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On the morning of the seventeenth, five hundred arquebusiers and pikemen were drawn up before the camp. To each was given six pounds of biscuit and a canteen filled with wine. Two Indians and a renegade Frenchman, called Francois Jean, were to guide them, and twenty Biscayan axemen moved to the front to clear the way.
English reserve is not esteemed in that land, and the axemen danced with the mingled verve of grey Caledonia and light-hearted France, while a little man with fiery hair from the misty Western Isles shrieked encouragement at them, and maddened them with his fiddle.
Each log was hand-hewed and squared an expensive whim when the axemen received a daily wage of fifteen dollars; but to him nothing could be too costly for the home in which Mabel Holmes was to live. So he went about with the building of the cabin, singing, "And oh, my fair, would I somewhere might house my heart with thee!"
We scouted along the Salt Fork for a mile either way before we found sufficient dry, dead cottonwood to form our raft. Then we set about cutting it, but we had only one axe, and were the poorest set of axemen that were ever called upon to perform a similar task; when we cut a tree it looked as though a beaver had gnawed it down.
The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab pigeons which had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs were fattening; hawks, buzzards, and eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their nests at pleasure; while from twenty feet upwards to the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for now the axemen were at work, cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner, that in their descent they might bring down several others, by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size to the old pigeons, and almost one mass of fat.
Then, a musket-shot behind, came the vanguard; then three hundred soldiers under Gage; then a large body of axemen, under Sir John Sinclair, to open the road; then two cannon with tumbrils and tool-wagons; and lastly the rear-guard, closing the line, while flanking-parties ranged the woods on both sides. This was the advance-column. The main body followed with little or no interval.
"To work, lads!" the general said. "There is no time to be lost. Let all the axemen fell trees and lay them end to end to make a breastwork. The rest of you range the waggons in a line behind, and lay the boats up in the intervals. Carry the line from the swamp, on the right there, to the slope of the hill."
So, too, with the transporters and freighters handling sixty-foot logs as though dealing with matchwood. But above all, and before all, the axemen made their appeal. There was nothing comparable with the rough skill of these creatures. She had watched the flash and swing of the axe, with its edge like the finest razor.
A French deserter from Fort Caroline and an Indian acted as guides, and twenty axemen cleared the way through the dense under-growth. What a march!
"Third floor, rear," said the Kid, softly. "I'll lead the way." Two axemen faced the door that he pointed out to them. "It seems all quiet," said the captain, doubtfully. "Are you sure your tip is straight?" "Cut away!" said the Kid. "It's on me if it ain't." The axes crashed through the as yet unprotected door. A blaze of light from within poured through the smashed panels.
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