While this was being found, Laughlin laid the short piece on the ground, placed the pole across it at right angles, fitting notch to notch; and from a short piece of dry wood chipped out a pin. In the meantime the farmer had produced the auger, and Laughlin now bored through both pieces at their intersection and drove in his pin, joining them firmly together.
“Got any fence wire?” was the next question.
“There’s a piece somewhere round, left from the fence, but I can’t just lay my hand on it now.”
“Let us take a couple of yards from the fence, then,” urged Laughlin; “we’ll pay for it.”
The farmer hesitated, blinking at the pair in perplexity.
“Well, ’tain’t quite the right thing to do, but I guess I can make out to fix it up again. I don’t want no pay for it. Hope you’ll get home all right.”
The boys thanked the good man with all the fervor of which they were capable, said good night, selected from the woodpile a pole for a lever, and with their booty tramped back to the barge.
They arrived none too soon, for the impatient musicians, left in utter darkness and biting cold, were already breathing maledictions against Laughlin, whom they fancied warming himself in the farmer’s kitchen. While Wolcott was hacking off a piece of wire from the fence and breaking it into proper lengths, Laughlin cleared the boys out of the barge, lifted the side of the sled with his lever manned by sceptical but willing volunteers, and shoved the pole into the place of the broken runner so that the end of the crosspiece rested on the top of the opposite runner, where a piece of wire soon secured it. Other pieces of wire served to fasten the pole to the framework of the broken sled. It remained to tie the forward end of the pole to the body of the sleigh with hitching ropes, and to stay the whole after sled with all available straps.
“All aboard!” cried Laughlin at last, and the weary boys, raising a feeble shout of joy, settled again into their places.
Laughlin did not get in. “I’m going on the seat with Jim,” he said quietly to Mr. Leighton. “I want to see that my work is given a fair show.”