ittle Bunkers'
comments. The four children peered out of the wikiup and saw the party
of horsemen dismount. A tall figure, with a waving headdress, came
striding toward the children. Vi and Laddie, it must be confessed,
shrank back behind the ranchman and daddy.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Cowboy Jack. "Here's Black Bear now."

"But he doesn't look like a bear," Laddie whispered. "Bears don't walk
on their hind feet."

"Sometimes they do," said Daddy Bunker. "And this Bear does all the
time. He is 'Mr. Bear' just the same as my name is 'Mr. Bunker.'"

The tall man lifted off his headdress and handed it to one of the women
who came running to help him. Underneath, his hair was not like an
Indian's at all--at least, not like the Indians whose pictures the
Bunker children had seen. Black Bear's hair was cut pompadour, and if it
had not been for the awful stripes across his face he would not have
looked bad. Even Rose admitted this, in a whisper, to her brother Russ.

It was interesting for the four little Bunkers to watch Black Bear get
rid of the paint with which his face was smeared. He stripped off the
deerskin shirt he wore and squatted down on his heels before a box in
the middle of the tent--a box like a little trunk. When he opened the
cover and braced it up at a slant, the children saw that there was a
mirror fastened in the box lid.

The Indian woman held a lantern, and Black Bear dipped his fingers in a
jar of cold-cream and began to smear his whole face and neck. He looked
all white and lathery in a moment, and he grinned in a funny way up at
Cowboy Jack and Mr. Bunker.

"Makes me think of the time they cast me for the part of the famous
_Pocahontas_ in the college play of 'John Smith,'" said Black Bear.
"That was some time--believe me! We made a barrel of money for the
Athletic Association."

"Oh!" murmured Rose, "he talks--he talks just like Captain Ben--or
anybody!"

"He doesn't talk like an Indian, that's _so_," whispered back Russ,
quite as much amazed.

But Violet could not contain her curiosity politely. She came right out
in the lantern-light and asked:

"Say, Mister Black Bear, are you a real Indian, or just a make-believe?"

"I am just as real an Indian, little girl, as you ever will see,"
replied the young chief, still rubbing the cream into his face and
neck. "I'm a full-blood, sure-enough, honest-Injun Indian! You ask Mr.
Scarbontiskil."

"But you're not savage!" said the amazed Vi. "Not as