CHAPTER IV
“What we got to do,” says Mark, next morning, “is to get a l-little money ahead so we won’t have to be b-bustin’ ourselves every day to p-pay the men. If we only had two-three hunderd d-dollars it ’u’d give us time to start in to run this mill.”
“If I had it,” says I, “I’d lend it to us.”
“There must be some m-m-money owin’ to Silas,” says Mark. “Let’s ask him.”
Silas Doolittle Bugg was just sort of roaming around, keeping an eye on things and waggling his head. He didn’t seem to be bossing anything, but just strolling around to see the sights. He’d stop and look at the men in the log-yard a minute, and scratch his head and waggle it as much as to say, “Well, if that hain’t the beatinest thing I ever see!” like he was astonished ’most to death, you know, when he had been seeing that selfsame sight almost every day of his life. Then he would mogg into the mill and stand alongside the saw for a spell and talk to himself and act as if a saw cutting through a log was a miracle right out of the Bible. I never saw a man that could get up so much surprise over something that didn’t surprise him a bit. He was always surprised. I’ll bet it surprised him when he woke up in the morning.
Mark and I went over to him, and Mark says:
“Mr. Bugg, see if you can’t think of somebody that owes you some money—somebody you’ve sold things to.”
“Wa-al,” says Silas, “I calc’late I’ve sold a heap of folks a heap of things. Some more and some less. Mostly they been in the habit of payin’. Some has, and I figger there’s some that hain’t, but for the life of me I can’t make out which is which.”
Mark jerked a piece of paper out of his pocket and waved it at Silas.
“I’ve copied off of those p-pieces of wood in the office,” says he, “about all I could make out to read. How much of this is paid and how much is owed?”