"Well, there were plenty in the valley, Klick-i-tats and Calapooyas--these last were a mean set at that. The valley was all over bunch-grass waist-high, and the hills were full of elk and deer." "Had the old man any stock?" "He had just brought a few with him from Missouri over the Plains, and fine store he set by them. You see the Indians used to come and beg for flour and sugar, and a beef now and then. Some of the neighbors would give them a beef at times, but the old man used to say he hadn't brought no cattle to give to them varmints." "How did they manage to live at first?" "Well, the old man used to go off for a week at a time to Oregon City to work on the boats there at his trade of a ship-carpenter. He had to foot it there and back, and pack flour and bacon on his back for his folks, and a tramp of sixty miles at that." "Did the Indians bother any while he was gone?" "One time a pack of them came round the cabin and got saucy, finding only the old lady at home. They crowded into the house and began to help themselves, but the old lady she took the axe and soon made them clear out. When the old man came back she told him about it. 'Well,' says he, 'I reckon I shall have to stop at home a day or two and fix these varmints.' So three or four days afterward back they came. "The old man he kept out of sight, and the buck they called the chief came in and began to lay hold of anything he fancied. "Then the old man showed himself in the doorway with his old rifle on his arm. He looked the chief up and down, and then he says to his wife: 'Do you see that bunch of twigs over the fireplace? You take them down, and go through that fellow while the twigs hold together!' And he says to the Indian, 'You raise a finger against that woman, and I'll blow the top of your head off!' So the old lady takes down the willow-twigs, and goes for the Indian for all there was in it, and beats him round and round the house till there wasn't a whole twig in the bunch. Lord! You should have seen the whole crowd of twenty or thirty Indians splitting with laughter to see the white squaw go for the chief. I tell you, sir, that Indian made the quickest time on record back to the camp as soon as she let him go, and that crowd never bothered that cabin any more. Now, wasn't that much better than shooting and fighting, and kicking up the worst kind of a muss?" "Well, I guess so. Did he have any more bother with the Indians?"