Chapter V: The Old Ax Maker Visits His Daughter

As they were talking, a long call came from far away. They listened. The call came again, and Strongarm put his hands to his mouth and answered.

"It is old Flint, the ax maker," he said to his wife.

"Grandfather!" cried the boys, and they ran to meet him.

Soon they came back with an old man. His hair was rough and gray, but his eyes were bright under his bushy eyebrows. He wore an old brown bear skin.

"Ho, man!" called Strongarm, "come on!"

"Sit and rest, father," Burr said.

The old man sat down on the root of a tree. Burr brought him bison meat and wild honey and a horn of water.

"Eat, you are tired and hungry."

The old man ate all he wanted. Then he began to talk. He told about his wife, and the work at the stone yard and the gravel bed, and of the men who had come from far away to buy his axes.

The boys stood by and listened.

After some time Burr looked at the bag on the old man's shoulder.

"Have you a new ax in there for me?" she asked with a little laugh.

Smiles came about the old man's mouth, and he slowly pulled four beautiful chipped axes from his bag. One ax was big and heavy. That was for Strongarm. He handed it to him. Another ax was small and light. That was Burr's. She put out her hand for it. There were two little axes. These the boys snatched with shouts of joy.

The axes were wide at the sharp end and narrow at the head, and you could see where every chip had come off.

Strongarm turned his ax over and looked at it. He rubbed his fingers along the rough sharp edge.

"That is a good ax," he said, and he held it up and looked it all over again.

"Grandfather," said Thorn, pressing close to the old man's side, "when I am a man, I shall be an ax maker like you."

"Begin now," said his grandfather, with a gruff laugh. "It takes a long time to learn to make a good ax."

"Can anybody learn?" asked Pineknot.

"No," said Flint. "Some men can chip stone, and others cannot. That is why some men make axes, and other men use them."

"Well, I will try," said Thorn. "When you go back to the stone yard, I will go with you."

Strongarm turned round where he sat and pulled up a little hickory tree. "We will put handles on these axes," he said.

He hacked off a piece of the little tree and split it half way down, and hacked off one split piece. The other split piece he bent around his ax. Then he took wet string made of skin. This he put around and around the ax handle, and pulled it tight.

The boys stood by watching. "The wet string will shrink and draw up short," their father told them. "Then the ax will be very tight on the handle."

The boys now tied on their ax handles with their father's help. And Flint tied on Burr's. Then all set to work with sandstone pebbles and rubbed them smooth. Strongarm's was soon done. He threw his old ax away, stuck his new one in the string around his waist, and went off to hunt.

Burr took her digging stick from beside her door and hacked a point on it with her new ax. Then she burned the point in the fire until it was hard. She took a basket in her hand, and her baby on her back, and went out of the cave. Old Flint and the boys rolled a stone up to the door to keep out wolves and foxes. Then they all went into the woods, and Burr began looking for things to eat.

She found a root and pushed it out of the ground with her digging stick and threw it into her basket. It was the root of a wild turnip. She found other roots. They were wild carrots and celery. In the open places, tall grasses grew. They were the wild grains. These she bent over and beat with a stick until the ripe seeds fell into her basket. Under the oak trees she gathered acorns.

Little wild pigs were there eating the acorns, and the boys ran one down and brought it, squealing, to their mother. Burr laughed and said, "You are little men. You will soon hunt for yourselves."

It began to rain, and they all sat under a tree until the rain had passed.