You'll be a heap more sane when you
get that old, wild-west notion, that every man should be a law unto
himself, out of your head. I'll venture to say that the Northwest will
be a safer and more law-abiding place five years from now than south of
the line will be in twenty--and the men in red coats will make it so.
Why, I wouldn't miss helping tame this country for half a dozen such
scrapes as I'm in now. This is merely the result of a rotten spot in the
personnel, a rotten spot that will soon be cut out if things come about
logically; it isn't the fault of the system. There never was any great
movement in developing a new country that didn't have a quota of damned
rascals to eliminate from within itself. If you didn't have such a
perverted idea of independence, you'd see that I'm in no danger of
losing either my identity or my self-respect simply because I've become
a unit in a body of six hundred fighting-men. I don't intend to remain
in the insignificant-unit class."
"Your intentions," I interrupted, "will cut a mighty small figure if
your friend Lessard gets hold of you in the next day or two."
"That's the melancholy truth," he returned seriously. "I imagine we'd
get a pretty rough deal; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that troop
has received orders, by now, to shoot first and arrest afterward.
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