A stout German woman who sat near by also seemed to be looking upon the chicken as though she would like to help me make away with it. With that magnanimity which was ever my peculiar characteristic, I severed the pope’s nose from the trunk and proffered her the delicious morsel, when, to my utter astonishment and confusion, she whipped out of her pocket a big bologna sausage the size of a stuffed club, and shook it triumphantly in my face, so close that it might have greased the end of my nose. She actually scouted the idea. Independent, proud and self-sustaining, these Germans, and no mistake. She evidently felt insulted, and delivered herself of a long essay in the German tongue. She was undoubtedly giving me to understand that she was able to furnish grists for her own mill. Of course that is what she meant. I could tell that by the way she flourished the bologna, and pointed to her mouth and stomach. I expected she was about to whack me over the jaw with the singular looking weapon, and prepared to dodge on the shortest possible notice. But she didn’t. As if to madden me, she commenced eating the sausage in a hasty, excited manner, taking about two inches at a bite. What could I do? What did I do? Why, let her eat it, of course; it was none of my business. I had no objection, so long as she didn’t choke, and render it necessary for me to pat her upon the back, which I certainly thought I would have to do before she finished her meal. You may be sure I offered no more chicken to any person after that, but picked the bones as bare as pen-holders. If she liked bologna better than a choice piece of fowl, it was her fault, not mine. I washed my hands of the whole affair. I stopped a few hours at a mill in the mountains, and while there witnessed an amusing incident. There was a small pipe leading from the engine, and projecting through the side of the building close to the ground. Through this pipe the waste water was conveyed from the engine, and at the end of it quite a puddle or drain had been formed, about a foot in width and eight or ten feet in length. The constant dripping from the pipe kept the water warm, and from it a steam was continually rising. There were several Indian camps in the vicinity of the mill, and as wood was rather scarce, the squaws belonging to the camps were in the habit of congregating around this warm drain when the cold weather numbed their poorly protected limbs. It was not an unusual thing to see half a dozen coming down the hill to squat beside the drain, and there sit for hours discussing the current topics of the day, enjoying at the same time the luxury of a cheap steam bath.