Free Westward the Tide (1950) by Louis L'amour

it only remained to wait and see what was to happen.

    Chapter IV
    Westward, the land lay empty. Behind them the rising sun threw their long shadows before them across the wind rippled grass. They were shadows not soon to fade from these virgin lands, but they were to lie long upon the plain and the mountain, darkening the retreat of the Indian.
    The buffalo, of course, were gone. Here and there a lonely old bull, or a cow with a calf, wandered dismally and alone where once they trailed with their millions. The buffalo had roamed the prairies for countless years, and then the white man had come, and the buffalo were gone like a sprinkling of powder in a strong wind.
    The Indians were a shattered few, defiant but defeated. In their last gesture, the swan song of a warlike people, they had met and defeated Custer. They had wiped him out.
    After Custer the combined armies of Terry, Crook, and Gibbon advanced relentlessly, and against the scattered forces of the Indian they had little trouble. The warfare of the white man was never understood by the Indian, and if he learned at last, he learned too late, for his power was already broken.
    To an Indian, a battle was a war. He did not think in terms of campaigns, and the winning or losing of a battle decided everything, and when it was over he returned to his tepee and his squaw. He had not learned to cope with the superior barbarism of the white man's warfare. The white man did not stop. He kept coming.
    Yet somehow, even in defeat the red man contrived to come off best. Wrapped in his blanket like a Roman senator in his toga, he stalked from the scene. The future might rob him of his morale, it might break him down, but he walked from the field a victor. If he was conquered later, it was never in full battle array. He was conquered by the slaughter of the buffalo and the relentless march of the white settlers even more than by the Army. It is still true that in the last major battle between the armies of the white man and the warriors from the Sioux and Cheyenne villages, that the Indian won.
    Matt Bardoul loved the country into which he was riding. The blind drive after wealth and power had never seemed to him to be either worthy or comfortable. His own driving energies and his desire to see what lay across the horizon had moved him west, and once he saw the long, waving sea of grass, the rolling aspen cloaked hills, and the mounting ranks of the lodgepole pine, his heart was forever lost to this lonely, beautiful land.
    The Big Horns still lay across that horizon, a image in the mind rather than the sky. Riding his long legged zebra dun on the side hill away from the wagon train, Matt knew that whatever the result, whatever the cost, this trip was worth the effort. This was his land, these were his people.
    Riding alone, away from the dust of the wagons, he let the dun pick his own way, while his mind began ferreting a way down the winding burrows of passion and feeling that disturbed the people of the train.
    In the clear light of day he was compelled to admit that he had no reason for any suspicion beyond his knowledge of the men around Massey. There was every chance that everything was strictly honest and straight forward. Father De Smet had always claimed there was gold in the Big Horns, and Tate Lyon's story might be true. If it was not true, why had they gone to such pains? Such effort?
    Was he not prejudiced by his innate dislike of Massey? Or by Jacquine's seeming preference for the man?
    Pearson had proved, some six years before, that as an Army officer he was an inexperienced nincompoop and a coward, but that was six years ago, and time may bring many changes to a man for the better as well as for the worse. It was true that so far Colonel Orvis Pearson's only gesture toward leadership had been just that ... a gesture.
    Seated upon a splendid horse, very straight in the saddle, he had removed his hat with a sweeping gesture worthy of Custer himself, and waved the wagon