After school for the next three days, the Cub Scouts spent much of their spare time either at the river or gathering clothing to be shipped to the Navajo reservation.
No more was said about the missing paddle. Though the Den 2 boys saw Ross Langdon in school, they avoided mention of their loss.
Red meanwhile, obtained another paddle, and went quietly to work on a more elaborate design. The finished job was so much better than the first that all the Cubs declared the Den might actually have been the gainer for having lost the paddle.
Not to be bested by Den 1, the boys set as one of their major projects, the making of an Indian hogan.
The house, they decided, would be made of best tree boughs and covered over with mud and clay. Brad pointed out that while it would be easier to use canvas or cloth for the slanting walls, the mud would be more in keeping with Navajo tradition.
Hogans were circular, six or eight-sided huts, with a roof-hole for the escape of smoke, he explained. The structure had only a single door which traditionally faced east toward the rising sun.
“The north side of the hogan always is the ‘woman’s side’ of the house,” Brad went on with a grin. “In our hut, we’ll skip that. We want it to look like a real Navajo hogan though. So we’ll need a lot of clay. When it hardens on the skeleton-pole structure, it should form a hard, rain-proof surface.”
“We can get plenty of good clay over the cliff,” Dan suggested. “I noticed the quality was especially good there at the ravine near the carved face.”
“Grab buckets, fellows, and let’s go after it,” Brad urged.
Sure of the route, he led the Cubs through the tall hardwoods toward the ravine. A saucy bird trilled at them from a tall pine. Otherwise, except for the chattering of a squirrel, the forest was very quiet.