quarters from clothes. One was a Sum-wahtah, the great Indian Remedy made from a prairie herb revealed by the Great Spirit in a dream to his favourite medicine men, the great chiefs MacGarrity and Silberstein, bottlers, Chicago. And the other was a frivolous system of pick-pocketing the Kansasters that had the department stores reduced to a decimal fraction. Look ye! A pair of silk garters, a dream book, one dozen clothes-pins, a gold tooth, and ‘When Knighthood Was in Flower’ all wrapped up in a genuine Japanese silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady by Mr. Peters for the trivial sum of fifty cents, while Professor Binkly entertains us in a three-minute round with the banjo.

“’Twas an eminent graft we had. We ravaged peacefully through the State, determined to remove all doubt as to why ’twas called bleeding Kansas. John Tom Little Bear, in full Indian Chief’s costume, drew crowds away from the parchesi sociables and government ownership conversaziones. While at the football college in the East he had acquired quantities of rhetoric and the art of calisthenics and sophistry in his classes, and when he stood up in the red wagon and explained to the farmers, eloquent, about chilblains and hyperæsthesia of the cranium, Jeff couldn’t hand out the Indian Remedy fast enough for ’em.

“One night we was camped on the edge of a little town out west of Salina. We always camped near a stream, and put up a little tent. Sometimes we sold out of the Remedy unexpected, and then Chief Wish-Heap-Dough would have a dream in which the Manitou commanded him to fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the most convenient place. ’Twas about ten o’clock, and we’d just got in from a street performance. I was in the tent with the lantern, figuring up the day’s profits. John Tom hadn’t taken off his Indian make-up, and was sitting by the camp-fire minding a fine sirloin steak in the pan for the Professor till he finished his hair-raising scene with the trained horses.

“All at once out of dark bushes comes a pop like a fire-cracker, and John Tom gives a grunt and digs out of his bosom a little bullet that has dented itself against his collar-bone. John Tom makes a dive in the direction of the fireworks, and comes back dragging by the collar a kid about nine or ten years young, in a velveteen suit, with a little nickel-mounted rifle in his hand about as big as a fountain-pen.

“‘Here, you papoose,’ says John Tom, ‘what are you gunning for with that howitzer? You might hit somebody in the eye. Come out, Jeff, and mind the steak. Don’t let it burn, while I investigate this demon with the pea-shooter.’

“‘Cowardly redskin,’ says the kid like he was quoting from a favourite author. ‘Dare to burn me at the stake and the paleface will sweep you from the prairies like—like everything. Now, you lemme go, or I’ll tell mamma.’

“John Tom plants the kid on a camp-stool, and sits down by him. ‘Now, tell the big chief,’ he says, ‘why you try to shoot pellets into your Uncle John’s system. Didn’t you know it was loaded?’

“‘Are you a Indian?’ asks the kid, looking up, cute as you please, at John Tom’s buckskin and eagle feathers. ‘I am,’ says John Tom.

“‘Well, then, that’s why,’ answers the boy, swinging his feet. I nearly let the steak burn watching the nerve of that youngster.

“‘O-ho!’ says John Tom, ‘I see. You’re the Boy Avenger. And you’ve sworn to rid the continent of the savage redman. Is that about the way of it, son?’

“The kid half-way nodded his head. And then he looked glum. ’Twas indecent to wring his secret from his bosom before a single brave had fallen before his parlour-rifle.

“‘Now, tell us where your wigwam is, pappoose,’ says John Tom—‘where you live? Your mamma will be worrying about you being out so late. Tell me, and I’ll take you home.’