He sent Thomas and me to lead several of our horses up through the woods to the pond.

We ran all the way; and we took the whippletrees off the double wagons, and brought all the spare rope halters.

Within an hour we were back there with four of the strongest horses.
Meanwhile the others had been busy; even Ben had been persuaded to drop his drilling and to help the other boys cut the great lever--a straight spruce tree forty or forty-five feet tall.

The girls, too, had worked; they had even helped us drag the two spruce logs for the lever to slide on.

In fact, every one had worked with might and main in a kind of breathless anxiety, for Rufus's very life seemed to be hanging on the success of our exertions.
A few feet to the left of the fallen rock was another boulder that served admirably for a fulcrum, and before long we had the big lever in place with the end of the short arm bearing against the fallen slab.
When we had attached the horses to the farther end, Addison gave the word to start.