it may be
right, but I have heard this doctrine voiced by red men and white, as
primitive law, once or twice; and have seen it lived up to a thousand
times.

Well, Josh Cree was a poacher. This does not mean that every night in
every month he went forth with nefarious tricks and tools, to steal the
flesh and fur that legally were not his. Far from it. Josh never poached
but once. But that's enough; he had crossed the line, and this is how it
came about:

As you roll up the Yellowstone from Livingston to Gardiner you may note
a little ranch-house on the west of the track with its log stables, its
corral, its irrigation ditch, and its alfalfa patch of morbid green. It
is a small affair, for it was founded by the handiwork of one honest
man, who with his wife and small boy left Pennsylvania, braved every
danger of the plains, and secured this claim in the late '80's. Old man
Cree--he was only forty, but every married man is "Old Man" in the
West--was ready to work at any honest calling from logging or sluicing
to grading and muling. He was strong and steady, his wife was steady and
strong. They saved their money, and little by little they got the small
ranch-house built and equipped; little by little they added to their
stock on the range with the cattle of a neighbour, until there came the
happy day when they went to live on their own ranch--father, mother, and
fourteen-year-old Josh, with every prospect of making it pay. The
spreading of that white tablecloth for the first time was a real
religious ceremony, and the hard workers gave thanks to the All-father
for His blessing on their every effort.

One year afterward a new event brought joy: there entered happily into
their happy house a little girl, and all the prairie smiled about them.
Surely their boat was well beyond the breakers.

But right in the sunshine of their joy the trouble cloud arose to block
the sky. Old man Cree was missing one day. His son rode long and far on
the range for two hard days before he sighted a grazing pony, and down a
rocky hollow near, found his father, battered and weak, near death, with
a broken leg and a gash in his head.

He could only gasp "Water" as Josh hurried up, and the boy rushed off to
fill his hat at the nearest stream.

They had no talk, for the father swooned after drinking, and Josh had to
face the situation; but he was Western trained. He stripped himself of
all spare clothing, and his father's horse of its saddle