Rejack had the tackle rigged, the teams hitched, and was impatient to begin the haul. Tesno had him wait till he had scouted out the pine clusters that dotted the lower part of the hillside, then told him to go ahead. The wagon groaned and inched upward. Two men walked behind it now, swinging a squared timber on ropes between them. They held this close behind the wheels so that they had only to drop it to block them. Rifle in hand, Tesno took a position where he could cover the rope on both sides of the tackle blocks.
Slowly, protestingly, the great wagon and its monstrous load crept up to the anchor tree and was lashed to it. Rejack had already chosen the course for the second leg of the ascent and had had brush and saplings cleared away. This would be a longer haul than the first. There were two or three trees that the men on the tongue would have to guide the wagon around, and the slope was uneven, mottled with rock outcroppings. Moreover, the forest pressed in from both sides before claiming the top of the hill entirely, just beyond the place where the wagon would rejoin the road.
"If they'd waited yesterday and hit us up here, there wouldn't be enough left of the boiler to hold a drink of water," Rejack said.
Tesno scouted the trees as best he could. But this was deep woods. A wary man could easily avoid being seen or heard among the maze of trunks growing out of carpetlike duff.
Again, the long double file of horses pulled slowly down the mountainside and the wagon groaned upward. It had climbed barely twenty yards when Muckamuck Charlie appeared below, working his horse zigzag up the slope. Tesno yelled for the team to halt and the men behind the wagon to block its wheels.
Charlie slid off his winded horse. "Them son-of-a-gun close by," he grunted. "They watch."
"Where?" Tesno demanded.
They moved a few steps into the woods. Charlie pointed to a little butte that rose out of the pines half a mile to the west. Its face was sheer rock cliff, but it could well have a sloping approach on its far side.
"They go up there," Charlie grunted. "Halo chako. Wait. Watch. By and by one go 'way. Come down here someplace. One stay."
Tesno squinted thoughtfully up at the butte. "You get a look at 'em, Charlie?"