When I had cooked the dinner, I carried it out to the site of the block house, and with our faces to the forest we ate it. We were a sad and a silent party. For ten years before I had not eaten a meal except in the presence of him who was now no more. Kit said not a word about his lost friend; but Mr. Mellowtone, seeing how badly I felt, tried to comfort me.
After dinner, my companions resumed their labors; but Kit directed me to commence carting the timber to the block house. I put away the dishes, and harnessed the horses to the wagon. The sticks were only three or four inches in diameter, and I loaded them without difficulty. By the time I had hauled a sufficient number for the structure, the trench was deep enough, and we all went to work setting up the sticks. We placed them on the inside of the ditch, propping them up with others, until we had a dozen up, when we began to throw in the dirt around them, jamming it down with a maul.
After a beginning was made, I was directed to set up the sticks, while Kit threw in the earth, and Mr. Mellowtone rammed it down. Once in every four feet I was required to put in a stick only five feet long, so that above it there was an opening three inches wide, which formed a loophole from which the rifles could be discharged at the enemy. The trench was two feet deep, leaving the bottom of the loophole three feet above the level of the ground.
As none but the straightest sticks were used in the works, the cracks were very narrow; but the earth was to be heaped up to the bottom of the loopholes against the outside, thus making the structure absolutely bullet-proof for three feet from the ground. By the middle of the afternoon, the sticks were all set, and the trench filled up. A space a foot and a half wide was left on the side next to the barn, for a door. I nailed together a sufficient number of sticks, putting cross-pieces of board over them, to fill this space, and serve as a door. In the mean time my friends shovelled the dirt against the outside of the palisades; and before sundown the work was completed, and we were ready for the Indians as soon as they wished to make an attack.
"No doubt this fort is a great institution; but the Indians will come upon us in the night, when we can't see them," said Mr. Mellowtone.
"But we must see 'em," replied Kit.
"The nights are rather dark now."
"There is plenty of pitch wood, and we can make it as light as we please."
"That's your plan—is it?"
"That's the idee. We must keep the fires up all night, and one pair of eyes wide open."