Jack Among the Indians; Or, A Boy's Summer on the Buffalo Plains

by George Bird Grinnell

"Well, what did ye do all winter?" said Hugh; "went to school, I reckon, and learned a whole lot. Study hard?"

"Yes, I studied hard. Of course I wanted to do well, but after I'd been back a little while, I thought that maybe if I worked right hard at school, and got good reports right along, father would be more willing to have me come out here again and spend the summer with you."

"Well, that was pretty good sense. I expect ye tried to keep him pleased with your schooling right along."

"Yes, I did," said Jack. "I told Uncle Will about it soon after I started in at school, and he said it was a mighty good idea, and I'd better keep it up. I don't know whether they would have let me come or not, if it hadn't been for Uncle Will. When he left home in the spring I heard him say to mother, 'Jack's been working hard all winter, and he's getting to look pretty thin and white; I really think you'd better send him off to me again in a month or two, for that long trip that he and Hugh have been planning.' So along in April I spoke to father about coming out again. He said he was willing I should come if mother was, and that he'd talk to her about it; so after a while it got so that we all of us talked it over together, and at last father and mother both said that I could come; and here I am, and mighty glad to get back here, too, you bet."

"Well, you bet, we're mighty glad to see you, and we'd like to have you stop here right along; only I don't expect that would do, 'cause ye're young and ye've got a heap to learn; but it's sure mighty good for a boy to spend three or four months out here in the fine weather, and so to get ready for these long months when ye've got to live in a house all the time."

"There's one thing I did last winter, Hugh, that I think is going to be a lot of fun; I learned how to make a bird skin."

"Make a bird skin!" said Hugh. "How do ye make it?"

"I mean I learned how to skin a bird, and stuff cotton into it, and fix it up so that it looks just like a dead bird lying there with its legs stretched out. You know there are people who study birds and know all about all the different kinds. When they see a bird they can tell you in a minute just what its Latin name is, and where it lives in summer, and then where it goes to pass the winter, for of course there are lots of birds that go south in the fall, until the weather gets warm, and then come north again."

"Yes, that's so," said Hugh, "everybody knows that."

"Well," continued Jack, "of course there isn't any man who has been all over the world and seen all the birds that there are, alive; so the men that go to one place, kill and skin a lot of the birds that live there, and then when they get back they put these skins in a museum, where everybody can see them; and there are a lot of men doing this all the time; and so after a while the biggest museums come to have the skins of pretty nearly all the birds there are. There must be a lot of 'em in all. An ornithologist told me there were more than 750 in North America."