All three were pictures of childish delight. The old man's face fairly beamed with triumph. Had he failed in his experiment he would have gone off hating those boys, but having made a brilliant success he was ready to love every one concerned, though they had been nothing more than interested spectators of his exploit.
RUBBING-STICKS FOR FIRE-MAKING
Two tools and two sticks are needed. The tools are bow and drill-socket; the sticks are drill and fire-board.
1. The simplest kind of bow—a bent stick with a stout leather thong fastened at each end. The stick must not spring. It is about 27 inches long and 5/8 inch thick.
2. A more elaborate bow with a hole at each end for the thong. At the handle end it goes through a disc of wood. This is to tighten the thong by pressure of the hand against the disc while using.
3. Simplest kind of drill-socket—a pine or hemlock knot with a shallow hole or pit in it. 3a is under view of same. It is about 4½ inches long.
4. A more elaborate drill-socket—a pebble cemented with gum in a wooden holder. 4a is under view of same.
5. A very elaborate drill-socket; it is made of tulip wood, carved to represent the Thunderbird. It has eyes of green felspar cemented in with resin. On the under side (5a) is seen, in the middle, a soapstone socket let into the wood and fastened with pine gum, and on the head a hole kept filled with grease, to grease the top of the drill before use.
6. The drill, 12 to 18 inches long and about ¾ of an inch thick; it is roughly 8-sided so the thong will not slip, pointed at each end. The best wood for the drill is old, dry, brash, but not punky balsam fir or cotton-wood roots; but basswood, white cedar, red cedar, tamarack, and sometimes even white pine, will do.
7. Fire-board or block, about ¾ of an inch thick and any length handy; a is notch with pit just below shows the pit after once using and in good trim for a second time; c shows the pit bored through and useless; the notch is ½ inch wide and ¾ inch deep.
8. Shows the way of using the sticks. The block (a) is held down with one foot, the end of the drill in the pit, the drill-socket (c) is held on top in left hand, one end of the bow (d ) is held in the right hand the bow is drawn back and forth.
9. Is a little wooden fire-pan, not essential but convenient; its thin edge is put under the notch to catch the powder that falls.
IX
The Bows and Arrows
"I don't think much of your artillery," said Yan one day as they were shooting in the orchard with Sam's "Western outfit." "It's about like the first one I made when I was young."
"Well, grandpa, let's see your up-to-date make?"
"It'd be about five times as strong, for one thing."
"You couldn't pull it."
"Not the way you hold the arrow! But last winter I got a book about archery from the library and learned something worth while. You pinch the arrow that way and you can draw six or eight pounds, maybe, but you hook your fingers in the string—so—and you can draw five times as much, and that's the right way to shoot."
"Feels mighty clumsy," said Sam, trying it.
"Of course it does at first, and you have to have a deep notch in the arrow or you can't do it at all."
"You don't seem to manage any better than I do."
"First time I ever had a chance to try since I read about it. But I want to make a first-class bow and a lot of arrows. It's not much good going with one."
"Well, go ahead an' make an outfit if you know how. What's the best wood? Did the book tell you that?"
"The best wood is Spanish Yew."
"Don't know it."
"An' the next is Oregon Yew."
"Nope."
"Then Lancewood and Osage Orange."
'Try again."
"Well, Red Cedar, Apple tree, Hickory and Elm seem to be the only ones that grow around here."
"Hain't seen any Red Cedar, but the rest is easy."
"It has to be thoroughly seasoned winter-cut wood, and cut so as to have heart on one side and sap wood on the other."
"How's that?" and Sam pointed to a lot of half-round Hickory sticks on the rafters of the log house. "Those have been there a couple of years."
A good one of five feet long was selected and split and hewn with the axe till the boys had the two bow staves, five and one-half feet long and two inches square, with the line of the heart and sap wood down the middle of each.
Guided by his memory of that precious book and some English long bows that he had seen in a shop in town, Yan superintended the manufacture. Sam was apt with tools, and in time they finished two bows, five feet long and drawing possibly twenty-five pounds each. In the middle they were one and one-half inches wide and an inch thick (see page 183). This size they kept for nine inches each way, making an eighteen-inch middle part that did not bend, but their two limbs were shaved down and scraped with glass till they bent evenly and were well within the boys' strength.
The string was the next difficulty. All the ordinary string they could get around the house proved too weak, never lasting more than two or three shots, till Si Lee, seeing their trouble, sent them to the cobbler's for a hank of unbleached linen thread and some shoemaker's wax. Of this thread he reeled enough for a strong cord tight around two pegs seven feet apart, then cutting it loose at one end he divided it equally in three parts, and, after slight waxing, he loosely plaited them together. At Yan's suggestion he then spliced a loop at one end, and with a fine waxed thread lashed six inches of the middle where the arrow fitted, as well as the splice of the loop. This last enabled them to unstring the bow when not in use (see page 183). "There," said he, "you won't break that." The finishing touch was thinly coating the bows with some varnish found among the paint supplies.
"Makes my old bow look purty sick," remarked Sam, as he held up the really fine new weapon in contrast with the wretched little hoop that had embodied his early ideas. "Now what do you know about arrers, mister?" as he tried his old arrow in the new bow.
"I know that that's no good," was the reply; "an' I can tell you that it's a deal harder to make an arrow than a bow—that is, a good one."
"That's encouraging, considering the trouble we've had already."
"'Tisn't meant to be, but we ought to have a dozen arrows each."
"How do the Injuns make them?"
"Mostly they get straight sticks of the Arrow-wood; but I haven't seen any Arrow-wood here, and they're not so awfully straight. You see, an arrow must be straight or it'll fly crooked. 'Straight as an arrow' means the thing itself. We can do better than the Indians 'cause we have better tools. We can split them out of the solid wood."
"What wood? Some bloomin' foreign kind that no White-man never saw nor heard of before?"
"No sir-ree. There ain't anything better 'n White Pine for target and Ash or Hickory for hunting arrows. Which are we making?"
"I'm a hunter. Give me huntin' arrows every time. What's needed next?"
"Seasoned Ash twenty-five inches long, split to three-eighths of an inch thick, hot glue, and turkey-wing feathers."
"I'll get the feathers and let you do the rest," said Sam, producing a bundle of turkey-wings, laid away as stove-dusters, and then belied his own statement by getting a block of Ash and splitting it up, halving it each time till he had a pile of two dozen straight sticks about three-quarters of an inch thick.
