"
"I'll bet it's a Whangerdoodle."
Yan merely chuckled in answer to this.
"Don't you laugh," said the Woodpecker, solemnly, "You'd be more apt
to cry if you seen one walk into the teepee blowing the whistle at the
end of his tail. Then it'd be, 'Oh, Sam, where's the axe?'"
"Tell you what I do believe it is," said Yan, not noticing this
terrifying description; "it's a Skunk."
"Little Beaver, my son! I thought I would tell you, then I sez to
meself, 'No; it's better for him to find out by his lone. Nothing like
a struggle in early life to develop the stuff in a man. It don't do to
help him too much,' sez I, an' so I didn't."
Here Sam condescendingly patted the Second War Chief on the head and
nodded approvingly. Of course he did not know as much about the track
as Yan did, but he prattled on:
"Little Beaver! you're a heap struck on tracks--Ugh--good! You kin
tell by them everything that passes in the night. Wagh! Bully! You're
likely to be the naturalist of our Tribe. But you ain't got gumption.
Now, in this yer hunting-ground of our Tribe there is only one place
where you can see a track, an' that is that same mud-bank; all the
rest is hard or grassy.
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