eccentricities, and his strange and merry humor, Captain Bonneville
fitted him out handsomely as the Nimrod of the party, who all soon
became quite attached to him. One of the earliest and most signal
services he performed, was to exorcise the insatiate kill-crop that
hitherto oppressed the party. In fact, the doltish Nez Perce, who had
seemed so perfectly insensible to rough treatment of every kind, by
which the travellers had endeavored to elbow him out of their society,
could not withstand the good-humored bantering, and occasionally sharp
wit of She-wee-she. He evidently quailed under his jokes, and sat
blinking like an owl in daylight, when pestered by the flouts and
peckings of mischievous birds. At length his place was found vacant at
meal-time; no one knew when he went off, or whither he had gone, but he
was seen no more, and the vast surplus that remained when the repast was
over, showed what a mighty gormandizer had departed.

Relieved from this incubus, the little party now went on cheerily.
She-wee-she kept them in fun as well as food. His hunting was always
successful; he was ever ready to render any assistance in the camp or
on the march; while his jokes, his antics, and the very cut of
his countenance, so full of whim and comicality, kept every one in
good-humor.

In this way they journeyed on until they arrived on the banks of the
Immahah, and encamped near to the Nez Perce lodges. Here She-wee-she
took a sudden notion to visit his people, and show off the state of
worldly prosperity to which he had so suddenly attained. He accordingly
departed in the morning, arrayed in hunter's style, and well appointed
with everything benefitting his vocation. The buoyancy of his gait, the
elasticity of his step, and the hilarity of his countenance, showed that
he anticipated, with chuckling satisfaction, the surprise he was about
to give those who had ejected him from their society in rags. But what
a change was there in his whole appearance when he rejoined the party in
the evening! He came skulking into camp like a beaten cur, with his tail
between his legs. All his finery was gone; he was naked as when he was
born, with the exception of a scanty flap that answered the purpose of a
fig leaf. His fellow-travellers at first did not know him, but supposed
it to be some vagrant Root Digger sneaking into the camp; but when they
recognized in this forlorn object their prime wag, She-wee-she, whom
they had seen depart