“I got him,” shouted Rolf.
The Indian smiled. “I knew you would, so I followed; last night I knew you must have your shakes, so let you go it alone.”
Very carefully that deer was skinned, and Rolf learned the reason for many little modes of procedure.
After the hide was removed from the body (not the hand or legs), Quonab carefully cut out the-broad sheath of tendon that cover the muscles, beginning at the hip bones on the back and extending up to the shoulders; this is the sewing sinew. Then he cut out the two long fillets of meat that lie on each side of the spine outside (the loin) and the two smaller ones inside (the tenderloin).
These, with the four quarters, the heart, and the kidneys, were put into the hide. The entrails, head, neck, legs, feet, he left for the foxes, but the hip bone or sacrum he hung in a tree with three little red yarns from them, so that the Great Spirit would be pleased and send good hunting. Then addressing the head he said: “Little brother, forgive us. We are sorry to kill you. Behold! we give you the honour of red streamers.” Then bearing the rest they tramped back to camp.
The meat wrapped in sacks to keep off the flies was hung in the shade, but the hide he buried in the warm mud of a swamp hole, and three days later, when the hair began to slip, he scraped it clean. A broad ash wood hoop he had made ready and when the green rawhide was strained on it again the Indian had an Indian drum.
It was not truly dry for two or three days and as it tightened on its frame it gave forth little sounds of click and shrinkage that told of the strain the tensioned rawhide made. Quonab tried it that night as he sat by the fire softly singing:
“Ho da ho-he da he.”
But the next day before sunrise he climbed the hill and sitting on the sun-up rock he hailed the Day God with the invocation, as he had not sung it since the day they left the great rock above the Asalnuk, and followed with the song:
“Father, we thank thee; We have found the good hunting. There is meat in the wigwam.”