“The place of rendezvous is many leagues from this, on the banks of La Platte.”
“It is bad—it is bad. If fighting is to be done, it is always wise to enter on it on equal terms. But what has one so near his time to do with ill-blood and hot-blood at his heart! Listen to what a grey head and some experience have to offer, and then if any among you can point out a wiser fashion for a retreat, we can just follow his design, and forget that I have spoken. This thicket stretches for near a mile as it may be slanting from the rock, and leads towards the sunset instead of the settlements.”
“Enough, enough,” cried Middleton, too impatient to wait until the deliberative and perhaps loquacious old man could end his minute explanation. “Time is too precious for words. Let us fly.”
The trapper made a gesture of compliance, and turning in his tracks, he led Asinus across the trembling earth of the swale, and quickly emerged on the hard ground, on the side opposite to the encampment of the squatter.
“If old Ishmael gets a squint at that highway through the brush,” cried Paul, casting, as he left the place, a hasty glance at the broad trail the party had made through the thicket, “he’ll need no finger-board to tell him which way his road lies. But let him follow! I know the vagabond would gladly cross his breed with a little honest blood, but if any son of his ever gets to be the husband of—”
“Hush, Paul, hush,” said the terrified young woman, who leaned on his arm for support; “your voice might be heard.”
The bee-hunter was silent, though he did not cease to cast ominous looks behind him, as they flew along the edge of the run, which sufficiently betrayed the belligerent condition of his mind. As each one was busy for himself, but a few minutes elapsed before the party rose a swell of the prairie, and descending without a moment’s delay on the opposite side, they were at once removed from every danger of being seen by the sons of Ishmael, unless the pursuers should happen to fall upon their trail. The old man now profited by the formation of the land to take another direction, with a view to elude pursuit, as a vessel changes her course in fogs and darkness, to escape from the vigilance of her enemies.
Two hours, passed in the utmost diligence, enabled them to make a half circuit around the rock, and to reach a point that was exactly opposite to the original direction of their flight. To most of the fugitives their situation was as entirely unknown as is that of a ship in the middle of the ocean to the uninstructed voyager: but the old man proceeded at every turn, and through every bottom, with a decision that inspired his followers with confidence, as it spoke favourably of his own knowledge of the localities. His hound, stopping now and then to catch the expression of his eye, had preceded the trapper throughout the whole distance, with as much certainty as though a previous and intelligible communion between them had established the route by which they were to proceed. But, at the expiration of the time just named, the dog suddenly came to a stand, and then seating himself on the prairie, he snuffed the air a moment, and began a low and piteous whining.
“Ay—pup—ay. I know the spot—I know the spot, and reason there is to remember it well!” said the old man, stopping by the side of his uneasy associate, until those who followed had time to come up. “Now, yonder, is a thicket before us,” he continued, pointing forward, “where we may lie till tall trees grow on these naked fields, afore any of the squatter’s kin will venture to molest us.”
“This is the spot, where the body of the dead man lay!” cried Middleton, examining the place with an eye that revolted at the recollection.