"My," cried Hank, "you've been moving!"
"We're only beginning," said Sam. "But we starts out for a lumber camp soon as the frost comes, and there we'll work till springtime. You axed what we was going to do in the winter. There's the answer."
It must be confessed that Sam Fennick's scheme was ambitious to the last degree. But then, if one analyses it, one can see the possibilities that Hank saw, for co-operative working is often enough wonderfully successful where the single individual fails. Again, in a country where labour is scarce, and profits often lessened because of the lack of labour at critical periods; where, in fact, a man who may have broken and sown his land with the greatest industry may see his crops rot in spite of his energy, simply and solely because of the lack of help to harvest them; there, in a case such as that, the co-operation of his fellows would be all in all to him. Indeed, with pooled labour, and a certain sum pooled by all the settlers with which to buy implements, it stands to reason that work could be done more cheaply, more expeditiously, and always at the proper season.
"It aer a grand proposition," declared Hank, when he had thoroughly considered the matter. "I kin see a big saving in more than one way, and one of 'em's this. Suppose there's twenty settlers in the combine. Wall, now, with ten ploughs and ten harrows and seeders you've tools to break the land. Supposing there warn't a combine; each man has his own tools. They ain't all in use together, so some of 'em's lying idle. That's gain number one, and don't you try to contradict me. And so you're goin' lumberin'?"
"We are that," assented Sam; "and seems to me you and Joe had better come along with us. You could put in a month or more, and then go along on prospecting."
It took our hero and his hunter companion but a little while to accept the invitation, the more so as Joe was already more or less one of the corporation Sam was forming.
"There's dollars in the scheme right through," Hank said, as they sat round the stove that evening. "Ef you'll have me as one of the band, I'll apply for my two hundred acres right off, paying for 'em, for I ain't able to take up more free land. Joe's in the same fix. But he aer got the dollars to pay. We'll come north with you and do a little lumbering. Afterwards he and I kin move on farther, for I've a proposition of my own to look into."
"But——" began Joe, who had been a listener for the most part up till now.
"Huh! He's agoin' to criticize the scheme and pour cold water on it," grinned Hank, swinging round on our hero. "Tell you, Sam, this here youngster aer had his eyes opened wide sense he came out, and he's turnin' into a business farmer. Wall, what are it?"
"This lumbering," began Joe diffidently, colouring at so much attention being attracted to him.