onte. I let Mike do the
card-playin' for our side, because he's got a pass which is the
despair of many a "tin-horn." He can take a clean Methodist-Episcopal
deck, deal three hands, and have every face card so it'll answer to
its Christian name. No, he didn't need no lookout, so I got myself
into a game of "bounce the stick," which same, as you prob'ly know, is
purely a redskin recreation. You take a handful of twigs in your hand,
then throw 'em on to a flat rock endways, bettin' whether an odd or an
even number will fall outside of a ring drawed in the dirt. After a
couple of hours Mike strolled up and tipped me the wink that he'd
dusted his victims.

"Say," he began, "there's the niftiest chicken down here that I ever
see."

"Don't start any didos with the domestic relations of this tribe," I
told him, "or they'll spread us out, and spread us thin. Remember,
you're here on business bent, and if you bend back and forrads, from
business to pleasure, and versy visa, you'll bust. These people has
scrooplous ideas regardin' their wives and I respect 'em."

"She ain't married," Mike told me. "She's the chief's daughter, and
she looks better to me than a silver mine."

Durin' that evening we give the impression that we was well heeled, so
the tribe wasn't in no hurry to break camp on the following morning.

Along about noon I missed Mike, and I took a stroll to look for him. I
found him--and the chief's daughter--alongside of a shady trout pool.
She was weavin' a horsehair bracelet onto his wrist, and I seen the
flash of his ring on her finger. Mike could travel some.

He was a bit flustered, it seemed to me, and he tried to laugh the
matter off, but the girl didn't. There was something about the look
of her that I didn't like. I've seen a whole lot of trouble come from
less than a horsehair bracelet. This here quail was mebbe seventeen;
she was slim and shy, and she had big black eyes and a skin like
velvet. I spoke to Mike in words of one syllable, and I drug him away
with me to our tent.

That afternoon some half-grown boys got to runnin' foot-races and Mike
entered. He let 'em beat him, then he offered to bet a pony that they
couldn't do it again. The kids was game, and they took him quick. Mike
faked the race, of course, and lost his horse, that bein' part of our
progam.

When it was all over I seen the chief's daughter had been watchin' us,
but she didn't say nuthin'. The next mornin', however, when we got up