“I thought he’d be here, but I wanted to make sure,” smiled the foreman. “Jim, run up the branches and pick up your train. If we are not here when you are ready, don’t wait. We’ll walk; the boys can see more.” And descending from the engine, Steve and his young guests set off among the huge tree stumps.
“How many ‘branches’ do you have?” inquired Phil.
“Four, two on each side. In that way we can clear a tract two thousand feet wide and four thousand feet long with each course of track.”
“What’s that? It sounds like the whir of an airship?” suddenly asked the younger boy.
“That’s the drums unwinding the cables.”
“Cables?” exclaimed both young homesteaders, together.
“Exactly. We haul the logs by cable, they are too big to handle in any other way. But you will see how it’s done in a few minutes.” For several rods the trio advanced in silence, when they were halted by a lusty “Stand clear!”
“Tree falling,” explained the foreman, and with his words there sounded a creaking and snapping, then a sharp crackling followed quickly by a mighty crash, as an enormous tree fell to the earth with a shock that made the ground tremble.
“We’ll go on now,” said Steve, and in a few minutes they were in sight of the tree just felled, a monster some hundred and twenty feet long and fifteen feet through the butt.
Already the lumberjacks were swarming like ants about it, some sawing the trunk into thirty-foot lengths, others trimming off branches.