where's the pale-faced woman who would
follow a man into this--" He finished his sentence with a wave of his
hand. "That is a woman one would marry," he amended. "The average
female of that country down south has no spirit of adventure in her
make-up."

Kayak Bill closed his clasp-knife, restored it to his pocket and slowly
drew forth an ancient corn-cob pipe.

"Wall, Chief," he drawled presently between puffs, "I ain't a-sayin'
yore not right, seein' as you've had consid'able more experience with
petticoats than me; but one time I hearn a couple o' scientific dudes
a-talkin' about females and they was of the notion that sons gets their
brains and their natures from their mammies." Disregarding the
contemptuous sound uttered by the White Chief, Kayak's slow tones
flowed on: "And I'm purty nigh pursuaded them fellows is right. . . .
Take it down in Texas now, where I was drug up. I'm noticin' a heap o'
times how the meechinest, quietest little old ladies has the rarin'est,
terrin'-est sons, hell-bent on fightin' and adventure. . . . Kinder
seems to me, Chief, that our women has been bottled up so long by us
men folks they just ain't had no chance to strike out that way, except
by givin' o' their natures to their sons. You take any little gal,
Chief, a-fore they get her taken with the notion that it ain't
lady-like to fight, and by hell, she can lick tar outen any boy her
size in the neighborhood. Same way with she-bears, or a huskie bitch.
Durned if they don't beat all get-out when it comes to fightin'
courage!"

Kayak Bill drew once or twice on his pipe with apparently
unsatisfactory results, for he slowly removed his sombrero, drew a
broom-straw from inside the band, extracted the stem of the corn-cob
and ran the straw through it. The immediate vicinity became
impregnated with a violent odor of nicotine. The White Chief, however,
musing close by on the steps, seemed not to notice it. His eyes were
fixed on three Indian canoes being paddled in from the lagoon across
the bay which was now taking on the opalescent tints of the late Alaska
sunset.

"What I been a-sayin' goes for the white women, Chief. As for them
Chocolate Drops--wall, I ain't made up my mind exactly. 'Pears to me
if I ever went a-courtin' though, it would be just like goin'
a-huntin': no fun in it if the end was certain and easy-like. Barrin'
the case of Silvertip and Senott, his squaw, it's like this: you say
'Come,' and they come.