The Prairie (25 page)

It is true that his slow-minded sons, even while they submitted to the
impressions of the recent event, had glimmerings of terrible distrusts,
as to the manner in which their elder brother had met with his death.
There were faint and indistinct images in the minds of two or three of
the oldest, which portrayed the father himself, as ready to imitate the
example of Abraham, without the justification of the sacred authority
which commanded the holy man to attempt the revolting office. But then,
these images were so transient, and so much obscured in intellectual
mists, as to leave no very strong impressions, and the tendency of the
whole transaction, as we have already said, was rather to strengthen
than to weaken the authority of Ishmael.

In this disposition of mind, the party continued their route towards
the place whence they had that morning issued on a search which had been
crowned with so melancholy a success. The long and fruitless march which
they had made under the direction of Abiram, the discovery of the body,
and its subsequent interment, had so far consumed the day, that by the
time their steps were retraced across the broad track of waste which lay
between the grave of Asa and the rock, the sun had fallen far below his
meridian altitude. The hill had gradually risen as they approached, like
some tower emerging from the bosom of the sea, and when within a mile,
the minuter objects that crowned its height came dimly into view.

"It will be a sad meeting for the girls!" said Ishmael, who, from time
to time, did not cease to utter something which he intended should be
consolatory to the bruised spirit of his partner. "Asa was much regarded
by all the young; and seldom failed to bring in from his hunts something
that they loved."

"He did, he did," murmured Esther; "the boy was the pride of the family.
My other children are as nothing to him!"

"Say not so, good woman," returned the father, glancing his eye a little
proudly at the athletic train which followed, at no great distance,
in the rear". Say not so, old Eester, for few fathers and mothers have
greater reason to be boastful than ourselves."

"Thankful, thankful," muttered the humbled woman; "ye mean thankful,
Ishmael!"

"Then thankful let it be, if you like the word better, my good
girl,—but what has become of Nelly and the young? The child has
forgotten the charge I gave her, and has not only suffered the children
to sleep, but, I warrant you, is dreaming of the fields of Tennessee
at this very moment. The mind of your niece is mainly fixed on the
settlements, I reckon."

"Ay, she is not for us; I said it, and thought it, when I took her,
because death had stripped her of all other friends. Death is a sad
worker in the bosom of families, Ishmael! Asa had a kind feeling to the
child, and they might have come one day into our places, had things been
so ordered."

"Nay, she is not gifted for a frontier wife, if this is the manner she
is to keep house while the husband is on the hunt. Abner, let off your
rifle, that they may know we ar' coming. I fear Nelly and the young ar'
asleep." The young man complied with an alacrity that manifested how
gladly he would see the rounded, active figure of Ellen, enlivening
the ragged summit of the rock. But the report was succeeded by neither
signal nor answer of any sort. For a moment, the whole party stood in
suspense, awaiting the result, and then a simultaneous impulse caused
the whole to let off their pieces at the same instant, producing a
noise which might not fail to reach the ears of all within so short a
distance.

"Ah! there they come at last!" cried Abiram, who was usually among
the first to seize on any circumstance which promised relief from
disagreeable apprehensions.

"It is a petticoat fluttering on the line," said Esther; "I put it there
myself."

"You ar' right; but now she comes; the jade has been taking her comfort
in the tent!"

"It is not so," said Ishmael, whose usually inflexible features were
beginning to manifest the uneasiness he felt. "It is the tent itself
blowing about loosely in the wind. They have loosened the bottom, like
silly children as they ar', and unless care is had, the whole will come
down!"

The words were scarcely uttered before a rushing blast of wind swept
by the spot where they stood, raising the dust in little eddies, in its
progress; and then, as if guided by a master hand, it quitted the
earth, and mounted to the precise spot on which all eyes were just
then riveted. The loosened linen felt its influence and tottered; but
regained its poise, and, for a moment, it became tranquil. The cloud of
leaves next played in circling revolutions around the place, and then
descended with the velocity of a swooping hawk, and sailed away into
the prairie in long straight lines, like a flight of swallows resting
on their expanded wings. They were followed for some distance by the
snow-white tent, which, however, soon fell behind the rock, leaving
its highest peak as naked as when it lay in the entire solitude of the
desert.

"The murderers have been here!" moaned Esther. "My babes! my babes!"

For a moment even Ishmael faltered before the weight of so unexpected a
blow. But shaking himself, like an awakened lion, he sprang forward,
and pushing aside the impediments of the barrier, as if they had been
feathers, he rushed up the ascent with an impetuosity which proved how
formidable a sluggish nature may become, when thoroughly aroused.

Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?
—King John.

In order to preserve an even pace between the incidents of the tale, it
becomes necessary to revert to such events as occurred during the ward
of Ellen Wade.

For the few first hours, the cares of the honest and warm-hearted girl
were confined to the simple offices of satisfying the often-repeated
demands which her younger associates made on her time and patience,
under the pretences of hunger, thirst, and all the other ceaseless wants
of captious and inconsiderate childhood. She had seized a moment from
their importunities to steal into the tent, where she was administering
to the comforts of one far more deserving of her tenderness, when an
outcry among the children recalled her to the duties she had momentarily
forgotten.

"See, Nelly, see!" exclaimed half a dozen eager voices; "yonder ar' men;
and Phoebe says that they ar' Sioux-Indians!"

Ellen turned her eyes in the direction in which so many arms were
already extended, and, to her consternation, beheld several men,
advancing manifestly and swiftly in a straight line towards the rock.
She counted four, but was unable to make out any thing concerning their
characters, except that they were not any of those who of right were
entitled to admission into the fortress. It was a fearful moment for
Ellen. Looking around, at the juvenile and frightened flock that pressed
upon the skirts of her garments, she endeavoured to recall to her
confused faculties some one of the many tales of female heroism, with
which the history of the western frontier abounded. In one, a stockade
had been successfully defended by a single man, supported by three or
four women, for days, against the assaults of a hundred enemies. In
another, the women alone had been able to protect the children, and
the less valuable effects of their absent husbands; and a third was not
wanting, in which a solitary female had destroyed her sleeping captors
and given liberty not only to herself, but to a brood of helpless young.
This was the case most nearly assimilated to the situation in which
Ellen now found herself; and, with flushing cheeks and kindling eyes,
the girl began to consider, and to prepare her slender means of defence.

She posted the larger girls at the little levers that were to cast the
rocks on the assailants, the smaller were to be used more for show than
any positive service they could perform, while, like any other leader,
she reserved her own person, as a superintendent and encourager of the
whole. When these dispositions were made, she endeavoured to await the
issue, with an air of composure, that she intended should inspire her
assistants with the confidence necessary to ensure success.

Although Ellen was vastly their superior in that spirit which emanates
from moral qualities, she was by no means the equal of the two eldest
daughters of Esther, in the important military property of insensibility
to danger. Reared in the hardihood of a migrating life, on the skirts of
society, where they had become familiarised to the sights and dangers
of the wilderness, these girls promised fairly to become, at some future
day, no less distinguished than their mother for daring, and for that
singular mixture of good and evil, which, in a wider sphere of action,
would probably have enabled the wife of the squatter to enrol her name
among the remarkable females of her time. Esther had already, on one
occasion, made good the log tenement of Ishmael against an inroad of
savages; and on another, she had been left for dead by her enemies,
after a defence that, with a more civilised foe, would have entitled her
to the honours of a liberal capitulation. These facts, and sundry
others of a similar nature, had often been recapitulated with suitable
exultation in the presence of her daughters, and the bosoms of the young
Amazons were now strangely fluctuating between natural terror and the
ambitious wish to do something that might render them worthy of being
the children of such a mother. It appeared that the opportunity for
distinction, of this wild character, was no longer to be denied them.

The party of strangers was already within a hundred rods of the rock.
Either consulting their usual wary method of advancing, or admonished
by the threatening attitudes of two figures, who had thrust forth the
barrels of as many old muskets from behind the stone entrenchment, the
new comers halted, under favour of an inequality in the ground, where
a growth of grass thicker than common offered the advantage of
concealment. From this spot they reconnoitred the fortress for several
anxious, and to Ellen, interminable minutes. Then one advanced singly,
and apparently more in the character of a herald than of an assailant.

"Phoebe, do you fire," and "no, Hetty, you," were beginning to be heard
between the half-frightened and yet eager daughters of the squatter,
when Ellen probably saved the advancing stranger from some imminent
alarm, if from no greater danger, by exclaiming—

"Lay down the muskets; it is Dr. Battius!"

Her subordinates so far complied, as to withdraw their hands from the
locks, though the threatening barrels still maintained the portentous
levels. The naturalist, who had advanced with sufficient deliberation
to note the smallest hostile demonstration of the garrison, now raised
a white handkerchief on the end of his fusee, and came within speaking
distance of the fortress. Then, assuming what he intended should be an
imposing and dignified semblance of authority, he blustered forth, in a
voice that might have been heard at a much greater distance—

"What, ho! I summon ye all, in the name of the Confederacy of the United
Sovereign States of North America, to submit yourselves to the laws."

"Doctor or no Doctor; he is an enemy, Nelly; hear him! hear him! he
talks of the law."

"Stop! stay till I hear his answer!" said the nearly breathless Ellen,
pushing aside the dangerous weapons which were again pointed in the
direction of the shrinking person of the herald.

"I admonish and forewarn ye all," continued the startled Doctor, "that I
am a peaceful citizen of the before named Confederacy, or to speak with
greater accuracy, Union, a supporter of the Social Compact, and a lover
of good order and amity;" then, perceiving that the danger was, at
least, temporarily removed, he once more raised his voice to the hostile
pitch,—"I charge ye all, therefore, to submit to the laws."

"I thought you were a friend," Ellen replied; "and that you travelled
with my uncle, in virtue of an agreement—"

"It is void! I have been deceived in the very premises, and, I hereby
pronounce, a certain compactum, entered into and concluded between
Ishmael Bush, squatter, and Obed Battius, M.D., to be incontinently
null and of non-effect. Nay, children, to be null is merely a negative
property, and is fraught with no evil to your worthy parent; so lay
aside the fire-arms, and listen to the admonitions of reason. I declare
it vicious—null—abrogated. As for thee, Nelly, my feelings towards
thee are not at all given to hostility; therefore listen to that which
I have to utter, nor turn away thine ears in the wantonness of security.
Thou knowest the character of the man with whom thou dwellest, young
woman, and thou also knowest the danger of being found in evil company.
Abandon, then, the trifling advantages of thy situation, and yield the
rock peaceably to the will of those who accompany me—a legion, young
woman—I do assure you an invincible and powerful legion! Render,
therefore, the effects of this lawless and wicked squatter,—nay,
children, such disregard of human life, is frightful in those who
have so recently received the gift, in their own persons! Point those
dangerous weapons aside, I entreat of you; more for your own sakes, than
for mine. Hetty, hast thou forgotten who appeased thine anguish when
thy auricular nerves were tortured by the colds and damps of the naked
earth! and thou, Phoebe, ungrateful and forgetful Phoebe! but for this
very arm, which you would prostrate with an endless paralysis, thy
incisores would still be giving thee pain and sorrow! Lay, then, aside
thy weapons, and hearken to the advice of one who has always been
thy friend. And now, young woman," still keeping a jealous eye on the
muskets which the girl had suffered to be diverted a little from their
aim,—"and now, young woman, for the last, and therefore the most solemn
asking: I demand of thee the surrender of this rock, without delay or
resistance, in the joint names of power, of justice, and of the—" law
he would have added; but recollecting that this ominous word would
again provoke the hostility of the squatter's children, he succeeded in
swallowing it in good season, and concluded with the less dangerous and
more convertible term of "reason."