rifting Crane has
seen it far in the east, twice. The white men come thick as the grass.
They tear up the sod. They build houses. They scare the buffalo away.
They spoil my young men with whisky. Already they begin to climb the
eastern hills. Soon they will fill the valley, and Drifting Crane and
his people will be surrounded. The sod will all be black."

"I hope you're right," was the rancher's grim reply.

"But they will not come if the cattleman go back to say the water is not
good. There is no grass, and the Indians own the land."

Wilson smiled at the childish faith of the chief. "Won't do,
chief--won't do. That won't do any good. I might as well stay."

The chief rose. He was touched by the settler's laugh; his eyes flashed;
his voice took on a sterner note. "The white man _must_ go!"

Wilson rose also. He was not a large man, but he was a very resolute
one. "I shan't go!" he said, through his clinched teeth. Each man
understood the tones of the other perfectly.

It was a thrilling, a significant scene. It was in absolute truth the
meeting of the modern vidette of civilization with one of the rear-guard
of retreating barbarism. Each man was a type; each was wrong, and each
was right. The Indian as true and noble from the barbaric point of view
as the white man. He was a warrior and hunter--made so by circumstances
over which he had no control. Guiltless as the panther, because war to
a savage is the necessity of life.

The settler represented the unflagging energy and fearless heart of the
American pioneer. Narrow-minded, partly brutalized by hard labor and a
lonely life, yet an admirable figure for all that. As he looked into the
Indian's face he seemed to grow in height. He felt behind him all the
weight of the millions of westward-moving settlers; he stood the
representative of an unborn State. He took down a rifle from the
wall--the magazine rifle, most modern of guns; he patted the stock,
pulled the crank, throwing a shell into view.

"You know this thing, chief?"

The Indian nodded slightly.

"Well, I'll go when--this--is--empty."

"But my young men are many."

"So are the white men--my brothers."

The chief's head dropped forward. Wilson, ashamed of his boasting, put
the rifle back on the wall.

"I'm not here to fight. You can kill me any time. You could 'a' killed
me to-night, but it wouldn't do any good. It 'ud only make it worse for
you. Why, they'll be a town in here bigger'n all your t