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We had now no tent or stove with us, so a "Siwash camp" in the open was the best we could do, and a wet, miserable camp it was. By inexcusable carelessness on my part, candles had been altogether forgotten in the replenishing of the supplies, and a little piece an inch long which we found loose in the grub box was all that we possessed.
Plug hats had been the peculiar form of insanity prevalent at Siwash in his day and he thought they were still part of the course of study. I got along much easier than many of the boys, too. Allie Bangs' Pa made him buy all his clothes at home, for fear he'd get to looking like some of the cartoons he'd seen in the funny papers.
It's nice for a woman to hear, I know, but I may have to take gas to get through this story. This Mary Jane Hicks came to Siwash the year before it all happened and was elected to the unnoticeables on the spot.
"It's a toothpick and a tater-peeler put together," said Siwash, when it came back to his hand. The young fellow with the black, sleek hair, who kept his gun on, reached for it, bent over it in the light, examining it with interest. "You can trim your toenails with it and half-sole your boots," he said.
They do say that the only way to teach a politician what the people want is to bore a shaft in his head and shout it in, but our experience ought to be proof to the contrary. Why, all we needed was the gentle little hint that Mary Jane Hicks gave us. How did the Siwash game come out Saturday? Forget it, my boy.
He just said "no" in nine languages; said that when he went to Siwash "and it turned out good men then, too, young fellow" the girls were glad to walk to entertainments through the mud; and when it was unusually muddy they weren't averse to being carried a short distance.
And after they had talked awhile, Hollister went home. But he was scarcely in his own dooryard before he became aware that while he might plan and arrange, so also could others; that his wife was capable of action independent of him or his plans. He glanced down the river and saw a long Siwash dugout sweep around the curve of the Big Bend.
They were a weird-looking bunch, but, gee! they were fierce. Pirates would have been kittens beside them. I guess the Reverend Pubby had never done much in the Centaur line, for he came very near balking entirely right there. It took us five minutes to explain that there was no other way of getting out to Siwash and that the Faculty would take it as a personal insult if he didn't come.
I haven't talked with a Siwash man for a month, and all of these Hale and Jarhard and Stencilmania fellows give me an ashy taste in my mouth when I talk with them. It's about as much fun talking college days with a fellow from another school as it is to talk ranching with a New England old maid; and when I get hold of a Siwash man you can bet I hang on to him as long as my talons will stick.
The natives had never evolved a "leader." Some fleet stripling always ran ahead, and the dogs followed. The leader, guided by the voice, "geeing" and "hawing," stopping and advancing at the word of command, is a white man's innovation, though now universally adopted by the natives. So is the dog collar. The "Siwash harness" is simply a band that goes round the shoulders and over the breast.
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