“The idea,” he exclaimed. “To think that twenty thousand people could be fooled in that way! After a buffalo is dead he is _dead_, and nothing can bring him to life again.” “Well, I don’t know that the Indian is so much to blame for that,” said Carl, looking down at the horn of his saddle. “You know how susceptible the savage is to superstition. All his life he has been planning and thinking about getting rid of the whites. We are his evil genius; and if we could be driven out of the country everything would go along as smoothly as it did before. One of their agents, in making out his report to Washington, has twelve different counts against our people.” “What have we done to the Sioux?” demanded Parker, opening his eyes in surprise. “Take, for instance, a supply of goods which ought to have been here by August but did not get here until midwinter,” said Carl in reply. “I guess that was enough to set a more patient people than the Sioux on the warpath. A good many of them starved to death in spite of all the army could do to prevent it. I tell you, you would find it mighty hard to be loyal to a Government that could deliberately go back on you in that way.” “Why, Carl, I did not know you were such an Indian lover,” said Lieutenant Parker. “I am an Indian lover in this way: I say they have been abused, and shamefully, too. When the Black Hills were given up to them, they were assured that they should belong to them and their heirs forever. Everything went on smoothly until gold was discovered there, and from that time the trouble began. Custer was sent through that country, not with any instructions to turn the settlers out, but just to examine the spot; and the consequence was that in less than a year the Black Hills were overrun with prospectors.” “Well, the Indians were in our way,” said Lieutenant Parker. “If they had behaved themselves——” “Yes, and seen their buffaloes all killed before their eyes. I tell you, lieutenant, you don’t know what a buffalo is to an Indian. It furnishes him with everything he needs, including skins for his tepee, robes to keep him warm in midwinter and sinews for sewing his clothes together. A white man kills them just to make a record. Sometimes he takes their tails home to hang up in his study and sometimes he don’t. There are but few buffaloes left, and they are in Yellowstone Park. I hope the Government will take a hand in protecting them.” Lieutenant Parker could not say a word against this, for he knew it was all true. He knew how he would feel if some people stronger than his own should follow him year after year, take his land away from him, and destroy the only means he had of making a living. He had never looked at it in this way before. He supposed that the redskins were born with a natural enmity against the whites, and that nothing could turn them from a desire to take vengeance on them. He did not know that he blamed the Indian so much, after all.