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They moved now with the most extreme care, always keeping under cover of bushes, and never making any sound as they walked, but the army kept on steadily in the road cut for it by the axmen. Encounters between the flankers and small bands still occurred, but there was yet no sign of serious resistance, and the fort was drawing nearer and nearer.
The axmen had gathered most of their loot and buried what was of value, for Brian had determined to return here from Bertragh and make use of the tower until he had heard from Turlough's errand. So now, at the head of thirty men, he rode across the narrow causeway with Cathbarr of the Ax at his side for friend and guide.
He had been in that land long enough to learn that it is the hard-handed drillers and axmen from whom the wanderer and even the outcast beyond the pale is most likely to receive a kindness. Their wide generosity is exceeded only by the light-hearted valor with which they plunge into some tremendous struggle with flood and rock and snow. "Make it half a dollar anyway," said one of them.
Then Monty pushed on to the far side of the castle road and held the remaining fringe of trees in such fashion that the Turks could not guess his exact whereabouts nor what number he had with him. Cutting down trees in a hurry is one thing, but cutting them down in face of hidden rifle-fire is most decidedly another, especially when the axmen have been promised there will be no reprisals.
Then he said slowly: "I reckon we can hold this bit of it, up yonder on the mountain, but there's a line of fire runnin' around by the gully, and the wind's beginnin' a-howlin' through there. I don't reckon we can stop that. We may have to fall back beyond the river. We'll need axmen, now. You've got a good mare; ride down to Pete's mine and bring all hands.
The next instant the damp air was ringing with the strokes of eight as skillful axmen as there were in the army, Si leading on one tree and Shorty on the other. They could not keep up the feverish pace they had set for many minutes, but the instant their blows relaxed eight other men snatched the axes, and in a few minutes the trees toppled and fell just in the right position. Co.
For some time, dimly, an intermittent and faint sound had been felt, rather than actually heard, like the irregular muffled beating of a heart. Gradually it had insisted on the attention. Now at last it broke through the film of consciousness. "What is it?" she asked. Thorpe listened. Then his face lit mightily with the joy of battle. "My axmen," he cried. "They are cutting the road."
There his axmen cleared a space in the forest, and his troops built a town, rather than pitched a camp. They put up four redoubts, one at each corner of the town, and fortified it with a strong stockade. Within this they built a council house, where the Indians could come and make speeches to their hearts' content, and deliver up their captives.
With him were two of Cathbarr's axmen, and they led him to the hold occupied by Murrough O'Flaherty of the Kine, where Brian stayed half a day. He concluded a friendship with the mountaineers, promising them powder in exchange for cattle, and they promised, in turn, that within three weeks they would fetch a hundred kine down to Castle Bertragh.
Instantly twenty axmen were set at work hewing a flat place for rails along the top of each log, while other men, as fast as the hewing advanced, laid and spiked down the iron rails. At five minutes before noon, a gang of men, with shouts of enthusiastic triumph, seized upon the dumping car, which stood waiting, and pushed it across the line!
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