Sponge-belly’s lips moved with the earnestness of his counting. It seemed impossible that any human could be as ignorant of printed numbers and the insides of a book as Sponge-belly was.

“Well,” Doc said, “if that don’t beat all! You tell that red rooster he don’t need to count. All he’s got to do is ask me how many pages it is from one place to another, and I’ll ask the book, and the book’ll tell me. It talks to me, that book does. Saves a terrible lot of time, too.”

When Verrieul interpreted, Sponge-belly coughed up a guttural exclamation of disbelief.

Doc, nevertheless, held to it that if he was allowed to see only the corner of any page, it would whisper to him its location.

When Sponge-belly gave Doc a glimpse of the corner of the page containing the picture of a knapweed, Doc instantly said that it was separated from the front of the book by ninety sheets of paper.

To find out whether Doc told the truth, Sponge-belly counted the sheets. It was a skeptical lot of red men that counted with him. I must admit, too, that my own heart thumped and perspiration stood heavy on me, after they had counted beyond eighty, for fear Doc had failed to reckon the unnumbered pages at the beginning of the book, or had in some way been mistaken.

By the grace of God he had not miscalculated, and when Sponge-belly had turned ninety sheets, there was the likeness of the knapweed, flanked by a goldenrod and a lungwort.

Our captors had never doubted, I think, that they had a rare prize in Doc; but this astounding piece of magic convinced them that they possessed the leading magician of all time. They made guttural noises at each other and at Doc; and for half the night they sat around the fire, telling one another all about it, and trying unsuccessfully to catch Doc in a mistake. They gave us two of their beaver blankets, which had a high smell, compounded of grease, sweat and singed hair; but despite the smell we slept in comfort for the first time in weeks.

XLV

THERE are so many Indian nations, scattered through that beautiful western country, that I never learned the names of half of them. The Sacs, certainly, are the biggest in stature and the best natured, and the Sioux and Winnebagoes the most peculiar, speaking an ugly, uncouth language. The Sioux and Winnebagoes are so different from the other Indian nations that they are said, by traders and travelers, to be the descendants of Tartars who somehow came from China in ages past. The Pawnees, too, are odd, being the only Indians who can endure to live as slaves. Therefore every Indian nation has Pawnee slaves, and some of the traders too.