Chapter II
What Came of Them
A few hours later Charley Russell again sat before the bench in the little wireless house in his father's yard. Before him lay some patterns for a rowboat, and on a piece of paper Charley was trying to figure out how much lumber it would take to build the boat.
"We'll need two sixteen-foot boards, each a foot wide for the sides," he said, looking across the table at his chum, who sat ready, with pencil and paper, to jot down the figures Charley gave him.
"Thirty-two feet," said Lew, setting down the number on his paper.
Charley bent over his patterns, measuring and estimating in silence. "It'll take three more like 'em for the bottom," he said presently.
"That's forty-eight more," replied Lew, jotting down the number.
"And these cross braces," added Charley, after another period of calculation, "will take ten feet more."
Again Lew set down the number.
"That provides for everything but the decks," said Charley. "They will take seven or eight feet more. Better call it ten. That's all. What does it make?"
Lew put down ten and added the column of figures. "One hundred feet exactly," he said.
"Bully good!" replied Charley. "A hundred feet oughtn't to cost much of anything. The rub's going to be to get the oars. You say they want five dollars for the cheapest pair at the hardware store, and the sporting goods store wants six-fifty."
"The robbers!" cried Lew. "Think of it. Six-fifty for about fifteen cents' worth of wood. Maybe we can get a pair of second-hand oars somewhere. Six-fifty is as much as we can afford to spend on the whole outfit."
"It will be all right to get second-hand oars," said Charley, "for we can get new ones later, when we have the money. Besides, we want to put most of our money into the boat itself. As long as we are going to build it, we want to make it the very best boat possible. We want the best wood in the market and we want our boat light enough so that the two of us can carry it. I reckon it may cost two or three dollars if we buy such good wood as that. But it will be worth while. We can get along with cheap oars for a time. Let's go down to the lumber-yard and get our boards."
The two chums left the shop and hurried down the street toward the lumber-yard.
"If we can get our lumber to-day," said Charley, "I'm certain we can get our boat made before the spring vacation. We ought to be able to put in three hours apiece every afternoon after high school lets out, and we can get in another hour apiece before school, if we get up early enough. That's four hours apiece, or eight hours a day. We certainly ought to get it finished and painted inside of ten days."
"Sure," replied Lew. "We'll have her done all right. And we'll have just about the finest boat in town."
"And I reckon we'll have just about the finest trip ever," went on Charley. "If we start right after school closes for the Easter vacation we can row up-stream that afternoon as far as Hillman's Grove, and camp there for the night. That will give us almost half a day's extra time. Then we can reach our old camping ground the next day and get the tent up and our wood cut and maybe even catch some fish before dark. We'll have everything ready so we can jump right into the boat and pull out the minute school is over."
"Sure," assented Lew. Then, after a moment's pause, he added, "Ain't it a shame none of the other members of the Wireless Patrol can go along? We'll miss 'em, particularly Roy. And now that he's wireless man on the Lycoming, he'll probably never go on another trip with the Camp Brady Patrol."
"It's too bad for us, but mighty nice for Roy," said Charley. "Just think of being the wireless man on a great ocean steamship when you're only nineteen. He's made for life. Gee! I wish I knew what I am going to do."
"I know how you feel, Charley. Maybe something will turn up so that you won't need to go into the factory after all. But here we are at the lumber-yard. Let's get the boards and begin our boat at once. We'll have a good time this vacation, no matter what happens afterward."
"Well, boys, what can I do for you?" inquired the lumber dealer, as Charley and Lew approached him.
"We want one hundred feet of the lightest and best boards you have," replied Charley. "We are going to build a boat and we want it to be strong but light, so that the two of us can handle it."
"White pine would be just the thing for you," replied the dealer, "but I haven't a foot of it in the place and can't get any. I have some fine cedar boards that would make a good light boat. Just come over to this pile of lumber." And he led the way across the yard.
"That will suit us all right if it's wide enough," said Charley. "We want foot boards."
"Well, that's what these are. And a good inch thick, too. They're mighty good boards. Hardly a knot in 'em. We don't see much lumber like that nowadays."
"They'll do all right," assented Charley, after examining the boards. "What do they cost a hundred?"
"Ten dollars."
"Ten dollars!" cried Charley in consternation. Then a smile came on his face. "Quit your kidding," he said. "What do they come at?"
"Ten dollars," replied the lumber dealer soberly.
The two boys stared at him incredulously.
"Impossible!" cried Lew. "What are they really worth?"
"Ten dollars," replied the man. His voice was sharp and a frown had gathered on his forehead. "Ten dollars, and cheap at that."
Charley turned to his companion with a look of dismay. "We can never build our boat with wood at such a price," he cried. "With five dollars to pay for oars, and two dollars for paint, and some more for nails and rowlocks, and lock and chain, the boat would cost eighteen or twenty dollars just for the materials. That's three times as much as we have got."
After an instant the look on Charley's face changed to one of intense indignation. He had a quick temper, and now he turned to the lumber dealer in anger.
"I guess the sugar profiteers are not the only ones who ought to be in the penitentiary," he said hotly. "You can keep your old boards. And I hope they rot for you."
Then he turned on his heel and started toward the gate, followed by Lew.
"Come back here!"
The words rang out sharp and sudden. The voice was commanding and compelling. Involuntarily the two boys turned back. The lumber dealer stood before them, his face ablaze with indignation. Under his fiery glances the boys were speechless. For a moment the man said nothing. Evidently he was struggling with his temper. When he had gotten control of himself he spoke. His voice was deep and low, but harsh and cutting.
"Before you make a fool of yourself again, young man," he said, speaking directly to Charley, "you had better know what you are talking about. You called me a profiteer for asking $100 a thousand feet for those cedar boards. Young man, those boards cost me $90 a thousand in the cars at the station. That leaves me a margin of $10 a thousand for handling them. Out of that I have to pay to have the boards hauled from the station, pay for insurance on them, pay their proportionate share of overhead expense, and pay for hauling them to customers. How much of that $10 do you think is left for profit? So little it almost requires a microscope to see it. I have to handle a good many hundred feet of lumber to make as much as the cheapest sort of laborer gets for a day's pay. The fact is, young man, that far from profiteering on that lumber, I am selling it at a smaller profit than I ever sold any lumber before in my life. Some lumber I am handling at a loss. But in these critical days, with factories closing everywhere, and men by the thousands being thrown out of work, the best thing a man can do, either for himself or for his country, is to keep business moving. That's why I am selling lumber without profit."
Charley was suddenly abashed. "I'm awfully sorry I called you a profiteer," he said humbly. "I beg your pardon."
"It's all right, young man," said the lumber dealer, a smile once more lighting up his face. "You are too young to understand how critical the business situation really is. But be careful in future how you call people names."
"I certainly will," agreed Charley. "But I'd like to know this. Who is profiteering in lumber? Who is responsible for such terrible prices?"
"Well, there has been profiteering in lumber, as in everything else. But there is a real reason why the price of lumber is so high, and that is the scarcity of timber."
"Scarcity!" cried Charley incredulously. "Why, the forests are full of timber."
"And what is it like?" demanded the lumber dealer. "Go out to the forests and look at it. There's nothing but little poles that will scarcely make six-inch boards. We don't produce one-fourth of the lumber we use in this state, and we are using wood ten times as fast as our forests are growing it."
"I thought Pennsylvania was a great lumbering state," protested Lew.
"For a good many years it led the nation in the production of lumber, young man, but now it ranks twentieth among the states. If only fire could be kept out of the forests, we might some day raise our own timber again. But the lumbermen chopped down the big trees and fire has destroyed the little ones and even burned the forest soil so that nothing grows in it again. We have not only destroyed our forests, but we have so injured the land that new trees do not grow to take the place of those we cut."
The two boys stared at the lumberman in amazement. "Where do we get our lumber from?" demanded Lew.
"Practically all of it comes from the South. That's one reason lumber costs so much here. The people of Pennsylvania pay $25,000,000 a year in freight charges on the lumber they use. That's one of the reasons those cedar boards you were looking at cost so much. When the new freight rates go into effect the cost of hauling our lumber to us will be something like $40,000,000 a year."
The two boys were very thoughtful as they made their way back to Charley's shop.
"What are people going to do for wood pretty soon?" Lew inquired of his companion. "If we can't build a little boat because the wood costs too much, how are people going to get homes and furniture and wagons and motor-cars and a thousand other things? Seems to me pretty much everything we use is made of wood."
"I don't know," replied Charley. "But what bothers me more just now is to know what we are going to do during Easter vacation. It may be the last vacation I shall ever have, and I'd like to have a good time."
"Why not follow the lumber dealer's suggestion and go out to the forests? Easter doesn't come this year until after the trout season opens. We could go out to our old camp in the mountains and spend the vacation there, fishing and hiking."
"That's a mighty good suggestion, Lew. If we have our packs ready, we can start from high school the minute it is dismissed. We can make that early afternoon train and get off at that little flag-station at the foot of Stone Mountain. Then we can hike through the notch and reach the far slope of Old Ironsides before dark. We shall have to camp overnight along the run from the spring there, as it is the only water for miles around. Then the next day we can go on into that little valley where we saw so many trout. That is so hard to reach that not many fishermen ever go there. The little stream from the spring on Old Ironsides runs into that brook. Do you remember what lots of little trout we saw not far below the spring? They will have become big fellows by this time and moved down into the larger stream. There ought to be some fine fishing there this spring."
"They say it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. I'm sorry we can't build the boat, but we shall have just as good a time in the mountains as we should have had on the river. We'll borrow that little pup tent of Johnnie Lee's, and take our blankets, hatchets, fishing-rods, and grub."
"I'd rather leave the tent at home and build a lean-to after we get there. Then we could take a portable wireless outfit and talk to the fellows at home here in the evening. Half a dozen dry cells would give us one-sixth of a kilowatt of current, and that ought to carry a message twenty-five or thirty miles easily. At night we might be able to talk fifty miles. We can carry six cells easily. The remainder of the outfit won't weigh much. We'll have to go as light as we can, for it's a mighty tough hike over Old Ironsides and on into that little valley."
"Shall we take our pistols?" asked Charley.
"We'd better have at least one. You never can tell when you're going to need a pistol in the forest. Remember the time that bear treed me on the first hike of the Wireless Patrol? I don't ever want to get into another situation like that without something to shoot with."
Charley chuckled. "It wasn't a pistol that saved you then," he smiled, "but Willie Brown and his spark-gap."
"Then we'll be doubly armed," replied Lew. "Since you have so much faith in wireless, you can carry the outfit. I'll pack the gun. We're almost certain to have some kind of adventure, for every time the Wireless Patrol or any of its members venture into the woods, something exciting happens."