“Snakes!” he remarked, “I had a pesky bad dream. Dreamt I was just goin’ to draw on some feller, when I awoke.”
“The Beaver has slain many enemies,” rejoined War Wolf, nodding his head approvingly. “When a man has taken scalps, he is prompt to take more, even in his dreams.”
“And to lose his own, you pison young skunk!” thought Smokestack Bill, in reply to this. “I’ll be even with you one day, see if I don’t.”
But the “pison young skunk,” unenlightened as to this event of the future, merely nodded pleasantly as he sat by the fire, knife in hand, assimilating his juicy venison steak with the utmost complacency.
Note 1. Part of the initiatory festival during which, by virtue of undergoing various forms of ghastly self-torture, the growing-up boys are admitted among the ranks of the warriors.