acked ourselves.
Our pickets are already driven in."

"Military pickets should not differ from other pickets," interrupted
the boot-black, modestly. "To stand firmly they should be well driven
in."

"Ha! there is something in that," said the General, thoughtfully. "But
who are you, who speak thus?"

Rising to his full height, the boot-black threw off his outer rags, and
revealed the figure of the Boy Chief of the "Pigeon Feet."

"Treason!" shrieked the General; "order an advance along the whole
line."

But in vain. The next moment he fell beneath the tomahawk of the Boy
Chief, and within the next quarter of an hour the United States Army
was dispersed. Thus ended the battle of Boot-black Creek.

CHAPTER V

And yet the Boy Chief was not entirely happy. Indeed, at times he
seriously thought of accepting the invitation extended by the Great
Chief at Washington, immediately after the massacre of the soldiers,
and once more revisiting the haunts of civilization. His soul sickened
in feverish inactivity; schoolmasters palled on his taste; he had
introduced base ball, blind hooky, marbles, and peg-top among his
Indian subjects, but only with indifferent success. The squaws insisted
in boring holes through the china alleys and wearing them as necklaces;
his warriors stuck spikes in their base ball bats and made war clubs of
them. He could not but feel, too, that the gentle Mushymush, although
devoted to her pale-faced brother, was deficient in culinary education.
Her mince pies were abominable; her jam far inferior to that made by
his Aunt Sally of Doemville. Only an unexpected incident kept him
equally from the extreme of listless Sybaritic indulgence, or of morbid
cynicism. Indeed, at the age of twelve, he already had become disgusted
with existence.

He had returned to his wigwam after an exhausting buffalo hunt in which
he had slain two hundred and seventy-five buffalos with his own hand,
not counting the individual buffalo on which he had leaped so as to
join the herd, and which he afterward led into the camp a captive and a
present to the lovely Mushymush. He had scalped two express riders and
a correspondent of the "New York Herald"; had despoiled the Overland
Mail Stage of a quantity of vouchers which enabled him to draw double
rations from the government, and was reclining on a bear skin, smoking
and thinking of the vanity of human endeavor, when a scout entered,
saying that a pale-face youth had d