"Yan, you go ahead with a sharp stone. You'll find lots on the road if you take off your shoes and walk barefoot—awful sharp; an' I'll go ahead with the smoothing plane an' see who wins."
Yan was not satisfied, but he contented himself with promising that he would some day make some arrows of Arrow-wood shoots and now he would finish at least one with his knife. He did so, but Sam, in the meantime, made six much better ones with the smoothing plane.
"What about heads?" said he.
"I've been thinking," was the reply. "Of course the Indians used stone heads fastened on with sinew, but we haven't got the stuff to do that. Bought heads of iron with a ferrule for the end of the arrow are best, but we can't get them. Bone heads and horn heads will do. I made some fine ones once filing [181] bones into the shape, but they were awfully brittle; and I made some more of big nails cut off and set in with a lashing of fine wire around the end to stop the wood splitting. Some Indian arrows have no point but the stick sharpened after it's scorched to harden it."
"That sounds easy enough for me," said Sam; "let's make some of them that way."
So the arrows were made, six each with nail points filed sharp and lashed with broom wire. These were called "War arrows," and six each with fire-hardened wood points for hunting arrows.
"Now for the feathering," and Yan showed Sam how to split the midrib of a turkey feather and separate the vane.
"Le's see, you want twice twenty-four—that's forty-eight feathers."
"No," said Yan, "that's a poor feathering, two on each. We want three on each arrow—seventy-two strips in all, and mind you, we want all three that are on one arrow from the same side of the bird."