“You do not deserve to HAVE a wife, Pigeonswing,” she cried, half-laughing, yet evidently alive to the feelings of her sex—“can have no gratitude for a wife's tenderness and care. I wonder that a Chippewa girl can be found to have you?”
“Don't want him,” coolly returned the Indian, making his preparations to light his pipe—“got Winnebagoe squaw, already; good 'nough for me. Shoot her t'other husband and take his scalp—den she come into my wigwam.”
“The wretch!” exclaimed Margery.
But this was a word the savage did not understand, and he continued to puff at the newly lighted tobacco, with all of a smoker's zeal. When the fire was secured, he found time to continue the subject.
“Yes, dat good war-path—got rifle; got wife; got TWO scalp! Don't do so well, ebbery day.”
“And that woman hoes your corn, and cooks your venison?” demanded the bee-hunter.
“Sartain—capital good to hoe—no good to cook—make deer meat too dry. Want to be made to mind business. Bye'm by teach him. No l'arn all at once, like pale-face pappoose in school.”
“Pigeonswing, have you never observed the manner in which the white man treats his squaw?”
“Sartain—see him make much of her—put her in warm corner—wrap blanket round her—give her venison 'fore he eat himself—see all dat, often—what den? DAT don't make it right.”
“I give you up, Chippewa, and agree with Margery in thinking you ought not to have a squaw, at all.”