“Nail. Twice this mornin’. Now I’ve got to shut down one lathe till the other knife’s ground down. What land of timber is this, anyhow, with nails hid all over it?”
“Nothing the matter with your eyesight, is there?”
Watson glared at Jim, shook a grimy finger at him.
“I kin see nails as far as anybody, but I can’t look through an inch of timber to ’em. We always look out for nails, but it’s easy to see ’em. Bolts come to us from the vats with the bark peeled, and mostly the peelers get the nails with their spuds. But nobody kin see a nail that’s sunk an inch and the hole plugged. Yes, sir, that’s what I mean. The hole was plugged!”
“How do you know?”
“Strip of veneer showed it. Slice of plug was still stickin’ in. And we went over a dozen more bolts with a fine-tooth comb. We found one with a spot in it that looked suspicious. Dug it out and it was a plug! And we notched in and hit the nail. Now what does that mean?”
“It means you’re to keep your mouth shut about it, and tell some kind of a story to your gang to keep their mouths shut.”
“Somebody’s goin’ to get hurt,” Watson said, darkly.
“Yes,” said Jim, slowly, “somebody is going to get hurt—bad.”
“I s’pose I’ll have to look over every bolt with opery-glasses,” growled Watson.