wins
onless he's got killin's of his own to stand off mine. I don't reckon
none he has though,' says Crooked Claw, curlin' his nose contemptuous.
'He's heap big squaw--a coward; an' would hide from me like a quail. He
looks big an' brave an' strong, but his heart is bad--he is a poor knife
in a good sheath. So I don't waste a bullet on him, seein' his fear, but
kills him with my war-axe. Still, he raises the chances ag'inst me to
twelve to one, an' after that I goes careful an' slow. I sends in my
young men; but for myse'f I sort o' hungers about the suburbs of the
racket, takin' no resks an' on the prowl for a cinch,--some sech pick-up
as a sleeper, mebby. But my 'leventh is my last; the Great Father in
Washin'ton gets tired with us an' he sends his walk-a-heaps an' buffalo
soldiers'--these savages calls niggers 'buffalo soldiers,' bein' they're
that woolly--'an' makes us love peace. Which we'd a-had the Utes too
dead to skin if it ain't for the walk-a-heaps an' buffalo soldiers.'

"An' at this Crooked Claw tosses the bunch of Ute top-knots to one of his
squaws, fills up his red-stone pipe with kinnikinick an' begins to smoke,
lookin' as complacent as a catfish doorin' a Joone rise.

"Bill Connors has now been wanderin' through this vale of tears for mebby
she's twenty odd years, an' accordin' to Osage tenets, Bill's doo to get
wedded. No, Bill don't make no move; he comports himse'f lethargic; the
reesponsibilities of the nuptials devolves on Bill's fam'ly.

"It's one of the excellentest things about a Injun that he don't pick out
no wife personal, deemin' himse'f as too locoed to beat so difficult a
game.

"Or mebby, as I observes to Texas Thompson one time in the Red Light when
him an' me's discussin', or mebby it's because he's that callous he don't
care, or that shiftless he won't take trouble.

"'Whatever's the reason,' says Texas, on that o'casion, heavin' a sigh,
'thar's much to be said in praise of the custom. If it only obtains
among the whites thar's one sport not onknown to me who would have shore
passed up some heartaches. You can bet a hoss, no fam'ly of mine would
pick out the lady who beats me for that divorce back in Laredo to be the
spouse of Texas Thompson. Said household's got too much savey to make
sech a break.'

"While a Osage don't select that squaw of his, still I allers entertains
a theery that he sort o' saveys what he's ag'inst an' no he'pmeet gets
sawed off on him objectio