"Tell Mapleson, I pass by the crime of forging lies against the name of Irving Whately; I pass by the plotted crimes against this town in '63; I ignore the systematic thievery of your dealings with the half-breed Jean Pahusca; but, by the God in heaven, my boy is my own. For the crime of seeking to lay stain upon his name, the crime of trying to entangle him hopelessly in a scandal and a legal prosecution with a sinful erring girl, the crime of lending your hand to hold the coat of the man who should stone him to death,--for these things, I, the father of Philip Baronet, give you now twenty-four hours to leave Springvale and the State. If at the end of that time you are within the limits of Kansas, you must answer to me in the court-room over there; and, Tell Mapleson, you know what's before you. I came to the West to help build it up. I cannot render my State a greater service than by driving you from its borders; and so long as I live I shall bar your entrance to a land that, in spite of all it has to bear, grows a larger crop of honest men with the conquest of each acre of the prairie soil." CHAPTER XXVII SUNSET BY THE SWEETWATER And we count men brave who on land and wave fear not to die; but still, Still first on the rolls of the world's great souls are the men who have feared to kill. --EDMUND VANCE COOKE. Jean Pahusca turned at the sound of O'mie's step on the stone. The red sun had blinded his eyes and he could not see clearly at first. When he did see, O'mie's presence and the captive unbound and staggering to his feet, surprised the Indian and held him a moment longer. The confusion at the change in war's grim front passed quickly, however,--he was only half Indian,--and he was himself again. He darted toward us, swift as a serpent. Clutching O'mie by the throat and lifting him clear of the rock shelf the Indian threw him headlong down the side of the bluff, crashing the bushes as he fell. The knife that had cut the cords that bound me, the same knife that would have scalped Marjie and taken the boy's life in the Hermit's Cave, was flung from O'mie's hand. It rang on the stone and slid down in the darkness below. Then the half-breed hurled himself upon me and we clinched there by the cliff's edge for our last conflict.