ep towards the Rocky Mountains as the advancing
white man cuts down their trees and ploughs up their prairies. Here,
too, dwell the wild horse and the wild ass, the deer, the buffalo, and
the badger; all, men and brutes alike, wild as the power of untamed and
ungovernable passion can make them, and free as the wind that sweeps
over their mighty plains.

There is a romantic and exquisitely beautiful spot on the banks of one
of the tributaries above referred to--a long stretch of mingled woodland
and meadow, with a magnificent lake lying like a gem in its green
bosom--which goes by the name of the Mustang Valley. This remote vale,
even at the present day, is but thinly peopled by white men, and is
still a frontier settlement round which the wolf and the bear prowl
curiously, and from which the startled deer bounds terrified away. At
the period of which we write the valley had just been taken possession
of by several families of squatters, who, tired of the turmoil and the
squabbles of the then frontier settlements, had pushed boldly into the
far west to seek a new home for themselves, where they could have "elbow
room," regardless alike of the dangers they might encounter in unknown
lands and of the Red-skins who dwelt there.

The squatters were well armed with axes, rifles, and ammunition. Most
of the women were used to dangers and alarms, and placed implicit
reliance in the power of their fathers, husbands, and brothers to
protect them--and well they might, for a bolder set of stalwart men than
these backwoodsmen never trod the wilderness. Each had been trained to
the use of the rifle and the axe from infancy, and many of them had
spent so much of their lives in the woods, that they were more than a
match for the Indian in his own peculiar pursuits of hunting and war.
When the squatters first issued from the woods bordering the valley, an
immense herd of wild horses or mustangs were browsing on the plain.
These no sooner beheld the cavalcade of white men, than, uttering a wild
neigh, they tossed their flowing manes in the breeze and dashed away
like a whirlwind. This incident procured the valley its name.

The newcomers gave one satisfied glance at their future home, and then
set to work to erect log huts forthwith. Soon the axe was heard ringing
through the forests, and tree after tree fell to the ground, while the
occasional sharp ring of a rifle told that the hunters were catering
successfully for the camp.