The report was favourable, nothing having life, the retiring teams excepted, was to be seen. A messenger was, however, coming from the latter, in great apparent haste.
Ishmael awaited its arrival.
He received from the hands of one of his wondering and frighted girls a fragment of that book, which Esther had preserved with so much care.
The squatter beckoned the child away, and placed the leaves in the hands of the criminal.
“Eest’er has sent you this,” he said, “that, in your last moments, you may remember God.”
“Bless her, bless her! a good and kind sister has she been to me.
But time must be given, that I may read; time, my brother, time!”
“Time shall not be wanting.
You shall be your own executioner, and this miserable office shall pass away from my hands.”
Ishmael proceeded to put his new resolution in force.
The immediate apprehensions of the kidnapper were quieted, by an assurance that he might yet live for days, though his punishment was inevitable. A reprieve, to one abject and wretched as Abiram, temporarily produced the same effects as a pardon. He was even foremost in assisting in the appalling arrangements, and of all the actors, in that solemn tragedy, his voice alone was facetious and jocular.
A thin shelf of the rock projected beneath one of the ragged arms of the willow.
It was many feet from the ground, and admirably adapted to the purpose which, in fact, its appearance had suggested.
On this little platform the criminal was placed, his arms bound at the elbows behind his back, beyond the possibility of liberation, with a proper cord leading from his neck to the limb of the tree.
The latter was so placed, that when suspended the body could find no foot-hold.
The fragment of the Bible was placed in his hands, and he was left to seek his consolation as he might from its pages.
“And now, Abiram White,” said the squatter, when his sons had descended from completing this arrangement, “I give you a last and solemn asking. Death is before you in two shapes. With this rifle can your misery be cut short, or by that cord, sooner or later, must you meet your end.”
“Let me yet live!
Oh, Ishmael, you know not how sweet life is, when the last moment draws so nigh!”
“‘Tis done,” said the squatter, motioning for his assistants to follow the herds and teams. “And now, miserable man, that it may prove a consolation to your end, I forgive you my wrongs, and leave you to your God.”
Ishmael turned and pursued his way across the plain, at his ordinary sluggish and ponderous gait.
Though his head was bent a little towards the earth, his inactive mind did not prompt him to cast a look behind.
Once, indeed, he thought he heard his name called, in tones that were a little smothered, but they failed to make him pause.
At the spot where he and Esther had conferred, he reached the boundary of the visible horizon from the rock.
Here he stopped, and ventured a glance in the direction of the place he had just quitted.
The sun was near dipping into the plains beyond, and its last rays lighted the naked branches of the willow.
He saw the ragged outline of the whole drawn against the glowing heavens, and he even traced the still upright form of the being he had left to his misery.
Turning the roll of the swell, he proceeded with the feelings of one, who had been suddenly and violently separated from a recent confederate, for ever.
Within a mile, the squatter overtook his teams.
His sons had found a place suited to the encampment for the night, and merely awaited his approach to confirm their choice.
Few words were necessary to express his acquiescence.
Every thing passed in a silence more general and remarkable than ever.
The chidings of Esther were not heard among her young, or if heard, they were more in the tones of softened admonition, than in her usual, upbraiding, key.
No questions nor explanations passed between the husband and his wife.
It was only as the latter was about to withdraw among her children, for the night, that the former saw her taking a furtive look at the pan of his rifle.
Ishmael bade his sons seek their rest, announcing his intention to look to the safety of the camp in person.
When all was still, he walked out upon the prairie, with a sort of sensation that he found his breathing among the tents too straitened.
The night was well adapted to heighten the feelings, which had been created by the events of the day.
The wind had risen with the moon, and it was occasionally sweeping over the plain, in a manner that made it not difficult for the sentinel to imagine strange and unearthly sounds were mingling in the blasts.
Yielding to the extraordinary impulses of which he was the subject, he cast a glance around, to see that all were slumbering in security, and then he strayed towards the swell of land already mentioned.
Here the squatter found himself at a point that commanded a view to the east and to the west.
Light fleecy clouds were driving before the moon, which was cold and watery though there were moments, when its placid rays were shed from clear blue fields, seeming to soften objects to its own mild loveliness.
For the first time, in a life of so much wild adventure, Ishmael felt a keen sense of solitude.
The naked prairies began to assume the forms of illimitable and dreary wastes and the rushing of the wind sounded like the whisperings of the dead.
It was not long before he thought a shriek was borne past him on a blast.
It did not sound like a call from earth but it swept frightfully through the upper air mingled with the hoarse accompaniment of the wind.
The teeth of the squatter were compressed, and his huge hand grasped the rifle, as if it would crush the metal.
Then came a lull, a fresher blast, and a cry of horror that seemed to have been uttered at the very portals of his ears.
A sort of echo burst involuntarily from his own lips, as men shout under unnatural excitement, and throwing his rifle across his shoulder he proceeded towards the rock with the strides of a giant.
It was not often that the blood of Ishmael moved at the rate with which the fluid circulates in the veins of ordinary men; but now he felt it ready to gush from every pore in his body.