“I see,” said Archer. “Harrison offered me the stuff at a great bargain, but I didn’t see how there could be anything fishy about it. Well, I’m glad I’m only out my expenses. I suppose you wouldn’t think of selling any of it yourself? I thought not. You’ll make a good thing out of it. Walnut’s almost off the market now, and bringing any sort of fancy price. But I don’t need to tell you anything about that. All I’ve got to do is to look for a way to get home.”
CHAPTER X
A FIGHT IN THE DARK
“I do believe we’ve got possession of the thing at last, Father,” said Tom, surveying the raft with joy, despite his aching head, which Harrison’s blow had jarred afresh.
“Yes, I don’t see what’s to stop us now,” returned Mr. Jackson.
It was near sunset, and peace had fallen on the camp again. The men of the two parties had fraternized and were sitting about on the logs and smoking. In the background the cook was preparing supper at an open-air fire. Mr. Archer had discreetly withdrawn into a tent, leaving Tom and his father to examine the property they had at last secured.
Harrison must have worked his men skilfully and hard while he had them. The partly built raft already stretched far out from the shore. It was by no means all of walnut, of course. Harrison had cut down all the spruce, jack-pine, and hemlock in sight for the floating foundation. They were put together in “cribs,” connected by strong traverses, pinned down with huge hardwood bolts. The walnut was piled on top of this foundation, and each log was “withed” down to its support with ironwood saplings as thick as a man’s wrist, twisted like rope around the timbers. There were already more than seventy cribs put together, each of them containing fully a thousand feet of walnut.
“His men knew how to handle logs,” Mr. Jackson remarked, looking with an expert eye at the way the timber was withed and pinned together. “Never saw a better built raft. If Dan Wilson had built it as well as this, it mightn’t have broken up so easily. That’s fine walnut, too. It’ll take some drying out and seasoning again, of course, but it’s practically as good as the day it was cut. I don’t believe there’s as much walnut timber as this anywhere else in one spot in all Canada.”
“And nobody knows how much that isn’t dug out yet,” Tom returned. “We ought to be thankful to Harrison, maybe, for all the work he’s done for us. We’ll have the use of his tents and tools too, until he comes to take them away. Not to forget that if he hadn’t tried to drive me out by burning the woods I’d probably never have found the walnut at all.”
“Yes, he seems to have cheated himself all around,” said his father. “If he presents a reasonable bill for labor, I’ll pay it. But I don’t think he ever will. As for what walnut is left,” he added, looking over the scarred surface of the shore, “I suspect that there isn’t much more of it.”
There was some, however, and the combined gangs went to work vigorously on the morrow. About noon the delayed wagon came in from Ormond, with two more men and the supplies, and Mr. Archer and the postmaster rode back in it when it returned. They promised to send out more provisions, for, with Harrison’s gang, Mr. Jackson had more men than he had counted on.