The Blackfeet took a few hesitating steps in advance, for they were not yet completely reassured.
"And now listen to me attentively," he said, "and when you have received my orders, take care to execute them thoroughly."
[CHAPTER V.]
THE STRANGE WOMAN.
We are now obliged to return to the Americans' camp. As we have said, Black and his son were mounting guard, and the pioneer was far from easy in his mind. Although not yet possessed of all the experience required for a desert life, the four months he had spent in fatiguing marches and continued alarms had endowed him with a certain degree of vigilance, which, under existing circumstances, might prove very useful; not, perhaps, to prevent an attack, but, at least, to repulse it. The situation of his camp was, besides, excellent; for from it he surveyed the prairie for a great distance, and could easily perceive the approach of an enemy.
Father and son were seated by the fire, rising from time to time, in turn, to cast glances over the desert, and assure themselves that nothing menaced their tranquillity. Black was a man gifted with an iron will and a lion's courage; hitherto his schemes had been unsuccessful, and he had sworn to make himself an honourable position, no matter at what cost.
He was the descendant of an old family of squatters. The squatter being an individuality peculiar to America, and vainly sought elsewhere, we will describe him as he is, in a few words. On the lands belonging to the United States, not yet cleared or put up for sale, large numbers of persons have settled, with the desire of eventually purchasing their lots. These inhabitants are called squatters. We will not say that they are the pick of the western emigrants, but we know that, in certain districts, they have constituted themselves a regular Government, and have elected magistrates to watch over the execution of the Draconian laws they have themselves laid down to insure the tranquillity of the territories they have invaded. But by the side of these quasi-honest squatters, who bow their necks beneath a yoke that is often harsh, there is another class of squatters, who understand the possession of land in its widest sense; that is to say, whenever they discover, in their vagabond peregrinations, a tract of land that suits them, they instal themselves there without any further inquiry, and caring nothing for the rightful owner, who, when he arrives with his labourers to till his estate, is quite annoyed to find it is in the hands of an individual who, trusting to the axiom that possession is nine points of the law, refuses to give it up, and if he insist, drives him away by means of his rifle and revolver.
We know a capital story of a gentleman, who, starting from New York with two hundred labourers, to clear a virgin forest he had purchased some ten years previously, and never turned to any use, found, on arriving at his claim, a town of four thousand souls built on the site of his virgin forest, of which not a tree remained. After numberless discussions, the said gentleman esteemed himself very fortunate in being able to depart with a whole skin, and without paying damages to his despoilers, whom he had momentarily hoped to oust. But there is no more chance of ousting a squatter, than you can get a dollar out of a Yankee, when he has once pocketed it.
John Black belonged to the former of the two classes we have described. When he reached the age of twenty, his father gave him an axe, a rifle with twenty charges of powder, and a bowie knife, saying to him—