TOLD AROUND THE CAMPFIRE.

“You knew Cora Belle Fellows, that white girl at Cheyenne Agency, South Dakota, who married a buck Indian, eh, Bill?”

“Yep,” Bill Hawkins answered, “and I know what the results were, too.

“About a year after she had left a fashionable seminary in New York state and came among the redskins to teach them manners and the like, she surprised and shocked everybody by announcing her marriage to Chaska, a full blood Sioux, twenty-one years of age. Then her troubles began. She was frowned upon by both whites and Indians. She went with Chaska to his tepee and lived upon the coarse chuck furnished by Uncle Sam.

“Her escapade was commented upon by all the newspapers of the country at the time, and a museum man of Chicago induced her and Chaska to place themselves upon exhibition. For two years she was inspected by the public, which in the meantime had made her presents until she had a carload of furniture.

“Then she concluded to go back to the Agency and make a farmer out of Chaska, and so with the money earned in the museum, she and her Indian lord returned. She purchased land some miles from the Agency and built a house.

“The agent and myself rode out there about six months after they had gone to housekeeping. We were both curious to know how they were getting along.

“It was a sight for your whiskers. Outside sat nearly all her furniture. The covers of plush had been ripped off for Indian horse trappings, the wood was stained and weather cracked.

“The house was without doors, worn blankets being hung instead. The floors were cold and bare. In a corner upon an old mattress lay Cora Belle Fellows or Mrs. Chaska. An old squaw sat by her side, crooning some lingo over her new born kid. She did not want to talk and we went away. Chaska soon after left her and took a wife from his own tribe, leaving her to live in a tepee about the Agency like any other squaw, feeding on Uncle Sam’s grub.

“You might as well have tried to shove butter down a wildcat’s neck with a hot awl as to have tried to talk that gal out of marrying the buck.”

“Marrying is bad business, anyway, unless they are both hooked up right,” observed the cook. “There is old Ben Berkley living over on the Cottonwood. He was pretty well fixed before he married that widder. She was a spiritualist or something of the sort, and used to go off in trances and have white lights coming around until she scared old Ben nearly to death. She was always running over the country telling people’s future and leaving Ben at home to cook. He took to drinking and one day got the D. T.’s and thought a freight engine was chasing him up and down the alleys of the town, and he finally crawled under a barn to keep out of its way, when the boys rescued him. After that he would not drink any more, but poured the licker in his boots and would get as full as a tick by absorption.

“His wife had brought to the ranch a measley water Spaniel, which Ben used to amuse himself with by throwing cobs and sticks into the river and teaching the dog to swim in and get them and bring them back to him, not thinking of the great blessing it was finally to be to him.

“Ben had been blasting out a hole for a cyclone cellar with sticks of gun-cotton, when his wife took it into her head that she wanted a mess of fish.

“‘No time to fish,’ said Ben. ‘Take a stick of that dynamite and go down to the creek where the water is still and blow out a mess for yourself.’

“His wife took the cartridge and lit the fuse, then gave the thing a toss into the creek. The dog was there and thinking she was playing with him, swam in and got the cartridge and came running up the bank to give it to her. Then she started to run over the plowed ground, yelling at the top of her voice, ‘Drap it, Tige! Drap it!’ There was an explosion and a hole in the ground big enough to bury a horse. The dog had gone up higher than Elijah, while Mrs. Berkley was laying in a furrow with one leg injured by the cartridge. In a day or two the leg swelled up and old Ben sent for the cross-roads doctor, who decided that the injured leg would have to come off.

“The doctor went to town the next day to get some tools, and was so glad over getting a job that he filled up on cactus whiskey and came back and cut off the wrong leg. The sore leg got well afterwards, but, Gee-whiz! It tickled old Ben nearly to death, for she has to stay at home now.”

“Story sounds fishy to me,” remarked Ned Antler.

“Billy Bolton nearly lost his life for using that word,” said Hank Pool. “You all know Billy runs a paper over at Woodward, on the Panhandle trail.

“There had been a hold-up in town, and Jim Belden was accused of it. After the trial before a justice of the peace, Belden was acquitted. In commenting on the affair in his paper the next day, Billy said Belden’s story which secured his release sounded fishy. Belden was a bad man. He saddled his broncho, filled his saddle pockets with grub, and his skin full of whiskey and went over to Billy’s printing office. He hitched the broncho in front, and with the paper in one hand and his Winchester in the other he went in and asked Billy what he meant by saying his story was fishy. Billy was taken by surprise, for he saw that Belden meant to kill him, as he was all ready to hit the trail.

“‘Fishy,’ says Billy. ‘Aha, fishy, fishy. Why that’s a compliment, my dear boy. Saint Peter used to fish and said so many good things that people used to call his sayings fishy. It was a favorite expression with Aristotle and Socrates, when they addressed Napoleon the Great, to say, ‘I hope your royal majesty will speak some imperial fishy things today.’ It is—ah, ahah, sort of an international e pluribus unum expression, a general sort of a non compos mentis, as it were, you understand.’

“‘Oh, well, if that’s all,’ said Belden, ‘it’s all right, but I wouldn’t use the word often if I were you, for some of the boys might not be as well posted as I am. Much obliged, Billy. I was just passing and thought I would subscribe for the paper for a year. Here is $2.00. Mail it to me at Lampassas.”

“Bolton got off light,” said Tom Tyler. “Over at Las Vegas two years ago a sheep man called ‘Doc’ Kinnie a liar and before the fellow could think twice Doc had his ear sliced off, and he went around afterwards using it for a beer check. He would call up the house and pay for the drinks with the sheepman’s ear; he always redeemed it, though, for fear the owner would buy it back.” “Cut it out, boys, cut it out, get to roost in your blankets,” said the boss. “We hit the trail at 5 o’clock in the morning and make the drive to Cimarron by noon.”

An hour later, the fire had smouldered to embers, the stars twinkled in the great dark blue dome of the sky, a soft south breeze fanned the Oklahoma plains and all was silent, save the tramp of horses’ hoofs as the outriders circled the herd of bedded cattle.