There might have passed before him a perspective of the past, the Plains peopled with their former life; the oncoming of the white men from below; the remnant of the passing Latin race, typified in the unguided giant who, savage with savage, fought here near by, one brutal force meeting another and both passing before one higher and yet more strong.

To this watcher it seemed that he looked out from the halfway point of the nation, from the halfway house of a nation's irresistible development.
Franklin had taken with him a small canteen of water, but bethinking himself that as of old the young man beseeching his dream neither ate nor drank until he had his desire, he poured out the water at his side as he sat in the dark.

The place was covered with small objects, bits of strewn shells and beads and torn "medicine bundles"-- pieces of things once held dear in earlier minds.

He felt his hand fall by accident upon some small object which had been wetted by the wasted water.

Later, in the crude light of the tiny flame which he had kindled, this lump of earth assumed, to his exalted fancy, the grim features of an Indian chieftain, wide-jawed, be-tufted, with low brow, great mouth, and lock of life's price hanging down the neck.