“The Teton, and the Pawnee, and the Konza, and men of a dozen other tribes, claim to own these naked fields.”

“Natur’ gives them the lie in their teeth. The air, the water, and the ground, are free gifts to man, and no one has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink, and breathe, and walk,—and therefore each has a right to his share of ’arth. Why do not the surveyors of the States set their compasses and run their lines over our heads as well as beneath our feet? Why do they not cover their shining sheep-skins with big words, giving to the landholder, or perhaps he should be called air holder, so many rods of heaven, with the use of such a star for a boundary-mark, and such a cloud to turn a mill?”

As the squatter uttered his wild conceit, he laughed from the very bottom of his chest, in scorn. The deriding but frightful merriment passed from the mouth of one of his ponderous sons to that of the other, until it had made the circuit of the whole family.

“Come, trapper,” continued Ishmael, in a tone of better humour, like a man who feels that he has triumphed, “neither of us, I reckon, has ever had much to do with title-deeds, or county clerks, or blazed trees; therefore we will not waste words on fooleries. You ar’ a man that has tarried long in this clearing, and now I ask your opinion, face to face, without fear or favour, if you had the lead in my business, what would you do?”

The old man hesitated, and seemed to give the required advice with deep reluctance. As every eye, however, was fastened on him, and whichever way he turned his face, he encountered a look riveted on the lineaments of his own working countenance, he answered in a low, melancholy, tone—

“I have seen too much mortal blood poured out in empty quarrels, to wish ever to hear an angry rifle again. Ten weary years have I sojourned alone on these naked plains, waiting for my hour, and not a blow have I struck ag’in an enemy more humanised than the grizzly bear.”

“Ursus horribilis,” muttered the Doctor.

The speaker paused at the sound of the other’s voice, but perceiving it was no more than a sort of mental ejaculation, he continued in the same strain—

“More humanised than the grizzly bear, or the panther of the Rocky Mountains; unless the beaver, which is a wise and knowing animal, may be so reckoned. What would I advise? Even the female buffaloe will fight for her young!”

“It never then shall be said, that Ishmael Bush has less kindness for his children than the bear for her cubs!”

“And yet this is but a naked spot for a dozen men to make head in, ag’in five hundred.”

“Ay, it is so,” returned the squatter, glancing his eye towards his humble camp; “but something might be done, with the wagons and the cotton-wood.”

The trapper shook his head incredulously, and pointed across the rolling plain in the direction of the west, as he answered—

“A rifle would send a bullet from these hills into your very sleeping-cabins; nay, arrows from the thicket in your rear would keep you all burrowed, like so many prairie dogs: it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do. Three long miles from this spot is a place, where as I have often thought in passing across the desert, a stand might be made for days and weeks together, if there were hearts and hands ready to engage in the bloody work.”

Another low, deriding laugh passed among the young men, announcing, in a manner sufficiently intelligible, their readiness to undertake a task even more arduous. The squatter himself eagerly seized the hint