CHAPTER 5. OUT OF THE WILDERNESS

On the way to God's Country at last! Already Chad had schooled himself for the
parting with Jack, and but for this he must--little man that he was--have
burst into tears. As it was, the lump in his throat stayed there a long while,
but it passed in the excitement of that mad race down the river. The old
Squire had never known such a tide.

"Boys," he said, gleefully, "we're goin' to make a REcord on this trip--you
jus' see if we don't. That is, if we ever git thar alive."

All the time the old man stood in the middle of the raft yelling orders. Ahead
was the Dillon raft, and the twin brothers--the giants, one mild, the other
sour-faced--were gesticulating angrily at each other from bow and stern. As
usual, they were quarrelling. On the Turner raft, Dolph was at the bow, the
school-master at the stern, while Rube--who was cook--and Chad, in spite of a
stinging pain in one foot, built an oven of stones, where coffee could be
boiled and bacon broiled, and started a fire, for the air was chill on the
river, especially when they were running between the hills and no sun could
strike them.

When the fire blazed up, Chad sat by it watching Tall Tom and the
school-master at the stern oar and Rube at the bow. When the turn was sharp,
how they lashed the huge white blades through the yellow water--with the
handle across their broad chests, catching with their toes in the little
notches that had been chipped along the logs and tossing the oars down and up
with a mighty swing that made the blades quiver and bend like the tops of