1.

In the early days of detachable cuffs and ten-cent whisky there had been a difference of opinion manifest in the railroad surveying party at Granger.

Part of the gang headed northward to the salmon country; the rest of them blazed a trail to the southwest, where the sand fleas live on artichokes.

Lily and her escort were headed southwest towards San Francisco. Presently the Wildcat's car was cut into a train whose trail led northward through Idaho and Oregon.

Lady Luck meanwhile had a hard time keeping up. Exhausted finally with her efforts, she set the stage a few hundred miles ahead and lay down and went to sleep. While she was sleeping a pair of hard boiled actors in the drama rummaged around in the woodshed back of a log house near the banks of the Columbia river.

Pete, a skinny character with ears like a loving cup, raked three wheat sacks out of a pile of lumber.

Into two of these sacks he cut a pair of holes two inches in diameter and about four inches apart. The third sack he left intact. He handed one of the sacks to his partner.

"Here she is; see if it fits you."

A fat bad actor by the name of Bill slipped the sack over his head. "Little narrow between the eyes."

Three hours later these two agents of Lady Luck engaged in a little hard work in their search for easy money. The product of their energy took shape in the form of a pyramid of old ties piled between the rails of the line over which the Wildcat was approaching in his twelve-wheeled cage.

Ten minutes before the train was due and while her crossing whistles could be heard in the dusk five miles up-stream, the two bad actors scrambled up the south bank of the Columbia. The skinny one poured a quart bottle of coal oil on the pile of ties and lighted it. The fat man lighted a cigarette.

Both of them drew the wheat sacks over their heads. The fat man carried the third wheat sack slung at his waist on a string which went around his shoulder.

The stillness of evening was broken by the roar of a locomotive whistle, and an instant later the wheels of the train smoked and screeched against the chattering brake shoes. In the cab ahead the handle of the air valve was slammed into the big notch.

The flagman swung down from the rear end of the train and ambled back along the track for half the regulation distance. He set his lantern in the middle of the track and rolled a cigarette. Three lanterns flashed along the train, where the train countered a locked door. Inside the car, on a seat to see what was going on.

Presently they found out and took their places beside the fireman and engineer, hands raised.

With his wheat sack dangling more heavily on his hip as he progressed through the train, the fat bad actor skimmed the Pullman cream on his way forward to the plated jewelry in the day coach.

On the vestibule of the Wildcat's car he encountered a locked door. Inside the car, on a seat beside the rag-head Hindoo, the Wildcat curled himself up as a preface to twelve long chapters of easy sleep.

"Sho's noble when de train stops; boy can sleep peaceful 'thout gittin' his insides scrambled."

"Bam!"

The fat bad actor shot the lock off the door of the Wildcat's car.

"Boy sure can sleep noble. Good mawnin--"

The rest of the sentence was action and not words. On the echo of the shot from the fat bad actor's gun the Wildcat leaped automatically. He ran fast enough to sidestep two more shots that crashed into the night after him. The Hindoo passed him in the darkness.

Down along the track the Wildcat's feet tore up great gobs of right-of-way. He passed the flagman, going like a brunet typhoon ten days overdue. After the first mile he began putting his feet down a little slower before he stepped on them. At the second mile his hind legs were dragging, and then suddenly, instead of the hard ground beneath his feet, there was nothing but a black void.

He rolled a few times like a 'possum falling off a limb. He landed on the hard sand of the river bank. Night had fallen.

"Lady Luck, here us is. Whah at is we?"

The Wildcat curled up and went to sleep.

He woke up five minutes later. "Sho' is peaceful. How come I's so thirsty?"

Beside him the river offered him a solution to his thirst problems. On all fours he crawled to the river edge. He shoved his bow under the water and nearly sank himself absorbing as much of the Columbia river as could flow into his wide mouth.

"Whuff! Sho' is noble water."

The black rippling water before him was suddenly shot with silver. Then it became a solid glistening black. A school of smelt, seeking the quiet water of the bank, fought their way upstream. The Wildcat reached a tentative exploring paw into the stream of fish.

"Fish, howdy. De table sho' is set. Come out heah."

With his bare hands he snatched ashore a breakfast four sizes too big for his optimistic estimate of his stomach's capacity.

"Quit floppin'. Ole Wilecat's done caught you." He felt for the box of Pullman matches in the pocket of his shirt, beneath the folds of the parade-leading Prince Albert. Here was food and a chance to sleep. With the Wildcat, all was well.

He accumulated a pile of firewood from the river bank, and presently a great fire was blazing. For an hour he gorged himself on smelt.

"Whuff! Sho's noble fish. Now I sees kin I sleep me."

The twinkling stars rattled in their orbits in cadence to the Wildcat's snores. Sufficient unto the night was the evil thereof. Here, except for a few sand fleas, was peace. The Wildcat snuggled deeper into the intimate environment of the sand about him. His lower jaw dropped, and his tongue lolled out less than a foot. Three or four mosquitoes landed on him and did a little boring, but the Wildcat slept on. Presently the halo of fish about him quit flopping. In the dark waters of the river's margin their myriad brethren fought their way upstream. The Wildcat mumbled in his sleep,

"Lady Luck sure done noble.
I sleeps mos' all de time.
I don' give a dog-gone
If de sun don't nevah shine."

2.

In the Cascades there had been berries enough for the bears and for the Indians. Now that the salmon run was heralded in the Columbia by the little fish scouts, all of the scattered members of the Flathead tribe not otherwise engaged coagulated from their several loafing grounds and headed for Memloose Island to pay their annual respects to the ghost of the King Salmon.

Included in the tribe were a few solid citizens. Some of these were college graduates. John Running Bear, better known to the business men of The Dalles as John Franklin, left his tailored clothes at home and painted his brown body with yellow ochre. He stained his arms and face with the tribal marks of his people. He drove in his twelve-cylinder car to a point near the upstream tip of Memloose Island, whereon the Flathead salmon dance was to be held. He parked his car in a thicket of willows.

"Safe enough," he said to his companion. "If some bundle-stiff or some drifter from a sheep camp up the line needs the old wagon more than I do, he's welcome to it. Let's go."

At dawn Running Bear and his companions encountered a hundred of their fellows. From the camp the smoke of the cooking fires lifted in the still air. Running Bear opened a tin of chicken. He sighed.

"This is the last civilized meal for the next six days."

He breakfasted slowly, lingering over his coffee, and then half reluctantly the last trace of civilization's veneer was cast aside.

"Clee Hy Yah Skookum Kum chuck. Waugh!"

3.

Half a mile upstream from the Indian camp the Wildcat greeted the dawn. Building a quick fire, he looked about him at the wrinkled little fish, drying in the early morning sunlight. Slithering past him in the water still persisted the mad rush of racing myriads. He threw the dead fish back into the stream and raked out a fresher breakfast.

He poulticed a dozen fish with maple leaves and threw them in the glowing coals of his fire. Ten minutes later he again began the business of gorging himself on free fish.

"Don't cost me nuthin'." He clawed the water for another dozen handfuls. "Free fish, howdy doo.

"I eats when I can git it.
I sleeps mos' all de time."

Gorged to the bursting point, the Wildcat rolled over in the warm sunlight. He preferred not to go to sleep again, but in five minutes he was snoring along at his old sixty-mile gait. He slept all day.

He was discovered and surrounded at evening by Running Bear and the rest of the tribe.

Running Bear sized up the situation and pulled off a pow-wow with three or four of his companions. They arrived at a verdict.

"A little black-face vaudeville might liven things up. These blasted tribal ceremonies need a cabaret attachment to jazz them up. How about it, redskins?"

"Let's go."

The verdict was unanimous.

Somewhere in the Wildcat's dreams there presently developed a rhythm in which the cadence of dancing feet punctuated his slumbers. His eyes opened finally, and within the range of his vision passed a parade of leaping figures. To his ears came the regular booming beat of a deerskin tom-tom, punctuated by an occasional blood-curdling yell.

His memory failed him.

"How come dis voodoo bizness?"

He sat up. He got to his feet and instinctively crouched to a running position.

The ring of dancing warriors about him tightened up.

"Lady Luck, whah is you?"

Running Bear lifted a flint-tipped spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs of the dove of peace.

In spite of his fish-distended anatomy, the Wildcat shrivelled to boy's size.

Running Bear emitted several mouthfuls of language.

"Naw suh, not me." The Wildcat denied everything. "I ain't only a field han'. Lemme by, boy. Whah at's yo' pants? How come you runnin' around nekked?"

"Waugh!"

Six Indians seized the Wildcat, and a moment later he was seated in the stern of a twenty-foot skiff, which presently embarked upon the surface of the Columbia. Beside the Wildcat sat Running Bear, speaking a fluent mixture of Flathead and Chinook.

In time with Running Bear's measured periods, the Wildcat rolled his eyes. Now and then when the Indian's sense of humour got the best of him he varied his Chinook jargon with Wild shrieks of laughter.

"Sounds like dem crazy folks in dat car comin' from Chicago. Seems like de whole worl' done got crowded wid fools. What you laffin' at, boy?"

In a little while the party landed at Memloose Island. Before them, rising sharply against the evening sky, drooping cottonwoods lifted high above an undergrowth of willows. The party marched down a little trail for half the length of the island, and then, at a point where the trail divided into the sombre interior of the wooded terrain, they left the sunlight.

After a march of a hundred yards they came upon a clearing. About the clearing in the fringing woods were fifty rickety structures lifted on poles. On each of these, with its grinning skull lying towards the east, lay a skeleton.

The Wildcat began to sweat. He counted a dozen skeletons and added a few dozen prayers to his perspiration. In a green alcove opening from the wider clearing seven skeletons stood erect in a ring about a flat stone.

His captors carried the Wildcat to this stone and held him. A little apart from him Running Bear opened the services with a yell which echoed like a chorus from the inferno.

The Wildcat gave up hope.

"They sho' got me. What dey is I don' know. Lemme go, boys."

The smoke from a dozen fires lifted in the clearing. Staggering in from half a dozen paths came as many painted warriors, each bearing on his back a salmon nearly as long as its red-skinned carrier.

Running Bear abandoned the vernacular f............