224 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
would be snapped like reeds in the grasp of these stalwart 
men ! 
For a moment, a dark shadow passed over me and I saw 
myself embrowned and haggard, returning after years of 
wild vicissitudes amidst the avowed and constant perils of 
an Indian and guerilla-ravaged frontier, in what was then a 
foreign and unreclaimed territory — where my rifle and pis- 
tols had been considered by me as necessary to the extension 
of my daily life as my lungs and heart — ^to find myself here 
on my weary returning to the repose of civilization and 
home, when I had gladly thrown aside those weapons, the 
very sight of which had become painful to me, suddenly en- 
trapped in the surroundings of a new peril, perhaps more 
formidable than any I had met in my wanderings^ and that 
too without a weapon to my hand. 
The most terrible position in which you can place those 
who habitually rely upon the use of weapons as an equiva- 
lent for that physical prowess which they have failed to cul- 
tivate, is to deprive them of them in circumstances of danger, 
which otherwise they would have faced without hesitation ! 
It is horrible. As it was, I was only more sharpened and 
intensified in every faculty. 
In a reckless way I suddenly exclaimed — 
" Boys, I love hunting. I have come down here to hunt ! 
You must have plenty of game around you here, for you've 
got woods enough ! I've a notion to stay with you for a 
day or two on this side, if there's any chance for game." 
" Plenty of it here, sir ! Plenty of it here !" 
" What is it? Bear and deer, of course ?" 
" 0 yes, bear and deer plenty — wild cats — ^painters and all 
that!" 
" Well, I'm with you. That's the game for me. I won't 
go over with the old man there," pointing to my sleeping 
friend. " You look like good fellows — he wants me to go 
over to the other side and fish with his boys, but I don't 
like fishing when there's bear and wild-cat about — it's a 
