is land and were prepared to die in defence of it. By adroit
juggling, he and his corporation put the unsuspecting settler forward to
receive the first shock of the battle, and, when trouble came, loudly
called upon the government to send its troops "in support of the
pioneers." In this way, without danger to himself, the shrewd old Yankee
had acquired mineral belts, cattle-ranges, railway rights, and many
other good things, and at last, when the Territory was made a State, he
became one of its senators.

Naturally, he hated the red people. They were pestilential because,
first of all, they paid no railway charges, and also for the reason that
they held the land away from those who would add to his unearned
increment and increase the sum total of his tariff receipts. His
original plan was broadly simple. "Sweep them from the earth," he
snarled, when asked "What will we do with the Indians?" But his policy,
modified by men with hearts and a sense of justice, had settled into a
process of remorseless removal from point to point, from tillable land
to grazing land, from grazing land to barren waste, and from barren
waste to arid desert. He had no doubts in these matters. It was good
business, and to say a thing was not good business was conclusive. The
Tetong did not pay--remove him!

Elsie in her home-life, therefore, had been well schooled in race
hatred. Tender-hearted where suffering in a dog or even a wolf was
concerned, she remained indifferent when a tribe was reported to be
starving. Nothing modified her view till, as an art student in Paris,
she came into contact with men who placed high value on the redman as
"material." She found herself envied because she had casually looked
upon a few of these "wonderful chaps," as Newt Penrose called them, and
was often asked to give her impressions of them. When she returned to
New York she was deeply impressed by Maurice Stewart's enormous success
in sculpturing certain types of this despised race. A little later
Wilfred J. Buttes, who had been struggling along as a painter of bad
portraits, suddenly purchased a house in a choice suburb on the strength
of two summers' work among the mountain Utes.

Thereupon Elsie opened her eyes. Not that money was a lure to her, for
it was not, but she was eager for notice--for the fame that comes
quickly, and with loud trumpets and gay banners. In conversation with
Lawson one day she learned that he was about to do some pen-portraits o