whoop at the end of it, and swings the kid ten feet high and sets him on
his shoulder, and the runaway fingers the fringe and the eagle feathers
and is full of the joy the white man knows when he dangles his heels
against an inferior race. It is plain that Little Bear and that kid are
chums from that on. The little renegade has already smoked the pipe of
peace with the savage; and you can see in his eye that he is figuring on
a tomahawk and a pair of moccasins, children's size.

"We have supper in the tent. The youngster looks upon me and the
Professor as ordinary braves, only intended as a background to the camp
scene. When he is seated on a box of Sum-wah-tah, with the edge of the
table sawing his neck, and his mouth full of beefsteak, Little Bear
calls for his name. 'Roy,' says the kid, with a sirloiny sound to it.
But when the rest of it and his post-office address is referred to, he
shakes his head. 'I guess not,' he says. 'You'll send me back. I want to
stay with you. I like this camping out. At home, we fellows had a camp
in our back yard. They called me Roy, the Red Wolf! I guess that'll do
for a name. Gimme another piece of beefsteak, please.'

"We had to keep that kid. We knew there was a hullabaloo about him
somewheres, and that Mamma, and Uncle Harry, and Aunt Jane, and the
Chief of Police were hot after finding his trail, but not another word
would he tell us. In two days he was the mascot of the Big Medicine
outfit, and all of us had a sneaking hope that his owners wouldn't turn
up. When the red wagon was doing business he was in it, and passed up
the bottles to Mr. Peters as proud and satisfied as a prince that's
abjured a two-hundred-dollar crown for a million-dollar parvenuess. Once
John Tom asked him something about his papa. 'I ain't got any papa,' he
says. 'He runned away and left us. He made my mamma cry. Aunt Lucy says
he's a shape.' 'A what?' somebody asks him. 'A shape,' says the kid;