LETTER V. 77 



and the others little fellows ten years younger, I 

 should think) are busy roofing a log-hut with 

 shingles, and doing their work smartly and well. 

 When they have made the hut weather-proof, it 

 is to be used as a school-house, and someone 

 (I did not clearly gather who) was pledged to 

 send them a schoolmaster now and again to teach 

 the station children to read and write. That bit 

 of a boy, who looks hardly old enough for trousers, 

 will, when our horses are unloaded, catch and 

 saddle a pony for himself out of the band in the 

 corral, and then drive our beasts off to the 

 meadow for the night, and bring them in again 

 next morning. What with taking care of the 

 store, fencing fresh lands, breaking horses, build- 

 ing, etc., there is always plenty to do in the 

 summer for all of them ; and in the winter there 

 are deer to be shot, and the young ones at least 

 while away the long evenings with story-telling, 

 the mother collecting the wild fairy legends of 

 the Indians, and dressing them in familiar language 

 for her children. The Indians themselves are 

 excellent story-tellers ; one old fellow whom I met 

 at Alison's telling me a bear-story with such 

 vivid pantomime, that though ' kheelounha ' 

 (grizzly) was the only word of his language 

 which I .knew, I had no difficulty in following 

 him. Bear-stories were rather the fashion in 



