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He laid a little piece of deer skin in his left hand. On this he laid one of the flakes he had just broken from the pebble, and held it fast with his fingers. Then he took a piece of deer antler. "This antler," he said, "is soft enough to spring a little when I press it against the pebble. Yet it is hard enough to bring off a chip." He began pressing with the antler along the edge of the flake.
There were no liners in those days; but a ship with two cabins was a miracle of convenience. "Your mother will hardly suit a ship, Moses; and a ship will hardly suit your mother." "How can any of us know that till we try? If I'm a chip of the old block, they'll take to each other like rum and water. If I'm to go out in the ship, I'm far from certain I'll not take the old woman to sea with me."
Chip," he said earnestly, "I'd give a lot right now to have old Patsy back er just to have around, if it made him feel bad to leave. I reckon maybe that was my fault: I hadn't oughta pitched quite so hard, and I had oughta looked where I was throwin' m' rider.
"Ef it comes t' that," exclaimed Chip in a resentful tone, "what's the matter with you goin' ahead and turnin' the trick. There ain't nobody here that knows better'n you how to keep the recordin' angel workin' double shifts." There was a laugh at this, but when it subsided Sandy had his answer ready: "It ain't a question o' lyin' with me," he explained.
He commands 'em to cut down a big whitewood tree that lives down in the bottoms, hollow out the butt log for a trough, an' haul her up alongside the r'ar veranda. "'For a week thar's a incessant "chip! chop!" of the axes; an' then with six yoke of steers, the trough is brought into camp. It's long enough an' wide enough an' deep enough to swim a colt.
Chip, as he was stretched on the floor feigning drunkenness, had kept his ears open, although obliged to keep his eyes closed. The single candle which lit the room, furnished light too indistinct for him to see the faces of the two visitors, and as he acted his character of the drunken man, he cudgeled his brains to account for their visit.
The marvelous dexterity and determined purpose evinced in the laborious decoration of canoe paddles, ax-handles, and other weapons, is, under such technical disabilities as to tools, really very impressive. This being so, there is no inherent reason why such a rudimentary form of the art as "chip" carving should not be practised in a way consistent with its true nature and limitations.
This one chip contains inscribed on it the whole history of the wood-chopper and of the world. On this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt, perchance, or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the forest, with what interest we read the tattle of cities, of those larger huts, empty and to let, like this, in High Streets and Broadways.
If one priest alone went up and poured the wine and oil over the sacred stone, and then cleansed the shrine from any spot or stain, the grandeur of the idea would not be marred by the monotony of the performance; but when some four hundred priests and choristers defile past, each armed with a chip besom, like those of the buy-a-broom girls of our childhood, and each gives a dab to the altar as he passes, the whole scene becomes tiresome, if not absurd.
Scip, walking his nag, drew near the cowboy. "Hye thar, honey, got any 'bacco?" "Plenty, blacky, plenty," "Den give me some." "What is it, Chip?" asked the cowboy as Moriarity swept out of sight. "We have work to do to-morrow night, Barney, you must get the boys together, go down the divide to the ford and cross over, ready to come when I whistle. To-morrow night we must bag our game."
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