It also appeared, on examination, that a desperate struggle had taken place on the very margin of the thicket.
This was sufficiently apparent by the trodden branches, the deep impressions on the moist ground, and the lavish flow of blood.
“He has been shot in the open ground and come here for a cover,” said Abiram; “these marks would clearly prove it.
The boy has been set upon by the savages in a body, and has fou’t like a hero as he was, until they have mastered his strength, and then drawn him to the bushes.”
To this probable opinion there was now but one dissenting voice, that of the slow-minded Ishmael, who demanded that the corpse itself should be examined in order to obtain a more accurate knowledge of its injuries.
On examination, it appeared that a rifle bullet had passed directly through the body of the deceased, entering beneath one of his brawny shoulders, and making its exit by the breast.
It required some knowledge in gun-shot wounds to decide this delicate point, but the experience of the borderers was quite equal to the scrutiny; and a smile of wild, and certainly of singular satisfaction, passed among the sons of Ishmael, when Abner confidently announced that the enemies of Asa had assailed him in the rear.
“It must be so,” said the gloomy but attentive squatter. “He was of too good a stock and too well trained, knowingly to turn the weak side to man or beast!
Remember, boys, that while the front of manhood is to your enemy, let him be who or what he may, you ar’ safe from cowardly surprise.
Why, Eester, woman! you ar’ getting beside yourself; with picking at the hair and the garments of the child!
Little good can you do him now, old girl.”
“See!” interrupted Enoch, extricating from the fragments of cloth the morsel of lead which had prostrated the strength of one so powerful; “here is the very bullet!”
Ishmael took it in his hand and eyed it long and closely.
“There’s no mistake,” at length he muttered through his compressed teeth. “It is from the pouch of that accursed trapper.
Like many of the hunters he has a mark in his mould, in order to know the work his rifle performs; and here you see it plainly—six little holes, laid crossways.”
“I’ll swear to it!” cried Abiram, triumphantly. “He show’d me his private mark, himself, and boasted of the number of deer he had laid upon the prairies with these very bullets!
Now, Ishmael, will you believe me when I tell you the old knave is a spy of the red-skins?”
The lead passed from the hand of one to that of another, and unfortunately for the reputation of the old man, several among them remembered also to have seen the aforesaid private bullet-marks, during the curious examination which all had made of his accoutrements.
In addition to this wound, however, were many others of a less dangerous nature, all of which were supposed to confirm the supposed guilt of the trapper.
The traces of many different struggles were to be seen, between the spot where the first blood was spilt and the thicket to which it was now generally believed Asa had retreated, as a place of refuge.
These were interpreted into so many proofs of the weakness of the murderer, who would have sooner despatched his victim, had not even the dying strength of the youth rendered him formidable to the infirmities of one so old.
The danger of drawing some others of the hunters to the spot, by repeated firing, was deemed a sufficient reason for not again resorting to the rifle, after it had performed the important duty of disabling the victim.
The weapon of the dead man was not to be found, and had doubtless, together with many other less valuable and lighter articles, that he was accustomed to carry about his person, become a prize to his destroyer.
But what, in addition to the tell-tale bullet, appeared to fix the ruthless deed with peculiar certainty on the trapper, was the accumulated evidence furnished by the trail; which proved, notwithstanding his deadly hurt, that the wounded man had still been able to make a long and desperate resistance to the subsequent efforts of his murderer.
Ishmael seemed to press this proof with a singular mixture of sorrow and pride: sorrow, at the loss of a son, whom in their moments of amity he highly valued; and pride, at the courage and power he had manifested to his last and weakest breath.
“He died as a son of mine should die,” said the squatter, gleaning a hollow consolation from so unnatural an exultation: “a dread to his enemy to the last, and without help from the law!
Come, children; we have the grave to make, and then to hunt his murderer.”
The sons of the squatter set about their melancholy office, in silence and in sadness.
An excavation was made in the hard earth, at a great expense of toil and time, and the body was wrapped in such spare vestments as could be collected among the labourers.
When these arrangements were completed, Ishmael approached the seemingly unconscious Esther, and announced his intention to inter the dead.
She heard him, and quietly relinquished her grasp of the corpse, rising in silence to follow it to its narrow resting place.
Here she seated herself again at the head of the grave, watching each movement of the youths with eager and jealous eyes.
When a sufficiency of earth was laid upon the senseless clay of Asa, to protect it from injury, Enoch and Abner entered the cavity, and trode it into a solid mass, by the weight of their huge frames, with an appearance of a strange, not to say savage, mixture of care and indifference.
This well-known precaution was adopted to prevent the speedy exhumation of the body by some of the carnivorous beasts of the prairie, whose instinct was sure to guide them to the spot.
Even the rapacious birds appeared to comprehend the nature of the ceremony, for, mysteriously apprised that the miserable victim was now about to be abandoned by the human race, they once more began to make their airy circuits above the place, screaming, as if to frighten the kinsmen from their labour of caution and love.
Ishmael stood, with folded arms, steadily watching the manner in which this necessary duty was performed, and when the whole was completed, he lifted his cap to his sons, to thank them for their services, with a dignity that would have become one much better nurtured.
Throughout the whole of a ceremony, which is ever solemn and admonitory, the squatter had maintained a grave and serious deportment.
His vast features were visibly stamped with an expression of deep concern; but at no time did they falter, until he turned his back, as he believed for ever, on the grave of his first-born.
Nature was then stirring powerfully within him, and the muscles of his stern visage began to work perceptibly.
His children fastened their eyes on his, as if to seek a direction to the strange emotions which were moving their own heavy natures, when the struggle in the bosom of the squatter suddenly ceased, and, taking his wife by the arm, he raised her to her feet as if she had been an infant, saying, in a voice that was perfectly steady, though a nice observer would have discovered that it was kinder than usual—
“Eester, we have now done all that man and woman can do.
We raised the boy, and made him such as few others were like, on the frontiers of America; and we have given him a grave.
Let us go our way.”
The woman turned her eyes slowly from the fresh earth, and laying her hands on the shoulders of her husband, stood, looking him anxiously in the eyes.
“Ishmael!
Ishmael!” she said, “you parted from the boy in your wrath!”
“May the Lord pardon his sins freely as I have forgiven his worst misdeeds!” calmly returned the squatter: “woman, go you back to the rock and read your Bible; a chapter in that book always does you good.
You can read, Eester; which is a privilege I never did enjoy.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered the woman, yielding to his strength, and suffering herself to be led, though with strong reluctance from the spot. “I can read; and how have I used the knowledge!
But he, Ishmael, he has not the sin of wasted l’arning to answer for.