“‘You never mind,’ says John Tom, ’whether I’m a cigar-sign or a Tammany cartoon.  The question before the council is what’s to be done with you.  You’ve run away from home.  You’ve been reading Howells.  You’ve disgraced the profession of boy avengers by trying to shoot a tame Indian, and never saying:  “Die, dog of a redskin!  You have crossed the path of the Boy Avenger nineteen times too often.”  What do you mean by it?’

“The kid thought for a minute.  ‘I guess I made a mistake,’ he says.  ’I ought to have gone farther west.  They find ’em wild out there in the canyons.’  He holds out his hand to John Tom, the little rascal.  ’Please excuse me, sir,’ says he, ’for shooting at you.  I hope it didn’t hurt you.  But you ought to be more careful.  When a scout sees a Indian in his war-dress, his rifle must speak.’  Little Bear give a big laugh with a whoop at the end of it, and swings the kid ten feet high and sets him on his shoulder, and the runaway fingers the fringe and the eagle feathers and is full of the joy the white man knows when he dangles his heels against an inferior race.  It is plain that Little Bear and that kid are chums from that on.  The little renegade has already smoked the pipe of peace with the savage; and you can see in his eye that he is figuring on a tomahawk and a pair of moccasins, children’s size.

“We have supper in the tent.  The youngster looks upon me and the Professor as ordinary braves, only intended as a background to the camp scene.  When he is seated on a box of Sum-wah-tah, with the edge of the table sawing his neck, and his mouth full of beefsteak, Little Bear calls for his name.  ‘Roy,’ says the kid, with a sirloiny sound to it.  But when the rest of it and his post-office address is referred to, he shakes his head.  ‘I guess not,’ he says.  ’You’ll send me back.  I want to stay with you.  I like this camping out.  At home, we fellows had a camp in our back yard.  They called me Roy, the Red Wolf!  I guess that’ll do for a name.  Gimme another piece of beefsteak, please.’

“We had to keep that kid.  We knew there was a hullabaloo about him somewheres, and that Mamma, and Uncle Harry, and Aunt Jane, and the Chief of Police were hot after finding his trail, but not another word would he tell us.  In two days he was the mascot of the Big Medicine outfit, and all of us had a sneaking hope that his owners wouldn’t turn up.  When the red wagon was doing business he was in it, and passed up the bottles to Mr. Peters as proud and satisfied as a prince that’s abjured a two-hundred-dollar crown for a million-dollar parvenuess.  Once John Tom asked him something about his papa.  ‘I ain’t got any papa,’ he says.  ’He runned away and left us.  He made my mamma cry.  Aunt Lucy says he’s a shape.’  ‘A what?’ somebody asks him.  ‘A shape,’ says the kid; ’some kind of a shape—­lemme see—­oh, yes, a feendenuman shape.  I don’t know what it means.’  John Tom was for putting our brand on him, and dressing him up like a little chief, with wampum and beads, but I vetoes it.  ’Somebody’s lost that kid, is my view of it, and they may want him.  You let me try him with a few stratagems, and see if I can’t get a look at his visiting-card.’