“Well, that’s just what I will do.”

Then arose a knotty question.  Should he go to Si Lee and thereby turn “White” and break the charm of the Indian life, or should he attempt the task of persuading Si to come down there to work without proper conveniences.  They voted to bring Si to camp.  “Da might think we was backing out.”  After all, the things needed were easily carried, and Si, having been ambushed by a scout, consented to come and open a night-school in taxidermy.

The tools and things that he brought were a bundle of tow made by unravelling a piece of rope, some cotton wool, strong linen thread, two long darning needles, arsenical soap worked up like cream, corn-meal, some soft iron wire about size sixteen and some of stovepipe size, a file, a pair of pliers, wire cutters, a sharp knife, a pair of stout scissors, a gimlet, two ready-made wooden stands, and last of all a good lamp.  The boys hitherto had been content with the firelight.

Thus in the forest teepee Yan had his first lesson in the art that was to give him so much joy and some sorrow in the future.

Guy was interested, though scornful; Sam was much interested; Yan was simply rapt, and Si Lee was in his glory.  His rosy red cheeks and his round figure swelled with pride; even his semi-nude head and fat, fumbling fingers seemed to partake of his general elation and importance.

First he stuffed the Owls’ throats and wounds with cotton wool.

Then he took one, cut a slit from the back of the breast-bone nearly to the tail (A to B, Fig. 1), while Yan took the other and tried faithfully to follow his example.

He worked the skin from the body chiefly by the use of his finger nails, till he could reach the knee of each leg and cut this through at the joint with the knife (Kn, Fig. 1).  The flesh was removed from each leg-bone down to the heel-joint (Hl, Hl, Fig. 1), leaving the leg and skin as in Lg, Figure 2.  Then working back on each side of the tail, he cut the “pope’s nose” from the body and left it as part of the skin, with the tail feathers in it, and this, Si explained, was a hard place to get around.  Sam called it “rounding Cape Horn.”  As the flesh was exposed Si kept it powdered thickly with corn-meal, and this saved the feathers from soiling.

Once around Cape Horn it was easy sailing.  The skin was rapidly pushed off till the wings were reached.  These were cut off at the joint deep in the breast (under J J, Fig. 1, or seen on the back, W J, Fig. 2), the first bone of each wing was cleared of meat, and the skin, now inside out and well mealed, was pushed off the neck up to the head.

Here Si explained that in most birds it would slip easily over the head, but in Owls, Woodpeckers, Ducks and some others one had sometimes to help it by a lengthwise slit on the nape (Sn, Fig. 2).  “Owls is hard, anyway,” he went on, “though not so bad as Water-fowl.  If ye want a real easy bird for a starter, take a Robin or a Blackbird, or any land Bird about that size except Woodpeckers.”