"Oh, yes," answered Hugh; "it's well known all right. All the old men know about it, but lots of the young men don't know anything at all about it. They don't care much about those old stories. All they want to do is to be riding horses; or maybe some of them, if they should have a dollar or so, go off down to the Birch Creek and buy some whisky with it."
"Well, I suppose it's too late to hear the story to-night; but to-morrow night, if you feel like it, I'd like to have you tell us those stories, Mason. You would like to hear them over again, wouldn't you, Hugh?"
"Sure," said Hugh; "I'd like to mighty well."
"Me, too," said Tulare Joe, as he threw the stump of his cigarette into the fire and rose to go to his blankets.
[CHAPTER XI]
TANNING A BUCKSKIN
When Joe learned that the camp was not to move the next day he told Jack that here was his opportunity to tan his deer hide, and that after the work of cutting and branding was over he would speak to McIntyre about doing this job of tanning. There were men enough to do herd duty, and the boys thought that in the few hours of daylight that remained after the day's work was done they could get the skin in fair shape.
"Of course," said Joe, "we can't make a good job of it; an Indian has all the time there is, and he does his tanning slowly and does it well. We'll have to be satisfied with a rough job, but anyhow we can get the hide fairly soft, and it can be worked on again later."
As soon as the outfit had got into camp in the afternoon, Joe went to the cook tent and borrowed Frank's spade, and going down near to the stream and choosing a place where the grass grew fairly thick, he began to dig a hole considerably larger than a water bucket. When he had made the hole a foot and a half deep, he got into it and tramped down the soil on the bottom, scraping up anything that was loose and finally leaving a fairly smooth and hard surface. While working at this, he asked Jack to go to the wagon and bring the skin, and also the skull of the deer, which was tied to one of the bows of the wagon near the hide. Jack presently returned with both.