Frederick Niven

“ In all these there occupations and enjoyments, and perils what ain't enjoyable except in the recollection, this here Steve takes part like a man. We was a kind of happy family there, for the boss he don't care for men to come and go too much. He says to any prospective assistant: “I don't look upon this ranch as a hand-out place for hobos, nor a passing resort of globe-trotters hitting across America. I like a man to stay a reasonable time, not just to quit when he gets able to tell his own stock without prying and wondering.” ”

“ Having corrected what you might call this machine man's superior ignorance regarding the impossibility of expressing heart trouble, or brain storm, by sign—instead of only signaling them simple desires, wood, water, and eats—he falls out of the talk and wets his wheat paper meditative where it had coiled loose from the tobacco. ”

“ Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.'
“That was early one morning, when I was just getting ready to pull out on the wagon road, and all the smell of the morning was in the air, and it was sure good. I said to her: 'Annie, Annie,' I said, 'there's only the one God over us,' and I turned around the way I'd seen some of them old Indians do, facing the sun that was up over the east, and lifted my hand with the palm flat to it. ”

“ Cattlemen don't admire barbed wire and grain elevators any. We-all, at them words, has an additional jolt of fellow feeling with Steve's reticent narrated but whatever love story.
“The Utes,” he explains, “carried the story to the Sioux in their annual visit. They began dancing. The ignorant ones—all same as in white communities—outnumbered the sensible. It is sure the bogus sentiment that “is put over easiest and the real goods waits a long time for followers,” says Steve. “They danced, and hypnotizes themselves dancing. ”

“ Progress has sure its way with what Fred calls 'natives,'” says Steve. “And where there are guns, guns are liable to go off. It's in the nature of guns. They went off all right, eventually, and it culminates in the cavalry charge on Big Foot's camp at the Pine Ridge reserve. ”

“ We-all opines to ourselves—and mentions to each other afterward in discussing this story of Steve's—that she was sure suitable to him if she had been pea-green instead of the color of a new one-cent piece—which you see when you get back East where a dime ain't the smallest coin in circulation. For Steve was always talking of nature things. ”

“ Their intellects vary, he tells us—all the same as intellects of white men, and he launches a nod at Fred. Some of them don't get the hang of what you-all calls civilization in a lifetime; some can pick up anything to it and understand it first pop. He sure is fair and unbiased, is this here Steve. ”

“ Then they braids up their horses' tails for war, if so be the Messiah wanted them to make a fight for it instead of just supernacherally eliminating the whites and bringing back the buffalo. They was dancing at the Fort Hall reserve in Idaho, and scaring folks around Pocatello-with the tomtoming; and down on Green River the Utes were on the verge of shooting up the settlers. The Pine Ridge reserve got it so bad that the stock men thereabouts were getting their womenfolks out of the country. ”