Rand shot a glance at the hunter where he lounged against the window, a figure straight and lithe as an Indian, not tall, but gifted with a pantherish grace, and breathing a certain tawny brightness as of sunshine through pine needles. "You're daft!" he said; then after a moment, "Are you serious?"
"Why should I not be serious?" asked Adam. "My faith! it's a restless land, the West, and it's a far cry from the Mississippi to the Potomac. The West doesn't like the East anyhow. But it wants a picked man from the East. It will get one too! The wind's blowing hard from the full to the empty, from the parcelled-out to the virgin land!"
"Yes," said Rand.
"Why shouldn't you be the man?" demanded Gaudylock. "Just as well you as Claiborne—Wilkinson's naught, I don't count him—or any one still East, like—like—Aaron Burr."
"Aaron Burr?"
"Well, I just instance him. He's ambitious enough, and there doesn't seem much room for him back here. If Adam Gaudylock was ambitious and was anything but just an uneducated hunter with a taste for danger—I tell you, Lewis, I can see the blazed trees, I can see them with my eyes shut, stretching clean from anywhere—stretching from this room, say—beyond the Ohio, and beyond the Mississippi, and beyond Mexico to where the sun strikes the water! It's a trail for fine treading and a strong man, but it leads—it leads—"
"It might lead," said Rand, "to the Tarpeian Rock."
"Where's that?"
"It's where they put to death a sort of folk called traitors—Benedict Arnolds and such."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Adam. "Traitors! Benedict Arnold was a traitor. This is not like that. America's large enough for a mort of countries. All the states are countries—federated countries. Say some man is big enough to make a country west of the Mississippi—Well, one day we may federate too. Eh, Lewis, 'twould be a powerful country—great as Rome, I reckon! And we'd smoke the calumet with old Virginia—and she'd rule East and we'd rule West. D'you think it's a dream?—Well, men make dreams come true."