At the first sign of daylight the next morning we left the dock with our queer looking craft and started up the river. Through an employment agency Hiram had secured three additional men, a sawyer and two laborers.
Hiram's interest amounted to intense excitement when the first log was cut. He had waited until he saw an unusually promising one go through. One of the laborers rowed to it, fastened the grapples and it seemed to want to come aboard, as though tired of life in the river, and there it lay quietly, without one flinch before the saw that passed through it. The sawyer understood his business, four slab cuts were made skillfully, the log squared and finally reduced to wide, clean, inch boards and stored below in less than ten minutes. Hiram found it hard to contain himself. His intense joy and elation threatened his dignity. He had made something useful, valuable, beautiful, with the delicate odor of the spring woods, from hitherto waste material. I knew what would have happened had we been alone. He would have tried to throw on me his now brawny person and pummel me from sheer exuberance.
"Ben," he said, in a tense undertone, "over five hundred feet of lumber in that log that they will mob us to get at five cents a foot." I knew he wanted to cut a big caper and cavort. "Twenty-five dollars, Ben, in less than ten minutes. Say, if Becker don't fall for cheap lumber—well, we'll get him sure with such bait, and the bayou back of his place is full of logs—we won't be there an hour before he comes for it—just you watch. We can be there by to-morrow morning," he went on, his eyes roaming the river on both sides for another good log that had eluded the lumber men in the long reaches of the Mississippi as far back as the Great Lakes.
That night we tied up at a bank across the river and a little below Becker & Co.'s plant. It had been a busy day and every one except Hiram was tired and glad to stop for supper. I was sitting aft smoking when I noticed him come up from below, looking for me.
"I've been down taking stock and checking up the day," he began, squatting down before me on his heels, keeping his pipe in his mouth. "We captured just thirty-nine logs, you know a few of them had rotten centers, but we've got over twenty thousand feet of clear lumber besides nearly three thousand feet of culls. Figure it out at fifty dollars—it's worth more delivered—eleven hundred dollars—first day—all amateurs—we've got the big idea working."
"Why do you say we, Hiram? I claim no credit or interest or wages; I'm paid—it is your plan—don't be so modest."
"Yes, I did get the idea of capturing this waste, but how far would I have got alone—a hundred and twenty-five dollars per from the railroad and a certainty of being accused of stealing. In a thousand years I never will be charged with ingratitude—if we win, you've got——"
"The weak spot, Hiram, is that you will soon clean the river of logs, and then what? Sit still and wait for the once-a-year highwater to bring them down?" I asked, interrupting him purposely.
"Wait till we get Becker over there," he said, suddenly sobering and looking across the river, but making no other sign—something as a wolf looks at his prey within easy reach. "It's a hundred and fifty miles from here to the Gulf and lots of logs all the way. But with our big job done, once get actually free, and we run out of logs, something will turn up; in fact I've got another idea hatching. Do you see the foundation he has started over there? That's why he must have lumber. Doesn't his plant remind you of a quarantine station—or a pest house?" He asked this question as though he did not expect an answer.