"That's us. You mind the stuff left off the teepee?"
"Do till we get better." So each made a sort of canvas bag shorter than the arrows. Yan painted an Indian device on each, and they were ready.
"Now bring on your Bears," said the older boy, and feeling a sense of complete armament, they went out.
"See who can hit that tree." Both fired together and missed, but Sam's arrow struck another tree and split open.
"Guess we'd better get a soft target," he remarked. Then after discussion they got a large old corn sack full of hay, painted on it some rings around a bull's [186] eye (a Buffalo's eye, Sam called it) and set it up at twenty yards.
They were woefully disappointed at first in their shooting. It did seem a very easy mark, and it was disappointing to have the arrows fly some feet away to the left.
"Le's get in the barn and shoot at that," suggested Sam.
"We might hit it if we shut the door tight," was the optimistic reply. As well as needing practice, the boys had to learn several little rules about Archery. But Yan had some pencil notes from "that book" and some more in his brain that with much practice gradually taught him: To stand with his heel centres in line with the target; his right elbow in line with the arrow; his left hand fixed till the arrow struck; his right thumb always on the same place on his cheek when he fired, and the bow plumb.
They soon found that they needed guards for the left arm where the bow strings struck, and these they made out of the leg of an old boot (see Cut page 183), and an old glove to protect the fingers of the right hand when they practised very much. After they learned to obey the rules without thinking about them, the boys improved quickly and soon they were able to put all the arrows into the hay sack at twenty yards, increasing the distance later till they could make fair shooting at forty yards.