l months. In ten minutes
we had a little round table between us in a quiet corner, and my
ears began to get busy. I leave out my sly ruses and feints to draw
Hunky's word-of-mouth blows--it all came to something like this:

"Speaking of the next election," said Hunky, "did you ever know much
about Indians? No? I don't mean the Cooper, Beadle, cigar-store, or
Laughing Water kind--I mean the modern Indian--the kind that takes
Greek prizes in colleges and scalps the half-back on the other side
in football games. The kind that eats macaroons and tea in the
afternoons with the daughter of the professor of biology, and fills
up on grasshoppers and fried rattlesnake when they get back to the
ancestral wickiup.

"Well, they ain't so bad. I like 'em better than most foreigners that
have come over in the last few hundred years. One thing about the
Indian is this: when he mixes with the white race he swaps all his own
vices for them of the pale-faces--and he retains all his own virtues.
Well, his virtues are enough to call out the reserves whenever he lets
'em loose. But the imported foreigners adopt our virtues and keep
their own vices--and it's going to take our whole standing army some
day to police that gang.

"But let me tell you about the trip I took to Mexico with High Jack
Snakefeeder, a Cherokee twice removed, a graduate of a Pennsylvania
college and the latest thing in pointed-toed, rubber-heeled, patent
kid moccasins and Madras hunting-shirt with turned-back cuffs. He was
a friend of mine. I met him in Tahlequah when I was out there during
the land boom, and we got thick. He had got all there was out of
colleges and had come back to lead his people out of Egypt. He was a
man of first-class style and wrote essays, and had been invited to
visit rich guys' houses in Boston and such places.

"There was a Cherokee girl in Muscogee that High Jack was foolish
about. He took me to see her a few times. Her name was Florence Blue
Feather--but you want to clear your mind of all ideas of squaws with
nose-rings and army blankets. This young lady was whiter than you
are, and better educated than I ever was. You couldn't have told her
from any of the girls shopping in the swell Third Avenue stores. I
liked her so well that I got to calling on her now and then when High
Jack wasn't along, which is the way of friends in such matters. She
was educated at the Muscogee College, and was making a specialty
of--let's see--eth--yes, ethno