fashioning a small supply of arrows, or balls if he boasted the
spectre of a gun, coloring the inferior half of his frontispiece a
rich vermilion and the upper a delicate green, with ramifications of
lampblack coursing tastefully along the cheek-bones and the bridge of
the nose, twisting a crane's feather into the tail of his horse, and
giving his affectionate squaw a farewell kick, the cavalier of the
prairie was ready for a raid on the Long-knives. Making a rapid
night-march or two, he would carry the "latest intelligence from
the Indian country" to the border ranches of Texas or New Mexico.
Stampeding all the horses and mules that stood or ranged convenient,
and under favorable circumstances some cattle and sheep, and
"gobbling" on occasion some incautious Cyrion or Phyllis of the
Western Arcadia, the marauder made for the mountains. By the time he
had well passed the last outpost the hue-and-cry was at his heels,
followed, after an easy-going delay, by the lumbering dragoon. The
soldier, armed with ineffectual sabre and carbine, encumbered with
a variety of traps about as useful as they, usually managed, if not
forced to put back by stress of provisions, to come up with him in the
gates of the hills. There an idle interchange of arrow and round ball
between hollow and cliff wound up the eventful history of the chase.
As a rule, no marked chastisement was inflicted on the Indian: he
realized in peace the proceeds of his little speculation.

Now, Minié, like the Harpagon of his countryman, has "changed all
that." The retreating heathen flies to his hills in vain. They do not
cover him, but the rifle does. Cantering to the summit of a knoll,
he waves his compliments to the distant dragoon with a gesture of
derision, more expressive than elegant, he has acquired from the
white. Turning calmly to depart, as he sinks below the crest of the
hill a sagittiform bullet, fired at five hundred yards' distance with