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He had three white labourers, in addition men employed about the teams, and as axe-men, to clear the woods, bridge the streams, and to do other work of that nature, as it might be required. On our side, there were us three gentlemen, Yaap, my own faithful negro, Mr. Traverse, the surveyor, two chain-bearers, and two axe-men.
I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City westward to a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have the necessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged." "What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?" "Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!" He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and turned them loose in the desert.
Maud was not sorry to be left to herself, and the chaplain devoted his time to the entertainment of the friend of Beekman, who was in truth a surveyor, brought along partly to preserve appearances, and partly for service. The chain-bearers, hunters, &c., had been distributed in the different cabins of the settlement, immediately on the arrival of the party.
Their cries were taken up by the two chain-bearers still farther back. "Is it a lake, Baptiste?" cried Tom Dunscombe, the young surveyor, as he hurried forward through balsams that edged the woods and concealed the open space from those among the trees. "No, seh; only a beaver meddy." "Clean?" "Clean! Yesseh! Clean 's your face. Hain't no tree for two mile if de line is go right." "Good!
"We had closed the gate, and set the look-out at the loops again," he said, "before I ascertained that all your party is not here. I see nothing of Traverse and his chain-bearers, nor of Sam or Tom, your hunters! Surely, they are not left behind in the forest?" Neither of us three spoke. Our looks must have told the sad story, for Herman Mordaunt seemed to understand us on the instant.
Susquesus examined the trails, and the bodies, and gave it as his opinion that the surveyor and chain-bearers might have been killed about three or four hours; and that the murderers, for such, in our eyes, they who had done the foul deed were to be accounted, had not been away from the place more than twenty minutes, when we arrived.
For the surveyor, stalking ahead, had passed beyond the great tables of the Law; the chain-bearers were drawing Purdee's line on the other side of them, and they had fallen, if ever they fell here from Moses' hand and broke in twain, upon Purdee's land, granted to his ancestor by the State of Tennessee. He could not speak for joy, for pride. His dark eyes were illumined by a glancing, amber light.
And this was what he saw at the end of Purdee's line. Suddenly he took up his Jacob's-staff and marched on with a long stride, bearing straight down upon the rocks. The whole cortège started anew the genuflecting chain-bearers, the dodging, scrambling, running spectators.
It was Evert Beekman, with an old friend, attended by a party of chain-bearers, hunters, &c., on his way from the "Patent" he owned in the neighbourhood that is to say, within fifty miles and halting at the Hutted Knoll, under the courteous pretence of paying his respects to the family, but, in reality, to bring the suit he had now been making to Beulah for quite a twelvemonth, to a successful termination.
As for the forest, it had now veiled its mysteries beneath broad curtains of a green so bright and lively, that one can only meet it, beneath a generous sun, tempered by genial rains, and a mountain air. The chain-bearers, and other companions of Beekman, quitted the valley the day after the wedding, leaving no one of their party behind but its principal.
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