to the old Indian, "cut this fellow up, will you? I'll make camp."

"Can we keep the skin?" asked Rod. "It's my first, you know, and--"

"Of course we can. Give us a hand with the fire, Rod; it will keep you
from catching cold."

In the excitement of making their first camp, Rod almost forgot that he
was soaked to the skin, and that night was falling about them. The first
step was the building of a fire, and soon a great, crackling, almost
smokeless blaze was throwing its light and heat for thirty feet around.
Wabi now brought blankets from the canoe, stripped off a part of his own
clothes, made Rod undress, and soon had that youth swathed in dry togs,
while his wet ones were hung close up to the fire. For the first time
Rod saw the making of a wilderness shelter. Whistling cheerily, Wabi got
an ax from the canoe, went into the edge of the cedars and cut armful
after armful of saplings and boughs. Tying his blankets about himself,
Rod helped to carry these, a laughable and grotesque figure as he
stumbled about clumsily in his efforts. Within half an hour the cedar
shelter was taking form. Two crotched saplings were driven into the
ground eight feet apart, and from one to the other, resting in the
crotches, was placed another sapling, which formed the ridge-pole; and
from this pole there ran slantwise to the earth half a dozen others,
making a framework upon which the cedar boughs were piled. By the time
the old Indian had finished his bear the home was completed, and with
its beds of sweet-smelling boughs, the great camp-fire in front and the
dense wilderness about them growing black with the approach of night,
Rod thought that nothing in picture-book or story could quite equal the
reality of that moment. And when, a few moments later, great bear-steaks
were broiling over a mass of coals, and the odor of coffee mingled with