a particular
preference for John Logan. The idea of having an Indian for a rival was
more than this ignorant and brutal Deputy Agent could well bear, and he
set to work at once to rid himself of the object of his hatred.

The hard and merciless man-hunter almost shouted with delight at a new
idea which now came upon him with the light and suddeness of a
revelation. He ran at once to his partner, and told him of his
determination.

Then these two men sat down and talked a long time together. They made
marks in the sand with sticks. They set up little stakes in the sand,
and seemed delighted as they reached their heads out and looked down
from the mouth of their tunnel toward the Indian farm.

That night these two men stole down together, and set up stakes and made
corner marks about John Logan's land while he slept, and then rolled
themselves in their blankets, and spent the night inside the limits of
their new location. Having done this, and sent a notice of their
pre-emption to the Surveyor General, to be filed as their declaration of
claim to the little farm with the orchard, they entered complaint
against John Logan, and so sat down to await results.

Meantime, this old woman sat alone, with a great dog by her side, sick
and desolate, waiting her sun of life to set, piously waiting, dark
browed, thoughtful; while her tall handsome boy, meek, obedient, with
the awful curse of Cain upon his brow, the mark of Indian blood, was
toiling on up in the canyon alone.

You had better be a negro--you had better be ten times a negro, were it
possible--than be one-tenth part an Indian in the West. The Indian will
have little to do with one who is part Indian. And as for the white man,
unless the Indian is willing to be his slave, do him homage and service,
he would sooner take a leper in his house or to his heart.

Up and above the Indian woman's house, in the dense wood and on the spur
of the mountain, wound an old Indian trail. Along this trail, above the
hidden house, stole two little creatures--tawny, sunburnt, ragged,
wretched, yet full of affection for each other. These were the two
wretched children escaped from the Reservation. They were now being
harbored by old Forty-nine. For this he was liable to be arrested and
punished. Knowing this, he kept his gun loaded and standing in the
corner of his cabin, where the children slept at night.

How strange that this one man, the most despised and miserable, should
be th