“The red-skin give a hiccup or two, and then said he didn’t run away with the boat at all. That he got into it to take a nap, and when he woke up, he found it had run away with him, and he thought the Great Father of the red-men in Washington orter send him some presents for the outrage he had suffered. “Wal, when he said that, thar was a screech through the camp, that almost lifted the ha’r off my head and Colonel Stebbins shook so hard, that the top of the barrel he was sittin’ on broke through, and droppin’ a couple of feet down into it, he got wedged so fast he couldn’t get out. While two or three of his officers was tryin’ to pull him and the barrel apart, the Injin gave the hoops a whack with his tomahawk, that made the staves fly apart, and let him out ag’in. “When things had got sobered down a little, the colonel put him on his trial for stealing a bottle of whisky, and I’ll be shot ef he didn’t deny it right squar’, and then ax the officer to prove it on him. Who see’d him do it? Whar was the man? He axed him to be fotched. That was another stunner, and all Colonel Stebbins could do, when he got over laughin’, was to ax the red-skin, whar he got the liquor that made him drunk, and that all could smell on him that minute. With another hiccup, he said that wasn’t nobody’s business, and he’d see ’em all hanged fust, and then he turned round and axed the colonel whar he got the whisky that _he_ got drunk on. “That turned the laugh on him, and fur fifteen minutes, the other officers rolled over on the ground, and the colonel had to hold his sides to keep from bu’stin’. When he got things kind of quieted down, he told the red-skin that the charges wa’n’t sustained and he might go; but afore he left camp, the officers gave him a half-dozen blankets, a new rifle, ammunition, beads, trinkets till he could hardly carry ’em all. You see he had got the best of ’em all so well, that they liked him, and war willing to do any thing in the world for him.” “And was that the last you heard of him?” asked Little Rifle. “Not by a long shot; that night the confounded scamp stole into camp, run off two of the best horses we had, and come powerful near scalping Colonel Stebbins himself.” “What was it that prevented?” “The colonel wore a wig, and when the Nez Perce grabbed his hair, you see it come off without using his knife. So he stuck a couple of eagle-feathers in the top, and set on the head of one of the mules, and then skedaddled. I’ve always ’spicioned that that Injin had white blood in him.” “His stealing the whisky bottle looks very much like it. Was _that_ the question you wished me to settle?” asked Harry. “No; I come near forgettin’ it. What I wanted to ask was, whether in law that varmint run away with the boat, or whether it run away with him. I’ve often thought of it since, but have never been able to make out which way it would be. How do you think it would be decided down in Fr’isco?”