Our auctioneer was a good talker! When—as he put it to them amidst laughter—he asked the sheep to separate from the goats, more than a hundred and fifty men stepped to one side and waved their axes as signal that they were ready to go to work.
Fifteen minutes later, closeted with Vose and Hook in my room, I was counting the deposit money—a fat bundle of bills; I had made ready for that part of the ceremony and I had an equally fat packet of blank paper in the drawer of my little table. I had not sat at the feet of my crook acquaintances without hearing much about the “substitution trick.” I worked it then and there on those guileless old countrymen.
I merely yanked out a table drawer with the casual remark about an envelope, turned my back for an instant, and then slipped into an envelope in full view of them a financial sandwich; I had made that sandwich by flicking two bills off the money-packet and framing the blank paper. I licked the mucilage, sparked down the flap, and handed the packet to Landlord Vose. I left the rest of the money in the drawer and slammed it shut.
“I suppose you have wax and a seal down-stairs, Mr. Vose. Please daub on a little and lock this up in your safe. Then Mr. Hook and you and I will feel all right about our affairs.”
I led the gang to the wood-lot, and that plug-hat of mine must have flashed in the March sunlight about as brightly as the helmet of Henry of Navarre—providing I remember my Fourth Reader selection. That wad of bills which I had frisked out of the table drawer was bulked against my ribs in most comforting manner.
I never saw men pitch into a job more cheerfully than those chaps did after I led them over the fence and gave the word. It was a real frolic. Men bantered one another and made side bets on ability and everybody was laughing. Axes sounded in a chick-chock chorus, and trees began to crash down.
I spent the most of the day on the job, for I saw opportunities for extra profits; there was quite a stand of hackmatack, for instance, and there was a lot of cedar which fringed a small swamp. I made special bargains with men to fell this stuff for railroad ties. There was also considerable pine suitable for, box stuff; before the day was over a portable-sawmill man, hearing of the onslaught on the Kingsley lot, came hurrying to the village, made a trade for the pine, and paid down a sizable deposit; advertising was certainly paying!
One of the most interested onlookers was my uncle Deck, who drove dose to the wood-lot fence and scowled and sliced the air with his whip. He made several trips during the day and was handy by when I started to walk back to the village in the late afternoon. He offered a seat in his wagon and I accepted, for I was all done being scared of him and I was footsore.
“Recorded your deed yet?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” I said, airily.