HUNTING IN THE SELKIRK'S. 163 



Indians go. I often tried to talk with him 

 about game and hunting, but we understood 

 each other too little to exchange more than 

 the most rudimentary ideas. His face bright- 

 ened one night when I happened to tell him 

 of my baby boys at home ; he must have been 

 an affectionate father in his way, this dark 

 Ammal, for he at once proceeded to tell me 

 about his own papoose, who had also seen 

 one snow, and to describe how the little fellow 

 was old enough to take one step and then fall 

 down. But he never displayed so much 

 vivacity as on one occasion when the white 

 hunter happened to relate to him a rather 

 gruesome feat of one of their mutual acquaint- 

 ances, an Upper Kootenai Indian named 

 Three Coyotes. The latter was a quarrelsome, 

 adventurous Indian, with whom the hunter 

 had once had a difficulty — "I had to beat 

 the cuss over the head with my gun a little,* 

 he remarked parenthetically. His last feat 

 had been done in connection with a number 

 of Chinamen who had been working among 

 some placer mines, where the Indians came to 

 visit them. Now the astute Chinese are as 

 fond of gambling as any of the borderers, 

 white or red, and are very successful, generally 

 fleecing the Indians unmercifully. Three 

 Coyotes lost all he possessed to one of the 

 pigtailed gentry ; but he apparently took his 

 losses philosophically, and pleasantly followed 

 the victor round, until the latter had won 

 all the cash and goods of several other In- 

 dians. Then he suddenly fell on the exile 

 from the Celestial Empire, slew him and took 

 all his plunder, retiring unmolested, as it did 



