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The Valley of the Giants

by Peter B. Kyne · English · Gutenberg #5735 · 575,061 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Valley of the Giants

Author: Peter B. Kyne


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5735]
                Most recently updated: March 12, 2018

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team







THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS

By Peter B. Kyne

Author of Cappy Ricks, The Long Chance, Etc.

Illustrated by Dean Cornwell




TO MY WIFE




THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS



CHAPTER I


In the summer of 1850 a topsail schooner slipped into the cove under
Trinidad Head and dropped anchor at the edge of the kelp-fields. Fifteen
minutes later her small-boat deposited on the beach a man armed with
long squirrel-rifle and an axe, and carrying food and clothing in a
brown canvas pack. From the beach he watched the boat return and saw the
schooner weigh anchor and stand out to sea before the northwest trades.
When she had disappeared from his ken, he swung his pack to his broad
and powerful back and strode resolutely into the timber at the mouth of
a little river.

The man was John Cardigan; in that lonely, hostile land he was the first
pioneer. This is the tale of Cardigan and Cardigan's son, for in his
chosen land the pioneer leader in the gigantic task of hewing a path for
civilization was to know the bliss of woman's love and of parenthood,
and the sorrow that comes of the loss of a perfect mate; he was to know
the tremendous joy of accomplishment and worldly success after infinite
labour; and in the sunset of life he was to know the dull despair of
failure and ruin. Because of these things there is a tale to be told,
the tale of Cardigan's son, who, when his sire fell in the fray, took up
the fight to save his heritage--a tale of life with its love and hate,
its battle, victory, defeat, labour, joy, and sorrow, a tale of that
unconquerable spirit of youth which spurred Bryce Cardigan to lead a
forlorn hope for the sake not of wealth but of an ideal. Hark, then, to
this tale of Cardigan's redwoods:

Along the coast of California, through the secret valleys and over the
tumbled foothills of the Coast Range, extends a belt of timber of an
average width of thirty miles. In approaching it from the Oregon line
the first tree looms suddenly against the horizon--an outpost, as it
were, of the host of giants whose column stretches south nearly four
hundred miles to where the last of the rear-guard maintains eternal
sentry go on the crest of the mountains overlooking Monterey Bay. Far
in the interior of the State, beyond the fertile San Joaquin Valley, the
allies of this vast army hold a small sector on the west slope of the
Sierras.

These are the redwood forests of California, the only trees of their
kind in the world and indigenous only to these two areas within the
State. The coast timber is known botanically as sequoia sempervirens,
that in the interior as sequoia gigantea. As the name indicates, the
latter is the larger species of the two, although the fibre of the
timber is coarser and the wood softer and consequently less valuable
commercially than the sequoia sempervirens--which in Santa Cruz, San
Mateo, Marin, and Sonoma counties has been almost wholly logged off,
because of its accessibility. In northern Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del
Norte counties, however, sixty years of logging seems scarcely to have
left a scar upon this vast body of timber. Notwithstanding sixty years
of attrition, there remain in this section of the redwood belt thousands
upon thousands of acres of virgin timber that had already attained
a vigorous growth when Christ was crucified. In their vast, sombre
recesses, with the sunlight filtering through their branches two hundred
and fifty feet above, one hears no sound save the tremendous diapason
of the silence of the ages; here, more forcibly than elsewhere in the
universe, is one reminded of the littleness of man and the glory of his
creator.

In sizes ranging from five to twenty feet in diameter, the brown trunks
rise perpendicularly to a height of from ninety to a hundred and fifty
feet before putting forth a single limb, which frequently is more
massive than the growth which men call a tree in the forests of
Michigan. Scattered between the giants, like subjects around their king,
one finds noble fir, spruce, or pines, with some Valparaiso live oak,
black oak, pepper-wood, madrone, yew, and cedar.

In May and June, when the twisted and cowering madrone trees are putting
forth their clusters of creamy buds, when the white blossoms of
the dogwoods line the banks of little streams, when the azaleas and
rhododendrons, lovely and delicate as orchids, blaze a bed of glory, and
the modest little oxalis has thrust itself up through the brown carpet
of pine-needles and redwood-twigs, these wonderful forests cast upon one
a potent spell. To have seen them once thus in gala dress is to yearn
thereafter to see them again and still again and grieve always in the
knowledge of their inevitable death at the hands of the woodsman.

John Cardigan settled in Humboldt County, where the sequoia sempervirens
attains the pinnacle of its glory, and with the lust for conquest hot in
his blood, he filed upon a quarter-section of the timber almost on the
shore of Humboldt Bay--land upon which a city subsequently was to be
built. With his double-bitted axe and crosscut saw John Cardigan brought
the first of the redwood giants crashing to the earth above which it had
towered for twenty centuries, and in the form of split posts, railroad
ties, pickets, and shakes, the fallen giant was hauled to tidewater in
ox-drawn wagons and shipped to San Francisco in the little two-masted
coasting schooners of the period. Here, by the abominable magic of
barter and trade, the dismembered tree was transmuted into dollars and
cents and returned to Humboldt County to assist John Cardigan in his
task of hewing an empire out of a wilderness.

At a period in the history of California when the treasures of the
centuries were to be had for the asking or the taking, John Cardigan
chose that which others elected to cast away. For him the fertile wheat
and fruit-lands of California's smiling valleys, the dull placer gold in
her foot-hill streams, and the free grass, knee deep, on her cattle
and sheep-ranges held no lure; for he had been first among the Humboldt
redwoods and had come under the spell of the vastness and antiquity, the
majesty and promise of these epics of a planet. He was a big man with a
great heart and the soul of a dreamer, and in such a land as this it was
fitting he should take his stand.

In that wasteful day a timber-claim was not looked upon as valuable. The
price of a quarter-section was a pittance in cash and a brief residence
in a cabin constructed on the claim as evidence of good faith to a
government none too exacting in the restrictions with which it hedged
about its careless dissipation of the heritage of posterity. Hence,
because redwood timber-claims were easy to acquire, many men acquired
them; but when the lure of greener pastures gripped these men and
the necessity for ready money oppressed, they were wont to sell their
holdings for a few hundred dollars. Gradually it became the fashion
in Humboldt to “unload” redwood timber-claims on thrifty, far-seeing,
visionary John Cardigan who appeared to be always in the market for any
claim worth while.

Cardigan was a shrewd judge of stumpage; with the calm certitude of
a prophet he looked over township after township and cunningly
checkerboarded it with his holdings. Notwithstanding the fact that
hillside timber is the best, John Cardigan in those days preferred to
buy valley timber, for he was looking forward to the day when the timber
on the watersheds should become available. He knew that when such timber
should be cut it would have to be hauled out through the valleys where
his untouched holdings formed an impenetrable barrier to the exit!
Before long the owners of timber on the watersheds would come to realize
this and sell to John Cardigan at a reasonable price.

Time passed. John Cardigan no longer swung an axe or dragged a cross-cut
saw through a fallen redwood. He was an employer of labour now, well
known in San Francisco as a manufacturer of split-redwood products, the
purchasers sending their own schooners for the cargo. And presently John
Cardigan mortgaged all of his timber holdings with a San Francisco bank,
made a heap of his winnings, and like a true adventurer staked his all
on a new venture--the first sawmill in Humboldt County. The timbers for
it were hewed out by hand; the boards and planking were whipsawed.

It was a tiny mill, judged by present-day standards, for in a
fourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut more
than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked
at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater
and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the
logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull-whackers to haul with
ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's
mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet of water at low tide.
Also this dock was sufficiently far up the bay to be sheltered from the
heavy seas that rolled in from Humboldt Bar, while the level land
that stretched inland to the timber-line constituted the only logical
townsite on the bay.

“Here,” said John Cardigan to himself exultingly when a long-drawn wail
told him his circular saw was biting into the first redwood log to be
milled since the world began, “I shall build a city and call it Sequoia.
By to-morrow I shall have cut sufficient timber to make a start. First
I shall build for my employees better homes than the rude shacks and
tent-houses they now occupy; then I shall build myself a fine residence
with six rooms, and the room that faces on the bay shall be the parlour.
When I can afford it, I shall build a larger mill, employ more men, and
build more houses. I shall encourage tradesmen to set up in business in
Sequoia, and to my city I shall present a church and a schoolhouse. We
shall have a volunteer fire department, and if God is good, I shall, at
a later date, get out some long-length fir-timber and build a schooner
to freight my lumber to market. And she shall have three masts instead
of two, and carry half a million feet of lumber instead of two hundred
thousand. First, however, I must build a steam tugboat to tow my
schooner in and out over Humboldt Bar. And after that--ah, well! That is
sufficient for the present.”




CHAPTER II


Thus did John Cardigan dream, and as he dreamed he worked. The city of
Sequoia was born with the Argonaut's six-room mansion of rough redwood
boards and a dozen three-room cabins with lean-to kitchens; and the
tradespeople came when John Cardigan, with something of the largeness of
his own redwood trees, gave them ground and lumber in order to encourage
the building of their enterprises. Also the dream of the schoolhouse
and the church came true, as did the steam tugboat and the schooner with
three masts. The mill was enlarged until it could cut forty thousand
feet on a twelve-hour shift, and a planer and machines for making rustic
siding and tongued-and-grooved flooring and ceiling were installed. More
ox-teams appeared upon the skid-road, which was longer now; the cry of
“Timber-r-r!” and the thunderous roar of a falling redwood grew fainter
and fainter as the forest receded from the bay shore, and at last the
whine of the saws silenced these sounds forever in Sequoia.

At forty John Cardigan was younger than most men at thirty, albeit he
worked fourteen hours a day, slept eight, and consumed the remaining two
at his meals. But through all those fruitful years of toil he had still
found time to dream, and the spell of the redwoods had lost none of its
potency. He was still checker-boarding the forested townships with his
adverse holdings--the key-positions to the timber in back of beyond
which some day should come to his hand. Also he had competition now:
other sawmills dotted the bay shore; other three-masted schooners
carried Humboldt redwood to the world beyond the bar, over which they
were escorted by other and more powerful steam-tugs. This competition
John Cardigan welcomed and enjoyed, however, for he had been first in
Humboldt, and the townsite and a mile of tidelands fronting on deep
water were his; hence each incoming adventurer merely helped his dream
of a city to come true.

At forty-two Cardigan was the first mayor of Sequoia. At forty-four he
was standing on his dock one day, watching his tug kick into her berth
the first square-rigged ship that had ever come to Humboldt Bay to load
a cargo of clear redwood for foreign delivery. She was a big Bath-built
clipper, and her master a lusty down-Easter, a widower with one daughter
who had come with him around the Horn. John Cardigan saw this girl come
up on the quarter-deck and stand by with a heaving-line in her hand;
calmly she fixed her glance upon him, and as the ship was shunted in
closer to the dock, she made the cast to Cardigan. He caught the light
heaving-line, hauled in the heavy Manila stern-line to which it was
attached, and slipped the loop of the mooring-cable over the dolphin at
the end of the dock.

“Some men wanted aft here to take up the slack of the stern-line on the
windlass, sir,” he shouted to the skipper, who was walking around on top
of the house. “That girl can't haul her in alone.”

“Can't. I'm short-handed,” the skipper replied. “Jump aboard and help
her.”

Cardigan made a long leap from the dock to the ship's rail, balanced
there lightly a moment, and sprang to the deck. He passed the bight of
the stern-line in a triple loop around the drum of the windlass, and
without awaiting his instructions, the girl grasped the slack of the
line and prepared to walk away with it as the rope paid in on the
windlass. Cardigan inserted a belaying-pin in the windlass, paused
and looked at the girl. “Raise a chantey,” he suggested. Instantly she
lifted a sweet contralto in that rollicking old ballad of the sea--“Blow
the Men Down.”

   For tinkers and tailors and lawyers and all,
   Way! Aye! Blow the men down!
   They ship for real sailors aboard the Black Ball,
   Give me some time to blow the men down.

Round the windlass Cardigan walked, steadily and easily, and the girl's
eyes widened in wonder as he did the work of three powerful men. When
the ship had been warped in and the slack of the line made fast on the
bitts, she said:

“Please run for'd and help my father with the bow-lines. You're worth
three foremast hands. Indeed, I didn't expect to see a sailor on this
dock.”

“I had to come around the Horn to get here, Miss,” he explained, “and
when a man hasn't money to pay for his passage, he needs must work it.”

“I'm the second mate,” she explained. “We had a succession of gales from
the Falklands to the Evangelistas, and there the mate got her in irons
and she took three big ones over the taffrail and cost us eight men.
Working short-handed, we couldn't get any canvas on her to speak
of--long voyage, you know, and the rest of the crew got scurvy.”

“You're a brave girl,” he told her.

“And you're a first-class A. B.,” she replied. “If you're looking for a
berth, my father will be glad to ship you.”

“Sorry, but I can't go,” he called as he turned toward the companion
ladder. “I'm Cardigan, and I own this sawmill and must stay here and
look after it.”

There was a light, exultant feeling in his middle-aged heart as he
scampered along the deck. The girl had wonderful dark auburn hair and
brown eyes, with a milk-white skin that sun and wind had sought in vain
to blemish. And for all her girlhood she was a woman--bred from a race
(his own people) to whom danger and despair merely furnished a tonic
for their courage. What a mate for a man! And she had looked at him
pridefully.

They were married before the ship was loaded, and on a knoll of the
logged-over lands back of the town and commanding a view of the bay,
with the dark-forested hills in back and the little second-growth
redwoods flourishing in the front yard, he built her the finest home in
Sequoia. He had reserved this building-site in a vague hope that some
day he might utilize it for this very purpose, and here he spent with
her three wonderfully happy years. Here his son Bryce was born, and
here, two days later, the new-made mother made the supreme sacrifice of
maternity.

For half a day following the destruction of his Eden John Cardigan sat
dumbly beside his wife, his great, hard hand caressing the auburn head
whose every thought for three years had been his happiness and comfort.
Then the doctor came to him and mentioned the matter of funeral
arrangements.

Cardigan looked up at him blankly. “Funeral arrangements?” he murmured.
“Funeral arrangements?” He passed his gnarled hand over his leonine
head. “Ah, yes, I suppose so. I shall attend to it.”

He rose and left the house, walking with bowed head out of Sequoia, up
the abandoned and decaying skid-road through the second-growth redwoods
to the dark green blur that marked the old timber. It was May, and
Nature was renewing herself, for spring comes late in Humboldt County.
From an alder thicket a pompous cock grouse boomed intermittently; the
valley quail, in pairs, were busy about their household affairs; from a
clump of manzanita a buck watched John Cardigan curiously. On past the
landing where the big bull donkey-engine stood (for with the march of
progress, the logging donkey-engine had replaced the ox-teams, while the
logs were hauled out of the woods to the landing by means of a mile-long
steel cable, and there loaded on the flat-cars of a logging railroad
to be hauled to the mill and dumped in the log-boom) he went, up the
skid-road recently swamped from the landing to the down timber where
the crosscut men and barkpeelers were at work, on into the green timber
where the woods-boss and his men were chopping.

“Come with me, McTavish,” he said to his woods-boss. They passed through
a narrow gap between two low hills and emerged in a long narrow valley
where the redwood grew thickly and where the smallest tree was not
less than fifteen feet in diameter and two hundred and fifty feet tall.
McTavish followed at the master's heels as they penetrated this grove,
making their way with difficulty through the underbrush until they came
at length to a little amphitheatre, a clearing perhaps a hundred feet
in diameter, oval-shaped and surrounded by a wall of redwoods of such
dimensions that even McTavish, who was no stranger to these natural
marvels, was struck with wonder. The ground in this little amphitheatre
was covered to a depth of a foot with brown, withered little redwood
twigs to which the dead leaves still clung, while up through this
aromatic covering delicate maidenhair ferns and oxalis had thrust
themselves. Between the huge brown boles of the redwoods woodwardia grew
riotously, while through the great branches of these sentinels of the
ages the sunlight filtered. Against the prevailing twilight of the
surrounding forest it descended like a halo, and where it struck the
ground John Cardigan paused.

“McTavish,” he said, “she died this morning.”

“I'm sore distressed for you, sir,” the woods-boss answered. “We'd a
whisper in the camp yesterday that the lass was like to be in a bad
way.”

Cardigan scuffed with his foot a clear space in the brown litter. “Take
two men from the section-gang, McTavish,” he ordered, “and have them dig
her grave here; then swamp a trail through the underbrush and out to the
donkey-landing, so we can carry her in. The funeral will be private.”

McTavish nodded. “Any further orders, sir?”

“Yes. When you come to that little gap in the hills, cease your logging
and bear off yonder.” He waved his hand. “I'm not going to cut the
timber in this valley. You see, McTavish, what it is. The trees
here--ah, man, I haven't the heart to destroy God's most wonderful
handiwork. Besides, she loved this spot, McTavish, and she called the
valley her Valley of the Giants. I--I gave it to her for a wedding
present because she had a bit of a dream that some day the town I
started would grow up to yonder gap, and when that time came and we
could afford it, 'twas in her mind to give her Valley of the Giants to
Sequoia for a city park, all hidden away here and unsuspected.

“She loved it, McTavish. It pleased her to come here with me; she'd make
up a lunch of her own cooking and I would catch trout in the stream by
the dogwoods yonder and fry the fish for her. Sometimes I'd barbecue a
venison steak and--well, 'twas our playhouse, McTavish, and I who am no
longer young--I who never played until I met her--I--I'm a bit foolish,
I fear, but I found rest and comfort here, McTavish, even before I
met her, and I'm thinking I'll have to come here often for the same.
She--she was a very superior woman, McTavish--very superior. Ah, man,
the soul of her! I cannot bear that her body should rest in Sequoia
cemetery, along with the rag tag and bobtail o' the town. She was like
this sunbeam, McTavish. She--she--”

“Aye,” murmured McTavish huskily. “I ken. Ye wouldna gie her a common
or a public spot in which to wait for ye. An' ye'll be shuttin' down
the mill an' loggin'-camps an' layin' off the hands in her honour for a
bit?”

“Until after the funeral, McTavish. And tell your men they'll be paid
for the lost time. That will be all, lad.”

When McTavish was gone, John Cardigan sat down on a small sugar-pine
windfall, his head held slightly to one side while he listened to that
which in the redwoods is not sound but rather the absence of it. And as
he listened, he absorbed a subtle comfort from those huge brown trees,
so emblematic of immortality; in the thought he grew closer to his
Maker, and presently found that peace which he sought. Love such as
theirs could never die... The tears came at last.

At sundown he walked home bearing an armful of rhododendrons and dogwood
blossoms, which he arranged in the room where she lay. Then he sought
the nurse who had attended her.

“I'd like to hold my son,” he said gently. “May I?”

She brought him the baby and placed it in his great arms that trembled
so; he sat down and gazed long and earnestly at this flesh of his flesh
and blood of his blood. “You'll have her hair and skin and eyes,” he
murmured. “My son, my son, I shall love you so, for now I must love for
two. Sorrow I shall keep from you, please God, and happiness and worldly
comfort shall I leave you when I go to her.” He nuzzled his grizzled
cheek against the baby's face. “Just you and my trees,” he whispered,
“just you and my trees to help me hang on to a plucky finish.”

For love and paternity had come to him late in life, and so had his
first great sorrow; wherefore, since he was not accustomed to these
heritages of all flesh, he would have to adjust himself to the change.
But his son and his trees--ah, yes, they would help. And he would gather
more redwoods now!




CHAPTER III


A young half-breed Digger woman, who had suffered the loss of the latest
of her numerous progeny two days prior to Mrs. Cardigan's death, was
installed in the house on the knoll as nurse to John Cardigan's son whom
he called Bryce, the family name of his mother's people. A Mrs.
Tully, widow of Cardigan's first engineer in the mill, was engaged as
housekeeper and cook; and with his domestic establishment reorganized
along these simple lines, John Cardigan turned with added eagerness to
his business affairs, hoping between them and his boy to salvage as
much as possible from what seemed to him, in the first pangs of his
loneliness and desolation, the wreckage of his life.

While Bryce was in swaddling clothes, he was known only to those females
of Sequoia to whom his half-breed foster mother proudly exhibited him
when taking him abroad for an airing in his perambulator. With his
advent into rompers, however, and the assumption of his American
prerogative of free speech, his father developed the habit of bringing
the child down to the mill office, to which he added a playroom that
connected with his private office. Hence, prior to his second birthday,
Bryce divined that his father was closer to him than motherly Mrs. Tully
or the half-breed girl, albeit the housekeeper sang to him the lullabys
that mothers know while the Digger girl, improvising blank verse paeans
of praise and prophecy, crooned them to her charge in the unmusical
monotone of her tribal tongue. His father, on the contrary, wasted no
time in singing, but would toss him to the ceiling or set him astride
his foot and swing him until he screamed in ecstasy. Moreover, his
father took him on wonderful journeys which no other member of the
household had even suggested. Together they were wont to ride to and
from the woods in the cab of the logging locomotive, and once they both
got on the log carriage in the mill with Dan Keyes, the head sawyer, and
had a jolly ride up to the saw and back again, up and back again until
the log had been completely sawed; and because he had refrained from
crying aloud when the greedy saw bit into the log with a shrill whine,
Dan Keyes had given him a nickel to put in his tin bank.

Of all their adventures together, however, those which occurred on their
frequent excursions up to the Valley of the Giants impressed themselves
imperishably upon Bryce's memory. How well he remembered their first
trip, when, seated astride his father's shoulders with his sturdy little
legs around Cardigan's neck and his chubby little hands clasping the
old man's ears, they had gone up the abandoned skid-road and into
the semi-darkness of the forest, terminating suddenly in a shower of
sunshine that fell in an open space where a boy could roll and play
and never get dirty. Also there were several dozen gray squirrels there
waiting to climb on his shoulder and search his pockets for pine-nuts, a
supply of which his father always furnished.

Bryce always looked forward with eagerness to those frequent trips with
his father “to the place where Mother dear went to heaven.” From his
perch on his father's shoulders he could look vast distances into the
underbrush and catch glimpses of the wild life therein; when the last
nut had been distributed to the squirrels in the clearing, he would
follow a flash of blue that was a jay high up among the evergreen
branches, or a flash of red that was a woodpecker hammering a home in
the bark of a sugar-pine. Eventually, however, the spell of the forest
would creep over the child; intuitively he would become one with the
all-pervading silence, climb into his father's arms as the latter sat
dreaming on the old sugar-pine windfall, and presently drop off to
sleep.

When Bryce was six years old, his father sent him to the public school
in Sequoia with the children of his loggers and mill-hands, thus laying
the foundation for a democratic education all too infrequent with the
sons of men rated as millionaires. At night old Cardigan (for so men had
now commenced to designate him!) would hear his boy's lessons, taking
the while an immeasurable delight in watching the lad's mind develop. As
a pupil Bryce was not meteoric; he had his father's patient, unexcitable
nature; and, like the old man, he possessed the glorious gift of
imagination. Never mediocre, he was never especially brilliant, but
was seemingly content to maintain a steady, dependable average in all
things. He had his mother's dark auburn hair, brown eyes, and fair white
skin, and quite early in life he gave promise of being as large and
powerful a man as his father.

Bryce's boyhood was much the same as that of other lads in Sequoia,
save that in the matter of toys and, later guns, fishing-rods, dogs, and
ponies he was a source of envy to his fellows. After his tenth year his
father placed him on the mill pay-roll, and on payday he was wont to
line up with the mill-crew to receive his modest stipend of ten dollars
for carrying in kindling to the cook in the mill kitchen each day after
school.

This otherwise needless arrangement was old Cardigan's way of teaching
his boy financial responsibility. All that he possessed he had worked
for, and he wanted his son to grow up with the business to realize that
he was a part of it with definite duties connected with it developing
upon him--duties which he must never shirk if he was to retain the rich
redwood heritage his father had been so eagerly storing up for him.

When Bryce Cardigan was about fourteen years old there occurred an
important event in his life. In a commendable effort to increase his
income he had laid out a small vegetable garden in the rear of his
father's house, and here on a Saturday morning, while down on his knees
weeding carrots, he chanced to look up and discovered a young lady
gazing at him through the picket fence. She was a few years his junior,
and a stranger in Sequoia. Ensued the following conversation: “Hello,
little boy.”

“Hello yourself! I ain't a little boy.”

She ignored the correction. “What are you doing?”

“Weedin' carrots. Can't you see?”

“What for?”

Bryce, highly incensed at having been designated a little boy by this
superior damsel, saw his opportunity to silence her. “Cat's fur for
kitten breeches,” he retorted--without any evidence of originality, we
must confess. Whereat she stung him to the heart with a sweet smile and
promptly sang for him this ancient ballad of childhood:

     “What are little boys made of?
      What are little boys made of?
       Snakes and snails,
       And puppy dog's tails,
      And that's what little boys are made of.”

Bryce knew the second verse and shrivelled inwardly in anticipation
of being informed that little girls are made of sugar and spice and
everything nice. Realizing that he had begun something which might not
terminate with credit to himself, he hung his head and for the space of
several minutes gave all his attention to his crop. And presently the
visitor spoke again.

“I like your hair, little boy. It's a pretty red.”

That settled the issue between them. To be hailed as little boy was bad
enough, but to be reminded of his crowning misfortune was adding
insult to injury. He rose and cautiously approached the fence with
the intention of pinching the impudent stranger, suddenly and
surreptitiously, and sending her away weeping. As his hand crept between
the palings on its wicked mission, the little miss looked at him in
friendly fashion and queried:

“What's your name?”

Bryce's hand hesitated. “Bryce Cardigan,” he answered gruffly.

“I'm Shirley Sumner,” she ventured, “Let's be friends.”

“When did you come to live in Sequoia?” he demanded.

“I don't live here. I'm just visiting here with my aunt and uncle. We're
staying at the hotel, and there's nobody to play with. My uncle's name
is Pennington. So's my aunt's. He's out here buying timber, and we live
in Michigan. Do you know the capital of Michigan?”

“Of course I do,” he answered. “The capital of Michigan is Chicago.”

“Oh, you big stupid! It isn't. It's Detroit.”

“'Tain't neither. It's Chicago.”

“I live there--so I guess I ought to know. So there!”

Bryce was vanquished, and an acute sense of his imperfections in matters
geographical inclined him to end the argument. “Well, maybe you're
right,” he admitted grudgingly. “Anyhow, what difference does it make?”

She did not answer. Evidently she was desirous of avoiding an argument
if possible. Her gaze wandered past Bryce to where his Indian pony stood
with her head out the window of her box-stall contemplating her master.

“Oh, what a dear little horse!” Shirley Sumner exclaimed. “Whose is he?”

“'Tain't a he. It's a she. And she belongs to me.”

“Do you ride her?”

“Not very often now. I'm getting too heavy for her, so Dad's bought me a
horse that weighs nine hundred pounds. Midget only weighs five hundred.”
 He considered her a moment while she gazed in awe upon this man with two
horses. “Can you ride a pony?” he asked, for no reason that he was aware
of.

She sighed, shaking her head resignedly. “We haven't any room to keep a
pony at our house in Detroit,” she explained, and added hopefully: “But
I'd love to ride on Midget. I suppose I could learn to ride if somebody
taught me how.”

He looked at her again. At that period of his existence he was inclined
to regard girls as a necessary evil. For some immutable reason they
existed, and perforce must be borne with, and it was his hope that he
would get through life and see as little as possible of the exasperating
sex. Nevertheless, as Bryce surveyed this winsome miss through the
palings, he was sensible of a sneaking desire to find favour in her
eyes--also equally sensible of the fact that the path to that desirable
end lay between himself and Midget. He swelled with the importance of
one who knows he controls a delicate situation. “Well, I suppose if you
want a ride I'll have to give it to you,” he grumbled, “although I'm
mighty busy this morning.”

“Oh, I think you're so nice,” she declared.

A thrill shot through him that was akin to pain; with difficulty did he
restrain an impulse to dash wildly into the stable and saddle Midget
in furious haste. Instead he walked to the barn slowly and with extreme
dignity. When he reappeared, he was leading Midget, a little silverpoint
runt of a Klamath Indian pony, and Moses, a sturdy pinto cayuse from the
cattle ranges over in Trinity County. “I'll have to ride with you,” he
announced. “Can't let a tenderfoot like you go out alone on Midget.”

All aflutter with delightful anticipation, the young lady climbed up
on the gate and scrambled into the saddle when Bryce swung the pony
broadside to the gate. Then he adjusted the stirrups to fit her, passed
a hair rope from Midget's little hackamore to the pommel of Moses'
saddle, mounted the pinto, and proceeded with his first adventure as a
riding-master. Two hours of his valuable time did he give that morning
before the call of duty brought him back to the house and his neglected
crop of carrots. When he suggested tactfully, however, that it was
now necessary that his guest and Midget separate, a difficulty arose.
Shirley Sumner refused point blank to leave the premises. She liked
Bryce for his hair and because he had been so kind to her; she was a
stranger in Sequoia, and now that she had found an agreeable companion,
it was far from her intention to desert him.

So Miss Sumner stayed and helped Bryce weed his carrots, and since as
a voluntary labourer she was at least worth her board, at noon Bryce
brought her in to Mrs. Tully with a request for luncheon. When he
went to the mill to carry in the kindling for the cook, the young lady
returned rather sorrowfully to the Hotel Sequoia, with a fervent promise
to see him the next day. She did, and Bryce took her for a long ride
up into the Valley of the Giants and showed her his mother's grave. The
gray squirrels were there, and Bryce gave Shirley a bag of pine-nuts
to feed them. Then they put some flowers on the grave, and when they
returned to town and Bryce was unsaddling the ponies, Shirley drew
Midget's nose down to her and kissed it. Then she commenced to weep
rather violently.

“What are you crying about?” Bryce demanded. Girls were so hard to
understand.

“I'm go-going h-h-h-home to-morrow,” she howled.

He was stricken with dismay and bade her desist from her vain
repinings. But her heart was broken, and somehow--Bryce appeared to
act automatically--he had his arm around her. “Don't cry, Shirley,” he
pleaded. “It breaks my heart to see you cry. Do you want Midget? I'll
give her to you.”

Between sobs Shirley confessed that the prospect of parting with him and
not Midget was provocative of her woe. This staggered Bryce and pleased
him immensely. And at parting she kissed him good-bye, reiterating her
opinion that he was the nicest, kindest boy she had ever met or hoped to
meet.

When Shirley and her uncle and aunt boarded the steamer for San
Francisco, Bryce stood disconsolate on the dock and waved to Shirley
until he could no longer discern her on the deck. Then he went home,
crawled up into the haymow and wept, for he had something in his heart
and it hurt. He thought of his elfin companion very frequently for a
week, and he lost his appetite, very much to Mrs. Tully's concern. Then
the steelhead trout began to run in Eel River, and the sweetest event
that can occur in any boy's existence--the sudden awakening to
the wonder and beauty of life so poignantly realized in his first
love-affair--was lost sight of by Bryce. In a month he had forgotten the
incident; in six months he had forgotten Shirley Sumner.




CHAPTER IV


The succeeding years of Bryce Cardigan's life, until he completed
his high-school studies and went East to Princeton, were those of the
ordinary youth in a small and somewhat primitive country town. He made
frequent trips to San Francisco with his father, taking passage on the
steamer that made bi-weekly trips between Sequoia and the metropolis--as
The Sequoia Sentinel always referred to San Francisco. He was an expert
fisherman, and the best shot with rifle or shot-gun in the county; he
delighted in sports and, greatly to the secret delight of his father
showed a profound interest in the latter's business.

Throughout the happy years of Bryce's boyhood his father continued to
enlarge and improve his sawmill, to build more schooners, and to acquire
more redwood timber. Lands, the purchase of which by Cardigan a decade
before had caused his neighbours to impugn his judgment, now developed
strategical importance. As a result those lands necessary to consolidate
his own holdings came to him at his own price, while his adverse
holdings that blocked the logging operations of his competitors went
from him--also at his own price. In fact, all well-laid plans matured
satisfactorily with the exception of one, and since it has a very
definite bearing on the story, the necessity for explaining it is
paramount.

Contiguous to Cardigan's logging operations to the east and north of
Sequoia, and comparatively close in, lay a block of two thousand acres
of splendid timber, the natural, feasible, and inexpensive outlet for
which, when it should be logged, was the Valley of the Giants. For
thirty years John Cardigan had played a waiting game with the owner of
that timber, for the latter was as fully obsessed with the belief that
he was going to sell it to John Cardigan at a dollar and a half per
thousand feet stumpage as Cardigan was certain he was going to buy it
for a dollar a thousand--when he should be ready to do so and not one
second sooner. He calculated, as did the owner of the timber, that the
time to do business would be a year or two before the last of Cardigan's
timber in that section should be gone.

Eventually the time for acquiring more timber arrived. John Cardigan,
meeting his neighbour on the street, accosted him thus:

“Look here, Bill: isn't it time we got together on that timber of yours?
You know you've been holding it to block me and force me to buy at your
figure.”

“That's why I bought it,” the other admitted smilingly. “Then, before I
realized my position, you checkmated me with that quarter-section in the
valley, and we've been deadlocked ever since.”

“I'll give you a dollar a thousand stumpage for your timber, Bill.”

“I want a dollar and a half.”

“A dollar is my absolute limit.”

“Then I'll keep my timber.”

“And I'll keep my money. When I finish logging in my present holdings,
I'm going to pull out of that country and log twenty miles south
of Sequoia. I have ten thousand acres in the San Hedrin watershed.
Remember, Bill, the man who buys your timber will have to log it through
my land--and I'm not going to log that quarter-section in the valley.
Hence there will be no outlet for your timber in back.”

“Not going to log it? Why, what are you going to do with it?”

“I'm just going to let it stay there until I die. When my will is filed
for probate, your curiosity will be satisfied--but not until then.”

The other laughed. “John,” he declared, “you just haven't got the
courage to pull out when your timber adjoining mine is gone, and
move twenty miles south to the San Hedrin watershed. That will be too
expensive a move, and you'll only be biting off your nose to spite your
face. Come through with a dollar and a half, John.”

“I never bluff, Bill. Remember, if I pull out for the San Hedrin, I'll
not abandon my logging-camps there to come back and log your timber.
One expensive move is enough for me. Better take a dollar, Bill. It's a
good, fair price, as the market on redwood timber is now, and you'll be
making an even hundred per cent, on your investment. Remember, Bill, if
I don't buy your timber, you'll never log it yourself and neither will
anybody else. You'll be stuck with it for the next forty years--and
taxes aren't getting any lower. Besides, there's a good deal of pine and
fir in there, and you know what a forest fire will do to that.”

“I'll hang on a little longer, I think.”

“I think so, too,” John Cardigan replied. And that night, as was his
wont, even though he realized that it was not possible for Bryce to gain
a profound understanding of the business problems to which he was heir,
John Cardigan discussed the Squaw Creek timber with his son, relating to
him the details of his conversation with the owner.

“I suppose he thinks you're bluffing,” Bryce commented.

“I'm not, Bryce. I never bluff--that is, I never permit a bluff of mine
to be called, and don't you ever do it, either. Remember that, boy. Any
time you deliver a verdict, be sure you're in such a position you won't
have to reverse yourself. I'm going to finish logging in that district
this fall, so if I'm to keep the mill running, I'll have to establish my
camps on the San Hedrin watershed right away.”

Bryce pondered. “But isn't it cheaper to give him his price on Squaw
Creek timber than go logging in the San Hedrin and have to build twenty
miles of logging railroad to get your logs to the mill?”

“It would be, son, if I HAD to build the railroad. Fortunately, I do
not. I'll just shoot the logs down the hillside to the San Hedrin River
and drive them down the stream to a log-boom on tidewater.”

“But there isn't enough water in the San Hedrin to float a redwood log,
Dad. I've fished there, and I know.”

“Quite true--in the summer and fall. But when the winter freshets come
on and the snow begins to melt in the spring up in the Yola Bolas, where
the San Hedrin has its source, we'll have plenty of water for driving
the river. Once we get the logs down to tide-water, we'll raft them and
tow them up to the mill. So you see, Bryce, we won't be bothered with
the expense of maintaining a logging railroad, as at present.”

Bryce looked at his father admiringly. “I guess Dan Keyes is right,
Dad,” he said. “Dan says you're crazy--like a fox. Now I know why you've
been picking up claims in the San Hedrin watershed.”

“No, you don't, Bryce. I've never told you, but I'll tell you now the
real reason. Humboldt County has no rail connection with the outside
world, so we are forced to ship our lumber by water. But some day a
railroad will be built in from the south--from San Francisco; and when
it comes, the only route for it to travel is through our timber in the
San Hedrin Valley. I've accumulated that ten thousand acres for you,
my son, for the railroad will never be built in my day. It may come in
yours, but I have grown weary waiting for it, and now that my hand is
forced, I'm going to start logging there. It doesn't matter, son. You
will still be logging there fifty years from now. And when the railroad
people come to you for a right of way, my boy, give it to them. Don't
charge them a cent. It has always been my policy to encourage the
development of this county, and I want you to be a forward-looking,
public-spirited citizen. That's why I'm sending you East to college.
You've been born and raised in this town, and you must see more of the
world. You mustn't be narrow or provincial, because I'm saving up for
you, my son, a great many responsibilities, and I want to educate you to
meet them bravely and sensibly.”

He paused, regarding the boy gravely and tenderly. “Bryce, lad,” he said
presently, “do you ever wonder why I work so hard and barely manage to
spare the time to go camping with you in vacation time?”

“Why don't you take it easy, Dad? You do work awfully hard, and I have
wondered about it.”

“I have to work hard, my son, because I started something a long time
ago, when work was fun. And now I can't let go. I employ too many people
who are dependent on me for their bread and butter. When they plan a
marriage or the building of a home or the purchase of a cottage organ,
they have to figure me in on the proposition. I didn't have a name for
the part I played in these people's lives until the other night when I
was helping you with your algebra. I'm the unknown quantity.”

“Oh, no,” Bryce protested. “You're the known quantity.”

Cardigan smiled. “Well, maybe I am,” he admitted. “I've always tried to
be. And if I have succeeded, then you're the unknown quantity, Bryce,
because some day you'll have to take my place; they will have to depend
upon you when I am gone. Listen to me, son. You're only a boy, and you
can't understand everything I tell you now, but I want you to remember
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:” [graphic]

Colonel Pennington took from his pocket the rough sketch-map of the
region which we have reproduced herewith 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


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 half of the cut of the preceding year to
the boom on tidewater at the mouth of the river.

“Unless the Lord'll gi' us a lot more water in the river,” the
woods-boss McTavish complained, “I dinna see how I'm to keep the mill
runnin'.” He was taking John Cardigan up the riverbank and explaining
the situation. “The heavy butt-logs hae sunk to the bottom,” he
continued. “Wie a normal head o' water, the lads'll move them, but
wi' the wee drappie we have the noo--” He threw up his hamlike hands
despairingly.

Three days later a cloud-burst filled the river to the brim; it came
at night and swept the river clean of Cardigan's clear logs, An army
of Juggernauts, they swept down on the boiling torrent to tidewater,
reaching the bay shortly after the tide had commenced to ebb.

Now, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a log-boom is
a chaplet of a small logs, linked end to end by means of short chains;
hence when the vanguard of logs on the lip of that flood reached the
log-boom, the impetus of the charge was too great to be resisted.
Straight through the weakest link in this boom the huge saw-logs crashed
and out over Humboldt Bar to the broad Pacific. With the ebb tide some
of them came back, while others, caught in cross-currents, bobbed about
the Bay all night and finally beached at widely scattered points. Out
of the fifteen million feet of logs less than three million feet were
salvaged, and this task in itself was an expensive operation.

John Cardigan received the news calmly. “Thank God we don't have a
cloud-burst more than once in ten years,” he remarked to his manager.
“However, that is often enough, considering the high cost of this one.
Those logs were worth eight dollars a thousand feet, board measure,
in the millpond, and I suppose we've lost a hundred thousand dollars'
worth.”

He turned from the manager and walked away through the drying yard, up
the main street of Sequoia, and on into the second-growth timber at the
edge of the town. Presently he emerged on the old, decaying skid-road
and continued on through his logged-over lands, across the little divide
and down into the quarter-section of green timber he had told McTavish
not to cut. Once in the Valley of the Giants, he followed a well-worn
foot-path to the little amphitheatre, and where the sunlight filtered
through like a halo and fell on a plain little white marble monument, he
paused and sat down on the now almost decayed sugar-pine windfall.

“I've come for a little comfort, sweetheart,” he murmured to her who
slept beneath the stone. Then he leaned back against a redwood tree,
removed his hat, and closed his eyes, holding his great gray head the
while a little to one side in a listening attitude. Long he sat there,
a great, time-bitten devotee at the shrine of his comfort; and presently
the harried look left his strong, kind face and was replaced by a little
prescient smile--the sort of smile worn by one who through bitter years
has sought something very, very precious and has at length discovered
it.




CHAPTER VI


It was on the day that John Cardigan received the telegram from Bryce
saying that, following four years at Princeton and two years of
travel abroad, he was returning to Sequoia to take over his redwood
heritage--that he discovered that a stranger and not the flesh of his
flesh and the blood of his blood was to reap the reward of his fifty
years of endeavour. Small wonder, then, that he laid his leonine head
upon his desk and wept, silently, as the aged and helpless weep.

For a long time he sat there lethargic with misery. Eventually he roused
himself, reached for the desk telephone, and pressed a button on the
office exchange-station. His manager, one Thomas Sinclair, answered.
“Thomas,” he said calmly, “you know, of course, that Bryce is coming
home. Tell George to take the big car and go over to Red Bluff for him.”

“I'll attend to it, Mr Cardigan. Anything else?”

“Yes, but I'll wait until Bryce gets home.”

George Sea Otter, son of Bryce Cardigan's old half-breed nurse, was
a person in whose nature struggled the white man's predilection for
advertisement and civic pride and the red man's instinct for
adornment. For three years he had been old man Cardigan's chauffeur and
man-of-all-work about the latter's old-fashioned home, and in the former
capacity he drove John Cardigan's single evidence of extravagance--a
Napier car, which was very justly regarded by George Sea Otter as the
king of automobiles, since it was the only imported car in the county.
Upon receipt of orders, therefore, from Sinclair, to drive the Napier
over to Red Bluff and meet his future boss and one-time playfellow,
George Sea Otter arrayed himself in a pair of new black corduroy
trousers, yellow button shoes, a blue woollen shirt with a large scarlet
silk handkerchief tied around the neck, a pair of beaded buckskin gloves
with fringe dependent from the gauntlet, and a broad white beaver hat
with a rattlesnake-skin band. Across the windshield of the Napier he
fastened an orange-coloured pennant bearing in bright green letters the
legend: MY CITY--SEQUOIA. As a safety-first precaution against man and
beast en route, he buckled a gun-scabbard to the spare tires on the
running-board and slipped a rifle into the scabbard within quick and
easy reach of his hand; and arrayed thus, George descended upon Red
Bluff at the helm of the king of automobiles.

When the overland train coasted into Red Bluff and slid to a grinding
halt, Bryce Cardigan saw that the Highest Living Authority had descended
from the train also. He had elected to designate her thus in the absence
of any information anent her Christian and family names, and for the
further reason that quite obviously she was a very superior person. He
had a vague suspicion that she was the kind of girl in whose presence
a man always feels that he must appear on parade--one of those alert,
highly intelligent young women so extremely apt to reduce an ordinarily
intelligent young man to a state of gibbering idiocy or stupid
immobility.

Bryce had travelled in the same car with the Highest Living Authority
from Chicago and had made up his mind by observation that with a little
encouragement she could be induced to mount a soap-box and make a speech
about Women's Rights; that when her native State should be granted
equal suffrage she would run for office or manage somebody's political
campaign; that she could drive an automobile and had probably been
arrested for speeding; that she could go around any golf links in the
country in ninety and had read Maeterlinck and enjoyed it.

Bryce could see that she was the little daughter of some large rich man.
The sparsity of jewellery and the rich simplicity of her attire proved
that, and moreover she was accompanied by a French maid to whom she
spoke French in a manner which testified that before acquiring the
French maid she had been in the custody of a French nurse. She possessed
poise. For the rest, she had wonderful jet-black hair, violet eyes, and
milk-white skin, a correct nose but a somewhat generous mouth, Bryce
guessed she was twenty or twenty-one years old and that she had a temper
susceptible of being aroused. On the whole, she was rather wonderful
but not dazzling--at least, not to Bryce Cardigan. He told himself she
merely interested him as a type--whatever he meant by that.

The fact that this remarkable young woman had also left the train at Red
Bluff further interested him, for he knew Red Bluff and while giving due
credit to the many lovely damsels of that ambitious little city, Bryce
had a suspicion that no former Red Bluff girl would dare to invade the
old home town with a French maid. He noted, as further evidence of the
correctness of his assumption, that the youthful baggage-smasher at the
station failed to recognize her and was evidently dazzled when, followed
by the maid struggling with two suit-cases, she approached him and in
pure though alien English (the Italian A predominated) inquired the name
and location of the best hotel and the hour and point of departure of
the automobile stage for San Hedrin. The youth had answered her first
question and was about to answer the second when George Sea Otter, in
all his barbaric splendour, came pussy-footing around the corner of the
station in old man Cardigan's regal touring-car.

The Highest Living Authority, following the gaze of the baggage-smasher,
turned and beheld George Sea Otter. Beyond a doubt he was of the West
westward. She had heard that California stage-drivers were picturesque
fellows, and in all probability the displacing of the old Concord coach
of the movie-thriller in favour of the motor-stage had not disturbed the
idiosyncrasies of the drivers in their choice of raiment. She noted
the rifle-stock projecting from the scabbard, and a vision of a stage
hold-up flashed across her mind. Ah, yes, of course--the express
messenger's weapon, no doubt! And further to clinch her instant
assumption that here was the Sequoia motor-stage, there was the pennant
adorning the wind-shield!

Dismissing the baggage-smasher with a gracious smile, the Highest
Living Authority approached George Sea Otter, noting, the while, further
evidence that this car was a public conveyance, for the young man who
had been her fellow-passenger was heading toward the automobile also.
She heard him say:

“Hello, George, you radiant red rascal! I'm mighty glad to see you, boy.
Shake!”

They shook, George Sea Otter's dark eyes and white teeth flashing
pleasurably. Bryce tossed his bag into the tonneau; the half-breed
opened the front door; and the young master had his foot on the
running-board and was about to enter the car when a soft voice spoke at
his elbow:

“Driver, this is the stage for Sequoia, is it not?”

George Sea Otter could scarcely credit his auditory nerves. “This car?”
 he demanded bluntly, “this--the Sequoia stage! Take a look, lady. This
here's a Napier imported English automobile. It's a private car and
belongs to my boss here.”

“I'm so sorry I slandered your car,” she replied demurely. “I observed
the pennant on the wind-shield, and I thought--”

Bryce Cardigan turned and lifted his hat.

“Quite naturally, you thought it was the Sequoia stage,” he said to
her. He turned a smoldering glance upon George Sea Otter. “George,” he
declared ominously, but with a sly wink that drew the sting from his
words, “if you're anxious to hold down your job the next time a lady
speaks to you and asks you a simple question, you answer yes or no and
refrain from sarcastic remarks. Don't let your enthusiasm for this car
run away with you.” He faced the girl again. “Was it your intention to
go out to Sequoia on the next trip of the stage?”

She nodded.

“That means you will have to wait here three days until the stage
returns from Sequoia,” Bryce replied.

“I realized, of course, that we would arrive here too late to connect
with the stage if it maintained the customary schedule for its
departure,” she explained, “but it didn't occur to me that the
stage-driver wouldn't wait until our train arrived. I had an idea his
schedule was rather elastic.”

“Stage-drivers have no imagination, to speak of,” Bryce assured her. To
himself he remarked: “She's used to having people wait on her.”

A shade of annoyance passed over the classic features of the Highest
Living Authority. “Oh, dear,” she complained, “how fearfully awkward!
Now I shall have to take the next train to San Francisco and book
passage on the steamer to Sequoia--and Marcelle is such a poor sailor.
Oh, dear!”

Bryce had an inspiration and hastened to reveal it.

“We are about to start for Sequoia now, although the lateness of our
start will compel us to put up tonight at the rest-house on the south
fork of Trinity River and continue the journey in the morning. However,
this rest-house is eminently respectable and the food and accommodations
are extraordinarily good for mountains; so, if an invitation to occupy
the tonneau of my car will not be construed as an impertinence, coming
as it does from a total stranger, you are at liberty to regard this
car as to all intents and purposes the public conveyance which so
scandalously declined to wait for you this morning.”

She looked at him searchingly for a brief instant: then with a
peculiarly winning smile and a graceful inclination of her head she
thanked him and accepted his hospitality--thus:

“Why, certainly not! You are very kind, and I shall be eternally
grateful.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence. It makes me feel that I have
your permission to introduce myself. My name is Bryce Cardigan, and I
live in Sequoia when I'm at home.”

“Of Cardigan's Redwoods?” she questioned. He nodded. “I've heard of you,
I think,” she continued. “I am Shirley Sumner.”

“You do not live in Sequoia.”

“No, but I'm going to hereafter. I was there about ten years ago.”

He grinned and thrust out a great hand which she surveyed gravely for a
minute before inserting hers in it. “I wonder,” he said, “if it is to be
my duty to give you a ride every time you come to Sequoia? The last time
you were there you wheedled me into giving you a ride on my pony, an
animal known as Midget. Do you, by any chance, recall that incident?”

She looked up at him wonderingly. “Why--why you're the boy with the
beautiful auburn hair,” she declared. He lifted his hat and revealed his
thick thatch in all its glory. “I'm not so sensitive about it now,” he
explained. “When we first met, reference to my hair was apt to rile
me.” He shook her little hand with cordial good-nature. “What a pity it
wasn't possible for us to renew acquaintance on the train, Miss Sumner!”

“Better late than never, Mr. Cardigan, considering the predicament in
which you found me. What became of Midget?”

“Midget, I regret to state, made a little pig of herself one day and
died of acute indigestion. She ate half a sack of carrots, and knowing
full well that she was eating forbidden fruit, she bolted them, and for
her failure to Fletcherize--but speaking of Fletcherizing, did you dine
aboard the train?”

She nodded. “So did I, Miss Sumner; hence I take it that you are quite
ready to start.”

“Quite, Mr. Cardigan.”

“Then we'll drift. George, suppose you pile Miss Sumner's hand-baggage
in the tonneau and then pile in there yourself and keep Marcelle
company. I'll drive; and you can sit up in front with me, Miss Sumner,
snug behind the wind-shield where you'll not be blown about.”

“I'm sure this is going to be a far pleasanter journey than the stage
could possibly have afforded,” she said graciously as Bryce slipped in
beside her and took the wheel.

“You are very kind to share the pleasure with me, Miss Sumner.” He went
through his gears, and the car glided away on its journey. “By the way,”
 he said suddenly as he turned west toward the distant blue mountains
of Trinity County, “how did you happen to connect me with Cardigan's
redwoods?”

“I've heard my uncle, Colonel Seth Pennington, speak of them.”

“Colonel Seth Pennington means nothing in my young life. I never heard
of him before; so I dare say he's a newcomer in our country. I've been
away six years,” he added in explanation.

“We're from Michigan. Uncle was formerly in the lumber business there,
but he's logged out now.”

“I see. So he came West, I suppose, and bought a lot of redwood timber
cheap from some old croaker who never could see any future to the
redwood lumber industry. Personally, I don't think he could have made
a better investment. I hope I shall have the pleasure of making his
acquaintance when I deliver you to him. Perhaps you may be a neighbour
of mine. Hope so.”

At this juncture George Sea Otter, who had been an interested listener
to the conversation, essayed a grunt from the rear seat. Instantly, to
Shirley Sumner's vast surprise, her host grunted also; whereupon George
Sea Otter broke into a series of grunts and guttural exclamations which
evidently appeared quite intelligible to her host, for he slowed down
to five miles an hour and cocked one ear to the rear; apparently he
was profoundly interested in whatever information his henchman had to
impart. When George Sea Otter finished his harangue, Bryce nodded and
once more gave his attention to tossing the miles behind him.

“What language was that?” Shirley Sumner inquired, consumed with
curiosity.

“Digger Indian,” he replied. “George's mother was my nurse, and he and I
grew up together. So I can't very well help speaking the language of the
tribe.”

They chattered volubly on many subjects for the first twenty miles; then
the road narrowed and commenced to climb steadily, and thereafter Bryce
gave all of his attention to the car, for a deviation of a foot from the
wheel-rut on the outside of the road would have sent them hurtling over
the grade into the deep-timbered canons below. Their course led through
a rugged wilderness, widely diversified and transcendently beautiful,
and the girl was rather glad of the opportunity to enjoy it in silence.
Also by reason of the fact that Bryce's gaze never wavered from the
road immediately in front of the car, she had a chance to appraise
him critically while pretending to look past him to the tumbled,
snow-covered ranges to their right.

She saw a big, supple, powerful man of twenty-five or six, with the
bearing and general demeanour of one many years his elder. His rich,
dark auburn hair was wavy, and a curling lock of it had escaped from the
band of his cap at the temple; his eyes were brown to match his hair and
were the striking feature of a strong, rugged countenance, for they were
spaced at that eminently proper interval which proclaims an honest man.
His nose was high, of medium thickness and just a trifle long--the
nose of a thinker. His ears were large, with full lobes--the ears of a
generous man. The mouth, full-lipped but firm, the heavy jaw and square
chin, the great hands (most amazingly free from freckles) denoted the
man who would not avoid a fight worth while. Indeed, while the girl was
looking covertly at him, she saw his jaw set and a sudden, fierce light
leap up in his eyes, which at first sight had seemed to her rather
quizzical. Subconsciously he lifted one hand from the wheel and clenched
it; he wagged his head a very little bit; consequently she knew his
thoughts were far away, and for some reason, not quite clear to her, she
would have preferred that they weren't. As a usual thing, young men
did not go wool-gathering in her presence; so she sought to divert his
thoughts to present company.

“What a perfectly glorious country!” she exclaimed. “Can't we stop for
just a minute to appreciate it?”

“Yes,” he replied abstractedly as he descended from the car and sat at
her feet while she drank in the beauty of the scene, “it's a he country;
I love it, and I'm glad to get back to it.”

Upon their arrival at the rest-house, however, Bryce cheered up, and
during dinner was very attentive and mildly amusing, although Shirley's
keen wits assured her that this was merely a clever pose and sustained
with difficulty. She was confirmed in this assumption when, after
sitting with him a little on the porch after dinner, she complained of
being weary and bade him good-night. She had scarcely left him when he
called:

“George!”

The half-breed slid out of the darkness and sat down beside him. A
moment later, through the open window of her room just above the porch
where Bryce and George Sea Otter sat, Shirley heard the former say:

“George, when did you first notice that my father's sight was beginning
to fail?”

“About two years ago, Bryce.”

“What made you notice it?”

“He began to walk with his hands held out in front of him, and sometimes
he lifted his feet too high.”

“Can he see at all now, George?”

“Oh, yes, a little bit--enough to make his way to the office and back.”

“Poor old governor! George, until you told me this afternoon, I hadn't
heard a word about it. If I had, I never would have taken that two-year
jaunt around the world.”

George Sea Otter grunted. “That's what your father said, too. So he
wouldn't tell you, and he ordered everybody else to keep quiet about it.
Myself--well, I didn't want you to go home and not know it until you met
him.”

“That was mighty kind and considerate of you, George. And you say this
man Colonel Pennington and my father have been having trouble?”

“Yes--” Here George Sea Otter gracefully unburdened himself of a fervent
curse directed at Shirley's avuncular relative; whereupon that young
lady promptly left the window and heard no more.

They were on the road again by eight o'clock next morning, and just as
Cardigan's mill was blowing the six o'clock whistle, Bryce stopped the
car at the head of the street leading down to the water-front. “I'll let
you drive now, George,” he informed the silent Sea Otter. He turned to
Shirley Sumner. “I'm going to leave you now,” he said. “Thank you for
riding over from Red Bluff with me. My father never leaves the office
until the whistle blows, and so I'm going to hurry down to that little
building you see at the end of the street and surprise him.”

He stepped out on the running-board, stood there a moment, and extended
his hand. Shirley had commenced a due and formal expression of her
gratitude for having been delivered safely in Sequoia, when George Sea
Otter spoke:

“Here comes John Cardigan,” he said.

“Drive Miss Sumner around to Colonel Pennington's house,” Bryce ordered,
and even while he held Shirley's hand, he turned to catch the first
glimpse of his father. Shirley followed his glance and saw a tall,
powerfully built old man coming down the street with his hands thrust
a little in front of him, as if for protection from some invisible
assailant.

“Oh, my poor old father!” she heard Bryce Cardigan murmur. “My dear old
pal! And I've let him grope in the dark for two years!”

He released her hand and leaped from the car. “Dad!” he called. “It is
I--Bryce. I've come home to you at last.”

The slightly bent figure of John Cardigan straightened with a jerk; he
held out his arms, trembling with eagerness, and as the car continued on
to the Pennington house Shirley looked back and saw Bryce folded in his
father's embrace. She did not, however, hear the heart-cry with which
the beaten old man welcomed his boy.

“Sonny, sonny--oh, I'm so glad you're back. I've missed you. Bryce, I'm
whipped--I've lost your heritage. Oh, son! I'm old--I can't fight
any more. I'm blind--I can't see my enemies. I've lost your redwood
trees--even your mother's Valley of the Giants.”

And he commenced to weep for the third time in fifty years. And when the
aged and helpless weep, nothing is more terrible. Bryce Cardigan said
no word, but held his father close to his great heart and laid his cheek
gently against the old man's, tenderly as a woman might. And presently,
from that silent communion of spirit, each drew strength and comfort. As
the shadows fell in John Cardigan's town, they went home to the house on
the hill.




CHAPTER VII


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!”




CHAPTER VII


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.




CHAPTER IX


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.




CHAPTER X


For many years there had been installed in Cardigan's mill a clock set
to United States observatory time and corrected hourly by the telegraph
company. It was the only clock of its kind in Sequoia; hence folk set
their watches by it, or rather by the whistle on Cardigan's mill. With
a due appreciation of the important function of this clock toward his
fellow-citizens, old Zeb Curry, the chief engineer and a stickler for
being on time, was most meticulous in his whistle-blowing. With a sage
and prophetic eye fixed upon the face of the clock, and a particularly
greasy hand grasping the whistle-cord, Zeb would wait until the clock
registered exactly six-fifty-nine and a half--whereupon the seven
o'clock whistle would commence blowing, to cease instantly upon the
stroke of the hour. It was old Zeb's pride and boast that with a single
exception, during the sixteen years the clock had been in service, no
man could say that Zeb had been more than a second late or early with
his whistle-blowing. That exception occurred when Bryce Cardigan,
invading the engine room while Zeb was at luncheon, looped the
whistle-cord until the end dangled seven feet above ground. As a
consequence Zeb, who was a short, fat little man, was forced to leap
at it several times before success crowned his efforts and the whistle
blew. Thereafter for the remainder of the day his reason tottered on its
throne, due to the fact that Bryce induced every mill employee to call
upon the engineer and remind him that he must be growing old, since he
was no longer dependable!

On the morning following Bryce Cardigan's return to Sequoia, Zeb Curry,
as per custom, started his engine at six-fifty-eight. That gave the huge
bandsaws two minutes in which to attain their proper speed and afforded
Dan Kenyon, the head sawyer, ample time to run his steam log-carriage
out to the end of the track; for Daniel, too, was a reliable man in the
matter of starting his daily uproar on time.

At precisely six fifty-nine and a half, therefore, the engineer's hand
closed over the handle of the whistle-cord, and Dan Kenyon, standing
on the steam-carriage with his hand on the lever, took a thirty-second
squint through a rather grimy window that gave upon the drying-yard and
the mill-office at the head of it.

The whistle ceased blowing, but still Dan Kenyon stood at his post,
oblivious of the hungry saws. Ten seconds passed; then Zeb Curry,
immeasurably scandalized at Daniel's tardiness, tooted the whistle
sharply twice; whereupon Dan woke up, threw over the lever, and walked
his log up to the saw.

For the next five hours Zeb Curry had no opportunity to discuss the
matter with the head sawyer. After blowing the twelve o'clock whistle,
however, he hurried over to the dining-hall, where the mill hands
already lined the benches, shovelling food into their mouths as only a
lumberman or a miner can. Dan Kenyon sat at the head of the table in
the place of honour sacred to the head sawyer, and when his mouth would
permit of some activity other than mastication, Zeb Curry caught his
eye.

“Hey, you, Dan Kenyon,” he shouted across the table, “what happened
to you this mornin'? It was sixteen seconds between the tail end o' my
whistle an' the front end o' your whinin'. First thing you know, you'll
be gettin' so slack an' careless-like some other man'll be ridin' that
log-carriage o' yourn.”

“I was struck dumb,” Dan Kenyon replied. “I just stood there like one
o' these here graven images. Last night on my way home from work I heerd
the young feller was back--he got in just as we was knockin' off for the
day; an' this mornin' just as you cut loose, Zeb, I'll be danged if he
didn't show up in front o' the office door, fumblin' for the keyhole.
Yes, sirree! That boy gets in at six o'clock last night an' turns to on
his paw's job when the whistle blows this mornin' at seven.”

“You mean young Bryce Cardigan?” Zeb queried incredulously.

“I shore do.”

“'Tain't possible,” Zeb declared. “You seen a new bookkeeper, mebbe, but
you didn't see Bryce. He aint no such hog for labour as his daddy before
him, I'm tellin' you. Not that there's a lazy bone in his body, for
there ain't, but because that there boy's got too much sense to come
bollin' down to work at seven o'clock the very first mornin' he's back
from Yurrup.”

“I'm layin' you ten to one I seen him,” Dan replied defiantly, “an'
what's more, I'll bet a good cigar--a ten-center straight--the boy don't
leave till six o'clock to-night.”

“You're on,” answered the chief engineer. “Them's lumberjack hours, man.
From seven till six means work--an' only fools an' hosses keeps them
hours.”

The head sawyer leaned across the table and pounded with the handle of
his knife until he had the attention of all present. “I'm a-goin' to
tell you young fellers somethin',” he announced. “Ever since the old
boss got so he couldn't look after his business with his own eyes,
things has been goin' to blazes round this sawmill, but they ain't
a-goin' no more. How do I know? Well, I'll tell you. All this forenoon I
kept my eye on the office door--I can see it through a mill winder; an'
I'm tellin' you the old boss didn't show up till ten o'clock, which the
old man ain't never been a ten o'clock business man at no time. Don't
that prove the boy's took his place?”

Confused murmurs of affirmation and negation ran up and down the long
table. Dan tapped with his knife again. “You hear me,” he warned.
“Thirty year I've been ridin' John Cardigan's log-carriages; thirty
year I've been gettin' everythin' out of a log it's possible to git out,
which is more'n you fellers at the trimmers can git out of a board after
I've sawed it off the cant. There's a lot o' you young fellers that've
been takin' John Cardigan's money under false pretenses, so if I was you
I'd keep both eyes on my job hereafter. For a year I've been claimin'
that good No. 2 stock has been chucked into the slab-fire as refuge
lumber.” (Dan meant refuse lumber.) “But it won't be done no more. The
raftsman tells me he seen Bryce down at the end o' the conveyin' belt
givin' that refuge the once-over--so step easy.”

“What does young Cardigan know about runnin' a sawmill?” a planer-man
demanded bluntly. “They tell me he's been away to college an' travellin'
the past six years.”

“Wa-ll,” drawled the head sawyer, “you git to talkin' with him some day
an' see how much he knows about runnin' a sawmill. What he knows will
surprise you. Yes, indeed, you'll find he knows considerable. He's
picked up loose shingles around the yard an' bundled 'em in vacation
times, an' I want to see the shingle-weaver that can teach him some
tricks. Also, I've had him come up on the steam carriage more'n once an'
saw up logs, while at times I've seen him put in a week or two on the
sortin' table. In a pinch, with a lot o' vessels loadin' here at the
dock an' the skippers raisin' Cain because they wasn't gettin' their
cargo fast enough, I've seen him work nights an' Sundays tallyin' with
the best o' them. Believe me that boy can grade lumber.”

“An' I'll tell you somethin' else,” Zeb Curry cut in. “If the new boss
ever tells you to do a thing his way, you do it an' don't argue none as
to whether he knows more about it than you do or not.”

“A whole lot o' dagos an' bohunks that's come into the woods since the
blue-noses an' canucks an' wild Irish went out had better keep your eyes
open,” Dan Kenyon warned sagely. “There ain't none o' you any better'n
you ought to be, an' things have been pretty durned slack around
Cardigan's mill since the old man went blind, but--you watch out.
There's a change due. Bryce Cardigan is his father's son. He'll do
things.”

“Which he's big enough to throw a bear uphill by the tail,” Zeb Curry
added, “an' you fellers all know how much tail a bear has.”

“Every mornin' for thirty years, 'ceptin' when we was shut down for
repairs,” Dan continued, “I've looked through that winder, when John
Cardigan wasn't away from Sequoia, to watch him git to his office on
time. He's there when the whistle blows, clear up to the time his eyes
go back on him, an' then he arrives late once or twice on account o'
havin' to go careful. This mornin', for the first time in fifty year,
he stays in bed; but--his son has the key in the office door when the
whistle blows, an'--”

Dan Kenyon paused abruptly; the hum of conversation ceased, and silence
fell upon the room as Bryce Cardigan strolled in the door, nodded to the
men, and slid in on the bench to a seat beside the head sawyer.

“Hello, Dan--hello, Zeb,” he said and shook hands with each. “I'm mighty
glad to see you both again. Hello, everybody. I'm the new boss, so I
suppose I'd better introduce myself--there are so many new faces here.
I'm Bryce Cardigan.”

“Yes,” Zeb Curry volunteered, “an' he's like his daddy. He ain't ashamed
to work with his men, an' he ain't ashamed to eat with his men, nuther.
Glad you're back with us again, boy--mighty glad. Dan, here, he's
gittin' slacker'n an old squaw with his work an' needs somebody to jerk
him up, while the rest o' these here--”

“I noticed that about Dan,” Bryce interrupted craftily. “He's slowing
up, Zeb. He must have been fifteen seconds late this morning--or
perhaps,” he added “you were fifteen seconds earlier than the clock.”

Dan grinned, and Bryce went on seriously: “I'm afraid you're getting too
old to ride the log-carriage, Dan. You've been at it a long time; so,
with the utmost good will in the world toward you, you're fired. I might
as well tell you now. You know me, Dan. I always did dislike beating
about the bush.”

“Fired!” Dan Kenyon's eyes popped with amazement and horror.
“Fired--after thirty years!” he croaked.

“Fired!” There was unmistakable finality in Bryce's tones. “You're hired
again, however, at a higher salary, as mill-superintendent. You can get
away with that job, can't you, Dan? In fact,” he added without waiting
for the overjoyed Dan to answer him, “you've got to get away with it,
because I discharged the mill-superintendent I found on the job when I
got down here this morning. He's been letting too many profits go into
the slab-fire. In fact, the entire plant has gone to glory. Fire-hose
old and rotten--couldn't stand a hundred-pound pressure; fire-buckets
and water-barrels empty, axes not in their proper places,
fire-extinguishers filled with stale chemical--why, the smallest kind
of a fire here would get beyond our control with that man on the job.
Besides, he's changed the grading-rules. I found the men putting clear
boards with hard-grained streaks in them in with the No. 1 clear. The
customer may not kick at a small percentage of No. 2 in his No. 1 but
it's only fair to give it to him at two dollars a thousand less.”

“Well,” purred Zeb Curry, “they don't grade lumber as strict nowadays as
they used to before you went away. Colonel Pennington says we're a lot
o' back numbers out this way an' too generous with our grades.
First thing he did was to call a meetin' of all the Humboldt lumber
manufacturers an' organize 'em into an association. Then he had the
gradin'-rules changed. The retailers hollered for a while, but bimeby
they got used to it.”

“Did my father join that association?” Bryce demanded quickly.

“Yes. He told Pennington he wasn't goin' to be no obstructionist in the
trade, but he did kick like a bay steer on them new gradin'-rules an'
refused to conform to 'em. Said he was too old an' had been too long in
business to start gougin' his customers at his time o' life. So he got
out o' the association.”

“Bully for John Cardigan!” Bryce declared. “I suppose we could make a
little more money by cheapening our grade, but the quality of our
lumber is so well known that it sells itself and saves us the expense of
maintaining a corps of salesmen.”

“From what I hear tell o' the Colonel,” Dan observed sagely, “the least
he ever wants is a hundred and fifty per cent. the best of it.”

“Yes,” old Zeb observed gravely, “an' so fur as I can see, he ain't none
too perticular how he gets it.” He helped himself to a toothpick, and
followed by the head sawyer, abruptly left the room--after the fashion
of sawmill men and woodsmen, who eat as much as they can as quickly as
they can and eventually die of old age rather than indigestion. Bryce
ate his noonday meal in more leisurely fashion and at its conclusion
stepped into the kitchen.

“Where do you live, cook?” he demanded of that functionary; and upon
being informed, he retired to the office and called up the Sequoia
meat-market.

“Bryce Cardigan speaking,” he informed the butcher. “Do you ever buy any
pigs from our mill cook?”

“Not any more,” the butcher answered. “He stung me once with a dozen
fine shoats. They looked great, but after I had slaughtered them and had
them dressed, they turned out to be swill-fed hogs--swill and alfalfa.”

“Thank you.” Bryce hung up. “I knew that cook was wasteful,” he
declared, turning to his father's old manager, one Thomas Sinclair.
“He wastes food in order to take the swill home to his hogs--and nobody
watches him. Things have certainly gone to the devil,” he continued.

“No fault of mine,” Sinclair protested. “I've never paid any attention
to matters outside the office. Your father looked after everything
else.”

Bryce looked at Sinclair. The latter was a thin, spare, nervous man
in the late fifties, and though generally credited with being John
Cardigan's manager, Bryce knew that Sinclair was in reality little more
than a glorified bookkeeper--and a very excellent bookkeeper indeed.
Bryce realized that in the colossal task that confronted him he could
expect no real help from Sinclair.

“Yes,” he replied, “my father looked after everything else--while he
could.”

“Oh, you'll soon get the business straightened out and running smoothly
again,” Sinclair declared confidently.

“Well, I'm glad I started on the job to-day, rather than next Monday, as
I planned to do last night.”

He stepped to the window and looked out. At the mill-dock a big steam
schooner and a wind-jammer lay; in the lee of the piles of lumber,
sailors and long-shoremen, tallymen and timekeeper lounged, enjoying the
brief period of the noon hour still theirs before the driving mates
of the lumber-vessels should turn them to on the job once more. To his
right and left stretched the drying yard, gangway on gangway formed by
the serried rows of lumber-piles, the hoop-horses placidly feeding from
their nosebags while the strong-armed fellows who piled the lumber sat
about in little groups conversing with the mill-hands.

As Bryce looked, a puff of white steam appeared over the roof of the
old sawmill, and the one o'clock whistle blew. Instantly that scene of
indolence and ease turned to one of activity. The mill-hands lounging in
the gangways scurried for their stations in the mill; men climbed to the
tops of the lumber-piles, while other men passed boards and scantlings
up to them; the donkey-engines aboard the vessels rattled; the
cargo-gaffs of the steam schooner swung outward, and a moment later two
great sling-loads of newly sawed lumber rose in the air, swung inward,
and descended to the steamer's decks.

All about Bryce were scenes of activity, of human endeavour; and to
him in that moment came the thought: “My father brought all this to
pass--and now the task of continuing it is mine! All those men who earn
a living in Cardigan's mill and on Cardigan's dock--those sailors who
sail the ships that carry Cardigan's lumber into the distant marts of
men--are dependent upon me; and my father used to tell me not to fail
them. Must my father have wrought all this in vain? And must I stand by
and see all this go to satisfy the overwhelming ambition of a stranger?”
 His big hands clenched. “No!” he growled savagely.

“If I stick around this office a minute longer, I'll go crazy,” Bryce
snarled then. “Give me your last five annual statements, Mr. Sinclair,
please.”

The old servitor brought forth the documents in question. Bryce stuffed
them into his pocket and left the office. Three quarters of an hour
later he entered the little amphitheatre in the Valley of the Giants and
paused with an expression of dismay. One of the giants had fallen
and lay stretched across the little clearing. In its descent it had
demolished the little white stone over his mother's grave and had driven
the fragments of the stone deep into the earth.

The tremendous brown butt quite ruined the appearance of the
amphitheatre by reason of the fact that it constituted a barrier some
fifteen feet high and of equal thickness athwart the centre of the
clearing, with fully three quarters of the length of the tree lost to
sight where the fallen monarch had wedged between its more fortunate
fellows. The fact that the tree was down, however, was secondary to the
fact that neither wind nor lightning had brought it low, but rather the
impious hand of man; for the great jagged stump showed all too plainly
the marks of cross-cut saw and axe; a pile of chips four feet deep
littered the ground.

For fully a minute Bryce stood dumbly gazing upon the sacrilege before
his rage and horror found vent in words. “An enemy has done this thing,”
 he cried aloud to the wood-goblins. “And over her grave!”

Presently, smothering his emotion, he walked the length of the dead
giant, and where the top tapered off to a size that would permit of his
stepping across it, he retraced his steps on the other side of the tree
until he had reached a point some fifty feet from the butt--when the
vandal's reason for felling the monster became apparent.

It was a burl tree. At the point where Bryce paused a malignant growth
had developed on the trunk of the tree, for all the world like a
tremendous wart. This was the burl, so prized for table-tops and
panelling because of the fact that the twisted, wavy, helter-skelter
grain lends to the wood an extraordinary beauty when polished. Bryee
noted that the work of removing this excrescence had been accomplished
very neatly. With a cross-cut saw the growth, perhaps ten feet in
diameter, had been neatly sliced off much as a housewife cuts slice
after slice from a loaf of bread. He guessed that these slices,
practically circular in shape, had been rolled out of the woods to some
conveyance waiting to receive them.

What Bryce could not understand, however, was the stupid brutality of
the raiders in felling the tree merely for that section of burl. By
permitting the tree to stand and merely building a staging up to the
burl, the latter could have been removed without vital injury to the
tree--whereas by destroying the tree the wretches had evidenced all too
clearly to Bryce a wanton desire to add insult to injury.

Bryce inspected the scars on the stump carefully. They were
weather-stained to such an extent that to his experienced eye it was
evident the outrage had been committed more than a year previously;
and the winter rains, not to mention the spring growth of grasses and
underbrush, had effectually destroyed all trace of the trail taken by
the vandals with their booty.

“Poor old Dad!” he murmured. “I'm glad now he has been unable to get up
here and see this. It would have broken his heart. I'll have this tree
made into fence-posts and the stump dynamited and removed this summer.
After he is operated on and gets back his sight, he will come up
here--and he must never know. Perhaps he will have forgotten how many
trees stood in this circle. And I'll fill in the hole left by the stump
and plant some manzanita there to hide the--”

He paused. Peeping out from under a chip among the litter at his feet
was the moldy corner of a white envelope. In an instant Bryce had it in
his hand. The envelope was dirty and weather-beaten, but to a certain
extent the redwood chips under which it had lain hidden had served to
protect it, and the writing on the face was still legible. The envelope
was empty and addressed to Jules Rondeau, care of the Laguna Grande
Lumber Company, Sequoia, California.

Bryce read and reread that address. “Rondeau!” he muttered. “Jules
Rondeau! I've heard that name before--ah, yes! Dad spoke of him last
night. He's Pennington's woods-boss--”

He paused. An enemy had done this thing--and in all the world John
Cardigan had but one enemy--Colonel Seth Pennington. Had Pennington sent
his woods-boss to do this dirty work out of sheer spite? Hardly. The
section of burl was gone, and this argued that the question of spite had
been purely a matter of secondary consideration.

Evidently, Bryce reasoned, someone had desired that burl redwood
greatly, and that someone had not been Jules Rondeau, since a woods-boss
would not be likely to spend five minutes of his leisure time in
consideration of the beauties of a burl table-top or panel. Hence, if
Rondeau had superintended the task of felling the tree, it must have
been at the behest of a superior; and since a woods-boss acknowledges no
superior save the creator of the pay-roll, the recipient of that stolen
burl must have been Colonel Pennington.

Suddenly he thrilled. If Jules Rondeau had stolen that burl to present
it to Colonel Pennington, his employer, then the finished article must
be in Pennington's home! And Bryce had been invited to that home for
dinner the following Thursday by the Colonel's niece.

“I'll go, after all,” he told himself. “I'll go--and I'll see what I
shall see.”

He was too wrought up now to sit calmly down in the peace and quietude
of the giants, and digest the annual reports Sinclair had given him. He
hastened back to the mill-office and sought Sinclair.

“At what hour does the logging-train leave the Laguna Grande Lumber
Company's yard for our log-landing in Township Nine?” he demanded.

“Eight a.m. and one p.m. daily, Bryce.”

“Have you any maps of the holdings of Pennington and ourselves in that
district?”

“Yes.”

“Let me have them, please. I know the topography of that district
perfectly, but I am not familiar with the holdings in and around ours.”

Sinclair gave him the maps, and Bryce retired to his father's private
office and gave himself up to a study of them.




CHAPTER XI


When Shirley Sumner descended to the breakfast room on the morning
following her arrival in Sequoia, the first glance at her uncle's
stately countenance informed her that during the night something had
occurred to irritate Colonel Seth Pennington and startle him out of
his customary bland composure. He greeted her politely but coldly, and
without even the perfunctory formality of inquiring how she had passed
the night, he came directly to the issue,

“Shirley,” he began, “did I hear you calling young Cardigan on the
telephone after dinner last night or did my ears deceive me?”

“Your ears are all right, Uncle Seth. I called Mr. Cardigan up to thank
him for the pie he sent over, and incidentally to invite him over here
to dinner on Thursday night.”

“I thought I heard you asking somebody to dinner, and as you don't know
a soul in Sequoia except young Cardigan, naturally I opined that he was
to be the object of our hospitality.”

The Colonel coughed slightly. From the manner in which he approached the
task of buttering his hot cakes Shirley knew he had something more
to say and was merely formulating a polite set of phrases in which to
express himself. She resolved to help him along.

“I dare say it's quite all right to have invited him; isn't it, Uncle
Seth?”

“Certainly, certainly, my dear. Quite all right, but er--ah, slightly
inconvenient.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry. If I had known--Perhaps some other night--”

“I am expecting other company Thursday night--unfortunately, Brayton,
the president of the Bank of Sequoia, is coming up to dine and discuss
some business affairs with me afterward; so if you don't mind, my dear,
suppose you call young Cardigan up and ask him to defer his visit until
some later date.”

“Certainly, Uncle. There is no particular reason why I should have
Mr. Cardigan on Thursday if his presence would mean the slightest
interference with your plans. What perfectly marvellous roses! How did
you succeed in growing them, Uncle Seth?”

He smiled sourly. “I didn't raise them,” he replied. “That half-breed
Indian that drives John Cardigan's car brought them around about an hour
ago, along with a card. There it is, beside your plate.”

She blushed ever so slightly. “I suppose Bryce Cardigan is vindicating
himself,” she murmured as she withdrew the card from the envelope. As
she had surmised, it was Bryce Cardigan's. Colonel Pennington was the
proprietor of a similar surmise.

“Fast work, Shirley,” he murmured banteringly. “I wonder what he'll send
you for luncheon. Some dill pickles, probably.”

She pretended to be very busy with the roses, and not to have heard
him. Her uncle's sneer was not lost on her, however; she resented it but
chose to ignore it for the present; and when at length she had finished
arranging the flowers, she changed the conversation adroitly by
questioning her relative anent the opportunities for shopping in
Sequoia. The Colonel, who could assimilate a hint quicker than most
ordinary mortals, saw that he had annoyed her, and he promptly hastened
to make amends by permitting himself to be led readily into this new
conversational channel. As soon as he could do so, however, he excused
himself on the plea of urgent business at the office, and left the room.

Shirley, left alone at the breakfast-table, picked idly at the preserved
figs the owlish butler set before her. Vaguely she wondered at her
uncle's apparent hostility to the Cardigans; she was as vaguely troubled
in the knowledge that until she should succeed in eradicating this
hostility, it must inevitably act as a bar to the further progress of
her friendship with Bryce Cardigan. And she told herself she did not
want to lose that friendship. She wasn't the least bit in love with him
albeit she realized he was rather lovable. The delight which she had
experienced in his society lay in the fact that he was absolutely
different from any other man she had met. His simplicity, his utter lack
of “swank,” his directness, his good nature, and dry sense of humour
made him shine luminously in comparison with the worldly, rather
artificial young men she had previously met--young men who said and did
only those things which time, tradition, and hallowed memory assured
them were done by the right sort of people. Shirley had a suspicion that
Bryce Cardigan could--and would--swear like a pirate should his temper
be aroused and the circumstances appear to warrant letting off steam.
Also she liked him because he was imaginative--because he saw and sensed
and properly understood without a diagram or a blueprint. And lastly,
he was a good, devoted son and was susceptible of development into
a congenial and wholly acceptable comrade to a young lady absolutely
lacking in other means of amusement.

She finished her breakfast in thoughtful silence; then she went to the
telephone and called up Bryce at his home. Mrs. Tully, all aflutter with
curiosity, was quite insistent that Shirley should leave her name and
telephone number, but failing to carry her point, consented to inform
the latter that Mr. Bryce was at the office. She gave Shirley the
telephone number.

When the girl called the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company, Bryce
answered. He recognized her voice instantly and called her name before
she had opportunity to announce her identity.

“Thank you so much for the beautiful roses, Mr. Cardigan,” she began.

“I'm glad you liked them. Nobody picks flowers out of our garden, you
know. I used to, but I'll be too busy hereafter to bother with the
garden.”

“Very well. Then I am not to expect any more roses?”

“I'm a stupid clodhopper. Of course you may. By the way, Miss Sumner,
does your uncle own a car?”

“I believe he does--a little old rattletrap which he drives himself.”

“Then I'll send George over with the Napier this afternoon. You might
care to take a spin out into the surrounding country. By the way,
Miss Sumner, you are to consider George and that car as your personal
property. I fear you're going to find Sequoia a dull place; so whenever
you wish to go for a ride, just call me up, and I'll have George report
to you.”

“But think of all the expensive gasoline and tires!”

“Oh, but you mustn't look at things from that angle after you cross the
Rocky Mountains on your way west. Moreover, mine is the only real car
in the country, and I know you like it. What are you going to do this
afternoon?”

“I don't know. I haven't thought that far ahead.”

“For some real sport I would suggest that you motor up to Laguna Grande.
That's Spanish for Big Lagoon, you know. Take a rod with you. There are
some land-locked salmon in the lagoon--that is, there used to be; and if
you hook one you'll get a thrill.”

“But I haven't any rod.”

“I'll send you over a good one.”

“But I have nobody to teach me how to use it,” she hinted daringly.

“I appreciate that compliment,” he flashed back at her, “but
unfortunately my holidays are over for a long, long time. I took my
father's place in the business this morning.”

“So soon?”

“Yes. Things have been happening while I was away. However, speaking of
fishing, George Sea Otter will prove an invaluable instructor. He is a
good boy and you may trust him implicitly. On Thursday evening you can
tell me what success you had with the salmon.”

“Oh, that reminds me, Mr. Cardigan. You can't come Thursday evening,
after all.” And she explained the reason.

“By Jove,” he replied, “I'm mighty glad you tipped me off about that.
I couldn't possibly remain at ease in the presence of a
banker-particularly one who will not lend me money.”

“Suppose you come Wednesday night instead.”

“We'll call that a bet. Thank you.”

She chuckled at his frank good humour. “Thank YOU, Mr Cardigan, for all
your kindness and thoughtfulness; and if you WILL persist in being nice
to me, you might send George Sea Otter and the car at one-thirty. I'll
be glad to avail myself of both until I can get a car of my own sent up
from San Francisco. Till Wednesday night, then. Good-bye.”

As Bryce Cardigan hung up, he heaved a slight sigh, and a parody on a
quatrain from “Lalla Rookh” ran through his mind:

I never loved a dear gazelle, To glad me with its limpid eye, But when I
learned to love it well, The gol-darned thing was sure to die!

It was difficult to get out of the habit of playing; he found himself
the possessor of a very great desire to close down the desk, call
on Shirley Sumner, and spend the remainder of the day basking in the
sunlight of her presence.




CHAPTER XII


The days passed swiftly, as they have a habit of passing after one has
discovered one's allotted task in life and has proceeded to perform
it. Following his discovery of the outrage committed on his father's
sanctuary, Bryce wasted considerable valuable time and effort in a
futile endeavour to gather some further hint of the identity of the
vandals; but despairing at last, he dismissed the matter from his mind,
resolving only that on Thursday he would go up into Pennington's woods
and interview the redoubtable Jules Rondeau. Bryce's natural inclination
was to wait upon M. Rondeau immediately, if not sooner, but the
recollection of his dinner engagement at the Pennington home warned him
to proceed cautiously; for while harbouring no apprehensions as to the
outcome of a possible clash with Rondeau, Bryce was not so optimistic as
to believe he would escape unscathed from an encounter. Experience had
impressed upon him the fact that in a rough-and-tumble battle nobody is
quite so thoroughly at home as a lumberjack; once in a clinch with
such a man, even a champion gladiator of the prize ring may well feel
apprehensive of the outcome.

Wednesday evening at five o'clock Mr. Sinclair, the manager, came
into Bryce's office with a handful of folded papers. “I have here,” he
announced in his clerky voice with a touch of solemnity to it, “a trial
balance. I have not had time to make an exact inventory; but in order
to give you some idea of the condition of your father's affairs, I have
used approximate figures and prepared a profit-and-loss account.”

Bryce reached for the papers.

“You will note the amount charged off to profit and loss under the head
of 'Pensions,'” Sinclair continued. “It amounts approximately to two
thousand dollars a month, and this sum represents payments to crippled
employees and the dependent families of men killed in the employ of the
Company.”

“In addition to these payments, your father owns thirty-two thirty-acre
farms which he has cleared from his logged-over lands. These little
farms are equipped with bungalows and outbuildings built by your father
and represent a considerable investment. As you know, these farms are
wonderfully rich, and are planted in apples and berries. Other lands
contiguous to them sell readily at two hundred dollars an acre, and so
you will see that your father has approximately two hundred thousand
dollars tied up in these little farms.”

“But he has given a life-lease at nothing a year for each farm to former
employees who have been smashed beyond the possibility of doing the hard
work of the mill and woods,” Bryce reminded the manager. “Hence you must
not figure those farms among our assets.”

“Why not?” Sinclair replied evenly. “Formal leases have never been
executed, and the tenants occupy the property at your father's
pleasure.”

“I think that will be about as far as the discussion on that point need
proceed,” Bryce replied smilingly. “My father's word has always been
considered sufficient in this country; his verbal promise to pay has
always been collateral enough for those who know him.”

“But my dear boy,” Sinclair protested, “while that sort of philanthropy
is very delightful when one can afford the luxury, it is scarcely
practical when one is teetering on the verge of financial ruin. After
all, Bryce, self-preservation is the first law of human nature, and
the sale of those farms would go a long way toward helping the Cardigan
Redwood Lumber Company out of the hole it is in at present.”

“And we're really teetering on the edge of financial ruin, eh?” Bryce
queried calmly.

“That is expressing your condition mildly. The semi-annual payment of
interest on the bonded indebtedness falls due on July first--and we're
going to default on it, sure as death and taxes. Colonel Pennington
holds a majority of our bonds, and that means prompt suit for
foreclosure.”

“Well, then, Sinclair,” Bryce retorted, carefully pigeon-holing the
documents the manager had handed him, “I'll tell you what we'll do. For
fifty years my father has played the game in this community like a sport
and a gentleman, and I'll be damned if his son will dog it now, at the
finish. I gather from your remarks that we could find ready sale for
those thirty-two little farms?”

“I am continually receiving offers for them.”

“Then they were not included in the list of properties covered by our
bonded indebtedness?”

“No, your father refused to include them. He said he would take a chance
on the financial future of himself and his boy, but not on his helpless
dependents.”

“Good old John Cardigan! Well, Sinclair, I'll not take a chance on them
either; so to-morrow morning you will instruct our attorney to draw
up formal life-leases on those farms, and to make certain they are
absolutely unassailable. Colonel Pennington may have the lands sold to
satisfy a deficiency judgment against us, but while those life-leases
from the former owner are in force, my father's proteges cannot be
dispossessed. After they are dead, of course, Pennington may take the
farms--and be damned to him.”

Sinclair stared in frank amazement at his youthful superior. “You are
throwing away two hundred thousand dollars,” he said distinctly.

“I haven't thrown it away--yet. You forget, Sinclair, that we're going
to fight first--and fight like fiends; then if we lose--well, the
tail goes with the hide, By the way, Sinclair, are any of those farms
untenanted at the present time?”

“Yes. Old Bill Tarpey, who lost his three boys in a forest fire over
on the San Hedrin, passed out last week. The Tarpey boys died in the
Cardigan employ, and so your father gave Bill the use of a farm out near
Freshwater.”

“Well, you'd better be his successor, Sinclair. You're no longer a young
man, and you've been thirty years in this office. Play safe, Sinclair,
and include yourself in one of those life-leases.”

“My dear boy--”

“Nonsense! United we stand, divided we fall, Sinclair; and let there be
no moaning of the bar when a Cardigan puts out to sea.”

Smiling, he rose from his desk, patted the bewildered Sinclair on the
latter's grizzled head, and then reached for his hat. “I'm dining out
to-night, Sinclair, and I wouldn't be a kill-joy at the feast, for a
ripe peach. Your confounded figures might make me gloomy; so we'll just
reserve discussion of them till to-morrow morning. Be a sport, Sinclair,
and for once in your life beat the six o'clock whistle. In other words,
I suggest that you go home and rest for once.”

He left Sinclair staring at him rather stupidly.




CHAPTER XIII


Colonel Pennington's imported British butler showed Bryce into the
Pennington living room at six-thirty, announcing him with due ceremony.
Shirley rose from the piano where she had been idly fingering the keys
and greeted him with every appearance of pleasure--following which, she
turned to present her visitor to Colonel Pennington, who was standing in
his favourite position with his back to the fireplace.

“Uncle Seth, this is Mr. Cardigan, who was so very nice to me the day I
landed in Red Bluff.”

The Colonel bowed. “I have to thank you, sir, for your courtesy to my
niece.” He had assumed an air of reserve, of distinct aloofness, despite
his studied politeness. Bryce stepped forward with extended hand, which
the Colonel grasped in a manner vaguely suggestive of that clammy-palmed
creation of Charles Dickens--Uriah Heep. Bryce was tempted to squeeze
the lax fingers until the Colonel should bellow with pain; but resisting
the ungenerous impulse, he replied instead:

“Your niece, Colonel, is one of those fortunate beings the world will
always clamour to serve.”

“Quite true, Mr. Cardigan. When she was quite a little girl I came under
her spell myself.”

“So did I, Colonel. Miss Sumner has doubtless told you of our first
meeting some twelve years ago?”

“Quite so. May I offer you a cocktail, Mr. Cardigan?”

“Thank you, certainly. Dad and I have been pinning one on about this
time every night since my return.”

“Shirley belongs to the Band of Hope,” the Colonel explained. “She's
ready at any time to break a lance with the Demon Rum. Back in Michigan,
where we used to live, she saw too many woodsmen around after the spring
drive. So we'll have to drink her share, Mr. Cardigan. Pray be seated.”

Bryce seated himself. “Well, we lumbermen are a low lot and naturally
fond of dissipation,” he agreed. “I fear Miss Sumner's Prohibition
tendencies will be still further strengthened after she has seen the
mad-train.”

“What is that?” Shirley queried.

“The mad-train runs over your uncle's logging railroad up into Township
Nine, where his timber and ours is located. It is the only train
operated on Sunday, and it leaves Sequoia at five p.m. to carry
the Pennington and Cardigan crews back to the woods after their
Saturday-night celebration in town. As a usual thing, all hands, with
the exception of the brakeman, engineers, and fireman, are singing,
weeping or fighting drunk.”

“But why do you provide transportation for them to come to town Saturday
nights?” Shirley protested.

“They ride in on the last trainload of logs, and if we didn't let them
do it, they'd ask for their time. It's the way of the gentle lumberjack.
And of course, once they get in, we have to round them up on Sunday
afternoon and get them back on the job. Hence the mad-train.”

“Do they fight, Mr. Cardigan?”

“Frequently. I might say usually. It's quite an inspiring sight to see a
couple of lumberjacks going to it on a flat-car travelling thirty miles
an hour.”

“But aren't they liable to fall off and get killed?”

“No. You see, they're used to fighting that way. Moreover, the engineer
looks back, and if he sees any signs of Donnybrook Fair, he slows down.”

“How horrible!”

“Yes, indeed. The right of way is lined with empty whiskey bottles.”

Colonel Pennington spoke up. “We don't have any fighting on the
mad-train any more,” he said blandly.

“Indeed! How do you prevent it?” Bryce asked.

“My woods-boss, Jules Rondeau, makes them keep the peace,” Pennington
replied with a small smile. “If there's any fighting to be done, he does
it.”

“You mean among his own crew, of course,” Bryce suggested.

“No, he's in charge of the mad-train, and whether a fight starts among
your men or ours, he takes a hand. He's had them all behaving mildly for
quite a while, because he can whip any man in the country, and everybody
realizes it. I don't know what I'd do without Rondeau. He certainly
makes those bohunks of mine step lively.”

“Oh-h-h! Do you employ bohunks, Colonel?”

“Certainly. They cost less; they are far less independent than most
men and more readily handled. And you don't have to pamper
them--particularly in the matter of food. Why, Mr Cardigan, with all due
respect to your father, the way he feeds his men is simply ridiculous!
Cake and pie and doughnuts at the same meal!” The Colonel snorted
virtuously.

“Well, Dad started in to feed his men the same food he fed himself, and
I suppose the habits one forms in youth are not readily changed in old
age, Colonel.”

“But that makes it hard for other manufacturers,” the Colonel protested.
“I feed my men good plain food and plenty of it--quite better food than
they were used to before they came to this country; but I cannot seem to
satisfy them. I am continuously being reminded, when I do a thing thus
and so, that John Cardigan does it otherwise. Your respected parent
is the basis for comparison in this country, Cardigan, and I find
it devilish inconvenient.” He laughed indulgently and passed his
cigarette-case to Bryce.

“Uncle Seth always grows restless when some other man is the leader,”
 Shirley volunteered with a mischievous glance at Pennington. “He was the
Great Pooh-Bah of the lumber-trade back in Michigan, but out here he has
to play second fiddle. Don't you, Nunky-dunk?”

“I'm afraid I do, my dear,” the Colonel admitted with his best air of
hearty expansiveness. “I'm afraid I do. However, Mr. Cardigan, now that
you have--at least, I have been so informed--taken over your father's
business, I am hoping we will be enabled to get together on many little
details and work them out on a common basis to our mutual advantage. We
lumbermen should stand together and not make it hard for each other. For
instance, your scale of wages is totally disproportionate to the present
high cost of manufacture and the mediocre market; yet just because you
pay it, you set a precedent which we are all forced to follow. However,”
 he concluded, “let's not talk shop. I imagine we have enough of that
during the day. Besides, here are the cocktails.”

With the disposal of the cocktails, the conversation drifted into a
discussion of Shirley's adventures with a salmon in Big Lagoon.
The Colonel discoursed learnedly on the superior sport of
muskellunge-fishing, which prompted Bryce to enter into a description
of going after swordfish among the islands of the Santa Barbara channel.
“Trout-fishing when the fish gets into white water is good sport;
salmon-fishing is fine, and the steel-head in Eel River are hard to
beat; muskellunge are a delight, and tarpon are not so bad if you're
looking for thrills; but for genuine inspiration give me a sixteen-foot
swordfish that will leap out of the water from three to six feet, and do
it three or four hundred times--all on a line and rod so light one dares
not state the exact weight if he values his reputation for veracity.
Once I was fishing at San--”

The butler appeared in the doorway and bowed to Shirley, at the time
announcing that dinner was served. The girl rose and gave her arm to
Bryce; with her other arm linked through her uncle's she turned toward
the dining room.

Just inside the entrance Bryce paused. The soft glow of the candles in
the old-fashioned silver candlesticks upon the table was reflected
in the polished walls of the room-walls formed of panels of the most
exquisitely patterned redwood burl Bryce Cardigan had ever seen. Also
the panels were unusually large.

Shirley Sumner's alert glance followed Bryce's as it swept around
the room. “This dining room is Uncle Seth's particular delight, Mr.
Cardigan,” she explained.

“It is very beautiful, Miss Sumner. And your uncle has worked wonders
in the matter of having it polished. Those panels are positively the
largest and most beautiful specimens of redwood burl ever turned out in
this country. The grain is not merely wavy; it is not merely curly; it
is actually so contrary that you have here, Colonel Pennington, a room
absolutely unique, in that it is formed of bird's-eye burl. Mark the
deep shadows in it. And how it does reflect those candles!”

“It is beautiful,” the Colonel declared. “And I must confess to a
pardonable pride in it, although the task of keeping these walls from
being marred by the furniture knocking against them requires the utmost
care.”

Bryce turned and his brown eyes blazed into the Colonel's. “Where DID
you succeed in finding such a marvellous tree?” he queried pointedly.
“I know of but one tree in Humboldt County that could have produced such
beautiful burl.”

For about a second Colonel Pennington met Bryce's glance unwaveringly;
then he read something in his guest's eyes, and his glance shifted,
while over his benign countenance a flush spread quickly. Bryce noted
it, and his quickly roused suspicions were as quickly kindled into
certainty. “Where did you find that tree?” he repeated innocently.

“Rondeau, my woods-boss, knew I was on the lookout for something
special--something nobody else could get; so he kept his eyes open.”

“Indeed!” There was just a trace of irony in Bryce's tones as he
drew Shirley's chair and held it for her. “As you say, Colonel, it is
difficult to keep such soft wood from being marred by contact with
the furniture. And you are fortunate to have such a woods-boss in your
employ. Such loyal fellows are usually too good to be true, and quite
frequently they put their blankets on their backs and get out of the
country when you least expect it. I dare say it would be a shock to you
if Rondeau did that.”

There was no mistaking the veiled threat behind that apparently
innocent observation, and the Colonel, being a man of more than ordinary
astuteness, realized that at last he must place his cards on the table.
His glance, as he rested it on Bryce now, was baleful, ophidian. “Yes,”
 he said, “I would be rather disappointed. However, I pay Rondeau rather
more than it is customary to pay woods-bosses; so I imagine he'll
stay--unless, of course, somebody takes a notion to run him out of
the county. And when that happens, I want to be on hand to view the
spectacle.”

Bryce sprinkled a modicum of salt in his soup. “I'm going up into
Township Nine to-morrow afternoon,” he remarked casually. “I think I
shall go over to your camp and pay the incomparable Jules a brief visit.
Really, I have heard so much about that woods-boss of yours, Colonel,
that I ache to take him apart and see what makes him go.”

Again the Colonel assimilated the hint, but preferred to dissemble.
“Oh, you can't steal him from me, Cardigan,” he laughed. “I warn you in
advance--so spare yourself the effort.”

“I'll try anything once,” Bryce retorted with equal good nature.
“However, I don't want to steal him from you. I want to ascertain from
him where he procured this burl. There may be more of the same in the
neighbourhood where he got this.”

“He wouldn't tell you.”

“He might. I'm a persuasive little cuss when I choose to exert myself.”

“Rondeau is not communicative. He requires lots of persuading.”

“What delicious soup!” Bryce murmured blandly. “Miss Sumner, may I have
a cracker?”

The dinner passed pleasantly; the challenge and defiance between guest
and host had been so skillfully and gracefully exchanged that Shirley
hadn't the slightest suspicion that these two well-groomed men had,
under her very nose, as it were, agreed to be enemies and then, for the
time being, turned their attention to other and more trifling matters.
Coffee was served in the living room, and through the fragrant smoke
of Pennington's fifty-cent perfectos a sprightly three-cornered
conversation continued for an hour. Then the Colonel, secretly enraged
at the calm, mocking, contemplative glances which Bryce ever and anon
bestowed upon him, and unable longer to convince himself that he was too
apprehensive--that this cool young man knew nothing and would do nothing
even if he knew something--rose, pleaded the necessity for looking over
some papers, and bade Bryce good-night. Foolishly he proffered Bryce a
limp hand; and a demon of deviltry taking possession of the latter, this
time he squeezed with a simple, hearty earnestness, the while he said:

“Colonel Pennington, I hope I do not have to assure you that my visit
here this evening has not only been delightful but--er--instructive.
Good-night, sir, and pleasant dreams.”

With difficulty the Colonel suppressed a groan. However, he was not
the sort of man who suffers in silence; for a minute later the butler,
leaning over the banisters as his master climbed the stairs to his
library, heard the latter curse with an eloquence that was singularly
appealing.




CHAPTER XIV

Colonel Seth Pennington looked up sourly as a clerk entered his private
office. “Well?” he demanded brusquely. When addressing his employees,
the Colonel seldom bothered to assume his pontifical manner.

“Mr. Bryce Cardigan is waiting to see you, sir.”

“Very well. Show him in.”

Bryce entered. “Good morning, Colonel,” he said pleasantly and brazenly
thrust out his hand.

“Not for me, my boy,” the Colonel assured him. “I had enough of that
last night. We'll just consider the hand-shaking all attended to, if
you please. Have a chair; sit down and tell me what I can do to make you
happy.”

“I'm delighted to find you in such a generous frame of mind, Colonel.
You can make me genuinely happy by renewing, for ten years on the same
terms as the original contract, your arrangement to freight the logs of
the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company from the woods to tidewater.”

Colonel Pennington cleared his throat with a propitiatory “Ahem-m-m!”
 Then he removed his gold spectacles and carefully wiped them with a silk
handkerchief, as carefully replaced them upon his aristocratic nose, and
then gazed curiously at Bryce.

“Upon my soul!” he breathed.

“I realized, of course, that this is reopening an issue which you have
been pleased to regard as having been settled in the last letter my
father had from you, and wherein you named terms that were absolutely
prohibitive.”

“My dear young friend! My very dear young friend! I must protest at
being asked to discuss this matter. Your father and I have been over it
in detail; we failed to agree, and that settles it. As a matter of fact,
I am not in position to handle your logs with my limited rolling-stock,
and that old hauling contract which I took over when I bought the mills,
timber-lands, and logging railroad from the late Mr. Henderson and
incorporated into the Laguna Grande Lumber Company, has been an
embarrassment I have longed to rid myself of. Under those circumstances
you could scarcely expect me to saddle myself with it again, at your
mere request and solely to oblige you.”

“I did not expect you to agree to my request. I am not quite that
optimistic,” Bryce replied evenly.

“Then why did you ask me?”

“I thought that possibly, if I reopened negotiations, you might have a
reasonable counter-proposition to suggest.”

“I haven't thought of any.”

“I suppose if I agreed to sell you that quarter-section of timber in
the little valley over yonder” (he pointed to the east) “and the natural
outlet for your Squaw Creek timber, you'd quickly think of one,” Bryce
suggested pointedly.

“No, I am not in the market for that Valley of the Giants, as your
idealistic father prefers to call it. Once I would have purchased it for
double its value, but at present I am not interested.”

“Nevertheless it would be an advantage for you to possess it.”

“My dear boy, the possession of that big timber is an advantage I expect
to enjoy before I acquire many more gray hairs. But I do not expect to
pay for it.”

“Do you expect me to offer it to you as a bonus for renewing our hauling
contract?”

The Colonel snapped his fingers. “By George,” he declared, “that's a
bright idea, and a few months ago I would have been inclined to consider
it very seriously. But now--”

“You figure you've got us winging, eh?” Bryce was smiling pleasantly.

“I am making no admissions,” Pennington responded enigmatically “--nor
any hauling contracts for my neighbour's logs,” he added.

“You may change your mind.”

“Never.”

“I suppose I'll have to abandon logging in Township Nine and go back to
the San Hedrin,” Bryce sighed resignedly.

“If you do, you'll go broke. You can't afford it. You're on the verge of
insolvency this minute.”

“I suppose, since you decline to haul our logs, after the expiration
of our present contract, and in view of the fact that we are not
financially able to build our own logging railroad, that the wisest
course my father and I could pursue would be to sell our timber in
Township Nine to you. It adjoins your holdings in the same township”

“I had a notion the situation would begin to dawn upon you.” The Colonel
was smiling now; his handsome face was gradually assuming the expression
pontifical. “I'll give you a dollar a thousand feet stumpage for it.”

“On whose cruise?”

“Oh, my own cruisers will estimate it.”

“I'm afraid I can't accept that offer. We paid a dollar and a half for
it, you know, and if we sold it to you at a dollar, the sale would not
bring us sufficient money to take up our bonded indebtedness; we'd only
have the San Hedrin timber and the Valley of the Giants left, and since
we cannot log either of these at present, naturally we'd be out of
business.”

“That's the way I figured it, my boy.”

“Well--we're not going out of business.”

“Pardon me for disagreeing with you. I think you are.”

“Not much! We can't afford it.”

The Colonel smiled benignantly. “My dear boy, my very dear young friend,
listen to me. Your paternal ancestor is the only human being who has
ever succeeded in making a perfect monkey of me. When I wanted to
purchase from him a right of way through his absurd Valley of the
Giants, in order that I might log my Squaw Creek timber, he refused
me. And to add insult to injury, he spouted a lot of rot about his big
trees, how much they meant to him, and the utter artistic horror of
running a logging-train through the grove--particularly since he planned
to bequeath it to Sequoia as a public park. He expects the city to grow
up to it during the next twenty years.

“My boy, that was the first bad break your father made. His second break
was his refusal to sell me a mill-site. He was the first man in this
county, and he had been shrewd enough to hog all the water-front real
estate and hold onto it. I remember he called himself a progressive
citizen, and when I asked him why he was so assiduously blocking the
wheels of progress, he replied that the railroad would build in from
the south some day, but that when it did, its builders would have to be
assured of terminal facilities on Humboldt Bay. 'By holding intact the
spot where rail and water are bound to meet,' he told me, 'I insure the
terminal on tidewater which the railroad must have before consenting to
build. But if I sell it to Tom, Dick, and Harry, they will be certain to
gouge the railroad when the latter tries to buy it from them. They may
scare the railroad away.'”

“Naturally!” Bryce replied. “The average human being is a hog, and
merciless when he has the upper hand. He figures that a bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush. My father, on the contrary, has always planned
for the future. He didn't want that railroad blocked by land-speculators
and its building delayed. The country needed rail connection with the
outside world, and moreover his San Hedrin timber isn't worth a hoot
until that feeder to a transcontinental road shall be built to tap it.”

“But he sold Bill Henderson the mill-site on tidewater that he refused
to sell me, and later I had to pay Henderson's heirs a whooping price
for it. And I haven't half the land I need.”

“But he needed Henderson then. They had a deal on together. You must
remember, Colonel, that while Bill Henderson held that Squaw Creek
timber he later sold you, my father would never sell him a mill-site.
Can't you see the sporting point of view involved? My father and Bill
Henderson were good-natured rivals; for thirty years they had tried
to outgame each other on that Squaw Creek timber. Henderson thought he
could force my father to buy at a certain price, and my father thought
he could force Henderson to sell at a lesser price; they were perfectly
frank about it with each other and held no grudges. Of course, after
you bought Henderson out, you foolishly took over his job of trying to
outgame my father. That's why you bought Henderson out, isn't it? You
had a vision of my father's paying you a nice profit on your investment,
but he fooled you, and now you're peeved and won't play.”

Bryce hitched his chair farther toward the Colonel. “Why shouldn't my
dad be nice to Bill Henderson after the feud ended?” he continued. “They
could play the game together then, and they did. Colonel, why can't you
be as sporty as Henderson and my father? They fought each other, but
they fought fairly and in the open, and they never lost the respect and
liking each had for the other.”

“I will not renew your logging contract. That is final, young man. No
man can ride me with spurs and get away with it.”

“Oh, I knew that yesterday.”

“Then why have you called on me to-day, taking up my time on a dead
issue?”

“I wanted to give you one final chance to repent. I know your plan.
You have it in your power to smash the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company,
acquire it at fifty per cent. of its value, and merge its assets with
your Laguna Grande Lumber Company. You are an ambitious man. You want
to be the greatest redwood manufacturer in California, and in order
to achieve your ambitions, you are willing to ruin a competitor: you
decline to play the game like a thoroughbred.”

“I play the game of business according to the rules of the game; I do
nothing illegal, sir.”

“And nothing generous or chivalrous. Colonel, you know your plea of a
shortage of rolling-stock is that the contract for hauling our logs has
been very profitable and will be more profitable in the future if you
will accept a fifty-cent-per-thousand increase on the freight-rate and
renew the contract for ten years.”

“Nothing doing, young man. Remember, you are not in a position to ask
favours.”

“Then I suppose we'll have to go down fighting?”

“I do not anticipate much of a fight.”

“You'll get as much as I can give you.”

“I'm not at all apprehensive.”

“And I'll begin by running your woods-boss out of the country.”

“Ah-h!”

“You know why, of course--those burl panels in your dining room. Rondeau
felled a tree in our Valley of the Giants to get that burl for you,
Colonel Pennington.”

Pennington flushed. “I defy you to prove that,” he almost shouted.

“Very well. I'll make Rondeau confess; perhaps he'll even tell me
who sent him after the burl. Upon my word, I think you inspired that
dastardly raid. At any rate, I know Rondeau is guilty, and you, as his
employer and the beneficiary of his crime, must accept the odium.”

The Colonel's face went white. “I do not admit anything except that
you appear to have lost your head, young man. However, for the sake of
argument: granting that Rondeau felled that tree, he did it under the
apprehension that your Valley of the Giants is a part of my Squaw Creek
timber adjoining.”

“I do not believe that. There was malice in the act--brutality even; for
my mother's grave identified the land as ours, and Rondeau felled the
tree on her tombstone.”

“If that is so, and Rondeau felled that tree--I do not believe he did--I
am sincerely sorry, Cardigan, Name your price and I will pay you for the
tree. I do not desire any trouble to develop over this affair.”

“You can't pay for that tree,” Bryce burst forth. “No pitiful human
being can pay in dollars and cents for the wanton destruction of God's
handiwork. You wanted that burl and when my father was blind and could
no longer make his Sunday pilgrimage up to that grove, your woods-boss
went up and stole that which you knew you could not buy.”

“That will be about all from you, young man. Get out of my office. And
by the way, forget that you have met my niece.”

“It's your office--so I'll get out. As for your second command”--he
snapped his fingers in Pennington's face--“fooey!”

When Bryce had gone, the Colonel hurriedly called his logging-camp on
the telephone and asked for Jules Rondeau, only to be informed, by the
timekeeper who answered the telephone, that Rondeau was up in the green
timber with the choppers and could not be gotten to the telephone in
less than two hours.

“Do not send for him, then,” Pennington commanded. “I'm coming up on
the eleven-fifteen train and will talk to him when he comes in for his
lunch.”

At eleven o'clock, and just as the Colonel was leaving to board the
eleven-fifteen logging-train bound empty for the woods, Shirley Sumner
made her appearance in his office.

“Uncle Seth,” she complained, “I'm lonesome. The bookkeeper tells me
you're going up to the logging-camp. May I go with you?”

“By all means. Usually I ride in the cab with the engineer and fireman;
but if you're coming, I'll have them hook on the caboose. Step lively,
my dear, or they'll be holding the train for us and upsetting our
schedule.”




CHAPTER XV


By virtue of their logging-contract with Pennington, the Cardigans
and their employees were transported free over Pennington's logging
railroad; hence, when Bryce Cardigan resolved to wait upon Jules Rondeau
in the matter of that murdered Giant, it was characteristic of him to
choose the shortest and most direct route to his quarry, and as the
long string of empty logging-trucks came crawling off the Laguna Grande
Lumber Company's log-dump, he swung over the side, quite ignorant of the
fact that Shirley and her precious relative were riding in the little
caboose in the rear.

At twelve-ten the train slid in on the log landing of the Laguna Grande
Lumber Company's main camp, and Bryce dropped off and approached the
engineer of the little donkey-engine used for loading the logs.

“Where's Rondeau?” he asked.

The engineer pointed to a huge, swarthy man approaching across the
clearing in which the camp was situated. “That's him,” he replied. And
without further ado, Bryce strode to meet his man.

“Are you Jules Rondeau?” he demanded as he came up to the woods-boss.
The latter nodded. “I'm Bryce Cardigan,” his interrogator announced,
“and I'm here to thrash you for chopping that big redwood tree over in
that little valley where my mother is buried.”

“Oh!” Rondeau smiled. “Wiz pleasure, M'sieur.” And without a moment's
hesitation he rushed. Bryce backed away from him warily, and they
circled.

“When I get through with you, Rondeau,” Bryce said distinctly, “it'll
take a good man to lead you to your meals. This country isn't big enough
for both of us, and since you came here last, you've got to go first.”

Bryce stepped in, feinted for Rondeau's jaw with his right, and when
the woods-boss quickly covered, ripped a sizzling left into the latter's
midriff. Rondeau grunted and dropped his guard, with the result that
Bryce's great fists played a devil's tattoo on his countenance before he
could crouch and cover.

“This is a tough one,” thought Bryce. His blows had not, apparently, had
the slightest effect on the woods-boss. Crouched low and with his arms
wrapped around his head, Rondeau still came on unfalteringly, and Bryce
was forced to give way before him; to save his hands, he avoided the
risk of battering Rondeau's hard head and sinewy arms.

Already word that the woods-boss was battling with a stranger had been
shouted into the camp dining room, and the entire crew of that camp,
abandoning their half-finished meal, came pouring forth to view the
contest. Out of the tail of his eye Bryce saw them coming, but he was
not apprehensive, for he knew the code of the woodsman: “Let every man
roll his own hoop.” It would be a fight to a finish, for no man would
interfere; striking, kicking, gouging, biting, or choking would not be
looked upon as unsportsmanlike; and as Bryce backed cautiously away from
the huge, lithe, active, and powerful man before him, he realized
that Jules Rondeau was, as his father had stated, “top dog among the
lumberjacks.”

Rondeau, it was apparent, had no stomach for Bryce's style of combat. He
wanted a rough-and-tumble fight and kept rushing, hoping to clinch; if
he could but get his great hands on Bryce, he would wrestle him down,
climb him, and finish the fight in jig-time. But a rough-and-tumble was
exactly what Bryce was striving to avoid; hence when Rondeau rushed,
Bryce side-stepped and peppered the woodsman's ribs. But the woods-crew,
which by now was ringed around them, began to voice disapproval of this
style of battle.

“Clinch with him, dancing-master,” a voice roared.

“Tie into him, Rondeau,” another shouted.

“It's a fair match,” cried another, “and the red one picked on the main
push. He was looking for a fight, an' he ought to get it; but these
fancy fights don't suit me. Flop him, stranger, flop him.”

“Rondeau can't catch him,” a fourth man jeered. “He's a foot-racer, not
a fighter.”

Suddenly two powerful hands were placed between Bryce's shoulders,
effectually halting his backward progress; then he was propelled
violently forward until he collided with Rondeau. With a bellow of
triumph, the woods-boss's gorilla-like arms were around Bryce, swinging
him until he faced the man who had forced him into that terrible grip.
This was no less a personage than Colonel Seth Pennington, and it was
obvious he had taken charge of what he considered the obsequies.

“Stand back, you men, and give them room,” he shouted. “Rondeau will
take care of him now. Stand back, I say. I'll discharge the man that
interferes.”

With a heave and a grunt Rondeau lifted his antagonist, and the
pair went crashing to the earth together, Bryce underneath. And then
something happened. With a howl of pain, Rondeau rolled over on his back
and lay clasping his left wrist in his right hand, while Bryce scrambled
to his feet.

“The good old wrist-lock does the trick,” he announced; and stooping, he
grasped the woods-boss by the collar with his left hand, lifted him, and
struck him a terrible blow in the face with his right. But for the arm
that upheld him, Rondeau would have fallen. To have him fall, however,
was not part of Bryce's plan. Jerking the fellow toward him, he passed
his arm around Rondeau's neck, holding the latter's head as in a vise
with the crook of his elbow. And then the battering started. When it
was finished, Bryce let his man go, and Rondeau, bloody, sobbing, and
semi-conscious, sprawled on the ground.

Bryce bent over him. “Now, damn you,” he roared, “who felled that tree
in Cardigan's Redwoods?”

“I did, M'sieur. Enough--I confess!” The words were a whisper.

“Did Colonel Pennington suggest it to you?”

“He want ze burl. By gar, I do not want to fell zat tree--”

“That's all I want to know.” Stooping, Bryce seized Rondeau by the nape
of the neck and the slack of his overalls, lifted him shoulder-high and
threw him, as one throws a sack of meal, full at Colonel Pennington.

“You threw me at him. Now I throw him at you. You damned, thieving,
greedy, hypocritical scoundrel, if it weren't for your years and your
gray hair, I'd kill you.”

The helpless hulk of the woods-boss descended upon the Colonel's
expansive chest and sent him crashing earthward. Then Bryce, war-mad,
turned to face the ring of Laguna Grande employees about him.

“Next!” he roared. “Singly, in pairs, or the whole damned pack!”

“Mr. Cardigan!”

He turned. Colonel Pennington's breath had been knocked out of his
body by the impact of his semi-conscious woods-boss, and he lay inert,
gasping like a hooked fish. Beside him Shirley Sumner was kneeling, her
hands clasping her uncle's, but with her violet eyes blazing fiercely on
Bryce Cardigan.

“How dare you?” she cried. “You coward! To hurt my uncle!”

He gazed at her a moment, fiercely, defiantly, his chest rising and
falling from his recent exertions, his knotted fists gory with the blood
of his enemy. Then the light of battle died, and he hung his head. “I'm
sorry,” he murmured, “not for his sake, but yours. I didn't know you
were here. I forgot--myself.”

“I'll never speak to you again so long as I live,” she burst out
passionately.

He advanced a step and stood gazing down upon her. Her angry glance
met his unflinchingly; and presently for him the light went out of the
world.

“Very well,” he murmured. “Good-bye.” And with bowed head he turned and
made off through the green timber toward his own logging-camp five miles
distant.




CHAPTER XVI


With the descent upon his breast of the limp body of his big
woods-bully, Colonel Pennington had been struck to earth as effectively
as if a fair-sized tree had fallen on him. Indeed, with such force did
his proud head collide with terra firma that had it not been for the
soft cushion of ferns and tiny redwood twigs, his neck must have been
broken by the shock. To complete his withdrawal from active service, the
last whiff of breath had been driven from his lungs; and for the space
of a minute, during which Jules Rondeau lay heavily across his midriff,
the Colonel was quite unable to get it back. Pale, gasping, and jarred
from soul to suspenders, he was merely aware that something unexpected
and disconcerting had occurred.

While the Colonel fought for his breath, his woodsmen remained in
the offing, paralyzed into inactivity by reason of the swiftness and
thoroughness of Bryce Cardigan's work; then Shirley motioned to them to
remove the wreckage, and they hastened to obey.

Freed from the weight on the geometric centre of his being, Colonel
Pennington stretched his legs, rolled his head from side to side, and
snorted violently several times like a buck. After the sixth snort he
felt so much better that a clear understanding of the exact nature of
the catastrophe came to him; he struggled and sat up, looking around a
little wildly.

“Where--did--Cardigan--go?” he gasped.

One of his men pointed to the timber into which the enemy had just
disappeared.

“Surround him--take him,” Pennington ordered. “I'll give--a month's
pay--to each of--the six men that bring--that scoundrel to me. Get
him--quickly! Understand?”

Not a man moved. Pennington shook with fury. “Get him,” he croaked.
“There are enough of you to do--the job. Close in on him--everybody.
I'll give a month's pay to--everybody.”

A man of that indiscriminate mixture of Spaniard and Indian known in
California as cholo swept the circle of men with an alert and knowing
glance. His name was Flavio Artelan, but his straight black hair, dark
russet complexion, beady eyes, and hawk nose gave him such a resemblance
to a fowl that he was known among his fellows as the Black Minorca,
regardless of the fact that this sobriquet was scarcely fair to a
very excellent breed of chicken. “That offer's good enough for me,” he
remarked in businesslike tones. “Come on--everybody. A month's pay for
five minutes' work. I wouldn't tackle the job with six men, but there
are twenty of us here.”

“Hurry,” the Colonel urged them.

Shirley Sumner's flashing glance rested upon the Black Minorca. “Don't
you dare!” she cried. “Twenty to one! For shame!”

“For a month's pay,” he replied impudently, and grinned evilly. “And I'm
takin' orders from my boss.” He started on a dog-trot for the timber,
and a dozen men trailed after him.

Shirley turned helplessly on her uncle, seized his arm and shook it
frantically. “Call them back! Call them back!” she pleaded.

Her uncle got uncertainly to his feet. “Not on your life!” he growled,
and in his cold gray eyes there danced the lights of a thousand devils.
“I told you the fellow was a ruffian. Now, perhaps, you'll believe me.
We'll hold him until Rondeau revives, and then--”

Shirley guessed the rest, and she realized that it was useless to
plead--that she was only wasting time. “Bryce! Bryce!” she called. “Run!
They're after you. Twenty of them! Run, run--for my sake!”

His voice answered her from the timber: “Run? From those cattle? Not
from man or devil.” A silence. Then: “So you've changed your mind, have
you? You've spoken to me again!” There was triumph, exultation in his
voice. “The timber's too thick, Shirley. I couldn't get away anyhow--so
I'm coming back.”

She saw him burst through a thicket of alder saplings into the clearing,
saw half a dozen of her uncle's men close in around him like wolves
around a sick steer; and at the shock of their contact, she moaned and
hid her face in her trembling hands.

Half man and half tiger that he was, the Black Minorca, as
self-appointed leader, reached Bryce first. The cholo was a squat,
powerful little man, with more bounce to him than a rubber ball; leading
his men by a dozen yards, he hesitated not an instant but dodged under
the blow Bryce lashed out at him and came up inside the latter's guard,
feeling for Bryce's throat. Instead he met Bryce's knee in his abdomen,
and forthwith he folded up like an accordion.

The next instant Bryce had stooped, caught him by the slack of the
trousers and the scruff of the neck and thrown him, as he had thrown
Rondeau, into the midst of the men advancing to his aid. Three of them
went down backward; and Bryce, charging over them, stretched two more
with well-placed blows from left and right, and continued on across
the clearing, running at top speed, for he realized that for all
the desperation of his fight and the losses already inflicted on his
assailants, the odds against him were insurmountable.

Seeing him running away, the Laguna Grande woods-men took heart and
hope and pursued him. Straight for the loading donkey at the log-landing
Bryce ran. Beside the donkey stood a neat tier of firewood; in the
chopping block, where the donkey-fireman had driven it prior to
abandoning his post to view the contest between Bryce and Jules Rondeau,
was a double-bitted axe. Bryce jerked it loose, swung it, whirled on his
pursuers, and rushed them. Like turkeys scattering before the raid of a
coyote they fled in divers directions and from a safe distance turned to
gaze apprehensively upon this demon they had been ordered to bring in.

Bryce lowered the axe, removed his hat, and mopped his moist brow.
From the centre of the clearing men were crawling or staggering to
safety--with the exception of the Black Minorca, who lay moaning softly.
Colonel Pennington, seeing his fondest hopes expire, lost his head
completely.

“Get off my property, you savage,” he shrilled.

“Don't be a nut, Colonel,” Bryce returned soothingly. “I'll get
off--when I get good and ready, and not a second sooner. In fact, I was
trying to get off as rapidly as I could when you sent your men to bring
me back. Prithee why, old thing? Didst crave more conversation with me,
or didst want thy camp cleaned out?”

He started toward Pennington, who backed hastily away. Shirley stood
her ground, bending upon Bryce, as he approached her, a cold and
disapproving glance. “I'll get you yet,” the Colonel declared from the
shelter of an old stump behind which he had taken refuge.

“Barking dogs never bite, Colonel. And that reminds me: I've heard
enough from you. One more cheep out of you, my friend, and I'll go up to
my own logging-camp, return here with a crew of bluenoses and wild Irish
and run your wops, bohunks, and cholos out of the county. I don't fancy
the class of labour you're importing into this county, anyhow.”

The Colonel, evidently deciding that discretion was the better part of
valour, promptly subsided, although Bryce could see that he was mumbling
threats to himself, though not in an audible voice.

The demon Cardigan halted beside Shirley and stood gazing down at her.
He was smiling at her whimsically. She met his glance for a few seconds;
then her lids were lowered and she bit her lip with vexation.

“Shirley,” he said.

“You are presumptuous,” she quavered.

“You set me an example in presumption,” he retorted good humouredly.
“Did you not call ME by MY first name a minute ago?” He glanced toward
Colonel Pennington and observed the latter with his neck craned across
his protecting stump. He was all ears. Bryce pointed sternly across the
clearing, and the Colonel promptly abandoned his refuge and retreated
hastily in the direction indicated.

The heir to Cardigan's Redwoods bent over the girl. “You spoke to
me--after your promise not to, Shirley,” he said gently. “You will
always speak to me.”

She commenced to cry softly. “I loathe you,” she sobbed.

“For you I have the utmost respect and admiration,” he replied.

“No, you haven't. If you had, you wouldn't hurt my uncle--the only human
being in all this world who is dear to me.”

“Gosh!” he murmured plaintively. “I'm jealous of that man. However, I'm
sorry I hurt him. He is no longer young, while I--well, I forgot the
chivalry my daddy taught me. I give you my word I came here to fight
fairly--”

“He merely tried to stop you from fighting.”

“No, he didn't, Shirley. He interfered and fouled me. Still, despite
that, if I had known you were a spectator I think I should have
controlled myself and refrained from pulling off my vengeance in your
presence. I shall never cease to regret that I subjected you to such a
distressing spectacle. I do hope, however, that you will believe me when
I tell you I am not a bully, although when there is a fight worth while,
I never dodge it. And this time I fought for the honour of the House of
Cardigan.”

“If you want me to believe that, you will beg my uncle's pardon.”

“I can't do that. He is my enemy and I shall hate him forever; I
shall fight him and his way of doing business until he reforms or I am
exhausted.”

She looked up at him, showing a face in which resentment, outrage, and
wistfulness were mirrored.

“You realize, of course, what your insistence on that plan means, Mr.
Cardigan?”

“Call me Bryce,” he pleaded. “You're going to call me that some day
anyhow, so why not start now?”

“You are altogether insufferable, sir. Please go away and never presume
to address me again. You are quite impossible.”

He shook his head. “I do not give up that readily, Shirley. I didn't
know how dear--what your friendship meant to me, until you sent me away;
I didn't think there was any hope until you warned me those dogs were
hunting me--and called me Bryce.” He held out his hand. “'God gave us
our relations,'” he quoted, “'but thank God, we can choose our friends.'
And I'll be a good friend to you, Shirley Sumner, until I have earned
the right to be something more. Won't you shake hands with me? Remember,
this fight to-day is only the first skirmish in a war to the finish--and
I am leading a forlorn hope. If I lose--well, this will be good-bye.”

“I hate you,” she answered drearily. “All our fine
friendship--smashed--and you growing stupidly sentimental. I didn't
think it of you. Please go away. You are distressing me.”

He smiled at her tenderly, forgivingly, wistfully, but she did not see
it. “Then it is really good-by,” he murmured with mock dolorousness.

She nodded her bowed head. “Yes,” she whispered. “After all, I have
some pride, you know. You mustn't presume to be the butterfly preaching
contentment to the toad in the dust.”

“As you will it, Shirley.” He turned away. “I'll send your axe back
with the first trainload of logs from my camp, Colonel,” he called to
Pennington.

Once more he strode away into the timber. Shirley watched him pass out
of her life, and gloried in what she conceived to be his agony, for she
had both temper and spirit, and Bryce Cardigan calmly, blunderingly,
rather stupidly (she thought) had presumed flagrantly on brief
acquaintance. Her uncle was right. He was not of their kind of people,
and it was well she had discovered this before permitting herself
to develop a livelier feeling of friendship for him. It was true he
possessed certain manly virtues, but his crudities by far outweighed
these.

The Colonel's voice broke in upon her bitter reflections. “That fellow
Cardigan is a hard nut to crack--I'll say that for him.” He had crossed
the clearing to her side and was addressing her with his customary air
of expansiveness. “I think, my dear, you had better go back into the
caboose, away from the prying eyes of these rough fellows. I'm sorry
you came, Shirley. I'll never forgive myself for bringing you. If I had
thought--but how could I know that scoundrel was coming here to raise a
disturbance? And only last night he was at our house for dinner!”

“That's just what makes it so terrible, Uncle Seth,” she quavered.

“It IS hard to believe that a man of young Cardigan's evident
intelligence and advantages could be such a boor, Shirley. However, I,
for one, am not surprised. You will recall that I warned you he might
be his father's son. The best course to pursue now is to forget that you
have ever met the fellow.”

“I wonder what could have occurred to make such a madman of him?” the
girl queried wonderingly. “He acted more like a demon than a human
being.”

“Just like his old father,” the Colonel purred benevolently. “When
he can't get what he wants, he sulks. I'll tell you what got on his
confounded nerves. I've been freighting logs for the senior Cardigan
over my railroad; the contract for hauling them was a heritage from old
Bill Henderson, from whom I bought the mill and timber-lands; and of
course as his assignee it was incumbent upon me to fulfill Henderson's
contract with Cardigan, even though the freight-rate was ruinous.

“Well, this morning young Cardigan came to my offi

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