Thus far the work had been quickly accomplished, and now came the enclosing of the structure. This Willy did by laying strips of bark on the sloping "lodge"-poles, carrying the leather thong about them to hold the bark firmly against the poles. The entrance, formed by spreading poles apart, faced the waters of the Little Big Branch.
The tepee was finished shortly before eleven o'clock that morning, when Willy hung a blanket of deerhide over the doorway. As yet, none of the Overlanders had been permitted to look in and when they asked if they might do so, "You wait. Me fix," answered the Indian, ducking into the house he had created, and in a few moments they saw wisps of smoke curling up from the peak of the tepee through the opening left by the tops of the "lodge"-poles.
"You come," announced the Indian as he stepped out.
The girls lost no time in crawling into the tepee. Cries of delight rose with the smoke of the lodge-fire that Willy had made with a few sticks and pieces of bark, as they found themselves in a circular room fully ten feet in diameter, in the center of which crackled a comforting little fire, the draft carrying the smoke straight up and out of the tepee.
"What if it should rain?" questioned Emma apprehensively.
"Me put cover over top," answered the Indian, whose stolid expressionless face was peering in at them. "No rain come along. You like?"
Miss Briggs got up and offered her hand to him.
"We do, Willy. But why do you do so much for us?" she asked.
"Willy's Big Friends," he answered gruffly, and started to back out, but the girls would not let him go until each had shaken hands with him and thanked him.
"By the way, where do you live?" wondered Nora.