"It must be right. You know," added Boone quietly, smiling again as he spoke, "I am one of those who believe that whatever happens is right."
"And yet," suggested the hunter, "you don't stop tryin' for yourself, nor for others, either."
"Not at all," answered the scout. "A man must follow the best light he can get and then, beyond that, where he cannot go, he must believe that things do not 'happen.' I have heard some men blame their 'luck' for what befell them. I have never thought there was any such thing as 'luck.' The trouble is we do not always see the connection in events, and in our ignorance we say a thing 'happens.' I am sorry the boys had to shoot the painter."
"I never knew," laughed the loquacious Sam, "that you had any sympathy to waste on those critters."
"I haven't," replied Daniel Boone, a trace of a smile again appearing on his face as he spoke. "I am not sorry that the painter was shot. I am sorry that the boys had to shoot it. Just now I am more afraid of their rifles than I am of painters."
The trio looked quickly into the face of the leader, but his quiet expression was unchanged, and what he may have implied by his statement he did not explain.
"I do not love the varmints," said Sam, shaking his head. "I shall put them out of the world every chance I get."
"So shall I," assented Boone, "although sometimes I feel sorry that I have to do so. I do not suppose that a painter is following anything else than the instinct which was given him, the same as a hound dog follows the track of a rabbit."
"How about men?" inquired Sam.
"I believe the same thing is true of men," said Daniel Boone seriously. "Fortunately for me, I had a good father and a good mother, so that when I was a child I was kept free from many of the things which drive some people I have known into divers sorts of evil."