Lastly, dislodging
this figure in turn and already pushing him westward as he had driven the
Indian, a third type of historic man, the fixed settler, the land-loving,
house-building, wife-bringing, child-getting, stock-breeding yeoman of the
new field and pasture: this was the figure of the endless Future. The
retreating wave of Indian life, the thin restless wave of frontier life, the
on-coming, all-burying wave of civilized life--he seemed to feel close to
him the mighty movements of the three. His own affair, the attack of the
panther, the last encounter between the cabin and the jungle looked to him
as typical of the conquest; and that he should have come out of the struggle
alive, and have owed his life to the young Indian fighter and hunter who had
sprung between him and the incarnate terror of the wilderness, affected his
imagination as an epitome of the whole winning of the West.
One morning while the earth was still fresh with dew, the great Boone came
to inquire for him, and before he left, drew from the pocket of his hunting
shirt a well-worn little volume.
"It has been my friend many a night," he said. "I have read it by many a
camp-fire.
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