Sport and Life. 



consisted of a scanty breech-cloth, and, if money was flush, of a 

 pair of leggings, to which in winter a blanket was added. To my 

 astonishment it was then June the Indians took to those shirts 

 right off. Laid down at Grohman, the B.B. storekeeper calculated 

 they stood in some cents under half a dollar (two shillings), and as 

 they were all sold within a fortnight at 2dols. 50 cents, those potent 

 reds, blues, and greens seemed to be altogether irresistible. The 

 Kootenays are a fine stalwart race of men, and to see a six-footer 

 stalk into the store and proceed to climb into one of these 

 2dols. 50 cents articles was a sight worth more than the shirt cost. 

 For a fortnight we had bucks careering about the Flat on their 

 ponies, showing off those shirts fluttering from their Centaur figures. 

 At night you would see them. stand round their campfires still engaged 

 in blissful admiration. Then something unexpected happened. 

 That June fortnight had been a very dry one, not a drop of rain 

 fell. Then we had a day when it arrived by the bucketful. It was 

 a deluge which precipitated matters, for the very next day came 

 flocking in from all sides Indians covered no longer by shirts, but 

 by waistcoasts of gauze-like fabric to which dimensions and substance 

 these flannelette articles had shrunk. 



Not all, it is true, had fared thus, for some of the Indians had 

 enough sense to go in when it rained. But this was only 

 putting off the evil day for the storekeeping B.B., who, of course, 

 would have to face the music at some future occasion. Loudly 

 protesting that the Indians would kill him, he would rush over to 

 my office. " Here is another of those shirt chaps, snapping his 

 Winchester at me, and flourishing his scalping knife ; his darned 

 shirt don't cover his ribs any longer, and he swears it got wet 

 only once." "Give him a packet of our 'best' cigarettes, and 

 tell him those shirts are fine-weather shirts, the same the white 

 tyhees (chiefs) wear going to church," came back my reply. But 

 events march fast out West, as a horse thief is reported to have 

 exclaimed when he was caught, tried, sentenced, and was about 

 to be strung up, all within six hours after he had levanted with 

 the prospector's horses. By July those shirts were tight fits for 



