ut Indians to keep away from them when they mix beer with
green corn, for it has about the same effect as committing suicide with
carbolic acid.

Pa put his hat on one side of his head and went right into the midst of
the Indians, and grabbed a chief called "One Ear at a Time," and hit him
with the tent stake, and knocked him down, and said, "Now, you git."
Well, sir, that Indian had no more than struck the fire in a sitting
position, and filled the air with the odor of fried buckskin, before the
whole tribe jumped on pa, and they kicked him with their moccasins, and
were going to murder him, while the chief who acted as the burnt
offering got out of the fire, and sat down in the cold mud to cool
himself. He held up his hand as a signal of attention, and he called a
council of war, while the squaws sat on pa to hold him down.

The council of war sentenced pa to be burned at the stake, and they tied
him to a tree and began to pile sticks around him, and pa told me to go
to the circus lot and give an alarm, and send the hands to rescue him.
Gee, but didn't I run though, and yell an alarm big enough for a
massacre. I told the hands, who were sleeping under the seats, or
playing cards on the trunks that the Indians were burning pa at the
stake, and some of the hands said that would serve him right, and the
fellows that were playing cards said they didn't want to break up the
game when they were losers, to rescue no baldheaded curmudgeon. I
thought pa was a goner, sure, 'cause I could hear the Indians yell, and
I thought I could smell flesh burning. Oh, but I was scared for fear
they would burn pa alive.

[Illustration: The Indians Tied Pa to a Tree and Began to Pile Sticks
Around Him.]

Just then the man who had charge of our cannibals, who each had a dog
that they were looking for a place to roast, came along and I told him
about the Indians' corn roast, and he ordered the cannibals to go drive
the Indians away from their fire and roast their dogs. Well, it worked
like a charm, and the cannibals made a rush for the Indians and drove
them away just as they had lighted the fire around pa, and we were not a
minute too soon. After the Indians had skedaddled for the woods, and we
cut the cords that bound pa, the cannibals went to work and skun the
dogs, and began to cook them, and pa looked on, until it made him
squirmish, but he was so tickled at being saved from the Indians, that
he tried to be a good fellow with the cann