istle at the
end of his tail. Then it'd be, 'Oh, Sam, where's the axe?'"

"Tell you what I do believe it is," said Yan, not noticing this
terrifying description; "it's a Skunk."

"Little Beaver, my son! I thought I would tell you, then I sez to
meself, 'No; it's better for him to find out by his lone. Nothing like
a struggle in early life to develop the stuff in a man. It don't do to
help him too much,' sez I, an' so I didn't."

Here Sam condescendingly patted the Second War Chief on the head and
nodded approvingly. Of course he did not know as much about the track
as Yan did, but he prattled on:

"Little Beaver! you're a heap struck on tracks--Ugh--good! You kin
tell by them everything that passes in the night. Wagh! Bully! You're
likely to be the naturalist of our Tribe. But you ain't got gumption.
Now, in this yer hunting-ground of our Tribe there is only one place
where you can see a track, an' that is that same mud-bank; all the
rest is hard or grassy. Now, what I'd do if I was a Track-a-mist, I'd
give the critters lots o' chance to leave tracks. I'd fix it all
round with places so nothing could come or go 'thout givin' us his
impressions of the trip. I'd have one on each end of the trail coming
in, an' one on each side of the creek where it comes in an' goes out."

"Well, Sam, you have a pretty level head. I wonder I didn't think of
that myself."

"My son, the Great Chief does the thinking. It's the rabble--that's
you and Sappy--that does the work."

But all the same he set about it at once with Yan, Sappy following
with a _slight limp now_. They removed the sticks and rubbish for
twenty feet of the trail at each end and sprinkled this with three
or four inches of fine black loam. They cleared off the bank of the
stream at four places, one at each side where it entered the woods,
and one at each side where it went into the Burns's Bush.

"Now," said Sam, "there's what I call visitors' albums like the one
that Phil Leary's nine fatties started when they got their brick house
and their swelled heads, so every one that came in could write their
names an' something about 'this happy, happy, ne'er-to-be-forgotten
visit'--them as could write. Reckon that's where our visitors get the
start, for all of ours kin write that has feet."

"Wonder why I didn't think o' that," said Yan, again and again. "But
there's one thing you forget," he said. "We want one around the
teepee."

This was easily made, as the ground