Chapter 12

Pray God the Duke of York excuse himself!
--King Henry VI.

The mustering of the borderers on the following morning was silent,
sullen, and gloomy. The repast of that hour was wanting in the
inharmonious accompaniment with which Esther ordinarily enlivened
their meals; for the effects of the powerful opiate the Doctor had
administered still muddled her intellects. The young men brooded over
the absence of their elder brother, and the brows of Ishmael himself
were knit, as he cast his scowling eyes from one to the other, like a
man preparing to meet and to repel an expected assault on his
authority. In the midst of this family distrust, Ellen and her
midnight confederate, the naturalist, took their usual places among
the children, without awakening suspicion or exciting comment. The
only apparent fruits of the adventure in which they had been engaged,
were occasional upliftings of the eyes, on the part of the Doctor,
which were mistaken by the observers for some of his scientific
contemplations of the heavens, but which, in reality, were no other
than furtive glances at the fluttering walls of the proscribed tent.

At length the squatter, who had waited in vain for some more decided
manifestation of the expected rising among his sons, resolved to make
a demonstration of his own intentions.

"Asa shall account to me for this undutiful conduct!" he observed.
"Here has the livelong night gone by, and he out-lying on the prairie,
when his hand and his rifle might both have been wanted in a brush
with the Siouxes, for any right he had to know the contrary."

"Spare your breath, good man," retorted his wife; "be saving of your
breath; for you may have to call long enough for the boy before he
will answer!"

"It ar' a fact, that some men be so womanish, as to let the young
master the old! But, you, old Esther, should know better than to think
such will ever be the nature of things in the family of Ishmael Bush."

"Ah! you are a hectorer with the boys, when need calls! I know it
well, Ishmael; and one of your sons have you driven from you, by your
temper; and that, too, at a time when he is most wanted."

"Father," said Abner, whose sluggish nature had gradually been
stimulating itself to the exertion of taking so bold a stand, "the
boys and I have pretty generally concluded to go out on the search of
Asa. We are disagreeable about his camping on the prairie, instead of
coming in to his own bed, as we all know he would like to do."

"Pshaw!" muttered Abiram; "the boy has killed a buck; or perhaps a
buffaloe; and he is sleeping by the carcass to keep off the wolves,
till day; we shall soon