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XIX
ROBINSON BUILDS A HOME FOR HIS GOAT
But the goat was a new care. Wild animals could come and kill and
carry Robinson's goat away while he slept, and if the goat got
frightened while he was hunting it would run away.
"I will have to make me a little yard in front of my cave," he said,
"for my goat to live in." But from whence must come the tools? He had
neither hatchet nor saw. Where then were the stakes to come from? He
went in search of something. After hunting for a long time he came
upon a kind of thistle about two feet higher than himself, having at
its top a red torch-like blossom. There were a great many of them.
"Good!" thought Robinson. "If I could only dig up enough of them and
plant them thick around the door of my cave, I would have just the
thing. No one could get at me, nor at the goat, either, The thorns
would keep anything from creeping through, peeping in or getting
over."
So he took his mussel-shell spade and went to work. It was pretty
hard, but at length he succeeded in laying bare the roots of quite
a number. But he could not drag them to his cave on account of the
thorns sticking in him. He thought a long time. Finally, he sought
out two strong poles or branches which were turned up a little at one
end and like a sled runner. To these he tied twelve cross-pieces with
bark. To the foremost he tied a strong rope made from cocoa fiber.
He then had something that looked much like a sled on which to draw
his thistle-like brush to his cave. But for one day he had done enough.
The transplanting of the thistles was hard work. His spade broke and
he had to make a new one. In the afternoon he broke his spade again.
And as he made his third one, he made up his mind that it was no use
trying to dig with such a weak tool in the hard ground. It would only
break again.
"If I only had a pick." But he had none. He found a thick, hard, sharp
stone. With it he picked up the hard earth, but had to bend almost
double in using it. "At home," he thought, "they have handles to
picks." The handle was put through a hole in the iron. He turned the
matter over and over in his mind, how he might put a hole through the
stone. But he found no means. He searched out a branch with a crotch
at one end. He tied the stone to this with strong cocoa fiber and
bark.
[Illustration: ROBINSON'S TOOLS]
How his eye glistened as he looked at the new tool! Now he began to
work. He first loosened up the earth with his pick, then he dug it
out with his spade and planted in a high thistle. Many days he had
to work, but finally one evening the hedge was ready. He had a row
in a semicircle in front of his cave. He counted the marks on his calendar
tree. The day on which he had begun to make his hedge he had
especially marked out. He had worked fourteen days.
He had completed his hedge with the exception of a small hole that
must serve for a door. But the door must not be seen from without.
As Robinson thought, it came to him that there was still place for
two thistles on the outside. He could easily get in, but the entrance
was difficult to find from the outside.
Robinson looked on his hedge from without. It was not yet thick
enough. For this reason he planted small thistles between the larger
ones. With the digging them out and transplanting them he was a whole
week longer.
Finally, the hedge and the yard were ready. Now Robinson could rest
without fear and sleep in his cave, and could have his goat near him
all the time. It delighted him greatly. It ran after him continually
like a dog. When he came back from an absence, it bleated for joy and
ran to meet him as soon as he got inside the hedge. Robinson felt that
he was not entirely alone. He had now a living being near him.
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Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
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