some yellowish, and the black mop of his straight hair, you might
have thought here was an ordinary man out of the city directory that
subscribes for magazines and pushes the lawn-mower in his shirt-sleeves
of evenings.

"Then the train rolled in, and a little woman in a gray dress, with sort
of illuminating hair, slides off and looks around quick. And the Boy
Avenger sees her, and yells 'Mamma,' and she cries 'O!' and they meet
in a clinch, and now the pesky redskins can come forth from their caves
on the plains without fear any more of the rifle of Roy, the Red Wolf.
Mrs. Conyers comes up and thanks me an' John Tom without the usual
extremities you always look for in a woman. She says just enough, in
a way to convince, and there is no incidental music by the orchestra.
I made a few illiterate requisitions upon the art of conversation, at
which the lady smiles friendly, as if she had known me a week. And then
Mr. Little Bear adorns the atmosphere with the various idioms into which
education can fracture the wind of speech. I could see the kid's mother
didn't quite place John Tom; but it seemed she was apprised in his
dialects, and she played up to his lead in the science of making three
words do the work of one.

"That kid introduced us, with some footnotes and explanations that made
things plainer than a week of rhetoric. He danced around, and punched
us in the back, and tried to climb John Tom's leg. 'This is John Tom,
mamma,' says he. 'He's a Indian. He sells medicine in a red wagon. I
shot him, but he wasn't wild. The other one's Jeff. He's a fakir, too.
Come on and see the camp where we live, won't you, mamma?'

"It is plain to see that the life of the woman is in that boy. She has
got him again where her arms can gather him, and that's enough. She's