CHAPTER X
For many years there had been installed in Cardigan's mill a clock setto United States observatory time and corrected hourly by the telegraphcompany. It was the only clock of its kind in Sequoia; hence folk settheir watches by it, or rather by the whistle on Cardigan's mill. Witha due appreciation of the important function of this clock toward hisfellow-citizens, old Zeb Curry, the chief engineer and a stickler forbeing on time, was most meticulous in his whistle-blowing. With a sageand prophetic eye fixed upon the face of the clock, and a particularlygreasy hand grasping the whistle-cord, Zeb would wait until the clockregistered exactly six-fifty-nine and a half--whereupon the seveno'clock whistle would commence blowing, to cease instantly upon thestroke of the hour. It was old Zeb's pride and boast that with a singleexception, during the sixteen years the clock had been in service, noman could say that Zeb had been more than a second late or early withhis whistle-blowing. That exception occurred when Bryce Cardigan,invading the engine room while Zeb was at luncheon, looped thewhistle-cord until the end dangled seven feet above ground. As aconsequence Zeb, who was a short, fat little man, was forced to leapat it several times before success crowned his efforts and the whistleblew. Thereafter for the remainder of the day his reason tottered on itsthrone, due to the fact that Bryce induced every mill employee to callupon the engineer and remind him that he must be growing old, since hewas 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 hugebandsaws two minutes in which to attain their proper speed and affordedDan Kenyon, the head sawyer, ample time to run his steam log-carriageout to the end of the track; for Daniel, too, was a reliable man in thematter of starting his daily uproar on time.
At precisely six fifty-nine and a half, therefore, the engineer's handclosed over the handle of the whistle-cord, and Dan Kenyon, standingon the steam-carriage with his hand on the lever, took a thirty-secondsquint through a rather grimy window that gave upon the drying-yard andthe 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 whistlesharply twice; whereupon Dan woke up, threw over the lever, and walkedhis log up to the saw.
For the next five hours Zeb Curry had no opportunity to discuss thematter with the head sawyer. After blowing the twelve o'clock whistle,however, he hurried over to the dining-hall, where the mill handsalready lined the benches, shovelling food into their mouths as only alumberman or a miner can. Dan Kenyon sat at the head of the table inthe place of honour sacred to the head sawyer, and when his mouth wouldpermit of some activity other than mastication, Zeb Curry caught hiseye.
"Hey, you, Dan Kenyon," he shouted across the table, "what happenedto you this mornin'? It was sixteen seconds between the tail end o' mywhistle an' the front end o' your whinin'. First thing you know, you'llbe gettin' so slack an' careless-like some other man'll be ridin' thatlog-carriage o' yourn."
"I was struck dumb," Dan Kenyon replied. "I just stood there like oneo' these here graven images. Last night on my way home from work I heerdthe young feller was back--he got in just as we was knockin' off for theday; an' this mornin' just as you cut loose, Zeb, I'll be danged if hedidn'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 onhis 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, butyou didn't see Bryce. He aint no such hog for labour as his daddy beforehim, I'm tellin' you. Not that there's a lazy bone in his body, forthere ain't, but because that there boy's got too much sense to comebollin' down to work at seven o'clock the very first mornin' he's backfrom 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'tleave 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 themhours."
The head sawyer leaned across the table and pounded with the handle ofhis knife until he had the attention of all present. "I'm a-goin' totell you young fellers somethin'," he announced. "Ever since the oldboss 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'ta-goin' no more. How do I know? Well, I'll tell you. All this forenoon Ikept 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 theold man ain't never been a ten o'clock business man at no time. Don'tthat prove the boy's took his place?"
Confused murmurs of affirmation and negation ran up and down the longtable. Dan tapped with his knife again. "You hear me," he warned."Thirty year I've been ridin' John Cardigan's log-carriages; thirtyyear 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 afterI've sawed it off the cant. There's a lot o' you young fellers that'vebeen takin' John Cardigan's money under false pretenses, so if I was youI'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 refugelumber." (Dan meant refuse lumber.) "But it won't be done no more. Theraftsman tells me he seen Bryce down at the end o' the conveyin' beltgivin' that refuge the once-over--so step easy."
"What does young Cardigan know about runnin' a sawmill?" a planer-mandemanded 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 dayan' see how much he knows about runnin' a sawmill. What he knows willsurprise you. Yes, indeed, you'll find he knows considerable. He'spicked up loose shingles around the yard an' bundled 'em in vacationtimes, an' I want to see the shingle-weaver that can teach him sometricks. 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 thesortin' table. In a pinch, with a lot o' vessels loadin' here at thedock an' the skippers raisin' Cain because they wasn't gettin' theircargo fast enough, I've seen him work nights an' Sundays tallyin' withthe best o' them. Believe me that boy can grade lumber."
"An' I'll tell you somethin' else," Zeb Curry cut in. "If the new bossever tells you to do a thing his way, you do it an' don't argue none asto 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 theblue-noses an' canucks an' wild Irish went out had better keep your eyesopen," Dan Kenyon warned sagely. "There ain't none o' you any better'nyou ought to be, an' things have been pretty durned slack aroundCardigan'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 dothings."
"Which he's big enough to throw a bear uphill by the tail," Zeb Curryadded, "an' you fellers all know how much tail a bear has."
"Every mornin' for thirty years, 'ceptin' when we was shut down forrepairs," Dan continued, "I've looked through that winder, when JohnCardigan wasn't away from Sequoia, to watch him git to his office ontime. He's there when the whistle blows, clear up to the time his eyesgo 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 thewhistle blows, an'--"
Dan Kenyon paused abruptly; the hum of conversation ceased, and silencefell upon the room as Bryce Cardigan strolled in the door, nodded to themen, 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 mightyglad to see you both again. Hello, everybody. I'm the new boss, so Isuppose 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 ashamedto 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'sgittin' slacker'n an old squaw with his work an' needs somebody to jerkhim up, while the rest o' these here--"
"I noticed that about Dan," Bryce interrupted craftily. "He's slowingup, Zeb. He must have been fifteen seconds late this morning--orperhaps," he added "you were fifteen seconds earlier than the clock."
Dan grinned, and Bryce went on seriously: "I'm afraid you're getting tooold 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 mightas well tell you now. You know me, Dan. I always did dislike beatingabout 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 hiredagain, however, at a higher salary, as mill-superintendent. You can getaway with that job, can't you, Dan? In fact," he added without waitingfor 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 Igot down here this morning. He's been letting too many profits go intothe slab-fire. In fact, the entire plant has gone to glory. Fire-hoseold and rotten--couldn't stand a hundred-pound pressure; fire-bucketsand water-barrels empty, axes not in their proper places,fire-extinguishers filled with stale chemical--why, the smallest kindof 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 clearboards with hard-grained streaks in them in with the No. 1 clear. Thecustomer may not kick at a small percentage of No. 2 in his No. 1 butit'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 asthey used to before you went away. Colonel Pennington says we're a loto' back numbers out this way an' too generous with our grades.First thing he did was to call a meetin' of all the Humboldt lumbermanufacturers an' organize 'em into an association. Then he had thegradin'-rules changed. The retailers hollered for a while, but bimebythey 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 thetrade, 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 inbusiness to start gougin' his customers at his time o' life. So he gotout o' the association."
"Bully for John Cardigan!" Bryce declared. "I suppose we could make alittle more money by cheapening our grade, but the quality of ourlumber is so well known that it sells itself and saves us the expense ofmaintaining a corps of salesmen."
"From what I hear tell o' the Colonel," Dan observed sagely, "the leasthe 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 nonetoo perticular how he gets it." He helped himself to a toothpick, andfollowed by the head sawyer, abruptly left the room--after the fashionof sawmill men and woodsmen, who eat as much as they can as quickly asthey can and eventually die of old age rather than indigestion. Bryceate his noonday meal in more leisurely fashion and at its conclusionstepped into the kitchen.
"Where do you live, cook?" he demanded of that functionary; and uponbeing informed, he retired to the office and called up the Sequoiameat-market.
"Bryce Cardigan speaking," he informed the butcher. "Do you ever buy anypigs from our mill cook?"
"Not any more," the butcher answered. "He stung me once with a dozenfine shoats. They looked great, but after I had slaughtered them and hadthem dressed, they turned out to be swill-fed hogs--swill and alfalfa."
"Thank you." Bryce hung up. "I knew that cook was wasteful," hedeclared, turning to his father's old manager, one Thomas Sinclair."He wastes food in order to take the swill home to his hogs--and nobodywatches him. Things have certainly gone to the devil," he continued.
"No fault of mine," Sinclair protested. "I've never paid any attentionto matters outside the office. Your father looked after everythingelse."
Bryce looked at Sinclair. The latter was a thin, spare, nervous manin the late fifties, and though generally credited with being JohnCardigan's manager, Bryce knew that Sinclair was in reality little morethan a glorified bookkeeper--and a very excellent bookkeeper indeed.Bryce realized that in the colossal task that confronted him he couldexpect no real help from Sinclair.
"Yes," he replied, "my father looked after everything else--while hecould."
"Oh, you'll soon get the business straightened out and running smoothlyagain," Sinclair declared confidently.
"Well, I'm glad I started on the job to-day, rather than next Monday, asI planned to do last night."
He stepped to the window and looked out. At the mill-dock a big steamschooner and a wind-jammer lay; in the lee of the piles of lumber,sailors and long-shoremen, tallymen and timekeeper lounged, enjoying thebrief period of the noon hour still theirs before the driving matesof the lumber-vessels should turn them to on the job once more. To hisright and left stretched the drying yard, gangway on gangway formed bythe serried rows of lumber-piles, the hoop-horses placidly feeding fromtheir nosebags while the strong-armed fellows who piled the lumber satabout in little groups conversing with the mill-hands.
As Bryce looked, a puff of white steam appeared over the roof of theold sawmill, and the one o'clock whistle blew. Instantly that scene ofindolence and ease turned to one of activity. The mill-hands lounging inthe gangways scurried for their stations in the mill; men climbed to thetops of the lumber-piles, while other men passed boards and scantlingsup to them; the donkey-engines aboard the vessels rattled; thecargo-gaffs of the steam schooner swung outward, and a moment later twogreat 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 tohim in that moment came the thought: "My father brought all this topass--and now the task of continuing it is mine! All those men who earna living in Cardigan's mill and on Cardigan's dock--those sailors whosail the ships that carry Cardigan's lumber into the distant marts ofmen--are dependent upon me; and my father used to tell me not to failthem. Must my father have wrought all this in vain? And must I stand byand 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," Brycesnarled then. "Give me your last five annual statements, Mr. Sinclair,please."
The old servitor brought forth the documents in question. Bryce stuffedthem into his pocket and left the office. Three quarters of an hourlater he entered the little amphitheatre in the Valley of the Giants andpaused with an expression of dismay. One of the giants had fallenand lay stretched across the little clearing. In its descent it haddemolished the little white stone over his mother's grave and had driventhe fragments of the stone deep into the earth.
The tremendous brown butt quite ruined the appearance of theamphitheatre by reason of the fact that it constituted a barrier somefifteen feet high and of equal thickness athwart the centre of theclearing, with fully three quarters of the length of the tree lost tosight where the fallen monarch had wedged between its more fortunatefellows. The fact that the tree was down, however, was secondary to thefact that neither wind nor lightning had brought it low, but rather theimpious hand of man; for the great jagged stump showed all too plainlythe marks of cross-cut saw and axe; a pile of chips four feet deeplittered the ground.
For fully a minute Bryce stood dumbly gazing upon the sacrilege beforehis 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 t
he length of the deadgiant, and where the top tapered off to a size that would permit of hisstepping across it, he retraced his steps on the other side of the treeuntil he had reached a point some fifty feet from the butt--when thevandal's reason for felling the monster became apparent.
It was a burl tree. At the point where Bryce paused a malignant growthhad developed on the trunk of the tree, for all the world like atremendous wart. This was the burl, so prized for table-tops andpanelling because of the fact that the twisted, wavy, helter-skeltergrain lends to the wood an extraordinary beauty when polished. Bryeenoted that the work of removing this excrescence had been accomplishedvery neatly. With a cross-cut saw the growth, perhaps ten feet indiameter, had been neatly sliced off much as a housewife cuts sliceafter slice from a loaf of bread. He guessed that these slices,practically circular in shape, had been rolled out of the woods to someconveyance waiting to receive them.
What Bryce could not understand, however, was the stupid brutality ofthe raiders in felling the tree merely for that section of burl. Bypermitting the tree to stand and merely building a staging up to theburl, the latter could have been removed without vital injury to thetree--whereas by destroying the tree the wretches had evidenced all tooclearly to Bryce a wanton desire to add insult to injury.
Bryce inspected the scars on the stump carefully. They wereweather-stained to such an extent that to his experienced eye it wasevident the outrage had been committed more than a year previously;and the winter rains, not to mention the spring growth of grasses andunderbrush, had effectually destroyed all trace of the trail taken bythe vandals with their booty.
"Poor old Dad!" he murmured. "I'm glad now he has been unable to get uphere and see this. It would have broken his heart. I'll have this treemade into fence-posts and the stump dynamited and removed this summer.After he is operated on and gets back his sight, he will come uphere--and he must never know. Perhaps he will have forgotten how manytrees stood in this circle. And I'll fill in the hole left by the stumpand plant some manzanita there to hide the--"
He paused. Peeping out from under a chip among the litter at his feetwas the moldy corner of a white envelope. In an instant Bryce had it inhis hand. The envelope was dirty and weather-beaten, but to a certainextent the redwood chips under which it had lain hidden had served toprotect it, and the writing on the face was still legible. The envelopewas empty and addressed to Jules Rondeau, care of the Laguna GrandeLumber Company, Sequoia, California.
Bryce read and reread that address. "Rondeau!" he muttered. "JulesRondeau! I've heard that name before--ah, yes! Dad spoke of him lastnight. He's Pennington's woods-boss--"
He paused. An enemy had done this thing--and in all the world JohnCardigan had but one enemy--Colonel Seth Pennington. Had Pennington senthis woods-boss to do this dirty work out of sheer spite? Hardly. Thesection of burl was gone, and this argued that the question of spite hadbeen purely a matter of secondary consideration.
Evidently, Bryce reasoned, someone had desired that burl redwoodgreatly, and that someone had not been Jules Rondeau, since a woods-bosswould not be likely to spend five minutes of his leisure time inconsideration of the beauties of a burl table-top or panel. Hence, ifRondeau had superintended the task of felling the tree, it must havebeen at the behest of a superior; and since a woods-boss acknowledges nosuperior save the creator of the pay-roll, the recipient of that stolenburl must have been Colonel Pennington.
Suddenly he thrilled. If Jules Rondeau had stolen that burl to presentit to Colonel Pennington, his employer, then the finished article mustbe in Pennington's home! And Bryce had been invited to that home fordinner the following Thursday by the Colonel's niece.
"I'll go, after all," he told himself. "I'll go--and I'll see what Ishall see."
He was too wrought up now to sit calmly down in the peace and quietudeof the giants, and digest the annual reports Sinclair had given him. Hehastened back to the mill-office and sought Sinclair.
"At what hour does the logging-train leave the Laguna Grande LumberCompany'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 thatdistrict?"
"Yes."
"Let me have them, please. I know the topography of that districtperfectly, but I am not familiar with the holdings in and around ours."
Sinclair gave him the maps, and Bryce retired to his father's privateoffice and gave himself up to a study of them.
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