“Logical!” echoed Haines again. He held the regulation Eastern view that the Indian knows nothing but the three blind appetites.
“You’d know better,” remarked Stirling, “if you’d been fighting ’em for fifteen years. They’re as shrewd as Æsop’s fables.”
Just then two Indians appeared round a bluff—one old and shabby, the other young and very gaudy—riding side by side.
“That’s Cheschapah,” said Stirling. “That’s the agitator in all his feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively.”
The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.
“Nice manners,” commented Haines. “Seems to have a chip on his shoulder.”
But Stirling looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he muttered, “he has a chip.”
Meanwhile the shabby father was approaching. His face was mild and sad, and he might be seventy. He made a gesture of greeting. “How!” he said, pleasantly, and ambled on his way.
“Now there you have an object-lesson,” said Stirling. “Old Pounded Meat has no chip. The question is, are the fathers or the sons going to run the Crow Nation?”
“Why did the young chap have a dog on his saddle?” inquired Haines.