Jack routed out the entire party before daylight next morning and bade them "get breakfast quick and eat it in a hurry. We've got to begin our house to-day," he added.
They were eager enough, for, apart from the frolic of house building, they knew how badly they should need a more secure shelter than their temporary abode could furnish, should rain or snow come, as was likely now at any time.
Breakfast over, Jack took his axe and marked a number of trees for cutting. Most of them were trees nearly a foot in thickness—none under eight inches—and all were situated in the thickest growth of timber.
"Why not choose trees farther out in the open?" asked Ed Parmly, "where they would be easier to get at and get out."
"Because, if you will use your eyes, Ed, you'll see that out in the open, the trees taper rapidly from stump to top. I want trees that will yield at least one, and if possible, two logs apiece, with very little taper to them. Otherwise, our house will be lop-sided."
"But I say, Jack, what causes the difference? Why do trees in the thick woods grow so much taller and straighter and of more uniform size than trees out in the open?"
"Because every tree is continually hunting for sunlight and air," answered Jack. "Out in the open, each tree finds these easily and goes to work at once to put out its branches, about ten feet from the ground, and to make itself generally comfortable. But where the trees are crowded close together each has to struggle with all the rest for its share of sunlight and air. They do not waste their energies in putting out branches that they can do without, but just keep on growing straight up in search of the air and sunlight. So you see if you want long sticks you must go into the thick woods for them. Out there in that half open glade there isn't a single tree with a twenty-foot reach before you come to its branches, while the trees I have marked here in the thick woods will give us, most of them two logs apiece twenty-one feet long and with not more than three or four inches difference between their diameters at the butt and their diameters at the extreme upper end. It's a good deal so with men, by the way. Those that must struggle for a chance usually achieve the best results in the end."
By this time the axes were all busy felling the marked trees, and within an hour or so they all lay upon the ground, trimmed of their branches, and cut into the required lengths of twenty-one feet each.
Having felled his share of them, Jack went a little further into the woodlands, and began blocking out great chips from one after another big chestnut tree. Having blocked out these chips, Jack sat down and began to split them, observing the result in each case with care. Presently he satisfied himself and set to work to cut down the giant chestnut whose chip had yielded the best results.
"What's all that for, Jack?" asked the Doctor. "Why did you split up those chips in that way, like a little boy with a new hatchet?"
"I was hunting for some timber that isn't 'brash,'" answered Jack, "to make our clapboards out of."
"What do you mean by 'brash?'"
"Why, some timber splits easily and straight along its grain, while other wood breaks away slantwise across the grain. That last kind is called 'brash,' and, of course, it is of no account for clapboards. See here!" and with that he took up two of the big sample chips and illustrated his meaning by splitting them and showing the Doctor how one of them split straight with the grain, while the other showed no such integrity.
"Oh, then, you're going to make clapboards out of this tree to roof our shanty with and to close up its gables."
"I'm going to make clapboards for our roof," answered Jack, "but not for our gables. They'll be made of logs, in true mountain fashion."
"But how is that possible?" eagerly asked the Doctor.
"I'll show you when we come to build. I can't very well explain it in advance. And another thing, Doctor, you remember that we have only ten pounds or so of nails, all told."
"That's true!" exclaimed the Doctor, almost in consternation. "We can't roof our house till somebody goes down the mountain and brings a supply."
"That's where you are mightily mistaken, Doctor. There isn't a log cabin in these mountains that has a nail in its roof."
"But how then are the clapboards held in place?"
"That again is a thing I can show you far better than I can explain it without demonstration. But we must first get our clapboards, and if you'll go back to the camp and bring a cross cut saw, I'll have this giant of the forest laid low by the time you get back, and then you and I will cut it into four-foot lengths for clapboards."
It should be explained that in the mountains of Virginia the word "clapboard" and the simpler word "board," mean something quite different from what they signify elsewhere. When the Virginia mountaineer speaks of a "board" or a "clapboard" he means a rough shingle, four feet long, simply split out of a piece of timber and not dressed in any way.
When the Doctor returned with the cross cut saw, Jack first marked off ten feet of his great tree at the butt and the two set to work to sever it.
"But you said we were to cut it into four-foot lengths," said the Doctor, as they began to pull the saw back and forth.
"So we are," answered Jack, "after we saw off this butt. You see, the butt of a tree is always rather brash, and so we won't use that for clapboards. Besides, I've another use for it."
"What?" asked the Doctor.
"I'm going to dig it out into a big trough and make a bath tub out of it. You see, that spring up there under the cliff has a fine flow of water. I'll sink this trough in the ground, at a proper angle, and train the water into it. It will run in at one end and out at the other, continually, so we'll always have a fresh bath ready for any comer."
"But will the boys relish a cold bath out of doors when the thermometer gets down into the small figures?"
"Well they'd better. Little Tom is a crank on cold bathing in the morning, and if any fellow in the party doesn't relish that sort of thing, Tom will souse him in any how till he teaches him to like it. He won't do you that way, Doctor, of course, but—"
"But why not? I need the tonic influence of cold morning baths more than anybody else in the party, and as soon as we get our bath tub in place I shall begin taking them. And more than that, I'll help little Tom in the work of dousing any boy in the party that neglects that hygienic regimen."
Having sawed off the butt of this big tree, Jack went back to the house site and directed the boys as to the work of building. The forty sticks of timber already cut, when piled into a crib would make the body of a cabin nearly twenty feet square, allowing for the overlapping of the timbers, and about ten feet high under the eaves. Jack showed the boys how to notch the logs at their ends so as to hold them securely in place and so also as to let them lie very close together throughout their length. For, of course, without notching, each log would lie the whole thickness of another log above the timber below it. Having thus started the four in the work of building, he returned to the woods where he and the Doctor continued the work of sawing the big tree trunk into four-foot lengths. About noon the Doctor volunteered to go and prepare a roast venison dinner, and Jack proceeded to split the tree-lengths into sizes convenient for the riving of the clapboards.
By the time that he had accomplished this, the Doctor whistled through his fingers to announce dinner, and every member of the party was eagerly ready for the savory meal, the very odor of which made their nostrils glad while they were washing their hands and faces in preparation for it. There were not many dishes included in it—only some sweet potatoes roasted in the ashes, and some big pones of black ash cake, to go with the great haunch of roast venison.
Ash cake is a species of corn bread, consisting of corn meal mixed up with cold water and a little salt, and baked hard in a bed of hot ashes and hotter coals, and if any reader of this story has ever eaten ash cake, properly prepared, I need not tell him that there is no better kind of bread made anywhere—no, not even in Paris, a city that prides itself about equally upon its "pain"—bread,—and its paintings, of which it has the finest collections in all the world. Finally, there was the sauce—traditionally, the best in the world,—namely, hunger. Half a dozen young fellows high up on a mountain side, who had breakfasted before daylight and swung axes and lifted logs till midday, needed no highly-spiced flavoring to give savor to their meat. They ate like the healthy, hard working fellows that they were, and they had no fear of indigestions to follow their eating.
After dinner the work of building went on apace. The main crib of the house was finished by noon of the next day, and the roof and gables only remained to be completed after that. This was to be done as follows:
Logs to form the gables were cut, each a few feet shorter than the one below. Then poles six inches in diameter were cut to form a resting place for the clapboards, and were placed lengthwise the building, resting in notches in the steadily shortening gable timbers. The gable timbers were permitted, however, to extend two feet or so beyond the notches in which the lengthwise poles rested, and a second notch was cut in each end of each of them. When a row of clapboards was laid on the lengthwise poles, another lengthwise pole was placed on top to hold the clapboards in place, and this top pole rested in the outer notches of the gable logs, thus securely holding the roof in position, and as the clapboards overlapped each other as shingles do, the roof was rainproof.
Meantime Jack had been riving clapboards with a fro. Does the reader know what a fro is? The dictionaries do not tell you in any adequate way, though in Virginia and throughout the south and the great west that implement has played an important part in enabling men to house themselves with clapboards or shingles for their roofs. So I must do the work that the dictionaries neglect. A fro is an iron or steel blade about eight or ten inches long, about three inches wide, a quarter of an inch thick at top, tapering to a very dull edge at bottom. In one end of it is an eye to hold a handle.
The fro is used in splitting out clapboards and rough shingles. The operator places its dull edge on the end of a piece of timber of proper width, at the distance of a clapboard's thickness from the side of the timber. Then he hits the back of the fro blade with a mallet or club, driving it well in like a wedge. Then, by working the handle backwards and forwards, and pushing the fro further and further into the crack, as it opens, he splits off a shingle, or a clapboard, as the case may be. In the south, and in some parts of the west nearly all of the shingles and clapboards used are still split out in this way with the fro. Until recent years, when shingle making machines were introduced, all shingles were made in that way, so that next to the axe, and the pitsaw, which used to do the work now done by the saw mill, the fro played the most conspicuous part in the creation of human habitations in all that pioneer period when sturdy arms were conquering the American wilderness and stout hearts were creating the greatness in which we now rejoice. It is stupid of the dictionaries not to tell of it.
In splitting out his clapboards from three-cornered sections of his chestnut logs, Jack gradually reduced those sections to a width too small for the further making of clapboards. This left in each case a three-cornered stick two inches thick at its thickest part, and perhaps three inches wide to its edge. The Doctor wanted to utilize these sticks for firewood and proposed to carry a lot of them to the temporary shelter for that purpose.
"Not by any means," said Jack. "Those wedge-shaped pieces are to be used for chinking."
"What's chinking?" asked the Doctor.
"Why, you see," answered Jack, "the logs of which our house or hut is built, are not quite straight, though they are the straightest we could find in the woods. There are spaces between them that are open, and when the zero weather comes we should be very uncomfortably cold in there if these spaces remained open. No fire that we could make in our chimney would keep us warm under such conditions. So we must stop up the cracks. We'll do that by fitting these pieces of chinking into the cracks between the logs, and then 'daubing' the smaller cracks with mud. That's an operation that will try your resolution, Doctor, and determine whether you are really only sixteen years old, as we voted that you were, or are a much older person, to be specially considered by us boys—for I don't know any more disagreeable job than daubing a log cabin."
"Good!" answered the Doctor. "I'll submit myself to the test very gladly. You'll show me how to 'daub' of course, and if I don't 'daub' with the best and youngest of you, then I'll give up and go down the mountain, acknowledging myself a failure. But I give you fair warning that I don't expect or intend either to give up or to go down the mountain."
"We should all be very sorry if you did, Doctor. We've adopted you now. We've decreed that for this winter, at any rate, you are only sixteen years of age, and upon my word, if you'll allow me to say so—"
"Now, stop right there," broke in the Doctor. "Don't say 'if you'll allow me to say so.' That undoes the whole arrangement. You fellows have accepted me as a boy among boys, and you've got to stick to that. There are to be no deferences to me. There is to be precisely the same comradeship between me and the rest of you that exists among yourselves, otherwise I shall consider myself an intruder."
"All right," responded Jack, seizing the Doctor's hand and pressing it warmly. "We all feel that you are altogether one of us, and I for one shall hereafter treat you as such. So when the daubing time comes I'll set you your task like the rest of them and I'll criticize every crevice you leave open. What with an open roof—for a clapboard roof is very open—through which the wind can blow at its own sweet will, and what with the necessity of keeping the door open most of the time for light, it's going to be very hard work to keep the place comfortably warm."
"But why keep the door open for light?" asked the Doctor. "Why not let in the light through windows?"
"We haven't any windows," answered Jack, "and we haven't any sash or glass to make them with."
"Of course not," said the Doctor, "but still, if you'll let me, I'll show you how to have windows that will keep out the wind and let in light at the same time. I've all the necessary materials in my shoulder pack."
"I can't guess how you're going to do it, Doctor, but at any rate I accept your statement, and if you'll tell me what sized openings you want in the walls for your windows, I'll go at once and saw them out."
"That's what troubles me," said the Doctor. "I don't see how we are going to make window openings without sawing through the logs, and I don't see how that is to be done without weakening the structure, and letting the unsupported ends of the logs fall out of place."
"Oh, that's easy enough," answered Jack. "You tell me what sized window openings you want in our walls, and I'll take care of the logs."
The Doctor thought a moment, and then said:
"Well, we ought to have two windows, each about two feet and a half one way by about three feet or a little more the other way."
"Does it make any difference," asked Jack, "whether the long way is up and down, or to the right and left?"
"None. You can make the openings long either way and short either way."
"Good!" answered Jack. "Then I'll make them long to right and left and short in their up and down dimensions, so that I shall have to saw out only two logs for each window."
Jack went immediately to work. He split out six or eight boards, each four times the thickness of any ordinary clapboard, and, taking a handful of the small supply of nails on hand, went to the cabin now well advanced in construction, and selected the places for the two window openings. Then he nailed the thick boards securely to the logs, one on each side of one of the proposed window openings. The boards were long enough to reach over four of the logs. Jack nailed them securely to all four of the logs, thus binding the timbers together, and making each a support to all of the others. Then he sawed out three-foot lengths of the two middle logs, leaving their ends securely supported by the boards which were firmly nailed to them, and also to the uncut logs above and below. Then, to make all secure, he fitted pieces of his thick boards to the ends of the sawed logs, and nailed them firmly into place as an additional protection against sagging.
"Now, then, Doctor," he called out, "come on with your windows. I'm curious to see what they are like."
"In a minute," answered the Doctor, who was busy with his materials on a log in front of the house. He had taken two strips of thin yard-wide muslin each a little over four feet long, and with the inside of a bacon rind he was busily greasing them.
The result of the greasing was to render the thin cotton fabric quite translucent, and indeed, almost transparent. With tacks, of which there was a small supply in the Doctor's own pack, he securely fastened one of these pieces of greased muslin on the outside of the window opening that Jack had made, and the other on the inside, leaving a space of several inches between.
"There," he said, when all was done, "that will let in light almost as well as glass could do, and it will keep out wind and cold even better than the logs you sawed away could have done, no matter how well chinked and daubed they might have been."
Then he and Jack proceeded to deal with the other window opening in the same way. By the time that they had done the boys were clamorously calling them to supper, and they were not reluctant to answer the summons. By this time the roof was on the house and a door of clapboards, split out of double thickness, was hung by hinges made of limber twigs, called withes, to pegs in the logs, and supplied with a wooden latch, catching into a wooden slot. The door opening was made precisely as the window holes were. The mountain form of log cabin involved the least possible use of metal in its construction, and except for the nails used in making the door and windows this one had involved the use of no metal at all. It was not all done, by any means, but at least its outer shell was done after two days of hard work, and the rest could be safely left till the morrow—all of it, except one thing, of which Jack was mindful during supper.
"Boys," said Jack while supper was in process of consumption, "I'm afraid we've all got to do a little work to-night by moonlight. Fortunately there is a moon, but these thin, fleecy clouds mean snow or I'm mistaken."
"What is the work to be done, Jack," asked Ed. "Why," said Jack, "we've got to have some dry broom straw for our beds, and we've got to gather it to-night. Otherwise it'll all be wet."
"Broom straw" in Virginia means a tall grass of the prairie grass kind, which grows thickly in every open space. In winter it is dry and nothing makes a sweeter smelling bed.
The boys were tired after their hard day's work, but their enthusiasm instantly outvoted their weariness, for their proceedings had not yet lost the character of a sort of frolic in their minds.
"Besides," said little Tom as the supper drew to an end, "I for one am not half as tired as I was when we sat down to eat."
"Naturally not," said the Doctor.
"But why is it?" asked Tom. "I don't see how I have got rested so soon."
"You've fired up," replied the Doctor. "Did you ever see an engine that worked badly for want of steam? Did you ever observe what the engineer does in that case?"
"Yes, of course; he sets the stoker to firing up under the boiler. But what has that to do with getting tired and getting rested again? I don't see the connection."
"Yet it is clear enough," the Doctor responded. "The human system is a machine. It must have energy or force or whatever you choose to call it, to enable it to do its work. Now an engine gets its energy from the coal or wood burned under its boiler. This human machine derives its energy solely from food put into the stomach. When you are tired it means simply that your supply of physical force has run low. When you eat you replenish the supply, just as firing up does it for the engine."
"But Doctor," said Jack with an accent of puzzled inquiry, "how about those people that are always tired—'born tired' as they say? They eat, but they never get over being tired."
"Dyspeptics, every one of them," replied the Doctor. "It doesn't help an engine to shovel coal into its furnace if the coal doesn't burn. In the same way it doesn't strengthen a man to eat unless he digests and assimilates his food."
"Well now, if you people have sufficiently assimilated your food and your ideas," broke in little Tom, "let's get to work."
Some of the boys pulled the grass and piled it in rude shocks. The others carried it to the hut and bestowed it in one corner, ready for use. As they carried on the work the moon slowly went out, and just as they were finishing it, Jim Chenowith called out:
"There's the snow," and very gently the flakes began descending. "Jack you're a good weather prophet, and this time it's lucky for us that you are. Otherwise we should have had wet broom straw to sleep on all winter. By the way, how are we going to arrange our beds?"
"Why, we'll build a platform of small poles along the eastern wall of our house—the fireplace being on the western side. We'll divide this platform into compartments, each to serve as a bed. We'll lay clapboards on the poles to make a smooth surface, and on them we'll pile all the broom straw we've got. Then we'll wrap ourselves in our blankets and crawl in. Do you see?"
"Yes, but how about the fellows that must sleep under the Doctor's muslin window?" asked Harry. "Won't they sleep pretty cold, Doctor?"
"I don't think so," answered the Doctor. "The windows will keep out the cold quite as well as the logs themselves do."
"But how can they? How can two thin sheets of muslin keep cold out or heat in, which I believe is the better way of putting it?" asked Harry.
"They can't," answered the Doctor. "Bring those two sheets of muslin together and they would let heat out and cold in as freely almost as an open hole does. It isn't the muslin that keeps the cold out or the heat in—which ever way you choose to put it. It is the imprisoned air between the two pieces of muslin. There is hardly anywhere a worse conductor of heat than confined air. That is why in building fire proof structures in the great cities they use hollow bricks for partition walls. No amount of heat on one side can pass through the confined air in the bricks and set fire to anything on the other side of the wall. In the contracts for such buildings it is often stipulated that the owner shall be free to build as hot a bonfire as he pleases in any room he may select, and if it sets fire to anything in any other room the contractor shall pay a heavy penalty."
"But where did you get your idea of greased muslin windows, Doctor?" asked Jack. "I never heard of it before."
"I got it by reading history," answered the Doctor. "In old English times nobody but princes could afford to use glass. Its cost was too great. And then later, when glass became cheaper, a stupid government put a tax on windows, and so men went on using greased cloth instead of glass in order to get the light of heaven into their habitations without having their substance eaten up by a window tax."
"But why was it 'stupid' as you say for the government to raise revenue by so simple a means as that of taxing windows?" asked Jack.
"Because governments exist for the good of the people governed, and not the reverse of that. Otherwise no government would have any right to exist at all. A window tax discourages the use of windows. As a result the people live in darkness and foul air, which is not good for them. But governments in the old days assumed not that the government existed for the good of the people, but that the people existed for the good of the government. Never until our American Republic was established was that notion driven out of the minds of Kings, Princes and great ministers of state. It is one of our country's best services to human kind that it has taught this lesson until now in every part of the civilized world it is perfectly understood that the government is the servant of the people, not the people the servant of the government."
"Yes, I remember," said Jack, "that when the colonies were resisting British oppression, Thomas Jefferson put into an address to George III a pointed and not very polite reminder that the King was after all only a chosen chief magistrate of the people, appointed by them to do their service and promote their happiness. There wasn't much idea of 'the divine right of kings' in Jefferson's noddle."
"No," responded the Doctor, "nor in Franklin's, or Patrick Henry's or John Adams's or James Otis's. Jefferson simply formulated the thought of all of them when he contended that the British parliament had no more right to pass laws for the government and taxation of Virginia than the Virginia legislature had to pass laws for the government and taxation of Great Britain. But the beauty of the whole thing lies in the fact that these great truths, asserted by the Americans in justification of their rebellion, have been fastened upon the minds of men everywhere, and all civilized governments have been compelled to accept and submit to them. There are kings and emperors still, but they have completely changed their conception of their functions. They have been taught, mainly by American statesmen, that they are nothing more than the servants of the people, and that so far from owning the people, the people are their masters. But come boys, it's time to get to bed. So turn in at once. I'm on guard for the next hour and a half."
There was still much to do on the house and the boys set themselves at work on it very early the next morning. First of all there was a chimney to be built. Jack directed two of the boys to saw out a space nine feet wide for the fireplace, first securing the logs in position by nailing pieces of timber to them, just as he had done with the Doctor's windows. He decided that the fireplace when finished should be five feet wide.
"You see," he said, "we've a hard house to keep warm and we must have a lot of fire. Now the width of a fire means as much as its other dimensions, and so I'm going to have a wide fire. We'll burn full length cordwood in our fireplace, and we'll make room for plenty of it in front of a big back log. In earlier times an open wood fire place was the only heating apparatus people had, and they managed very well with it. Nowadays people insist that an open fire will not heat a room. I'm disposed to think that that's because they make their fireplaces too small. We'll make ours big, like those of our grandfathers."
Then Jack turned to the Doctor and asked:
"Is it freezing?"
"No," answered the Doctor. "The thermometer stands at forty-six, and before noon this little skim of snow will be gone I think. But why do you ask?"
"Because we want to chink and daub our house as soon as possible, and of course we can't do it in freezing weather."
"Why not?" asked the Doctor. "We can warm our hands from time to time and make out to stand it."
"Yes," answered Jack, "but that isn't the point. If we daub in freezing weather the mud will all drop out. You see it freezes and then when a thaw comes the whole thing goes to pieces. So I'm glad it isn't freezing to-day. Now come you fellows, and let me show you how to chink and daub."
He dug away the soil at several spots, exposing the clay that lay beneath. Then pouring great pailfuls of water into the holes thus made, he set the boys at work mixing the clay into a soft plastic mud. By the time that this was well started the two who were to saw out a fireplace opening had finished that task, and Jack set all at work fitting chinkings into the cracks between the logs, and so daubing them with the soft mud as to close up all cracks, big and little, against the ingress of the winter's air.
"Now, Doctor," he said, when the boys began showing something like skill in this work, "if you'll come with me, we'll start a chimney."
They went into the woods and set to work splitting some chestnut logs into thick slabs, six or seven feet long. With these they made a sort of crib work outside the house at the point where the fireplace was to be. This, as Jack explained, was to hold the fire place.
Inside of this crib, or box—about two feet inside—Jack drove some sharpened sticks into the ground and behind them he placed some clapboards set on edge. Then he called for mud and with it filled in the space between the clapboards and the crib walls behind. Then he set another tier of clapboards and added more mud, and so on till he had the whole inside of the slab crib lined with two feet of mud held in place by clapboards set on edge and braced with stakes.
"Now, then," said Jack, "when we build a fire the clapboards will slowly burn away, but very slowly because no air can get behind them, and in the meantime the mud will bake into one great solid brick. Now for the top of the chimney."
Then he went outside and built upon this fireplace a smoke stack, consisting of cribwork of sticks split out for the purpose, embedding each stick in a thick daubing of mud as he went.
By the time he finished it was night—for so eager had the boys been with their work that they had not stopped on this third day for dinner, but had contented themselves with cold bites left over from breakfast. In the meantime also the other boys had finished chinking and daubing the house.
"Now we're ready to move in," said Jim Chenowith as they sat down round the fire to eat their supper.
"Indeed we're not," answered little Tom. "We haven't built our bed yet or a table to eat on, or any chairs to sit on, and besides that the fireplace must have at least twenty-four hours in which to dry before we can build a fire in it. You're always in a hurry Jim. If we get comfortably moved into our winter quarters by this time day after to-morrow we'll do very well indeed."
"Yes," interposed Jack, "but we'll move in to-morrow night nevertheless. By that time we'll have the bed constructed and a table and some sort of chairs made, and we shall be much more comfortable in the house than out here under the cliff where it is very uncomfortably wet and muddy since the snow began to melt. Of course we can't have a fire in the house for two or three days yet, but we can have one outside, in front of the door."
"So the programme for to-morrow is to make beds, chairs and a table?" asked the Doctor.
"That's the programme for the other boys, Doctor. You and I will in the meantime set up the chute through which we are to send the results of our chopping into the valley below. Fortunately there is a straight slide down the mountain, free from trees and landing at the right place. It was used some years ago to send big stones down. All we've got to do is to build a short chute at this end of it. Gravity will do the rest."
"But, I say Jack," broke in little Tom, "If we begin to chute sticks down there and anybody should be in the way—"
"But there'll be nobody in the way," answered Jack. "You don't imagine that I left so serious a matter as that to chance, do you? I've arranged the whole thing. Our slide ends in a spreading sort of flat down there in the valley that embraces an acre or so of level ground. Our timbers will go down there with the speed of cannon balls, but when they get there they'll slow up as the descent grows gentler, and stop on the level ground. Now I've arranged with the railroad people that we're not to send anything down the chute till to-morrow afternoon at the earliest, and that after that we are to send nothing down till three o'clock each day. That's to give them a chance to collect the stuff, haul it away and measure it."
"By the way," asked the Doctor, "how are we going to keep tab on their counts and measurements? Must we simply trust the contractor's men for all that?"
"Not by any means," answered Jack, who carried a very good business head on his shoulders. "Not by any means. We'll keep our own count up here. On every hundredth tie that we send down I am to mark 100, 200, 300 and so forth, according to the count, using a piece of red keel for the purpose. On every big bridge timber that we send down I am to mark the length and smallest diameter, keeping an account of it all up here. As for cordwood, every time we have sent down ten cords I am to send down a slab indicating the amount. All these markings of mine will be verified below, of course, and when we go down in the spring the contractor or, rather, his agent with whom I made our bargain—for I didn't meet the contractor himself—will settle with us. He knows us only as a single source of supply, and will credit everything we send down to the whole party of us. So as between ourselves we must keep our own accounts so as to make a proper and equitable division of the proceeds of our work when the springtime comes. To that function I appoint Ed Parmly. He is to keep our books. He has had experience in that sort of work in his father's store, and we'll look to him to keep a record of every fellow's contribution to the supply of timber sent down."
"But Jack," broke in little Tom, "how are we to estimate the amount of cordwood we send down the chute?"
"We won't estimate it at all. We'll cord it up and measure it before we send it down, just as we'll count our ties and measure up our bridge timbers. What's that?"
All the boys had started to their feet at the sound of something that seemed to be a human being in excruciating agony.
After a long pause there was a repetition of the strange, pitiful cry.
"May I use your rifle, Doctor?" asked little Tom. "That's a fellow that I don't care to tackle with a shot gun, and I've located him pretty well."
"What is it, anyhow?" asked Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith, in a breath.
"It's a panther," answered Tom as he took the gun from the Doctor's hands, slipped off his boots and crept stealthily and noiselessly into the woods.
"Stay here, all of you," he commanded, "and don't make the least noise."
Tom was a chronic huntsman. From his tenth year onward, as has been already told, he had spent a large part of his vacation alone in the woods in pursuit of game. Sometimes he had been absent from home for a week at a time, having taken no supplies with him, but depending exclusively upon his gun for the means of subsistence. Then he had come home heavily burdened with wild turkeys, squirrels, opossums, raccoons and game of every other species that the mountains afforded. In every matter pertaining to the chase his present comrades were willingly ready to pay deference to little Tom's superior skill, knowledge and sagacity. So they all obeyed him when he bade them remain where they were, and keep perfectly still.
There was a long time of waiting. Then came another of the demoniacal screams, but still no response from little Tom. Several minutes later came three rapidly succeeding reports from the repeating rifle, and after half a minute more little Tom called out—
"Come here all of you, and bring your guns."
The boys all hurried to the place from which the voice came, the Doctor carrying a brand from the camp fire to give light.
It was well that he had thought of that, for light was just then badly needed. Little Tom was lying at the root of a tree, covered with blood and manifestly fainting. Only a few feet away lay the panther, shot three times through the body but still sufficiently alive to be striking out madly with his fearfully clawed fore feet in a desperate endeavor to destroy his enemy.
By the light of the Doctor's torch three charges of buckshot were quickly driven into the beast's vitals, and at last he lay still.
Then, all attention was given to Little Tom. Throwing his torch upon the ground the Doctor called out:
"Build a fire right there, boys, as quickly as you can. I must have light by which to examine the boy's wounds."
Willing hands produced the desired light within a very few moments, and stripping off part of Tom's clothing, the Doctor discovered that the beast had dealt him two vicious blows with his horridly armed claws, one tearing his left arm severely and the other lacerating his chest. After a hurried examination, the Doctor said:
"He can stand removing to the camp if you'll carry him gently, boys, and I can treat him better there than here." Then he gave a few hurried directions as to the best way of carrying the wounded boy, and the others very lovingly obeyed his instructions in removing their comrade to the main camp fire.
"Now," said the Doctor, "remove all his clothing as quickly and as gently as you can."
This was done and the Doctor carefully examined the wounds.
"It's all right, boys," he said, presently. "Tom is very painfully hurt, but the 'painter' didn't know enough of anatomy to deliver his blows in vital parts. Tom will get well, but he's fainting now. Lower his head and throw a gourdful of cold water into his face and another over his chest."
It was no sooner said than done, and no sooner was it done than Tom revived. After blinking his eyes for a moment, he asked:
"Did you fellows finish the painter?"
"Indeed we did," answered Jack; "but it's you old fellow, that we're concerned about now."
"That's all right," said Tom, "but that fellow's hide is worth a good many dollars, and better than that, we're rid of him. If I hadn't shot him he would have dropped from a tree upon some one or other of us, and in that case he wouldn't have left anything for the Doctor to do."
Meanwhile the Doctor was carefully cleansing the boy's wounds and drenching them in water in which disinfectant tablets from his pocket case had been dissolved. Here and there it was necessary to draw the edges of deep gashes together by a stitch or two with a surgical needle. "But the main thing," the Doctor expounded, "is to cleanse and disinfect the wounds. Nature itself," he added, "will repair any wound that does not involve a vital part, if it is cleansed and kept clean. The danger always is that the wound will become infected, that inflammation and blood poisoning will set in and kill the patient. Fortunately, we surgeons know now how to prevent that, and I'll answer for it that nothing of the kind shall happen to little Tom."
"But what is it that causes the inflammation and blood poisoning?" asked Harry.
"Microbes," answered the Doctor; "little things that you can't see without a microscope—and some that you can't see with one. The greatest advance that was ever made in medical and surgical science was the discovery of the fact that nearly all diseases and all hurtful and dangerous inflammation is due to the presence of microbes in a wound. The moment the Doctors found that out they set to work to kill the microbes. They studied them under the most powerful microscopes. They tried all sorts of experiments with them till they learned how to kill them. Thus they discovered two greatly good things—antiseptic surgery first and after that aseptic surgery. Antiseptic surgery aims to kill all the evil germs that are already in a wound. Aseptic surgery aims to keep all evil germs out of the wounds that the surgeon must make."
"Would you mind giving us some illustrations, Doctor?" asked Jack.
"Certainly not, if you are interested," said the Doctor.
"I have practiced both antiseptic and aseptic surgery on little Tom to-night, so his case will serve to illustrate both. I have washed all his wounds with a solution of bi-chloride of mercury, commonly called corrosive sublimate, for the purpose of killing all the germs that may have got into them from that beast's claws or in any other way. That was antiseptic surgery. Then, wherever I found it necessary to take a stitch or two, I have used ligatures drawn directly out of a disinfecting solution, and perhaps you observed that I thoroughly disinfected my needles and other implements by passing them through a blaze before using them. So, also, as to my hands. Before touching Tom's wounds I thoroughly scoured my hands in a solution of corrosive sublimate, so that they might not carry any possible infection to the scratches. All that is aseptic surgery. In the hospitals, where all conditions can be controlled they do this aseptic business completely. First of all, they have an operating table made of glass, which absorbs nothing and could be easily and perfectly cleansed after each operation by mere washing with water. But not content with that they scour the table with a disinfecting solution immediately before every operation. Then the surgeon, his assistant, and all the attendants are clad in garments that have been rendered 'sterile' as they call it, by roasting. So of all the towels and sheets and everything else employed about the patient's person. Everything is sterilized. The bandages and the thread or the catgut to be used are drawn from thoroughly disinfected supplies. The surgeon's instruments of every kind are laid in a panfull of a disinfecting fluid, and there are so many of each that if any one of them is accidentally dropped its use is abandoned and another is used in its stead. But come! Little Tom, you are comfortable now. Why not tell us how it all happened?"
"Well, you see," answered little Tom, "when I heard that cry and located it, I knew what it meant. I knew it was a painter or a catamount, or a puma, or a panther, or a mountain lion—or whatever else you choose to call it, for it bears all those names and some others. And I knew what it was after. It wanted that last leg of venison of ours, but it wasn't over particular. If it couldn't get the venison it was quite ready to take any one of us boys instead.
"It's a smart beast, the panther. It sneaks on its prey and springs upon any animal, human or other, that it may fancy, for lunch. And yet it is a fool in some ways. It suffers itself to grow enthusiastic now and then, though that is very rare, and when that happens it gives that excruciating yell that we heard. I never heard that except once, before to-night.
"Well, when I heard it, I knew what it meant. I knew that unless somebody killed that panther, that panther would kill somebody in this company. At his second yell I located him pretty accurately, though, of course, you can't depend too confidently upon that, as the beast often runs a dozen yards in a few seconds. So I took your gun, Doctor, and went out to find the gentleman. For a time, I couldn't get a sight of him, but after awhile he yelled again, and I 'spotted' him. I crept up in the very dim light till I got a good view of him, crouching on a limb, and evidently planning to spring upon me and accept me in lieu of the venison. Then I fired three bullets through him with that splendid repeating rifle of yours, Doctor, and then I had an illustration of the old adage about 'the ruling passion' being 'strong in death.' For, instead of dropping to the ground, as I had expected him to do, the beast sprang twenty or thirty feet forward and attacked me with his hideously long and sharp claws. He tore me to ribbons at his first onset, but then the three bullets I had given him from your gun seemed suddenly to dishearten him. So I managed to creep out of his way and call to you fellows to come to my rescue. The rest of the story you fellows know better than I do. For the next thing I recollect was when you doused me with the water so that I should become conscious of the prick of the Doctor's needles, as he sewed me up. By the way, Doctor, am I seriously hurt?"
"Seriously, yes," answered the Doctor. "But not dangerously, I think. You're going to have a good long rest in one of our beds over there in the new house, but surgery is now so exact a science that I think I can promise you an entirely certain recovery within a few days, or a few weeks at furthest, if you'll be a good boy and obey my instructions."
"I say, boys," called out Tom, "how fortunate we've been in bringing a Doctor along, even if we did have to resolve half his age away! Doctor, I never met any other boy of only sixteen years old who knew half as much as you do! Now, I'm tired. I'm going to sleep. Call me when it comes my turn for guard duty."
And with that the boy sank to sleep. But there was no call upon him that night or for many nights yet to come, for sentinel service.
The next day the boys moved from their temporary shelter into their permanent winter quarters, building a fire in front of the door and making themselves as comfortable as they could under the circumstances.
Meantime the Doctor and Jack had got the chute ready. It was a strong, rough structure of stout poles, forming a sort of trough, beginning on a level with the ground at the turn of the hill and extending with a heavy incline for twenty yards or so over the steep brow of the mountain. It was supported by strong hickory and oak posts and braces throughout its length. Any piece of timber placed in its upper end and gently impelled forward would quickly traverse it to its farther end and there make a tremendous leap and a long slide down the steep, into the depths below.
Little Tom, greatly to his disgust, was peremptorily ordered into bed by command of the Doctor, but two of the boys had volunteered to strip off that valuable panther skin for him, salt it and stretch it out on the logs of the cabin to dry.
It was on Saturday that the boys removed to their new quarters, and the next day, being Sunday, was to be spent in resting. But Little Tom, as he lay there in his broom straw bed about midday on Saturday became troubled in his mind about the provisioning of the garrison.
"We've eaten up the last of the venison to-day," he said, "and there isn't an ounce of fresh meat in the camp. If I didn't hurt so badly, and if the Doctor wasn't such a tyrant, with his arbitrary orders for me to lie still, I'd go out this afternoon and get something better than salt meat for all of us to eat to-morrow. Why don't some of you other fellows go? If you can't get a deer, you can at any rate kill a turkey or a pheasant or two, or some partridges or squirrels, or, as a last resort, some rabbits. Oh, how my head aches! Go, some of you, and get what you can."
With that the poor bed-ridden boy turned over in his bunk and sought sleep. But Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith acted upon his wise suggestion. A few hours later they returned to Camp Venture bearing three hares and seven squirrels on their shoulders, and dragging a half-grown hog by withes.
"I don't know but what we've made a mistake," said Ed to Jack; "the hog may belong to the moonshiners, and if so, they'll present their bill in a fashion that we sha'n't want to have it presented."
"Never mind about that," called out Tom, from inside the house. "We're at war with those people, you know, and in war you capture all you can of the enemy's supplies. But why can't you let a fellow see your game?"
The boys dragged the shoat into the hut, and Tom, expert huntsman that he was, had only to glance at it in order to pronounce it one of the wild hogs of the mountains, and anybody's property.
"Don't you see," he said, "that although it is only a half-grown shoat, it has tusks already. No domesticated hog ever developed in that way. And besides, the moonshiners haven't any hogs or anything else, for that matter. They are the poorest and most starved human beings I ever saw or heard of. I passed a week as a prisoner in one of their huts once, and I never dreamed of such poverty or such indolence. So long as they have corn pones or anything else to distend their stomachs with, they simply will not exert themselves to get anything better. They won't even go out and shoot a rabbit if they've got anything else to eat. You simply can't conceive of their poverty or of the indolence that produces it. If one of them owned a hog he'd kill it without taking the trouble to fatten it, and he'd eat it to the picking of the last bone before he would exert himself to procure another morsel of food."
"When was it, Tom, that you learned all this?" asked Harry.
"A year ago. You remember the time I went hunting and didn't get back for two weeks?"
"Yes, but tell us—"
"Well, that time I was captured by the moonshiners and held for a week as a spy. I didn't say anything about it at home except confidentially to Jack, for fear mother would worry when I went hunting again. But I tell you fellows you never dreamed of the sort of poverty that those men and their families live in. I don't know whether they are poor because they lead criminal lives, or whether they lead criminal lives because they are poor. But I do know that that fellow told the truth the other night when he said that they do not usually have enough to eat. You saw how starved he was. That's the chronic condition of all of them; and yet these mountains are full of game and any man of even half ordinary industry can feed himself well by killing it.
"The trouble is they are hopeless people. They have no ambition, no energy, no 'go' in them. They drink too much of their illicit whiskey for one thing, I suppose, but I don't think that's the bottom trouble. They seem to be people born without energy. They like to sit still in the sunshine, unless there is a revenue officer to hunt down and shoot. I suppose they are what somebody in the newspapers calls 'degenerates'—people that are run down even before they are born."
"But tell us, Tom," broke in Harry, "how did you get away from them?"
"Why, I watched my chance," answered Tom, "till one day I 'got the drap' on my jailer, to employ their own language. With a cocked gun at his breast, I made him promise not to follow me, and then I retreated 'in good order' as the soldiers say, down the mountain, with both barrels cocked. But really, fellows, you can have no idea of the abject poverty or the inconceivable indolence of these people. The little energy they have is expended in making illicit whiskey and sneaking it down the mountain without getting caught. Many of them have already served long terms in prison, but they regard that merely as a manifestation of the law's injustice, just as they do the hanging of one of their number now and then, when he is caught shooting an agent of the revenue. They don't understand. They are as ignorant as they are poor, and their poverty exceeds anything that it is possible for us to conceive."
By this time Tom's scant strength was exhausted, and after muttering: "That's anybody's wild hog," he turned himself over in bed and went to sleep.
"I say, Tom," said the Doctor, on Sunday morning, after the breakfast things had been cleared away, and the first fire had been lighted in the new fireplace, "I want to ask you something about your experience on your hunting trips."
"Go on, Doctor. No boy of sixteen—and we've voted you to be of that age—can ask me anything that I'll hesitate to answer."
"Thank you," said the Doctor, with a laugh. "Now, think of me as exactly sixteen and tell me all about it. As I understand, you have frequently spent from a week to ten days in the mountains, living exclusively upon what you could kill."
"So far, Doctor, you are absolutely right," answered the boy, who, having laid aside his headache, was disposed to be facetious.
"Well, that must have been animal food exclusively," said the Doctor.
"Absolutely," answered Tom. "I had always a little of the mineral food salt to season it with, but as for bread or potatoes, or anything else of a vegetable character, why I simply couldn't get them."
"All right. Now, the theory is that a man must have starchy foods in order to keep in good health. You had no starchy food for from a week to two weeks at a time on each of these occasions, but lived exclusively on meat. Now, what effects of this diet did you observe?"
"None whatever, except that little Tom Ridsdale had a mighty keen relish for bread when he got home again."
The Doctor then asked detailed questions as to particular symptoms, to all of which the substance of Tom's replies was that in his case no symptoms whatever had manifested themselves. "I think, Doctor," he added, "as the result of my own experience that a healthy young human animal like me, when living night and day in the open air and taking a great deal of exercise, can eat pretty much anything he pleases that we commonly recognize as food, or rather anything of that kind that he can get—without much danger of injuring himself. No, I don't know so well about that. Once, I got hurt in the mountains, and lived for a week in a barn, eating nothing but corn. I was all right in a general way, but I suffered a good deal with cold. When I got out and killed a 'coon and roasted and ate it, the weather seemed suddenly to warm up."
"Precisely," answered the Doctor. "The fat of the coon furnished you with fuel, and you needed it. The more I study the subject, the more firmly convinced I become of two things—first, that man is essentially a carnivorous, or meat-eating animal, and second, that while starchy foods are desirable as a part of his diet, they are not absolutely necessary to him, except at comparatively long intervals. You know a baby simply cannot digest starchy foods at all. It would starve to death with a stomach full of them. Every baby lives exclusively upon the animal food milk."
"Yes," answered Jack, "but so does every colt and every calf. Yet, neither horses nor cows eat any animal food whatever after they cease to be colts and calves."
"That is true," said the Doctor, meditatively. "I hadn't thought of that." Then, after a minute's thought, he added—"but neither cows nor horses have any carnivorous teeth whatever, any teeth fit for the chewing of meat, while man has. Besides that, physicians have observed that behind almost every case of obstinate, low fevers and that sort of debilitated disease, there is a history of underfeeding, and particularly of an insufficient use of meat, whether as a matter of necessity, or merely as a matter of choice. Persons who eat no meat, or very little meat, may seem very robust so long as positive disease does not attack them, but when they contract maladies of a serious sort, they are very likely to show a lack of stamina, a deficiency of recuperative power."
"Then you don't believe at all, any more than we meat-eating Virginians do—in the doctrines of the vegetarians?" asked Jack, as he finished the hind legs of a broiled squirrel.
"It will be time enough," answered the Doctor, "to consider the doctrines of the vegetarians when they agree among themselves as to what those doctrines are."
"Why, how do you mean?" asked Tom.
"Well, some vegetarians held a congress, or a convention, or something of that sort in New York a little while ago. There were only fifty-seven of them present, I believe, and yet they managed to split their congress up into four groups, each antagonizing the views of all the others with something approaching violence of temper."
"What were their differences?" asked Tom.
"Well first of all there was a group who advocated the eating of vegetable matters only, except that they saw no harm in the use of milk, eggs, cheese and butter. Next there was a group who bitterly condemned milk, eggs, cheese and butter as animal foods, tending to inflame evil passions and utterly to be rejected, though they ate milk biscuit and butter crackers. This second group looked with favor upon all fruits and vegetables, but here a third group took issue with them, contending that only those vegetables should be eaten which grow above ground, and utterly rejecting the thought of eating potatoes, parsnips, beets, turnips, onions, carrots, radishes and other things that develop beneath the surface of the earth. Finally there was a fourth group that agreed with the third except that they made a plea in behalf of celery, on the ground that it is naturally a plant growing above ground and is artificially imbedded in earth only by way of making it tender and palatable."
"But how about circuses then?" asked Tom.
"I don't understand," the Doctor answered.
"Why how can anybody go to a circus without eating peanuts? And about three-fourths of all the peanuts are developed under ground by burying the blossoms."
"It's all very funny," said Jack. "But the funniest thing about it is the fetish worship of that word 'vegetable.' Patent medicines are often advertised as 'purely vegetable,' as if that settled the question of their harmlessness. Yet I know at least a dozen 'purely vegetable' plants that grow in these woods which are poisonous."
"Of course," answered the Doctor, "and for that matter the most virulent poisons known to man are 'purely vegetable.' There's strychnia for example, as purely vegetable in its origin as apple-butter itself is. And there are others, such as morphine, stramonium, and nux vomica and worst of all hydrocyanic acid, commonly called prussic acid. That is so deadly that it is almost never made or kept in its pure state, because a single whiff of its fumes in the nostrils would kill almost instantly. Yet it is an extract of peach pits or bitter almonds."
"Well now I say," broke in Tom, "let's return to the subject of foods, for I am hungry, and I'm going to declare war on the Doctor if he doesn't let me have some light thing to eat like a chop from that wild boar or something of an equally digestible sort."
"Well, we'll see about that," said the Doctor, going to Tom's bed and examining and redressing his wounds. After the inspection he said:
"You were entirely right, Tom, when you called yourself a perfectly healthy human animal a little while ago. I never yet saw wounds heal in the way they are doing on you. So you may sit up for dinner to-day, and you may have whatever you want to eat."
"All right!" cried Tom, hastily scrambling out of bed. "My clamor is for pork. How are you going to cook the pig boys?"
After a little consultation, it was decided to hang the shoat before the great fire in the new fire place, and roast it whole.
"After all, it doesn't weigh more than forty pounds, and that isn't much to divide between six of us," said Harry, laughingly.
"And besides," added Ed, "roast wild shoat is as good cold as hot, or rather better. So we'll roast the gentleman whole, and I for one volunteer to sit down before him and baste him so that all the juices that belong to him shall be found succulently pervading his muscular structure."
"I'll help in that," called Jim Chenowith from outside the cabin, where he was just finishing a turn of guard duty.
Thus the little company rested and grew strong during the Sunday, and by bed time they were eager for the morning and the hard, outdoor work of tree felling that it would bring with it. With a great glowing blaze in the fireplace, which each sentinel replenished with wood before summoning his successor to take his place, the log hut seemed a delightful place to sleep in.
The Doctor was the first "boy" to crawl out of bed in the morning. He carefully inspected his weather instruments and reported:
"It's a stinging morning. Thermometer only ten degrees above zero outside; wind North-northwest, and blowing at twenty miles an hour; barometric pressure very high, indicating prolonged clear and cold weather; hygrometer indicating a minimum of moisture in the atmosphere, promises a clear sky and a bright sun to-day."
"Good!" shouted the other boys. "Now for a hearty breakfast to begin with."
"Well I for one am going to begin with an invigorating cold bath," said the Doctor seizing a sponge and two towels and running nearly naked through the biting air, to the spring under the cliff. After a shudder of hesitation all the other boys gave chase to him.
The bathing trough was not yet in place, but by dipping sponges into the sluiceway that flowed out of the spring, and rapidly drenching their bodies with the intensely cold water, gasping for breath as they did so, they all set their blood aflow and their skins a-tingling. Then, vigorously rubbing themselves with towels as they went, they ran to the cabin and there dressed before a mighty fire of freshly replenished logs.
"Why does a bath like that feel so good after it's over?" asked Jack. For answer the Doctor gave a little physiological explanation which need not be repeated here. He ended it with this dictum: "For a man or woman or boy in full health, whose heart and lungs are sound, there is no such tonic in the world as a very cold bath on a very cold morning." Then suddenly he called out:
"Why hello, Tom! you didn't bathe, did you?" observing the boy vigorously polishing his back with a sharp Turkish towel.
"Oh, didn't I though. I've done that sort of thing every morning since I was a very little fellow, except when I hadn't the chance to do it."
"But Tom," said the Doctor in much concern, "I'm afraid this was very imprudent. Some of your wounds are still unhealed, and you might take cold in them."
"Why, Doctor, you have just been telling us how a cold morning bath renders it nearly impossible for one to take cold, by reason of the stimulated skin and full circulation."
"Still," answered the Doctor doubtfully, "I didn't mean all that to apply to a fellow who was cut into ribbons by a catamount's claws only a few nights ago. At any rate you mustn't wear those wet bandages, so the other boys will have to get breakfast while I take them all off and replace them with dry ones."
With that he hastily slipped on a scanty covering of clothes and set to work to re-dress Tom's wounds.
"Well bless my soul!" he exclaimed presently.
"What's the matter Doctor? Anything gone wrong with that shoulder?" asked Tom.
"Gone wrong! Well I should say not. I never in my life saw the process of healing advance so rapidly. Why I gave that big scratch two weeks at least to get well in, and if I'm not absolutely blind it is practically healed up already. Bring a light one of you! There, hold it so," and with a strong magnifying glass, the Doctor minutely examined the wounded part. Then he sat back and said:
"Tom Ridsdale you are certainly the healthiest human animal I ever saw or heard of. Why a surgeon in private practice wouldn't make his salt if all his patients recovered after your fashion. You are practically so nearly well that I am going to leave off all your bandages, only holding this newly healed cut together with a strip or two of rubber plaster for extra safety. But I certainly never saw anything like it!"
"Perhaps that's because you never before had a perfectly healthy, out-of-door boy like me as a surgical patient."
"Of course that's it. But now that I've taken off all your bandages and given you leave to eat whatever you want, you must be good enough to obey my orders in other respects. Otherwise, you might spoil this splendid result."
"I will, Doctor. Honestly, I'll do whatever you tell me."
"Well, we're going to begin chopping now, and I peremptorily forbid you to do any work for a day or two—at least, until the healing of those lacerated muscles is complete and their union firm. It would be very easy now to tear the wounds open again, and if you did that they would not heal again in a hurry. So, you must do no chopping, no lifting, no work of any kind for the present. Promise me that and in return I'll faithfully promise to release you from the restraint at the first moment when I think it safe to do so."
"All right, Doctor," answered Tom, "I'll potter about and 'keep camp' till you say I may go to work. And in the meantime I'm going to make some soup out of our scraps and bones. It will warm you fellows up when you come in cold and hungry from your chopping in this excessively cold air."
With that Tom got out their biggest camp kettle, threw all the meat fragments into it, broke up all the bones with a hatchet, and threw them in, and then filling the kettle nearly full of cold water, set it on the fire to boil.
The other boys, after breakfast, had taken their axes and gone out to begin the work of chopping. First of all, they built a fire near the timber they were about to cut, so that benumbed hands and half frozen feet might be warmed as occasion required. They all had good axes, and they all knew how to use them expertly, for these boys had been brought up in a heavily timbered country and had been used all their lives to chopping.
"Now, let's begin right," said Jack Ridsdale, "and then we'll go on right. There are two ways to fell trees in a forest, a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way is to fell them in any way that comes handy, regardless of any incidental damage that may be done as they fall. The right way is so to fell your big tree that in falling it won't smash any of the smaller trees standing around. You see, we aren't going to cut down any tree that isn't big enough to make railroad ties—that is to say any tree that isn't full seven inches in diameter. In doing that, if we take a little care, we can save all the smaller trees, and in the course of a year or two they will grow up, and we fellows can come out here and spend another winter in chopping. It all depends upon the way in which we do our work this time, whether these lands remain a splendid forest or become a desolate waste with all the soil washed off for lack of roots to hold it, and with no hope of anything ever growing upon them again."
Then Jack, who was an expert woodchopper, explained to all the others how to chop down a tree so as to make it fall wherever the chopper wishes it to fall.
"Now, another thing," added Jack. "You, Doctor, have had less experience than the rest of us, in this business, and perhaps you'd best practice on the easier part of it first. I propose that instead of cutting down trees you devote yourself to-day to making cordwood out of the unused parts of the trees we cut to build our house with. There are several cords of good wood in them. You can cut the branches into round wood and split the rest with the mauls and wedges and gluts." A glut is a big wooden wedge used to supplement the work of the axe and the iron wedge. The Doctor assented readily—the more because he had learned, during his sojourn in Virginia how to cut and split wood with very tolerable skill, but had never yet practiced the art of felling trees.
With brisk axes expertly wielded by strong arms, the party had goodly piles of ties and timbers and cordwood ready for the chute before noon, and as they were not to begin sending it down the hill until three o'clock the next day, they had every prospect of making a good showing with their two days' work.