The Ferguson Rifle Read Free Page B

wind, the changes in the light on the grass, and the shadows left by clouds. Soon the mind has sorted the usual sights and the eye becomes quick to pick up the unusual, the smallest wrong movement in the bend of grass, a deepening of a shadow at the wrong place. The land where I had spent my earliest years was forest and foothills, with frequent streams. Here the only trees were along the water-courses. Later, in New England, I had hunted in farming country, occasionally taking trips into the mountains of Vermont or to Maine. The open plains were new to me, and I was wary of them.
    â€œKnown many Indians?”
    â€œHere and there,” Davy acknowledged. “Shawnees, mostly. Some Ponca Sioux, Cherokee, and Delaware. I’ve no bad thought for them. They have their ways and we ours, but when it comes to livin’ in this country, their way is best.
    â€œBob Sandy now, he figures the only good Injun is a dead one. He come home from the mill one time with his pa to find his family butchered, their cabin burned. Even the pigs were shot full of arrows.
    â€œSo Bob, he’s got a full-sized grudge against Injuns. That’s why we put him up to watchin’ the Otoe.”
    â€œYou’re watching him? You don’t trust him?”
    â€œChantry, that Injun is ridin’ toward his own people. What we got may seem mighty small to a gent from back east, but to an Injun, it’s treasure. If he could murder us all, or set a trap with his own folks to kill us, they’d have all we got and he’d be a big man among his own folks.
    â€œThey got no Christian upbringin’. Nobody ever told them to forgive their enemies, or told them that stealin’ was bad, except in their own village, from their own people. With most Injuns the word stranger is the same as that for enemy.
    â€œA lot of white men think the Injun is dead set against them because they’re white. Nothing to it. An Injun will kill another Injun as quick as he will a white man, except that the white man may have more loot on him.”
    â€œThey’ve had it pretty good, Davy. The best hunting in the world, no taxes to pay, and a lot of country to move around in.”
    â€œUh-huh”—Shanagan chuckled—“that’s your Boston showin’. What you don’t figure on is that you folks yonder in civilization have yourselves nicely protected by the law and custom. Out here you’ve got no protection but a quick eye, a fast horse, and the ability to shoot straight.
    â€œThat free savage that folks talk about, he never leaves his camp but what somebody is likely to take his hair.”
    After that neither of us spoke for some time. My own thoughts strayed far afield. These broad plains must resemble those from which the wild riding Scythians migrated when they moved west and south from Central Asia. They took scalps as well, although they worked with metal and were in many ways further advanced than the American Indian.
    Out of Central Asia our own people had come … or perhaps from the lands east of the Danube or Don. The question is disputed, but my own inclination is toward Central Asia. Among those migrating tribes were the Celts and we who moved farthest to the west, we Irish, Welsh, and Bretons still kept some of the old beliefs, the old customs.
    Since the beginning of time, men had been migrating, with the movement usually to the south or west. Perhaps this of which I was now a part would be the last great migration. Yet this was different. This was no organized movement of tribes, nations, or conquering armies; it was a migration of individuals, each making his own decision, gathering his own supplies and equipment. From a thousand villages and cities they came, strangers to each other, yet with a common goal.
    Over the mountains from the coastal provinces, filtering down the slopes, floating down the rivers, some dying, some living, many killed by savages, but the dead were always