Every evening a crowd of Snake Indians would collect outside Savage's house, or in the store, and while he smoked a friendly pipe with them, he was sometimes able to gauge their feelings towards the fresh inhabitants of the tiny settlement, whose number was steadily increasing. The chief of the Snakes was one José Jerez, a comparatively young man, who certainly had not benefited by contact with white men. Bit by bit this brave had succeeded in supplying most of his tribe with muskets; but ammunition was not so easy to obtain. Savage had, from the beginning, firmly refused to supply the Indians with powder; and now that San Francisco was becoming a power in the land, few of them dared enter it to make purchases, lest some of their tribe's recent depredations should be visited on them. Thus Jerez was dependent on what ammunition he could bully or steal or wheedle from passing travellers or raw new-comers. One evening Savage noticed that the group of idlers were less chatty and civil than usual; in fact, they pointedly conversed with one another in their own dialect, of which they knew him to be ignorant, instead of in the broken English which they generally employed. This so aroused his suspicions that he ordered his wife to play the part of eavesdropper, and to report anything of a dangerous nature. The talk turned on the Indians' grievances, real or imaginary. Their fishing and hunting had been encroached upon, they said; the pale-faces were enriching themselves out of land that belonged to them, and giving them nothing in return; not so much as a bag of gunpowder; and the miners would never be satisfied till they had driven them up to the barren mountain-tops. When Savage had learned the gist of the conversation, his mind was soon made up. He had to drive into San Francisco on the following day for fresh stores, and it occurred to him that if he offered Jerez a seat in his waggon, and a day's sight-seeing, he would not only be restoring the chief to good humour, but would have an opportunity of showing that gentleman the numerical strength of the white men, and the folly of interfering with people who might deal out some very unwelcome chastisement. Jerez and another brave joyfully accepted the invitation, and at daybreak the waggon drove off. On the way Savage did his best, by means of quiet hints, to show his two guests that it is always wise to put up with what one cannot alter; and that Indian notions of wholesale bloodshed would not "pay" with white men. In San Francisco he hammered this lesson home by taking them to see the volunteers at target-practice, and pointing out one or two pieces of artillery that had been imported. The chiefs were decidedly impressed, and, seeing them in such a satisfactory frame of mind, Savage conducted them to the inn where he purposed staying the night and went about his purchases.