70 FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS 



" You see," he explained, " if you are camping in any 

 one place for a spell, it gets dreadful mussy if you don't 

 keep cleaned up, and then you may want yer duds in 

 a hurry. Always keep yer kit ready, whether it's guns, 

 or harness, or kittles ; that's camp law." 



So the children strayed abovit for an hour or so until 

 Nez and their father had finished their work and smoked 

 their after-dinner pipes. 



" Now we'll have a campfire, though it's the wrong 

 time o' day," continued Nez, piling some logs from his 

 shed against a couple of charred tree trunks that stood 

 side by side about four feet apart ; he put sticks and 

 kindling in front of the logs, arranging the heap so that 

 the wind blew from the front to the back. 



" Why don't you put the sticks in a stack, like corn 

 stalks?" asked Nat. "That is the way we do when 

 Uncle Roy lets us make bonfires in the gravel-bank lot ; 

 it burns up as quick as a flash, only it eats a great lot 

 of wood." 



" That's the reason we don't do it," said Nez, " just 

 'cause it does burn up quick and eat the wood so fast 

 and then slumps out. This isn't the real time o' day 

 that in natur' a woodsman or a plainsman would stop 

 to build a campfire, but it'll do to show you by." 



" When do people generally build them ? " asked 

 Rap. 



"Along about dark," said Nez, "after supper, when 

 the day's work is done, if it's a cattle round-up, or a 

 huntin' or a lumber camji. In the north and northwest 

 country the air is dry and fine enough in the daytime, 

 but as soon as the sun goes down — down goes the 

 weather, too. If you go to sleep with no fire, or let 



