erest you in a set of
books I am selling. I shall detain you only a moment. Sixty-three steel
engravings by well-known artists; best hand-made paper; and the work
itself is of high educational value."

Tish suddenly put the beads behind her back and said we did not expect
to have any time to read. We had come into the wilderness to rest our
minds.

"You are wrong, I fear," said the Indian. "Personally I find that I can
read better in the wilds than anywhere else. Great thoughts in great
surroundings! I take Nietzsche with me when I go fishing."

Tish had the wretched beads behind her all the time; and, to make
conversation, more than anything else, she asked about venison. He
shrugged his shoulders. J. Fenimore Cooper had not prepared us for an
Indian who shrugged his shoulders.

"We Indians are allowed to kill deer," he said; "but I fear you are
prohibited. I am not even permitted to sell it."

"I should think," said Tish sharply, "that, since we are miles from a
game warden, you could safely sell us a steak or two."

He gazed at her disapprovingly. "I should not care to break the law,
madam," he said.

Then he picked up his paddle and took himself and his scruples and his
hand-made paper and his sixty-three steel engravings down the river.

"Primitive man!" I said to Tish, from my chair. "Notice the freedom,
almost the savagery, with which he swings that paddle."

We had brought a volume of Cooper along, not so much to read as to
remind us how to address the Indians. Tish said nothing, but she got the
book and flung it far out into the river.

There were a number of small annoyances the first day or two. Hutchins
was having trouble with the motor launch, which the steamer had towed up
the day we came, and which she called the "Mebbe." And another civilized
Indian, with a gold watch and a cigarette case, had rented us a leaky
canoe for a dollar a day.

[We patched the leak with chewing gum, which Aggie always carried for
indigestion; and it did fairly well, so long as the gum lasted.]

Then, on the second night, there was a little wind, and the tent
collapsed on us, the ridgepole taking Aggie across the chest. It was
that same night, I think, when Aggie's cat found a porcupine in the
woods, and came in looking like a pincushion.

What with chopping firewood for the stove, and carrying water, and
bailing out the canoe, and with the motor boat giving one gasp and then
dying for every hundred times somebod