What! fifty of my followers, at a clap!
                                                         —Lear.

The day had now fairly opened on the seemingly interminable waste of the prairie. The entrance of Obed at such a moment into the camp, accompanied as it was by vociferous lamentations over his anticipated loss, did not fail to rouse the drowsy family of the squatter. Ishmael and his sons, together with the forbidding looking brother of his wife, were all speedily afoot; and then, as the sun began to shed his light on the place, they became gradually apprised of the extent of their loss.

Ishmael looked round upon the motionless and heavily loaded vehicles with his teeth firmly compressed, cast a glance at the amazed and helpless group of children, which clustered around their sullen but desponding mother, and walked out upon the open land, as if he found the air of the encampment too confined. He was followed by several of the men, who were attentive observers, watching the dark expression of his eye as the index of their own future movements. The whole proceeded in profound and moody silence to the summit of the nearest swell, whence they could command an almost boundless view of the naked plains. Here nothing was visible but a solitary buffaloe, that gleaned a meagre subsistence from the decaying herbage, at no great distance, and the ass of the physician, who profited by his freedom to enjoy a meal richer than common.

“Yonder is one of the creatures left by the villains to mock us,” said Ishmael, glancing his eye towards the latter, “and that the meanest of the stock. This is a hard country to make a crop in, boys; and yet food must be found to fill many hungry mouths!”

“The rifle is better than the hoe, in such a place as this,” returned the eldest of his sons, kicking the hard and thirsty soil on which he stood, with an air of contempt. “It is good for such as they who make their dinner better on beggars\' beans than on homminy. A crow would shed tears if obliged by its errand to fly across the district.”

“What say you, trapper?” returned the father, showing the slight impression his powerful heel had made on the compact earth, and laughing with frightful ferocity. “Is this the quality of land a man would choose who never troubles the county clerk with title deeds?”

“There is richer soil in the bottoms,” returned the old man calmly, “and you have passed millions of acres to get to this dreary spot, where he who loves to till the \'arth might have received bushels in return for pints, and that too at the cost of no very grievous labour. If you have come in search of land, you have journeyed hundreds of miles too far, or as many leagues too little.”

“There is then a better choice towards the other Ocean?” demanded the squatter, pointing in the direction of the Pacific.

“There is, and I have seen it all,” was the answer of the other, who dropped his rifle to the earth, and stood leaning on its barrel, like one who recalled the scenes he had witnessed with melancholy pleasure. “I have seen the waters of the two seas! On one of them was I born, and raised to be a lad like yonder tumbling boy. America has grown, my men, since the days of my youth, to be a country larger than I once had thought the world itself to be. Near seventy years I dwelt in York, province and state together:—you\'ve been in York, \'tis like?”

“Not I—not I; I never visited the towns; but often have heard the place you speak of named. \'Tis a wide clearing there, I reckon.”

“Too wide! too wide! They scourge the very \'arth with their axes. Such hills and hunting-grounds as I have seen stripped of the gifts of the Lord, without remorse or shame! I tarried till the mouths of my hounds were deafened by the blows of the chopper, and then I came west in search of quiet. It was a grievous journey that I made; a grievous toil to pass through falling timber and to breathe the thick air of smoky clearings, week after week, as I did! \'Tis a far country too, that state of York from this!”

“It lies ag\'in the outer edge of old Kentuck, I reckon; though what the distance may be I never knew.”

“A gull would have to fan a thousand miles of air to find the eastern sea. And yet it is no mighty reach to hunt across, when shade and game are plenty! The time has been when I followed the deer in the mountains of the Delaware and Hudson, and took the beaver on the streams of the upper lakes in the same season, but my eye was quick and certain at that day, and my limbs were like the legs of a moose! The dam of Hector,” dropping his look kindly to the aged hound that crouched at his feet, “was then a pup, and apt to open on the game the moment she struck the scent. She gave me a deal of trouble, that slut, she did!”

“Your hound is old, stranger, and a rap on the head would prove a mercy to the beast.”

“The dog is like his master,” returned the trapper, without appearing to heed the brutal advice the other gave, “and will number his days, when his work amongst the game is over, and not before. To my eye things seem ordered to meet each other in this creation. \'Tis not the swiftest running deer that always throws off the hounds, nor the biggest arm that holds the truest rifle. Look around you, men; what will the Yankee Choppers say, when they have cut their path from the eastern to the western waters, and find that a hand, which can lay the \'arth bare at a blow, has been here and swept the country, in very mockery of their wickedness. They will turn on their tracks like a fox that doubles, and then the rank smell of their own footsteps will show them the madness of their waste. Howsomever, these are thoughts that are more likely to rise in him who has seen the folly of eighty seasons, than to teach wisdom to men still bent on the pleasures of their kind! You have need, yet, of a stirring time, if you think to escape the craft and hatred of the burnt-wood Indians. They claim to be the lawful owners of this country, and seldom leave a white more than the skin he boasts of, when once they get the power, as they always have the will, to do him harm.”

“Old man,” said Ishmael sternly, “to which people do you belong? You have the colour and speech of a Christian, while it seems that your heart is with the redskins.”

“To me there is little difference in nations. The people I loved most are scattered as the sands of the dry river-beds fly before the fall hurricanes, and life is too short to make use and custom with strangers, as one can do with such as he has dwelt amongst for years. Still am I a man without the cross of Indian blood; and what is due from a warrior to his nation, is owing by me to the people of the States; though little need have they, with their militia and their armed boats, of help from a single arm of fourscore.”

“Since you own your kin, I may ask a simple question. Where are the Siouxes who have stolen my cattle?”

“Where is the herd of buffaloes, which was chased by the panther across this plain, no later than the morning of yesterday? It is as hard—”

“Friend,” said Dr. Battius, who had hitherto been an attentive listener, but who now felt a sudden impulse to mingle in the discourse, “I am grieved when I find a venator or hunter, of your experience and observation, following the current of vulgar error. The animal you describe is in truth a species of the bos ferus, (or bos sylvestris, as he has been happily called by the poets,) but, though of close affinity, it is altogether distinct from the common bubulus. Bison is the better word; and I would suggest the necessity of adopting it in future, when you shall have occasion to allude to the species.”

“Bison or buffaloe, it makes but little matter. The creatur\' is the same, call it by what name you will, and—”

“Pardon me, venerable venator; as classification is the very soul of the natural sciences, the animal or vegetable must, of necessity, be characterised by the peculiarities of its species, which is always indicated by the name—”

“Friend,” said the trapper, a little positively, “would the tail of a beaver make the worse dinner for calling it a mink; or could you eat of the wolf, with relish, because some bookish man had given it the name of venison?”

As these questions were put with no little earnestness and some spirit, there was every probability that a hot discussion would have succeeded between two men, of whom one was so purely practical and the other so much given to theory, had not Ishmael seen fit to terminate the dispute, by bringing into view a subject that was much more important to his own immediate interests.

“Beavers\' tails and minks\' flesh may do to talk about before a maple fire and a quiet hearth,” interrupted the squatter, without the smallest deference to the interested feelings of the disputants; “but something more than foreign words, or words of any sort, is now needed. Tell me, trapper, where are your Siouxes skulking?”

“It would be as easy to tell you the colours of the hawk that is floating beneath yonder white cloud! When a red-skin strikes his blow, he is not apt to wait until he is paid for the evil deed in lead.”

“Will the beggarly savages believe they have enough, when they find themselves master of all the stock?”

“Natur\' is much the same, let it be covered by what skin it may. Do you ever find your longings after riches less when you have made a good crop, than before you were master of a kernel of corn? If you do, you differ from what the experience of a long life tells me is the common cravings of man.”

“Speak plainly, old stranger,” said the squatter, striking the butt of his rifle heavily on the earth, his dull capacity finding no pleasure in a discourse that was conducted in so obscure allusions; “I have asked a simple question, and one I know well that you can answer.”

“You are right, you are right. I can answer, for I have too often seen the disposition of my kind to mistake it, when evil is stirring. When the Siouxes have gathered in the beasts, and have made sure that you are not upon their heels, they will be back nibbling like hungry wolves to take the bait they have left or it may be, they\'ll show the temper of the great bears, that are found at the falls of the Long River, and strike at once with the paw, without stopping to nose their prey.”

“You have then seen the animals you mention!” exclaimed Dr. Battius, who had now been thrown out of the conversation quite as long as his impatience could well brook, and who approached the subject with his tablets ready opened, as a book of reference. “Can you tell me if what you encountered was of the species, ursus horribilis—with the ears, rounded—front, arquated—eyes—destitute of the remarkable supplemental lid—with six incisores, one false, and four perfect molares—”

“Trapper, go on, for we are engaged in reasonable discourse,” interrupted Ishmael; “you believe we shall see more of the robbers.”

“Nay—nay—I do not call them robbers, for it is the usage of their people, and what may be called the prairie law.”

“I have come five hundred miles to find a place where no man can ding the words of the law in my ears,” said Ishmael, fiercely, “and I am not in a humour to stand quietly at a bar, while a red-skin sits in judgment. I tell you, trapper, if another Sioux is seen prowling around my camp, wherever it may be, he shall feel the contents of old Kentuck,” slapping his rifle, in a manner that could not be easily misconstrued, “though he wore the medal of Washington,[*] himself. I call the man a robber who takes that which is not his own.”

    [*] The American government creates chiefs among the western tribes,
    and decorates them with silver medals bearing the impression of
    the different presidents. That of Washington is the most prized.

“The Teton, and the Pawnee, and the Konza, and men of a dozen other tribes, claim to own these naked fields.”

“Natur\' gives them the lie in their teeth. The air, the water, and the ground, are free gifts to man, and no one has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink, and breathe, and walk,—and therefore each has a right to his share of \'arth. Why do not the surveyors of the States set their compasses and run their lines over our heads as well as beneath our feet? Why do they not cover their shining sheep-skins with big words, giving to the landholder, or perhaps he should be called air holder, so many rods of heaven, with the use of such a star for a boundary-mark, and such a cloud to turn a mill?”

As the squatter uttered his wild conceit, he laughed from the very bottom of his chest, in scorn. The deriding but frightful merriment passed from the mouth of one of his ponderous sons to that of the other, until it had made the circuit of the whole family.

“Come, trapper,” continued Ishmael, in a tone of better humour, like a man who feels that he has triumphed, “neither of us, I reckon, has ever had much to do with title-deeds, or county clerks, or blazed trees; therefor............