The hand of the wandering Teton passed over the downy coat, the meek countenance, and the slender limbs of the gentle creature, with untiring curiosity; but he finally abandoned the prize, as useless in his predatory expeditions, and offering too little temptation to the appetite.
As soon, however, as he found himself among the beasts of burden, his gratification was extreme, and it was with difficulty that he restrained the customary ejaculations of pleasure that were more than once on the point of bursting from his lips.
Here he lost sight of the hazards by which he had gained access to his dangerous position; and the watchfulness of the wary and long practised warrior was momentarily forgotten in the exultation of the savage.
CHAPTER V
Why, worthy father, what have we to lose?
—The law
Protects us not.
Then why should we be tender
To let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us!
Play judge and executioner.
—Cymbeline.
While the Teton thus enacted his subtle and characteristic part, not a sound broke the stillness of the surrounding prairie.
The whole band lay at their several posts, waiting, with the well-known patience of the natives, for the signal which was to summon them to action.
To the eyes of the anxious spectators who occupied the little eminence, already described as the position of the captives, the scene presented the broad, solemn view of a waste, dimly lighted by the glimmering rays of a clouded moon.
The place of the encampment was marked by a gloom deeper than that which faintly shadowed out the courses of the bottoms, and here and there a brighter streak tinged the rolling summits of the ridges.
As for the rest, it was the deep, imposing quiet of a desert.
But to those who so well knew how much was brooding beneath this mantle of stillness and night, it was a scene of high and wild excitement.
Their anxiety gradually increased, as minute after minute passed away, and not the smallest sound of life arose out of the calm and darkness which enveloped the brake.
The breathing of Paul grew louder and deeper, and more than once Ellen trembled at she knew not what, as she felt the quivering of his active frame, while she leaned dependently on his arm for support.
The shallow honesty, as well as the besetting infirmity of Weucha, have already been exhibited.
The reader, therefore, will not be surprised to learn that he was the first to forget the regulations he had himself imposed.
It was at the precise moment when we left Mahtoree yielding to his nearly ungovernable delight, as he surveyed the number and quality of Ishmael’s beasts of burden, that the man he had selected to watch his captives chose to indulge in the malignant pleasure of tormenting those it was his duty to protect.
Bending his head nigh the ear of the trapper, the savage rather muttered than whispered—
“If the Tetons lose their great chief by the hands of the Long-knives, old shall die as well as young!”
“Life is the gift of the Wahcondah,” was the unmoved reply. “The burnt-wood warrior must submit to his laws, as well as his other children.
Men only die when he chooses; and no Dahcotah can change the hour.”
“Look!” returned the savage, thrusting the blade of his knife before the face of his captive. “Weucha is the Wahcondah of a dog.”
The old man raised his eyes to the fierce visage of his keeper, and, for a moment, a gleam of honest and powerful disgust shot from their deep cells; but it instantly passed away, leaving in its place an expression of commiseration, if not of sorrow.
“Why should one made in the real image of God suffer his natur’ to be provoked by a mere effigy of reason?” he said in English, and in tones much louder than those in which Weucha had chosen to pitch the conversation.
The latter profited by the unintentional offence of his captive, and, seizing him by the thin, grey locks, that fell from beneath his cap, was on the point of passing the blade of his knife in malignant triumph around their roots, when a long, shrill yell rent the air, and was instantly echoed from the surrounding waste, as if a thousand demons opened their throats in common at the summons.
Weucha relinquished his grasp, and uttered a cry of exultation.
“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!