Most men never discover what they've got inside. A man has to face up to trouble before he knows. - Louis L'Amour

Hardy had learned in a hard school, where the tests are given by savage Indians, by bitter cold, by hunger. These were tests where the result was not just a bad mark if one failed. The result was a starved or frozen body somewhere, forgotten in the wilderness.

No man is a complete ruler or dictator. He is only the mouthpiece for the wishes of his followers. As long as he expresses those wishes, he leads them.

Yet Tanneman was a man grown up to danger and trouble, knowing nothing else, and for the first time he was acting with conscious, deliberate purpose.