We had packed the necessary supplies and tools to help us in constructing a raft. We each had an axe. There were also big spikes and several sizes of nails. We had plenty of these. Jim led the way to the slope of the valley, just above our camp, where grew the tall pines and in a few minutes there was the ring of the axes as we jumped into the work, each anxious to get his tree down before the other.
It was jolly work as I made the big yellow chips fly, and swinging into the stroke with all the weight of my body, poised from the toes.
Jim and Tom stood squarely on their feet and struck in only with the weight of their shoulders, and as they sent in their blows with greater rapidity, it looked as if they would surely beat me out. But it was like a bad stroke in rowing, and was hard on their wind and taxed their strength.
"Oh, you're slow," grinned Jim with a gleam of his white teeth as he glanced over his shoulder at me. "I'll have this fellow down before you are half through."
My only reply was to send another blow with precision and a big, perfectly blocked chip flew into the air and came down on Jim's back. It was my turn to grin. "They laugh best who laugh last."
It was true that Jim's first tree came down a few seconds ahead of mine, but after that I beat him easily, no matter how hard he struggled.
Oh, I tell you, it was great work, cheerful and invigorating in that resin fragrant air. We soon stripped off our shirts and, bareheaded, we swung out glittering axes into the trunks of the pines.
I don't think that any of the old knights used their great battle axes against the gates of beleaguered cities or on each other's iron top knots with any more enthusiasm than we three boys did as we slew the pines. I imagined that I was Ivanhoe or Richard C[oe]ur de Lion and this added more vigor to my blows.
I think it would have pleased our old physical director if he could have seen the muscles on our arms and back and shoulders. Jim, long and rangy, Tom somewhat lighter, but with clear cut development, making for agility, while I was rather lithe, with symmetrical muscles and of tireless activity. It was a pretty strong, three-stand combination.
After the trees were cut and trimmed, the next thing was to get them down to the beach where the raft was to be constructed. Of course we had felled them as near the selected place as possible. Jim decided to press Coyote and Piute into service for snaking the logs down. Then there was something doing every minute, like in a three-ringed circus.