"I should think so!" cried Bob. "I wonder if I could pass it myself." He laughed. "I should hate to tackle tying those things on that horse—even after seeing those prospectors do it!"
"Most of them will go a little slow. They're used to kyacks. But you'd have your specialty."
"What would it be?" asked Amy curiously of Bob.
The young man shook his head.
"You haven't got some nice scrappy little job, have you?" he asked, "where I can tell people to hop high? That's about all I'm good for."
"We might even have that," said Thorne, eyeing the young man's proportions.
[a/]
V
Bob saw that afternoon the chopping contest. Thorne assigned to each a tree some eighteen or twenty inches in diameter, selecting those whose loss would aid rather than deplete the timber stand, and also, it must be confessed, those whose close proximity to others might make axe swinging awkward. About twenty feet from the base of each tree he placed upright in the earth a sharpened stake. This, he informed the axe-man, must be driven by the fall of the tree.