“The t-trouble,” says Mark, next morning, “is that we got to wait for our m-money a month after we ship.”

“How?” says I.

“Why, we put the stuff on cars and s-s-send it. Whoever buys it has got a month to pay for it.”

“So,” says I, “even if we have the best kind of luck, which hain’t likely, it’ll be a month before any money comes in—and maybe more, because everybody won’t pay up prompt.”

“Yes,” says he.

“So,” says I, “we’ve got a month, anyhow, and we’ve got to pay the men, and pay our bills and everythin’, and no money comin’ in.”

“That’s the f-f-fix,” says he.

“And we hain’t got an order,” says I.

“I just sent out my f-figgers to some of our customers.”

“They’ll be mad,” says I, “because they been used to buyin’ at Silas Doolittle’s prices, and now you’ve gone and raised ’em.”

“You bet I have,” says he.

“What if you don’t git any orders?”

“Then we’re b-busted,” says he.

“Huh!” says I.

“We’ll git orders,” he says, “b-because my prices are fair. I’ll bet they’re l-lower than some. So far’s I kin see,” he says, “’tain’t any worse to go b-busted sellin’ for enough than for too little. One way we’re sure to b-bust. The other way we got a chance.”

“If we kin git orders,” says I, “and if we kin find money to carry us through the next month.”

“That’s the idee,” says he, and you could tell he was a mite worried by the way he took a hold of his cheek and pinched it and jerked at it. He always did that when he was worried, but I never got really scairt till he began to whittle. When Mark Tidd whittled, then things was perty sick.

“That notice of yours comes out in the paper this afternoon,” says I. “The one about Silas’s debts.”

“Uh-huh,” says he.

“Well,” says I, “what if half the town comes traipsin’ in with bills against him? What then?”

“We’ll have to f-f-figger to pay ’em somehow,” says he.

All the time I saw him looking at two or three of our turners who didn’t seem to be very busy. Anyhow, they had time to stand off from their lathes and talk about taxes, and William Jennings Bryan, and rabbit-dogs, and fishing, and how mean Clem Roberts’s wife was to him. Mark kind of frowned and squinted up his little eyes and fidgeted around.

“Makes me mad,” says he. “Here we’re payin’ them men for a day’s work, and what do we git? We git just as much work as they feel like doin’. I’ll bet them old coots wastes a quarter of a day, and don’t kill themselves the rest of the time. We ought to be gittin’ about twice as much done as we do—and that would lower costs a heap.”

“What you goin’ to do about it?” says I.

“I been thinkin’,” says he.

“Better think some more,” says I; “it’s easy.”

“I’m a-goin’ to, and I’m a-goin’ to do it n-now. You tell Tallow and Binney to come up to the office and we’ll have a council of war.”

I got the fellows and we all went into the office that Mark had got fixed up pretty slick with an old table and some kitchen chairs. It looked real business-like with bookkeeping books and such like scattered around.

“Well,” says he, “who’s got any n-n-notion of how to make them grocery-store p-politicans work harder?”

“Pay ’em more,” says I.

“That won’t do it,” says he. “I’d be willin’ to p-pay more if they’d earn it. But they don’t earn fair what they git. They got an idee we’re just kids and they kin do about the way they w-want to.”

“Tell ’em,” says Binney, “that we won’t pay ’em only for what they do.”

Mark looked at him a minute. “Say, Binney,” says he, “I guess you’re promoted. That’s a notion. I knew there was somethin’. Piece-work is what they call it. Pay ’em so much for every article they make. So much for a hunderd chair-s-s-spindles, so much for d-drumsticks, so much for d-d-dumb-bells and tenpins.”

“They’ll quit,” says Tallow.

“Maybe,” says Mark, “but we got to do somethin’. Let’s give it a try.”

We waited till noon and the men was all sitting around eating their lunches. Mark and us went up to them, and Mark says:

“Beginnin’ to-morrow, we’re a-goin’ to put this mill on a piece-work basis.”

“Eh?” says old Charlie Cobb.

“Piece-work. I got the rates f-f-figgered out. I know how much a turner ought to do in a day, and I based my rates on that. Any man that works l-like he ought to will make what he’s m-makin’ to-day, and more, and a f-f-feller that really wants to dig in can make a heap more. I don’t care if every one of you makes ten dollars a day.”

“We won’t work no piece-work,” says Charlie.

“Why?”

“It’s jest gougin’ us. We’ll have to dum’ near kill ourselves, and then we won’t make wages.”

“Look here,” says Mark, “you’re turnin’ spindles, Charlie. How many d’you f-f-figger you kin turn in a day without b-bustin’? You’re a first-class turner.”

Charlie thought a minute and then told him. Maybe he bragged a little, because Charlie liked to tell folks what a dickens of a man he was.

“Bet you can’t do it,” says Mark.

“I kin do it every day for a year hand-runnin’ and not sweat a hair,” says Charlie.

“How about you other f-f-fellers?” says Mark.

“Calc’late we kin equal anythin’ Charlie can do,” said Jake Marks. “Charlie hain’t no wizard.”

“Then,” says Mark, “you ought to be p-plumb tickled with my piece-work schedule, for it don’t require no sich amount as Charlie says to earn what you’re earnin’ now. I figgered consid’able lower. So you kin git a day’s work done in maybe an hour less, and git the same money for it, or you kin keep right on to work and make a dollar and maybe more than you be.”

“I won’t do it,” says Charlie.

“Why?”

“I jest don’t like the idee.”

“All right, Charlie,” says Mark. “I’m s-s-sorry, because I wanted you to keep on workin’ here. When you git your lunch et come up to the office for your p-pay.”

“Eh? What? What’s that? Firin’ me?”

“No. You’re quittin’.” He turned to the other men as if nothing had happened, and told them how much he planned to pay for what they was making on piece-work rates. “You kin see,” says he, “that I aim to be f-f-fair. And more ’n that, I’m goin’ to t-tack on a bonus. Every man that t-turns out a full day’s work every day will git an extry d-d-dollar Saturday n-night.”

They did a little talking among themselves, and then Jake got up and says, “The boys says they’ll try it a week, anyhow.”

“Good!” says Mark. “Sorry Charlie don’t feel that way. I’m goin’ to the office now, Charlie. Come along and g-g-git your money.”

Charlie he sort of hemmed and hawed, and then he said he guessed maybe he was a mite hasty, and he figgered to stay on with the rest.

“Suit yourself,” says Mark, as independent as a hog on ice. “Whatever you say.”

Well, next day they went on piece-work, and it was a surprise to me. Maybe it wasn’t to Mark, but I was plumb took off my feet when Tallow and Binney turned in their report at night. They was doin’ the checkin’ up. We had the biggest day we’d ever had. Mark said he was gettin’ all of ten per cent. more for his money than he ever did before. The surprising thing about it was that it kept right up, and even got bigger. Mark said the men sort of felt they was working for themselves, and that it was up to them to stay busy because they wasn’t cheating anybody but their own selves when they loafed.

That night Mark’s notice came out in the paper, and next day about half a dozen folks come in with little bills, and Mark paid them right up. We was getting all ready to slap ourselves on the back and say that we had been afraid of something that there wasn’t any danger in, when, late in the afternoon, who should come stomping into the office but old-man Fugle from up the river.

“I seen your piece in the paper,” says he, “so I says to myself, I’ll drive in and find out what there is to it, because I’d about giv’ up what Silas owed me and was calc’latin’ to take it out of his hide one of these days. Not that I could git the worth of my money by lickin’ Silas, but it would make me sort of easier in my mind.”

“What does Silas owe you?” says Mark.

“More ’n I wisht he did,” says old-man Fugle. “Be you goin’ to pay it?”

“How much did you say?”

“More’n his ganglin’ carcass is worth for corned beef,” says old-man Fugle. “Dunno why I ever trusted the coot. Might ’a’ knowed he wa’n’t man enough to run a mill. I says to my old woman the day after I done it that I calc’lated I’d up and made Silas a Christmas present, but there wasn’t no good wishes goin’ along with it.”

“What does he owe you for?”

“’Cause I was fool enough to trust him,” says old-man Fugle. “Next time I’ll know better. I don’t see what for you put that piece in the paper and got me ’way in here and then don’t do anything about it.”

“If you’ll t-t-tell me what Silas owes you for, and how much he owes you, we kin g-g-git down to b-business,” says Mark.

“Hain’t I been tellin’ you right along? Hain’t I been dingin’ it into your ears? Say! How many times I got to holler it at you? Be you deef?”

“You m-might tell me once more, in dollars and cents,” says Mark.

“I’ll tell you. You bet I’ll tell you. If it wasn’t so much I wouldn’t give a hoot, ’cause I could lick him and git satisfaction enough to make up, but I’d have to lick him more’n seventy times.”

“At how much a l-lick?” says Mark.

“Eh?” says old-man Fugle.

“How much does Silas owe you?”

“Hain’t I been tellin’ you? Confound it! where’s your ears?”

Mark pushed a sheet of paper at him. “Please write the amount d-down there,” he says.

Old-man Fugle scowled at the paper and waggled his whiskers and took a bite out of the pencil. Then he got over the paper so close his nose touched it, and he wrapped his fingers around the pencil so he didn’t know whether he was writing with it or with his finger-nail, and made some marks. I could see the paper better than the other fellows, and when I saw what he had put down I felt like yelling “Fire!” and running for home. The figures was two hunderd and seventy-two dollars and sixty-one cents!

He shoved the paper over to Mark, and Mark looked at it and turned kind of pink and sniffed and looked at me. I guess the wind was took out of his sails for once.

“What’s—what’s this for?” says he.

“For you to pay,” says old-man Fugle.

“What did you s-s-sell Silas?” says Mark.

“Logs,” says old-man Fugle.

“Call Silas Doolittle,” says Mark to me, and off I hustled. I was back in a second, dragging Silas after me.

“Silas,” says Mark, “do you owe Mr. Fugle for logs?”

“Why,” says Silas, kind of vague and walleyed, “I wouldn’t say. Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Seems like I bought some logs off of him, and then again seems like I didn’t. What’s he got to say about it?”

“He claims you owe him n-n-nearly three hunderd d-dollars.”

“Does, eh? Well, I swan to man! Who’d ’a’ thought it? Well, well!”

“Do you owe it?”

“Fugle says so,” Silas says, “and I calc’late if he says so I do. Now I wonder how it come I never paid that?”

“You never had no money,” says old-man Fugle. “Be you goin’ to pay it now?”

“Ask him,” says Silas, pointing to Mark. “He knows.”

“We are,” says Mark, “but we haven’t the m-m-money to-night. We weren’t expectin’ a b-bill of this size.”

“I’ve come for my pay and I want it.”

“You’ll have to give us a l-l-little time.”

“That’s about all I been givin’ for a spell back. Can’t figger to buy no groceries with time.”

“We will pay this,” says Mark, “just as s-s-soon as we kin. You won’t l-lose a cent. How much t-time will you be willing to give us?”

“Fifteen minutes,” says old-man Fugle.

“What’s your hurry now? A few days won’t make any difference.”

“Won’t, eh? How d’you know? Guess maybe I know my own business.”

“Will you give us a week?”

“No.”

“Give us till next Wednesday?”

“No.”

“Well, how much will you g-g-give us?”

“I’ll give you exactly till Tuesday noon,” says old-man Fugle. “If I hain’t got the money then, why, I got a offer for this debt, cash money. A feller offers to buy it off of me.”

“For how much?”

“Two hunderd dollars.”

“You’d lose more than seventy-two d-d-dollars.”

“Better ’n losin’ the whole shebang,” says old-man Fugle.

“Tuesday noon’s the best you will d-do?”

“You bet you.”

“All right, then. You come Tuesday n-n-noon and your money will be here. Don’t sell to Jason Barnes on any account. You read what I said in the p-p-paper?”

“That’s why I come here.”

“All right, then. Tuesday noon you get p-p-paid in full.”

“I’ll wait,” says old-man Fugle, and out he stamped.

When he was gone we looked at one another sort of quiet, and then we all looked at Silas Doolittle, who was stepping from one foot to the other like he was standing on something hot. But Mark never said a word to him. When he spoke it was mostly to himself.

“Tuesday noon,” says he. “Two hunderd and seventy-two d-d-dollars and sixty-one cents!... I guess we got to git a h-h-hustle on.”

Somehow I was looking at it about like Mark was. We sure did need to get a hustle on, but I was guessing that the place we would hustle would be out of that mill for good and all, and that Mr. Wiggamore would come hustling into it. It looked to me like our dam was his.