barrin' you out.
Kind o' unfair, too."

Injun's response to this was as broad a grin as he ever showed to the
world. "Me glad," he said. "No like school."

This was rather a setback to Bill, who had expected to play on Injun's
feeling of resentment. He rolled a cigarette and planned a new line of
attack. He knew that all the punchers would be glad to see him fail to
make Injun talk, and this didn't make Bill any more easy in his mind. It
may have been pleasing to him to have worked up a reputation for knowing
more than the others, but this reputation was not without its drawbacks.
For one thing, it was hard to keep it up; for another, it filled his
friends with glee when he failed to keep it up. He puffed hard on his
cigarette, and thought harder.

Whitey broke the silence. "Tell us a story, Bill," he suggested.

"I ain't exactly got no story in mind," Bill replied. "We was talkin'
'bout folks, b'fore you an' Injun come, an' how they is apt t' be
unjust, 'specially in th' way o' makin' laws an' such, an' it kind o'
got me thinkin' serious; kind o' drove stories out o' my head."

"Why, John Big Moose was talking about that the other day," Whitey
exclaimed, "and how hard it is for one body of people to understand and
sympathize with another, and about that sayin', 'Man's inhumanity to man
makes countless thousands mourn.' Of course, you know that saying.
Bill?"

"'Course," answered Bill. "My father was allus mentionin' of it."

"Your old man was a blacksmith, wa'n't he, Bill?" Buck Higgins asked.

"Sure."

"Seems t' me 'twould 'a' bin more in the way o' sense if he'd talked
'bout man's unhumanness t' hosses," Buck said lightly.

Bill ignored this, and got back to the serious side of the subject.
"It's somethin' t' make a critter think," he declared. "Take white folks
an' Injuns, f'r instance. They ain't never rightly understood each
other, 'cause they ain't never bin rightly in tune with each other, an'
that's another way o' sayin' they ain't bin in symp'thy. An' th' only
way they could get that way would be t' tell, outspoke, what they thinks
o' each other. Now they's Injun, here. He's bin our friend for some
time, an' we bin his, but no one ain't never knowed his _real_ 'pinion
of us, an' I think it'd be some help in adjustin' matters all round if
we did."

Shielding his mouth with his hand, Shorty Palmer turned to Buck Higgins,
and spoke in a hoarse whisper, that could be heard distinctly by
everybody. "B