Chapter 17

Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight
With a new Gorgon--Do not bid me speak;
See, and then speak yourselves.
--Shakspeare.

The little run, which supplied the family of the squatter with water,
and nourished the trees and bushes that grew near the base of the
rocky eminence, took its rise at no great distance from the latter, in
a small thicket of cotton-wood and vines. Hither, then, the trapper
directed the flight, as to the place affording the only available
cover in so pressing an emergency. It will be remembered, that the
sagacity of the old man, which, from long practice in similar scenes,
amounted nearly to an instinct in all cases of sudden danger, had
first induced him to take this course, as it placed the hill between
them and the approaching party. Favoured by this circumstance, he
succeeded in reaching the bushes in sufficient time and Paul Hover had
just hurried the breathless Ellen into the tangled bush, as Ishmael
gained the summit of the rock, in the manner already described, where
he stood like a man momentarily bereft of sense, gazing at the
confusion which had been created among his chattels, or at his gagged
and bound children, who had been safely bestowed, by the forethought
of the bee-hunter, under the cover of a bark roof, in a sort of
irregular pile. A long rifle would have thrown a bullet from the
height, on which the squatter now stood, into the very cover where the
fugitives, who had wrought all this mischief, were clustered.

The trapper was the first to speak, as the man on whose intelligence
and experience they all depended for counsel, after running his eye
over the different individuals who gathered about him, in order to see
that none were missing.

"Ah! natur' is natur', and has done its work!" he said, nodding to the
exulting Paul, with a smile of approbation. "I thought it would be
hard for those, who had so often met in fair and foul, by starlight
and under the clouded moon, to part at last in anger. Now is there
little time to lose in talk, and every thing to gain by industry! It
cannot be long afore some of yonder brood will be nosing along the
'arth for our trail, and should they find it, as find it they surely
will, and should they push us to a stand on our courage, the dispute
must be settled with the rifle; which may He in heaven forbid!
Captain, can you lead us to the place where any of your warriors lie?
--For the stout sons of the squatter will make a manly brush of it, or
I am but little of a judge in warlike dispositions!"

"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