"Gol darn ye!" the boy yelled, "can't ye wait till a feller gits _his_ breakfast?"
A voice deep, lazy, and resonant came from the watch-tower above:
"Not more'n a thousand or two, I reckon." The boy laughed:
"Well, I reckon you won't see any while I'm around--they're afeerd o' _me_."
"I don't blame 'em, Bud. I reckon that blunderbuss o' yours would come might' nigh goin' through a pat o' butter at twenty yards." The sentinel rose towering to the full of his stature, stretched his mighty arms with a yawn, and lightly leaped, rifle in hand, into the enclosure. A girl climbing the rude ladder to the tower stopped midway.
"I was comin' to wake you up," she smiled.
"I just waked up," he yawned, humoring the jest.
"You don't seem to have much use for this ladder."
"Not unless I'm goin' up; and I wouldn't then if I could jump as high as I can fall." He went toward her to help her down.
"I wouldn't climb very high," she said, and scorning his hand with a tantalizing little grimace she leaped as lightly as had he to the ground. Two older women who sat about a kettle of steaming clothes watched her.
"Look at Polly Conrad, won't ye? I declare that gal----"
"Lyddy!" cried Polly, "bring Dave's breakfast!"
At the door of each log cabin, as solidly built as a little fort, a hunter was cleaning a long rifle. At the western angle two men were strengthening the pickets of the palisade. About the fire two mothers were suckling babes at naked breasts. A boy was stringing a bow, and another was hurling a small tomahawk at an oaken post, while a third who was carrying wood for the open fire cried hotly:
"Come on here, you two, an' he'p me with this wood!" And grumbling they came, for that fort harbored no idler, irrespective of age or sex.
At the fire a tall girl rose, pushed a mass of sunburned hair from her heated forehead, and a flush not from the fire fused with her smile.
"I reckon Dave can walk this far--he don't look very puny."
A voice vibrant with sarcasm rose from one of the women about the steaming kettle.
In a doorway near, a third girl was framed--deep-eyed, deep-breasted.
"Honor!" cried the old woman, "stop wastin' yo' time with that weavin' in thar an' come out here an' he'p these two gals to git Dave his breakfast." Dave Yandell laughed loudly.