they get it in their minds that a man is loco, an’ pertected by spirits, an’ that sort o’ thing, they won’t fight him, fer fear o’ gettin’ the worst of it.  That’s about why we got out of there, I reckon.  They’d a-took our hosses an’ our guns an’ our meat, an’ been blame apt not to a-fergot our hair, too, if they hadn’t got the idee that Juan was too much fer ’em.  I’ll bet they won’t come down in there again in a hundred years’”

“I felt sad for them,” said Franklin soberly.

Curly smiled slowly.  “Well, Cap,” said he, “they’s a heap o’ things out in this here country that seems right hard till you git used to ‘em.  But what’s the ust carin’ ’bout a dead Injun here or there?  They got to go, one at a time, or more in a bunch.  But now, do you know what they just done with ole Mr. White Calf?  Why, they taken him out along with ’em a ways, till they thought we was fur enough away from ‘em, an’ then they probably got a lot of poles tied up, or else found a tree, an’ they planted him on top of a scaffold, like jerked beef, an’ left him there fer to dry a-plenty, with all his war clothes on and his gun along with him.  Else, if they couldn’t git no good place like that, they likely taken him up on to a highish hill, er some rocky place, an’ there they covered him up good an’ deep with rocks, so’st the wolves wouldn’t bother him any.  They tell me them buryin’ hills is great places fer their lookouts, an’ sometimes their folks’ll go up on top o’ them hills and set there a few days, or maybe overnight, a-hopin’ they’ll dream something.  They want to dream something that’ll give ’em a better line on how to run off a whole cavvie-vard o’ white men’s hosses, next time they git a chanct.”

“Ye’re a d——­d Philistine, Curly,” said Battersleigh calmly.

“I’m sorry for them,” repeated Franklin, thoughtfully, as he sat idly fingering the lump of clay that lay between his feet.  “Just think, we are taking’ away from these people everything in the world they had.  They were happy as we are—­happier, perhaps—­and they had their little ambitions, the same as we have ours.  We are driving them away from their old country, all over the West, until it is hard to see where they can get a foothold to call their own.  We drive them and fight them and kill them, and then—­well, then we forget them.”

Curly had a certain sense of politeness, so he kept silence for a time.  “Well,” said he at length, “a Injun could tan hides better’n a white man kin—­at least some white men.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Franklin, rousing and replying stoutly.  “The white man wins by dodging the issue.  Now, look you, the Indian squaw you tell me about would probably hack and hack away at this hide by main strength in getting the flesh off the inside.  I am sure I shall do it better, because I shall study which way the muscles run, and so strip off the flesh along those lines, and not across them.”