“Hurrah! We’ve got ’em!” shrieked Dig, spurring Poke up the hill.
“Keep right before the mouth of that pocket—but outside,” cried Chet, throwing himself from the saddle, with the axe in his hand. “Keep Poke moving. Don’t let the beasts catch you afoot. If they charge back on us, try to scare them into the gulch again.”
“Hot chance I’d have to do that,” muttered Dig.
But he held his ground while Chet struck steel to timber with much vigour. Cutting down a tree of this size was no easy task, and well the boy knew it; but he was determined to shut the buffaloes into the pocket in the hill. Once the big tree was felled across the mouth of the gulch he was very sure the herd would be secure.
Chet was no poor woodsman. He could swing an axe as well as a full-grown man, for his father owned a wood-lot near the Silent Sue mine, and Chet for two years had cut and sledded down to the Havens house the winter’s wood.
But to hammer at this big tree trunk with a short-handled hatchet was a more difficult task.
Dig had to laugh at him, despite the anxiety they both felt about the buffaloes. “Cricky, Chet! why don’t you use your pocketknife?” he demanded. “You’d get it down just as quick.”
“Can you suggest any better way?” asked Chet, stopping for breath.
“You might set fire to it,” grinned his chum.
“You keep still, or I’ll make you come here and spell me,” said Chet. “My goodness! but my hand is getting sore.”