"Now the white man picked up the stick from the ground where it had fallen and again took the horn of black sand and did the same things to the stick as before, but this time the Indians all stood away from him. They didn't know what was going to happen. After the white man had finished doing these things, he persuaded them to come out of doors with him. Then he sat down on the ground and put the stick to his shoulder, pointing it toward a log that was lying on the ground. Again the terrible noise was heard, but the white man didn't let go the stick. He held it in his hand. Then he got up and walked over to the log and showed the bullet hole, and pushed a little stick into it. Then he loaded the gun again. "By this time the Indians were beginning to understand the power of this stick; and at last, after the white man had loaded the gun again and encouraged the Indians, he took one of them close to the log and showed him how to point the gun and how to pull the trigger. The Indian fired and hit the log. I reckon when he found that he had hit it he thought that he was one of the biggest men in the country. "Well, after a while the Indians and the white men got to be pretty friendly. The Indians could see that knives and axes and copper cups, to say nothing of guns, were a heap better than anything they had; and the white men on the other hand wanted the furs and dresses that the Indians wore. They traded for them, and after a while the Indians and the white people got to know each other pretty well, and commenced to trade regularly. "And that's the story as I heard it." "You told that mighty well, Mason," commented Hugh; "a great deal better than anybody else could tell it, except perhaps old John Monroe, or some of those old Piegans." "But I want a lot of explanation," said Joe. "What about those fellows with the red tails? I don't savvy that a bit. I can understand about the red bodies, because I suppose that means they wore red shirts, but what about the red tails?" "Well, Joe," replied Hugh, "you've never been out in that northern country or else you wouldn't ask a question like that. The old voyageurs and people in the North always used to wear a red sash tied around their waist with the long ends hanging down in front. When they were working, to get these ends out of the way, they used to pass them around their body, and then under the sash, so that they hung down behind." "Well," laughed Joe, "that certainly is the limit." "And," Jack said, "just think of their taking a tree chopped down with an ax for one cut down by a beaver; and their not knowing the foot-prints of a person wearing a shoe!"