But his chum got tired of tossing flapjacks after a while; to tell the truth, his arm got lame. Then John Peep tried it. The chums discovered that these Indian lads did not call each other by the outlandish names that white people had bestowed upon them. They all spoke of John Peep as “Amoshee,” and Chet quickly began to address him by his Indian name, too.
There was a lot of fun at that breakfast. Indian boys are not like whites in all things, it is true; but they are not lacking in a sense of humour, and as these sat about the campfire in the glade, jokes and quips passed to and fro as they might have at a gathering of white boys.
Chet “counted noses” and said to Amoshee:
“Say, they froze you out of our ball club, but why don’t you have one of your own? Here’s enough of you boys to make up a good nine.”
The Indian lad’s eyes brightened, and he looked proudly around the circle of faces. Their racial features were pronounced; there wasn’t a redskin boy there that could not trace his line back to some big chief of the olden time when the Indian was master of these plains and hills.
“Heap good boys,” Amoshee grunted, but smiled, too, for he only used English in that barbarous way in fun, or when he was excited. Out in the open like this, having thrown off all the shackles of civilisation, his natural thoughts and instincts rose to the surface. “Heap good boys,” he said again, and with pride.
“I should say they were!” exclaimed Chet, with enthusiasm. “Look at that tall fellow yonder. Couldn’t he reach the high ones out in centrefield? My! And that little, squatty fellow—what a shortstop he’d make! Say! don’t they know anything about baseball?”
Amoshee smiled rather pityingly upon his white friend.
“They all play baseball at school—and football, and ev’rything else. I want to go away to Government school if my grandfather will let me.”
“Say! then you’ve got a nine ready-made to your hand. Practise a little,” said Chet. “Get to working together well, and then challenge our high school nine. It would serve them right if you licked them. You’ve a delivery that would puzzle most of them, I tell you.”