But Cultus Johnny declined the invitation.  He was tired, and wanted to rest.  Besides, he had a bridle to finish which he was plaiting from the leather cut from the legs of an old pair of cow-boy boots which he had found; it would be worth ten dollars when finished.  In spite of his good intentions Johnny spent the whole day in idleness at the home of Mrs. Peter; and, as it is no insult among the Indians for a buck to propose an elopement with his neighbor’s wife, because it is a very common business transaction among them, Johnny again suggested the escapade.  The woman only laughed and seemed to enjoy the flirtation.  But she would neither consent nor refuse.  Hias Peter did not return that evening, and the next day Johnny was at the works with greater cannonading, and with more skookum tumtum than ever, and this time he was braver.  He was just on the point of putting his arm around the keeka’s waist when the door opened and Peter darkened the opening.  They looked at one another for a few moments like two panthers about to spring at each other’s throats.  Hias Peter had a hias gun, and he raised it to his shoulder and glanced in a very savage and threatening way along the barrel toward Cultus Johnny’s heart.  Johnny dropped to the floor and begged for mercy.  Now it requires some courage to shoot a fellow-being down in cold blood, although the punishment may be well deserved, so Peter lowered his rifle.

“Klatawa!” (Go!) he commanded.  “Hiak!” (Quick!) he shouted.  Johnny crawled on his hands and knees towards the door, and as he was creeping over the threshold Peter gave him one awful kick that sent him rolling on the ground outside.  And turning to the woman:  “Fooled!” he roared.  “I will shoot you down like a coyote next time,” he said.  As the Indian is a man of few words, he drew himself up to his hias (large) size in front of her.  But the woman pleaded that she was not to blame.  Johnny had persisted in his attentions to her, and she could not drive him off.  “If you want to get rid of him, shoot him,” said Peter.

Now, among the Indians, when you covet your neighbor’s wife, or have been too familiar with her, and you are caught with the goods, you do not fly into a far country for fear of your life.  You still hang around, and the worst you can get is perhaps a pounding from the jealous neighbor; and the sweet environment is worth the risk.

Johnny’s skookum tumtum was somewhat out of commission for a while.  When he met Mrs. Peter on the street after that they grinned at each other a few times without speaking; and by and by, when they thought Peter was out of sight, they would stop and talk for a while.  He asked her again to fly to Kamloops with him, and she seemed to be swinging on the balance.  Johnny dwelt upon his worldly assets—­his saddle, his bridle, and all his skookum icties.  Peter soon realized that his wife was eating at his table and living in another man’s tumtum, but he kept on chewing his beans and bacon and dried soquas (salmon) in silence, and, but for the intervention of Providence, Peter might have followed in the footsteps of Paul Spintlum.