The Prairie, Volume 2

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “That there did exist a certain compactum or agreement between Obed Batt, M. D., and Ishmael Bush, viator, or erratic husbandman,” he said, endeavouring to avoid all offence in the use of terms, “I am not disposed to deny. I will admit that it was therein conditioned, or stipulated that a certain journey should be performed conjointly, or in company, until so many days had been numbered. But as the said time has fully expired, I presume it fair to infer that the bargain may now be said to be obsolete.”

  “Ishmael!” interrupted the impatient Esther, “make no words with a man who can break your bones as easily as set them, and let the poisoning devil go! He’s a cheat from box to phial. Give him half the prairie and take the other half yourself. He an acclimator! I will engage to get the brats acclimated to a fever-and-agy bottom in a week, and not a word shall be uttered harder to pronounce than the bark of a cherry-tree, with perhaps a drop or two of western comfort. One thing ar’ a fact, Ishmael; I like no fellow travellers who can give a heavy feel to an honest woman’s tongue, I--and that without caring whether her household is in order or out of order.”

  The air of settled gloom, which had taken possession of the squatter’s countenance, lighted for an instant with a look of dull drollery as he answered--

  “Different people might judge differently, Esther, of the virtue of the man’s art. But sin’ it is your wish to let him depart, I will not plough the prairie to make the walking rough. Friend, you are at liberty to go into the settlements, and there I would advise you to tarry, as men like me who make but few contracts do not relish the custom of breaking them so easily.”

  “And now, Ishmael,” resumed his conquering wife, “in order to keep a quiet family and to smother all heart-burnings between us, show yonder Red-skin and his daughter,” pointing to the aged Le Balafré and the widowed Tachechana, “the way to their village, and let us say to them: God bless you and farewell in the same breath!”

  “They are the captives of the Pawnee, according to the rules of Indian warfare, and I cannot meddle with his rights.”

  “Beware the devil, my man! He’s a cheat and a tempter, and none can say they ar’ safe with his awful delusions before their eyes! Take the advice of one who has the honour of your name at heart, and send the tawny Jezebel away.”

  The squatter laid his broad hand on her shoulder, and looking her steadily in the eye he answered, in tones that were both stern and solemn--

  “Woman, we have that before us which calls our thoughts to other matters than the follies you mean. Remember what is to come and put your silly jealousy to sleep.”

  “It is true, it is true,” murmured his wife moving back among her daughters; “God forgive me, that I should forget it!”

  “And, now, young man; you, who have so often come into my clearing, under the pretence of lining the bee into his hole,” resumed Ishmael, after a momentary pause, as if to recover the equilibrium of his mind, “with you there is a heavier account to settle. Not satisfied with rummaging my camp, you have stolen a girl who is akin to my wife, and who I had calculated to make one day a daughter of my own.”

  A stronger sensation was produced by this than by any of the preceding interrogations. All the young men bent their curious eyes on Paul and Ellen, the former of whom seemed in no small mental confusion, while the latter bent her face on her bosom in shame.

  “Harkee, friend Ishmael Bush,” returned the bee-hunter, who found that he was expected to answer to the charge of burglary as well as to that of abduction; “that I did not give the most civil treatment to your pots and pails, I am not going to gainsay. If you will name the price you put upon the articles, it is possible the damage may be quietly settled between us, and all hard feelings forgotten. I was not in a church-going humour when we got upon your rock, and it is more than probable there was quite as much kicking as preaching among your wares; but a hole in the best man’s coat can be mended by money. As to the matter of Ellen Wade, here, it may not be got over so easily. Different people have different opinions on the subject of matrimony. Some think it is enough to say yes and no, to the questions of the magistrate, or of the parson if one happens to be handy, in order to make a quiet house, but I think that where a young woman’s mind is fairly bent on going in a certain direction, it will be quite as prudent to let her body follow. Not that I mean to say Ellen was not altogether forced to what she did, and therefore she is just as innocent, in this matter, as yonder jackass, who was made to carry her, and greatly against his will, too, as I am ready to swear he would say himself, if he could speak as loud as he can bray.”

  “Nelly,” resumed the squatter, who paid very little attention to what Paul considered a highly creditable and ingenious vindication, “Nelly, this is a wide and a wicked world, on which you have been in such a hurry to cast yourself. You have fed and you have slept in my camp for a year, and I did hope that you had found the free air of the borders enough to your mind to wish to remain among us.”

  “Let the girl have her will,” muttered Esther, from the rear; “he, who might have persuaded her to stay, is sleeping in the cold and naked prairie, and little hope is left of changing her humour; besides a woman’s mind is a wilful thing, and not easily turned from its way wardness, as you know yourself, my man, or I should not be here the mother of your sons and daughters.”

  The squatter seemed reluctant to abandon his views on the abashed girl so easily, and before he answered to the suggestion of his wife, he turned his usual dull look along the line of the curious countenances of his boys, as if to see whether there was not one among them fit to fill the place of the deceased. Paul was not slow to observe the expression, and hitting nigher than usual on the secret thoughts of the other, he believed he had fallen on an expedient which might remove every difficulty.

  “It is quite plain, friend Bush,” he said, “that there are two opinions in this matter; yours for your sons and mine for myself. I see but one amicable way of settling this dispute, which is as follows:--do you make a choice among your boys of any you will, and let us walk off together for the matter of a few miles into the prairies; the one who stays behind, can never trouble any man’s house or his fixen, and the one who comes back may make the best of his way he can, in the good wishes of the young woman.”

  “Paul!” exclaimed the reproachful but smothered voice of Ellen.

  “Never fear, Nelly,” whispered the literal bee-hunter, whose straight-going mind suggested no other motive of uneasiness, on the part of his mistress, than concern for himself; “I have taken the measure of them all, and you may trust an eye that has seen to line so many a bee into his hole!”

  “I am not about to set myself up as a ruler of inclinations,” observed the squatter. “If the heart of the child is truly in the settlements let her declare it; she shall have no let or hindrance from me. Speak, Nelly, and let what you say come from your wishes, without fear or favour. Would you leave us to go with this young man into the settled countries, or will you tarry and share the little we have to give, but which to you we give so freely?”

  Thus called upon to decide, Ellen could no longer hesitate. The glance of her eye was at first timid and furtive. But as the colour flushed her features, and her breathing became quick and excited, it was apparent that the native spirit of the girl was gaining the ascendancy over the bushfulness of sex.

  “You took me a fatherless, impoverished and friendless orphan,” she said, struggling to command her voice, “when others, who live in what may be called affluence compared to your state, chose to forget me; and may Heaven in its goodness bless you for it! The little I have done will never pay you for that one act of kindness. I like not your manner of life; it is different from the ways of my childhood, and it is different from my wishes; still had you not led this sweet and unoffending lady from her friends, I should never have quitted you, until you yourself had said, ‘go, and the blessing of God go with you!’ ”

  “The act was not wise, but it is repented of, and so far as it can be
done, in safety, it shall be repaired. Now, speak freely; will you tarry, or will you go?”

  “I have promised the lady,” said Ellen, dropping her eyes again to the earth, “not to leave her; and after she has received so much wrong from our hands, she may have a right to claim that I keep my word.”

  “Take the cords from the young man,” said Ishmael. When the order was obeyed, he motioned for all his sons to advance, and he placed them in a row before the eyes of Ellen. “Now let there be no trifling, but open your heart. Here ar’ all I have to offer, besides a hearty welcome.”

  The distressed girl turned her abashed look from the countenance of one of the young men to that of another, until her eye met the troubled and working features of Paul. Then nature got the better of forms. She threw herself into the arms of the bee-hunter, and sufficiently proclaimed her choice by sobbing aloud. Ishmael signed to his sons to fall back, and evidently mortified, though perhaps not disappointed by the result, he no longer hesitated.

  “Take her,” he said, “and deal honestly and kindly by her. The girl has that in her which should make her welcome, in any man’s house, and I should be loth to hear she ever came to harm. And now I have settled with you all on terms that I hope you will not find hard, but on the contrary just and manly. I have only another question to ask, and that is of the Captain; do you choose to profit by my teams in going into the settlements, or not?”

  “I hear, that some soldiers of my party are looking for me near the villages of the Pawness,” said Middleton, “and I intend to accompany this chief, in order to join my men.”

  “Then the sooner we part the better. Horses are plenty on the bottom. Go; make your choice and leave us in peace.”

  “That is impossible, while the old man, who has been a friend of my family near half a century is left a prisoner. What has he done, that he too is not released?”

  “Ask no questions that may lead to deceitful answers,” sullenly returned the squatter; “I have dealings of my own with that trapper that it may not befit an officer of the States to meddle with. Go, while your road is open.”

  “The man may be giving you honest counsel, and that which it concerns you all to hearken to,” observed the old captive, who seemed in no uneasiness at the extraordinary condition in which he found himself. “The Siouxes are a numberless and bloody-minded race, and no one can say how long it may be afore they will be out again on the scent of revenge. Therefore I say to you, go, also, and take especial heed, in crossing the bottoms, that you get not entangled again in the fires, for the honest hunters often burn the grass at this season, in order that the buffaloes may find a sweeter and a greener pasturage in the spring.”

  “I should forget not only my gratitude, but my duty to the laws, were I to leave this prisoner in your hands, even by his own consent, without knowing the nature of his crime, in which we may have all been his innocent accessaries.”

  “Will it satisfy you to know, that he merits all he will receive?”

  “It will at least change my opinion of his character.”

  “Look then at this,” said Ishmael, placing before the eyes of the Captain the bullet that had been found about the person of the dead Asa; “with this morsel of lead did he lay low as fine a boy as ever gave joy to a parent’s eyes!”

  “I cannot believe that he has done this deed, unless in self-defence, or on some justifiable provocation. That he knew of the death of your son, I confess, for he pointed out the brake in which the body lay, but that he has wrongfully taken his life, nothing but his own acknowledgment shall persuade me to believe.”

  “I have lived long,” commenced the trapper, who found, by the general pause, that he was expected to vindicate himself from the heavy imputation, “and much evil have I seen in my day. Many are the prowling bears and leaping panthers that I have met, fighting for the morsel which has been thrown in their way, and many are the reasoning men, that I have looked on striving against each other unto death, in order that human madness might also have its hour. For myself, I hope, there is no boasting in saying, that though my hand has been needed in putting down wickedness and oppression, it has never struck a blow of which its owner will be ashamed to hear at a reckoning that shall be far mightier than this.”

  “If my father has taken life from one of his tribe,” said the young Pawnee, whose quick eye had read the meaning of what was passing, in the bullet and in the countenances of the others, “let him give himself up to the friends of the dead, like a warrior. He is too just to need thongs to lead him to judgment.”

  “Boy, I hope you do me justice. If I had done the foul deed, with which they charge me, I should have manhood enough to come and offer my head to the blow of punishment, as all good and honest Redmen do the same.” Then giving his anxious Indian friend a look, to reassure him of his innocence, he turned to the rest of his attentive and interested listeners, as he continued in English, “I have a short story to tell, and he that believes it will believe the truth, and he that disbelieves it will only lead himself astray, and perhaps his neighbour too. We were all outlying about your camp, friend squatter, as by this time you may begin to suspect, when we found that it contained a wronged and imprisoned lady, with intentions neither more honest nor dishonest than to set her free, as in nature and justice she had a right to be. Seeing that I was more skilled in scouting than the others, while they lay back in the cover, I was sent upon the plain on the business of the reconnoitrings. You little thought that one was so nigh, who saw into all the circumventions of your hunt, but there was I, sometimes flat behind a bush or a tuft of grass, sometimes rolling down a hill into a bottom, and little did you dream that your motions were watched, as the panther watches the drinking deer. Lord, squatter, when I was a man in the pride and strength of my days, I have looked in at the tent door of the enemy, and they sleeping, ay, and dreaming too of being at home and in peace! I wish there was time to give you the partic--”

  “Proceed with your explanation,” interrupted the impatient Middleton.

  “Ah! and a bloody and wicked sight it was! There I lay in a low bed of grass, as two of the hunters came nigh each other. Their meeting was not cordial, nor such as men, who meet in a desert, should give each other; but I thought they would have parted in peace, until I saw one put his rifle to the other’s back and do what I call a treacherous and sinful murder. It was a noble and a manly youth, that boy!--Though the powder burnt his coat he stood the shock for more than a minute before he fell. Then was he brought to his knees and a desperate and manful fight he made to the brake, like a wounded bear seeking a cover!”

  “And why, in the name of heavenly justice, did you conceal this!” cried Middleton.

  “What! think you, Captain, that a man, who has spent more than threescore years in the wilderness, has not learned the virtue of discretion. What red warrior runs to tell the sights he has seen until a fitting time? I took the Doctor to the place, in order to see whether his skill might not come in use, and our friend, the bee-hunter, being in company, was knowing to the fact that the bushes held the body.”

  “Ay; it ar’ true,” said Paul; “but not knowing what private reasons might make the old trapper wish to hush the matter up, I said as little about the thing as possible; which was just nothing at all.”

  “And who was the perpetrator of this deed? demanded Middleton.

  “If by perpetrator you mean him who did the act, 1 stands the man; and a shame, and a disgrace is it to our race, that he is of the blood and family of the dead.”

  “He lies! he lies!” shrieked Abiram. “I did no murder; I gave but blow for blow.”

  The voice of Ishmael was deep and even awful, as he answered--

  “It is enough. Let the old man go. Boys, put the brother of your mother in his place.”

  “Touch me not!” cried Abiram. “I’ll call on God to curse ye if you touch me!”

  The wild and disordered gleam of his eye at first induced the young men to arrest their steps, but when Abn
er, older and more resolute than the rest, advanced full upon him, with a countenance that bespoke the hostile state of his mind, the affrighted criminal turned, and making an abortive effort to fly, fell with his face to the earth, to all appearance perfectly dead. Amid the low exclamations of horror, which succeeded, Ishmael made a gesture which commanded his sons to bear the body into a tent.

  “Now,” he said, turning to those who were strangers in his camp, “nothing is left to be done, but for each to go his own road. I wish you all well; and to you, Ellen, though you may not prize the gift, I say, God bless you!”

  Middleton, awe-struck by what he believed a manifest judgment of Heaven, made no further resistance, but prepared to depart. The arrangements were brief and soon completed. When they were all ready, they took a short and silent leave of the squatter and his family, and then the whole of the singularly constituted party was seen slowly and silently following the victorious Pawnee, towards his distant villages.

  CHAPTER XV.

  “And I beseech you, Wrest once the law, to your authority:

  To do a great right, do a little wrong.”

  Shakspeare Ishmael awaited long and patiently for the motley train of Hard-Heart to disappear. When his scout reported that the last straggler of the Indians, who had joined their chief so soon as he was at such a distance from the encampment as to excite no jealousy by their numbers, had gone behind the most distant swell of the prairie, he gave forth the order to strike his tents. The cattle were already in the gears, and the moveables were soon transferred to their usual places in the different vehicles. When all these arrangements were completed, the little wagon, which had so long been the tenement of Inez, was drawn before the tent, into which the insensible body of the kidnapper had been borne, and preparations were evidently made for the reception of another prisoner. Then it was, as Abiram appeared, pale, terrified, and tottering beneath a load of detected guilt, that the younger members of the family were first apprized that he still belonged to the class of the living. A general and superstitious impression had spread among them that his crime had been visited by a terrible retribution from Heaven, and they now gazed at him, as at a being who belonged rather to another world, than as a mortal, who like themselves had still to endure the last agony, before the great link of human existence could be broken. The criminal himself appeared to be in a state in which the most sensitive and startling terror was singularly combined with total physical apathy. The truth was, that while his person had been numbed by the shock, his susceptibility to apprehension kept his agitated mind in unrelieved distress. When he found himself in the open air, he looked about him, in order to gather, if possible, some evidences of his future fate from the countenances of those who were gathered round. Seeing every where grave but composed features, and meeting in no eye any expression that threatened immediate violence, the miserable man began to revive, and, by the time he was seated in the wagon, his artful faculties were beginning to plot the expedients of parrying the just resentment of his kinsmen, or, if these should fail him, the means of escaping from a punishment that his forebodings told him would be terrible.