ses at Elk Lodge I spoke of the
snowshoes."

"And when Mr. Macksey told me of it," put in the manager, "I saw at
once that we could use a scene with some of you folks on the shoes. So I
arranged with Billy Jack."

"Is that your real name?" asked Alice, who had taken a sudden liking to
the rugged son of the forest.

"That's one of my real names, strange as it sounds," he answered. "I
don't much fancy it; but what am I to do?"

"I like it!" the girl announced, promptly. "It's better than being
Running Bear or something like that."

"I had one of those names--in fact, I have it yet," he said, "but I
never use it. Flaming Arrow is my real Indian name."

"Flaming Arrow! How romantic!" exclaimed Miss Dixon. "How did you come
to get that?"

"Oh, when I was a boy an Indian from a neighboring tribe shot an arrow,
with some burning tow on it, over into our camp, just in a spirit of
mischief, for we were friendly. I snatched the arrow out of a pile of
dry bark that it might have set on fire, and so I got my name. I am a
Western Indian," Billy Jack explained, "but of late I have made my home
in New England. Now, if you like, I will show you how to use
snowshoes."

A number of the queer "tennis racquets," as Alice called them, had been
obtained through the good offices of Billy Jack, he having arranged for
them in the lumber camp. Snowshoes, as you all know, consist of a thin
strip of wood, bent around in a curve, and shaped not unlike a lawn
tennis racquet, except that the handle or heel part is shorter. The
shoes are laced with thongs, and the feet are placed in the centre of
the criss-crossed thongs, and held there by other thongs or straps.

The idea of snowshoes is to enable travelers to make their way over deep
drifts without sinking, the shoes distributing the weight over a larger
area. They are not easy to use, and the novice is very apt to trip by
putting one shoe down on top of the other, and then trying to step out.

Billy Jack, or Flaming Arrow, as Ruth and Alice voted to call him, first
showed the members of the company how to fasten the snowshoes on their
feet, allowing for the play of the heel. He put a pair on himself,
first, and stepped out over a stretch of unbroken snow. Instead of
sinking down, as he would have done under ordinary circumstances, he
slipped over the surface as lightly as a feather.

"Now, you try," he told Mr. Sneed, who was near him.

"Who, me? Oh, I can't walk on these things," pr