"All right, Sim; I don't want to have anything done that isn't right."
"What you goin' to do with them ropes, Buck?" he asked, as I threw the clothes-lines upon the raft.
"We want them to haul the logs out with."
Sim was in high spirits, and I concluded that he had filled himself again from the provisions I brought. I was confident that he would be satisfied as long as the rations were supplied. We poled the raft over to the branch of the creek; and, as I had the plan of the structure we were to build in my mind, we lost no time in commencing the work.
"I don't know what you're goin' to do, Buck," said Sim, as he picked up his axe; "but I can chop as well as the best on 'em. If you'll tell me what to do, I'll go into it like a hund'ed of bricks."
"You won't need your axe yet," I replied, assured there would be no difference of opinion in regard to the manner of constructing the raft, for my companion had few ideas of his own. "We must build the raft on the stream."
I selected two logs from the pile, thirty feet in length, attached one of the lines to each of them, and hauled them out of the pile of lumber, though not till after we had secured the boards, slabs, and other smaller pieces. We placed them side by side over the deep water. I then nailed each end of a couple of slabs to the inner log, at the two extremities of it. We next rolled the outer log away from the other until the two were ten feet apart, and the other end of the slab was nailed to it, thus forming the shape of the raft--thirty feet long, and ten feet wide.
"Now, Sim, we want another log thirty feet long," I continued, when the work was laid out.
"I see it," replied Sim; and, in his eagerness to be useful, I was fearful he would tumble into the river, for he was rather clumsy in his movements.
I cut one of the lines in two, and carefully secured the frame to the trees on shore, using the other line to float the logs down to the structure. There was only one other stick in the heap that was thirty feet in length, and we pushed this under the cross slabs, and nailed it half way between the two. For the rest of the groundwork of the raft we were obliged to use shorter sticks; but we made a solid platform of large logs.