rebellious hand, starts
him to breakin' rock.

"'Which the issue is pants,' says the obdurate agent sport; 'an' I'll
keep you-all whackin' away at them boulders while the cliff lasts onless
you yields. Thar's none of you young bucks goin' to bluff me, an' that's
whatever!'

"Bill breaks rocks two days. The other Osages comes an' perches about,
sympathetic, an' surveys Bill. They exhorts him to be firm; they gives
it out in Osage he's a patriot.

"Bill's willin' to be a patriot as the game is commonly dealt, but when
his love of country takes the form of poundin' rocks, the noble
sentiments which yeretofore bubbles in Bill's breast commences to pall on
Bill an' he becomes none too shore but what trousers is right. By second
drink time--only savages don't drink, a paternal gov'ment barrin'
nosepaint on account of it makin' 'em too fitfully exyooberant--by second
drink time the second evenin' Bill lays down his hand--pitches his hammer
into the diskyard as it were--an' when I crosses up with him, Bill's that
abject he wears a necktie. When Bill yields, the agent meets him half
way, an' him an' Bill rigs a deal whereby Bill arrays himse'f Osage
fashion whenever his hand's crowded by tribal customs. Other times, Bill
inhabits trousers; an' blankets an' feathers is rooled out.

"Shore, I talks with Bill's father, old Crooked Claw. This yere savage
is the ace-kyard of Osage-land as a fighter. No, that outfit ain't been
on the warpath for twenty years when I sees 'em then it's with Boggs' old
pards, the Utes. I asks Crooked Claw if he likes war. He tells me that
he dotes on carnage like a jaybird, an' goes forth to battle as joobilant
as a drunkard to a shootin' match. That is, Crooked Claw used to go
curvin' off to war, joyful, at first. Later his glee is subdooed because
of the big chances he's takin'. Then he lugs out 'leven skelps, all Ute,
an' eloocidates.

"'This first maverick,' says Crooked Claw--of course, I gives him in the
American tongue, not bein' equal to the reedic'lous broken Osage he
talks--'this yere first maverick,' an' he strokes the braided ha'r of a
old an' smoke-dried skelp, 'is easy. The chances, that a-way, is even.
Number two is twice as hard; an' when I snags onto number three--I downs
that hold-up over by the foot of Fisher's Peak--the chances has done
mounted to be three to one ag'in me. So it goes gettin' higher an'
higher, ontil when I corrals my 'leventh, it's 'leven to one he