He, as soon as he learned what we wanted, engaged to send us up three stout young Mexicans, an engagement he duly fulfilled—to the rage and bewilderment of Galvez, as we afterward heard, who could not for the life of him make out what had become of them.
With this accession of strength we needed a second saw, and Dick went off to Mosby to get one. In a few days he returned with two saws instead of one, and with a load of dried apples, sugar and coffee with which to feed our hungry Mexicans. Flour—of a kind—we could get from the village, and deer-meat, though poor and tough at that season of the year, we could always procure.
Dick also brought back with him that commodity so necessary in all business undertakings—some money. The professor had insisted on advancing him some, while Uncle Tom had enclosed fifty dollars in a registered letter to me.
Thus armed, we procured two more Mexicans, and setting Pedro and his five compatriots to work with the three saws, while Dick and I did the carpenter work, we very soon began to make a showing.
As it was obviously too dangerous to attempt to work on the bare stringers, we first laid a solid temporary floor of three-inch planks, and having then a good platform we could proceed in safety to set our big cross-pieces—upon which the permanent floor was afterward laid—and to go ahead with the rest of the building.
There being no stint of timber, we could afford to make our flume immensely strong—and we did. The framework was composed mostly of ten-by-ten pieces, while the planks for the floor and sides were three inches thick. The wings at each end of the flume were extended up stream and down stream eight feet in either direction; and to prevent the water from getting around these ends we built rough stone walls on the edge of the gorge and filled in the spaces with well-tamped clay, of which we were fortunate enough to find a great supply close at hand.
I do not intend to go into all the many details of the work, or to relate our mistakes or the accidents—all of them slight, fortunately—which now and then befell us. There was one little item of construction, however, which seemed to me so ingenious and withal so simple and so effective that I think it is worth special mention.
When we came to lay our floor and build the sides, the question of leakage cropped up, when Dick suggested a plan which he said he had heard of as being adopted by sheepmen on the plains in building dipping-troughs.
Each three-inch plank, before being spiked in place, was set up on edge, and along the middle of its whole length we hammered a dent about half an inch wide and half an inch deep. Then, taking the jack-plane, we planed off the projecting edges to the same level. The consequence was that when the plank became water-soaked, this dented line swelled up and completely closed any crack between itself and the plank above or beside it. It was an ingenious trick, and proved so successful that it was well worth the time and trouble it took.
In fact, by the expenditure of time and trouble, in addition to a very modest sum of money, we did at length put together a flume which, I think I may say, was a very creditable piece of work. It was strenuous and unceasing labor, and at first it was pretty hard on me, but as my muscles became used to the strain I enjoyed it more and more, especially as every evening showed a forward step—a small one, perhaps, but still a forward step—toward the accomplishment of our object.