played a trick on the old woman. All the food they had
was a quart of frozen bears' grease, kept in a kettle with a skin
fastened over it. But Tanner caught a rabbit alive and popped him under
the skin. So when the old woman went for the bears' grease in the
morning, and found it alive, she was not a little alarmed.

But does not the notion of living on frozen pomatum rather take the gilt
off the delight of being an Indian? The old woman was as brave and
resolute as a man, but in one day she sold a hundred and twenty beaver
skins and many buffalo robes for rum. She always entertained all the
neighbouring Indians as long as the rum lasted, and Tanner had a narrow
escape of growing up a drunkard. He became such a savage that when an
Indian girl carelessly allowed his wigwam to be burned, he stripped her
of her blanket and turned her out for the night in the snow.

So Tanner grew up in spite of hunger and drink. Once, when starving, and
without bullets, he met a buck moose. If he killed the moose he would be
saved, if he did not he would die. So he took the screws out of the lock
of his rifle, loaded with them in place of bullets, tied the lock on with
string, fired, and killed the moose.

Tanner was worried into marrying a young squaw (at least _he_ says he did
it because the girl wanted it), and this led to all his sorrows--this and
a quarrel with a medicine-man. The medicine-man accused him of being a
wizard, and his wife got another Indian to shoot him. Tanner was far
from surgeons, and he actually hacked out the bullet himself with an old
razor. Another wounded Indian once amputated his own arm. The ancient
Spartans could not have been pluckier. The Indians had other virtues as
well as pluck. They were honest and so hospitable, before they knew
white men's ways, that they would give poor strangers new mocassins and
new buffalo cloaks.

Will it bore you, my dear Dick, if I tell you of an old Indian's death?
It seems a pretty and touching story. Old Pe-shau-ba was a friend of
Tanner. One day he fell violently ill. He sent for Tanner and said to
him: "I remember before I came to live in this world, I was with the
Great Spirit above. I saw many good and desirable things, and among
others a beautiful woman. And the Great Spirit said: 'Pe-shau-ba, do you
love the woman?' I told him I did. Then he said, 'Go down and spend a
few winters on earth. You cannot stay long, and you must remember to be
alw