Scattergood Baines Part 6

"Huh!... You'll handle the stuff, deliver it, and all that? What's your proposition?"

"Well, havin' been in business twenty-odd year, I kin buy mighty favorable. More so 'n you fellers. All I want's a livin' profit. Tell you what I'll do. I'll take this here contract like this: Goods to be delivered in your camps at actual cost of the stuff and freighting plus ten per cent. We'll keep stock on hand in depots, and deliver as needed.

It'll save you all the trouble of handlin'. We'll carry the stock, and you pay once a month for what's delivered."

Crane called in Keith, and they discussed the proposition. It presented distinct advantages; might, indeed, save them money in addition to trouble. Bailey clinched the thing by showing an agreement with the stage line to transport the provisions at a price per hundred pounds notably lower than Crane and Keith imagined could be obtained, and went home carrying the contract Scattergood had sent him to get.

Scattergood put the paper away in his safe and sat back in his reinforced armchair, with placid satisfaction making benignant his face.

"I calc'late," he said to himself, "that this here d.i.c.ker'll keep Crane and Keith gropin' and wonderin' and scrutinizin' more or less--when it gits to their ears. Shouldn't be s'prised if it come to worry 'em a mite."

So, having created a diversion to conceal the movements of his main attack, Scattergood got out his maps and began scientifically to plan his fall and winter campaign.

Timber was his objective. Not a hundred acres of it, nor a thousand, but tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand acres of spruce-covered hills was the goal he had set. To control his valley he must have money; to get money for his developments he must have timber. Also, ownership of vast limits of growing spruce was necessary to the control of the valley. He must own more timber thereabouts than anybody else. He must dominate the timber situation. To a man whose total resources totaled a matter of fifty thousand dollars--the bulk of which was tied up in a dam and boom company as yet unproductive--this looked like a mouthful beyond his capacity to bite off. Even with timber in the back reaches selling at sixty-six cents an acre, a hundred thousand acres meant an investment of sixty-six thousand dollars. True, Scattergood could look forward to the day when that same timberland would be worth ten dollars an acre--a million dollars--but looking ahead would not produce a cent to-day.

Of timberlands, whose cut logs must go down Coldriver Valley to reach a market, Scattergood's maps showed him there were probably a quarter of a million acres--mostly spruce. Estimating with rigid conservatism, this would run eight thousand feet to the acre, or twenty billion feet of timber--and this did not take into consideration hardwood. In Scattergood's secret heart he wanted it _all_. All he might not be able to get, but he must have more than half--and that half distributed strategically.

It will be seen that Scattergood was content to wait. His motto was, "Grab a dollar to-day--but don't meddle with it if it interferes with a thousand dollars in ten years."

Scattergood's maps had been the work of two years. That they were accurate he knew, because he had set down on them most of the facts they showed. They were valuable, for, in Scattergood's rude printing, one could read upon them the owner of every piece of timber, every farm, the acreage in each piece of timber, with a careful estimate of the amount of timber to the acre--also its proportions of spruce, beech, birch, maple, ash.

Toward the head of the valley, where good timber was thickest, Scattergood's map showed how it spread out like a fan, with the two main branches of Coldriver and numerous brooks as the ribs. Then, down the length of the stream, were parallel bands of it. On the map one could see what this timber could be bought for; prices ranging from two dollars and a half an acre down the main river to sixty-six cents at the extremity of the fan.

As Scattergood studied his maps he saw, far in the future, perhaps, but clearly and distinctly and certainly, two parallel lines running up the river to his village; he saw, branching off from a spot below the village, where East and West Branches joined to pour over a certain dam owned by him, other narrower parallel lines following river and brooks back and back into the mountains, the spruce-clad mountains. These parallel lines were rails. The ones which ran close together were narrow-gauge--logging roads to bring logs to the big mill which Scattergood planned to build beside his dam. The broader lines were a standard-gauge road to carry the cut lumber to the outside world, and not only the cut lumber, but all the traffic of the valley, all the freight, the manufactured products of other mills and factories which were to come along the banks of his river. Here, in black and white, was set down Scattergood's life plan. When it was accomplished he would be through. He would be willing to have his maps rolled up and himself to be laid on the shelf, for he would have done the thing he set out to do.... For, strange as it may seem, Scattergood was not pursuing money for money itself--his objective was achievement.

Scattergood was not the only man to own or to study maps. Crane and Keith were at the same interesting employment, but on a lesser scale.

"Here's your stuff," said Keith, "over here on the East Branch--thirty thousand acres. Here's mine, on the West Branch--close to thirty thousand acres. We don't touch anywhere."

"But our locations put us in the driver's seat so far as the timber up here is concerned. We're in control. There are sixty thousand acres of mighty good spruce in that triangle between us, and it's as good as ours. It's there for us when we need it. All we got to do is reach out our hand for it. The folks that own it haven't got the money to go ahead with it. Pretty sweet for us--with sixty thousand acres in the palm of our hand and not a cent invested in it."

"Sweet is the word. But what if somebody grabbed it off?"

"Who'll grab?"

"I think we ought to tie it up somehow. If we owned the whole thing we could work a heap more profitably. Now we've got to divide camps, or else cut off one slice or the other at a time. If we owned the whole thing we could make our cut where it would be easiest handled--and leave the rest till things develop."

"It's safe. And we can make it mighty unpleasant for anybody who comes ramming into this region in a small way. Which reminds me of that Baines--our friend Scattergood. Are we going to let him get away with that dam and boom company we made him a present of?"

"I can't see ourselves digging down for sixty cents a thousand for driving our logs--contracts or no contracts."

"Maybe we can buy him off."

"Hanged if I'll do that--we'll chase him off. Look here--he's got to handle our logs. If he can't handle them we've got a right to put on our own crew and drive them down--and charge back to him what it costs us.

Get the idea?"

"Not exactly."

"We deliver the logs as specified in the spring. Let him start his drive. Then, I figure, he'll have some trouble with his men, and most likely men he don't have trouble with will get into a row with lumberjacks going out of camp. See? Men of his that we can't handle we'll pitch into the river. Then we'll take charge with our men and make the drive. On top of that we'll sue Scattergood for thirty or forty cents a thousand--extra cost we've been put to by his inability to handle the drive. That'll put a crimp in him--and if we keep after him hot and heavy it won't take long to drive him out of the valley."

"Don't believe he's dangerous, anyhow. That last deal was bullhead luck."

"Yes, but he's stirring around. We don't want anybody poking in. There's a heap of money in this valley for us, if we can keep it to ourselves, and the sooner the idea gets abroad that it isn't healthful to b.u.t.t in, the better."

"Guess you're right."

If Scattergood could have heard this conversation perhaps he would not have been so gayly partaking of the softer joys of life. For that is what Scattergood was doing. He had polished up his buggy, put his new harness on his horse, and was driving out to make a social call. Not only that, but it was a social call upon a lady!

Scattergood was lonely sometimes. In one of his moments of loneliness it had occurred to him that a great many men had wives, and that wives were, undoubtedly, a remarkably effective insurance against that ailment.

"I gather," he said, in the course of a casual conversation with Sam Kettleman, the grocer, "that wives is sometimes inconvenient and sometimes tryin' on the temper, but on the whole they're returnin'

income on the investment."

"Some does and some doesn't," said Kettleman, lugubriously.

"Hotel grub," said Scattergood, "gets mighty similar. Roast beef and roast pork! Roast pork and roast beef! Then cold roast pork and beef for supper.... And me obliged, by the way I'm built, to pay extry board.

Sundays I always order me two dinners. Seems like a wife 'u'd act as a benefit there."

"But there's drawbacks," said Sam, "and there's mother-in-laws, and there's lendin' a dollar to your brother-in-law."

"The thing to do," said Scattergood, "is to pick one without them impediments. I also figger," he added, wriggling his bare toes, "that a feller ought to pick one that could lend a dollar to _your_ brother in case he needed one."

"Hain't none sich to be found," said Sam.

"I calc'late to look," Scattergood replied.

He had already done his looking. The lady of his choice, tradition says, was older than he, but this is a base libel. She was not older. She had not yet reached thirty. Scattergood had first encountered her when she came to his hardware store to buy a plow. On that occasion her excellent business judgment and her powers of barter had attracted him strongly.

As a matter of fact, he was a bit in doubt if she hadn't the best of him on the deal.... Her name was Amanda Randle.

Scattergood gave the matter his best thought, then polished the buggy as aforesaid, and called.

"Howdy, Miss Randle?" said he, tying to her hitching post.

"Howdy, Mr. Baines?"

"I calculated," said he, "that, bein' as it's a hot night, a buggy ride might sort of cool you off, after a way of speakin'."

Amanda blushed, for the proffer of a buggy ride was not without definite significance in that region.

"I'll git my shawl and bonnet," she said.

To the casual eye it would have appeared that Scattergood's summer was devoted wholly to running his hardware store and to paying court to Mandy Randle.... But this would not have been so. He was making ready for the winter--and for the spring that came after it. For in the spring came the drive, and with the coming of the drive Scattergood foresaw the coming of trouble. He was not a man to dodge trouble that might bring profit dangling to the fringe of her skirt.

Coldriver watched with deep interest the progress of Scattergood's suit.

It had figured Mandy as an old maid--for, as has been mentioned, she was close upon her thirtieth year, which, in a village where eighteen is the general age for taking a husband, is well along in spinsterhood. It was late in October when Scattergood "came to scratch," as the local saying is.

"Mandy," said he, "I calc'late you noticed I been comin' around here consid'able."

"You have--seems as though," she said, and blushed. It was coming. She recognized the signs.

"I been a-comin' on purpose," said Scattergood.