"Well, after a while the Indians and the white men got to be pretty friendly. The Indians could see that knives and axes and copper cups, to say nothing of guns, were a heap better than anything they had; and the white men on the other hand wanted the furs and dresses that the Indians wore. They traded for them, and after a while the Indians and the white people got to know each other pretty well, and commenced to trade regularly.
"And that's the story as I heard it."
"You told that mighty well, Mason," commented Hugh; "a great deal better than anybody else could tell it, except perhaps old John Monroe, or some of those old Piegans."
"But I want a lot of explanation," said Joe. "What about those fellows with the red tails? I don't savvy that a bit. I can understand about the red bodies, because I suppose that means they wore red shirts, but what about the red tails?"
"Well, Joe," replied Hugh, "you've never been out in that northern country or else you wouldn't ask a question like that. The old voyageurs and people in the North always used to wear a red sash tied around their waist with the long ends hanging down in front. When they were working, to get these ends out of the way, they used to pass them around their body, and then under the sash, so that they hung down behind."
"Well," laughed Joe, "that certainly is the limit."
"And," Jack said, "just think of their taking a tree chopped down with an ax for one cut down by a beaver; and their not knowing the foot-prints of a person wearing a shoe!"
"Sho," drawled Hugh; "haven't I told you time and again that we all of us measure up things by what we ourselves have seen, and we find it hard to believe anything that's outside the range of our own experience. If there was any way of proving it, I'd be willing to bet a good horse and saddle and bridle that if we'd been there we'd all have acted just the way those Indians did."