“This is not what our priests tell US,” answered le Bourdon. “They tell us that the white man's God commands us to love all alike--to do GOOD to our enemies, to LOVE them that wish us HARM, and to treat all men as we would wish men to treat us.” Peter was a good deal surprised at this doctrine, and it was nearly a minute before he resumed the discourse. He had recently heard it several times, and it was slowly working its way into his mind. “Such are our traditions, and such are our laws. Look at me. Fifty winters have tried to turn my hair white. Time can do that. The hair is the only part of an Injin that ever turns white; all the rest of him is red. That is his color. The game knows an Injin by his color. The tribes know him. Everything knows him by his color. He knows the things which the Great Spirit has given him, in the same way. He gets used to them, and they are his acquaintances. He does not like strange things. He does not like strangers. White men are strangers, and he does not like to see them on his hunting-ground. If they come singly, to kill a few buffaloes, or to look for honey, or to catch beaver, the Injins would not complain. They love to give of their abundance. The pale-faces do not come in this fashion. They do not come as guests; they come as masters. They come and they stay. Each year of my fifty have I heard of new tribes that have been driven by them toward the setting sun. “Bourdon, for many seasons I have thought of this. I have tried to find a way to stop them. There is but one. That way must the Injins try, or give up their hunting-grounds to the strangers. No nation likes to give up its hunting-grounds. They come from the Manitou, and one day he may ask to have them back again. What could the red men say, if they let the pale-faces take them away? No; this we cannot do. We will first try the one thing that is to be done.” “I believe I understand you, Peter,” observed le Bourdon, finding that his companion paused. “You mean war. War, in the Injin mode of redressing all wrongs; war against man, woman, and child!” Peter nodded in acquiescence, fixing his glowing eyes on the bee-hunter's face, as if to read his soul. “Am I to understand, then, that you and your friends, the chiefs and their followers, that I saw on Prairie Round, mean to begin with US, half-a-dozen whites, of whom two are women, who happen to be here in your power--that OUR scalps are to be the first taken?” “First!--no, Bourdon. Peter's hand has taken a great many, years since. He has got a name for his deeds, and no longer dare go to the white men's forts. He does not look for Yankees, he looks for pale-faces. When he meets a pale-face on the prairies, or in the woods, he tries to get his scalp. This has he done for years, and many has he taken.”