Ishmael cast his eye upward to the place, where the offending, but unconscious girl was holding her anxious watch.
She was seated at the edge of the uppermost crag, by the side of the little tent, and at least two hundred feet above the level of the plain.
Little else was to be distinguished, at that distance, but the outline of her form, her fair hair streaming in the gusts beyond her shoulders, and the steady and seemingly unchangeable look that she had riveted on some remote point of the prairie.
“What is it, Nell?” cried Ishmael, lifting his powerful voice a little above the rushing of the element. “Have you got a glimpse of any thing bigger than a burrowing barker?”
The lips of the attentive Ellen parted; she rose to the utmost height her small stature admitted, seeming still to regard the unknown object; but her voice, if she spoke at all, was not sufficiently loud to be heard amid the wind.
“It ar’ a fact that the child sees something more uncommon than a buffaloe or a prairie dog!” continued Ishmael. “Why, Nell, girl, ar’ ye deaf?
Nell, I say;—I hope it is an army of red-skins she has in her eye; for I should relish the chance to pay them for their kindness, under the favour of these logs and rocks!”
As the squatter accompanied his vaunt with corresponding gestures, and directed his eyes to the circle of his equally confident sons while speaking, he drew their gaze from Ellen to himself; but now, when they turned together to note the succeeding movements of their female sentinel, the place which had so lately been occupied by her form was vacant.
“As I am a sinner,” exclaimed Asa, usually one of the most phlegmatic of the youths, “the girl is blown away by the wind!”
Something like a sensation was exhibited among them, which might have denoted that the influence of the laughing blue eyes, flaxen hair, and glowing cheeks of Ellen, had not been lost on the dull natures of the young men; and looks of amazement, mingled slightly with concern, passed from one to the other as they gazed, in dull wonder, at the point of the naked rock.
“It might well be!” added another; “she sat on a slivered stone, and I have been thinking of telling her she was in danger for more than an hour.”
“Is that a riband of the child, dangling from the corner of the hill below?” cried Ishmael; “ha! who is moving about the tent? have I not told you all—”
“Ellen! ‘tis Ellen!” interrupted the whole body of his sons in a breath; and at that instant she re-appeared to put an end to their different surmises, and to relieve more than one sluggish nature from its unwonted excitement.
As Ellen issued from beneath the folds of the tent, she advanced with a light and fearless step to her former giddy stand, and pointed toward the prairie, appearing to speak in an eager and rapid voice to some invisible auditor.
“Nell is mad!” said Asa, half in contempt and yet not a little in concern. “The girl is dreaming with her eyes open; and thinks she sees some of them fierce creatur’s, with hard names, with which the Doctor fills her ears.”
“Can it be, the child has found a scout of the Siouxes?” said Ishmael, bending his look toward the plain; but a low, significant whisper from Abiram drew his eyes quickly upward again, where they were turned just in time to perceive that the cloth of the tent was agitated by a motion very evidently different from the quivering occasioned by the wind.
“Let her, if she dare!” the squatter muttered in his teeth. “Abiram; they know my temper too well to play the prank with me!”
“Look for yourself! if the curtain is not lifted, I can see no better than the owl by daylight.”
Ishmael struck the breach of his rifle violently on the earth, and shouted in a voice that might easily have been heard by Ellen, had not her attention still continued rapt on the object which so unaccountably attracted her eyes in the distance.
“Nell!” continued the squatter, “away with you, fool! will you bring down punishment on your own head?
Why, Nell!—she has forgotten her native speech; let us see if she can understand another language.”
Ishmael threw his rifle to his shoulder, and at the next moment it was pointed upward at the summit of the rock.
Before time was given for a word of remonstrance, it had sent forth its contents, in its usual streak of bright flame.
Ellen started like the frightened chamois, and uttering a piercing scream, she darted into the tent, with a swiftness that left it uncertain whether terror or actual injury had been the penalty of her offence.
The action of the squatter was too sudden and unexpected to admit of prevention, but the instant it was done, his sons manifested, in an unequivocal manner, the temper with which they witnessed the desperate measure.
Angry and fierce glances were interchanged, and a murmur of disapprobation was uttered by the whole, in common.
“What has Ellen done, father,” said Asa, with a degree of spirit, which was the more striking from being unusual, “that she should be shot at like a straggling deer, or a hungry wolf?”
“Mischief,” deliberately returned the squatter; but with a cool expression of defiance in his eye that showed how little he was moved by the ill-concealed humour of his children.
“Mischief, boy; mischief! take you heed that the disorder don’t spread.”
“It would need a different treatment in a man, than in yon screaming girl!”
“Asa, you ar’ a man, as you have often boasted; but remember I am your father, and your better.”
“I know it well; and what sort of a father?”
“Harkee, boy: I more than half believe that your drowsy head let in the Siouxes.
Be modest in speech, my watchful son, or you may have to answer yet for the mischief your own bad conduct has brought upon us.”
“I’ll stay no longer to be hectored like a child in petticoats.
You talk of law, as if you knew of none, and yet you keep me down, as though I had not life and wants of my own.
I’ll stay no longer to be treated like one of your meanest cattle!”
“The world is wide, my gallant boy, and there’s many a noble plantation on it, without a tenant.
Go; you have title deeds signed and sealed to your hand.
Few fathers portion their children better than Ishmael Bush; you will say that for me, at least, when you get to be a wealthy landholder.”
“Look! father, look!” exclaimed several voices at once, seizing with avidity, an opportunity to interrupt a dialogue which threatened to become more violent.
“Look!” repeated Abiram, in a voice which sounded hollow and warning; “if you have time for any thing but quarrels, Ishmael, look!”
The squatter turned slowly from his offending son, and cast an eye, that still lowered with deep resentment upward; but which, the instant it caught a view of the object that now attracted the attention of all around him, changed its expression to one of astonishment and dismay.
A female stood on the spot, from which Ellen had been so fearfully expelled.
Her person was of the smallest size that is believed to comport with beauty, and which poets and artists have chosen as the beau ideal of feminine loveliness.
Her dress was of a dark and glossy silk, and fluttered like gossamer around her form.
Long, flowing, and curling tresses of hair, still blacker and more shining than her robe, fell at times about her shoulders, completely enveloping the whole of her delicate bust in their ringlets; or at others streaming in the wind.
The elevation at which she stood prevented a close examination of the lineaments of a countenance which, however, it might be seen was youthful, and, at the moment of her unlooked-for appearance, eloquent with feeling.
So young, indeed, did this fair and fragile being appear, that it might be doubted whether the age of childhood was entirely passed.
One small and exquisitely moulded hand was pressed on her heart, while with the other she made an impressive gesture, which seemed to invite Ishmael, if further violence was meditated, to direct it against her bosom.