th thteady over me day after day."

We were lounging against the side of the low building now in the warm
afternoon sunshine, and Bud's eyes were gazing absently out across the
wide Plains. Although I had been away from home only two months, I felt
twenty years older than this fair-haired, chubby boy, sitting there so
full of blooming life and vigor. I shivered at the picture his words
suggested.

"Don't joke, Bud. There's a grave at the end of most of the trails out
here. The trails aren't very long, some of 'em. The wind sweeps over 'em
lonely and sad day after day. They're quiet enough, Heaven knows. The
wrangle and noise are all on the edge of 'em, just as you're getting
ready to get in."

"I'm not joking, Phil. All my life I have wanted to get out here. It'th
a fever in the blood."

We talked a while of the frontier, of the chances of war, and of the
Indian raids with their trail of destruction, death, torture and
captivity of unspeakable horror.

The closing years of the decade of the sixties in American history saw
the closing events of the long and bitter, but hopeless struggle of a
savage race against a superior civilized force. From the southern bound
of British America to the northern bound of old Mexico the Plains
warfare was waged.

The Western tribes, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe, and Kiowa, and Brule, and
Sioux and Comanche were forced to quarter themselves on their
reservations again and again with rations and clothing and equipments
for all their needs. With fair, soft promises in return from their chief
men these tribes settled purringly in their allotted places. Through
each fall and winter season they were "good Indians," wards of the
nation; their "untutored mind saw God in clouds, or heard him in the
wind."

Eastern churches had an "Indian fund" in their contribution boxes, and
very pathetic and beautifully idyllic was the story the sentimentalists
told, the story of the Indian as he looked in books and spoke on paper.
But the Plains had another record, and the light called History is
pitiless. When the last true story is written out, it has no favoring
shadows for sentimentalists who feel more than they know.

Each Winter the "good Indians" were mild and gentle. But with the warmth
of Spring and the fruitfulness of summer, with the green grasses of the
Plains for their ponies, with wild game in the open, and the labor of
the industrious settler of the unprotected frontier as a stake for the