Part 19 (1/2)
”Well, I say that's mighty inter-est-in',” said Sam--he had listened attentively--”an' I'd like nothin' better than to try it myself if I had a gun an' there was lots of game.”
”Pooh, who wouldn't?”
”Mighty few--an' there's mighty few who _could_.”
”I could.”
”What, make everything with just a knife? I'd like to see you make a teepee,” then adding earnestly, ”Sam, we've been kind o' playing Injuns; now let's do it properly. Let's make everything out of what we find in the woods.”
”Guess we'll have to visit the Sanger Witch again. She knows all about plants.”
”We'll be the Sanger Indians. We can both be Chiefs,” said Yan, not wis.h.i.+ng to propose himself as Chief or caring to accept Sam as his superior. ”I'm Little Beaver. Now what are you?”
”b.l.o.o.d.y-Thundercloud-in-the-Afternoon.”
”No, try again. Make it something you can draw, so you can make your totem, and make it short.”
”What's the smartest animal there is?”
”I--I--suppose the Wolverine.”
”What! Smarter'n a Fox?”
”The books say so.”
”Kin he lick a Beaver?”
”Well, I should say so.”
”Well, that's me.”
”No, you don't. I'm not going around with a fellow that licks me. It don't fit you as well as 'Woodp.e.c.k.e.r,' anyhow. I always get _you_ when I want a nice tree spoiled or pecked into holes,” retorted Yan, magnanimously ignoring the personal reason for the name.
”Tain t as bad as _beavering_,” answered Sam
”Beavering” was a word with a history. Axes and timber were the biggest things in the lives of the Sangerites. Skill with the axe was the highest accomplishment. The old settlers used to make everything in the house out of wood, and with the axe for the only tool. It was even said that some of them used to ”edge her up a bit” and shave with her on Sundays. When a father was setting his son up in life he gave him simply a good axe. The axe was the grand essential of life and work, and was supposed to be a whole outfit. Skill with the axe was general. Every man and boy was more or less expert, and did not know how expert he was till a real ”greeny” came among them. There is a right way to cut for each kind of grain, and a certain proper way of felling a tree to throw it in any given direction with the minimum of labour. All these things are second nature to the Sangerite. A Beaver is credited with a haphazard way of gnawing round and round a tree till somehow it tumbles, and when a chopper deviates in the least from the correct form, the exact right cut in the exact right place, he is said to be ”beavering”; therefore, while ”working like a Beaver” is high praise, ”beavering” a tree is a term of unmeasured reproach, and Sam's final gibe had point and force that none but a Sangerite could possibly have appreciated.
XI
Yan and the Witch
The Sanger Witch hated the Shanty-man's axe And wildfire, too, they tell, But the hate that she had for the Sporting man Was wuss nor her hate of h.e.l.l!
--Cracked Jimmie's Ballad of Sanger.
Yan took his earliest opportunity to revisit the Sanger Witch.
”Better leave me out,” advised Sam, when he heard of it. ”She'd never look at you if I went. You look too blame healthy.”