"No," said Flint. "Some men can chip stone, and others cannot. That is why some men make axes, and other men use them."
"Well, I will try," said Thorn. "When you go back to the stone yard, I will go with you."
Strongarm turned round where he sat and pulled up a little hickory tree. "We will put handles on these axes," he said.
He hacked off a piece of the little tree and split it half way down, and hacked off one split piece. The other split piece he bent around his ax. Then he took wet string made of skin. This he put around and around the ax handle, and pulled it tight.
[Illustration: Stone axe]
The boys stood by watching. "The wet string will shrink and draw up short," their father told them. "Then the ax will be very tight on the handle."
The boys now tied on their ax handles with their father's help. And Flint tied on Burr's. Then all set to work with sandstone pebbles and rubbed them smooth. Strongarm's was soon done. He threw his old ax away, stuck his new one in the string around his waist, and went off to hunt.
Burr took her digging stick from beside her door and hacked a point on it with her new ax. Then she burned the point in the fire until it was hard. She took a basket in her hand, and her baby on her back, and went out of the cave. Old Flint and the boys rolled a stone up to the door to keep out wolves and foxes. Then they all went into the woods, and Burr began looking for things to eat.