Two hundred dollars meant much to the Allen family that spring, for by it the mother was enabled to go to Chicago for treatment by a famous specialist, who said she had come just in time.
CHAPTER XIV
WINTER IN THE LUMBER WOODS
When Mr. Thompson proposed, as an act of kindness, to take the cook, Peter Lateur, back to Necedah that he might receive proper attention for his broken arm, he did not know that it would prove to be an opening to a profitable winter’s contract, but so it was.
As he stepped into the office of the Medford Lumber Company, “Old Man” Medford, who was in earnest conversation with a keen-eyed, brisk-appearing gentleman, looked up, and as his eyes fell upon Mr. Thompson, he exclaimed, “The very thing. Here’s the man, Mr. Norman, that can do the job.” “Mr. Norman, this is Mr. Thompson, one of the up-river settlers. Mr. Norman is at the head of the Construction Company that has a contract to build the grade and bridges of the new railroad that is coming into town next summer,” was Mr. Medford’s form of introduction.
“The lay of the land is such,” went on Mr. Medford, “that the road must cross the head of the big boom pond, and that calls for a long trestle. I’ve been telling him that our regular crews have all gone into the woods, and we can’t get out the piling he wants, this season; but he insists that he going to have that timber on the bank of the river to come down in the spring drive. Now what do you think of such a man?”
“I think he means to get his work done,” replied Mr. Thompson.
The big man’s eyes twinkled. “I may have to pay a little extra, of course, but I shall see that piling down here in the boom by the time my bridge builders are ready for them.”
Mr. Medford’s company owned a tract of young timber over which a fire had swept, and, while its thick growth had worked its ruin in that the trees had been killed, the trunks had not been destroyed, but stood tall and straight, and, if cut before the borers got in their destructive work, would make ideal piling timber.