e the
hide stiffens.

Be it understood, your first enthusiasm has evaporated, and you are
thinking of fifty pleasant things you might just as well be doing.

Next you revel in grease,--lard oil, if you have it; if not, then lard,
or the product of boiled brains. This you must rub into the skin. You
rub it in until you suspect that your finger-nails have worn away, and
you glisten to the elbows like an Eskimo cutting blubber.

By the merciful arrangement of those who invented buckskin, this
entitles you to a rest. You take it--for several days--until your
conscience seizes you by the scruff of the neck.

Then you transport gingerly that slippery, clammy, soggy, snaky, cold
bundle of greasy horror to the bank of the creek, and there for endless
hours you wash it. The grease is more reluctant to enter the stream
than you are in the early morning. Your hands turn purple. The others
go by on their way to the trout-pools, but you are chained to the stake.

By and by you straighten your back with creaks, and walk home like a
stiff old man, carrying your hide rid of all superfluous oil. Then if
you are just learning how, your instructor examines the result.

"That's all right," says he cheerfully. "Now when it dries, it will be
buckskin."

That encourages you. It need not. For during the process of drying it
must be your pastime constantly to pull and stretch at every square
inch of that boundless skin in order to loosen all the fibres.
Otherwise it would dry as stiff as whalebone. Now there is nothing on
earth that seems to dry slower than buckskin. You wear your fingers
down to the first joints, and, wishing to preserve the remainder for
future use, you carry the hide to your instructor.

"Just beginning to dry nicely," says he.

You go back and do it some more, putting the entire strength of your
body, soul, and religious convictions into the stretching of that
buckskin. It looks as white as paper; and feels as soft and warm as
the turf on a southern slope. Nevertheless your tyrant declares it
will not do.

"It looks dry, and it feels dry," says he, "but it isn't dry. Go to
it!"

But at this point your outraged soul arches its back and bucks. You
sneak off and roll up that piece of buckskin, and thrust it into the
alforja. You KNOW it is dry. Then with a deep sigh of relief you come
out of prison into the clear, sane, lazy atmosphere of the camp.

"Do you mean to tell me that there is any one