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.
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