CHAPTER VI.
CAPTAIN SAM BEGINS HIS MARCH.
At noon the next day Sam marched away from the camp at the head of his little company, reduced now to precisely six boys in all, counting the colored boy Joe, but not counting Captain Sam himself.

Jake Elliott was one of the company, rather against Sam's wish, but he had begged for permission to go, and Sam thought his size and strength might be of use in some emergency.

Tommy was of the party of course, and the other boys were Billy Bunker--called Billy Bowlegs by the boys, because he was not bow-legged at all but on the contrary badly knock-kneed,--Bob Sharp, a boy of about Tommy's size and age, and Sidney Russell, a boy of thirteen, who had "run to legs," his companions said, and was already nearly six feet high, and so slender that, notwithstanding his extreme height, he was the lightest boy in the company.

The rest of the party had already enlisted and could not go.
The outfit was complete, after Sam's notions of completeness; that is to say, it included every thing which was absolutely necessary and not an ounce of anything that could be safely spared.

For tools they had two axes, with rather short handles, a small hatchet, a pocket rule and an adze; to this list might be added their large pocket knives, which every man and boy on the frontier carries habitually.