His experiences of the last few days had
not only sobered, but brought home to him this real border life.
With all his fire and daring he new he was no fool. He had eagerly
embraced a career which, at the present stage of his training, was
beyond his scope--not that he did not know how to act in sudden
crises, but because he had not had the necessary practice to quickly
and surely use his knowledge.
Bitter, indeed, was his self-scorn when he recalled that of the
several critical positions he had been in since his acquaintance
with Wetzel, he had failed in all but one. The exception was the
killing of Silvertip. Here his fury had made him fight as Wetzel
fought with only his every day incentive. He realized that the
border was no place for any save the boldest and most experienced
hunters--men who had become inured to hardship, callous as to death,
keen as Indians. Fear was not in Joe nor lack of confidence; but he
had good sense, and realized he would have done a wiser thing had he
stayed at Fort Henry. Colonel Zane was right. The Indians were
tigers, the renegades vultures, the vast untrammeled forests and
plains their covert. Ten years of war had rendered this wilderness a
place where those few white men who had survived were hardened to
the spilling of blood, stern even in those few quiet hours which
peril allowed them, strong in their sacrifice of all for future
generations.
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