When opposition gets fairly into the councils of a tribe, it is rarely that humanity is the gainer.
Now see you these wrinkled and cruel-minded squaws—No, you cannot see them as you lie, but nevertheless they are here, ready and willing, like so many raging she-bears, to work their will upon us so soon as the proper time shall come.”
“Harkee, old gentleman trapper,” interrupted Paul, with a little bitterness in his manner; “do you tell us these matters for our amusement, or for your own?
If for ours, you may keep your breath for the next race you run, as I am tickled nearly to suffocation, already, with my part of the fun.”
“Hist”—said the trapper, cutting with great dexterity and rapidity the thong, which bound one of the arms of Paul to his body, and dropping his knife at the same time within reach of the liberated hand. “Hist, boy, hist; that was a lucky moment!
The yell from the bottom drew the eyes of these blood-suckers in another quarter, and so far we are safe.
Now make a proper use of your advantages; but be careful, that what you do, is done without being seen.”
“Thank you for this small favour, old deliberation,” muttered the bee-hunter, “though it comes like a snow in May, somewhat out of season.”
“Foolish boy!” reproachfully exclaimed the other, who had moved to a little distance from his friends, and appeared to be attentively regarding the movements of the hostile parties, “will you never learn to know the wisdom of patience?
And you, too, Captain; though a man myself, that seldom ruffles his temper by vain feelings, I see that you are silent, because you scorn to ask favours any longer from one you think too slow to grant them.
No doubt, ye are both young, and filled with the pride of your strength and manhood, and I dare say you thought it only needful to cut the thongs, to leave you masters of the ground.
But he, that has seen much, is apt to think much.
Had I run like a bustling woman to have given you freedom, these hags of the Siouxes would have seen the same, and then where would you both have found yourselves?
Under the tomahawk and the knife, like helpless and outcrying children, though gifted with the size and beards of men.
Ask our friend, the bee-hunter, in what condition he finds himself to struggle with a Teton boy, after so many hours of bondage; much less with a dozen merciless and bloodthirsty squaws!”
“Truly, old trapper,” returned Paul, stretching his limbs, which were by this time entirely released, and endeavouring to restore the suspended circulation, “you have some judgmatical notions in these matters.
Now here am I, Paul Hover, a man who will give in to few at wrestle or race, nearly as helpless as the day I paid my first visit to the house of old Paul, who is dead and gone,—the Lord forgive him any little blunders he may have made while he tarried in Kentucky!
Now there is my foot on the ground, so far as eye-sight has any virtue, and yet it would take no great temptation to make me swear it didn’t touch the earth by six inches.
I say, honest friend, since you have done so much, have the goodness to keep these damnable squaws, of whom you say so many interesting things, at a little distance, till I have got the blood of this arm in motion, and am ready to receive them.”
The trapper made a sign that he perfectly understood the case; and he walked towards the superannuated savage, who began to manifest an intention of commencing his assigned task, leaving the bee-hunter to recover the use of his limbs as well as he could, and to put Middleton in a similar situation to defend himself. Mahtoree had not mistaken his man, in selecting the one he did to execute his bloody purpose. He had chosen one of those ruthless savages, more or less of whom are to be found in every tribe, who had purchased a certain share of military reputation, by the exhibition of a hardihood that found its impulses in an innate love of cruelty.
Contrary to the high and chivalrous sentiment, which among the Indians of the prairies renders it a deed of even greater merit to bear off the trophy of victory from a fallen foe, than to slay him, he had been remarkable for preferring the pleasure of destroying life, to the glory of striking the dead.
While the more self-devoted and ambitious braves were intent on personal honour, he had always been seen, established behind some favourable cover, depriving the wounded of hope, by finishing that which a more gallant warrior had begun.
In all the cruelties of the tribe he had ever been foremost; and no Sioux was so uniformly found on the side of merciless councils.
He had awaited, with an impatience which his long practised restraint could with difficulty subdue, for the moment to arrive when he might proceed to execute the wishes of the great chief, without whose approbation and powerful protection he would not have dared to undertake a step, that had so many opposers in the nation.
But events had been hastening to an issue, between the hostile parties; and the time had now arrived, greatly to his secret and malignant joy, when he was free to act his will.
The trapper found him distributing knives to the ferocious hags, who received the presents chanting a low monotonous song, that recalled the losses of their people, in various conflicts with the whites, and which extolled the pleasures and glory of revenge.
The appearance of such a group was enough of itself to have deterred one, less accustomed to such sights than the old man, from trusting himself within the circle of their wild and repulsive rites.
Each of the crones, as she received the weapon, commenced a slow and measured, but ungainly, step, around the savage, until the whole were circling him in a sort of magic dance.
The movements were timed, in some degree, by the words of their songs, as were their gestures by the ideas.
When they spoke of their own losses, they tossed their long straight locks of grey into the air, or suffered them to fall in confusion upon their withered necks; but as the sweetness of returning blow for blow was touched upon, by any among them, it was answered by a common howl, as well as by gestures, that were sufficiently expressive of the manner in which they were exciting themselves to the necessary state of fury.
Into the very centre of this ring of seeming demons, the trapper now stalked, with the same calmness and observation as he would have walked into a village church.
No other change was made by his appearance, than a renewal of the threatening gestures, with, if possible, a still less equivocal display of their remorseless intentions.
Making a sign for them to cease, the old man demanded—
“Why do the mothers of the Tetons sing with bitter tongues?
The Pawnee prisoners are not yet in their village; their young men have not come back loaded with scalps!”
He was answered by a general howl, and a few of the boldest of the furies even ventured to approach him, flourishing their knives within a dangerous proximity of his own steady eye-balls.
“It is a warrior you see, and no runner of the Long-knives, whose face grows paler at the sight of a tomahawk,” returned the trapper, without moving a muscle. “Let the Sioux women think; if one White-skin dies, a hundred spring up where he falls.”
Still the hags made no other answer, than by increasing their speed in the circle, and occasionally raising the threatening expressions of their chant, into louder and more intelligible strains.
Suddenly, one of the oldest, and the most ferocious of them all, broke out of the ring, and skirred away in the direction of her victims, like a rapacious bird, that having wheeled on poised wings, for the time necessary to ensure its object, makes the final dart upon its prey.
The others followed, a disorderly and screaming flock, fearful of being too late to reap their portion of the sanguinary pleasure.
“Mighty medicine of my people!” shouted the old man, in the Teton tongue; “lift your voice and speak, that the Sioux nation may hear.”
Whether Asinus had acquired so much knowledge, by his recent experience, as to know the value of his sonorous properties, or the strange spectacle of a dozen hags flitting past him, filling the air with such sounds as were even grating to the ears of an ass, most moved his temper, it is certain that the animal did that which Obed was requested to do, and probably with far greater effect than if the naturalist had strove with his mightiest effort to be heard.
It was the first time the strange beast had spoken, since his arrival in the encampment.
Admonished by so terrible a warning, the hags scattered themselves, like vultures frightened from their prey, still screaming, and but half diverted from their purpose.
In the mean time the sudden appearance, and the imminency of the danger, quickened the blood in the veins of Paul and Middleton, more than all their laborious frictions, and physical expedients.
The former had actually risen to his feet, and assumed an attitude which perhaps threatened more than the worthy bee-hunter was able to perform, and even the latter had mounted to his knees, and shown a disposition to do good service for his life.
The unaccountable release of the captives from their bonds was attributed, by the hags, to the incantations of the medicine; and the mistake was probably of as much service, as the miraculous and timely interposition of Asinus in their favour.
“Now is the time to come out of our ambushment,” exclaimed the old man, hastening to join his friends, “and to make open and manful war.
It would have been policy to have kept back the struggle, until the Captain was in better condition to join, but as we have unmasked our battery, why, we must maintain the ground—”
He was interrupted by feeling a gigantic hand on his shoulder.