I don't know of anything that could keep you from making yourself independent of any one, if you go to work with a LONG AIM and don't fritter away your chances on short ones.

If I were you, old fellow, I'd drop the Plains and the Indians out of my thoughts, or at least out of my TALK, for a while; they won't help you in the long run.

The people who believe you will be jealous of you; those who don't, will look down upon you, and if they get to questioning your little Indian romances, Jim, they'll be apt to question your civilized facts.
That won't help you in the ranching business and that's your only real grip now." For the space of two or three hours after this, Jim was reasonably grateful and even subdued,--so much so that his employer, to whom he confided his good fortune, frankly confessed that he believed him from that unusual fact alone.

Unfortunately, neither the practical lesson conveyed in this grim admission, nor the sentiment of gratitude, remained long with Jim.

Another idea had taken possession of his fancy.
Although the land nominated in his bill of sale had been, except on the occasion of his own temporary halt there, always unoccupied, unsought, and unclaimed, and although he was amply protected by legal certificates, he gravely collected a posse of three or four idlers from Fair Plains, armed them at his own expense, and in the dead of night took belligerent and forcible possession of the peaceful domain which the weak generosity and unheroic dollars of Clarence had purchased for him! A martial camp-fire tempered the chill night winds to the pulses of the invaders, and enabled them to sleep on their arms in the field they had won.