The Indians were now cleared away, not only about Ellisville but far to the north and west.

The skin-hunters had wiped out the last of the great herds of the buffalo.

The face of Nature was changing.

The tremendous drama of the West was going on in all its giant action.

This torrent of rude life, against which the hands of the law were still so weak and unavailing, had set for it in the ways of things a limit for its flood and a time for its receding.
The West was a noble country, and it asked of each man what nobility there was in his soul.