“You said it!  Always a-creating of disturbances up on the reservation, where he rightly belongs.  Mebbe that’s why they let him go off.  Anyway, he never stays there.  Even in his young days they tell me he wouldn’t stay put.  He’d disappear for a month and always come back with a new wife.  Talk about your Mormons!  One time they sent out a new agent to the reservation, and he hears talk back and forth of Pete philandering thisaway; and he had his orders from the Gov’ment at Washington, D.C., to stamp out this here poly-gamy—­or whatever you call it; so he orders Pete up on the carpet and says to him:  ’Look here now, Pete!  You got a regular wife, ain’t you?’ Pete says sure he has; and how could he say anything else—­the old liar!  ‘Well,’ says Mr. Agent, ’I want you to get this one regular wife of yours and lead a decent, orderly home life with her; and don’t let me hear no more scandalous reports about your goings on.’

“Pete says all right; but he allows he’ll have to have help in getting her back home, because she’s got kind of antagonistic and left him.  The agent says he’ll put a stop to that if Pete’ll just point her out.  So they ride down about a mile from the agency to a shack where they’s a young squaw out in front graining a deerhide and minding her own business.  She looked up when they come and started to jaw Pete something fierce; but the agent tells her the Gov’ment frowns on wives running off, and Pete grabbed her; and the agent he helps, with her screeching and biting and clawing like a female demon.  The agent is going to see that Pete has his rights, even if it don’t seem like a joyous household; and finally they get her scrambled onto Pete’s horse in front of him and off they go up the trail.  The agent yells after ’em that Pete is to remember that this is his regular wife and he’d better behave himself from now on.

“And then about sunup next morning this agent is woke up by a pounding on his door.  He goes down and here’s Pete clawed to a frazzle and whimpering for the law’s protection because his squaw has chased him over the reservation all night trying to kill him.  She’d near done it, too.  They say old Pete was so scared the agent had to soothe him like a mother.”

Uncle Abner paused to relight his pipe, meantime negotiating a doubly vigilant survey of the distant road.  But I considered that he had told me nothing to the discredit of Pete, and now said as much.

“You couldn’t blame the man for wanting his wife back, could you?” I demanded.  “Of course he might have been more tactful.”

“Tactful’s the word,” agreed Uncle Abner cordially.  “You see, this wasn’t Pete’s wife at all.  She was just a young squaw he’d took a fancy to.”

“Oh!” Nothing else seemed quite so fitting to say.