"The sentinel must be wide awake," he said, "and I don't know anything like good strong coffee to keep one's eyes open."
CHAPTER II
A Picket Shot
The three Ridsdale boys and their comrades lived in a thriving, bustling little town in one of the great valleys which divide the Virginia Mountains into ranges each having its own name. Their ages ranged from Jack's nineteen years down to Jim Chenowith's sixteen. Little Tom was so called not so much because he was rather shorter than his overgrown brothers, as because his father had been also Thomas Ridsdale and for the sake of distinguishing between them the family and the neighbors had from his infancy called the boy "Little Tom." He was next to Jack in age being now nearly eighteen years old, and as a voracious reader and a singularly keen observer he was perhaps better informed than any other boy in the party. He was not really little by any means, being five feet seven inches high and of unusually stalwart frame. From his tenth year till now he had spent his vacations mainly in hunting in these mountains. His knowledge of wood craft and of all that pertains to the chase was therefore superior even to Jack's.
The father of the Ridsdale boys had been the foremost young lawyer in the town, but he had died at a comparatively early age, leaving his widow a very scanty estate with which to bring up the three boys who were her treasures. The boys had helped from the earliest years in which they were capable of helping. They had chopped and sawed and split wood, worked in the hay fields, dropped and covered corn, pulled fodder and done what ever else there was to do that might bring a little wage to eke out the good mother's scant income. In brief they had behaved like the brave, manly, mother-loving fellows that they were, and they had grown into a sturdy strength that promised stalwart manhood to all of them.
Among the widow's meagre possessions was a vast tract of almost worthless timber land up there on the mountain. It was almost worthless simply because there was no market for the timber that grew upon it. But now had come the railroad enterprise, whose contractors wanted ties and bridge timbers and unlimited cordwood for use in their engine furnaces. So Jack and his brothers had decided to omit this winter's attendance upon the High school, and to devote the season to the profitable work of wood chopping on the mountain. There was an exceedingly steep descent on that side of the mountain, on which their timber lands lay, so that by building a short chute to give a headway they could send their railroad ties and the other products of their chopping by a steep slide to the valley below by force of gravity and without any hauling whatever. Two of their schoolmates—Jim Chenowith and Ed Parmly had asked to join in the expedition. An arrangement had been made with the railroad people to pay a stipulated price for every railroad tie shot down the hill, a much higher price for every piece of timber big enough for use in bridge building and a fair price for all the cordwood sent down the chute. This latter was to be made of the limbs of trees cut down for ties or bridge timbers—limbs not large enough for other uses, and which must otherwise go to waste. The two boys who did not belong to the Ridsdale family—Ed Parmly and Jim Chenowith—were to pay to Mrs. Ridsdale a small price agreed upon for each tie or timber, or cord of wood that they should cut on her land, the rest of the price going to themselves.
During the last week before their departure Dr. LaTrobe had asked the privilege of joining the expedition. He was a man of means whose home was in Baltimore, but who had come to the town in which the boys lived in search of health and strength. He was a tireless student of science, and in the course of his duty in one of the charity hospitals of Baltimore he had contracted a fever. His recovery from it was so slow and unsatisfactory that he had abandoned his work and wandered away into South Western Virginia for purposes of recuperation and had been for some months boarding with Mrs. Ridsdale. In pursuit of health and strength therefore he asked to join the Ridsdale boys in their mountain expedition.
"I have quite all the money I want," he explained, "and so the ties and timbers and cordwood that I may cut will be counted as your own. All I want is the life in the open air, the exercise, the freedom, the health-giving experience of a camping trip."
Thus it was that the party had come together. They knew perfectly that once in the mountains after winter should set in in earnest their communication with the country below must be very uncertain. They therefore, took with them on their own backs and on the backs of their pack mules those necessaries which would most certainly render them independent of other sources of supply. The Doctor had largely directed the selection of food stuffs, bringing to bear upon it an expert knowledge which the boys, of course, did not possess.