"I want those of you who are not busy burning out the
canes, to go to work making arrows just like that, while I do
something else."

The boys went to work with a will, while Sam, going into the nearest
thicket, cut a green stick about three quarters of an inch in
diameter. Returning to the fire, he split one end of this stick for a
little way, converting it into a sort of rude pincer. He then unrolled
his blanket, and revealed to the astonished gaze of his companions
several pounds of horse shoe nails.

"What on earth are you goin' to do with them horse shoe nails?" asked
Hilly Bowlegs, looking up from the cedar arrow on which he was
working.

"I'm going to make arrow heads out of them," answered Sam, thrusting
several of them into the bed of coals.

With the side of an axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer,
Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrow
points, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the things
that Sam had thought it worth while to learn something about, was
blacksmithing, and he was really expert in the simpler arts of the
smith. He could shoe a horse, "point" a plow, or weld iron or steel,
very well indeed.

He had learned this as he had learned a good many other things, merely
because he thought that every young man should know how to do
tolerably well whatever he might sometime need to do, and in a new
country where shops are scarce and workmen are not always to be found,
there is no mechanical art which it is not sometimes very convenient
to know something about.

Sam wrought now so expertly that within less than an hour he had made
six arrow points. These he fitted to six of the arrows, and then he
suspended work for the evening, and marked progress on his map; that
is to say, he pricked on his map with a pin the course followed during
the afternoon, estimating the distance travelled as accurately as he
could.

CHAPTER VIII.

A MOTION WHICH WAS NOT IN ORDER.

The next day the march was resumed, and continued with some haltings
for rest until about three o'clock, when Sam chose a camp for the
night, saying that they had already made a better march than he had
planned for that day, and that there was no occasion to break
themselves down by going further.

The work was at once resumed upon guns and arrows, Sam beginning by
finishing the arrows already made. He cut strips from a hare's skin
which Tommy had brought with him at Sam's reque