The next day was a very busy one. He collected his freight and we moved the _Fearsome_ to dock near the unclaimed freight house. I arranged with Superintendent Kitch.e.l.l by telephone to take the sawmill, and by night it was bolted to the deck, with power from the motor applied. A derrick with outrigging, so that a log could be grappled and brought to the deck by power, and laid on the saw carriage to be solidly locked down for its terrible shining fangs that become invisible in full career, moving through a dirty, slimy log.
"Yes," Superintendent Kitch.e.l.l had said to me when I asked him about my clerk, "I have taken Miss Bascom into my private office and found work for her there--perfectly safe any time you want her," he a.s.sured me, after getting a brief account of our progress.
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 pa.s.sed 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 ingrat.i.tude--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.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE next morning it occurred to me that, while our plans were made with great care, the weak point was, that if Becker himself was at the plant he might recognize either of us. I mentioned this to Hiram, and for once since I had met him he laughed loud and long.
"I don"t believe your mother would recognize you in that greasy, dirt-soaked, bifurcated night dress you wear," he yelled at me, "and the work you owe the barber, too; but look at me--I am worse yet, covered with mud and slime. Besides, I don"t believe Becker ever had a good look at me, and if he did he couldn"t pick me out as different from any other deckhand now," he said, grinning. Then he looked himself over, at his muddy shoes, browned hands, long hair and unshaved face, and it did seem to him as though, without effort, during the past few days, he had prepared a genuine disguise. Nevertheless we decided it would be safe to allow Captain Marianna to be the spokesman, although the captain should be kept in the dark concerning our real designs. Marianna should sell Becker lumber, cheap for cash, if he bit at our bait.
We sawed one or two logs, then crossed the river and began working up the stream toward the bayou back of Becker"s plant, apparently with no more interest in it than if it had been a cemetery. The bayou was, just as Hiram said, full of logs--enough to keep us there for a day at least.
By the noon hour we had worked pretty well into the bayou and in back of the big fertilizer factory, with no apparent attention from it other than a terrible offense to our nostrils. If Becker was there he did not show himself and it began to look as if we would have to make overtures.
But when we had suspended operations for noon-time, a negro with a boat made out from the Becker place and came alongside. He clambered on our deck, but no one paid any attention to him.
"I wants to see de boss," said he to one of our blacks resting well aft.
"You wants to see de Captain? He"s up dere somewhares aroun" de wheel-house." We overheard this inquiry and the answer with great interest. This was likely to be the first nibble at our bait.
When the captain was pointed out he acted well the part of a trader who had desirable goods with a liberal demand, but evidenced little interest in the emissary who approached him hat in hand.
"Is you de cap"m?"
"Yes, me da capitan," Marianna replied, a.s.suming strong Italian accent without effort.
"Yas"sa--yas"sa," the darky echoed, looking about the boat, wet, dirty and littered with bark, slabs, and sawdust. "My boss, Mista Becka, wants to know--would like to know," he corrected, "if you kain"t c.u.m ash.o.r.e to see him."
"Whata yo" boss want?--we start upa quick, gotta not much time."
"Wal, he did"n zactly say, but I done reckon as how he wants to see you "bout somp"n pa"tic"lar."
"Go back, tella da boss we starta to work soon--I talka with him here after we getta da start," the captain said, pointing toward the deck.
"Yas, I"ll tell him dat," replied the negro, fidgeting as though his mission had been a failure, but immediately started for his boat.
"You tella heem we be here alla day; he come any time," Marianna called to him as he rowed away.
In about an hour the negro made out again, but this time he had the bulky figure of the man we wanted to see above all others. Of course, while we were running I had to stand by the engine below constantly, while Hiram, antic.i.p.ating Becker"s visit, had taken to a boat ostensibly to look over the logs carefully before fastening the grapples that brought them aboard.
Becker had not been aboard long before it was clear that Hiram had planned better than he knew. There is something about a saw in full career that the most blase cannot resist. He stood watching it for some time. A huge wet and mud-laden log was hauled aboard, laid on the carriage, where steel teeth clenched it down. In a twinkling four side slabs came off and it was transformed into a square timber, clean and white, in strange contrast to the slimy thing it had been but a moment before. Then the whirling teeth began to travel through it with an ease that suggested a much softer material, laying out inch boards which disappeared below.
Captain Marianna brought him below to see the stock on hand, and it seemed to fill the bill, but as he was leaving our big motor attracted his attention. Becker was not the debonaire Lothario he affected to be when in New Orleans. Now sadly unkempt, it seemed to me that his great midriff exuded grease, but it might have been sweat.
He was greatly interested in learning how the big motor, originally intended for an air-plane, not only propelled a boat and ran a sawmill, but yanked in the logs, and hauled in our rigging.
He finally came over to where I stood trying my best to look bored and tired.
"Do you ever have any trouble with it?" he asked, jerkily pointing a pudgy thumb toward the motor.
"No-o-o--but of course it"s got to be watched."
"I"ve got one over there running an ice machine, but I don"t know whether its the n.i.g.g.e.r I"ve got running it, or whether it"s overloaded, or no good, but it makes lots of trouble." I could see he wished to get some free technical instruction.
"It"s likely your man doesn"t know all about it," I led him on.
Our talk ended in my promise to go ash.o.r.e that night and take a look at it.
Yes, he wanted lumber and the captain"s price seemed satisfactory. In addition he wanted some lumber sawed half an inch thick for crating--and more--he would like to have all the sawdust we could save for him. He needed it in some insulating work on a cooler room--so he said.
That night we were to come alongside his wharf and he would have his negroes unload during the night what lumber we had so we would lose no time next morning.
"Oh, yes, I"ve got lots of n.i.g.g.e.rs to do it," he explained when leaving.
When Hiram heard of the turn things had taken he could hardly contain himself. He acted like a man who had been in a dungeon for months and suddenly caught a glimmer of light. As for myself, I saw only that we were nearing the end of a very unpleasant bit of investigation.
"Be careful, Hiram," I cautioned, "the least bad move will spoil it.
This man has a low cunning--hypnotize yourself into thinking it is not of much importance and you have a year to do it. A show of haste will be fatal."
Hiram was quick to see the point and began to grin. I knew he was about ready to jump out of his skin with excitement.
"Do you know," said he, "it is now only a little after two and we have sawed more logs and made more good lumber than we did all day yesterday!" Evidently he was trying to control himself. "The sawyer tells me he must have nice clear logs to make half-inch lumber on Becker"s order. I guess I"ll spend the afternoon picking them out."