“You don’t deserve to have any.  Be good enough to explain how this trouble arose?”

The chief was asking the same question of the other young savages in his own language and they were telling him in a series of guttural explosions.

“It was this way, I was playing the game with them when I stepped on Elephant Face’s foot.  He didn’t like it.  I guess he has corns on his feet as well as on his face.  He punched me.  I punched him back.  Then the show began.  We had a little argument, with the result that you already have observed,” answered Stacy pompously.

“You needn’t get so chesty about it,” rebuked Ned.

“Chief,” said the Professor, turning to Chick-a-pan-a-gi, “I don’t know what to say.  I am deeply humiliated that one of our party should engage in a fight with—–­”

“I didn’t engage in any fight,” protested Stacy.  “It wasn’t a fight, it was just a little argument.”

“Silence!” thundered the Professor.

“I trust you will overlook the action of this boy.   He was very much
excited and-----”

“Fat boy him not blame.  Fat boy him much brave warrior,” grunted the chief.  “Afraid Of His Face he go ha-wa.  Stay all day, all night.  Him not brave warrior.”

The chief accentuated his disgust by prodding his homely son with the toe of a moccasin.  Afraid Of his Face got up painfully, felt gingerly of his damaged nose, and with a surly grunt limped off toward his own ha-wa, there to remain in disgrace until the following day.

“Fat boy come smoke pipe of peace,” grunted the chief.

“No, thank you.  No more pieces of pipe for mine.  I’ve had one experience.  That’s enough for a life time,” answered Stacy.

“Stacy, if I see any more such unseemly conduct I shall send you home in disgrace,” rebuked the Professor as they walked back to the village.

“The boy wasn’t to blame, Professor,” interceded Dad.  “The buck pitched into him first.  He had to defend himself.”

“No, don’t be too hard on Chunky,” begged Tad.  “You must remember that he wasn’t quite himself.  First to be boiled alive, then set upon by an Indian, I should say, would be quite enough to set anyone off his balance.”

The Professor nodded.  Perhaps they were right, after all.  So long as the chief was not angry, why should he be?  The chief, in his unemotional way, seemed pleased with the result of the encounter.  But Professor Zepplin, of course, could not countenance fighting.  That was a certainty.  With a stern admonition to Chunky never to engage in another row while out with the Pony Rider Boys, the Professor agreed to let the matter drop.

The day was well spent by that time, and the party was invited to pass the night in the village, which they decided to do.  The chief gave the Professor a cordial invitation to share his ha-wa with him, but after a sniff at the opening of the hovel Professor Zepplin decided that he would much prefer to sleep outside on the ground.  The others concluded that they would do the same.  The odors coming from the ha-was of the tribe were not at all inviting.