“Can we keep the skin?” asked Rod.  “It’s my first, you know, and—­”

“Of course we can.  Give us a hand with the fire, Rod; it will keep you from catching cold.”

In the excitement of making their first camp, Rod almost forgot that he was soaked to the skin, and that night was falling about them.  The first step was the building of a fire, and soon a great, crackling, almost smokeless blaze was throwing its light and heat for thirty feet around.  Wabi now brought blankets from the canoe, stripped off a part of his own clothes, made Rod undress, and soon had that youth swathed in dry togs, while his wet ones were hung close up to the fire.  For the first time Rod saw the making of a wilderness shelter.  Whistling cheerily, Wabi got an ax from the canoe, went into the edge of the cedars and cut armful after armful of saplings and boughs.  Tying his blankets about himself, Rod helped to carry these, a laughable and grotesque figure as he stumbled about clumsily in his efforts.  Within half an hour the cedar shelter was taking form.  Two crotched saplings were driven into the ground eight feet apart, and from one to the other, resting in the crotches, was placed another sapling, which formed the ridge-pole; and from this pole there ran slantwise to the earth half a dozen others, making a framework upon which the cedar boughs were piled.  By the time the old Indian had finished his bear the home was completed, and with its beds of sweet-smelling boughs, the great camp-fire in front and the dense wilderness about them growing black with the approach of night, Rod thought that nothing in picture-book or story could quite equal the reality of that moment.  And when, a few moments later, great bear-steaks were broiling over a mass of coals, and the odor of coffee mingled with that of meal-cakes sizzling on a heated stone, he knew that his dearest dreams had come true.

That night in the glow of the camp-fire Rod listened to the thrilling stories of Wabi and the old Indian, and lay awake until nearly dawn, listening to the occasional howl of a wolf, mysterious splashings in the river and the shrill notes of the night birds.  There were varied experiences in the following three days:  one frosty morning before the others were awake he stole out from the camp with Wabi’s rifle and shot twice at a red deer—­which he missed both times; there was an exciting but fruitless race with a swimming caribou in Sturgeon Lake, at which Wabi himself took three long-range shots without effect.

It was on a glorious autumn afternoon that Wabi’s keen eyes first descried the log buildings of the Post snuggled in the edge of the seemingly unending forest.  As they approached he joyfully pointed out the different buildings to Rod—­the Company store, the little cluster of employees’ homes and the factor’s house, where Rod was to meet his welcome.  At least Roderick himself had thought it would be there.  But as they came nearer a single canoe shot out suddenly from the shore and the young hunters could see a white handkerchief waving them greeting.  Wabi replied with a whoop of pleasure and fired his gun into the air.