The Prairie (10 page)

"Now!" shouted Paul, unable to control his impatience any longer, "now,
old Ishmael, is the time to show the native blood of Kentucky! Fire low,
boys—level into the swales, for the red skins are settling to the very
earth!"

His voice was, however, lost, or rather unheeded, in the midst of the
shrieks, shouts, and yells that were, by this time, bursting from fifty
mouths on every side of him. The guards still maintained their posts at
the side of the captives, but it was with that sort of difficulty with
which steeds are restrained at the starting-post, when expecting the
signal to commence the trial of speed. They tossed their arms wildly in
the air, leaping up and down more like exulting children than sober men,
and continued to utter the most frantic cries.

In the midst of this tumultuous disorder a rushing sound was heard,
similar to that which might be expected to precede the passage of a
flight of buffaloes, and then came the flocks and cattle of Ishmael in
one confused and frightened drove.

"They have robbed the squatter of his beasts!" said the attentive
trapper. "The reptiles have left him as hoofless as a beaver!" He was
yet speaking, when the whole body of the terrified animals rose the
little acclivity, and swept by the place where he stood, followed by a
band of dusky and demon-like looking figures, who pressed madly on their
rear.

The impulse was communicated to the Teton horses, long accustomed to
sympathise in the untutored passions of their owners, and it was with
difficulty that the keepers were enabled to restrain their impatience.
At this moment, when all eyes were directed to the passing whirlwind
of men and beasts, the trapper caught the knife from the hands of his
inattentive keeper, with a power that his age would have seemed to
contradict, and, at a single blow, severed the thong of hide which
connected the whole of the drove. The wild animals snorted with joy and
terror, and tearing the earth with their heels, they dashed away into
the broad prairies, in a dozen different directions.

Weucha turned upon his assailant with the ferocity and agility of a
tiger. He felt for the weapon of which he had been so suddenly deprived,
fumbled with impotent haste for the handle of his tomahawk, and at the
same moment glanced his eyes after the flying cattle, with the longings
of a Western Indian. The struggle between thirst for vengeance and
cupidity was severe but short. The latter quickly predominated in the
bosom of one whose passions were proverbially grovelling; and scarcely
a moment intervened between the flight of the animals and the swift
pursuit of the guards. The trapper had continued calmly facing his foe,
during the instant of suspense that succeeded his hardy act; and now
that Weucha was seen following his companions, he pointed after the dark
train, saying, with his deep and nearly inaudible laugh—

"Red-natur' is red-natur', let it show itself on a prairie, or in a
forest! A knock on the head would be the smallest reward to him who
should take such a liberty with a Christian sentinel; but there goes the
Teton after his horses as if he thought two legs as good as four in such
a race! And yet the imps will have every hoof of them afore the day sets
in, because it's reason ag'in instinct. Poor reason, I allow; but still
there is a great deal of the man in an Indian. Ah's me! your Delawares
were the redskins of which America might boast; but few and scattered
is that mighty people, now! Well! the traveller may just make his pitch
where he is; he has plenty of water, though natur' has cheated him of
the pleasure of stripping the 'arth of its lawful trees. He has seen the
last of his four-footed creatures, or I am but little skilled in Sioux
cunning."

"Had we not better join the party of Ishmael?" said the bee-hunter.
"There will be a regular fight about this matter, or the old fellow has
suddenly grown chicken-hearted."

"No—no—no," hastily exclaimed Ellen.

She was stopped by the trapper, who laid his hand gently on her mouth,
as he answered—

"Hist—hist!—the sound of voices might bring us into danger. Is your
friend," he added, turning to Paul, "a man of spirit enough?"

"Don't call the squatter a friend of mine!" interrupted the youth. "I
never yet harboured with one who could not show hand and zeal for the
land which fed him."

"Well—well. Let it then be acquaintance. Is he a man to maintain his
own, stoutly by dint of powder and lead?"

"His own! ay, and that which is not his own, too! Can you tell me, old
trapper, who held the rifle that did the deed for the sheriff's deputy,
that thought to rout the unlawful settlers who had gathered nigh the
Buffaloe lick in old Kentucky? I had lined a beautiful swarm that very
day into the hollow of a dead beech, and there lay the people's officer
at its roots, with a hole directly through the 'grace of God;' which he
carried in his jacket pocket covering his heart, as if he thought a bit
of sheepskin was a breastplate against a squatter's bullet! Now, Ellen,
you needn't be troubled for it never strictly was brought home to him;
and there were fifty others who had pitched in that neighbourhood with
just the same authority from the law."

The poor girl shuddered, struggling powerfully to suppress the sigh
which arose in spite of her efforts, as if from the very bottom of her
heart.

Thoroughly satisfied that he understood the character of the emigrants,
by the short but comprehensive description conveyed in Paul's reply, the
old man raised no further question concerning the readiness of Ishmael
to revenge his wrongs, but rather followed the train of thought which
was suggested to his experience, by the occasion.

"Each one knows the ties which bind him to his fellow-creatures best,"
he answered. "Though it is greatly to be mourned that colour, and
property, and tongue, and l'arning should make so wide a difference in
those who, after all, are but the children of one father! Howsomever,"
he continued, by a transition not a little characteristic of the
pursuits and feelings of the man, "as this is a business in which there
is much more likelihood of a fight than need for a sermon, it is best to
be prepared for what may follow.—Hush! there is a movement below; it is
an equal chance that we are seen."

"The family is stirring," cried Ellen, with a tremor that announced
nearly as much terror at the approach of her friends, as she had before
manifested at the presence of her enemies. "Go, Paul, leave me. You, at
least, must not be seen!"

"If I leave you, Ellen, in this desert before I see you safe in the care
of old Ishmael, at least, may I never hear the hum of another bee, or,
what is worse, fail in sight to line him to his hive!"

"You forget this good old man. He will not leave me. Though I am sure,
Paul, we have parted before, where there has been more of a desert than
this."

"Never! These Indians may come whooping back, and then where are you!
Half way to the Rocky Mountains before a man can fairly strike the line
of your flight. What think you, old trapper? How long may it be before
these Tetons, as you call them, will be coming for the rest of old
Ishmael's goods and chattels?"

"No fear of them," returned the old man, laughing in his own peculiar
and silent manner; "I warrant me the devils will be scampering after
their beasts these six hours yet! Listen! you may hear them in the
willow bottoms at this very moment; ay, your real Sioux cattle will run
like so many long-legged elks. Hist! crouch again into the grass, down
with ye both; as I'm a miserable piece of clay, I heard the ticking of a
gunlock!"

The trapper did not allow his companions time to hesitate, but dragging
them both after him, he nearly buried his own person in the fog of the
prairie, while he was speaking. It was fortunate that the senses of
the aged hunter remained so acute, and that he had lost none of his
readiness of action. The three were scarcely bowed to the ground, when
their ears were saluted with the well-known, sharp, short, reports of
the western rifle, and instantly, the whizzing of the ragged lead was
heard, buzzing within dangerous proximity of their heads.

"Well done, young chips! well done, old block!" whispered Paul, whose
spirits no danger nor situation could entirely depress. "As pretty a
volley, as one would wish to bear on the wrong end of a rifle! What d'ye
say, trapper! here is likely to be a three-cornered war. Shall I give
'em as good as they send?"

"Give them nothing but fair words," returned the other, hastily, "or you
are both lost."

"I'm not certain it would much mend the matter, if I were to speak with
my tongue instead of the piece," said Paul, in a tone half jocular half
bitter.

"For the sake of heaven, do not let them hear you!" cried Ellen. "Go,
Paul, go; you can easily quit us now!"

Several shots in quick succession, each sending its dangerous messenger,
still nearer than the preceding discharge, cut short her speech, no less
in prudence than in terror.

"This must end," said the trapper, rising with the dignity of one bent
only on the importance of his object. "I know not what need ye may have,
children, to fear those you should both love and honour, but something
must be done to save your lives. A few hours more or less can never
be missed from the time of one who has already numbered so many days;
therefore I will advance. Here is a clear space around you. Profit by it
as you need, and may God bless and prosper each of you, as ye deserve!"

Without waiting for any reply, the trapper walked boldly down the
declivity in his front, taking the direction of the encampment, neither
quickening his pace in trepidation, nor suffering it to be retarded
by fear. The light of the moon fell brighter for a moment on his
tall, gaunt, form, and served to warn the emigrants of his approach.
Indifferent, however to this unfavourable circumstance, he held his way,
silently and steadily towards the copse, until a threatening voice met
him with a challenge of—

"Who comes; friend or foe?"

"Friend," was the reply; "one who has lived too long to disturb the
close of life with quarrels."

"But not so long as to forget the tricks of his youth," said Ishmael,
rearing his huge frame from beneath the slight covering of a low bush,
and meeting the trapper, face to face; "old man, you have brought this
tribe of red devils upon us, and to-morrow you will be sharing the
booty."

"What have you lost?" calmly demanded the trapper.

"Eight as good mares as ever travelled in gears, besides a foal that is
worth thirty of the brightest Mexicans that bear the face of the King of
Spain. Then the woman has not a cloven hoof for her dairy, or her loom,
and I believe even the grunters, foot sore as they be, are ploughing the
prairie. And now, stranger," he added, dropping the butt of his rifle on
the hard earth, with a violence and clatter that would have intimidated
one less firm than the man he addressed, "how many of these creatures
may fall to your lot?"

"Horses have I never craved, nor even used; though few have journeyed
over more of the wide lands of America than myself, old and feeble as I
seem. But little use is there for a horse among the hills and woods of
York—that is, as York was, but as I greatly fear York is no longer—as
for woollen covering and cow's milk, I covet no such womanly fashions!
The beasts of the field give me food and raiment. No, I crave no cloth
better than the skin of a deer, nor any meat richer than his flesh."

The sincere manner of the trapper, as he uttered this simple
vindication, was not entirely thrown away on the emigrant, whose dull
nature was gradually quickening into a flame, that might speedily have
burst forth with dangerous violence. He listened like one who
doubted, not entirely convinced: and he muttered between his teeth the
denunciation, with which a moment before he intended to precede the
summary vengeance he had certainly meditated.

"This is brave talking," he at length grumbled; "but to my judgment,
too lawyer-like, for a straight forward, fair-weather, and foul-weather
hunter."

"I claim to be no better than a trapper," the other meekly answered.

"Hunter or trapper—there is little difference. I have come, old man,
into these districts because I found the law sitting too tight upon me,
and am not over fond of neighbours who can't settle a dispute without
troubling a justice and twelve men; but I didn't come to be robb'd of my
plunder, and then to say thank'ee to the man who did it!"

"He, who ventures far into the prairies, must abide by the ways of its
owners."

"Owners!" echoed the squatter, "I am as rightful an owner of the land
I stand on, as any governor in the States! Can you tell me, stranger,
where the law or the reason, is to be found, which says that one man
shall have a section, or a town, or perhaps a county to his use, and
another have to beg for earth to make his grave in? This is not nature,
and I deny that it is law. That is, your legal law."

"I cannot say that you are wrong," returned the trapper, whose opinions
on this important topic, though drawn from very different premises, were
in singular accordance with those of his companion, "and I have often
thought and said as much, when and where I have believed my voice could
be heard. But your beasts are stolen by them who claim to be masters of
all they find in the deserts."

"They had better not dispute that matter with a man who knows better,"
said the other in a portentous voice, though it seemed deep and sluggish
as he who spoke.

"I call myself a fair trader, and one who gives to his chaps as good as
he receives. You saw the Indians?"

"I did—they held me a prisoner, while they stole into your camp."

"It would have been more like a white man and a Christian, to have let
me known as much in better season," retorted Ishmael, casting another
ominous sidelong glance at the trapper, as if still meditating evil. "I
am not much given to call every man, I fall in with, cousin, but colour
should be something, when Christians meet in such a place as this. But
what is done, is done, and cannot be mended, by words. Come out of your
ambush, boys; here is no one but the old man: he has eaten of my bread,
and should be our friend; though there is such good reason to suspect
him of harbouring with our enemies."