4
The following day Ben, Adam, Joe and Bucky went out with a few hands to start moving the timber to the railyards at Reno. They weren't likely to get top dollar for the wood, and Ben knew it would sit unused for a few weeks before a buyer came along. The waste, piled onto more waste, rankled, but Ben chose to keep his mouth shut about it.
When he and his boys arrived at the ark they found that half of the population of the tent city remained at the site. They sat by their tents, cooking, cleaning, talking or just sitting and staring up at the giant structure. The men from Reno and a handful of cavalrymen guarding the ark and the tents were basically ignored. The ark had neither gained nor lost a single board overnight, and Ben knew from a brief stint in the shipyards, that taking a boat apart was almost more dangerous than putting it together. A well made ship was under a great deal of tension at all times, each piece fitting perfectly into the next so that when the ocean pressed against the outside, or the cargo pressed against the inside, the weight of the pressure was distributed evenly throughout the hull.
Ben suspected he was one of the few men in landlocked Nevada that had the knowledge to take apart even the little that had already been built. While his sons began to load wood onto the first of the wagons, Ben studied the ship, climbing up the ramps and stepping down into the bottom of the hull.
He and Thomas had talked at length the night before. Ben had apologized for his lack of faith, first, and Thomas had accepted the apology after a spell. They talked through the disconcerting situation and the fact that Thomas himself had become a target, regardless of his previous relationship with Noah. Thomas told Ben everything he remembered about the old man, and never once had the big cowhand said anything about Noah having sailing or shipwright experience. How then could a man who could not read or write, and who spent most of his life on a plantation, even begin to build a boat?
Ben began to wonder about the people that Noah had chosen to surround himself with. Were there shipwrights hidden among the Mexican immigrants and former slaves? Were the natives offering information based on their knowledge of canoe building? Was Noah truly being guided by God?
Ben stayed with the ark when the first two wagons left for Reno, walking it's length and breadth. He'd read the story of Noah in the Bible the night before as he'd put Elizabeth to bed. He'd looked up the words gopherwood and cubit in the dictionary and found ambiguous definitions that implied that the biblical Noah might have known what those things were, but no one in modern times did.
He'd thought about the sheer manpower that would be required to get two of every animal into a ship, knowing all too well how hard it was to get even one or two steers to market. He'd hazed mountain lions, chased bears, herded cattle and horses, raised chickens and once ridden an elephant. On all of those occasions, though he had been somewhat confident, he had always known that it would take very little to be at the complete mercy of the animals. It was always the cooperation of the animals versus the determination of the man, and if the animal chose to be unreasonable, there was nothing that man could do about it.
The biblical Noah must have been the greatest rancher on earth, Ben decided, finally turning his mind to practical things when the empty wagons returned. He helped his boys load the second wagon then went with them into Reno, buying dinner for them at a restaurant before they returned for the final two wagon loads. It was past midnight when they finished stacking the last piece of timber at the railroad yard. Ben had secured two rooms for the night, for the four of them to share, and he made sure his boys and Bucky were settled before he went down to the sheriff's office to look in on Noah.
When he arrived a weary looking deputy let him into the cells. He was told that Noah had been quiet and cooperative since his arrival at the jail and Ben found the man sleeping on his cot, his back for the first time straight and true against the metal supports of the simple bed. Ben called to him softly, but Noah didn't stir.
"Has he said anything? Offered any further explanation for his actions?" Ben asked the deputy in a whisper.
The man shrugged. "He's either sleepin', eatin' or prayin', Mr. Cartwright. That's all he does."
"Has he asked to be released? Made any threats?"
The deputy crossed his arms over his chest and said, "Sometimes he tells us that God's will will be done, and we don't have no power over God, and so on. Sounds like a sunday school teacher mostly."
"Has he talked about the ark? Asked about it?"
The deputy's lower lip jutted out and he shook his head. In the quiet Ben could hear the sudden pound of boots tearing down the boardwalk and a minute later one of the gophers from the rail station burst into the jail office, shouting for Mr Cartwright.
Ben exchanged an alarmed look with the deputy then charged out into the office. "What's the matter?"
"That wood, Mr. Cartwright. It's infested with bark beetles." The boy said, his face white with fear, disgust or both.
"What!?"
"Bark beetles, thousands of 'em. They just burst out of the logs sudden like. It's like a plague, Mr. Cartwright! Mr. Grayson down at the railroad station says you need to get them logs outta here and now!"
"There isn't a single bark beetle on those logs. I worked with them all afternoon." Ben insisted, grabbing his hat and storming out of the jail. At the end of the boardwalk was a cab, and he and the boy jumped in, riding quickly to the railyard. What should have been a quiet, peaceful spring evening, was in turmoil. Rail workers were scattered around the yard with torches and lanterns, pushing the stacked logs from their pyramids and rolling them toward a deserted corner of the yard where men stood next to canisters of kerosene.
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Not a drop of kerosene, until I've looked at those logs!" Ben insisted. He charged toward the nearest man with a lantern and jogged toward the wood piles, raising the light. Even before the dancing light of the flame settled he could see maggots squirming out of the end of the wood, under the bark. His stomach turned at the sight and his mind raced, trying to account for it. Could fresh cut timber be infested so quickly? How could he have missed the signs of bark beetles when he'd worked with the logs all afternoon?
He wanted to blame one of the railyard workers for putting the beetles there but he knew it was preposterous. It was as if he had been cursed, first with the loss of the timber, then with the attack on his men, and now, a third plague of beetles on otherwise healthy, green timber.
"This doesn't make sense!"
"We gotta burn it, mister! Those pests will eat everything we got in this yard!"
Already men were pushing him out of the way, continuing their work as if he wasn't there. He watched the first stack of lumber as it was doused in kerosene and lit. The flames licked along the trails of accelerant, dancing over the bark and consuming the maggots and adult beetles, with crackles and pops and flashes of light.
"How…" Ben whispered, staring helplessly as perfectly good timber was set aflame. He ran to the second stack, then the third, finding the same thing. Even when he lifted the bark up he could see the trails the adult beetles had left, telling him that at least one generation of the pests had hatched, lived their lives and laid more eggs.
Noah had ordered his men to cut down an entire stand of infested wood.
Ben was pushed back as another stack was set alight. Again the kerosene, pests and bark were the first things to light, but as he looked back to the first stack, he found that the flames were dying. The men entrusted with destroying the wood were pouring more kerosene onto the now stripped lengths of wood, and the kerosene would light, but the wood itself was too green.
After their second attempt to light it had failed, Ben shouted for them to wait, and held his lantern close to the wood. Log to log, Ben studied the shallow trails left by the pests, looking for bore holes that would indicate that the beetles had managed to dig all the way into the center of the trees.
"These trees aren't infested." Ben said, then dragged one of the men in close and held the light up. "Look for yourself. No bore holes. The eggs are gone, the maggots are gone." They went from log to log, and stack to stack, doing the same inspection. "The logs are whole, and they're too green to burn."
And man after man began to agree with him.
"I ain't never seen nothin' like that."
"That just ain't natural for a bark beetle."
"You sure are lucky, Mister."
Once every one of his logs had been treated with kerosene and flame, stripped of its bark, and checked under lamplight, the logs were restacked, away from the rest of the wood stock in the rail yard, just in case. Stinking of smoke and oil, Ben took a cab back to his lodgings, still trying to fathom the situation. When he entered the room that he was sharing with Adam, his oldest boy woke at the sound of the door.
Adam glanced to the clock on the bedside table, caught a whiff of his father and sat up, concerned. Ben explained the evening's events, slowly peeling off clothes that smelled like a barn fire.
"That entire stand was infested?" Adam asked after Ben had finished.
"It must have been. We'll need to check the rest of the stands, and anything within a mile of that clearing, and treat the wood." Ben said.
"I can start on that in the morning." Adam said, yawning.
"If I left that timber standing, like I planned to, those trees would have been dead in only a few years, Adam. We would have had an infestation that could have wiped out half the Ponderosa. We still might, if any of those trees are as bad as those logs were."
"Sounds like Noah did us a favor."
Ben cast a glance to his boy that wanted to be a glare, but softened on contact.
"It was still illegal, he still attacked Hoss and Thomas, and he's going to pay for his crimes, but...give credit where it's due, Pa." Adam said, shrugging.
"Yes.." Ben said, grudgingly, "In spite of everything it does seem that Noah did us a favor. But I certainly don't intend to tell him that."
It took a few days to check the rest of the timber. Some of the trees around the cleared stand had to be treated or felled, but the rest of the Ponderosa appeared to be free of the pests. Over the following week Adam, Thomas, Joe and Hoss started a controlled burn to rid the hillside of the pests for good. While his boys worked at preparing the land for new saplings, Ben worked with the rest of Noah's 'shipwrights' to tear apart the last of the ark.
His timber sold to a buyer the same day that the last of the giant boat was torn to the ground. The workers were transferred to the custody of the military until an inquest could be begun to determine who precisely did what. Ben returned to his home, happy to never hear or see Noah again until the trial.