“I have been calling Ellen Wade, who is on the rock keeping the look-out, to know if there is anything to be seen,” observed the eldest of the young men; “and she shakes her head, for an answer. Ellen is sparing of her words for a woman; and might be taught manners, at least, without spoiling her good looks.”

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 concern. “The girl is dreaming with her eyes open; and thinks she sees some of them fierce creaturs, with hard names, with which the Doctor fills her ears.”

“Car 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!”


  By PanEris using Melati.

Previous chapter/page Back Home Email this Search Discuss Bookmark Next chapter/page
Copyright: All texts on Bibliomania are © Bibliomania.com Ltd, and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. See our FAQ for more details.