“You will keep on till you have those squaws pulling your hair, Chunky,” warned Butler.
The other boys were by this time eating cheese, crackers and ginger snaps. The proprietor had sent one of the Indian children to fetch the man he had recommended as a guide, and by the time the Pony Rider Boys had satisfied their appetites, the guide entered the store and stood waiting to be recognized.
The boys laughed when they saw him.
125CHAPTER XI
THE GUIDE WHO MADE A HIT
The guide might have been anywhere from twenty to forty years of age. The boys were unable to say, though they decided that he was quite young. He was considerably shorter in stature than the Indians they had seen, and Tad wondered if he were not an Eskimo. The guide’s head was shaven except for a tuft of black coarse hair on the top, standing straight up, while a yellow bar of paint had been drawn perpendicularly on each cheek. He wore a shirt that had once been white, a pair of trousers, one leg of which extended some six inches below the knee, the other as far above the knee of the other leg. Over his shoulders drooped a blanket of gaudy color. The guide’s feet were clad in the mucklucks worn both in summer and winter. Taking him all in all, the man was a smile-producing combination.
“Are you a guide?” asked the Professor.
“Me guide.”
“How old are you?”