The plan of Feller was much slower in coming to pass than he had first imagined. His crew were too exhausted to do anything at all the next day, and the day after that they awoke thinking of the complications that would be entailed, not just in cutting down the big tree, but in reducing its carcass to pieces small enough to be got down to the river. Adam had little interest in the plan and correspondingly little knowledge of its particulars, but when he crossed the river a few days later, everyone in Eltown seemed to know about it and to have become somehow involved—or to be claiming, at any rate, that Feller had entrusted them with this or that aspect of the preparations. Axe heads were being forged just as Feller had promised, but as well there was rope to be twisted, splitting wedges to be made, and supplies to be laid in for the encampment that Feller imagined he would bring into being around the tree. The project was seen as requiring a month’s work. Feller’s ambitions soon grew to include the creation of a new town on the site, and this brought further delays.

It also entailed docking the log piles of Adam and the other members of the crew. Feller did this when no one was present to raise objections, and later explained it as a necessary investment that would be repaid manyfold when the big tree came down.

Not wishing to make any further investments in a plan that troubled him in more than one way, Adam traded some of his remaining logs for cloth and other items that were required by the children, then devoted some days to rafting the remaining ones together and floating them across the river to the shore beneath Camp. This was a large enough task that he had to adopt the ways of Feller, at least for a time, and hire other souls to help him. It seemed a reasonable plan at the outset but became more trouble than it was worth as the members of his crew found every possible way of doing things wrong; and when not doing things wrong, they fell to arguments, which they assumed must be as momentous to Adam as they were to them, and which Adam was somehow responsible for settling; and none was ever pleased with how they were resolved. As little as Adam liked Feller, he came quickly to understand why Feller dealt with his crew as he did.