"Why," said Joe, "some of the boys started the deer to-day out of a little patch of brush. It ran from them up over the hill and met me just on top. I happened to have my rope in my hand and I caught it. I'm going to keep it and get two or three others, if I can, and make me a buckskin shirt for winter. They say they're the warmest things you can wear when you're riding in a cold wind, and they don't muffle you up the way a coat does--they leave you free. I'd like to stretch this hide, if I could; but I won't have time to do it on the round-up. If I could stretch it and get it dried flat it would make it easier to pack and easier to handle when it comes to tanning it; but of course on the round-up I haven't the time to peg the hide out, and no time to do the tanning while it's fresh, the way it really ought to be done." "I didn't know," said Jack, "that it's better to tan a hide right fresh than after it is dried." "Yes," said Joe, "it is; at least, that's what I've been told. All I know about tanning was taught me by the Navajos down south, and they make awful good soft buckskin." "I have never done any tanning; but I have seen a heap of robes dressed by women in the Blackfeet country. They tan a buffalo robe in a wonderful way, so that it is as soft as a piece of cloth; but they don't make good buckskin. According to all I have heard, the mountain Indians make the best buckskin." "That's what they say," answered Joe. "I've seen some wonderful buckskin made by the Utes, and by the Navajos too." "You have been down among the Navajos, have you?" Jack asked, as he sat down on the ground and, taking out his pocket-knife, began to work on the skin. "I'm interested in them, for when I was a little fellow I used to read Mayne Reid's books, and they had lots to say about the Navajos, and about the raids they used to make down in Mexico." "Yes," replied Joe, "they were certainly great raiders; and they've got lots of men and women and children there in the camp that are as white as I am. Most of them, they say, were captured down in Mexico as little children and brought up and raised in the tribe, and now, so far as their feelings go, are just as pure Navajo as anybody could be." "I guess that's so. There isn't anything in blood or race that makes a white man different from an Indian, if he is brought up in an Indian way." "Not much. Those Navajos, too, are mighty handy with tools and with their fingers. I reckon you've seen lots of Navajo blankets, and likely, too, you may have seen some of the silversmith work they do. They make fine rings and sort of pins, like the women wear at their throats, and they're pretty handy about setting bits of turquoise in silver. They make a whole lot of real pretty ornaments." "I've heard something about that," said Jack; "though I've never seen any of their work, except maybe a blanket or two. And you say they're tanners, too?"