bout that?" He smiled winningly now and
became a very old man indeed, the smile lighting the myriad minute
wrinkles that instantly came to life. Again he ruefully surveyed the
morning's work. "I think that caps the climax," said he, and grimanced
humorous dismay for the entertainment of us both.

I opened my cigarette case to him. Like his late critic, Pete availed
himself of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One
he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat
gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost
recesses, a shrunken little figure of a man in a calico shirt of gay
stripes, faded blue overalls, and shoes that were remarkable as ruins.
With a pointed chip in the slender fingers of one lean brown hand--a
narrow hand of quite feminine delicacy--he cleared the ground of other
chips and drew small figures in the earth.

"Some of your people cut up in a fight down at Kulanche last night," I
remarked after a moment of courteous waiting.

"Mebbe," said Pete, noncommittal.

"Were you down there?"

"I never kill a man with a knife," said Pete; "that ain't my belief."

He left an opening that tempted, but I thought it wise to ignore that
for the moment.

"You an old man, Pete?"

"Mebbe."

"How old?"

"Oh, so-so."

"You remember a long time ago--how long?"

He drew a square in his cleared patch of earth, subdivided it into
little squares, and dotted each of these in the centre before he spoke.

"When Modocs have big soldier fight."

"You a Modoc?"

"B'lieve me!"

"When Captain Jack fought the soldiers over in the Lava Beds?"

"Some fight--b'lieve me!" said Pete, erasing his square and starting a
circle.

"You fight, too?"

"Too small; I do little odd jobs--when big Injin kill soldier I skin um
head."

I begged for further items, but Pete seemed to feel that he had been
already verbose. He dismissed the historic action with a wise saying:

"Killing soldiers all right; but it don't settle nothing." He drew a
triangle.

Indelicately then I pried into his spiritual life.

"You a Christian, Pete?"

"Injin-Christian," he amended--as one would say
"Progressive-Republican."

"Believe in God?"

"Two." This was a guarded admission; I caught his side glance.

"Which ones?" I asked it cordially; and Pete smiled as one who detects a
brother liberal in theology.

"Injin God; Christian God. Injin God go like this--" He brushed out his
la