Sunset Ranch: A Story of a Boy's Adventures in the West — page 144: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

132 An Indian Brave. men, who usually treat their squaws like slaves, but it might be possible that Standing Elk’s spouse had a tongue which gave him some trouble. Cuthbert knew how to get into the good graces of the other sex, and he went to considerable trouble now to conciliate the buxom squaw, with such success that she was presently beaming upon him indulgently. He assisted her with the fire, something no boy or man had perhaps ever done before in the whole course of her natural life, to judge from the ex- pression of amazement that first spread over her countenance. Cuthbert soon came to the conclusion that Indian life was very one-sided—that to the male half fell all the good times, the jolly rides, the fishing and hunting trips, and the frequent spells of sweet idle- ness, while the women were usually busily engaged cooking, making pemmican, grinding corn or berries in coffee-mills purchased from traders, sewing buck- skin, bead-trimmed moccasins, or something of this sort. Still, they were able to come together and hold conversation while they worked, and this he soon learned was their great privilege. The dogs of the village were both numerous and ugly. They showed their teeth and growled at the white boy, doubtless looking on him in the light of an intruder, and this became such a nuisance that Cuthbert resolved to put a stop to it. Accordingly he possessed himself of the first likely-looking cudgel and bided his time. When a troop of the mangy curs disputed his right to free passage, he bounded into their midst and laid about him with such right good will that a panic ensued. Such barking and howling as ensued, such a scam- pering of dogs with tails between their legs; every COMIGIOOKSHEO