“You have established a pleasant home here,” said the Union veteran; “the soil is fertile; the country is rapidly settling; we shall soon have schools, churches and all the advantages of civilization; to abandon these now will be to throw away that golden opportunity which does not come twice to a man in this life. I intend to stick and you will regret it if you do not.”
And so Maurice Freeman allowed himself to be persuaded and stayed.
By the time the frightfully hot summer was drawing to close, Freeman was so convinced of the wisdom of the advice given by his friend that he thanked him for it.
“There hasn’t been a ripple since that flareup last winter,” remarked Freeman, as he sat in a chair at the front of his neighbor’s house and smoked a pipe with him; “it looks as if Geronimo, Natchez and the rest have made up their minds to do like their race further east—accept the inevitable.”
“Of course,” replied Murray; “an Indian isn’t a fool and when he sees it’s no use of fighting longer he stops—that is, he generally does,” added the speaker, conscious that his assertion needed a slight qualification. “There will be occasional disturbances now and then, but they will never amount to anything.”
“Do you think we shall ever have a raid through this section?”
“Never,” was the emphatic response; “it’s too risky for those that attempt it; they haven’t the chance of success that they had a year or even six months ago. The soldiers at Camp Reno and the other posts are on the alert and would detect anything of the kind before it could come to a head.”
“I can’t feel quite so sure on that score as you,” observed Freeman, with a vivid recollection of the incidents of the previous winter; “it was only by the merest accident that we learned of Geronimo’s coming in time to head him off.”