"Just you give 'em what you think and don't be afraid," cried Mrs. Fennick encouragingly. "The lad that could organize volunteers aboard ship has a right to speak. Sam, likely as not he'll show you and Hank that you've made a big error somewheres. Now, Joe."
"I was merely asking about the lumbering," said Joe. "I always gathered that lumberers were men who were more or less trained. They go out in gangs, don't they?"
"And so'll we," interrupted Sam, with eagerness. "But there ain't so many chaps out here that hasn't had a turn with the gangs some time. I've done a season; p'raps Hank has too."
"You bet," came from that individual. "I've done most things 'way out here, from gold diggin' to farming pure and simple. Huntin' aer my proper trade, but I ain't too proud to do anything. Even when I'm my own master I ain't above takin' on a job for someone else ef I've the time, and the money's good enough."
"Then there's two of us has done the work before," declared Sam. "Eight or nine of the boys I've fixed it with to join our corporation are already up in the woods, where we'll join 'em. They've a shack built this three months, and no doubt they've started in felling."
It appeared, indeed, as if the thoughtful Sam had made very complete arrangements, and there was little doubt but that Hank, as an old and experienced colonial, was delighted.
"It aer a fine proposition," he repeated for perhaps the twentieth time. "When other folks is buried in the snow, and only finding work with feeding the cattle and sichlike, we'll be cutting timber that'll bring dollars in the summer, and be back on our holdings time enough to plough and sow and make ready for harvest. Autumn will see us threshing, and by the time the grain is hauled down to the railway there'll be frosts. Then out we go again. Gee, Sam, this fair tickles me!"
A week later the little band of lumbermen was collected together, while Tom Egan, a sturdy settler some fifty years of age, had arrived from his own little shack across the valley and had taken up his residence at Sam's dwelling, where it was arranged that Mrs. Fennick should stay with Egan's wife and children.
"Yer see," explained Sam, "a lumber camp ain't no sorter place for a woman. It's rough living all the while. Men are packed together as close as sardines, and even then it's mighty cold. So the missus stays here with the Egans while we move on."
They slung their traps over their shoulders, and with snowshoes on their feet set out towards the north. The thaw of the past week had by now given way to severe frosts, while there had been a heavy fall of snow. However, none but a confirmed grumbler could have found fault with the conditions, for a bright sun flooded the landscape, shimmering on hillocks of snow, throwing long blue shadows athwart the hollows, and causing the millions of particles of ice to flash and scintillate. There was a dry, exhilarating crispness about the atmosphere that was typically Canadian, a bracing coldness that made the little band step out briskly, Hank at their head, Sam following; then Joe, and Jim and Claude, the two young friends he had made aboard the steamer, marching side by side. Dick Parsons, a lanky, bearded colonial, brought up the rear, a veritable grenadier in proportions.