Not long afterward, Alex Singleton appeared with twenty-seven of his kinsmen, among whom was his son. He proffered the services of himself and the twenty-seven strapping hill princes in the work of finishing the railroad. Under the new circumstances, he believed Wolfe would feel free to accept. Wolfe did accept, with gratitude, and the little lumber track began once more to move onward.
When the mill-site was reached, the Singletons, with old Alex as foreman, went to one of the big coves and began to wage war upon the giant oaks and poplars. A better force of woodsmen never felled trees.
Wolfe hurried out the necessities for the building of the monster sawmill as fast as they could be shipped. Following the material, came carpenters, masons, and millwrights. The plant went up with a rapidity that was next to amazing. The first day of November saw all the machinery installed and belted, and a huge pile of perfect logs waiting to be converted into export stock worth above a hundred dollars a thousand feet. Since entering the basin, there had not been a single hitch anywhere.
And in October, that month of silences, dying leaves and soft, hazy skies, Wolfe did something besides watch over the building of the sawmill. On the spot where his father's rambling, rotting, leaky cabin had stood, an extra force of workmen had put up a very comfortable dwelling of six rooms; it was furnished throughout with modern furnishings, and lying on one of the cabinet mantels was a beautiful orange-and-brown violin. The whole was to be a surprise present for the elder Buck Wolfe. After some persuasion from the colonel and his good wife, Sheriff Starnes had agreed to bring the old clan leader out to see it.
The son was counting upon this surprise present to do much toward softening the hard iron of his father's heart. He had drawn his salary for fifteen months in advance, in order that he might build and furnish the house and buy the violin. It had put him to wearing cheap blue shirts and corduroys; he was saving his one presentable suit for special occasions.
The mill was to be started at noon. The Masons and Tot Singleton, Alice Fair—who was still dazzlingly pretty—and her father had come out to see it. Whitney Fair now owned a controlling interest in the company, which was no fault of Colonel Mason's, and he wasn't going to miss anything. Physically, Fair was a big fellow, corpulent and florid, with an unlikeable cleft in his chin and eyes that were a little too small for the rest of his features.
Promptly at twelve o'clock the great whistle blew and awoke ten thousand echoes from the walls of the basin; Progress the Brobdignagian was once more defying the spirits of the wilds. The sawyer threw a log to the carriage by means of a powerful steam apparatus; he thrust his main lever forward, and the foot-wide ribbon of steel dove into the wood with a scream like that of some victorious medieval warrior. The edgers and trimmers and slashers began to roar intermittently; it was like the quarreling of demons. Fine yellow poplar panel stock began to drift down the transfer chains and to where an inspector stood with a new rule in one hand and a new tally-book in the other.
The Masons and the Fairs shook Wolfe's grimy hands in congratulation. The humming of machinery and the sounds of the saws made speech impossible; but the man who had built the mill understood.