Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat Page A

uppermost. Then he carefully scraped away the last fragments of tissue withthe rounded end of his knife blade. The skin was of a bluish color, and Awasin remarked that it was not yet “prime” and not much good for clothing. “But it’ll do for a tent,” he said.
    The next job was to strip away the three-inch-wide band of sinews that ran down the full length of each strip of back meat. These sheets of sinew, each three feet long, were hung to dry on the paddle, which had been stuck on end in the sand. At the lower end of each sheet Awasin tied a stone so that the sinew would dry straight. “Woman’s work this,” he complained to Jamie. “But we’re going to need sinew thread before too long.”
    By dusk the jobs were finished. The boys were tired, but strangely content. After a good dinner they lay down in a makeshift tent they had erected, using stones, twigs, and “green” hides.
    Their first day as dwellers in the plains had ended, and they had much to show for it. Nine skins; enough meat to make a hundred pounds of “jerky,” or dry meat; supplies of sinew thread and plenty of fresh meat for daily use. Also, they had acquired a friend.
    The fawn pushed its way under the edge of the tent to lie down awkwardly beside Awasin. Jamie pulled a handful of sedge and gave it to the little deer, who munched away contentedly.
    Jamie stretched out on his blanket and sighed. “Not so bad,” he said a trifle smugly.
    â€œDon’t be too proud. We still have much to do,” Awasin answered cautiously.

 

    CHAPTER 14
    Camp at the Deer Fence
    D URING THE NEXT WEEK THE BOYS found so many urgent jobs that they had little time for worrying. The weather was changing, and there was clear indication that summer days were done. There was heavy frost almost every night, and in the morning half an inch of ice lay on the tundra pools until the noonday sun melted it away.
    Luckily the sun was still bright, and in three days the meat laid out on the willow scrub had dried. Jamie collected it carefully and packed it away in rough bags made from some of the “green,” or untreated, caribou hides.
    The main problem now was to keep warm. The makeshift tent, supported only by low scrub, was full of gaps. Their clothing was thin and their footgear almost worn out. After one particularly miserable night when they lay sleepless and shivering in their tent, Jamie decided to do something about the shelter problem. “We’ll have to build some kind of house, Awasin,” he said. “Maybe we could make a sort of igloo out of rocks. If we stuffed all the chinks with moss and covered the whole thing with deer hides it ought to be fairly warm.”
    â€œWe must do something!” replied Awasin, still shivering from the night’s chill. “You go ahead on the house. I’ll see what I can do about some clothes.”
    Jamie set about housebuilding. There were plenty of flat rocks nearby and he gathered a pile of these at a spot beside the fire. Then he marked out a circle on the sand about five feet in diameter. Using the broad forehead antler from an old caribou skull, he dug out the sand inside the circle until he came to solid rock about a foot below the ground level. Next he began a circular wall, laying flat stones one on top of the other. At one point he placed a long, narrow stone across two others set upright in the wall. This was to be the door—a low, narrow entrance through which a boy, on hands and knees, could crawl.
    It was ticklish work. Since there was no mortar to hold the stones, they had a tendency to topple inward and knock the whole thing down. When the wall was three feet high, it became so tottery that Jamie did not dare build it any higher.
    His next problem was a roof. After much thought he placed the broken paddle across the top, like a rafter. Then he gathered armfuls of the longest willows he could find, and made a crude thatch