“Say, Jim,” he cried, as he watched one of his many “in-laws” struggling furiously with a roped steer, “I want to laff. I surely do. Say, look at that guy hanging to that pore critter’s stumps of horns. Now, how in hell does he guess that beast’s to reckon he wants it to move ahead while he’s smotherin’ its fool head with his darn sight more foolish body? Can you beat it?”
He moved off on the run, and laid a hand on the top bar of the corral opening. The next moment he had vaulted it, and became lost amidst the teeming throng.
Jim Pryse smilingly awaited his return. The Irishman amused him almost as much as did his “in-laws.” And when Dan came back to him his face was beaming with good-nature.
“Gee! They’re an outfit!” he cried, with a great laugh. “Did you ever see such a play? They got a Dago bull-fight skinned to death. Get a look at ’em. They’re the whole darn tally of Cama’s brothers, an’ cousins, an’ uncles. I feed the bunch, an’ talk Blackfoot to ’em from daylight to dark. They’d eat that bunch of steers in a week, but it takes their whole darn combination o’ brain to handle ’em right. I surely want to laff. They guess they’re showing the white man. They’re the queerest crowd of darn-foolishness you could locate outside a bughouse.”
Pryse laughed delightedly.
“It’s no wonder they’re a dying race,” he said.
Dan nodded and chuckled.
“They’re Reserve-raised,” he said significantly. “They know all about doctors’ dope an’ pie-faced religion. They can talk and read ‘white.’ They can count dollars to beat the band, but cents better. They got a hell of a notion for soap they fancy looking at, but ’ud hate to use. But set em to the work their old folk reckoned was natural to ’em, an you’ve got ’em hatin’ it like the devil hates holy water. But they’re a good crew, an’ I’ve got no kick comin’. They’d commit murder fer me, an’ I sort o’ feel they’re like a bunch of silly kids that need beating over the head with a club when they do wrong. Ther’ it is. It’s the civilisin’ play of our races—the old dames who sit around in steam heat figgerin’ out the best med’cine fer their own useless souls. I’m tryin’ to make men of ’em. But it’s mighty hard work after the missioners are through with ’em. I tell you, civilisation beats out of a boy all those things God A’mighty set out as right fer him. An’ it drives home a bunch of sloppy junk that any man worth the name gets worryin’ around to lose quick.”
“It was something of that set me yearning for Alaska seven or eight years back,” Pryse chuckled quietly. “But you couldn’t lose it there. The townships, even there, are up to their necks in automobiles, and ’phones, and wireless, and all the rest. Why, they got societies up there for every darn thing, from a Chink Labour Union to an Anti-Natural Fur Society. I guess the anti-fur bunch has tough work ahead in Alaska.”
Dan drew a deep breath, and his eyes sobered.