Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/91

 he trees. However much the Indians marveled at their easy capture, and, whatever of disappointment or chagrin they felt in their failure of wholesale extermination, their feelings were in a measure compensated by the sight that met their gaze when they crowded into the deserted school house.

On each side was ranged rough tables, ladened with everything dear to the human palate, from pie and cake to roast turkey and chicken. But what was more to the taste of the thirsty warriors, was the ostentatious display of several gallon demijohns and numerous black bottles distributed over the banquet boards.

Thus whetted, the appetite of these primeval men chafed with impatience the signal of their chief, who, after gravely inspecting the contents of one of the bottles, finally gave the delayed sign for the orgie to begin.

The chief — perhaps l^ecause of his long interview with the black bottle — was the tirst to pause in his gastronomic exercises. In the act of raising a succulent morsel of turkey to his -mouth, his eyes suddenly took on a far-away look and his mouth twitched convulsively.

Perhaps in that moment of introspection something in his inner being said to him that he had not been a good Indian. At least something mighty stirred within him, as he gave a spasmodic leap into the air, and with a yell that would have put a steam calliope out of commission, broke for the door and disappeared into the night.

It was only a matter of a minute or so more until the whole band of con- science-stricken Siwashes blazed a wide trail from there to the rancheria; nor did they stop until they had removed a hundred miles further from temptation. And it was manv vears before an Indian could be persuaded to come within ten miles of Wilcut. "

But Lank Peters — M'ith a wisdom gathered from close observation — disagrees emphaticallv in the general belief that "the only way to make a good Indian is to- kill him."

"Just give him a good stiff dose of ipecac,"' says he.

TANAKA THE COWARD

A Story of tke Russo-Japanese Vvar By J. Gordon Smith

OV^EE the mountain track the ever-lurching kuruma had jolted me down to Cliuzengi; the untiring kurumaya had jogged mile after mile, his brown skin glistening with moisture and caking with dust. His mush- room hat had bobbed before me, and, winking in the pitiless glare, I had seen dimly a ghostly landscape beyond a screen of dancing hats. The open shojis of the lake-side teahouses, revealing the lake, cool and blue, beyond the matted verandaS;, had been so inviting — and I had not resisted the invitation.

The flutter of a gay kimono', the twang of a samisen, the sight of dainty "musmees" flitting like the Initterflies they so much resembled, and I capitulated. Vainly the kurumaya said, "Honorably pardon, the august hotel is but one ri more." What else I had thought when the jinriksha stopped before the open door, now I knew my destination was here at the "august teahouse of the Honorable Stork."

There, as the sun sank, I drank tea, kneeling the while on a balcony that looked out upon a lake beyond which a dull brown hill showed hazily; beyond that hill was the world. Plaintively attuning the old song to her tinkling samisen, Ilaru San, the fairy sprite of this lakeside Elysium, sang for me:

"Time never changed since the way of the gods, The flowing of water ; the path of love." .