"A hoss? He sell a hoss an' you want to know 'bout dat? Verra good! I keep a big ear fo' dat." And then Jean Colette shut one eye tightly and gazed knowingly at Dale with the other, as if he suspected what was in the young lumberman's mind.
After this many days passed without special importance. Following the holidays the lumbermen began to look forward to the time when the ice in the rivers should break and the task of getting the winter's cut to market should begin. Cutters, swampers, sled tenders, and drivers were all equally busy, while big logs were being rolled down the hillside nearly every day. Down by the pond and the river were four yards, where the piles of logs, big and little, grew continually. Two extra sleds had come in, and six horses, besides a team of oxen, and having returned to camp from his visit to a sick relative, Joel Winthrop was dispatched to Oldtown and Bangor to employ the best river drivers money could get for the spring rafting.
"The best drivers in the world aint none too good for this work," said one old cutter to Dale. "A poor driver can do more harm than a billy goat in a dynamite shed. If he lets the drive get away from him and jam up where it hadn't ought to, every lumberman on the river will feel like kicking him full o' holes for it."
Down at the yards work had already begun on the logs, so that when the lower end of the river was reached, Mr. Paxton could identify his property from the property of scores of other lumbermen. In order to know their own logs each lumberman or firm has a private mark, which is cut in deeply on every log sent down the stream. The marks are numerous, consisting of figures, letters, crosses, stars, daggers, and numerous combinations of these. Mr. Paxton's mark was two I's, an X, and two I's—II X II—and not a log was made ready for shipment until the yard foreman was assured that this mark was cut in it in such a fashion that the rough passage down the various waterways to the mills or booms should not efface it.
"We are going to have a corking cut this year," said Owen, one day, after looking over the lumber piles. "Old Foley says he can count up eighty thousand feet more of timber than he had last year at this time."
"Well, that ought to please Mr. Paxton," answered Dale. "But what was he saying to you just before I came up? You mentioned a ride on a sled."
"He wanted to know if I'd drive over to the Gannett camp for him. He wants some things from there."
"Of course you said you'd go. It will be a fine drive over the hills."
"Yes, I said I'd go, and he said I could take you if I wished."
"Hurrah, just the thing!" shouted Dale. "I've been wanting a holiday. Working in the woods every day in this splendid weather is rather tiresome."