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 taken care of, and would be waiting when the white men asked for them again.

"Well, I for one am glad to be away," said George Shannon, when in the morning of October 7 the canoes, laden and manned, their oar-blades flashing, headed into mid-stream. "These Nez Percés are a good people—'bout the best looking Injuns we've seen—but they're mighty independent. They don't give anything for nothing."

"No. And they even hold us to small account because we eat dogs," quoth Joe Fields. "But if a man wants meat, in their village, it's eat fish, hoss or dog—an' dog's the only stuff with any strength."

That was true. Lacking better meat, the captains finally were buying the Pierced Noses' work-dogs—for dog-meat had been found good, back at the Sioux camps on the Missouri. Drouillard and Cruzatte and the other Frenchmen preferred it even to deer. But the Pierced Noses sneered at the white "dog-eaters."

Why they were called "Pierced Noses" nobody could tell. However, old Toby claimed that below there were other, real Pierced Noses, and also real Flat-heads.

Chief Twisted-hair and a second chief, Tetoh, were aboard the captains' canoe, to help the white men pass through the other villages, into the "Tim-tim-m-m" river.

As for old Toby and his son, on the third day out, during a halt they suddenly were espied running away