"Take another, they won't kill you!"

that he had probably "wandered about until he caught a glimpse of Tacoma and fell dead." "Death came," continued this obituary, "suddenly and unexpectedly, just as he had settled himself to a long siege to watch Tacoma grow. In this form it was probably a mercy, for he would have died of starvation had he stayed until the object of his visit was accomplished."

In Buffalo Bill's town the Banquetees danced-there being no time for a banquet -in Cody, on the plateau above the Stinking Water. After dark a coach—a great band-wagon affair that would hold a score or so carried us across the cañon from the town. Into this the Banquetees piled and away we went down into the cañon, brakes on and horses at the gallop, in a way calculated to inspire admiration for the laconic individual who did the driving, up again on the other side, still galloping. The dance was in the dining-room of the hotel which the Hon. Buffalo B. Cody built and named after his daughter and it was a very well worth while dance indeed. You would have a pretty hard time finding as many different sorts of people at a dance back East, all enjoying themselves together. The only ones about whose enthusiasm there seemed to be the slightest doubt were the lady waitresses of the hotel, and their natural hauteur, together with pompadours piled to an almost Alpine height, combined

to cloud expressions doubtless inwardly happy with a certain ambiguity. There were folks from town and from ranches near by, and the engineers had come down from their camps up the cañon; there was a beautiful and mysterious French lady who didn't dance and could only say a few words of English, and a nice, pink-cheeked cub of an architect, just out of college and come to this green corner from New York to try growing up with the country, and the play actress lady who did ingénue parts with the So-and-So Family which was spending a week in Cody and had "never been East" but once, she said—the time they played in Denver. It was the day of the HarvardYale race. The General Superintendentwho had gone to New Haven-and I had talked and prophesied and made vague bets since breakfast, and while we were dancing there in Cody we could see in our mind's eyes that other crowd dancing at the Pequot and the Casino, and the lights and lanterns of the yachts twinkling in New London harbor. It all flashed back with new warmth when one of the young women, hearing mention of the race and New London cried out with the quick pleasure and excitement of a child: "Know New London? I came from New London! I've seen every race but this one since I was the littlest little girl!" It was a far, far cry from that old New England town by the sea to this Wyoming settlement with its train twice a week trailing in from the Crow country, resting a while and trailing back again. Many other such we had met-wives of the engineers-living out the long, lonely days while the men were at work in the field. "Think of us," she laughed, when the time came to go, "when you get back to God's country." To a man just escaped from the town it seemed pretty much just that right here with these wonderful mountains and cañons and deserts and streams, this untarnished outof-doors. But it is one thing for a man, even a man hard at work, and quite another for a woman, and their plucky stories are told all over this western country, in work done that could not have been done without their help and inspiration-deserts watered, homes and the wilderness made a pleasant place. Two gentle pioneers at the dance that night were not even following a lord and master-two sisters, farmers

because they liked it. They had been "finished" in the East and had then gone to an agricultural college and learned all about farming, and now were conducting a ranch a dozen miles or so out of town with, apparently, both success and satisfaction. Now and then they hitched up and drove to town for the dances at the hotel and at election time. I asked one of them what had been put on the floor by the dance committee. She rubbed the toe of her boot over it thoughtfully and observed demurely that it might be cornmeal and it might be gold dust. Presently the music paused, the Gentleman from Wyoming made a speech, then the band-wagon coach appeared, again we galloped down into the cañon and out again and while the lights still blinked from the town across the gulch trailed away, down the Shoshone toward the Big Horn and Crow country.

The straight glare and heat of high noon were on the mountains as the Banquetees' special swung down the narrow gorge, from the ten-thousand-foot-level of Gunnison Pass into the shadow of Black Cañon. We had breakfasted on rainbow trout at Salida, in the amethystine dawn, so crystalline and buoyant that even our sated carcasses tugged a bit at their earthy guy-ropes. But the reaction of midday was claiming us. now. After our month and more along the gilded highways banqueting had become a habit, and like drowsy vultures we blinked at the wilderness of terra-cotta rocks and wanted to know when dinner was coming. Appeared a little board station and railroad eating-house. The train drew up with a tired release of breath, out tumbled the Banquetees. The reception committee consisted of a middle-aged man and woman and a little boy and three or four waitresses, very warm and flustered-looking, with puckers in their brows and brand new pink bows in their hair. Dinner was on the table the railroad silver, in soldierly rows, almost filled the gap between plate and plate, a few melancholy flowers drooped. here and there, and in the center bravely stood a huge pink-and-white cake such as grow in bake-shop windows. We gobbled through it-soup and rainbow trout and chicken and sad-hued lamb and many things out of cans-some panting freight had dragged it all up over the Pass-grum

bled a bit because there wasn't more trout and stumped back to the train. The little reception committee stood at the door, bowing each one out, prolonging the excitement. It is lonesome in Black Cañon. "Good-bye," smiled the woman. "Good

bye, sir," bowed the tired-looking man, and then, almost in a grand manner: "Believe me, it has been a great pleasure to have served you. We hope you'll come again." Some one, lighting his cigar, guessed that they didn't have as big a crowd as this very often. The woman nodded. "We're a long way from people here," she said, "a long way from home." The man with the cigar said that he was, too, all the way from New York. "New York!" She ran forward and held out her hand. "That's my home! That is, I came from Jersey City. I suppose," she ventured, "you know Jersey City?" And then came the little story so familiar in the West-her husband hadn't been well and they'd thought he might do better out here in the mountains. It had done him good and their little boy liked it be had caught the trout for the dinner. She hoped we were satisfied with the dinner. They'd just got the eatinghouse and they wanted to show the superintendent what they could do and--Well,

Good-bye! Be sure and come again sometime The train drew away, the little reception committee went out of sight behind the terra-cotta rocks and we bowled on toward the Valley of the Uncompahgre.

Many things happened during those six week a-junketing-I have gossiped about only a few haphazard mile-posts that bob into view as one harks back over the tenthousand-mile trail. In a way, I suppose, a junketer's outlook is somewhat limelighted-life west of the Corn Belt is not one grand sweet banquet; the casual tenderfoot, stepping off the train at Alkali Flats, may not, perhaps, safely assume that he will be met by the mayor and a brass band and beautiful maidens strewing the main street with roses and ripe oranges. But even though one admits this in the cold intellectual light of months after, it is good in this sad world to have seen, day after day for weeks, all mankind apparently governed by the cheerful laws of hospitality and optimism and good humor. It is difficult for one who has been properly presented to the Banquet Belt not to feel that somehow, out there, Christmas does not come more than once a year. It is reassuring, in an existence filled with folks dissatisfied with their own particular sorts of cages, to meet folks who jubilantly are convinced that their town, their mountains, their climate and soil and people are quite the best in the world. But most inspiring of all is that which lies under all this exuberance and optimism-the essential strength and faith and idealism and honesty-the good citizens. A country, like a man, has a certain youth and Eden-time, which comes but once; the greater part of the Banquet Belt is still in this youth, its people the strong, imaginative, chosen people who had the courage to break the old ties and strike out into it. They have been up against some of the elemental facts of existence; the elemental virtues have been necessary in their business. No weight of general evil, hovering vaguely in the atmosphere, as it were, has yet made them self-conscious; with the President they can discover the Decalogue without fear of being laughed at. There was a Montana man who drove us about his town one morning. He looked like a ranchman, but ran a big "general store" where you could

buy anything from dancing pumps to a threshing engine. We talked about hunting, politics, irrigation and the town. Something was said about a brilliant and rather unscrupulous critic of the President. "Well," said our host finally, "if a man can't be witty without being mean he'd better keep still. We're here in the world to build up and not to pull down,” and later, when we were talking about business chances in such a town, he summed it up with "a man can make a little more than he spends and own a home that'll give his children a chance. If a man can do that and make some friends along the way and when he gets out of the world have people glad he was in it—after all, that's about all that counts."

I am not quoting these chance remarks as part of any unique philosophy, but merely because I happen to remember them, almost word for word, and because they are so typical of the things men say to you every day in the new country—not in heart-to-heart comparisons of ethical standards, but spontaneously, with a sort of boyish candor, between cigar puffs and droll anecdotes and talk of politics and business. Folks work under such simple philosophies everywhere, in tenements as well as in wheatfields-no one who knows the city that good-humoredly fights the brave fight has any notion that Utopia exists only in the country. But back in the town it is rather harder to see; through the haze of this and that, individuals and the straight outlines of simple, vital things stand out less clearly. But here they are seen in fairer perspective. Work, even the humblest-raising a roof, making the desert blossom-has almost the thrill of creation, as all necessary work has if one can isolate it enough to see clearly its dignity. So, here, do the strong, kindly men stand out

clean, refreshing, as the air of their high plateaus, solid and reassuring as the mountains from which they have taken strength. They are ours, these men, and their generations yet unborn; in their presence one may puff aside the talk of graft and selfishness, the music-hall cynicism that Yankee Doodle has become Yankee Boodle. This is our country-these our people. It is good, now and then, to get down to the ground.

RANCE alone of the European nations which planted colonies in the New World, treated the natives with some degree of fairness and friendship, and in the Seven Years' War with England nearly all the tribes involved were her allies. That war was now over. The Empire of New France, built at such a terrible cost, had fallen on the plains of Abraham, September 13, 1759, before the expiring genius of the gallant Wolfe. All Canada soon surrendered and the articles of capitulation included the posts around the Great Lakes.

In the fall of 1760 Major Robert Rogers, of whom we have already had a brief glance in these papers, was dispatched from Montreal with his famous band of rangers, to take possession of those posts in the name of His Britannic Majesty. He bore a copy of the capitulation and letters from the French commander directing their surrender.

The first week in November found him on Lake Erie. Encountering a bitter storm, he landed near the present site of Cleveland and while in camp there was visited by a party of Indian chiefs, who announced themselves messengers of Pontiac, whom in the grandiloquent phraseology of the red-man, they declared to be the greatest of all sachems, the mightiest of all war chiefs, and the ruler of all lands east of the setting sun. His name and fame were new to Rogers, but as he was informed that the puissant chief was near at hand, he made no comment, and in a few hours the haughty king of the wilderness arrived.

In appearance, Pontiac realized the ideal

chief of the school of Cooper. Though not above the average height he possessed almost faultless symmetry, and his strength and endurance were the wonder of the savages themselves. No eastern despot could comport himself with loftier disdain or prouder arrogance. But it was chiefly in his stern and commanding countenance that the ascendency of his spirit and the mastery of his mind were apparent. Though born the son of an Ottawa chief and an Ojibway mother, his personal prowess, eloquence and capacity had early made him the dominant force of his tribe. He had led the war party of his people at Braddock's defeat, and soon after his craft, cunning and courage, his energy, resourcefulness and knowledge, made him the natural leader of all the Algonquin race in the Middle West. No other single Indian who ever lived possessed so much authority over so large a number of braves. He was ever the faithful ally of the French, and had grown to hate the English with a lasting and a rancorous hatred. Perhaps no man of his race ever equaled him in mental power and personal magnetism. He was at this time nearly fifty years of age, and for an Indian, had traveled extensively. He had been the guest of the great Montcalm at Quebec, and by the adroit French was everywhere treated with distinguished courtesy.

In his interview with Rogers he was characteristically disdainful and imperious. Who was Rogers, he demanded? What was his business here? How dared he enter the country of Pontiac without permission? Such was the tenor of his talk. the lordly chief had now met with a type of man very different from the ceremonious and deferential French commandants. The undaunted and experienced

But

American frontiersman knew the peril of the least sign of humility in his bearing toward the arrogant Indian, and replied in terms scarcely less ostentatious, and while Pontiac stood amazed at such insolence, he was rapidly told of the destruction of the French power, the capture of Quebec, and the surrender of Canada and the western posts. The Indian countenance is not more mobile than marble; but to Pontiac's fierce heart these new tidings must have brought dismay and anguish. But he surrendered none of his insolent assumption. He answered Rogers that he would consider until another sun whether he should be allowed to pass, and then withdrew to his near-by camp.

But the storm continued, and as Rogers could not move he and Pontiac had several "talks." An Indian's weakness is a lack of forethought, but in this respect Pontiac was a marked exception. He was shrewd, he was ambitious, and he probably realized that if Rogers' tale were true, policy dictated conciliatory and even friendly measures. So he graciously accorded a permission that was not asked, and both he and Rogers took their way to Detroit. Pontiac knew that if Rogers' tale were a ruse, the French were strong enough to destroy the small English force, but that if in truth the English King and the Indians' "Great Father in France," were now friends, as Rogers alleged, his own interest lay in a new alliance.

Though an ambush had been prepared by the Indians near Detroit, Pontiac allowed Rogers' force to reach the fort in safety. In the months following all the French posts were surrendered. This yielding up of strongholds to inferior numbers without the firing of a gun on merely the exhibition of a bit of white paper, was a thing that much astonished the savages. Their minds could not grasp the meaning of such a proceeding. They wondered at the magic spell of the letter Rogers bore and looked upon it with superstitious awe. They wavered between a profound respect for a people that could inspire such fear, and an equally profound contempt of them because no French were killed.

But the savages were not long in discovering that for them a new order of things was inaugurated. Ceremonious assemblies, dancing and feasts, presents of

blankets, food and firearms, all these and other pleasant things had been theirs at the hands of the French. Now they were treated like dogs by their old enemies, the English. Already under patronage and protection the red-men were losing much of their native independence and martial dignity, while acquiring only the vices of the whites. The gifts of the French had become necessities, but under the English the supplies were so curtailed that suffering and want resulted. English traders "cheated, cursed and plundered the Indians and outraged their families." The officers at the forts received them contemptuously and harshly. The brutal soldiery insulted and often struck them. Before a year had worn away every Indian tribe between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, had learned to hate the English with an implacable enmity.

But not one among all the race felt such fierce, incessant and rancorous animosity as did the proud Pontiac. The marked distinction, the lofty compliment, the abundant presents were his no longer. The great chief was hardly more than an outcast, a beggarly Indian in the eyes of the lordly English, who had robbed him of his lands and were debasing his braves with gambling and with whiskey. There is no doubt but that with his own selfish feelings there was mingled something of patriotic grief. He pondered over his wrongs through every waking hour. In his wild heart the fiercest passions burned. He went apart into the forest and spent days and nights nursing his woes. His own people grew afraid of him, looking with awe on the chief whom they believed communed with the Great Spirit. And indeed Pontiac's hatred was now so bitter and unceasing that it grew to be a sort of frenzy, and by the red-men the unbalanced in mind were ever regarded with something akin to worship, as the messengers of spirits of departed braves.

But the great chief was far from insane. Withdrawn to himself in swamps and in forest jungles, his savage heart and bitter mind were maturing the most comprehensive scheme of bloody vengeance that Indian history portrays. Suddenly he gave over his incantations and lonely meditations. He came forth from his dark retreats and visited all the neighboring tribes,