58 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



each morning, with numbed and stiffened 

 limbs, though warming to the blood was har- 

 rowing to the temper. 



On my return to the ranch I found a 

 strange hunter staying there ; a clean, square- 

 built, honest-looking little fellow, but evi- 

 dently not a native American. As a rule, 

 nobody displays much curiosity about any 

 one's else antecedents in the Far West ; but 

 I happened to ask my foreman who the new- 

 comer was, chiefly because the said new- 

 comer, evidently appreciating the warmth 

 and comfort of the clean, roomy, ranch 

 house, with its roaring fires, books, and good 

 fare, seemed inclined to make a permanent 

 stay, according to the custom of the country. 

 My foreman, who had a large way of looking 

 at questions of foreign ethnology and geogra- 

 phy, responded with indifference : " Oh, he's 

 a kind of a Dutchman ; but he hates the 

 other Dutch, mortal. He's from an island 

 Germany took from France in the last war ! " 

 This seemed puzzling; but it turned out that 

 the " island " in question was Alsace. Na- 

 tive Americans predominate among the 

 dwellers in and on the borders of the wilder- 

 ness, and in the wild country over which the 

 great herds of the cattle-men roam ; and they 

 take the lead in every way. The sons of the 

 Germans, Irish, and other European new- 

 comers are usually quick to claim to be 

 " straight United States," and to disavow all 

 kinship with the fellow-countrymen of their 

 fathers. Once, while with a hunter bearing a 

 German name, we came by chance on a 

 German hunting party from one of the eastern 



