“You’re right. A dust at real fightin’ would serve to pass the time, sergeant,” the others cried. “Didn’t we foller ’em, an’ didn’t they lead us wrong?”
“Or else we led ourselves wrong, mistaking Injun trail for white man trail. At any rate, here we are; and as soon as the ice breaks—which won’t be long—we’ll all be marching on, for home.”
The fort was to be a strong one. Lieutenant Pike, who took great pride in it, explained the scheme, himself, to Stub.
“Thirty-six feet square, inside, fronting upon the river, where the current is too deep to ford. Bastions (which were small block-houses) at the two rear corners, to cover the walls on three sides. The walls, six feet up, of large cottonwood logs two feet through. Smaller logs to be laid for another six feet. A ditch will be dug all around, inside, and sloped off toward the walls, for pickets to rest in. The pickets will be sharpened and will slant two and one-half feet over the top of the walls, like a fringe, so that nobody can climb in. All around, outside, there will be a deep ditch four feet wide, and filled with water. This is called a moat. We will cut a row of loopholes in the walls, eight feet up; the men will stand upon platforms, to shoot through. Our only entrance will be a hole, about the size of a man’s body, low down, on the river side; and to use it, everybody will have to crawl in or out on his stomach, and cross the big ditch by means of a plank. There will be no roof; this is what is called a stockade. But the men doubtless will construct shelters of brush.”
“You’ll be a soldier yet,” the doctor laughed, to Stub, overhearing the explanation.
“Entrenched here we need have no fear of one hundred Spanish troops,” the lieutenant remarked. “We could easily stand them off for a day or two; then by a sally at night either disperse them, or make our escape in the darkness, before our supplies were exhausted.”
“And Indians?”
“They would be less dangerous, unless they sent word to Santa Fe in the south. We would endeavor to treat with them, which is one of the purposes of the expedition.”
Jake Carter and Alex Roy were not able to do much, on account of tender feet. The other men worked hard, building the stockade around the American flag that had been planted on a pole, in the center. The lieutenant and Doctor Robinson hunted and explored. Stub frequently went with them, to help bring in the meat.
Once they discovered a group of springs, at the base of the hill south of the fork and opposite the stockade. These were warm springs, and strangely colored, brown and yellow. Their warm water was what kept the fork open, clear to the main river and for some distance down below the mouth of the fork.