"Well," Sandoval began again, as he lit a cigarette, "now that supper is over, suppose we have a chat. Are you agreeable, comrade?"
"Willingly," Red Cedar replied, as he settled himself comfortably, and filled his pipe.
"You were saying then—" Sandoval remarked.
"Pardon me," the squatter interrupted him; "I was saying nothing. You were complaining, I believe, about the whites destroying your trade by coming closer and closer to your abode."
"Yes, that was what I was saying."
"You added, if my memory serves me right, that the remedy was impossible to find?"
"To which you answered, perhaps."
"I said so, and repeat it."
"Explain yourself, then."
"The affair I have come to propose to you is extremely simple: For some years past the whites have been gradually invading the desert, which, in a given time which is not remote, will end by disappearing before the incessant efforts of civilisation."