ed; beautiful-muscled. He was a good
Indian; and I want to say when a redskin is good, he's damn good--beg
pardon, Miss--he's good and no mistake, I should say. He has a high-minded
way of looking at things, which ought to make a white man blush; but it
don't; for them kind makes the softest tradin'. I been a trader myself.

"This here Swift had a wife and ten childer, that he thought a power of.
He hunted for 'em night and day; and he come to be known as the best
provider in the tribe. Well, come one winter he went crazy; yes, ma'am,
plumb looney; and he went for 'em with his hatchet. He killed and _et_
'em one at a time, beginning with the youngest; while the others waited
their turn. You see an old-fashioned Indian was the boss of his family;
and they didn't dast fight him back. Right up there on that hill, under
that very same tree; I seen the ashes of their bones myself. In the
Spring he come down to the settlement and give himself up; said he
didn't want to live no more. Shouldn't think he would."

Grylls made no secret of his impatience with the old man's yarns. He
interrupted him, careless of his feelings.

"Are you making the round trip with the Bishop?" he asked Garth.

Garth answered in the affirmative.

"I have a rabbit-skin robe at the Landing I'd be glad to lend the lady,"
he said leering sidewise at Natalie.

"Much obliged," said Garth agreeably; "but we really have all we can
use."

"What does _she_ say?" growled Nick.

"Thank you very much," said Natalie quickly; "but I could not think of
accepting it."

He had forced her to speak to him at last; but the words were hardly
to his satisfaction. He flung around in his seat with an ugly scowl.

Meanwhile old Paul was still pursuing his thoughts about redskins.
"Indians think when they go off their heads they're obliged to be
cannibals," he continued agreeably. "They can't separate the two idees
somehow. So when a redskin feels a screw beginning to work loose up
above, he settles on a nice, fat, tender subject. He says his head's
full of ice, and has to be melted. I mind one winter at Caribou Lake
forty years back, we were all nigh starving, and our bones was comin'
through our skins, like ten-p'ny nails in a paper bag. And one night
they comes snoopin' into the settlement an Indian woman as sleek and
soft and greasy as a fresh sausage--and lickin' her chops--um--um!
There was a man with her and he let it out. She had knifed two young
half-breed