IN THE INDIAN TEPEE
The rain had ceased, when Grace, the first of her party to awaken,
looked out as she lay on her browse bed. The river was shining in the
morning sun, glassy, save here and there where its waters rippled over a
shallow of gravel.
"Turn out!" she shouted. "This is too wonderful to miss. Oh, look!"
A canoe, with an Indian crouching in its stern wielding a paddle, was
skimming across the stream, not a sound or splash of paddle, nor hardly
a ripple from it to be heard or seen.
"It's Willy Horse. Hurry, girls! Don't miss this wonderful nature
canvas."
Exclamations were heard from all the girls after they had rubbed the
sleep from their eyes. By then Willy was nearing their shore, and the
bow of his canoe, a real birch canoe made by himself, landed on the
beach, whereupon, Willy threw out a mess of speckled trout, sufficient
for breakfast for the entire party, amid little cries of delight from
the girls.
"Hey there, Thundercloud! Are those all for my breakfast?" called Hippy
from his lean-to.
"Hippy!" rebuked Nora.
"Oh, send him out in the woods to eat with Henry," advised Emma.
While the Overland girls were washing at the river, Willy cleaned the
fish and handed them to the forest woman who already had the cook fire
going. And such a breakfast as the Overland party had that morning!
Following the meal they made Willy take them for a ride in his canoe,
two at a time; then Hippy and the bull pup took a skim up and down the
river with Willy at the paddle.
"All we need now to make us feel like real aborigines is an Indian
wigwam or a tepee," suggested Grace to her companions.
"What is the difference between them?" asked Miss Briggs.
"A tepee is a temporary home; the wigwam is the Indian's permanent
abiding place."
"Me make," announced Willy.
"Oh, Mister Horse! Will you really?" giggled Emma.
Willy grunted, and, shoving off his canoe, paddled swiftly away. He
returned an hour later, the canoe loaded with strips of birch bark which
he carefully laid on the shore. The Indian then trotted off into the
forest. On this trip he fetched an armful of "lodge"-poles. After
trimming them, he tied three together with a long deerskin thong, about
eighteen inches from the tops of the poles, carrying the thong about
them a few times and leaving the end of it trailing down. The rest of
the poles he stood against the sides of the tripod at regular intervals
all the way around.
"Oh, it's an Indian house!" cried Emma. "It really is."
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.
"Summer time live on reservation. Hunting time live up here in tepee. Me
show. Me go hunting, too. Mebby shoot deer, mebby big moose. Bye!"
[Illustration: Grace Got One Spill and Essayed Another Attempt.]
"Oh, don't go away," begged Grace. "We like to have you here, and I
wish, too, that you would let me paddle that beautiful canoe. It is the
first bark canoe I have ever seen. I know how to paddle a modern canoe,
but I saw this morning that the bark boat is an entirely different
craft. Will you teach me?"
"Me show. Go meet Big Friend now."
"Bring him back with you, Willy," urged Grace, but the Indian already
had withdrawn, and when they looked out he had gone.
"Hey, you folks!" called Hippy, who was grooming Hindenburg with a horse
brush. "Where is the dinner?"
Grace said she had forgotten all about it, and that Mrs. Shafto had gone
out to try to shoot a duck.
"In the meantime we starve, eh? Hindenburg is so hungry that his sides
are caving in, and the bear has gone out into the woods to eat leaves.
By the way, Willy Hoss's canoe is down yonder hidden under the bushes.
He said you were to use it, Grace. He has gone away."
After dinner, which was more in the nature of a luncheon, Mrs. Shafto
came into camp with three ducks which she had shot, and promised her
charges that they should have stuffed roast duck for supper.
That afternoon Grace tried the canoe. She got one spill and was soaked
to the skin, but crawled back to shore laughing at her mishap, and
essayed another attempt.
"I thought my canoe was cranky, but this beats everything," she called
to her companions as she again floated out on the stream in the bark
canoe. The Overland girl practiced for half an hour, during which she
got the hang of the cranky bark canoe and did very well paddling it.
"Let me try it," begged Emma.
"You will not," objected Hippy. "Think I want to plunge into that cold
water and rescue you?"
"Do you think I am simple enough to fall in?" demanded Emma indignantly.
"Yes, and as often as I could pull you out. Then again, you would lose
yourself listening to the voices of nature and get into a fine, wet
mess. That nature stuff makes me weary."
Emma did not paddle the canoe that day, nor did any of the others
express a desire to do so. They saw no more of the Indian that day, and
that night the girls spread their blankets in the tepee.
"We must have a fire in here for the sake of cheerfulness," urged Anne.
"Yes. And burn ourselves up," objected Emma.
"There should be no danger unless we roll into the fire in our sleep,"
answered Miss Briggs.
A small fire was kindled in the tepee, and, for a long time after they
had gone in for the night, the Overland girls sat with feet doubled
under them, enjoying the novel sensation of having for their use a real
Indian tepee, and listening to Joe Shafto relate some of her experiences
in the Big North Woods.
The conversation was interrupted by Henry who poked his nose into the
tepee and sniffed the air inquisitively. A slight tap on his nose by the
guide sent the bear scampering away. After a hearty laugh at Henry's
expense, the girls rolled up in their blankets and went to sleep not to
awaken again until sunrise, when they were jolted out of their dreams by
a loud halloo.