turies that are daily colliding within our domain, but this is enough
to show how little we cohere in opinions. How many States and
Territories is it that we count united under our Stars and Stripes? I
know that there are some forty-five or more, and that though I belong
among the original thirteen, it has been my happiness to journey in all
the others, in most of them, indeed, many times, for the sake of making
my country's acquaintance. With no spread-eagle brag do I gather
conviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound at
heart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and always
ultimately of excellent good-sense. With such belief, or, rather,
knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yet
undisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to that
general business office of ours at Washington a herd of mismanagers that
seems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whether
branded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because often and
oftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering,
"There's too much politics in this country"; and we shake hands.

But all this is growing too serious for a book of short stories.
They are about Indians and soldiers and events west of the Missouri.
They belong to the past thirty years of our development, but you will
find some of those ancient surviving centuries in them if you take
my view. In certain ones the incidents, and even some of the names,
are left unchanged from their original reality. The visit of
Young-man-afraid-of-his-horses to the Little Big Horn and the rise and
fall of the young Crow impostor, General Crook's surprise of E-egante,
and many other occurrences, noble and ignoble, are told as they were
told to me by those who saw them. When our national life, our own soil,
is so rich in adventures to record, what need is there for one to call
upon his invention save to draw, if he can, characters who shall fit
these strange and dramatic scenes? One cannot improve upon such
realities. If this fiction is at all faithful to the truth from which
it springs, let the thanks be given to the patience and boundless
hospitality of the Army friends and other friends across the Missouri
who have housed my body and instructed my mind. And if the stories
entertain the ignorant without grieving the judicious I am content.

CONTENTS