There they sat, three great gray wolves, with noses pointing to the fire. One touch, over they toppled, dead, set up by this joking hunter in the night to frighten the tenderfeet from over the Rockies!
"Hi'll be 'anged if the dogs 'ave n't heaten my moccasins," was the next discovery. Perhaps the remnant of a cap chewed out of recognition lay under a tent edge. More than likely one leg of a pair of buckskin pantaloons was all that was left of somebody's apparel.
The missionaries laughed, laughed, laughed as at holiday. How could they look for guile when all went merry as a marriage-bell under the lead of this goodhumored, winsome host? To Ermatinger they confided their plans and acted on his advice. He slapped them on the shoulders, lounged round their tent doors, and sat in their secret councils. He penetrated their inmost hearts, warned them against trespassing the regulations of the great company.
"What are the regulations of the company?" asked the incoming missionaries.
"Hamericans must not trade with Hinjuns, they must confine themselves to hagriculture hand mission work, hand keep to the south side hof the Columbia," was the answer, impressed like a solemn law. And he tricked them, tricked them out of their tame cattle for longhorned Mexican heifers that needed to be caught with a lasso and held for milking, tricked them out of their gentle American horses for wild Indian ponies. Even at Whitman's he tried his wiles.
"You live too plainly. You dress too plainly. Splendor wins the Hinjuns. You must put hon more style hand get all the hinfluence possible. The Hamerican Board agrees to give you your living; that living must not be mean." Then the tempter passed, leaving
