There was a look of deep sorrow in the old man's face. At last he spoke again: "The cattleman is welcome; but he must go, because whenever one white man goes and calls it good, the others come. Drifting Crane has seen it far in the east, twice. The white men come thick as the grass. They tear up the sod. They build houses. They scare the buffalo away. They spoil my young men with whisky. Already they begin to climb the eastern hills. Soon they will fill the valley, and Drifting Crane and his people will be surrounded. The sod will all be black." "I hope you're right," was the rancher's grim reply. "But they will not come if the cattleman go back to say the water is not good. There is no grass, and the Indians own the land." Wilson smiled at the childish faith of the chief. "Won't do, chief--won't do. That won't do any good. I might as well stay." The chief rose. He was touched by the settler's laugh; his eyes flashed; his voice took on a sterner note. "The white man _must_ go!" Wilson rose also. He was not a large man, but he was a very resolute one. "I shan't go!" he said, through his clinched teeth. Each man understood the tones of the other perfectly. It was a thrilling, a significant scene. It was in absolute truth the meeting of the modern vidette of civilization with one of the rear-guard of retreating barbarism. Each man was a type; each was wrong, and each was right. The Indian as true and noble from the barbaric point of view as the white man. He was a warrior and hunter--made so by circumstances over which he had no control. Guiltless as the panther, because war to a savage is the necessity of life. The settler represented the unflagging energy and fearless heart of the American pioneer. Narrow-minded, partly brutalized by hard labor and a lonely life, yet an admirable figure for all that. As he looked into the Indian's face he seemed to grow in height. He felt behind him all the weight of the millions of westward-moving settlers; he stood the representative of an unborn State. He took down a rifle from the wall--the magazine rifle, most modern of guns; he patted the stock, pulled the crank, throwing a shell into view. "You know this thing, chief?" The Indian nodded slightly. "Well, I'll go when--this--is--empty." "But my young men are many." "So are the white men--my brothers." The chief's head dropped forward. Wilson, ashamed of his boasting, put the rifle back on the wall. "I'm not here to fight. You can kill me any time. You could 'a' killed me to-night, but it wouldn't do any good. It 'ud only make it worse for you. Why, they'll be a town in here bigger'n all your tribe before two grass from now. It ain't no use, Drifting Crane; it's _got_ to be. You an' I can't help n'r hinder it. I know just how you feel about it, but I tell yeh it ain't no use to fight."