d 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 Coeur 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.

Jim fixed up a crude harness out of the ropes and hitched our broncho
team onto the first log. They bucked and reared and kicked. Sometimes
they varied matters by falling over backwards. We let into them with the
whips, that is Tom and I did, while Jim held the ribbons or ropes.

Finally they started to run and the log went snaking down the slope,
but in a minute they came to an abrupt stop, turning an unexpected
somersault. But after an hour of gymnastics and acrobatics they settled
into the harness like respectable animals.

After awhile we put Tom to work cutting saplings of cottonwood and
quaking aspens. These were to be used for cross pieces to hold the raft
together.

We had all the material gathered at the beach by the middle of the
afternoon and we went to work to construct the raft. There was nothing
so extremely difficult about it, but there was lots of hard work and it
was not such a simple matter as making a raft