savage as you all
looked when you were riding down on that cabin to-day. We saw you and we
ran home again. We were scared."

"No. I'm pretty tame. I own an automobile and a talking-machine, and I
sleep in a brass bed when I'm at home. But, you see, I _work_ at being
an Indian, because it pays me better than farming."

"Oh! Oh!" gasped Laddie. "Scalping people, and all that?"

"No. There is a law now against scalping folks," said Mr. Black Bear,
smiling again. And now that he had got the yellow and red paint off his
face his smile was very pleasant. "We all have to obey the law, you
know."

"Oh! Do Indians, too?" gasped Rose.

"Indians are the most law-abiding folks there are," declared the chief
earnestly.

"Then I guess I won't feel afraid of Indians again," confessed Rose
Bunker. "Will you, Russ?"

But Russ did not answer. He felt that there was a trick about all this.
He could not see through it yet; but he meant to. It was worse than one
of Laddie's riddles.

By and by Chief Black Bear got all the paint off his face. Then he
washed the cold-cream off. He pulled on a pleated, white-bosomed shirt,
and buttoned on a collar and tied a butterfly tie in place. Then he went
behind a blanket that was hung up at one side of the wikiup, all the
time talking gaily to Cowboy Jack and Mr. Bunker, and when he reappeared
he was dressed just as Daddy Bunker dressed back home when he went to
the lodge or to a banquet!

The four little Bunkers stared. They could not find voice for any
comment upon this strange transformation in Black Bear's appearance. But
Cowboy Jack was critical.

"Some dog that boy puts on, doesn't he, Charlie?" he said to Mr. Bunker.
"He thinks he's down in New Haven, or somewhere, where he went to
college. Beats me what a little smatter of book-learning will do for
these redskins."

This did not seem to annoy Chief Black Bear at all. He laughed and
slapped the big ranchman on the shoulder.

"Of course I'm a redskin--just as you are a whiteskin. Only I have
improved my opportunities, Jack, while you have allowed yourself to
deteriorate." That last was a pretty hard word, but Russ and Rose
understood that it meant "fall behind." "Probably your grandfather had a
college education, Jack," went on the Indian chief. "But your father and
you did not appreciate education. _My_ father and grandfathers, away
back to the days of LaSalle and even to Cortez's followers who marched
up through Texas, had no e