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Show 71 I turned back quickly. Its long branches were leafless and dry. And lightweight! Laughing aloud, I ran headlong for the cottonwood tree. We could forget the sawpits. We would build a raft! During the next few days we found many dry cottonwood trees. We cut and trimmed fifteen straight logs which we dragged down to the ice, not far from our tent. We decided to build the raft on the ice, so when it thawed the raft would already be in the water. We laid the logs in a row, the middle log being the longest, with both ends forming a V. It looked like a raft already. Across the bow, middle, and stern we cut notches and laid three poles across. With hemp rope we lashed the cross poles to the logs beneath. Before we were finished we ran out of rope, but we were able to trade supplies for more. In the weeks that followed, I carved a long steering oar for the stern, which we set in a mount made from a forked alder tree. We also had the two short oars that I had purchased for rowing. And I carved a slender fifteen-foot log for poling. Later on we fastened a short mast toward the bow, and we made a sail from some canvas in Tip's supplies. One day I found a man who was willing, for five pounds of sugar, to cut up a spruce log into thin planks for a deck on our raft. I began nailing them to the cross poles while Tip watched. "Oh, a dance floor!" she exclaimed. She started dancing the |