e, an' his air is that patronisin' it would have been
exasperatin' only we're so relieved, 'gents, I'm come to seek
congratyoolations an' set 'em up. Peets an' that motherly angel,
Missis Rucker, allows I'll be of more use yere than in my own house,
whereat I nacherally floats over. Coupled with a su'gestion that we
drinks, I wants to say that he's a boy, an' that I brands him "Enright
Peets Tutt."'"

CHAPTER VI.

With the Apache's Compliments.

"Ondoubted," observed the Old Cattleman, during one of our long
excursive talks, "ondoubted, the ways an' the motives of Injuns is past
the white man's findin' out. He's shore a myst'ry, the Injun is! an'
where the paleface forever fails of his s'lootion is that the latter
ropes at this problem in copper-colour from the standp'int of the
Caucasian. Can a dog onderstand a wolf? Which I should remark not!

"It's a heap likely that with Injuns, the white man in his turn is jest
as difficult to solve. An' without the Injun findin' onusual fault
with 'em, thar's a triangle of things whereof the savage accooses the
paleface. The Western Injuns at least--for I ain't posted none on
Eastern savages, the same bein' happily killed off prior to my
time--the Western Injuns lays the bee, the wild turkey, an' that weed
folks calls the 'plantain,' at the white man's door. They-all descends
upon the Injun hand in hand. No, the Injun don't call the last-named
veg'table a 'plantain;' he alloodes to it as 'the White Man's Foot.'

"Thar's traits dominant among Injuns which it wouldn't lower the
standin' of a white man if he ups an' imitates a whole lot. I once
encounters a savage--one of these blanket Injuns with feathers in his
ha'r--an' bein' idle an' careless of what I'm about, I staggers into
casyooal talk with him. This buck's been East for the first time in
his darkened c'reer an' visited the Great Father in Washin'ton. I asks
him what he regyards as the deepest game he in his travels goes
ag'inst. At first he allows that pie, that a-way, makes the most
profound impression. But I bars pie, an' tells him to su'gest the
biggest thing he strikes, not on no bill of fare. Tharupon,
abandonin' menoos an' wonders of the table, he roominates a moment an'
declar's that the steamboat--now that pie is exclooded--ought to get
the nomination.

"'The choo-choo boat,' observes this intelligent savage, 'is the
paleface's big medicine.'

"'You'll have a list of marvels,' I says,