see how it is. Maybe it ain't always and only white men that patronizes
our goods. Uncle Sam is a long way off, and I don't say we'd ought to,
but when the cat's away, why the mice will, ye know--they most always
will."

There was a rattle of boards outside, at which he shut the door quickly,
and they heard him run. A light muttering came in at the window, and the
mother, peeping out, saw Andy fallen among a rubbish of crates and empty
cans, where he lay staring, while his two fists beat up and down like a
disordered toy. Wild-Goose Jake came, and having lifted him with great
tenderness, was laying him flat as Elizabeth Clallam hurried to his
help.

"No, ma'am," he sighed, "you can't do nothing, I guess."

"Just let me go over and get our medicines."

"Thank you, ma'am," said Jake, and the pain on his face was miserable to
see; "there ain't no medicine. We're kind of used to this, Andy and me.
Maybe, if you wouldn't mind stayin' till he comes to--Why, a sick man
takes comfort at the sight of a lady."

When the fit had passed they helped him to his feet, and Jake led him
away.

Mrs. Jake made her first appearance upon the guests sitting down to
their meal, when she waited on table, passing busily forth from the
kitchen with her dishes. She had but three or four English words, and
her best years were plainly behind her; but her cooking was good,
fried and boiled with sticks of her own chopping, and she served with
industry. Indeed, a squaw is one of the few species of the domestic wife
that survive today upon our continent. Andy seemed now to keep all
his dislike for her, and followed her with a scowling eye, while he
frequented Jake, drawing a chair to sit next him when he smoked by the
wall after supper, and sometimes watching him with a sort of clouded
affection upon his face. He did not talk, and the seizure had evidently
jarred his mind as well as his frame. When the squaw was about lighting
a lamp he brushed her arm in a childish way so that the match went out,
and set him laughing. She poured out a harangue in Chinook, showing the
dead match to Jake, who rose and gravely lighted the lamp himself, Andy
laughing more than ever. When Mrs. Clallam had taken Nancy with her
to bed, Jake walked John Clallam to the river-bank, and looking up and
down, spoke a little of his real mind.

"I guess you see how it is with me. Anyway, I don't commonly hev use
for stranger-folks in this house. But that little girl of yourn