“I intend to go,” responded the Prophet, coolly. “You see my force here, and you can tell if the surveyors will be able to withstand me.” He waved his hand complacently toward his assembled braves. “These are picked warriors. There is enough to drive away the surveyors. But, if more should be wanted, I can summon two hundred more from my village at the Rapids.”
Percy Vere glanced at the braves. There was at least forty of them, and each one carried a rifle. Among the friendly tribes through which he had passed he had never seen so fine a body of men. It appeared to him utterly impossible that the surveyors and soldiers could beat back this force.
The Prophet’s keen eyes were fixed upon his face, and he read what was passing in his mind by the expression of his features.
“You see how vain it is for your party to struggle against me?” he said.
“Why do you object to the survey being made?” asked Percy. “Why harm people that have no wish to harm you?”
The Prophet drew his tall form proudly up.
“This is my land,” he replied, “and I don’t want any railroad through it.”
“It will not run within a hundred miles of your village.”
“I don’t want it within a thousand. I am forming a great nation here; already our numbers count by thousands—my followers come from every tribe. I would regenerate the red-man, make him what the Great Spirit intended him to be. These woods teem with game—the water of yonder river is alive with fish. This is the red-man’s Paradise, and the white-man is the serpent who would destroy all. Settlement follows the railroad, villages and cities spring up in the wilderness, and then there is no longer any hunting-grounds left for the Indian. The game vanishes from the forest, the fish desert the running streams, and the red-man is left to starve, or become the drudge and servant of the pale-faces.”
These words were spoken with a strange eloquence, and thrilled Percy Vere as he listened to them. There was a ring of truth in them that carried conviction to his mind.