LITMIR.BIZ

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what I tell you, and some day understanding will come to you. You mustn't fail the people who work for you—who are dependent upon your strength and brains and enterprises to furnish them with an opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When you are the boss of Cardigan's mill, you must keep the wheels turning; you must never shut down the mill or the logging-camps in dull times just to avoid a loss you can stand better than your employees.”

      His hard, trembling old hand closed over the boy's. “I want you to be a brave and honourable man,” he concluded.

      True to his word, when John Cardigan finished his logging in his old, original holdings adjacent to Sequoia and Bill Henderson's Squaw Creek timber, he quietly moved south with his Squaw Creek woods-gang and joined the crew already getting out logs in the San Hedrin watershed. Not until then did Bill Henderson realize that John Cardigan had called his bluff—whereat he cursed himself for a fool and a poor judge of human nature. He had tried a hold-up game and had failed; a dollar a thousand feet stumpage was a fair price; for years he had needed the money; and now, when it was too late, he realized his error. Luck was with Henderson, however; for shortly thereafter there came again to Sequoia one Colonel Seth Pennington, a millionaire white-pine operator from Michigan. The Colonel's Michigan lands had been logged off, and since he had had one taste of cheap timber, having seen fifty-cent stumpage go to five dollars, the Colonel, like Oliver Twist, desired some more of the same. On his previous visit to Sequoia he had seen his chance awaiting him in the gradually decreasing market for redwood lumber and the corresponding increase of melancholia in the redwood operators; hence he had returned to Michigan, closed out his business interests there, and returned to Sequoia on the alert for an investment in redwood timber. From a chair-warmer on the porch of the Hotel Sequoia, the Colonel had heard the tale of how stiff-necked old John Cardigan had called the bluff of equally stiff-necked old Bill Henderson; so for the next few weeks the Colonel, under pretense of going hunting or fishing on Squaw Creek, managed to make a fairly accurate cursory cruise of the Henderson timber—following which he purchased it from the delighted Bill for a dollar and a quarter per thousand feet stumpage and paid for it with a certified check. With his check in his hand, Henderson queried:

      “Colonel, how do you purpose logging that timber?”

      The Colonel smiled. “Oh, I don't intend to log it. When I log timber, it has to be more accessible. I'm just going to hold on and outgame your former prospect, John Cardigan. He needs that timber; he has to have it—and one of these days he'll pay me two dollars for it.”

      Bill Henderson raised an admonitory finger and shook it under the Colonel's nose. “Hear me, stranger,” he warned. “When you know John Cardigan as well as I do, you'll change your tune. He doesn't bluff.”

      “He doesn't?” The Colonel laughed derisively. “Why, that move of his over to the San Hedrin was the most monumental bluff ever pulled off in this country.”

      “All right, sir. You wait and see.”

      “I've seen already. I know.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Well, for one thing, Henderson, I noticed Cardigan has carefully housed his rolling-stock—and he hasn't scrapped his five miles of logging railroad and three miles of spurs.”

      Old Bill Henderson chewed his quid of tobacco reflectively and spat at a crack in the sidewalk. “No,” he replied, “I'll admit he ain't started scrappin' it yet, but I happen to know he's sold the rollin'-stock an' rails to the Freshwater Lumber Company, so I reckon they'll be scrappin' that railroad for him before long.”

      The Colonel was visibly moved. “If your information is authentic,” he said slowly, “I suppose I'll have to build a mill on tidewater and log the timber.”

      “'Twon't pay you to do that at the present price of redwood lumber.”

      “I'm in no hurry. I can wait for better times.”

      “Well, when better times arrive, you'll find that John Cardigan owns the only water-front property on this side of the bay where the water's deep enough to let a ship lie at low tide and load in safety.”

      “There is deep water across the bay and plenty of water-front property for sale. I'll find a mill-site there and tow my logs across.”

      “But you've got to dump 'em in the water on this side. Everything north of Cardigan's mill is tide-flat; he owns all the deep-water frontage for a mile south of Sequoia, and after that come more tide-flats. If you dump your logs on these tide-flats, they'll bog down in the mud, and there isn't water enough at high tide to float 'em off or let a tug go in an' snake 'em off.”

      “You're a discouraging sort of person,” the Colonel declared irritably. “I suppose you'll tell me now that I can't log my timber without permission from Cardigan.”

      Old Bill spat at another crack; his faded blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “No, that's where you've got the bulge on John, Colonel. You can build a logging railroad from the southern fringe of your timber north and up a ten per cent. grade on the far side of the Squaw Creek watershed, then west three miles around a spur of low hills, and then south eleven miles through the level country along the bay shore. If you want to reduce your Squaw Creek grade to say two per cent., figure on ten additional miles of railroad and a couple extra locomotives. You understand, of course, Colonel, that no Locomotive can haul a long trainload of redwood logs up a long, crooked, two per cent. grade. You have to have an extry in back to push.”

      “Nonsense! I'll build my road from Squaw Creek gulch south through that valley where those whopping big trees grow. That's the natural outlet for the timber. See here:”

      Colonel Pennington took from his pocket the rough sketch-map of the region and pointed to the spot numbered “11.”

      “But that valley ain't logged yet,” explained Henderson.

      “Don't worry. Cardigan will sell that valley to me—also a right of way down his old railroad grade and through his logged-over lands to tidewater.”

      “Bet you a chaw o' tobacco he won't. Those big trees in that valley ain't goin' to be cut for no railroad right o' way. That valley's John Cardigan's private park; his wife's buried up there. Why, Colonel, that's the biggest grove of the biggest sequoia sempervirens in the world, an' many's the time I've heard John say he'd almost as lief cut off his right hand as fell one o' his giants, as he calls 'em. I tell you, Colonel, John Cardigan's mighty peculiar about them big trees. Any time he can get a day off he goes up an' looks 'em over.”

      “But, my very dear sir,” the Colonel protested, “if the man will not listen to reason, the courts will make him. I can condemn a right of way, you know.”

      “We-ll,” said old Bill, wagging his head sagely, “mebbe you can, an' then again mebbe you can't. It took me a long time to figger out just where I stood, but mebbe you're quicker at figgers than I am. Anyhow, Colonel, good luck to you, whichever way the cat jumps.”

      This illuminating conversation had one effect on Colonel Seth Pennington. It decided him to make haste slowly; so without taking the trouble to make the acquaintance of John Cardigan, he returned to Detroit, there to await the next move in this gigantic game of chess.

      CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      No man is infallible, and in planning his logging operations in the San Hedrin watershed, John Cardigan presently made the discovery that he had erred in judgment. That season, from May to November, his woods-crew put thirty million feet of logs into the San Hedrin River, while the mill sawed on a reserve supply of logs taken from the last of the old choppings adjacent to Squaw Creek. That year, however, the rainfall in the San Hedrin country was fifty per cent. less than normal, and by the first of May of the following year Cardigan's woods-crew had succeeded in driving slightly less than

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