different 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, befor