“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Wilde not unkindly and with some approach to seriousness in his voice and manner, “you scout kids are all right. You get lots of fresh air and exercise and they’re the best things for you. You go stalking June-bugs and caterpillars and it keeps you out of mischief. It’s just the difference between the amateur and the professional. Now you kids go in for these things as a pastime and that’s all right. You’re having the time of your lives. I’m for the boy scouts first, last and always. Stalking, tracking, etc., you make games out of all those things, and they’re bully good games too. You’re a pretty wide-awake bunch. But you’ll never do these things in a serious way because you don’t _have to_. Get me?” “We don’t get a chance,” said Westy. “Now you take a kid born out in the wilds—like this kid I’ve got waiting for me—Stove Polish or whatever his name is; he’s an Indian.” “Who?” said Westy. “What?” said Warde. “_Stove Polish?_” gasped Ed. “Shining Sun his name is,” said Mr. Wilde. “Sounds like some kind of stove polish so I call him Stove Polish——” “Where is he?” Westy asked, all excitement. “He’s waiting out at the Mammoth Hotel at Hot Springs with Mr. Creston; you’ll see him. He’s going up in the mountains with Clip and me. Now that kid is what you’d call a scout, the little rascal. He had to be a scout or starve. He didn’t read his little book and raise up his hand and say he was going to be a scout. He just got to be a scout because he had to. “When you’re in the Rocky Mountains a couple of hundred miles from the nearest town and the nearest town consists of one house, why, it’s a case of you or the Rocky Mountains—which wins. See? If you stay lost you starve. If you don’t know the signs you’re out of luck. If you don’t know what herbs to eat you don’t get any dinner. If you can’t tell where to look for a cave by the looks of the land, why then, you stay out in the rain and snow. See? If you haven’t got a gun the only way you can catch a bird is to fool him. So he knows how to fool them. You fellows are scouts because you want to have a lot of fun. But Stove Polish is a scout because he wants to live; he has to be one, or he did have to up to a year or two ago. He knows how to run without making a sound because if he made a sound it would be all up with him.” “You said it,” enthused Warde. “Why, a couple of years or more ago,” continued Mr. Wilde, “when that little rascal escaped from the Cheyenne reservation right back here a few miles, he got into the mountains and nobody heard a word from him for a year and a half—never even sent a post card saying he was having a nice time or anything. Beaver Pete found him up in the mountains and brought him down to Yellowstone and Mr. Creston snapped him up like a used Cadillac. Well now, that kid is a full-blooded Cheyenne Indian; he’s a grandson of old Stick-in-the-mud who was in the Custer scrap. You’ve heard of that old geezer, haven’t you?