Shirley Sumner's eyes were still moist when George Sea Otter, in obedience to the instructions of his youthful master, set her, the French maid, and their hand-baggage down on the sidewalk in front of Colonel Seth Pennington's house. The half-breed hesitated a moment, undecided whether he would carry the hand-baggage up to the door or leave that task for a Pennington retainer; then he noted the tear-stains on the cheeks of his fair passenger. Instantly he took up the hand-baggage, kicked open the iron gate, and preceded Shirley up the cement walk to the door.
“Just wait a moment, if you please, George,” Shirley said as he set the baggage down and started back for the car. He turned and beheld her extracting a five-dollar bill from her purse. “For you, George,” she continued. “Thank you so much.”
In all his life George Sea Otter had never had such an experience—he, happily, having been raised in a country where, with the exception of waiters, only a pronounced vagrant expects or accepts a gratuity from a woman. He took the bill and fingered it curiously; then his white blood asserted itself and he handed the bill back to Shirley.
“Thank you,” he said respectfully. “If you are a man—all right. But from a lady—no. I am like my boss. I work for you for nothing.”
Shirley did not understand his refusal, but her instinctive tact warned her not to insist. She returned the bill to her purse, thanked him again, and turned quickly to hide the slight flush of annoyance. George Sea Otter noted it.
“Lady,” he said with great dignity, “at first I did not want to carry your baggage. I did not want to walk on this land.” And with a sweeping gesture he indicated the Pennington grounds. “Then you cry a little because my boss is feeling bad about his old man. So I like you better. The old man—well, he has been like father to me and my mother—and we are Indians. My brothers, too—they work for him. So if you like my boss and his old man, George Sea Otter would go to hell for you pretty damn' quick. You bet you my life!”
“You're a very good boy, George,” she replied, with difficulty repressing a smile at his blunt but earnest avowal. “I am glad the Cardigans have such an honest, loyal servant.”
George Sea Otter's dark face lighted with a quick smile. “Now you pay me,” he replied and returned to the car.
The door opened, and a Swedish maid stood in the entrance regarding her stolidly. “I'm Miss Sumner,” Shirley informed her. “This is my maid Marcelle. Help her in with the hand-baggage.” She stepped into the hall and called: “Ooh-hooh! Nunky-dunk!”
“Ship ahoy!” An answering call came to her from the dining room, across the entrance-hall, and an instant later Colonel Seth Pennington stood in the doorway, “Bless my whiskers! Is that you, my dear?” he cried, and advanced to greet her. “Why, how did you get here, Shirley? I thought you'd missed the stage.”
She presented her cheek for his kiss. “So I did, Uncle, but a nice red-haired young man named Bryce Cardigan found me in distress at Red Bluff, picked me up in his car, and brought me here.” She sniffed adorably. “I'm so hungry,” she declared, “and here I am, just in time for dinner. Is my name in the pot?”
“It isn't, Shirley, but it soon will be. How perfectly bully to have you with me again, my dear! And what a charming young lady you've grown to be since I saw you last! You're—why, you've been crying! By Jove, I had no idea you'd be so glad to see me again.”
She could not forego a sly little smile at his egoism.
“You're looking perfectly splendid, Uncle Seth,” she parried.
“And I'm feeling perfectly splendid. This is a wonderful country, Shirley, and everything is going nicely with me here. By the way, who did you say picked you up in his car?”
“Bryce Cardigan. Do you know him?”
“No, we haven't met. Son of old John Cardigan, I dare say. I've heard of him. He's been away from Sequoia for quite a while, I believe.”
“Yes; he was abroad for two years after he was graduated from Princeton.”
“Hum-m-m! Well, it's about time he came home to take care of that stiff-necked old father of his.” He stepped to the bell and pressed it, and the butler answered. “Set a place at dinner for Miss Shirley, James,” he ordered. “Thelma will show you your rooms, Shirley. I was just about to sit down to dinner. I'll wait for you.”
While Shirley was in the living room Colonel Pennington's features wore an expression almost pontifical, but when she had gone, the atmosphere of paternalism and affection which he radiated faded instantly. The Colonel's face was in repose now—cold, calculating, vaguely repellent. He scowled slightly.
“Now, isn't that the devil's luck?” he soliloquized. “Young Cardigan is probably the only man in Sequoia—dashed awkward if they should become interested in each other—at this time. Everybody in town, from lumberjacks to bankers, has told me what a fine fellow Bryce Cardigan is. They say he's good-looking; certainly he is educated and has acquired some worldly polish—just the kind of young fellow Shirley will find interesting and welcome company in a town like this. Many things can happen in a year—and it will be a year before I can smash the Cardigans. Damn it!”
Along the well-remembered streets of Sequoia Bryce Cardigan and his father walked arm in arm, their progress continuously interrupted by well-meaning but impulsive Sequoians who insisted upon halting the pair to shake hands with Bryce and bid him welcome home. In the presence of those third parties the old man quickly conquered the agitation he had felt at this long-deferred meeting with his son, and when presently they left the business section of the town and turned into a less-frequented street, his emotion assumed the character of a quiet joy, evidenced in a more erect bearing and a firmer tread, as if he strove, despite his seventy-six years, not to appear incongruous as he walked beside his splendid son.
“I wish I could see you more clearly,” he said presently. His voice as well as his words expressed profound regret, but there was no hint of despair or heartbreak now.
Bryce, who up to this moment had refrained from discussing his father's misfortunes, drew the old man a little closer to his side.
“What's wrong with your eyes, pal?” he queried. He did not often address his parent, after the fashion of most sons, as “Father,” “Dad” or “Pop.” They were closer to each other than that, and a rare sense of perfect comradeship found expression, on Bryce's part, in such salutations as “pal,” “partner” and, infrequently, “old sport.” When arguing with his father, protesting with him or affectionately scolding him, Bryce, with mock seriousness, sometimes called the old man John Cardigan.
“Cataracts, son,” his father answered. “Merely the penalty of old age.”
“But can't something be done about it?” demanded Bryce. “Can't they be cured somehow or other?”
“Certainly they can. But I shall have to wait until they are completely matured and I have become completely blind; then a specialist will perform an operation on my eyes, and in all probability my sight will be restored for a few years. However, I haven't given the matter a great deal of consideration. At my age one doesn't find very much difficulty in making the best of everything. And I am about ready to quit now. I'd like to, in fact; I'm tired.”
“Oh, but you can't quit until you've seen your redwoods again,” Bryce reminded him. “I suppose it's been a long time since you've visited the Valley of the Giants; your long exile from the wood-goblins has made you a trifle gloomy, I'm afraid.”
John Cardigan nodded. “I haven't seen them in a year and a half, Bryce. Last time I was up, I slipped between the logs on the old skid-road and like to broke my old fool neck. But even that wasn't warning enough for me. I cracked right on into the timber and got lost.”
“Lost? Poor old partner! And what did you do about it?”
“The sensible thing, my boy. I just sat down under a tree and waited for George Sea Otter to trail me and bring me home.”
“And did he find you? Or did you have to spend the night in the woods?”
John Cardigan smiled humorously. “I did not. Along about sunset George found me. Seems he'd been following me all the time, and when I sat down he waited to make certain whether I was lost or just taking a rest where I could be quiet and think.”
“I've been leaving to an Indian the fulfillment of my duty,” Bryce murmured bitterly.
“No, no, son. You have never been deficient in that,” the old man protested.
“Why didn't you have the old skid-road planked with refuse lumber so you wouldn't fall through? And you might have had the woods-boss swamp a new trail into the timber and fence it on both sides, in order that you might feel your way along.”
“Yes, quite true,” admitted the old man. “But then, I don't spend money quite as freely as I used to, Bryce. I consider carefully now before I part with a dollar.”
“Pal, it wasn't fair of you to make me stay away so long. If I had only known—if I had remotely suspected—”
“You'd have spoiled everything—of course. Don't scold me, son. You're all I have now, and I couldn't bear to send for you until you'd had your fling.” His trembling old hand crept over and closed upon his boy's hand, so firm but free from signs of toil. “It was my pleasure, Bryce,” he continued, “and you wouldn't deny me my choice of sport, would you? Remember, lad, I never had a boyhood; I never had a college education, and the only real travel I have ever had was when I worked my way around Cape Horn as a foremast hand, and all I saw then was water and hardships; all I've seen since is my little world here in Sequoia and in San Francisco.”
“You've sacrificed enough—too much—for me, Dad.”
“It pleased me to give you all the advantages I wanted and couldn't afford until I was too old and too busy to consider them. Besides, it was your mother's wish. We made plans for you before you were born, and I promised her—ah, well, why be a cry-baby? I knew I could manage until you were ready to settle down to business. And you HAVE enjoyed your little run, haven't you?” he concluded wistfully.
“I have, Dad.” Bryce's great hand closed over the back of his father's neck; he shook the old man with mock ferocity. “Stubborn old lumberjack!” he chided.
John Cardigan shook with an inward chuckle, for the loving abuse his boy had formed a habit of heaping on him never failed to thrill him. Instinctively Bryce had realized that to-night obvious sympathy copiously expressed was not the medicine for his father's bruised spirit; hence he elected to regard the latter's blindness as a mere temporary annoyance, something to be considered lightly, if at all; and it was typical of him now that the subject had been discussed briefly, to resolve never to refer to it again. He released his hold on the old man's neck and tapped the latter's gray head lightly, while with his tongue he made hollow-sounding noises against the roof of his mouth.
“Ha! I thought so,” he declared. “After your fifty-odd years in the lumber business your head has become packed with sawdust—”
“Be serious and talk to me, Bryce.”
“I ought to send you to bed without your supper. Talk to you? You bet I'll talk to you, John Cardigan; and I'll tell you things, too, you scandalous bunko-steerer. To-morrow morning I'm going to put a pair of overalls on you, arm you with a tin can and a swab, and set you to greasing the skidways. Partner, you've deceived me.”
“Oh, nonsense. If I had whimpered, that would only have spoiled everything.”
“Nevertheless, you were forced to cable me to hurry home.”
“I summoned you the instant I realized I was going to need you.”
“No, you didn't, John Cardigan. You summoned me because, for the first time in your life, you were panicky and let yourself get out of hand.”
His father nodded slowly. “And you aren't over it yet,” Bryee continued, his voice no longer bantering but lowered affectionately. “What's the trouble, Dad? Trot out your old panic and let me inspect it. Trouble must be very real when it gets my father on the run.”
“It is, Bryce, very real indeed. As I remarked before, I've lost your heritage for you.” He sighed. “I waited till you would be able to come home and settle down to business; now you're home, and there isn't any business to settle down to.”
Bryce chuckled, for he was indeed far from being worried over business matters, his consideration now being entirely for his father's peace of mind. “All right,” he retorted, “Father has lost his money and we'll have to let the servants go and give up the old home. That part of it is settled; and weak, anemic, tenderly nurtured little Bryce Cardigan must put his turkey on his back and go into the woods looking for a job as lumberjack ... Busted, eh? Did I or did I not hear the six o'clock whistle blow at the mill? Bet you a dollar I did.”
“Oh, I have title to everything—yet.”
“How I do have to dig for good news! Then it appears we still have a business; indeed, we may always have a business, for the very fact that it is going but not quite gone implies a doubt as to its ultimate departure, and perhaps we may yet scheme a way to retain it.”
“Oh, my boy, when I think of my years of toil and scheming, of the big dreams I dreamed—”
“Belay all! If we can save enough out of the wreck to insure you your customary home comforts, I shan't cry, partner. I have a profession to fall back on. Yes, sirree. I own a sheep-skin, and it says I'm an electrical and civil engineer.”
“What!”
“I said it. An electrical and civil engineer. Slipped one over on you at college, John Cardigan, when all the time you thought I was having a good time. Thought I'd come home and surprise you.”
“Bu-bu-but—”
“It drives me wild to have a man sputter at me. I'm an electrical and civil engineer, I tell you, and my two years of travel have been spent studying the installation and construction of big plants abroad.” He commenced to chuckle softly. “I've known for years that our sawmill was a debilitated old coffee-grinder and would have to be rebuilt, so I wanted to know how to rebuild it. And I've known for years that some day I might have to build a logging railroad—”
“My dear boy! And you've got your degree?”
“Partner, I have a string of letters after my name like the tail of a comet.”
“You comfort me,” the old man answered simply. “I have reproached myself with the thought that I reared you with the sole thought of making a lumberman out of you—and when I saw your lumber business slipping through my fingers—”
“You were sorry I didn't have a profession to fall back on, eh? Or were you fearful lest you had raised the usual rich man's son? If the latter, you did not compliment me, pal. I've never forgotten how hard you always strove to impress me with a sense of the exact weight of my responsibility as your successor.”
“How big are you now?” his father queried suddenly.
“Well, sir,” Bryce answered, for his father's pleasure putting aside his normal modesty, “I'm six feet two inches tall, and I weigh two hundred pounds in the pink of condition. I have a forty-eight-inch chest, with five and a half inches chest-expansion, and a reach as long as a gorilla's. My underpinning is good, too; I'm not one of these fellows with spidery legs and a barrel-chest. I can do a hundred yards in ten seconds; I'm no slouch of a swimmer; and at Princeton they say I made football history. And in spite of it all, I haven't an athletic heart.”
“That is very encouraging, my boy—very. Ever do any boxing?”
“Quite a little. I'm fairly up in the manly art of self-defence.”
“That's good. And I suppose you did some wrestling at your college gymnasium, did you not?”
“Naturally. I went in for everything my big carcass could stand.”
The old man wagged his head approvingly, and they had reached the gate of the Cardigan home before he spoke again. “There's a big buck woods-boss up in Pennington's camp,” he remarked irrelevantly. “He's a French Canadian imported from northern Michigan by Colonel Pennington. I dare say he's the only man in this country who measures up to you physically. He can fight with his fists and wrestle right cleverly, I'm told. His name is Jules Rondeau, and he's top dog among the lumberjacks. They say he's the strongest man in the county.” He unlatched the gate. “Folks used to say that about me once,” he continued wistfully. “Ah, if I could have my eyes to see you meet Jules Rondeau!”
The front portal of the quaint old Cardigan residence opened, and a silver-haired lady came out on the porch and hailed Bryce. She was Mrs. Tully, John Cardigan's old housekeeper, and almost a mother to Bryce. “Oh, here's my boy!” she cried, and a moment later found herself encircled by Bryce's arms and saluted with a hearty kiss.
As he stepped into the familiar entrance-hall, Bryce paused, raised his head and sniffed suspiciously, like a bird-dog. Mrs. Tully, arms akimbo, watched him pleasurably. “I smell something,” he declared, and advanced a step down the hall for another sniff; then, in exact imitation of a foxhound, he gave tongue and started for the kitchen. Mrs. Tully, waddling after, found him “pointing” two hot blackberry pies which had but a few minutes previous been taken from the oven. He was baying lugubriously.
“They're wild blackberries, too,” Mrs. Tully announced pridefully. “I remembered how fond you used to be of wild-blackberry pie—so I phoned up to the logging-camp and had the woods-boss send a man out to pick them.”
“I'm still a pie-hound, Mrs. Tully, and you're still the same dear, thoughtful soul. I'm so glad now that I had sense enough to think of you before I turned my footsteps toward the setting sun.” He patted her gray head. “Mrs. T.,” he declared, “I've brought you a nice big collar of Irish lace—bought it in Belfast, b'gosh. It comes down around your neck and buckles right here with an old ivory cameo I picked up in Burma and which formerly was the property of a Hindu queen.”
Mrs. Tully simpered with pleasure and protested that her boy was too kind. “You haven't changed a single speck,” she concluded proudly.
“Has the pie?”
“I should say not.”
“How many did you make?”
“Two.”
“May I have one all for myself, Mrs. Tully?”
“Indeed you may, my dear.”
“Thank you, but I do not want it for myself. Mrs. Tully, will you please wrap one of those wonderful pies in a napkin and the instant George Sea Otter comes in with the car, tell him to take the pie over to Colonel Pennington's house and deliver it to Miss Sumner? There's a girl who doubtless thinks she has tasted pie in her day, and I want to prove to her that she hasn't.” He selected a card from his card-case, sat down, and wrote:
Dear Miss Sumner:
Here is a priceless hot wild-blackberry pie, especially manufactured in my honour. It is so good I wanted you to have some. In all your life you have never tasted anything like it.
Sincerely, BRYCE CARDIGAN.
He handed the card to Mrs. Tully and repaired to his old room to remove the stains of travel before joining his father at dinner.
Some twenty minutes later his unusual votive offering was delivered by George Sea Otter to Colonel Pennington's Swedish maid, who promptly brought it in to the Colonel and Shirley Sumner, who were even then at dinner in the Colonel's fine burl-redwood-panelled dining room. Miss Sumner's amazement was so profound that for fully a minute she was mute, contenting herself with scrutinizing alternately the pie and the card that accompanied it. Presently she handed the card to her uncle, who affixed his pince-nez and read the epistle with deliberation.
“Isn't this young Cardigan a truly remarkable young man, Shirley?” he declared. “Why, I have never heard of anything like his astounding action. If he had sent you over an armful of American Beauty roses from his father's old-fashioned garden, I could understand it, but an infernal blackberry pie! Good heavens!”
“I told you he was different,” she replied. To the Colonel's amazement she did not appear at all amused.
Colonel Pennington poked a fork through the delicate brown crust. “I wonder if it is really as good as he says it is, Shirley.”
“Of course. If it wasn't, he wouldn't have sent it.”
“How do you know?”
“By intuition,” she replied. And she cut into the pie and helped the Colonel to a quadrant of it.
“That was a genuine hayseed faux-pas,” announced the Colonel a few moments later as Shirley was pouring coffee from a samovar-shaped percolator in the library. “The idea of anybody who has enjoyed the advantages that fellow has, sending a hot blackberry pie to a girl he has just met!”
“Yes, the idea!” she echoed. “I find it rather charming.”
“You mean amusing.”
“I said 'charming.' Bryce Cardigan is a man with the heart and soul of a boy, and I think it was mighty sweet of him to share his pie with me. If he had sent roses, I should have suspected him of trying to 'rush' me, but the fact that he sent a blackberry pie proves that he's just a natural, simple, sane, original citizen—just the kind of person a girl can have for a dear friend without incurring the risk of having to marry him.”
“I repeat that this is most extraordinary.”
“Only because it is an unusual thing for a young man to do, although, after all, why shouldn't he send me a blackberry pie if he thought a blackberry pie would please me more than an armful of roses? Besides, he may send the roses to-morrow.”
“Most extraordinary!” the Colonel reiterated.
“What should one expect from such an extraordinary creature? He's an extraordinary fine-looking young man, with an extraordinary scowl and an extraordinary crinkly smile that is friendly and generous and free from masculine guile. Why, I think he's just the kind of man who WOULD send a girl a blackberry pie.”
The Colonel noticed a calm little smile fringing her generous mouth. He wished he could tell, by intuition, what she was thinking about—and what effect a hot wild-blackberry pie was ultimately to have upon the value of his minority holding in the Laguna Grande Lumber Company.
Not until dinner was finished and father and son had repaired to the library for their coffee and cigars did Bryce Cardigan advert to the subject of his father's business affairs.
“Well, John Cardigan,” he declared comfortably, “to-day is Friday. I'll spend Saturday and Sunday in sinful sloth and the renewal of old acquaintance, and on Monday I'll sit in at your desk and give you a long-deferred vacation. How about that programme, pard?”
“Our affairs are in such shape that they could not possibly be hurt or bettered, no matter who takes charge of them now,” Cardigan replied bitterly. “We're about through. I waited too long and trusted too far; and now—well, in a year we'll be out of business.”
“Suppose you start at the beginning and tell me everything right to the end. George Sea Otter informed me that you've been having trouble with this Johnny-come-lately, Colonel Pennington. Is he the man who has us where the hair is short?”
The old man nodded.
“The Squaw Creek timber deal, eh?” Bryce suggested.
Again the old man nodded. “You wrote me all about that,” Bryce continued. “You had him blocked whichever way he turned—so effectually blocked, in fact, that the only pleasure he has derived from his investment since is the knowledge that he owns two thousand acres of timber with the exclusive right to pay taxes on it, walk in it, look at it and admire it—in fact, do everything except log it, mill it, and realize on his investment. It must make him feel like a bally jackass.”
“On the other hand,” his father reminded him, “no matter what the Colonel's feeling on that score may be, misery loves company, and not until I had pulled out of the Squaw Creek country and started logging in the San Hedrin watershed, did I realize that I had been considerable of a jackass myself.”
“Yes,” Bryce admitted, “there can be no doubt but that you cut off your nose to spite your face.”
There was silence between them for several minutes. Bryce's thoughts harked back to that first season of logging in the San Hedrin, when the cloud-burst had caught the river filled with Cardigan logs and whirled them down to the bay, to crash through the log-boom at tidewater and continue out to the open sea. In his mind's eye he could still see the red-ink figures on the profit-and-loss statement Sinclair, his father's manager, had presented at the end of that year.
The old man appeared to divine the trend of his son's thoughts. “Yes, Bryce, that was a disastrous year,” he declared. “The mere loss of the logs was a severe blow, but in addition I had to pay out quite a little money to settle with my customers. I was loaded up with low-priced orders that year, although I didn't expect to make any money. The orders were merely taken to keep the men employed. You understand, Bryce! I had a good crew, the finest in the country; and if I had shut down, my men would have scattered and—well, you know how hard it is to get that kind of a crew together again. Besides, I had never failed my boys before, and I couldn't bear the thought of failing them then. Half the mills in the country were shut down at the time, and there was a lot of distress among the unemployed. I couldn't do it, Bryce.”
Bryce nodded. “And when you lost the logs, you couldn't fill those low-priced orders. Then the market commenced to jump and advanced three dollars in three months—”
“Exactly, my son. And my customers began to crowd me to fill those old orders. Praise be, my regular customers knew I wasn't the kind of lumberman who tries to crawl out of filling low-priced orders after the market has gone up. Nevertheless I couldn't expect them to suffer with me; my failure to perform my contracts, while unavoidable, nevertheless would have caused them a severe loss, and when they were forced to buy elsewhere, I paid them the difference between the price they paid my competitors and the price at which they originally placed their orders with me. And the delay in delivery caused them further loss.”
“How much?”
“Nearly a hundred thousand—to settle for losses to my local customers alone. Among my orders I had three million feet of clear lumber for shipment to the United Kingdom, and these foreign customers, thinking I was trying to crawfish on my contracts, sued me and got judgment for actual and exemplary damages for my failure to perform, while the demurrage on the ships they sent to freight the lumber sent me hustling to the bank to borrow money.”
He smoked meditatively for a minute. “I've always been land-poor,” he explained apologetically. “Never kept much of a reserve working-capital for emergencies, you know. Whenever I had idle money, I put it into timber in the San Hedrin watershed, because I realized that some day the railroad would build in from the south, tap that timber, and double its value. I've not as yet found reason to doubt the wisdom of my course; but”—he sighed—“the railroad is a long time coming!”
John Cardigan here spoke of a most important factor in the situation. The crying need of the country was a feeder to some transcontinental railroad. By reason of natural barriers, Humboldt County was not easily accessible to the outside world except from the sea, and even this avenue of ingress and egress would be closed for days at a stretch when the harbour bar was on a rampage. With the exception of a strip of level, fertile land, perhaps five miles wide and thirty miles long and contiguous to the seacoast, the heavily timbered mountains to the north, east, and south rendered the building of a railroad that would connect Humboldt County with the outside world a profoundly difficult and expensive task. The Northwestern Pacific, indeed, had been slowly building from San Francisco Bay up through Marin and Sonoma counties to Willits in Mendocino County. But there it had stuck to await that indefinite day when its finances and the courage of its board of directors should prove equal to the colossal task of continuing the road two hundred miles through the mountains to Sequoia on Humboldt Bay. For twenty years the Humboldt pioneers had lived in hope of this; but eventually they had died in despair or were in process of doing so.
“Don't worry, Dad. It will come,” Bryce assured his father. “It's bound to.”
“Yes, but not in my day. And when it comes, a stranger may own your San Hedrin timber and reap the reward of my lifetime of labour.”
Again a silence fell between them, broken presently by the old man. “That was a mistake—logging in the San Hedrin,” he observed. “I had my lesson that first year, but I didn't heed it. If I had abandoned my camps there, pocketed my pride, paid Colonel Pennington two dollars for his Squaw Creek timber, and rebuilt my old logging-road, I would have been safe to-day. But I was stubborn; I'd played the game so long, you know—I didn't want to let that man Pennington outgame me. So I tackled the San Hedrin again. We put thirty million feet of logs into the river that year, and when the freshet came, McTavish managed to make a fairly successful drive. But he was all winter on the job, and when spring came and the men went into the woods again, they had to leave nearly a million feet of heavy butt logs permanently stranded in the slack water along the banks, while perhaps another million feet of lighter logs had been lifted out of the channel by the overflow and left high and dry when the water receded. There they were, Bryce, scattered up and down the river, far from the cables and logging-donkeys, the only power we could use to get those monsters back into the river again, and I was forced to decide whether they should be abandoned or split during the summer into railroad ties, posts, pickets, and shakes—commodities for which there was very little call at the time and in which, even when sold, there could be no profit after deducting the cost of the twenty-mile wagon haul to Sequoia, and the water freight from Sequoia to market. So I abandoned them.”
“I remember that phase of it, partner.”
“To log it the third year only meant that more of those heavy logs would jam and spell more loss. Besides, there was always danger of another cloud-burst which would put me out of business completely, and I couldn't afford the risk.”
“That was the time you should have offered Colonel Pennington a handsome profit on his Squaw Creek timber, pal.”
“If my hindsight was as good as my foresight, and I had my eyesight, I wouldn't be in this dilemma at all,” the old man retorted briskly. “It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and besides, I was obsessed with the need of protecting your heritage from attack in any direction.”
John Cardigan straightened up in his chair and laid the tip of his right index finger in the centre of the palm of his left hand. “Here was the situation, Bryce: The centre of my palm represents Sequoia; the end of my fingers represents the San Hedrin timber twenty miles south. Now, if the railroad built in from the south, you would win. But if it built in from Grant's Pass, Oregon, on the north from the base of my hand, the terminus of the line would be Sequoia, twenty miles from your timber in the San Hedrin watershed!”
Bryce nodded. “In which event,” he replied, “we, would be in much the same position with our San Hedrin timber as Colonel Pennington is with his Squaw Creek timber. We would have the comforting knowledge that we owned it and paid taxes on it but couldn't do a dad-burned thing with it!”
“Right you are! The thing to do, then, as I viewed the situation, Bryce, was to acquire a body of timber NORTH of Sequoia and be prepared for either eventuality. And this I did.”
Silence again descended upon them; and Bryce, gazing into the open fireplace, recalled an event in that period of his father's activities: Old Bill Henderson had come up to their house to dinner one night, and quite suddenly, in the midst of his soup, the old fox had glared across at his host and bellowed:
“John, I hear you've bought six thousand acres up in Township Nine.”
John Cardigan had merely nodded, and Henderson had continued:
“Going to log it or hold it for investment?”
“It was a good buy,” Cardigan had replied enigmatically; “so I thought I'd better take it at the price. I suppose Bryce will log it some day.”
“Then I wish Bryce wasn't such a boy, John. See here, now, neighbour. I'll 'fess up. I took that money Pennington gave me for my Squaw Creek timber and put it back into redwood in Township Nine, slam-bang up against your holdings there. John, I'd build a mill on tidewater if you'd sell me a site, and I'd log my timber if—”
“I'll sell you a mill-site, Bill, and I won't stab you to the heart, either. Consider that settled.”
“That's bully, John; but still, you only dispose of part of my troubles. There's twelve miles of logging-road to build to get my logs to the mill, and I haven't enough ready money to make the grade. Better throw in with me, John, and we'll build the road and operate it for our joint interest.”
“I'll not throw in with you, Bill, at my time of life, I don't want to have the worry of building, maintaining, and operating twelve miles of private railroad. But I'll loan you, without security—”
“You'll have to take an unsecured note, John. Everything I've got is hocked.”
“—the money you need to build and equip the road,” finished Cardigan. “In return you are to shoulder all the grief and worry of the road and give me a ten-year contract at a dollar and a half per thousand feet, to haul my logs down to tidewater with your own. My minimum haul will be twenty-five million feet annually, and my maximum fifty million—”
“Sold!” cried Henderson. And it was even so.
Bryce came out of his reverie. “And now?” he queried of his father.
“I mortgaged the San Hedrin timber in the south to buy the timber in the north, my son; then after I commenced logging in my new holdings, came several long, lean years of famine. I stuck it out, hoping for a change for the better; I couldn't bear to close down my mill and logging-camps, for the reason that I could stand the loss far more readily than the men who worked for me and depended upon me. But the market dragged in the doldrums, and Bill Henderson died, and his boys got discouraged, and—”
A sudden flash of inspiration illumined Bryce Cardigan's brain. “And they sold out to Colonel Pennington,” he cried.
“Exactly. The Colonel took over my contract with Henderson's company, along with the other assets, and it was incumbent upon him, as assignee, to fulfill the contract. For the past two years the market for redwood has been most gratifying, and if I could only have gotten a maximum supply of logs over Pennington's road, I'd have worked out of the hole, but—”
“He manages to hold you to a minimum annual haul of twenty-five million feet, eh?”
John Cardigan nodded. “He claims he's short of rolling-stock—that wrecks and fires have embarrassed the road. He can always find excuses for failing to spot in logging-trucks for Cardigan's logs. Bill Henderson never played the game that way. He gave me what I wanted and never held me to the minimum haulage when I was prepared to give him the maximum.”
“What does Colonel Pennington want, pard?”
“He wants,” said John Cardigan slowly, “my Valley of the Giants and a right of way through my land from the valley to a log-dump on deep water.”
“And you refused him?”
“Naturally. You know my ideas on that big timber.” His old head sank low on his breast. “Folks call them Cardigan's Redwoods now,” he murmured. “Cardigan's Redwoods—and Pennington would cut them! Oh, Bryce, the man hasn't a soul!”
“But I fail to see what the loss of Cardigan's Redwoods has to do with the impending ruin of the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company,” his son reminded him. “We have all the timber we want.”
“My ten-year contract has but one more year to run, and recently I tried to get Pennington to renew it. He was very nice and sociable, but—he named me a freight-rate, for a renewal of the contract for five years, of three dollars per thousand feet. That rate is prohibitive and puts us out of business.”
“Not necessarily,” Bryce returned evenly. “How about the State railroad commission? Hasn't it got something to say about rates?”
“Yes—on common carriers. But Pennington's load is a private logging-road; my contract will expire next year, and it is not incumbent upon Pennington to renew it. And one can't operate a sawmill without logs, you know.”
“Then,” said Bryce calmly, “we'll shut the mill down when the log-hauling contract expires, hold our timber as an investment, and live the simple life until we can sell it or a transcontinental road builds into Humboldt County and enables us to start up the mill again.”
John Cardigan shook his head. “I'm mortgaged to the last penny,” he confessed, “and Pennington has been buying Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company first-mortgage bonds until he is in control of the issue. He'll buy in the San Hedrin timber at the foreclosure sale, and in order to get it back and save something for you out of the wreckage, I'll have to make an unprofitable trade with him. I'll have to give him my timber adjoining his north of Sequoia, together with my Valley of the Giants, in return for the San Hedrin timber, to which he'll have a sheriff's deed. But the mill, all my old employees, with their numerous dependents—gone, with you left land-poor and without a dollar to pay your taxes. Smashed—like that!” And he drove his fist into the palm of his hand.
“Perhaps—but not without a fight,” Bryce answered, although he knew their plight was well-nigh hopeless. “I'll give that man Pennington a run for his money, or I'll know the reason.”
The telephone on the table beside him tinkled, and he took down the receiver and said “Hello!”
“Mercy!” came the clear, sweet voice of Shirley Sumner over the wire. “Do you feel as savage as all that, Mr. Cardigan?”
For the second time in his life the thrill that was akin to pain came to Bryce Cardigan. He laughed. “If I had known you were calling, Miss Sumner,” he said, “I shouldn't have growled so.”
“Well, you're forgiven—for several reasons, but principally for sending me that delicious blackberry pie. Of course, it discoloured my teeth temporarily, but I don't care. The pie was worth it, and you were awfully dear to think of sending it. Thank you so much.”
“Glad you liked it, Miss Sumner. I dare to hope that I may have the privilege of seeing you soon again.”
“Of course. One good pie deserves another. Some evening next week, when that dear old daddy of yours can spare his boy, you might be interested to see our burl-redwood-panelled dining room Uncle Seth is so proud of. I'm too recent an arrival to know the hour at which Uncle Seth dines, but I'll let you know later and name a definite date. Would Thursday night be convenient?”
“Perfectly. Thank you a thousand times.”
She bade him good-night. As he turned from the telephone, his father looked up. “What are you going to do to-morrow, lad?” he queried.
“I have to do some thinking to-morrow,” Bryce answered. “So I'm going up into Cardigan's Redwoods to do it. Up there a fellow can get set, as it were, to put over a thought with a punch in it.”
“The dogwoods and rhododendron are blooming now,” the old man murmured wistfully. Bryce knew what he was thinking of. “I'll attend to the flowers for Mother,” he assured Cardigan, and he added fiercely: “And I'll attend to the battle for Father. We may lose, but that man Pennington will know he's been in a fight before we fin—-”
He broke off abruptly, for he had just remembered that he was to dine at the Pennington house the following Thursday—and he was not the sort of man who smilingly breaks bread with his enemy.