The Prairie (21 page)

"It is a pity, Eester," the husband coolly answered, "that you did not
take it; I reckon it would have done considerable good. But, boys, if it
should turn out as Ahiram thinks, that there are Indians near us, we may
have to scamper up the rock, and lose our suppers after all; therefore
we will make sure of the game, and talk over the performances of the
Doctor when we have nothing better to do."

The hint was taken; and in a few minutes, the exposed situation in which
the family was collected, was exchanged for the more secure elevation
of the rock. Here Esther busied herself, working and scolding with equal
industry, until the repast was prepared; when she summoned her husband
to his meal in a voice as sonorous as that with which the Imam reminds
the Faithful of a more important duty.

When each had assumed his proper and customary place around the smoking
viands, the squatter set the example by beginning to partake of a
delicious venison steak, prepared like the hump of the bison, with a
skill that rather increased than concealed its natural properties. A
painter would gladly have seized the moment, to transfer the wild and
characteristic scene to the canvass.

The reader will remember that the citadel of Ishmael stood insulated,
lofty, ragged, and nearly inaccessible. A bright flashing fire that was
burning on the centre of its summit, and around which the busy group
was clustered, lent it the appearance of some tall Pharos placed in the
centre of the deserts, to light such adventurers as wandered through
their broad wastes. The flashing flame gleamed from one sun-burnt
countenance to another, exhibiting every variety of expression, from the
juvenile simplicity of the children, mingled as it was with a shade of
the wildness peculiar to their semi-barbarous lives, to the dull and
immovable apathy that dwelt on the features of the squatter, when
unexcited. Occasionally a gust of wind would fan the embers; and, as
a brighter light shot upwards, the little solitary tent was seen as it
were suspended in the gloom of the upper air. All beyond was enveloped,
as usual at that hour, in an impenetrable body of darkness.

"It is unaccountable that Asa should choose to be out of the way at such
a time as this," Esther pettishly observed. "When all is finished and
to rights, we shall have the boy coming up, grumbling for his meal, and
hungry as a bear after his winter's nap. His stomach is as true as the
best clock in Kentucky, and seldom wants winding up to tell the time,
whether of day or night. A desperate eater is Asa, when a-hungered by a
little work!"

Ishmael looked sternly around the circle of his silent sons, as if to
see whether any among them would presume to say aught in favour of the
absent delinquent. But now, when no exciting causes existed to arouse
their slumbering tempers, it seemed to be too great an effort to enter
on the defence of their rebellious brother. Abiram, however, who, since
the pacification, either felt, or affected to feel, a more generous
interest in his late adversary, saw fit to express an anxiety, to which
the others were strangers—

"It will be well if the boy has escaped the Tetons!" he muttered. "I
should be sorry to have Asa, who is one of the stoutest of our party,
both in heart and hand, fall into the power of the red devils."

"Look to yourself, Abiram; and spare your breath, if you can use it only
to frighten the woman and her huddling girls. You have whitened the face
of Ellen Wade, already; who looks as pale as if she was staring to-day
at the very Indians you name, when I was forced to speak to her through
the rifle, because I couldn't reach her ears with my tongue. How was it,
Nell! you have never given the reason of your deafness?"

The colour of Ellen's cheek changed as suddenly as the squatter's
piece had flashed on the occasion to which he alluded, the burning glow
suffusing her features, until it even mantled her throat with its fine
healthful tinge. She hung her head abashed, but did not seem to think it
necessary to reply.

Ishmael, too sluggish to pursue the subject, or content with the
pointed allusion he had just made, rose from his seat on the rock,
and stretching his heavy frame, like a well-fed and fattened ox, he
announced his intention to sleep. Among a race who lived chiefly for the
indulgence of the natural wants, such a declaration could not fail of
meeting with sympathetic dispositions. One after another disappeared,
each seeking his or her rude dormitory; and, before many minutes,
Esther, who by this time had scolded the younger fry to sleep, found
herself, if we except the usual watchman below, in solitary possession
of the naked rock.

Whatever less valuable fruits had been produced in this uneducated woman
by her migratory habits, the great principle of female nature was too
deeply rooted ever to be entirely eradicated. Of a powerful, not to
say fierce temperament, her passions were violent and difficult to
be smothered. But, however she might and did abuse the accidental
prerogatives of her situation, love for her offspring, while it often
slumbered, could never be said to become extinct. She liked not the
protracted absence of Asa. Too fearless herself to have hesitated an
instant on her own account about crossing the dark abyss, into which she
now sat looking with longing eyes, her busy imagination, in obedience
to this inextinguishable sentiment, began to conjure nameless evils on
account of her son. It might be true, as Abiram had hinted, that he had
become a captive to some of the tribes who were hunting the buffaloe
in that vicinity, or even a still more dreadful calamity might have
befallen. So thought the mother, while silence and darkness lent their
aid to the secret impulses of nature.

Agitated by these reflections, which put sleep at defiance, Esther
continued at her post, listening with that sort of acuteness which is
termed instinct in the animals a few degrees below her in the scale of
intelligence, for any of those noises which might indicate the approach
of footsteps. At length, her wishes had an appearance of being realised,
for the long desired sounds were distinctly audible, and presently she
distinguished the dim form of a man at the base of the rock.

"Now, Asa, richly do you deserve to be left with an earthen bed this
blessed night!" the woman began to mutter, with a revolution in her
feelings, that will not be surprising to those who have made the
contradictions that give variety to the human character a study. "And
a hard one I've a mind it shall be! Why Abner; Abner; you Abner, do you
sleep? Let me not see you dare to open the hole, till I get down. I will
know who it is that wishes to disturb a peaceable, ay, and an honest
family too, at such a time in the night as this!"

"Woman!" exclaimed a voice, that intended to bluster, while the speaker
was manifestly a little apprehensive of the consequences; "Woman, I
forbid you on pain of the law to project any of your infernal missiles.
I am a citizen, and a freeholder, and a graduate of two universities;
and I stand upon my rights! Beware of malice prepense, of chance-medley,
and of manslaughter. It is I—your amicus; a friend and inmate. I—Dr.
Obed Battius."

"Who?" demanded Esther, in a voice that nearly refused to convey her
words to the ears of the anxious listener beneath. "Did you say it was
not Asa?"

"Nay, I am neither Asa, nor Absalom, nor any of the Hebrew princes, but
Obed, the root and stock of them all. Have I not said, woman, that you
keep one in attendance who is entitled to a peaceable as well as
an honourable admission? Do you take me for an animal of the class
amphibia, and that I can play with my lungs as a blacksmith does with
his bellows?"

The naturalist might have expended his breath much longer, without
producing any desirable result, had Esther been his only auditor.
Disappointed and alarmed, the woman had already sought her pallet, and
was preparing, with a sort of desperate indifference, to compose herself
to sleep. Abner, the sentinel below, however, had been aroused from
an exceedingly equivocal situation by the outcry; and as he had
now regained sufficient consciousness to recognise the voice of the
physician, the latter was admitted with the least possible delay. Dr.
Battius bustled through the narrow entrance, with an air of singular
impatience, and was already beginning to mount the difficult ascent,
when catching a view of the porter, he paused, to observe with an air
that he intended should be impressively admonitory—

"Abner, there are dangerous symptoms of somnolency about thee! It
is sufficiently exhibited in the tendency to hiation, and may prove
dangerous not only to yourself, but to all thy father's family."

"You never made a greater mistake, Doctor," returned the youth, gaping
like an indolent lion; "I haven't a symptom, as you call it, about any
part of me; and as to father and the children, I reckon the small-pox
and the measles have been thoroughly through the breed these many months
ago."

Content with his brief admonition, the naturalist had surmounted half
the difficulties of the ascent before the deliberate Abner ended his
justification. On the summit, Obed fully expected to encounter Esther,
of whose linguacious powers he had too often been furnished with the
most sinister reproofs, and of which he stood in an awe too salutary to
covet a repetition of the attacks. The reader can foresee that he was
to be agreeably disappointed. Treading lightly, and looking timidly
over his shoulder, as if he apprehended a shower of something, even more
formidable than words, the Doctor proceeded to the place which had been
allotted to himself in the general disposition of the dormitories.

Instead of sleeping, the worthy naturalist sat ruminating over what he
had both seen and heard that day, until the tossing and mutterings
which proceeded from the cabin of Esther, who was his nearest neighbour,
advertised him of the wakeful situation of its inmate. Perceiving the
necessity of doing something to disarm this female Cerberus, before his
own purpose could be accomplished, the Doctor, reluctant as he was to
encounter her tongue, found himself compelled to invite a colloquial
communication.

"You appear not to sleep, my very kind and worthy Mrs. Bush," he said,
determined to commence his applications with a plaster that was usually
found to adhere; "you appear to rest badly, my excellent hostess; can I
administer to your ailings?"

"What would you give me, man?" grumbled Esther; "a blister to make me
sleep?"

"Say rather a cataplasm. But if you are in pain, here are some cordial
drops, which, taken in a glass of my own cognac, will give you rest, if
I know aught of the materia medica."

The Doctor, as he very well knew, had assailed Esther on her weak side;
and, as he doubted not of the acceptable quality of his prescription, he
sat himself at work, without unnecessary delay, to prepare it. When he
made his offering, it was received in a snappish and threatening manner,
but swallowed with a facility that sufficiently proclaimed how much it
was relished. The woman muttered her thanks, and her {leech} reseated
himself in silence, to await the operation of the dose. In less than
half an hour the breathing of Esther became so profound, and, as the
Doctor himself might have termed it, so very abstracted, that had he not
known how easy it was to ascribe this new instance of somnolency to the
powerful dose of opium with which he had garnished the brandy, he might
have seen reason to distrust his own prescription. With the sleep of the
restless woman, the stillness became profound and general.

Then Dr. Battius saw fit to arise, with the silence and caution of the
midnight robber, and to steal out of his own cabin, or rather kennel,
for it deserved no better name, towards the adjoining dormitories. Here
he took time to assure himself that all his neighbours were buried in
deep sleep. Once advised of this important fact, he hesitated no longer,
but commenced the difficult ascent which led to the upper pinnacle
of the rock. His advance, though abundantly guarded, was not entirely
noiseless; but while he was felicitating himself on having successfully
effected his object, and he was in the very act of placing his foot on
the highest ledge a hand was laid upon the skirts of his coat, which as
effectually put an end to his advance, as if the gigantic strength of
Ishmael himself had pinned him to the earth.

"Is there sickness in the tent," whispered a soft voice in his very ear,
"that Dr. Battius is called to visit it at such an hour?"

So soon as the heart of the naturalist had returned from its hasty
expedition into his throat, as one less skilled than Dr. Battius in the
formation of the animal would have been apt to have accounted for
the extraordinary sensation with which he received this unlooked-for
interruption, he found resolution to reply; using, as much in terror as
in prudence, the same precaution in the indulgence of his voice.

"My worthy Nelly! I am greatly rejoiced to find it is no other than
thee. Hist! child, hist! Should Ishmael gain a knowledge of our plans,
he would not hesitate to cast us both from this rock, upon the plain
beneath. Hist! Nelly, hist!"

As the Doctor delivered his injunctions between the intervals of his
ascent, by the time they were concluded, both he and his auditor had
gained the upper level.

"And now, Dr. Battius," the girl gravely demanded, "may I know the
reason why you have run so great a risk of flying from this place,
without wings, and at the certain expense of your neck?"

"Nothing shall be concealed from thee, worthy and trusty Nelly—but are
you certain that Ishmael will not awake?"

"No fear of him; he will sleep until the sun scorches his eyelids. The
danger is from my aunt."

"Esther sleepeth!" the Doctor sententiously replied. "Ellen, you have
been watching on this rock, to-day?"