138 In the United States v 



an eastern girl's heart. He, however, has his love 

 and his longings out here, the pale maiden who 

 lives down on the Median River, who rides like a 

 chipney, writes poetry by the yard, shoots pistols as 

 well as Jack himself — and he is the best shot in the 

 territory — and is altogether the proudest, tenderest, 

 coldest, lovingest, most inscrutable darling to be 

 found on " God-a-Mighty's footstool." I thought 

 also that this wild huntress of the plains lived 

 only in the romances of Mayne Reid and the 

 " dime " novels, but here she is, warm flesh and blood, 

 as wild and as strange and as full of contradictions 

 as the most Bourbon-inspired novelist ever dreamt 

 of. I have long had a fancy that one could find 

 everything that one can imagine somewhere in the 

 world, if one could only search long enough, and the 

 more I travel the more do I find myself becoming 

 convinced of the truth of my own theory, which is 

 not the case with all theorists, I think. 



' Jack raves poetically as we canter along side by 

 side, and on one of us remarking what a deal of 

 beauty there is in the most plain prairie, he bursts 

 out, " Ah ! you should see it in the spring-time, with 

 the antelopes feeding in one direction, the buffaloes 

 in another, and the little birdies boo-hooing around, 

 building their nesties, and raising hell generally ! " 



' Jack, being a southern man, thinks it necessary 

 to suppose that he has Indian blood in his veins, a 

 very popular idea in those parts. If he has, he is 

 rather rough on his relatives, for he is deadly on 



