“Little Beaver, I want to be amused.  Come hyar.  Tell me a story.”

“How would you like a lesson in Tutnee?” was the Second Chief’s reply, but he had tried this before, and he found neither Sam nor Guy inclined to take any interest in the very dead language.

“Tell me a story, I said,” was the savage answer of the scowling and ferocious Woodpecker.

“All right,” said Little Beaver.  “I’ll tell you a story of such a fine boy—­oh, he was the noblest little hero that ever wore pantaloons or got spanked in school.  Well, this boy went to live in the woods, and he wanted to get acquainted with all the living wild things.  He found lots of difficulties and no one to help him, but he kept on and on—­oh! he was so noble and brave—­and made notes, and when he learned anything new he froze on to it like grim death.  By and by he got a book that was some help, but not much.  It told about some of the birds as if you had them in your hand.  But this heroic youth only saw them at a distance and he was stuck.  One day he saw a wild Duck on a pond so far away he could only see some spots of colour, but he made a sketch of it, and later he found out from that rough sketch that it was a Whistler, and then this wonderful boy had an idea.  All the Ducks are different; all have little blots and streaks that are their labels, or like the uniforms of soldiers.  ’Now, if I can put their uniforms down on paper I’ll know the Ducks as soon as I see them on a pond a long way off.’  So he set to work and drew what he could find.  One of his friends had a stuffed Wood-duck, so the ‘Boy-that-wanted-to-know’ drew that from a long way off.  He got another from an engraving and two more from the window of a taxidermist shop.  But he knew perfectly well that there are twenty or thirty different kinds of Ducks, for he often saw others at a distance and made far-sketches, hoping some day he’d find out what they were.  Well, one day the ‘Boy-that-wanted-to-know’ sketched a new Duck on a pond, and he saw it again and again, but couldn’t find out what it was, and there was his b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l sketch, but no one to tell him its name, so when he saw that he just had to go into the teepee and steal the First War Chief’s last apple and eat it to hide his emotion.”

Here Yan produced an apple and began to eat it with an air of sadness.

Without changing a muscle, the Great Woodpecker continued the tale: 

“Then when the First War Chief heard the harrowing tale of a blighted life, he said:  ’Shucks, I didn’t want that old apple.  It was fished out of the swill-barrel anyway, but ’pears to me when a feller sets out to do a thing an’ don’t he’s a ‘dumb failure,’ which ain’t much difference from a ‘durn fool.’

“Now, if this heroic youth had had gumption enough to come out flat-footed, an’ instead of stealing rotten apples that the pigs has walked on, had told his trouble to the Great Head War Chief, that native-born noble Red-man would ‘a’ said:  ’Sonny, quite right.  When in doubt come to Grandpa.  You want to get sharp on Duck.  Ugh!  Good’—­then he’d ‘a’ took that simple youth to Downey’s Hotel at Downey’s Dump an’ there showed him every kind o’ Duck that ever was born, an’ all tagged an’ labelled.  Wah!  I have spoken.”