“An’ at this Crooked Claw tosses the bunch of Ute top-knots to one of his squaws, fills up his red-stone pipe with kinnikinick an’ begins to smoke, lookin’ as complacent as a catfish doorin’ a Joone rise.

“Bill Connors has now been wanderin’ through this vale of tears for mebby she’s twenty odd years, an’ accordin’ to Osage tenets, Bill’s doo to get wedded.  No, Bill don’t make no move; he comports himse’f lethargic; the reesponsibilities of the nuptials devolves on Bill’s fam’ly.

“It’s one of the excellentest things about a Injun that he don’t pick out no wife personal, deemin’ himse’f as too locoed to beat so difficult a game.

“Or mebby, as I observes to Texas Thompson one time in the Red Light when him an’ me’s discussin’, or mebby it’s because he’s that callous he don’t care, or that shiftless he won’t take trouble.

“‘Whatever’s the reason,’ says Texas, on that o’casion, heavin’ a sigh, ’thar’s much to be said in praise of the custom.  If it only obtains among the whites thar’s one sport not onknown to me who would have shore passed up some heartaches.  You can bet a hoss, no fam’ly of mine would pick out the lady who beats me for that divorce back in Laredo to be the spouse of Texas Thompson.  Said household’s got too much savey to make sech a break.’

“While a Osage don’t select that squaw of his, still I allers entertains a theery that he sort o’ saveys what he’s ag’inst an’ no he’pmeet gets sawed off on him objectionable an’ blind.  I figgers, for all he don’t let on, that sech is the sityooation in the marital adventures of Bill.  His fam’ly picks the Saucy Willow out; but it’s mighty likely he signs up the lady to some discreet member of his outfit before ever they goes in to make the play.

“Saucy Willow for a savage is pretty—­pretty as a pinto hoss.  Her parent, old Strike Axe, is a morose but common form of Osage, strong financial, with a big bunch of cattle an’ more’n two hundred ponies.  Bill gets his first glimpse, after he comes back from school, of the lovely Saucy Willow at a dance.  This ain’t no war-dance nor any other ceremonious splurge; it’s a informal merrymakin’, innocent an’ free, same as is usual with us at the Wolfville dance hall.  Shore, Osages, lacks guitars an’ fiddles, an’ thar’s no barkeep nor nosepaint—­none, in trooth, of the fav’rable adjuncts wherewith we makes a evenin’ in Hamilton’s hurdygurdy a season of social elevation, an’ yet they pulls off their fandangoes with a heap of verve, an’ I’ve no doubt they shore enjoys themse’fs.

“For two hours before sundown the kettle-tenders is howlin’ an’ callin’ the dance throughout the Osage camp.  Thar’s to be a full moon, an’ the dance—­the Ingraska it is; a dance the Osages buys from the Poncas for eight ponies—­is to come off in a big, high-board corral called the ‘Round House.’