fight away a moth or a June-bug, but
presently the argument reached such a pitch that the mosquitoes fed
undisturbed.

"You have done much, sir," said the Spanish commandant of St. Louis, "but
the savage, he will never be content without present. He will never be
won without present."

Clark was one of those men who are perforce listened to when they begin
to speak.

"Captain de Leyba," said he, "I know not what may be the present policy
of his Spanish Majesty with McGillivray and his Creeks in the south, but
this I do believe," and he brought down his fist among the papers, "that
the old French and Spanish treaties were right in principle. Here are
copies of the English treaties that I have secured, and in them thousands
of sovereigns have been thrown away. They are so much waste paper.
Gentlemen, the Indians are children. If you give them presents, they
believe you to be afraid of them. I will deal with them without
presents; and if I had the gold of the Bank of England stored in the
garrison there, they should not touch a piece of it."

But Captain de Leyba, incredulous, raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Por Dios," he cried, "whoever hear of one man and fifty militia subduing
the northern tribes without a piastre?"

After a while the Colonel called me in, and sent me speeding across the
little river with a note to a certain Mr. Brady, whose house was not far
away. Like many another citizen of Cahokia, Mr. Brady was terror-ridden.
A party of young Puan bucks had decreed it to be their pleasure to encamp
in Mr. Brady's yard, to peer through the shutters into Mr. Brady's house,
to enjoy themselves by annoying Mr. Brady's family and others as much as
possible. During the Indian occupation of Cahokia this band had gained a
well-deserved reputation for mischief; and chief among them was the North
Wind himself, whom I had done the honor to kick in the stomach. To-night
they had made a fire in this Mr. Brady's flower-garden, over which they
were cooking venison steaks. And, as I reached the door, the North Wind
spied me, grinned, rubbed his stomach, made a false dash at me that
frightened me out of my wits, and finally went through the pantomime of
scalping me. I stood looking at him with my legs apart, for the son of
the Great Chief must not run away. And I marked that the North Wind had
two great ornamental daubs like shutter-fastenings painted on his cheeks.
I sniffed preparation, too, on his followers, and I was