“What business have they got off the reservation, I'd like to know,” said the ranchman, “Bow Leg, or anywhere?”
“Oh, it's just a hunt, and a kind of visitin' their friends on the South Reservation,” Shorty explained. “Squaws along and all.”
“Well, if the folks at Washington don't keep squaws and all where they belong,” said Balaam, in a rage, “the folks in Wyoming Territory 'ill do a little job that way themselves.”
“There's a petition out,” said Shorty. “Paper's goin' East with a lot of names to it. But they ain't no harm, them Indians ain't.”
“No harm?” rasped out Balaam. “Was it white men druv off the O. C. yearlings?”
Balaam's Eastern grammar was sometimes at the mercy of his Western feelings. The thought of the perennial stultification of Indian affairs at Washington, whether by politician or philanthropist, was always sure to arouse him. He walked impatiently about while he spoke, and halted impatiently at the window. Out in the world the unclouded day was shining, and Balaam's eye travelled across the plains to where a blue line, faint and pale, lay along the end of the vast yellow distance. That was the beginning of the Bow Leg Mountains. Somewhere over there were the red men, ranging in unfrequented depths of rock and pine—their forbidden ground.
Dinner was ready, and they sat down.
“And I suppose,” Balaam continued, still hot on the subject, “you'd claim Indians object to killing a white man when they run on to him good and far from human help? These peaceable Indians are just the worst in the business.”
“That's so,” assented the easy-opinioned Shorty, exactly as if he had always maintained this view. “Chap started for Sunk Creek three weeks ago. Trapper he was; old like, with a red shirt. One of his horses come into the round-up Toosday. Man ain't been heard from.” He ate in silence for a while, evidently brooding in his childlike mind. Then he said, querulously, “I'd sooner trust one of them Indians than I would Trampas.”
Balaam slanted his fat bullet head far to one side, and laying his spoon down (he had opened some canned grapes) laughed steadily at his guest with a harsh relish of irony.