The kettles were always boiling and sack after sack was filled with the precious commodity.

At night wild animals, despite the known presence of strange, new creatures, would come down to the springs, so eager were they for the salt, and the men rarely molested them.

Only a deer now and then was shot for food, and Henry and Paul lay awake one night, watching two big bull buffaloes, not fifty yards away, fighting for the best place at a spring.
Ross and Shif'less Sol did not do much of the work at the salt-boiling, but they were continually scouting through the forest, on a labor no less important, watching for raiding war parties who otherwise might fall unsuspected upon the toilers.

Henry, as a youth of great promise, was sometimes taken with them on these silent trips through the woods, and the first time he went he felt badly on Paul's account, because his comrade was not chosen also.

But when he returned he found that his sympathy was wasted.