This goes on until the reprobation becomes general, and public indignation at last growing stronger than the terror inspired by these villains, they are compelled to fly from town to town in order to escape the exemplary punishment of Lynch-law. Everywhere pursued like wild beasts, abandoned by all, even by their accomplices, they draw nearer and nearer to the Indian border, which they eventually cross, and are henceforth condemned to live and die in the desert. But there, too, everything is hostile to them--white trappers, wood rangers, Indian warriors, and wild beasts--they are compelled to endure a daily and hourly struggle to defend their life, which is incessantly assailed. But they have before them space, the hiding places on the mountains and in the virgin forests, and hence can sustain the combat to a certain point. Still, if they remained isolated they would infallibly succumb to cold, hunger, and wretchedness, even supposing they were not surprised, scalped, and massacred by their implacable enemies. These outlaws from society, whom every man thinks he has a right to hunt down, frankly accept their position. They feel proud of the hatred and repulsion they inspire, and collect in numerous bands to requite the anathema cast upon them. Taking as their rule the pitiless law of the prairies, eye for eye and tooth for tooth, they become formidable through their numbers, and repay their enemies the injuries they receive from them. Woe to the trappers or Indians who venture to traverse the prairies alone, for the pirates massacre them pitilessly. The emigrant trains are also attacked and pillaged by them with refined and atrocious barbarity. Some of these men who have retained a little shame, put off the dress of white men to assume that of Redskins, so as to make those they pillage suppose they have been attacked by Indians; hence their most inveterate enemies are the Indians, for whom they try to pass. Still, it frequently happens that the pirates, ally themselves with Redskins belonging to one nation to make war on another. All is good for them when their object is plunder; but what they prefer is raising scalps, for which the Government of the United States, that patriarchal government which protects the natives, according to some heartless optimists, are not ashamed to pay fifty dollars a-piece. Hence, the pirates are as skilful as the Indians themselves in raising hair; but with them all scalps are good; and when they cannot come across Indians, they have no scruple about scalping white men; the more so, because the United States does not look into matters very closely, and pays without bargaining or entering into details, provided that the hair be long and black.