been permitted to look in and when they asked if they
might do so, "You wait. Me fix," answered the Indian, ducking into the
house he had created, and in a few moments they saw wisps of smoke
curling up from the peak of the tepee through the opening left by the
tops of the "lodge"-poles.

"You come," announced the Indian as he stepped out.

The girls lost no time in crawling into the tepee. Cries of delight rose
with the smoke of the lodge-fire that Willy had made with a few sticks
and pieces of bark, as they found themselves in a circular room fully
ten feet in diameter, in the center of which crackled a comforting
little fire, the draft carrying the smoke straight up and out of the
tepee.

"What if it should rain?" questioned Emma apprehensively.

"Me put cover over top," answered the Indian, whose stolid
expressionless face was peering in at them. "No rain come along. You
like?"

Miss Briggs got up and offered her hand to him.

"We do, Willy. But why do you do so much for us?" she asked.

"Willy's Big Friends," he answered gruffly, and started to back out, but
the girls would not let him go until each had shaken hands with him and
thanked him.

"By the way, where do you live?" wondered Nora.

"Summer time live on reservation. Hunting time live up here in tepee. Me
show. Me go hunting, too. Mebby shoot deer, mebby big moose. Bye!"

[Illustration: Grace Got One Spill and Essayed Another Attempt.]

"Oh, don't go away," begged Grace. "We like to have you here, and I
wish, too, that you would let me paddle that beautiful canoe. It is the
first bark canoe I have ever seen. I know how to paddle a modern canoe,
but I saw this morning that the bark boat is an entirely different
craft. Will you teach me?"

"Me show. Go meet Big Friend now."

"Bring him back with you, Willy," urged Grace, but the Indian already
had withdrawn, and when they looked out he had gone.

"Hey, you folks!" called Hippy, who was grooming Hindenburg with a horse
brush. "Where is the dinner?"

Grace said she had forgotten all about it, and that Mrs. Shafto had gone
out to try to shoot a duck.

"In the meantime we starve, eh? Hindenburg is so hungry that his sides
are caving in, and the bear has gone out into the woods to eat leaves.
By the way, Willy Hoss's canoe is down yonder hidden under the bushes.
He said you were to use it, Grace. He has gone away."

After dinner, which was more in the nature of a luncheon, Mrs. Shafto
came in