“Mr. Barker,” they argued, “our lean-to will shed the rain if we pile on some oak brush with the leaves still on it.”
“That lean-to,” the old man laughed, “will leak like a sieve. In five minutes the wind will shake your ears full of big cold drops, and you wouldn’t sleep a wink all night.
“You fellows can stay here overnight, but I reckon Tatanka and I will go down to the boat and set up our tent. I don’t care to sit up all night in the rain. I have done that often enough.”
But after a little more coaxing, the old man consented to stay another night on the point.
“Now I tell you what you can do,” he suggested to his young friends. “You gather a lot of bark, big pieces, of oak or basswood, anything you can find, and we’ll put a roof on our shed.”
“But the bark doesn’t peel yet,” Tim objected.
“No, no, I don’t mean green bark. Get big pieces of bark from the old dead trees. That will do well enough for one night.”
The boys soon had a stock of dead bark piled up.
“Looks as if you were going to start a tannery,” remarked the trapper.
“Now go and find a lot of strings so we can tie it on.”