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I might inform you further of the gorge downstream, where you lie flat on your stomach ten feet above the river, and with one hand cautiously extended over the edge cast accurately into the angle of the cliff. Then when you get your strike, you tow him downstream, clamber precariously to the water’s level–still playing your fish–and there land him,–if he has accommodatingly stayed hooked. A three-pound fish will make you a lot of tribulation at this game.

We lived on fish and venison, and had all we wanted. The bear-trails were plenty enough, and the signs were comparatively fresh, but at the time of our visit the animals themselves had gone over the mountains on some sort of a picnic. Grouse, too, were numerous in the popple thickets, and flushed much like our ruffed grouse of the East. They afforded first-rate wing-shooting for Sure-Pop, the little shot-gun.

But these things occupied, after all, only a small part of every day. We had loads of time left. Of course we explored the valley up and down. That occupied two days. After that we became lazy. One always does in a permanent camp. So did the horses. Active–or rather restless interest in life seemed to die away. Neither we nor they had to rustle hard for food. They became fastidious in their choice, and at all times of day could be seen sauntering in Indian file from one part of the meadow to the other for the sole purpose apparently of cropping a half dozen indifferent mouthfuls. The rest of the time they roosted under trees, one hind leg relaxed, their eyes half closed, their ears wabbling, the pictures of imbecile content. We were very much the same.

Of course we had our outbursts of virtue. While under their influence we undertook vast works. But after their influence had died out, we found ourselves with said vast works on our hands, and so came to cursing ourselves and our fool spasms of industry.

For instance, Wes and I decided to make buckskin from the hide of the latest deer. We did not need the buckskin–we already had two in the pack. Our ordinary procedure would have been to dry the hide for future treatment by a Mexican, at a dollar a hide, when we should have returned home. But, as I said, we were afflicted by sporadic activity, and wanted to do something.

We began with great ingenuity by constructing a graining-tool out of a table-knife. We bound it with rawhide, and encased it with wood, and wrapped it with cloth, and filed its edge square across, as is proper. After this we hunted out a very smooth, barkless log, laid the hide across it, straddled it, and began graining.

Graining is a delightful process. You grasp the tool by either end, hold the square edge at a certain angle, and push away from you mightily. A half-dozen pushes will remove a little patch of hair; twice as many more will scrape away half as much of the seal-brown grain, exposing the white of the hide. Then, if you want to, you can stop and establish in your mind a definite proportion between the amount thus exposed, the area remaining unexposed, and the muscular fatigue of these dozen and a half of mighty pushes. The proportion will be wrong. You have left out of account the fact that you are going to get almighty sick of the job; that your arms and upper back are going to ache shrewdly before you are done; and that as you go on it is going to be increasingly difficult to hold down the edges firmly enough to offer the required resistance to your knife. Besides–if you get careless–you’ll scrape too hard: hence little holes in the completed buckskin. Also–if you get careless–you will probably leave the finest, tiniest shreds of grain, and each of them means a hard transparent spot in the product. Furthermore, once having started in on the job, you are like the little boy who caught the trolley: you cannot let go. It must be finished immediately, all at one heat, before the hide stiffens.