Pecks Bad Boy with the Cowboys | Page 5

great mind and a great head is better in the end than foolishness. Now
they want Pa to run a footrace with the young Indians, as the record he
made getting to camp ahead of the bear is better than any time ever
made on the reservation.

CHAPTER II
.
Indian Chief Compels Bad Boy's Pa to Herd with the Squaws--He
Shows Them How to Make Buckwheat Cakes and Is Kept Making
Them a Week--He Talks to the Squaws About Women's Rights and
They Organize a Strike--Pa's Success in a Wolf Hunt--The Strike is Put
Down and the Indians Prepare to Burn Pa at the Stake.
Since Pa's experience in trying to kill a grizzly by making the animal
chase him and die of heart disease, the chief has made Pa herd with the
squaws, until he can prove that he is a brave man by some daring deed.
The Indians wouldn't speak to him for a long time, so he decided to
teach the squaws how to keep house in a civilized manner, and he
began by trying to show them how to make buckwheat pancakes, so
they could furnish something for the Indians to eat that does not have to
be dug out of a tin can, which they draw from the Indian agent. Pa
found a sack of buckwheat flour and some baking powder, and mixed
up some batter, and while he was fixing a piece of tin roof for a griddle,
the squaws drank the pancake batter raw, and it made them all sick, and

the chief was going to have Pa burned at the stake, when the Carlisle
Indian who had eaten pancakes at college when he was training with
the football team, told the chief to let up on Pa and he would give them
something to eat that was good, so Pa mixed some more batter and
when the buckwheat pancakes began to bake, and the odor spread
around among the Indians, they all gathered around, and the way they
ate pancakes would paralyze you. They got some axle grease to spread
on the pancakes, and fought with each other to get the pancakes, and
they kept Pa baking pancakes all day and nearly all night, and then the
squaws began to feel better, and Pa had to bake pancakes for them, and
when the flour gave out the chief sent to the agency for more, and for a
week pa did nothing but make pancakes, but finally the whole tribe got
sick, and Pa had to prescribe raw beef for them, and they began to get
better, and then they wanted Pa to go on a coyote hunt, and kill a kiota,
which is a wolf, by jumping off his horse and taking the wolf by the
neck and choking it to death. Pa said he killed a tom cat that way once,
and he could kill any wolf that ever walked, so they arranged the hunt
Before we went on the hunt pa sent to Cheyenne for two dozen little
folding baby trundlers for the squaws to wheel the papooses in, 'cause
he didn't like to see them tie the children on their backs and carry them
around. Where the trundlers came Pa showed the squaws how they
worked, by putting a papoose in one of the baby wagons, and pushing it
around the camp, and by gosh, if they didn't make Pa wheel all the
babies in the tribe, for two days, and the Indians turned out and gave
the great father three cheers, but when the squaws wanted to get in the
wagons and be wheeled around, Pa kicked. After teaching the squaws
how to put the children in the wagons and work them, we went off on
the hunt, and when we came back every squaw had her papoose in a
baby wagon, but instead of wheeling the wagon in civilised fashion,
they slung the wagons, babies and all, on their backs, and carried the
whole thing on their backs. Gee, but that made Pa hot. He says you
can't do anything with a race of people that haven't got brain enough to
imitate. He says monkeys would know better than to carry baby
wagons on their backs. I never thought that Indians could be jealous,
but they are terrors when the jealousy germ begins to work. There is no
doubt but that the squaws got to thinking a great deal of pa, 'cause he
talked with them, through the Carlisle Indian for an interpreter, and as

he sat on a camp chair and looked like a great white god with a red
nose, and they gathered around him, and he told them stories of women
in the east, and how they dressed and went to parties, and how