unted two upon each of
the remaining horses and rode away.

We now got on famously with our fields, and soon sowed fifteen acres of
maize and tobacco, and then began clearing another ten-acre field. We
were one day hard at work at this, when one of my boys came running to
us, crying out, "Father! Father! The Redskins!" We snatched up our
rifles and hastened to the top of the little rising ground on which our
houses were built, and thence we saw, not Injuns, but fourteen or
fifteen Creoles, galloping towards our clearing, halloing and huzzaing
like mad. When they were within fifty yards of us, Asa stepped forward
to meet them. As soon as they saw him one of them called out, "There is
the thief! There is the man who stole my brown horse!" Asa made no
answer to this, but waited till they came nearer, when one of them rode
up to him and asked who was the chief in the settlement. "There is no
chief here," answered Asa; "we are all equals and free citizens."

"You have stolen a horse from our friend Monsieur Croupier," replied the
other. "You must give it up."

"Is that all?" said Asa quietly.

"No: you must show us by what right you hunt on this territory."

"Yes," cried half a dozen others, "we'll have no strangers on our
hunting-grounds; the bears and caguars are getting scarcer than ever,
and as for buffaloes, they are clean exterminated." And all the time
they were talking, they kept leaping and galloping about like madmen.

"The sooner the bears and caguars are killed the better," said Asa. "The
land is not for dumb brutes, but for men."

The Creoles, however, persisted that we had no right to hunt where we
were, and swore we should go away. Then Asa asked them what right they
had to send us away. This seemed to embarrass them, and they muttered
and talked together; so that it was easy to see there was no magistrate
or person in authority amongst them, but that they were a party of
fellows who had come in hopes to frighten us. At last they said they
should inform the governor, and the commandant at Natchitoches, and the
Lord knows who besides, that we had come and squatted ourselves down
here, and built houses, and cleared fields, and all without right or
permission; and that then we might look out. So Asa began to lose
patience, and told them they might all go to the devil, and that, if
they were not off soon, he should be apt to hasten their movements.

"I must have my horse back," screamed the Creole whom the