"Yes," said Asa; but we are only six, and they may send hundreds against us.
"Very true," said I; "but if we have a strong blockhouse on the top of the mound, that is as good as sixty, and we could hold out against a hundred Spanish musketeers. And it's my notion, that if we give up such a handsome bit of ground as we have cleared here without firing a shot, we deserve to have our rifles broken before our faces."
Asa, however, did not seem altogether satisfied. It was easy to see he was thinking of the women and children. Then said Asa's wife, Rachel, "I calculate," said she, "that Nathan, although he is my brother, and I oughtn't to say it, has spoke like the son of his father, who would have let himself be scalped ten times over before he would have given up such an almighty beautiful piece of land. And what's more, Asa, I for one won't go back up the omnipotent dirty Mississippi; and that's a fact."
"But if a hundred Spanish soldiers come," said Asa, "and I reckon they will come?"
"Build the blockhouse, man, to defend yourselves; and when our people up at Salt River and Cumberland hear that the Spaniards are quarreling with us, I guess they won't keep their hands crossed before them."
So, seeing us all, even the women, so determined, Asa gave in to our way of thinking, and the very same day we began the blockhouse you see before you. The walls were all of young cypress-trees, and we would fain have roofed it with the same wood; but the smallest of the cypresses were five or six feet thick, and it was no easy matter to split them. So we were obliged to use fir, which, when it is dried by a few days' sun, burns like tinder. But we little thought when we did so, what sorrow those cursed fir planks would bring us.
When all was ready, well and solidly nailed and hammered together, we made a chimney, so that the women might cook if necessary, and then laid in a good store of hams and dried bear's flesh, filled the meal and whisky tubs, and the water-casks, and brought our plough and what we had most valuable into the blockhouse. We then planted the palisades, securing them strongly in the ground, and to each other, so that it might not be easy to tear them up. We left, as you see, a space of five yards between the stockade and the house, so that we might have room to move about in. It would be necessary for an enemy to take the palisades before he could do any injury to the house itself, and we reckoned that with six good rifles in such hands as ours, it would require a pretty many Spanish musketeers to drive us from our outer defences.
In six weeks all was ready; all our tools and rations, except what we wanted for daily use, carried into the fort, and we stood contemplating the work of our hands with much satisfaction. Asa was the only one who seemed cast down.
"I've a notion," said he, "this blockhouse will be a bloody one before long; and what's more, I guess it will be the blood of one of us that'll redden it. I've a sort of feelin' of it, and of who it'll be."
"Pho! Asa, what notions be these! Keep a light heart, man."