“Not unless we helped ’em,” said the scout, decidedly. “And that’s not to be done.”
“I don’t know that. Speaking for myself, I get on very well with the reds. They’ve got their faults, but then so have other people. Wait, I know what you’re going to say—they’re cruel and treacherous devils, and so forth. Well, cruelty is in their nature, and, by the way, is not unknown in civilisation. As for treachery, it strikes me, old chum, that we’ve got to keep about as brisk a look-out for a shot in the back in any of our Western townships as we have for our scalps in an Indian village.”
The scout nodded assent; puffing away vigorously at his pipe as he stared into the glowing embers.
“For instance,” went on the other, “when that chap ‘grazed’ me in the street at Denver while I wasn’t looking, and would have put his next ball clean through me if you hadn’t dropped him in his tracks so neatly—that was a nice example for a white man and a Christian to set, say, to our friends Mountain Cat, or Three Bears, or Hole-in-a-Tree, down yonder, wasn’t it? But to come to the point—which is this: Supposing some fellow had rushed us while we were prospecting that place down on the Big Cheyenne in the summer and invited us to clear, I guess we should briskly have let him see a brace of muzzles. Eh?”
“Guess we should.”
“Well, then, it amounts to the same thing here. We are bound to strike a good vein or two in the summer—in fact, we have as good as struck it. All right. After all the risk and trouble we’ve stood to find it, Uncle Sam lopes in and serves us with a notice to quit. It isn’t in reason that we should stand that.”
“Well, you see, Vipan, we’ve no sort of title here. This is an Indian reservation, and Uncle Sam’s bound by treaty to keep white men out. There are others here besides us, and I reckon in the summer the Hills’ll be a bit crowded up with them. So we shall just have to chance it with the rest, and if we’re moved, light out somewhere else.”
“Well, I don’t know that I shall. It’s no part of good sense to chuck away the wealth lying at our very feet.” And the speaker’s splendid face wore a strangely reckless and excited look. “The scheme is for the Government to chouse the Indians out of this section of country by hook or by crook—then mining concessions will be granted to the wire-pullers and their friends. And we shall see a series of miscellaneous frauds blossoming into millionaires on the strength of our discoveries.”
“And are you so keen on this gold, Vipan? Ah I reckon you’re hankering after Europe again, but I judge you’ll be no happier when you get there.”
The scout’s tone was quiet, regretful, almost upbraiding. The other’s philosophy was to end in this, then?