Still, he raises the chances ag'inst me to twelve to one, an' after that I goes careful an' slow.

I sends in my young men; but for myse'f I sort o' hungers about the suburbs of the racket, takin' no resks an' on the prowl for a cinch,--some sech pick-up as a sleeper, mebby.

But my 'leventh is my last; the Great Father in Washin'ton gets tired with us an' he sends his walk-a-heaps an' buffalo soldiers'-- these savages calls niggers 'buffalo soldiers,' bein' they're that woolly--'an' makes us love peace.

Which we'd a-had the Utes too dead to skin if it ain't for the walk-a-heaps an' buffalo soldiers.' "An' at this Crooked Claw tosses the bunch of Ute top-knots to one of his squaws, fills up his red-stone pipe with kinnikinick an' begins to smoke, lookin' as complacent as a catfish doorin' a Joone rise.
"Bill Connors has now been wanderin' through this vale of tears for mebby she's twenty odd years, an' accordin' to Osage tenets, Bill's doo to get wedded.

No, Bill don't make no move; he comports himse'f lethargic; the reesponsibilities of the nuptials devolves on Bill's fam'ly.
"It's one of the excellentest things about a Injun that he don't pick out no wife personal, deemin' himse'f as too locoed to beat so difficult a game.
"Or mebby, as I observes to Texas Thompson one time in the Red Light when him an' me's discussin', or mebby it's because he's that callous he don't care, or that shiftless he won't take trouble.
"'Whatever's the reason,' says Texas, on that o'casion, heavin' a sigh, 'thar's much to be said in praise of the custom.