The boy's father was one of many pioneers, some from stony New England, some from sandy eastern coasts, who had joined the crowds of emigrants floating westward down the Ohio. Like most of the others, he was searching for a place where he could afford to buy rich land on which to build a homestead. "I couldn't see our boat, 'though I was looking straight at it," the boy said, proudly. "It is exactly like a piece of the river-bank." "If the Indians cannot see it, or if they fail to shoot through the barriers if they _do_ notice us as we drift down-stream, I, too, Doby, will be pleased with our work on it," answered his father, as they hurried up a hill before the wind toward Marietta's great stockade of Campus Martius. This fort was a hundred and eighty feet square and twenty feet high. It was made of logs, each one flattened at the sides to fit snugly to the next one, planted in the earth at the lower end and sharpened to a point at the upper, like a huge picket fence without a crack in it, big enough for a giant's dooryard. There were boxes for lookouts atop the wall, blockhouses on its corners, and cabins inside its strong defenses. Parson Cutler, at the head of the Ohio land company's New England shareholders, had ceremoniously blessed this fort when it was completed and ready to stand guard over the million and a half of their fertile acres. As he neared it Doby said, "Ma has already gone inside to the schoolma'am's house." "She means to get a book so she can give you a lesson every day as we move. This town isn't quite thirty years old, yet it has had an academy for twenty. 'Tis probably your ma's last chance to talk with scholars." "I'll study the book," promised Doby. "I don't want to be a dunce like the boys who can't spell their own names. Some cannot even cut their initials on trees in the towns where we stop." And Doby sniffed with scorn. "If I had a really good knife--a strong one--I could carve better than I do now," he sighed, as he thought of his one great need. "Piff! Puff!" the wind echoed his sigh. "Piff! Puff! Puff!" Rain was close on their heels. Mr. Holman pulled his 'coonskin cap down tight over his long hair, girded up his fringed buckskin breeches, and ran for the fort, his heavy boots clumping out a path through last year's weed-stalks. Doby tucked his cap under his arm and let his tow thatch take the breeze and, light as a ball in his moccasins, bounded along behind his father. They were not swift enough to gain the fort. As the downpour overtook them they ducked underneath the branches of a gnarled and broken oak and found good shelter. "Much obliged, old tree," laughed Doby. "You've saved us a drenching." He tried to girdle it with his arms. "I can't reach half-way. It's the _biggest_ trunk!"