Wilson was reading this paper for the sixth time one evening in May. He felt something touch him on the shoulder, and looked up to see a tall Indian gazing down upon him with a look of strange pride and gravity. Wilson sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
“Drifting Crane, how d’e do?”
The Indian bowed, but did not take the settler’s hand. Drifting Crane would have been called old if he had been a white man, and there was a look of age in the fixed lines of his powerful, strongly modeled face, but no suspicion of weakness in the splendid poise of his broad, muscular body. There was a smileless gravity about his lips and eyes which was very impressive.
“I’m glad to see you. Come in and get something to eat,” said Wilson, after a moment’s pause.
The chief entered the cabin and took a seat near the door. He took a cup of milk and some meat and bread silently, and ate while listening to the talk of the settler.
“I don’t brag on my biscuits, chief, but they eat, if a man is hungry. An’ the milk’s all right. I suppose you’ve come to see why I ain’t moseying back over the divide?”
The chief, after a long pause, began to speak in a low, slow voice, as if choosing his words. He spoke in broken English, of course, but his speech was very direct and plain and had none of these absurd figures of rhetoric which romancers invariably put into the mouths of Indians. His voice was almost lionlike in its depth, and yet was not unpleasant.
“Cattleman, my young men brought me bad message from you. They brought your words to me, saying, he will not go away.”
“That’s about the way the thing stands,” replied Wilson, in response to the question that was in the old chief’s steady eyes. “I’m here to stay. This ain’t your land; this is Uncle Sam’s land, and part of it’ll be mine as soon as the surveyors come to measure it off.”
“Who gave it away?” asked the chief. “My people were cheated out of it; they didn’t know what they were doing.”