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.

"I didn't know you had saved the skull, Joe," he said; "it looks as if it had been partly cooked. Did you save it for the brains?"

"Just for that," was the reply. "You know, of course, that the brains is a pretty important part of the operation of tanning. I did think I might get the brains of a beef from some animal that we'd kill, but of course we never could be sure of having a chance to do our tanning just after the beef had been killed, so I thought I'd save this skull; and to keep it from spoiling I stuck it in the ashes that night we skinned the deer, and hauled some coals over it, and asked Frank not to throw it away if he found it. It sort of cooked and dried during the night, and doesn't seem to have spoiled a bit."

By this time the hole seemed to suit Joe. He took the deer's hide and cut the string which bound it to the willow hoop, then began to fold it--taking care not to break the skin--until he made it into a more or less square package, flesh side out, somewhat less in size than the bottom of the hole. He placed it in the bottom of the hole, and put on it a rather heavy stone to hold it in position. Then, taking a bucket, he went down to the stream and brought two or three bucketfuls of water which he poured into the hole until it was almost full.

"This hole is close to the camp, and nothing is likely to disturb the skin during the night," he said; "but the coyotes might find it, and I don't mean to take any chances, so I'm going to cover it up. Maybe Frank will lend us the tail gate of his wagon to put over it. I'll ask him, anyhow."

The cook, on being appealed to, declined to lend the tail gate of the cook wagon.

"Why don't you get the tail gate of the bed wagon and use that?" he suggested.

Joe at once did so. He carried the end gate out and placed it over the hole, and the boys put two or three heavy stones on it.

"Now," said Joe, "I need a sort of beam to use in scraping the hair off this hide, and I reckon one of these young cottonwoods will do. I wish we had a tree right here to rest it against."

"What's the matter with that box elder over there with the low fork? If you make your pole long enough you can rest it in that fork."

"Right you are," said Joe. "I'll go down and get one of those young trees and you'd better come along, because that green wood is pretty heavy, and if we cut a long pole it'll take us both to pack it over."

The grove was only fifty yards away, and Joe soon felled a young tree, which was six or eight inches through at the butt. Cutting fifteen feet off the larger end, he and Jack carried it over and soon wedged it in the fork of the box elder, only a short distance from the hole where the hide was soaking.

"Now," Joe explained, "I've got to peel this stick, because any little lumps on the bark are likely to make us cut the hide."

They set to work and in a few minutes the lower five or six feet of the pole was free from its bark and shone white in the sun. They looked over the wood, and shaved down one or two little lumps until the surface of the peeled wood was quite smooth.

"There," exclaimed Joe; "that's all we can do to-night. My scraper is in my bed. I tied that up to the bows of the wagon until it got dry; and to-morrow, after our work is done, it won't take long to scrape the hair from the hide and to put on the brains. I'd like to have a day more to work on the thing, but we've got to do the best we can in the time we have."

The next day, after the work was over and the horses turned out, Joe repaired to the hole where the hide was soaking, and Jack went with him. Again they had recourse to the cook, who, after some grumbling, gave them half a dozen nails.

When the tail gate of the wagon was removed, the boys discovered that much of the water in the hole had soaked away into the soil, and the top of the stone on the deer hide was above the water. The hide, however, was still covered. After the stone had been removed and the hide taken out, they found it perfectly soft and pliable.

Joe carried it down to the stream and thoroughly rinsed it there, thus removing all the earth which clung to it. When he took it from the water he squeezed from it all the moisture that he could, then carried it up and hung it over the leaning pole, hair side out, and head toward the upper end. Now, with a stone, he drove a couple of nails into the pole and to them he fastened the head of the hide. Then he produced his scraper. Jack at once recognized it as a part of the deer's foreleg--the double bone that runs down from the elbow to meet the deer's wrist--what is usually called the knee. Of course Jack knew that in the hoofed animals the bone of the upper arm, which is called the humerus, is altogether hidden within the body and that the joint of the foreleg close to the body corresponds with man's elbow. Joe's scraper was the bone running from this elbow down to the deer's knee, and Jack was interested and somewhat astonished--for he had never before thought about the matter--to see what a splendid natural scraper this bone made. He said as much to Joe.

"Didn't you ever notice," asked Joe, "how often an Indian uses some natural and common thing for a tool in his work? I've seen that often, and it always made me wonder. Now you see this tool, in its curved shape and with that thin edge there of one of the bones, makes a great scraper. It's almost like a drawing-knife; and then look at the two handles on the ends--ain't that fine? The Indian that showed me how to tan, scraped the edge of his bone and made it a little sharper than this one is; but I reckon this will do all right; anyhow, we'll try. Of course, if we hadn't saved this bone from the deer's leg, we could have used a beef rib, or even the back of a knife; but this is the best and handiest thing I know of."

"That seems to me about a perfect tool for this work," declared Jack; "and I wonder at it too."

Joe took the leg bone of the deer and standing before the skin which hung over the pole, flesh side to the wood, began with long even strokes to scrape the hair from it. To Jack's surprise this came away readily and evenly, leaving the naked hide smooth and white. From time to time Joe shifted the skin, and gradually removed the hair from the whole hide down to the very edges, though on the head and ears the work was more raggedly done than on the neck, back and sides. Before very long, though, the skin was absolutely hairless, and as white on the hair side as it was white on the flesh side when Joe turned it over. It was quite free from superfluous tissue, for the boys had cleaned it well before stretching it.

After the hair had all been removed, Joe took the hide down to the stream and gave it a thorough washing, kneading it together as if to get out of it all the animal matter that had been left on it, and finally, weighing it down with stones, left it there to soak. Meanwhile he sent Jack back to the cook tent to bring a wash basin with a little warm water; and when Jack returned, he found that Joe had split the deer's skull. In a moment the brains of the animal were turned into the warm water, where they were crushed and pulverized by the boys' fingers until the water was all whitish and looked like soapsuds with a few white particles floating in it.

"Really, these brains ought to be heated for a while over the fire," explained Joe; "but we haven't much time to fuss, and maybe the hot water will answer just as well. What we want to do is to get these brains as fine as we can, and then we must build a little fire and warm the mixture again, and then put it on the skin."

They got together a few small sticks and chips and built a little fire; and then set the basin on it, having a bucket partly full of water close by.

Then Joe went down to the stream where he had left the hide soaking, and after shaking it about in the water to free it from any sediment that might have caught on it, he lifted it up and brought it to the grass near the fire, and then folded it over to make a long narrow piece. He took hold of one end, and Jack of the other, and they twisted it and wrung out almost all the water. It was surprising to Jack now how little the hide looked like the deer skin of an hour before. Two or three times the hide was unfolded and stretched out and then doubled again and the boys put all the power of their arms into the wringing process.

"The best way," said Joe, "would be to knot the skin around the limb of a tree and twist it just as hard as a man can twist; but we can't do that now."

When all the water possible had been wrung from the skin, it was unfolded, and Joe told Jack to help him stretch it and get it again to something like its natural shape. They worked for some time at this, pulling against each other, across and sidewise of the skin, and one hand pulling against the other at the edges; then, when the skin had again taken somewhat the shape of the dried hide of the day before, it was spread on the grass as flat as possible.

Now Joe added water to the brains in the basin which were just steaming, until he had increased the quantity of the mixture about three times; and carrying the basin over to where the hide lay, he began to take the fluid in his hand and to spread it smoothly over the hair side of the skin, rubbing it in as he did so.

When Jack saw what was being done, he took hold also, and soon the whole skin was covered with the mixture, which was rubbed in and kneaded with the knuckles, especially near the edges of the hide and about the head and neck.

"They say," explained Joe, "that the main part of the tanning is the way you put the brains on, and the way you work the thing dry afterward."

By this time the sun was getting low.

"I don't know whether we'll be able to finish this chore to-night or not," Joe said. "After the brains have been put on, it ought to be left in the sun to be set up and then it ought to be dried; but I'm afraid we can't do that. We'll have to quit now before very long."

After the brains had been thoroughly applied, Joe began to fold and roll up the skin until it was in a tight ball; and then he sat down and made a cigarette.

"That's about as far," he said, "as we'll be able to go to-night. Before we go to bed I'll spread the skin out, and to-morrow we'll have to let it dry in the wagon. I'm afraid it won't be much of a job of tanning: it's had to be done too fast and spread out over too much time. If we were going to lie over here to-morrow, I'd give it a good soaking in water and then start in to work it soft and dry; but that's something that'll have to wait."

This was what had to be done; and the next morning when Jack looked into the cook wagon where the hide was again tied to the bows, he saw that it had greatly shrunk, and though it had the color of buckskin, it looked almost like a piece of rawhide.

A few days later, Jack and Joe, having two or three hours which they could devote to finishing their tanning, again set to work at the hide. As soon as they came into camp, Joe looked up a place in the shade where the water was deep, and put the hide there to soak. Then, when they were able to get at it, they gave it a thorough washing and rinsed it many times in the water, and then took it over to a nearby tree which had low branches on it. Here one end of the hide was doubled about a branch and the other fastened to a short stout stick, and first Joe, later relieved by Jack, twisted the hide rope against the branch until the water was again all out of it. Once more it was taken down as before and pulled and stretched on its edges until it was brought back nearly to its natural shape. Then Joe, taking off his shoes and stockings, sat down on the ground and began to pull the hide this way and that, often throwing the hide over his feet and slowly dragging it over the feet toward the body. He rubbed the hide between his hands, shifting the hands constantly, and with a motion as if he wished to break up the fiber of the skin. Jack watched him and when he saw the purpose of this manipulation sat down beside him and helped.

"The northern Indians, Joe," he said, "have what seems to me a better plan than that--they have a rope running from the top of a pole down to a pin in the ground and pull the hide back and forth over that. Or I've seen them tie up a buffalo shoulder-blade with a big hole cut in it to a pole, and, passing the deer skin right through the hole in the bone, they pull it backward and forward through that. It's a labor-saving scheme; I guess very likely it doesn't make quite as good buckskin as your way, but it saves a whole lot of elbow-grease."

"I should think it would," answered Joe; "and what's the matter with trying that rope scheme right now? I'll go to my saddle and get my rope and we can drive a pin in the ground here; and between you and me I believe we can soften that thing in pretty short order."

While Joe had gone for the rope, Jack whittled a long sharp pin notched at the larger end; and after Joe had fastened the rope to a branch above, they drew it tight down to the pin and fixed it there securely, and in a few moments were hard at work softening the hide by pulling it backward and forward against the rope. It was extraordinary how soft and limp the hide became and how soon it began to look like real buckskin. When the hide was quite dry and they took it off and felt it, Jack congratulated Joe on having done a mighty good job of tanning.

That night in camp he showed the buckskin to Hugh, who praised it highly, and said that when smoked it would make part of a good shirt.

"You've got to smoke it, though," said Hugh, "or else every time it gets wet it will stiffen up and be just like a board, and will have to be rubbed soft again."

"Oh, I know, of course, it's no good until it has been smoked," replied Joe; "but in this camp we've got to do our tanning when we can, and there won't be any chance to smoke it until the next time we lie over somewhere."

"Well," suggested Hugh, "why don't you wait until you get your other buckskin? Then you can sew them together to make a kind of bag, and build a small smoke and fix your bag up over the fire so that the smoke will go into the mouth of the bag."

"That would be a good idea," said Joe. "I guess we'll wait for our other buckskin first."