_Beginning Work_
The Doctor was the first "boy" to crawl out of bed in the morning. He
carefully inspected his weather instruments and reported:
"It's a stinging morning. Thermometer only ten degrees above zero
outside; wind North-northwest, and blowing at twenty miles an hour;
barometric pressure very high, indicating prolonged clear and cold
weather; 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 begin
with."
"Well I for one am going to begin with an invigorating cold bath," said
the Doctor seizing a sponge and two towels and running nearly naked
through the biting air, to the spring under the cliff. After a shudder
of hesitation all the other boys gave chase to him.
The bathing trough was not yet in place, but by dipping sponges into
the sluiceway that flowed out of the spring, and rapidly drenching their
bodies 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 the
cabin and there dressed before a mighty fire of freshly replenished
logs.
"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 need
not be repeated here. He ended it with this dictum: "For a man or woman
or boy in full health, whose heart and lungs are sound, there is no such
tonic in the world as a very cold bath on a very cold morning." Then
suddenly he called out:
"Why hello, Tom! you didn't bathe, did you?" observing the boy
vigorously polishing his back with a sharp Turkish towel.
"Oh, didn't I though. I've done that sort of thing every morning since I
was 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 very
imprudent. Some of your wounds are still unhealed, and you might take
cold in them."
"Why, Doctor, you have just been telling us how a cold morning bath
renders it nearly impossible for one to take cold, by reason of the
stimulated skin and full circulation."
"Still," answered the Doctor doubtfully, "I didn't mean all that to
apply to a fellow who was cut into ribbons by a catamount's claws only a
few nights ago. At any rate you mustn't wear those wet bandages, so the
other boys will have to get breakfast while I take them all off and
replace them with dry ones."
With that he hastily slipped on a scanty covering of clothes and set to
work 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 process
of healing advance so rapidly. Why I gave that big scratch two weeks at
least to get well in, and if I'm not absolutely blind it is practically
healed up already. Bring a light one of you! There, hold it so," and
with a strong magnifying glass, the Doctor minutely examined the wounded
part. Then he sat back and said:
"Tom Ridsdale you are certainly the healthiest human animal I ever saw
or heard of. Why a surgeon in private practice wouldn't make his salt
if all his patients recovered after your fashion. You are practically so
nearly well that I am going to leave off all your bandages, only holding
this newly healed cut together with a strip or two of rubber plaster for
extra 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 and
given you leave to eat whatever you want, you must be good enough to
obey my orders in other respects. Otherwise, you might spoil this
splendid result."
"I will, Doctor. Honestly, I'll do whatever you tell me."
"Well, we're going to begin chopping now, and I peremptorily forbid you
to do any work for a day or two--at least, until the healing of those
lacerated muscles is complete and their union firm. It would be very
easy now to tear the wounds open again, and if you did that they would
not heal again in a hurry. So, you must do no chopping, no lifting, no
work of any kind for the present. Promise me that and in return I'll
faithfully promise to release you from the restraint at the first moment
when 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 make
some soup out of our scraps and bones. It will warm you fellows up when
you come in cold and hungry from your chopping in this excessively cold
air."
With that Tom got out their biggest camp kettle, threw all the meat
fragments into it, broke up all the bones with a hatchet, and threw them
in, and then filling the kettle nearly full of cold water, set it on the
fire to boil.
The other boys, after breakfast, had taken their axes and gone out to
begin the work of chopping. First of all, they built a fire near the
timber they were about to cut, so that benumbed hands and half frozen
feet might be warmed as occasion required. They all had good axes, and
they all knew how to use them expertly, for these boys had been brought
up in a heavily timbered country and had been used all their lives to
chopping.
"Now, let's begin right," said Jack Ridsdale, "and then we'll go on
right. There are two ways to fell trees in a forest, a right way and a
wrong 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. The
right way is so to fell your big tree that in falling it won't smash
any of the smaller trees standing around. You see, we aren't going to
cut down any tree that isn't big enough to make railroad ties--that is
to 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 the
course of a year or two they will grow up, and we fellows can come out
here and spend another winter in chopping. It all depends upon the way
in which we do our work this time, whether these lands remain a splendid
forest or become a desolate waste with all the soil washed off for lack
of roots to hold it, and with no hope of anything ever growing upon them
again."
Then Jack, who was an expert woodchopper, explained to all the others
how to chop down a tree so as to make it fall wherever the chopper
wishes it to fall.
"Now, another thing," added Jack. "You, Doctor, have had less experience
than the rest of us, in this business, and perhaps you'd best practice
on the easier part of it first. I propose that instead of cutting down
trees you devote yourself to-day to making cordwood out of the unused
parts of the trees we cut to build our house with. There are several
cords of good wood in them. You can cut the branches into round wood
and split the rest with the mauls and wedges and gluts." A glut is a
big wooden wedge used to supplement the work of the axe and the iron
wedge. The Doctor assented readily--the more because he had learned,
during his sojourn in Virginia how to cut and split wood with very
tolerable skill, but had never yet practiced the art of felling trees.
With brisk axes expertly wielded by strong arms, the party had goodly
piles 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 three
o'clock the next day, they had every prospect of making a good showing
with their two days' work.