LIFE IN THE FAK WEST. 167 



not "opened his hand," but "squeezed out his present 

 between his fingers," grudgingly and with too sparing 

 measure. This was hard to bear, but the Yellow Woli 

 would say no more ! 



Tah-kai-buhl, or, " he who jumps," is deputed from the 

 Kioway to warn the white traders not to proceed to the 

 Canadian to trade with the Comanche. That nation is 

 mad a " heap mad " with the whites, and has " dug up 

 the hatchet " to " rub out " all who enter its country. The 

 Kioway loves the pale-face, and gives him warning (and 

 " he who jumps " looks as if he deserves something " on 

 the prairie " for his information.) 



Shawh-noh-qua-mish, " the peeled lodge-pole," is there 

 to excuse his Arapaho braves, who lately made free with a 

 band of horses belonging to the fort. He promises the 

 like shall never happen again, and he, Shawh-noh-qua-mish, 

 speaks with a "single tongue." Over clouds of tobacco 

 and kinnik-kinnik these grave affairs are settled and terms 

 arranged. 



In the corral, groups of leather-clad mountaineers, with 

 "decks" of "euker" and "seven up," gamble away their 

 hard-earned peltries. The employes mostly St Louis 

 Frenchmen and Canadian voyageurs are pressing packs 

 of buffalo-skins, beating robes, or engaged in other duties 

 of a trading-fort. Indian squaws, the wives of mountain- 

 eers, strut about in all the pride of beads and fofarraw, 

 jingling with bells and bugles, and happy as paint can 

 make them. Hunters drop in with animals packed with 

 deer or buffalo meat to supply the fort ; Indian dogs look 

 anxiously in at the gateway, fearing to enter and encounter 

 their natural enemies, the whites ; and outside the fort, at 

 any hour of the day or night, one may safely wager to see 

 a dozen cayeutes or prairie wolves loping round, or seated 

 on their haunches, and looking gravely on, waiting patient- 

 ly for some chance offal to be cast outside. Against the 

 walls, groups of Indians too proud to enter without an 

 invitation, lean, wrapped in their buffalo-robes, sulky and 

 evidently ill at ease to be so near the whites without a 

 chance of fingering their scalp-locks ; their white lodges 



