“Did you ever see the Indians race in birch canoes?” asked Sam.
“Oh yes, often,” Paul replied; “and they make fast time too, I can tell you.”
“Did you ever race yourself?” asked Benny.
“No,” said Paul, “but I learned to paddle a canoe pretty well. I’d rather have a good row-boat, though, than any birch I ever saw. If you run one of them on a sharp stone, it may be cut open, unless it’s pretty new.”
“How do the Indians kill buffaloes?” asked Will Palmer.
“Why, just as white men do—they shoot them with rifles. Nearly all the Indians have rifles nowadays.”
This was very unromantic, most of the boys thought, for an Indian without bows and arrows could not be very different from a white man. Still, something wonderful would undoubtedly come before Paul was done talking.
“Are buffaloes really so terrible-looking as the story-papers say?” asked Bert Sharp.
“Well, they don’t look exactly like pets,” said Paul. “A bull buffalo, in the winter season, when he has a full coat of hair, looks fiercer than a lion.”
“Do the Indians really kill or torture all the white people they catch?” asked Canning Forbes.