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The position was one of those when the true spirit of the frontiersman is at its highest and grandest pitch. Gradually the riflemen on each flank dropped back before the raging mob. The rank, of which Rube was the centre, stood. Here was no rifle practice. Revolvers were at work with the rapidity of maxim guns. As they were emptied, they were passed back and reloaded by the women.

Suddenly, as a beast checked in its spring, they were still and motionless. By the side of the old frontiersman on the platform under the light stood Barbara. "Let me speak to them, Tex." Without pausing for the astonished man to reply she spoke to the mob in Spanish, her voice rising clearly and sweetly. "Do you know me, friends?" From different points in the crowd came the answers.

Charles undoubtedly ranked as high for courage and astuteness as any frontiersman in Virginia. The colored man at last turned the corner of the house. Behind him, and not yet in sight, was the colonel, and he was not alone for I could hear his grave voice addressing some companion.

But I would also have read especially in France, where letters are still being written that have the quality of literature a letter of this frontiersman.

But everyone understood the significance of the President's toast. It was a declaration of war. The Nullifiers had quite miscalculated Jackson's attitude. He was a Southerner by birth, but a frontiersman by upbringing, and all the formative influences of his youth were of the West.

At the time of which I write, my early childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his hunting shirt and leggings and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He was a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. And he talked little save when he drank too many "horns," as they were called in that country.

I ain't allowed to waste gov'ment powder and shot on YOUR kind onless I've orders, but if you'll wait till I strip off this shell* I'll lam the stuffin' outer ye, afore the stranger. With that Bill just danced with rage, but dassent fire, for HE knew, and I knew, that if he'd plugged me he'd been a dead frontiersman afore the next mornin'." * Cavalry jacket.

No woman's hands could have been tenderer than the calloused ones of this frontiersman. The boy was his life. For the girl-bride of John Beaudry had died to give this son birth. Beaudry sat by the dying fire and smoked. The hills had faded to black, shadowy outlines beneath a night of a million stars.

Joseph Meek, an old frontiersman and guide for emigrant trains through the mountains, came down from the Dalles, on his way to Vancouver, and stopped at my camp to inquire if an Indian named Spencer and his family had passed down to Vancouver since my arrival at the Cascades.

"Beats all, how things are goin' crosswise," he muttered, as he paused to get his breath. "An' all along o' thet confounded buffalo, too. Reckon he's miles an' miles away by this time," and in this surmise the old frontiersman was correct. An hour's search convinced him that Henry was no longer in that vicinity. But what had become of the youth was a mystery.