"Here, I want to be in this. I'll show you fellers how," exclaimed Guy in his usual scornful manner, and wrote down Fifty feet.
"Let's all try it for scalps," said Char-less, but this was ruled too unimportant for scalps, and again the penalty of failure was dishwashing, so the other boys came and put down their guesses close to that of their Chief—Forty-four, Forty-six and Forty-nine feet.
"Now we'll find out exactly," and Little Beaver, with an air of calm superiority, took three straight poles of exactly the same length and pegged them [506] together in a triangle, leaving the pegs sticking up. He placed this triangle on the bank at A B C, sighting the line A B for the little Hemlock D, and put three pegs in the ground exactly under the three pegs where the triangle was; moved the triangle to E F G and placed it so that F G should line with A C and E G with D. Now A G D also must be an equilateral triangle; therefore, according to arithmetic, the line D H must be seven-eighths of A G. A G was easily measured—70 feet. Seven-eighths of 70 equals 61-1/4 feet. The width of the pond—they measured it with tape line—was found to be 60 feet, so Yan was nearest, but Guy claimed that 50 feet was within 10 feet of it, which was allowed. Thus there were two winners—two who escaped dishwashing; and Hawkeye's bragging became insufferable. He never again got so close in a guess, but no number of failures could daunt him after such a success.
Sam was interested in the White-man's Woodcraft chiefly on Yan's account, but Blackhawk was evidently impressed with the study itself, and said:
"Little Beaver, I'll give you one more to do. Can you measure how far apart those two trees are on that bank, without crossing?"
"Yes," said Yan; "easily." So he cut three poles 6, 8 and 10 feet long and pegged them together in a triangle. "Now," said he, "A B C is a right angle; it must be, when the legs of the triangle are 6, 8 and 10; that's a law."
[507] He placed this on the shore, the side A B pointing to the inner side of the first tree, and the side B C as nearly as possible parallel with the line between the two trees. Then he put in a stake at B, another at C, and continued this line toward K. Now he slid his triangle along this till the side G F pointed to E, and the side H G in line with C B. The distance from D to E, of course, is equal to B G, which can be measured, and again the tape line showed Yan to be nearly right.
This White-man's Woodcraft was easy for him, and he volunteered to teach the other Indians, but they thought it looked "too much like school." They voted him a coup on finding how well he could do it. But when Raften heard of it he exclaimed in wonder and admiration, "My, but that's mightiful!" and would not be satisfied till the coup was made a grand coup.
"Say, Beaver," said Woodpecker sadly, harking back, "if a Dog's front foot is 3-1/2 inches long and 3 inches wide, what colour is the end of his tail?"