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“Cattleman, my young men brought me bad message from you. They brought your words to me, saying he will not go away.”

“That’s about the way the thing stands,” replied Wilson, in response to the question that was in the old chief’s steady eyes. “I’m here to stay. This ain’t your land. This is Uncle Sam’s land, and part of it’ll be mine as soon as the surveyors come to measure it off.”

“Who gave it away?” asked the chief. “My people were cheated out of it. They didn’t know what they were doing.”

“I can’t help that. That’s for Congress to say. That’s the business of the Great Father at Washington.” Wilson’s voice changed. He knew and liked the chief; he didn’t want to offend him. “They ain’t no use making a fuss, chief. You won’t gain anything.”

There was a look of deep sorrow in the old man’s face. At last he spoke again: “The cattleman is welcome; but he must go, because whenever one white man goes and calls it good, the others come. Drifting 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 tribe before two grass from now. It ain’t no use, Drifting Crane; it’s got to be. You an’ I can’t help n’r hinder it. I know just how you feel about it, but I tell yeh it ain’t no use to fight.”

Drifting Crane turned his head and gazed out on the western sky, still red with the light of the fallen sun. His face was rigid as bronze, but there was a dreaming, prophetic look in his eyes. A lump came into the settler’s throat; for the first time in his life he got a glimpse of the infinite despair of the Indian. He forgot that Drifting Crane was the representative of a “vagabond race;” he saw in him, or rather felt in him, something almost magnetic. He was a man, and a man of sorrows. The settler’s voice was husky when he spoke again, and his lips trembled.

“Chief, I’d go to-morrow if it ‘ud do any good, but it won’t–not a particle. You know that, when you stop to think a minute. What good did it do to massacree all them settlers at New Ulm? What good will it do to murder me and a hundred others? Not a bit. A thousand others would take our places. So I might just as well stay, and we might just as well keep good friends. Killin’ is out o’ fashion; don’t do any good.”

There was a twitching about the stern mouth of the Indian chief. He understood all too well the irresistible logic of the pioneer. He kept his martial attitude, but his broad chest heaved painfully, and his eyes grew dim. At last he said: “Good-by. Cattleman right; Drifting Crane wrong. Shake hands. Good-by.” He turned and strode away.

The rancher watched him till he mounted his pony, picketed down by the river; watched him as, with drooping head and rein flung loose upon the neck of his horse, he rode away into the dusk, hungry, weary and despairing, to face his problem alone. Again, for the thousandth time, the impotence of the Indian’s arm and the hopelessness of his fate were shown as perfectly as if two armies had met and soaked the beautiful prairie sod with blood.

“This is all wrong,” muttered the settler. “There’s land enough for us all, or ought to be. I don’t understand—- Well, I’ll leave it to Uncle Sam anyway.” He ended with a sigh.