The Prairie (29 page)

"Do you know this—can this be true? What reason have you to fancy a
thing so wild?"

"Reason enough; I know Abiram White. Now, will you add a trifle just to
keep my throat from parching?"

"Go, go; you are stupified with drink already, miserable man, and know
not what you say. Go; go, and beware the drummer."

"Experience is a good guide"—the fellow called after the retiring
Middleton; and then turning with a chuckling laugh, like one well
satisfied with himself, he made the best of his way towards the shop of
the suttler.

A hundred times in the course of that night did Middleton fancy that the
communication of the miscreant was entitled to some attention, and
as often did he reject the idea as too wild and visionary for another
thought. He was awakened early on the following morning, after passing a
restless and nearly sleepless night, by his orderly, who came to report
that a man was found dead on the parade, at no great distance from his
quarters. Throwing on his clothes he proceeded to the spot, and beheld
the individual, with whom he had held the preceding conference, in the
precise situation in which he had first been found.

The miserable wretch had fallen a victim to his intemperance. This
revolting fact was sufficiently proclaimed by his obtruding eye-balls,
his bloated countenance, and the nearly insufferable odours that
were even then exhaling from his carcass. Disgusted with the odious
spectacle, the youth was turning from the sight, after ordering the
corpse to be removed, when the position of one of the dead man's hands
struck him. On examination, he found the fore-finger extended, as if in
the act of writing in the sand, with the following incomplete sentence,
nearly illegible, but yet in a state to be deciphered: "Captain, it is
true, as I am a gentle—" He had either died, or fallen into a sleep,
the forerunner of his death, before the latter word was finished.

Concealing this fact from the others, Middleton repeated his orders and
departed. The pertinacity of the deceased, and all the circumstances
united, induced him to set on foot some secret enquiries. He found that
a family answering the description which had been given him, had in fact
passed the place the day of his nuptials. They were traced along the
margin of the Mississippi, for some distance, until they took boat and
ascended the river to its confluence with the Missouri. Here they had
disappeared like hundreds of others, in pursuit of the hidden wealth of
the interior.

Furnished with these facts, Middleton detailed a small guard of his most
trusty men, took leave of Don Augustin, without declaring his hopes or
his fears, and having arrived at the indicated point, he pushed into the
wilderness in pursuit. It was not difficult to trace a train like that
of Ishmael, until he was well assured its object lay far beyond the
usual limits of the settlements. This circumstance, in itself, quickened
his suspicions, and gave additional force to his hopes of final success.

After getting beyond the assistance of verbal directions, the anxious
husband had recourse to the usual signs of a trail, in order to follow
the fugitives. This he also found a task of no difficulty, until he
reached the hard and unyielding soil of the rolling prairies. Here,
indeed, he was completely at fault. He found himself, at length,
compelled to divide his followers, appointing a place of rendezvous at a
distant day, and to endeavour to find the lost trail by multiplying, as
much as possible, the number of his eyes. He had been alone a week, when
accident brought him in contact with the trapper and the bee-hunter.
Part of their interview has been related, and the reader can readily
imagine the explanations that succeeded the tale he recounted, and which
led, as has already been seen, to the recovery of his bride.

These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence,
Therefore, I pray you, stay not to discourse,
But mount you presently.
—Shakespeare.

An hour had slid by, in hasty and nearly incoherent questions and
answers, before Middleton, hanging over his recovered treasure with that
sort of jealous watchfulness with which a miser would regard his hoards,
closed the disjointed narrative of his own proceedings by demanding—

"And you, my Inez; in what manner were you treated?"

"In every thing, but the great injustice they did in separating me so
forcibly from my friends, as well perhaps as the circumstances of my
captors would allow. I think the man, who is certainly the master here,
is but a new beginner in wickedness. He quarrelled frightfully in my
presence, with the wretch who seized me, and then they made an impious
bargain, to which I was compelled to acquiesce, and to which they bound
me as well as themselves by oaths. Ah! Middleton, I fear the heretics
are not so heedful of their vows as we who are nurtured in the bosom of
the true church!"

"Believe it not; these villains are of no religion: did they forswear
themselves?"

"No, not perjured: but was it not awful to call upon the good God to
witness so sinful a compact?"

"And so we think, Inez, as truly as the most virtuous cardinal of Rome.
But how did they observe their oath, and what was its purport?"

"They conditioned to leave me unmolested, and free from their odious
presence, provided I would give a pledge to make no effort to escape;
and that I would not even show myself, until a time that my masters saw
fit to name."

"And that time?" demanded the impatient Middleton, who so well knew the
religious scruples of his wife—"that time?"

"It is already passed. I was sworn by my patron saint, and faithfully
did I keep the vow, until the man they call Ishmael forgot the terms by
offering violence. I then made my appearance on the rock, for the time
too was passed; though I even think father Ignatius would have absolved
me from the vow, on account of the treachery of my keepers."

"If he had not," muttered the youth between his compressed teeth,
"I would have absolved him for ever from his spiritual care of your
conscience!"

"You, Middleton!" returned his wife looking up into his flushed face,
while a bright blush suffused her own sweet countenance; "you may
receive my vows, but surely you can have no power to absolve me from
their observance!"

"No, no, no. Inez, you are right. I know but little of these
conscientious subtilties, and I am any thing but a priest: yet tell me,
what has induced these monsters to play this desperate game—to trifle
thus with my happiness?"

"You know my ignorance of the world, and how ill I am qualified to
furnish reasons for the conduct of beings so different from any I have
ever seen before. But does not love of money drive men to acts even
worse than this? I believe they thought that an aged and wealthy father
could be tempted to pay them a rich ransom for his child; and, perhaps,"
she added, stealing an enquiring glance through her tears, at the
attentive Middleton, "they counted something on the fresh affections of
a bridegroom."

"They might have extracted the blood from my heart, drop by drop!"

"Yes," resumed his young and timid wife, instantly withdrawing the
stolen look she had hazarded, and hurriedly pursuing the train of the
discourse, as if glad to make him forget the liberty she had just taken,
"I have been told, there are men so base as to perjure themselves at the
altar, in order to command the gold of ignorant and confiding girls;
and if love of money will lead to such baseness, we may surely expect
it will hurry those, who devote themselves to gain, into acts of lesser
fraud."

"It must be so; and now, Inez, though I am here to guard you with my
life, and we are in possession of this rock, our difficulties, perhaps
our dangers, are not ended. You will summon all your courage to meet the
trial and prove yourself a soldier's wife, my Inez?"

"I am ready to depart this instant. The letter you sent by the
physician, had prepared me to hope for the best, and I have every thing
arranged for flight, at the shortest warning."

"Let us then leave this place and join our friends."

"Friends!" interrupted Inez, glancing her eyes around the little tent
in quest of the form of Ellen. "I, too, have a friend who must not be
forgotten, but who is pledged to pass the remainder of her life with us.
She is gone!"

Middleton gently led her from the spot, as he smilingly answered—

"She may have had, like myself, her own private communications for some
favoured ear."

The young man had not however done justice to the motives of Ellen Wade.
The sensitive and intelligent girl had readily perceived how little her
presence was necessary in the interview that has just been related,
and had retired with that intuitive delicacy of feeling which seems
to belong more properly to her sex. She was now to be seen seated on a
point of the rock, with her person so entirely enveloped in her dress as
to conceal her features. Here she had remained for near an hour, no
one approaching to address her, and as it appeared to her own quick and
jealous eyes, totally unobserved. In the latter particular, however,
even the vigilance of the quick-sighted Ellen was deceived.

The first act of Paul Hover, on finding himself the master of Ishmael's
citadel, had been to sound the note of victory, after the quaint and
ludicrous manner that is so often practised among the borderers of the
West. Flapping his sides with his hands, as the conquering game-cock is
wont to do with his wings, he raised a loud and laughable imitation of
the exultation of this bird; a cry which might have proved a dangerous
challenge had any one of the athletic sons of the squatter been within
hearing.

"This has been a regular knock-down and drag-out," he cried, "and no
bones broke! How now, old trapper, you have been one of your training,
platoon, rank and file soldiers in your day, and have seen forts taken
and batteries stormed before this—am I right?"

"Ay, ay, that have I," answered the old man, who still maintained his
post at the foot of the rock, so little disturbed by what he had just
witnessed, as to return the grin of Paul, with a hearty indulgence in
his own silent and peculiar laughter; "you have gone through the exploit
like men!"

"Now tell me, is it not in rule, to call over the names of the living,
and to bury the dead, after every bloody battle?"

"Some did and other some didn't. When Sir William push'd the German,
Dieskau, thro' the defiles at the foot of the Hori—"

"Your Sir William was a drone to Sir Paul, and knew nothing of
regularity. So here begins the roll-call—by the by, old man, what
between bee-hunting and buffaloe humps, and certain other matters,
I have been too busy to ask your name; for I intend to begin with my
rear-guard, well knowing that my man in front is too busy to answer."

"Lord, lad, I've been called in my time by as many names as there are
people among whom I've dwelt. Now the Delawares nam'd me for my eyes,
and I was called after the far-sighted hawk. Then, ag'in, the settlers
in the Otsego hills christened me anew, from the fashion of my leggings;
and various have been the names by which I have gone through life;
but little will it matter when the time shall come, that all are to be
muster'd, face to face, by what titles a mortal has played his part!
I humbly trust I shall be able to answer to any of mine, in a loud and
manly voice."

Paul paid little or no attention to this reply, more than half of which
was lost in the distance, but pursuing the humour of the moment, he
called out in a stentorian voice to the naturalist to answer to his
name. Dr. Battius had not thought it necessary to push his success
beyond the comfortable niche, which accident had so opportunely formed
for his protection, and in which he now reposed from his labours, with
a pleasing consciousness of security, added to great exultation at the
possession of the botanical treasure already mentioned.

"Mount, mount, my worthy mole-catcher! come and behold the prospect of
skirting Ishmael; come and look nature boldly in the face, and not go
sneaking any longer, among the prairie grass and mullein tops, like a
gobbler nibbling for grasshoppers."

The mouth of the light-hearted and reckless bee-hunter was instantly
closed, and he was rendered as mute, as he had just been boisterous and
talkative, by the appearance of Ellen Wade. When the melancholy maiden
took her seat on the point of the rock as mentioned, Paul affected to
employ himself in conducting a close inspection of the household effects
of the squatter. He rummaged the drawers of Esther with no delicate
hands, scattered the rustic finery of her girls on the ground, without
the least deference to its quality or elegance, and tossed her pots and
kettles here and there, as though they had been vessels of wood instead
of iron. All this industry was, however, manifestly without an object.
He reserved nothing for himself, not even appearing conscious of the
nature of the articles which suffered by his familiarity. When he had
examined the inside of every cabin, taken a fresh survey of the spot
where he had confined the children, and where he had thoroughly secured
them with cords, and kicked one of the pails of the woman, like a
foot-ball, fifty feet into the air, in sheer wantonness, he returned to
the edge of the rock, and thrusting both his hands through his wampum
belt, he began to whistle the "Kentucky Hunters" as diligently as if he
had been hired to supply his auditors with music by the hour. In this
manner passed the remainder of the time, until Middleton, as has been
related, led Inez forth from the tent, and gave a new direction to
the thoughts of the whole party. He summoned Paul from his flourish of
music, tore the Doctor from the study of his plant, and, as acknowledged
leader, gave the necessary orders for immediate departure.