The Valley of the Giants Part 14

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

"Well--we're not going out of business."

"Pardon me for disagreeing with you. I think you are."

"Not much! We can't afford it."

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

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

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

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

"But he needed Henderson then. They had a deal on together. You must remember, Colonel, that while Bill Henderson held that Squaw Creek timber he later sold you, my father would never sell him a mill-site.

Can't you see the sporting point of view involved? My father and Bill Henderson were good-natured rivals; for thirty years they had tried to outgame each other on that Squaw Creek timber. Henderson thought he could force my father to buy at a certain price, and my father thought he could force Henderson to sell at a lesser price; they were perfectly frank about it with each other and held no grudges. Of course, after you bought Henderson out, you foolishly took over his job of trying to outgame my father. That's why you bought Henderson out, isn't it? You had a vision of my father's paying you a nice profit on your investment, but he fooled you, and now you're peeved and won't play."

Bryce hitched his chair farther toward the Colonel. "Why shouldn't my dad be nice to Bill Henderson after the feud ended?" he continued.

"They could play the game together then, and they did. Colonel, why can't you be as sporty as Henderson and my father? They fought each other, but they fought fairly and in the open, and they never lost the respect and liking each had for the other."

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

"Oh, I knew that yesterday."

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

"I wanted to give you one final chance to repent. I know your plan.

You have it in your power to smash the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company, acquire it at fifty per cent. of its value, and merge its a.s.sets with your Laguna Grande Lumber Company. You are an ambitious man. You want to be the greatest redwood manufacturer in California, and in order to achieve your ambitions, you are willing to ruin a compet.i.tor: you decline to play the game like a thoroughbred."

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

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

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

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

"I do not antic.i.p.ate much of a fight."

"You'll get as much as I can give you."

"I'm not at all apprehensive."

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

"Ah-h!"

"You know why, of course--those burl panels in your dining room.

Rondeau felled a tree in our Valley of the Giants to get that burl for you, Colonel Pennington."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That will be about all from you, young man. Get out of my office.

And by the way, forget that you have met my niece."

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

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

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

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

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

"By all means. Usually I ride in the cab with the engineer and fireman; but if you're coming, I'll have them hook on the caboose.

Step lively, my dear, or they'll be holding the train for us and upsetting our schedule."

CHAPTER XV

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

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

"Where's Rondeau?" he asked.

The engineer pointed to a huge, swarthy man approaching across the clearing in which the camp was situated. "That's him," he replied.

And without further ado, Bryce strode to meet his man.

"Are you Jules Rondeau?" he demanded as he came up to the woods-boss.

The latter nodded. "I'm Bryce Cardigan," his interrogator announced, "and I'm here to thrash you for chopping that big redwood tree over in that little valley where my mother is buried."

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