“All at once, an’ onexpected, Dave walks in.  A sigh of relief goes up, for the glance we gives him shows he’s all right—­sane as Enright—­clothed an’ in his right mind as set fo’th in holy writ.  Also, his countenance is a wrinkle of glee.

“‘Gents,’ says Dave, an’ his air is that patronisin’ it would have been exasperatin’ only we’re so relieved, ’gents, I’m come to seek congratyoolations an’ set ’em up.  Peets an’ that motherly angel, Missis Rucker, allows I’ll be of more use yere than in my own house, whereat I nacherally floats over.  Coupled with a su’gestion that we drinks, I wants to say that he’s a boy, an’ that I brands him “Enright Peets Tutt."’”

CHAPTER VI.

With the Apache’s Compliments.

“Ondoubted,” observed the Old Cattleman, during one of our long excursive talks, “ondoubted, the ways an’ the motives of Injuns is past the white man’s findin’ out.  He’s shore a myst’ry, the Injun is! an’ where the paleface forever fails of his s’lootion is that the latter ropes at this problem in copper-colour from the standp’int of the Caucasian.  Can a dog onderstand a wolf?  Which I should remark not!

“It’s a heap likely that with Injuns, the white man in his turn is jest as difficult to solve.  An’ without the Injun findin’ onusual fault with ’em, thar’s a triangle of things whereof the savage accooses the paleface.  The Western Injuns at least—­for I ain’t posted none on Eastern savages, the same bein’ happily killed off prior to my time—­the Western Injuns lays the bee, the wild turkey, an’ that weed folks calls the ‘plantain,’ at the white man’s door.  They-all descends upon the Injun hand in hand.  No, the Injun don’t call the last-named veg’table a ‘plantain;’ he alloodes to it as ‘the White Man’s Foot.’

“Thar’s traits dominant among Injuns which it wouldn’t lower the standin’ of a white man if he ups an’ imitates a whole lot.  I once encounters a savage—­one of these blanket Injuns with feathers in his ha’r—­an’ bein’ idle an’ careless of what I’m about, I staggers into casyooal talk with him.  This buck’s been East for the first time in his darkened c’reer an’ visited the Great Father in Washin’ton.  I asks him what he regyards as the deepest game he in his travels goes ag’inst.  At first he allows that pie, that a-way, makes the most profound impression.  But I bars pie, an’ tells him to su’gest the biggest thing he strikes, not on no bill of fare.  Tharupon, abandonin’ menoos an’ wonders of the table, he roominates a moment an’ declar’s that the steamboat—­now that pie is exclooded—­ought to get the nomination.

“‘The choo-choo boat,’ observes this intelligent savage, ’is the paleface’s big medicine.’

“‘You’ll have a list of marvels,’ I says, ’to avalanche upon the people when you cuts the trail of your ancestral tribe ag’in?’

“‘No,’ retorts the savage, shakin’ his head ontil the skelp-lock whips his y’ears, an’ all mighty decisive; ‘no; won’t tell Injun nothin’.’