“The hatchet, don’t you know!” came the answering whoop. “I don’t understand why I ever thought to snatch it up, and tote it along, but say, I’m mighty glad now I did. See, here it is, Hugh, and oh! I’m ever so pleased to handle it.”
When the scout master heard that he gave a shout of joy.
“You’ve saved the day, I tell you, boy!” he exclaimed, slapping the delighted Gus heartily on the back. “It was an inspiration that made you think of the hatchet. The credit of the whole undertaking rests on your shoulders, Gus! Here, give me the blade, and see me get busy.”
“By great good luck,” added Arthur, also decidedly pleased by the new twist fortune had taken in their behalf, “here are all the poles we need close by, though without that hatchet they might as well have been in Africa.”
Hugh had not wasted a second of time.
“You look after Sam, both of you, and rub his limbs,” he told his chums. “Leave the cutting of the poles to me, though I’ll need help when it comes to binding them together.”
He said no more than the law allowed, because it was a most arduous task to do any sort of decent talking in the midst of all that clamor. Already Hugh had turned in the quarter where Arthur’s extended finger had pointed at the time he spoke of the “poles” being conveniently near by.
Long practice had made the scout master a clever hand at using a hatchet. When a fellow has cut cords and cords of wood for campfires from time to time, he gets considerable experience in swinging both ax and hatchet. Besides, Hugh always took especial pains to have every tool he handled well sharpened, under the plea that a good working edge saved “heaps” of muscle.
The “poles” mentioned by Arthur were really second-growth ash springing up all around the butts of several trees that had been cut down a year or so ago by the lumbermen. They grew straight up, and would possibly have been used sooner or later by any nomad hoop-pole man wandering that way in search of material to eke out his scanty winter’s wages.
One after another those slender but stout saplings fell before the keen edge of the camp hatchet wielded so skillfully by the scout leader.