The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 221: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BIG BUFFALO’S LAST BATTLE. diate obedience from the ladies of his own household. He stopped a moment, as if to consider the matter. Jennie took advantage of his inde- cision to bolt for the tent. She arrived there, frightened but triumphant. “T got him,” she panted—“ I got him good!” Buffalo came on after her, shaking his fist. Mrs. Tree confronted him before the tent, waving her apron at him in the way that ladies wave their aprons to frighten chickens from the porch, “Go on, sh-h-h-h-h—get out of here, you ugly old thing!” she shooed, hands under the apron, flaunting the garment at the dingy old Indian as if he were a rooster of extraordinary impertinence. Big Buffalo stopped, looking at her curiously. But he retained enough dig- nity to assert his manhood in another grinding ‘‘ Naw!”’ whereon Mrs. Tree gave a little jump at him, one of those stiff-kneed, chicken-scaring jumps pe- culiar to ladies, still waving the dread- ful apron. - ““ Sh-h-h-h, go on—get out of here, you old rascal!” said she. Big Buffalo turned his back, walked to the place where his sack lay, shouldered it, and went his way. “Well, I declare, I never saw sucha bold old thing!” said Mrs. Tree. “He took that horr-id stuff away with him,” shuddered Jennie. ‘‘ What on earth do you suppose he’s going to do with it?” “Fat it, like as not,” said the man from Omaha; ‘“ them Arapahoes eats most anything they find.” “But to imagine any living human being eating limburger, and it spoiled!” “T’ve got my doubts about it bein’ spoiled,” defended the sergeant—‘ and I’m here to tell you he might eat worse.”’ “Worse!” exploded Mrs. Tree. “ Lands of mercy, I don’t see where he could find it!”’ “Good or bad—and it’s never good —that’s no dish for a self-respecting o!d {ndian,” declared Jennie. “‘ He’ll never think as much of himself again after- ward,” 923 “Oh, I dunno,” said the sergeant loftily: “that cheese has saved many a man’s life before to-day.” “Under what circumstances?” de- manded Jennie, cocking her head pe- dantically. “ Point out the circum- stances, will you, please? ” “Oh, I can’t give the names and dates, if that’s what you want ’’—the sergeant seemed to feel deeply on the matter, as if a friend’s honor had been assailed—“ but I know it has, all right, all right.” “T think if a man went up in a air-o- plane he orto carry a few chunks of it along,” offered the engineer. “ It'd hold him up if his ingin failed.”’ “ Knock it,’’ said the sergeant bitter- ly, getting up in a huff, settling his brown derby down against his ears solidly; “go on ahead and knock it. But I tell you that cheese has saved the life of many a man before to-day, and I’m here to stand by it. Some of you may see the day before you die that you'll be proud to meet a dish of it on a free-lunch counter, and I don’t mean the ladies when I say that, neither.” Plainly the sergeant was offended. He went away with that, having done his best for the cheese. “Land sakes!” said Jennie’s mother ; ‘land sakes alive!”’ The way of it was this: They had come to Comanche, all of them, to regis- ter for the drawing soon to take place for the distribution of homesteads in the Indian reservation close at hand. Comanche sat upon the border of the new domain, and it was a place of wick- edness and false promises, fiddles, flat games, flies. Jennie’s mother, being a widow, a condition which she tolerated but did not indorse, hoped for a claim in the low numbers. Likewise the lady dentist from Kansas City; the military gentleman with beer-colored mustache, who said he was a sergeant, but commonly was accredited with a somewhat more ob- scure rank ; and the tall, bony man from Omaha, who claimed that his business was hogs, but who looked as if he had ECORMMICLOOO SS (C@