It seemed that everybody did, or at least all the young crew in King’s Cove. Taking stock in this booming concern consisted merely in contributing all the labor and man-power you had in you.
Stringing up even a half mile of telegraph wire turned out to be a vast task; especially since the wire had to be yanked down from old fences, and some of it was barbed, from which the barbs had to be untwisted. But whenever a Cove youth could be spared from hoeing 'taters and corn or pushing the plow, he rushed off to the Renaud place to work ten times harder. Only this new labor was interesting work—work with a zest to it. One crew logged in the woods for tall, strong cedar poles that were to carry the wires, another crew de-barbed old fencing, still another dug the line of post holes. A great search went on for old bottles to be used as glass insulators.
Then the actual stringing up began to go forward.
“Mind, you boys,” warned Uncle Gem, “don’t let anybody’s clothesline get mixed up in this. We don’t want to stir up any hard feeling round here against our project.”
Which very likely was the reason why the stringing up halted for a time while more old fencing was de-barbed, and why, in the dark of a night, Nanny Borden’s clothes wire miraculously reappeared on its posts.
It was hard for untrained hands to set the posts firm and in a straight line, harder still to string the much-spliced wire taut.
At last, though, the great day came when the Renaud-Bobb Telegraph Line reached from station to station.
The lonely little Bobb cabin suddenly became a center of interest. There was always some youngster happening along who wanted to send a message over the line. Jimmy Bobb’s eager mind picked up the code quickly. His long fingers learned to click the key with real speed. The cripple began to know happiness. For the first time in all his starved, meager years, he was getting in touch with life.
Then one day while Lee Renaud was away from his workshop, a frantic message came clicking over the crude wires.
“That thing’s banging like fury up there!” Uncle Gem waved his stick ceilingwards as Lee dashed into the house.