In the first place they had had only Delbert’s hair rope and had used it for everything, but now they were trying to be as saving of it as possible, never using it when another one would suffice, but Delbert always carried it with him, coiled up and tied at his waist.
When they finished working out the fiber it was clean, straight, and pretty as it lay in a neat pile.
“Now, how is the best way to do this?” asked Marian in a businesslike tone.
“I have been thinking,” said Delbert. “Remember that time I went with Clarence and his father after a load of corn? Well, at one place where we stopped there was an old Indian making ropes. I’ve been trying for a long time to remember how he did it. Dear me!” he exclaimed in disgust, “why didn’t I pay ’tention? Clarence explained it all to me, but I just let it go into one ear and out the other. I wasn’t interested in making ropes then.”
“Can’t you remember anything about it at all?” asked his sister sympathetically. “If you could just remember a point or two, we could work it out from that, maybe. Davie, don’t you want to put a stick of wood on the fire? Not that one, dear; that one won’t burn,” for Davie had picked up the stump of the mescal plant and heaved it into the center of the flames.
“Yes, will burn,” asserted he complacently, and returned to his play of fitting little clamshells together and laying them in a row.
Jennie poked the stump to one side and raked the coals and hot ashes over it. “We’ll dry it out, and then maybe it’ll burn, Davie dear,” she said.
“Here,” said Esther, gingerly handing over a piece of particularly thorny pitalla; “this will make a light.”
“Why, you see,” said Delbert, “they had the fiber—este they call it—all in a pile, but tangled as if they must have tangled it themselves. They had that part of it all done when we got there, but I remember Clarence said they laid it on something—a board, I guess—and hooked one end over a nail to hold it, and scraped it with an old machete blade fixed in a crooked stick,—scraped it and scraped it till there wasn’t anything left of the leaf but the fiber; then, I s’pose, they tangled it all up next; anyway, the man had a thing he whirled and he backed off across the yard, a-whirling it and whirling it and spinning a strand of rope out from that pile of este.”