CHAPTER X
_Beginning Work_
The Doctor was the first "boy" to crawl out of bed in the morning. Hecarefully inspected his weather instruments and reported:
"It's a stinging morning. Thermometer only ten degrees above zerooutside; wind North-northwest, and blowing at twenty miles an hour;barometric pressure very high, indicating prolonged clear and coldweather; hygrometer indicating a minimum of moisture in the atmosphere,promises a clear sky and a bright sun to-day."
"Good!" shouted the other boys. "Now for a hearty breakfast to beginwith."
"Well I for one am going to begin with an invigorating cold bath," saidthe Doctor seizing a sponge and two towels and running nearly nakedthrough the biting air, to the spring under the cliff. After a shudderof hesitation all the other boys gave chase to him.
The bathing trough was not yet in place, but by dipping sponges intothe sluiceway that flowed out of the spring, and rapidly drenching theirbodies with the intensely cold water, gasping for breath as they did so,they all set their blood aflow and their skins a-tingling. Then,vigorously rubbing themselves with towels as they went, they ran to thecabin and there dressed before a mighty fire of freshly replenishedlogs.
"Why does a bath like that feel so good after it's over?" asked Jack.For answer the Doctor gave a little physiological explanation which neednot be repeated here. He ended it with this dictum: "For a man or womanor boy in full health, whose heart and lungs are sound, there is no suchtonic in the world as a very cold bath on a very cold morning." Thensuddenly he called out:
"Why hello, Tom! you didn't bathe, did you?" observing the boyvigorously polishing his back with a sharp Turkish towel.
"Oh, didn't I though. I've done that sort of thing every morning since Iwas a very little fellow, except when I hadn't the chance to do it."
"But Tom," said the Doctor in much concern, "I'm afraid this was veryimprudent. Some of your wounds are still unhealed, and you might takecold in them."
"Why, Doctor, you have just been telling us how a cold morning bathrenders it nearly impossible for one to take cold, by reason of thestimulated skin and full circulation."
"Still," answered the Doctor doubtfully, "I didn't mean all that toapply to a fellow who was cut into ribbons by a catamount's claws only afew nights ago. At any rate you mustn't wear those wet bandages, so theother boys will have to get breakfast while I take them all off andreplace them with dry ones."
With that he hastily slipped on a scanty covering of clothes and set towork to re-dress Tom's wounds.
"Well bless my soul!" he exclaimed presently.
"What's the matter Doctor? Anything gone wrong with that shoulder?"asked Tom.
"Gone wrong! Well I should say not. I never in my life saw the processof healing advance so rapidly. Why I gave that big scratch two weeks atleast to get well in, and if I'm not absolutely blind it is practicallyhealed up already. Bring a light one of you! There, hold it so," andwith a strong magnifying glass, the Doctor minutely examined the woundedpart. Then he sat back and said:
"Tom Ridsdale you are certainly the healthiest human animal I ever sawor heard of. Why a surgeon in private practice wouldn't make his saltif all his patients recovered after your fashion. You are practically sonearly well that I am going to leave off all your bandages, only holdingthis newly healed cut together with a strip or two of rubber plaster forextra safety. But I certainly never saw anything like it!"
"Perhaps that's because you never before had a perfectly healthy,out-of-door boy like me as a surgical patient."
"Of course that's it. But now that I've taken off all your bandages andgiven you leave to eat whatever you want, you must be good enough toobey my orders in other respects. Otherwise, you might spoil thissplendid result."
"I will, Doctor. Honestly, I'll do whatever you tell me."
"Well, we're going to begin chopping now, and I peremptorily forbid youto do any work for a day or two--at least, until the healing of thoselacerated muscles is complete and their union firm. It would be veryeasy now to tear the wounds open again, and if you did that they wouldnot heal again in a hurry. So, you must do no chopping, no lifting, nowork of any kind for the present. Promise me that and in return I'llfaithfully promise to release you from the restraint at the first momentwhen I think it safe to do so."
"All right, Doctor," answered Tom, "I'll potter about and 'keep camp'till you say I may go to work. And in the meantime I'm going to makesome soup out of our scraps and bones. It will warm you fellows up whenyou come in cold and hungry from your chopping in this excessively coldair."
With that Tom got out their biggest camp kettle, threw all the meatfragments into it, broke up all the bones with a hatchet, and threw themin, and then filling the kettle nearly full of cold water, set it on thefire to boil.
The other boys, after breakfast, had taken their axes and gone out tobegin the work of chopping. First of all, they built a fire near thetimber they were about to cut, so that benumbed hands and half frozenfeet might be warmed as occasion required. They all had good axes, andthey all knew how to use them expertly, for these boys had been broughtup in a heavily timbered country and had been used all their lives tochopping.
"Now, let's begin right," said Jack Ridsdale, "and then we'll go onright. There are two ways to fell trees in a forest, a right way and awrong way. The wrong way is to fell them in any way that comes handy,regardless of any incidental damage that may be done as they fall. Theright way is so to fell your big tree that in falling it won't smashany of the smaller trees standing around. You see, we aren't going tocut down any tree that isn't big enough to make railroad ties--that isto say any tree that isn't full seven inches in diameter. In doing that,if we take a little care, we can save all the smaller trees, and in thecourse of a year or two they will grow up, and we fellows can come outhere and spend another winter in chopping. It all depends upon the wayin which we do our work this time, whether these lands remain a splendidforest or become a desolate waste with all the soil washed off for lackof roots to hold it, and with no hope of anything ever growing upon themagain."
Then Jack, who was an expert woodchopper, explained to all the othershow to chop down a tree so as to make it fall wherever the chopperwishes it to fall.
"Now, another thing," added Jack. "You, Doctor, have had less experiencethan the rest of us, in this business, and perhaps you'd best practiceon the easier part of it first. I propose that instead of cutting downtrees you devote yourself to-day to making cordwood out of the unusedparts of the trees we cut to build our house with. There are severalcords of good wood in them. You can cut the branches into round woodand split the rest with the mauls and wedges and gluts." A glut is abig wooden wedge used to supplement the work of the axe and the ironwedge. The Doctor assented readily--the more because he had learned,during his sojourn in Virginia how to cut and split wood with verytolerable skill, but had never yet practiced the art of felling trees.
With brisk axes expertly wielded by strong arms, the party had goodlypiles of ties and timbers and cordwood ready for the chute before noon,and as they were not to begin sending it down the hill until threeo'clock the next day, they had every prospect of making a good showingwith their two days' work.