[Illustration:  “THE SWEDE BRISTLES UP AND SAYS:  ’THAT SOUNDS LIKE FIGHTING TALK!’ I SAYS:  ‘YOUR HEARING IS PERFECT.’”]

“‘In fact,’ I says, ’I don’t suppose anybody would take the trouble to prove it, even if it could be easy proved.  You’d note a singular lack of public interest in it—­if you was spared to us.  I guess about as far as an investigation would ever get—­the coroner’s jury would say it was the work of Pete’s brother-in-law; and you know what that would mean.’  The Swede bristles up and says:  ‘That sounds like fighting talk!’ I says:  ‘Your hearing is perfect.’  I left him thinking hard.”

“Pete’s brother-in-law?  That reminds me,” I said.  “Pete was telling me about him just—­I mean during his lunch hour; but he had to go to work again just at the beginning of something that sounded good—­about the time he was going to kill a bright lawyer.  What was that?”

The glass was drained and Ma Pettengill eyed the inconsiderable remains of the ham with something like repugnance.  She averted her face from it, lay back in the armchair she had chosen, and rolled a cigarette, while I brought a hassock for the jewelled slippers and the scarlet silken ankles, so ill-befitting one of her age.  The cigarette was presently burning.

“I guess Pete’s b’other-in-law, as he calls him, won’t come into these parts again.  He had a kind of narrow squeak this last time.  Pete done something pretty raw, even for this liberal-minded community.  He got scared about it himself and left the country for a couple of months—­looking for his brother-in-law, he said.  He beat it up North and got in with a bunch of other Injins that was being took down to New York City to advertise a railroad, Pete looking like what folks think an Injin ought to look when he’s dressed for the part.  But he got homesick; and, anyway, he didn’t like the job.

“This passenger agent that took ’em East put ’em up at one of the big hotels all right, but he subjects ’em to hardships they ain’t used to.  He wouldn’t let ’em talk much English, except to say, ’Ugh!  Ugh!’—­like Injins are supposed to—­with a few remarks about the Great Spirit; and not only that, but he makes ’em wear blankets and paint their faces—­an Injin without paint and blanket and some beadwork seeming to a general passenger agent like a state capitol without a dome.  And on top of these outrages he puts it up with the press agent of this big hotel to have the poor things sleep up on the roof, right in the open air, so them jay New York newspapers would fall for it and print articles about these hardy sons of the forest, the last of a vanishing race, being stifled by walls—­with the names of the railroad and the hotel coming out good and strong all through the piece.

“Three of the poor things got pneumonia, not being used to such exposure; and Pete himself took a bad cold, and got mad and quit the job.  They find him a couple of days later, in a check suit and white shoes and a golf cap, playing pool in a saloon over on Eighth Avenue, and ship him back as a disgrace to the Far West and a great common carrier.