Camping -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Scouting (Reconnaissance) -- Fiction; Scouts (Reconnaissance) -- Fiction
Next for speed: Can you shoot so quickly and so far up, as to have five
arrows in the air at once? If so, you are good: Can you keep up six?
Then you are very good. Seven is wonderful. The record is said to be
eight. Last for power: Can you pull so strong a bow and let the arrow go
so clean that it will fly for 250 yards or will pass through a deer at
ten paces? There is a record of a Sioux who sent an arrow through three
antelopes at one shot, and it was not unusual to pierce the huge buffalo
through and through; on one occasion a warrior with one shot pierced the
buffalo and killed her calf running at the other side.
If you excel in these three things, you can down your partridge and
squirrel every time; you can get five or six out of each flock of birds;
you can kill your deer at twenty-five yards, and so need never starve in
the woods where there is game.
Of course, Rolf was keen to go forth and try in the real chase, but it
was many a shot he missed and many an arrow lost or broken, before
he brought in even a red squirrel, and he got, at least, a higher
appreciation of the skill of those who could count on the bow for their
food.
For those, then, who think themselves hunters and woodmen, let this be
a test and standard: Can you go forth alone into the wilderness where
there is game, take only a bow and arrows for weapons, and travel afoot
250 miles, living on the country as you go?
Chapter 10. Rolf Works Out with Many Results
He is the dumbest kind of a dumb fool that ain't king in some
little corner.--_Sayings of Si Sylvanne_
The man who has wronged you will never forgive you, and he who has
helped you will be forever grateful. Yes, there is nothing that draws
you to a man so much as the knowledge that you have helped him.
Quonab helped Rolf, and so was more drawn to him than to many of the
neighbours that he had known cor years; he was ready to like him. Their
coming together ffas accidental, but it was soon very clear that a
friendship was springing up between them. Rolf was too much of a child
to think about the remote future; and so was Quonab. Most Indians are
merely tall children.
But there was one thing that Rolf did think of--he had no right to live
in Quonab's lodge without contributing a fair share of the things
needful. Quonab got his living partly by hunting, partly by fishing,
partly by selling baskets, and partly by doing odd jobs for the
neighbours. Rolf's training as a loafer had been wholly neglected, and
when he realized that he might be all summer with Quonab he said
bluntly:
“You let me stay here a couple of months. I'll work out odd days, and
buy enough stuff to keep myself any way.” Quonab said nothing, but
their eyes met, and the boy knew it was agreed to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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