to the target and assured him we were shooting at it, but he looked at it and then in the direction he had come, and said in Chinook and sign language "that the bullet was coming right at his head but he heard it whiz just in time to dodge and avoid it." We were reloading and had put in the powder and wad and I had a long bullet in my hand when our visitor held out his hand and said, "Nuh! nika nanich,"—"Say! let me see." Examining it for a moment, he uttered a grunt of satisfaction or disgust, coupled with the remark: "Cultus piltin colitin nowitka"—"It is a bad crazy projectile sure enough." We then discovered for the first time what the true quick eye of the savage had seen at a glance. The long bullet was a little smaller at one end than the other, a little bent and slightly beveled on one side of the larger end; it was almost a perfect model of the Australian boomerang, a veritable boomeranglet.
Having made this discovery, I put a round shot in the gun, for it was plain that the boomeranglet was liable to come back to the place it started from and we might not be so lucky in dodging it as the Indian had been. This shot missed the board, and the Indian, now in a good humor, being satisfied that the close call on him was an accident, and having his bow and arrows with him, strung his bow and as he did so, said, "Ulta nika pu."—"Now, I shoot," and the next instant the arrow sped. He was so alert I didn't even see him place the arrow in position, but it was launched with such force that it whizzed as it left the string. The board was split and fell in two pieces and the arrow passed on over the brow of the hill. The target had been hit nearly in the center. We all laughed, and as the Indian was a young fellow and had behaved so well after having to dodge one of our bullets, I gave him a plug of tobacco, about the size and shape of a squeezed lemon. I had had the tobacco in press under the corner of the fence a week or two. This was when we were growing and manufacturing our own tobacco. The Indian, now very much pleased with his day's sport, for when he came to us he had been hunting and had several birds he had killed, left us and went home. The small village where he lived was only a quarter of a mile from our house, up on a bench of a hill, where there was a spring in a grove of wild cherry trees. He
