purposes of sport. These boats
were made of strong rawhide, generally about thirty feet long, although
one was a full fifty feet, and they also had several boats shaped like
huge bowls, made with a frame of wicker and covering it, the strongest
buffalo hide, sewed together with unbreakable rawhide strings. They
called these round boats watta tatankaha, which Will learnt meant in
English bull boats. Just such boats as these were used on the Tigris,
and the Euphrates, the oldest of rivers known to civilized man.

The first sign of relenting toward the captive lad was when he was
allowed to withdraw from the hard work of strengthening a lodge to take
a place alone in one of the bull boats and navigate it with a paddle
down the river, at a place where it had a depth past fording. The stream
was swift here and, despite his knowledge of ordinary curves, the round
craft overturned with him before he had gone twenty feet, amid shouts of
laughter from the Sioux gathered on either bank.

The water flowing down from the mountains was very cold, but Will
scorned to cry for help. He was a powerful swimmer and he struck out
boldly for the round boat, which was floating ahead. He had held on to
the paddle all the while and, by a desperate struggle, he managed to
right his craft and pull himself into it again. He was so much immersed
in his physical struggle that he did not know the Indian children were
pelting him with sticks and clods of earth, and were shouting in
amusement and derision. But the warriors were grave and silent.

Another struggle and the round boat overturned again. But he held on to
the paddle and recovered it a second time. A new and desperate contest
between him and the boat followed, but in the end he was victor and
paddled it both down and up-stream in a fairly steady manner. Then he
brought it into the landing where he was received in a respectful
silence.

In his struggles to succeed Will had taken little notice of the coldness
of the waters, but when he went back to the lodge he had a severe chill,
followed by a high fever. Then old Inmutanka proved himself the doctor
that Will called him by using a remedy that either killed or cured.

Inmutanka gave the lad a sweat bath. He made a heap of stones and built
a big fire upon them, feeding it until their heat was very great. Then
he scraped away the fuel and put up a framework made of poles, covered
with layers of skins. These layers were six or seven feet abo