What else is there?" asked Bob.

"Well, I'll organize regular survey groups--compass-man, axe-man,
rod-man, chain-men--and let them run lines; and I'll make them estimate
timber, and make a sketch map or so. It's all practical."

"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.

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.

As in the previous contests, three classes of performers quickly
manifested themselves--the expert, the man of workmanlike skill, and the
absolute duffer. The lumberjacks produced the implements they had that
noon so carefully ground to an edge. It was beautiful to see them at
work. To all appearance they struck easily, yet each stroke buried half
the blade. The less experienced were inclined to put a great deal of
swift power in the back swing, to throw too much strength into the
beginning of the down stroke. The lumberjacks drew back quite
deliberately, swung forward almost lazily. But the power constantly
increased, until the axe met the wood in a mighty swish and whack. And
each stroke fell in the gash of the one previous. Methodically they
opened the "kerf," each face almost as smooth as though it had been
sawn. At the finish they left the last fibres on one side or another,
according as they wanted to twist the direction of the tree's fall. Then
the trunk crashed down across the stake driven in the ground.

The mountaineers, accustomed to the use of the axe in their backwoods
work, did a workmanlike but not expert job on their respective trees.