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Updated: June 12, 2025
A moment after and he was in the ditch, followed by some twenty or thirty of the leading men of the column, and advancing towards the bastion, then preparing to vomit forth its fire upon the devoted axemen. Even here, Fate, or Destiny, or whatever power it be that wills the nature of the end of man, turned aside the death with which he already seemed to grapple.
Pitching tent at a spot opposite the mouth of the Alatna, with the aid of a skilled carpenter and a couple of axemen brought from the mining district above, and the labour of the Indians, the little log church and the mission house were put up and prepared for the two ladies a trained nurse and a teacher who should arrive on the first steamboat.
In a few minutes the interlocked mass stretched from bank to bank, with the torrent spurting and spouting through it in furious milk-white jets. Log after log was chopped free by the axemen along the shore, but the mass remained unshaken.
We reached the end of the road, where the axemen were laboring faithfully, and after watching them for a time, were turning back to camp, when Spiltdorph called my attention to the peculiar appearance of the ground about us. We were in the midst of a grove of chestnuts, and the leaves beneath them for rods around had been turned over and the earth freshly raked up.
The fire ate its way steadily, despising the bucket brigade that fought it. It scorched the clothes, it singed the hair of the axemen it drove them back, foot by foot-inch by inch they wavered, struck a final blow in the teeth of the enemy, and surrendered. And as they fell back they heard prisoned voices saying: "Don't leave us! Don't desert us! Don't, don't do it!"
While no fears existed of an attack from the Indians, the axemen generally marched a day in advance of us, to cut a road through the woods.
Nevertheless there rose a general cry to cut the bridge of boats. By doing so more than half the army, who had not yet crossed, would have been sacrificed. The axemen were already at work, when they were stopped by some officers who had not lost their wits.
A mixed company of bush ranchers, free prospectors, axemen, and miners lounged outside it in picturesque disarray, and high above rose a dim white line of never-melting snow. "Well," said Alton, "it's time this circus was over, anyway, and if Carter will take my bid I'll clinch that deal with you. Have the pack and seizings handy, Charley."
Horton as usual served supper at six o'clock, and all his guests were expected to partake of reasty pork, potatoes, flapjacks, green tea and fruits at the same table. To this he made no exception, and would not have done so for the premier, and when a small company of axemen and free prospectors filed in Deringham and his daughter took their places amidst the rest.
Now and then, the cattle acquire a somewhat perilous fondness for wrecking road-makers' and prospectors' tents, which explains why a steer occasionally fails to be found and some little community of axemen is provided with more fresh meat than can well be consumed. "I'm afraid it's rather more than likely I'll have to pay a good price," said Nasmyth.
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