Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/91

Rh A boy in those days always wore his best clothes, not because he was vain, but because he had only one suit; so when we got out of bed in the morning we did not have to dress before breakfast, and we enjoyed this change; for we had been required to dress before breakfast so long that it had become monotonous. Our appearance at the table the first time attracted some attention and was the subject of several remarks, but they do not belong to this story. After breakfast we skipped out to the garden, dug up our clothes and dressed. Then we visited the battlefield; the cannon was there but the skunk had gone. We removed the gun to the garden and left it to deodorize at leisure. There was no danger of anything with a nose disturbing it. Abount noon, becoming ahungered, we approached the house and had reached the porch when we were warned away with threats of violence and told to go to the kitchen window. There our dinner was handed out to us in a squaw-cap on the end of a pole.

The full text of the law in our case was now promulgated: Our garments must be buried in the earth three days and three nights. If the clothes were in the ground only of nights, then the program to be carried out would take nearly a week— we chose the longer horn of the dilemma. In the course of three or four days, being confined from day to day to our own society, we began to feel lonesome and made several attempts to enlarge our circle. We tried to approach the dogs, but they declined our advances. We discovered Jake passing by one day and tried to engage him in social chat, but before we got very near him a zephyr passed by and gave him our wind and he began to make off talking back in Chinook, saying among other things, "Uh! hyas humm, skukum humm now witka; clonas mika muckamuck humm-ena"—"Uh! big smell, strong smell you bet; may be you eat skunk." He also made warlike signs, such as taking hold of his hair at the crown with his left hand and putting an arrow in his teeth with his right. The cannon stood there heavily charged and we would have taken a shot at the impudent and ungrateful savage, if we'd had a live coal, but we hadn't and we didn't have time to disrobe and run into the house after one. I think I might have been justified in shooting him on the spot, for you know it hadn't been long since I had given him a whole plug of tobacco I had