ce 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 on equal terms. But what has one so near his time to do with
ill-blood and hot-blood at