“Hello, Kill!” said the General, still keeping his feet upon the table. “Take a chair.”
Mr. Smith prepared the beverage, placed himself swiftly outside of it, elevated his feet until they rested close to those of the General, and said,--
“Oh, pretty well! tolerable! The Committee have promised to consider your case to-morrow, and I want you to be on hand, ready to tell your story. You’ve got it straight, I reckon?”
“Let’s see. Your theory is that you were scalped by a Pottawatomie Indian in 1862. Now, where is that scalp?”
“In my trunk. Between ourselves, you know, I bought it of an Indian in Laramie year before last.”
“Very well. Now, what is the name of the Indian who scalped you?”
“I was trying to convert him by reading the Scriptures to him.”
“See here, Kill, isn’t that a little thin? He couldn’t understand the language, you know. I’m afraid that won’t wash.”
“S’pos’n’ the Committee ask you to prove that you know the language?”
“I’ll get off some gibberish, and you can assure them that you recognize it as pure Pottawatomie.”
“Very well. Now, what particular part of the--the--Scriptures were you reading to him?”
“I dunno. Let’s see; what are some of the books?”
“Don’t ask me; I’m not very well posted. We used to have a Bible out in the Kansas Legislature, to swear members on, but they always kept a string tied around it, and after it was stolen a rumor got around that the clerk swore a whole House of Representatives in on Kidderminster’s Digest of the State Laws.”
“Jonah’s the only book I recall very distinctly now.”
“That’ll do, if you can remember something in it. I connect it indistinctly with reminiscences of a whale.”
“Yes. Well, I was trying to convert that Indian by reading to him about Jonah and the whale, when he rose up suddenly and began fumbling about my hair with a carving-knife.”
“The Committee may go into detail. Now, why did he do this? Is the narrative calculated in any way to excite the nervous system of an untutored child of the forest?”
“Nothing in it about depriving persons of their hair? Don’t say Jonah was scalped, hey?”
“Did your assailant accompany the act with any conversation?”
“He merely remarked ‘How!’ and I thought I caught some rather indistinct reference to the Happy Hunting Grounds; but I’ll only swear to ‘How.’”