84 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. 



is the brother-in-law of one ; but as you contem- 

 plate the little fellow in his blue canvas shirt, penny 

 straw hat, and gray Yankee trousers frayed into 

 a fringe round the ankles of his moccasins as 

 you look at his brown dog-like eyes and merry 

 Mongolian little face, you forget the chieftain, 

 and instinctively christen him ' Tommy.' Tommy 

 was to me a revelation. Anything less like 

 Fenimore Cooper's dignified savage I have never 

 seen. From his dry, withered and hairless features 

 he might have been any age ; from the eager 

 animation of his manner he might have been 

 sixteen or a Frenchman. The Ashinola tongue 

 lends itself naturally to acting. When Tommy 

 began to talk, his voice was somewhere far away 

 down in the blue-shirt region ; by-and-by it 

 ascended, and his utterance grew rapid, his words 

 short and close-clipped until he came to a very 

 big superlative, and then his eyes grew wide, and 

 he lingered whole seconds over the word, like an 

 Australian doing a ' cooey.' Unfortunately for 

 me, his noble relative, ' Ashinola John/ had told 

 him that the Englishman was in straits, and that 

 he could charge accordingly. As I liked the 

 look of the fellow, I yielded in part to his extor- 

 tions, and in an hour's time we had cached our 

 superfluous baggage, and were on the way to 

 the sheep-grounds. Where we cached our goods 



