"You do? Well now don't you undertake anything foolish. You know better than I do that in your country you've got to wait until your throat's already cut before drawing upon a man, and even then like enough you'll be hung if you recover. Say, now, couldn't you get the party or parties out here, and have a fair and square stand up? You'd make undertaker's goods of 'em right enough, never fear." "No, no, my friend. That sort of reptile doesn't face you in any such simple fashion. It strikes you through the lawyers--those beneficent products of our Christian civilisation," replied the other, with a bitter laugh. "However, time enough to talk about that when we get to our prospecting again." "If we ever do get to it again. Custer's expedition in the fall of last year didn't go through here for fun, nor yet to look after the Sioux, though that was given as the colour of it. Why, they were prospectin' all the time, and not for nothin' neither. No, `Uncle Sam' wants to have all the plums himself, and, likely enough, the hills'll be full of cavalrymen soon as the snow melts. Then I reckon we shall have to git." "Well, the reds'll be hoist with their own petard. It's the old fable again. They call in `Uncle Sam' to clear out the miners, and `Uncle Sam' hustles them out as well. But we may not have to clear, after all, for it's my belief that the moment the grass begins to sprout the whole Sioux nation will go upon the war-path." "Then we'd have to git all the slicker." "Not necessarily," replied Vipan, coolly. "I've a notion we could stop here more snugly than ever." "Not unless we helped 'em," said the scout, decidedly. "And that's not to be done." "I don't know that. Speaking for myself, I get on very well with the reds. They've got their faults, but then so have other people. Wait, I know what you're going to say--they're cruel and treacherous devils, and so forth. Well, cruelty is in their nature, and, by the way, is not unknown in civilisation. As for treachery, it strikes me, old chum, that we've got to keep about as brisk a look-out for a shot in the back in any of our Western townships as we have for our scalps in an Indian village." The scout nodded assent; puffing away vigorously at his pipe as he stared into the glowing embers. "For instance," went on the other, "when that chap `grazed' me in the street at Denver while I wasn't looking, and would have put his next ball clean through me if you hadn't dropped him in his tracks so neatly--that was a nice example for a white man and a Christian to set, say, to our friends Mountain Cat, or Three Bears, or Hole-in-a-Tree, down yonder, wasn't it? But to come to the point--which is this: Supposing some fellow had rushed us while we were prospecting that place down on the Big Cheyenne in the summer and invited us to clear, I guess we should briskly have let him see a brace of muzzles. Eh?" "Guess we should."