Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-11-06

1t appeE more or less frequently,
said a travelling inspector of the lndiaa
agencies. that an educated buck Indian
deSenerates in the long run into a bad
proposition. I'm thinking particularly OF
an educated Oregon Indian, about three
quarter blood. who got the bighead 50
bad, after he had been polished off mem
tally at school. that he never mixed sup
with his people when he returned from
the east. He was a tmatilla. He was
sent first to Carlisle. Pa. n whenhhe
had finished there he was passed on to
John hopkins university in Baltimore,
to take the law course there. 1t was IN
view that he was to become the attorney
for his tribe, upon the conclusion of his
Observation-Disclosures. He squeezed
through at Johns Hopkins. and then he
was told of a nice, fat thing that awaited
him out among his own people. He turn
ed the proposition dow cold. He said
fatty that he had no intention whatayer
of mixing up with his own bunch at all
any more. He likewise remarked that he
knew his gait. and that he intended to
follow it.
"A couple of months after he quit Bal
timore he turned up at The Dalles, in
western Oregon. and settled down to the
career of a short-poker player. Where ne
had picked up the game it woul be hard
to say; but he certainly was a daisy at 1T.
There wasn't a kink in the game that he
didn't have the hang of. 1t did not take
the square people of The Dalles long to
get next to the fact that this educated
Indian. who had coolly taken up his abode
among them, was a cheat and a swindler.
and that his sole occupation consisted in
fleeing pulp-headed young tourists. The
men at The Dalles who had the interest
of the place at heart would point the
sWellerino buck out to young strangers
! who looked as if they might be likely vic
Tins of the Indian short-card f1eeCer, and
tell the young goslinss just where and
how the buck stood. 1t may sound in
credible, but. even after being warned IN
this fashion, Il whole lot of the young adj
lepates fell into the bucks mesh and got
themselves done to a proper urn by him.
The buck was six feet three inches high,
and weighed 235 pounds, and he looked
like a macerator from the high ridges. so
he was never called by any of his Dalles
victims, even when they knew the details
Of how they'd been plucked. One poor lit
tie devil of a rich mans son from Oman
broke down and w~himpered one night
when the Indian had removed about $500
from him by dealing from both end and
the middle of the deck, and he said to the
buck piteously:
81 just hope you've played fair, that's
ALL
'"The Indian reached over and struck
the pollywog with all his force on both
sides of the face with his two open palms.
leaving the blood-red marks of his fin
gers on the lambs fair cheeks. The whin-
ing victim drilled for his life up the hotel
stairs to his room. and the indian looked
after him sardonically. There wasn't a
nan about that didn't know hat the In
dian had scandalously cheated the lad,
but not one of them said a word. There
was a lynx-eyed. hig-framed, premature
ly g~ray-haired man. a stranger, standing
at the hotel desk, reading a just arrived
letter, when the thing happened. His face
flushed angrily when he saw the burly In
dian slap the understood fool of a boy,
and he turned TO the hotel clerk and re-
marked:
Is this the real thing here? Does the
gang stand for that kind of work on the
part of a mud -hided raW-meater?' There
was plenty of contempt in the way the
stranger spoke.
"The clerk shrugged his shoulders. we
can't undertake to cut in Oh any of the
plays of our guests he replied. We Just
board and lodge 'em, that's all. If they're
guys enough to mix up with grafters, it's
their game, and we're not asking for any
rake-doWn one way or the other
THE stranger muttered something
about a hicken-iivered population, and
strolled out. He took the train an hour
! or two later.
about three months after he had left
the marks of his fingers on the lambs
face at The Dalles, this vas in the fall
of 92,-the Indian turned up one day at
| Walla Walla, Washington. He strolled
| around the hotel corridors with an eye to
business, and along toward night he met
with a young fellow named HELEN,
whose father, a wealthy Chicago man,
had raeanf1y forEe1OSa6 a n1nrtpay p on a
big ranch about sixty miles from Walia
Walla. The son, a raw young chap, had
come to look he ranch over, and the In
| dian got next to him as soon as he struck
the town. The buck was an expert bill
lard player, and he suggested a game of
pin billiards to the young HELEN chap.
He played off on the youth, and soon got
him to betting on shots. After losing
| about a dozen five-dollar bets on shots.
the Indian soaked it to the young man
from Chicago by betting $500 that he
could execute a certain difficult shot,
which he did.
ut would naturally be thought that
| the tenderfoot would have smelled a rat
by this time, but he didn't. He had plenty
of money. and probably he considered it
piquant to lose his coin to a sWagger-
looking educated Indian. Anyhow, the
two were playing poker in the card-room
of Walla Walla's stag hotel half an hour
later. me youth from chicago Was the
merest mutt in the hands of the Indian,
and he lost from the jump. He would
stand pat on a full house, and the buck,
-drawing three cards, would still beat
him after sky-scraping betting. \ num-
Der of onlookers at the game have
seen the little side-plays of the Indian,
but they only grinned at each other over
the hopeless imbecility of the young man
from Chicago.
Finally the Indian, perhaps losing
some of his dexterity from the drinks he
was steadily absorbing, overstepped
himself. He filled two pairs from the
.ai.-.al a..d l,a-aidi Il al,anacilx Yha .