We threw open three or four windows and looked down. Then he ran for one of the doors and looked out. The car was on something, that was sure.
“It’s an old scow,” Westy said. “Look!”
I looked down from the car door just as Westy jumped down. He said, “It’s an old scow just as sure as you live. It was part of the solid part of the trestle. See how the old tracks are broken? What—do—you—know—about—that?”
He pulled off a chip of wood and threw it up to me. “Cedar,” he said; “smell it.”
I saw just how it was. The car was standing on an old scow. The old rusty tracks were twisted and broken off and stuck out over the end. In five seconds we were all down on the deck of it, staring around.
Westy said, “Did you smell it? It’s cedar.”
And just then I remembered about something we had read in a scouts’ book about trees. Westy knows all the different kinds of wood; he’s crazy about trees. This is it, copied right out of the book:
Cedar is the wood most valuable for the hulls of vessels. When kept under water its freshness is everlasting. While other woods rot away this soft, spongy wood that yields so readily to the ax or the jack-knife, defies the decaying effects of water, its soft fiber swelling and toughening even in ordinary dampness. Time is powerless to rot it when it is in its natural element.
“What happened?” I asked him, because he seemed to know more about it than I did.
He said, “That’s easy to see. The creek flooded the marsh last night. The solid part of the trestle that we noticed was just several old scows. I guess this was the only one made of cedar. Anyway, it rose with the water and broke the old tracks and floated away. It’s lucky the car wasn’t half on one scow and half on another.”