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.