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I heard of a job of cutting cordwood six miles away and went after it, for our money was getting very scarce, but when I reached the place I found a man had been there half an hour before and secured the job. The proprietor, Mr. Crow, gave me my dinner which I accepted with many thanks, for it saved my coin to pay for the next meal. I now went to Mineral Point, and searched the town over for work.
To me the selection seemed most judicious. It answered the needs of Tawabinisay's habitual experiences, and so the red man was a good and consistent convert. Irresistibly I was led to contemplate the idea of any one trying to get Tawabinisay to live in a house, to cut cordwood with an axe, to roost on a hard bench under a tin steeple, to wear stiff shoes, and to quit forest roaming.
Isaac Polhemus came first: Sixty years of age, silent, gray, thick-set; face scarred and seamed by many weathers, but fresh as a baby's; two china-blue eyes peep-holes through which you looked into his open heart; shoulders hard and tough as cordwood hands a bunch of knots; legs like snubbing-posts, body quick-moving; brain quick-thinking; alert as a dog when on duty, calm as a sleepy cat beside a stove when his time was his own.
You'll have a thousand to feed through the winter. Put them on rations, working rations, and see that they work. Cordwood, six dollars per cord, and piled on the bank where steamers can make a landing. No work, no rations. Understand?" "Ay." "A thousand men can get ugly, if they are idle. They can get ugly anyway. Watch out they don't rush the caches. If they do, do your duty."
The crew and passengers were rescued and brought to St. John in a sloop of Captain Drinkwater's, the captain consenting to throw overboard his load of cordwood to make room for the rescued party and their possessions. Most of Mr. Hazen's valuables and the rigging and stores of the Merrimack were saved. The sloop St. John's Paquet was another vessel that had an unfortunate experience.
The doctor's old eyes began to twinkle. "I want fall ploughing done and my cordwood hauled." "I'll do it!" cried Barney. A light broke in his eyes and flooded his face. At last he saw his path. "Here," said the doctor, taking down a book, "here's your Gray." And turning the leaves, "Here's what happened to Ben Fallows. Read this.
He was so excited I thought him cowardly, but the poor devil had reason enough, I supposed, to want to keep the transaction from the ears of his father, or worse still the bishop. He seemed easier when I assured him the boys were square, and immensely gratified at the news that I had already traded six quarts of the stuff for over a hundred dollars' worth of cordwood.
February and March gave an interval for cutting cordwood, cleaning ditches, and such other incidentals as the building and repair of the plantation's railroad. Warm weather then brought the corn planting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of the crops gave time for incidentals again.
"Yu tal me to hold it," said Ole reproachfully, hugging it tighter than ever. "Drop it, you Mammoth Cave of ignorance!" yelled Bost. "If I had your head I'd sell it for cordwood. Drop it!" Ole dropped the ball placidly. "Das ban fule game," he smiled dazedly. "Aye ent care for it. Eny faller got a Yewsharp?" That was the opening chapter of Ole's instruction. The rest were just like it.
She heard him take down an ax that had been left hanging on the cabin walls and heard his step in the snow as he began to cut into kindling some of the pieces of cordwood that were heaped outside the door. She undressed quickly, then lay shivering between the warm, heavy blankets. In a moment the man faltered in, his arms heavy with wood.
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