four at a time through a long chute, and halted at the gate at the end of it until their owner’s names were marked off the list. The Indians were gathered in front of the gate in long rows, or in groups of ten or twelve, sitting easily in their saddles, and riding off leisurely in bunches of four as their names were called out, and as their cattle were started off with a parting kick into the open prairie. The Apaches, Comanches, Delawares, and Towacomies drove their share off towards their camps; the Caddoes and the Kiowas, who live near the agency, and who were served last, killed theirs, if they chose to do so, as soon as they left the pen. A man in charge of the issue held a long paper in his hand, and called out, “Eck-hoos-cho, Pe-an-voon-it, Hoos-cho, and Cho-noo-chy,” which meant that Red-Bird, Large-Looking-Glass, The Bird, and Deer-Head were to have the next four steers. His assistant, an Indian policeman, with “God helps them who help themselves” engraved on his brass buttons, with the figure of an Indian toiling at a plough in the centre, repeated these names aloud, and designated which steer was to go to which Indian. [Illustration: THE BEEF ISSUE AT ANADARKO] A beef issue is not a pretty thing to watch. Why the Government does not serve its meat with the throats cut, as any reputable butcher would do, it is not possible to determine. It seems to prefer, on the contrary, that the Indian should exhibit his disregard for the suffering of animals and his bad marksmanship at the same time. When the representatives of the more distant tribes had ridden off, chasing their beef before them, the Caddoes and Kiowas gathered close around the gate of the pen, with the boys in front. They were handsome, mischievous boys, with leather leggings, colored green and blue and with silver buttons down the side, and beaded buckskin shirts. They sat two on each pony, and each held his bow and arrows, and as the steers came stumbling blindly out into the open, they let the arrows drive from a distance of ten feet into the animal’s flank and neck, where they stuck quivering. Then the Indian boys would yell, and their fathers, who had hunted buffaloes with arrows, smiled approvingly. The arrows were not big enough to kill, they merely hurt, and the steer would rush off into a clumsy gallop for fifty yards, when its owner would raise his Winchester, and make the dust spurt up around it until one bullet would reach a leg, and the steer would stop for an instant, with a desperate toss of its head, and stagger forward again on three. The dogs to the number of twenty or more were around it by this time in a snarling, leaping pack, and the owner would try again, and wound it perhaps in the flank, and it would lurch over heavily like a drunken man, shaking its head from side to side and tossing its horns at the dogs, who bit at the place where the blood ran, and snapped at its legs. Sometimes it would lie there for an hour, until it bled to death,