The boys listened to Rodney with increasing respect for his judgment and sound horse sense.
“Gall dinged if yeou don’t seem to know jest haow to do these things, Texas,” drawled Crane. “I guess we’ll foller yeour lead.”
“All right,” nodded Grant briskly. “Do you know how to rustle firewood?”
“I was brung up on a farm, and I cal’late I know as much abaout the different kinds of wood as anybody here.”
“Then get the axe out of that bundle Piper cut open and go foraging for wood. Stone, can you cook any at all?”
“Not much,” confessed Ben; “but I suppose I can fry bacon, and that’s about all the cooking there’ll be to do tonight.”
“That’s right. We’ve bread and some canned stuff. You can get out the stove top and cooking utensils and build the fireplace, with the help of Piper, who will bring such extra stones as you may need. Springer, I reckon you and I had better clear away here, unpack the tent and get it ready for pitching. When we need the others we can call them to give us a helping hand.”
In this manner he set them all at work, and, to their credit, every fellow took hold with a will. While Springer and Grant were ripping up the small bushes by the roots, removing the loose stones and smoothing out the ground for the tent floor, Piper, red-faced and grunting, brought rocks for Stone to build the fireplace, and, that being done, aided him in constructing the cook’s table. The ring of Crane’s axe resounded through the near-by woods, and presently he appeared with a huge armful of dry sugar maple cut from a fallen tree.
“If this ain’t as good firewood as anybody can find araound here,” he said, dropping it on the ground near the fireplace, “I’ll eat every stick of it.”
“Get it. Cut a chopping block if you can find anything suitable, and bring it along with the axe, which we’ll need when we come to drive the stakes for pitching the tent. I don’t reckon it’s a good plan to leave an axe out in the woods away from camp.”
Two minutes later the strokes of the axe were again ringing through the woods, and in less than quarter of an hour Crane reappeared with the implement in his hand, rolling along the ground before him a chopping block, which he had cut from the small sugar maple.