“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.