The Valley of the Giants Part 21

CHAPTER XIX

In the interim Bryce had not been idle. From his woods-crew he picked an old, experienced hand--one Jabez Curtis--to take the place of the vanished McTavish. Colonel Pennington, having repaired in three days the gap in his railroad, wrote a letter to the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company, informing Bryce that until more equipment could be purchased and delivered to take the place of the rolling-stock destroyed in the wreck, the latter would have to be content with half-deliveries; whereupon Bryce irritated the Colonel profoundly by purchasing a lot of second-hand trucks from a bankrupt sugar-pine mill in La.s.sen County and delivering them to the Colonel's road via the deck of a steam schooner.

"That will insure delivery of sufficient logs to get out our orders on file," Bryce informed his father. "While we are morally certain our mill will run but one year longer, I intend that it shall run full capacity for that year. In fact, I'm going to saw in that one year remaining to us as much lumber as we would ordinarily saw in two years. To be exact, I'm going to run a night-shift."

The sightless old man raised both hands in deprecation. "The market won't absorb it," he protested.

"Then we'll stack it in piles to air-dry and wait until the market is brisk enough to absorb it," Bryce replied.

"Our finances won't stand the overhead of that night-shift, I tell you," his father warned.

"I know we haven't sufficient cash on hand to attempt it, Dad, but-- I'm going to borrow some."

"From whom? No bank in Sequoia will lend us a penny, and long before you came home I had sounded every possible source of a private loan."

"Did you sound the Sequoia Bank of Commerce?"

"Certainly not. Pennington owns the controlling interest in that bank, and I was never a man to waste my time."

Bryce chuckled. "I don't care where the money comes from so long as I get it, partner. Pennington's money may be tainted; in fact, I'd risk a bet that it is; but our employees will accept it for wages nevertheless. Desperate circ.u.mstances require desperate measures you know, and the day before yesterday, when I was quite ignorant of the fact that Colonel Pennington controls the Sequoia Bank of Commerce, I drifted in on the president and casually struck him for a loan of one hundred thousand dollars."

"Well, I'll be shot, Bryce! What did he say?"

"Said he'd take the matter under consideration and give me an answer this morning. He asked me, of course, what I wanted that much money for, and I told him I was going to run a night-shift, double my force of men in the woods, and buy some more logging-trucks, which I can get rather cheap. Well, this morning I called for my answer--and got.

it. The Sequoia Bank of Commerce will loan me up to a hundred thousand, but it won't give me the cash in a lump sum. I can have enough to buy the logging-trucks now, and on the first of each month, when I present my pay-roll, the bank will advance me the money to meet it."

"Bryce, I am amazed."

"I am not--since you tell me Colonel Pennington controls that bank.

That the bank should accommodate us is the most natural procedure imaginable. Pennington is only playing safe--which is why the bank declined to give me the money in a lump sum. If we run a night-shift, Pennington knows that we can't dispose of our excess output under present market conditions. The redwood trade is in the doldrums and will remain in them to a greater or less degree until the princ.i.p.al redwood centres secure a rail outlet to the markets of the country.

It's a safe bet our lumber is going to pile up on the mill dock; hence, when the smash comes and the Sequoia Bank of Commerce calls our loan and we cannot possibly meet it, the lumber on hand will prove security for the loan, will it not? In fact, it will be worth two or three dollars per thousand more then than it is now, because it will be air-dried. And inasmuch as all the signs point to Pennington's gobbling us anyhow, it strikes me as a rather good business on his part to give us sufficient rope to insure a thorough job of hanging."

"But what idea have you got back of such a procedure, Bryce?"

"Merely a forlorn hope, Dad. Something might turn up. The market may take a sudden spurt and go up three or four dollars."

"Yes--and it may take a sudden spurt and drop three or four dollars,"

his father reminded him.

Bryce laughed. "That would be Pennington's funeral, Dad. And whether the market goes up or comes down, it costs us nothing to make the experiment."

"Quite true." his father agreed.

"Then, if you'll come down to the office to-morrow morning, Dad, we'll hold a meeting of our board of directors and authorize me, as president of the company, to sign the note to the bank. We're borrowing this without collateral, you know."

John Cardigan sighed. Such daring financial acrobatics were not usual with him, but as Bryce had remarked there was no reason why, in their present predicament, they should not gamble. Hence he entered no further objection, and the following day the agreement was entered into with the bank. Bryce closed by wire for the extra logging- equipment and immediately set about rounding up a crew for the woods and for the night-shift in the mill.

For a month Bryce was as busy as the proverbial one-armed paper- hanger with the itch, and during all that time he did not see Shirley Sumner or hear of her, directly or indirectly. Only at infrequent intervals did he permit himself to think of her, for he was striving to forget, and the memory of his brief glimpse of paradise was always provocative of pain.

Moira McTavish, in the meantime, had come down from the woods and entered upon her duties in the mill office. The change from her dull, drab life, giving her, as it did, an opportunity for companionship with people of greater mentality and refinement than she had been used to, quickly brought about a swift transition in the girl's nature. With the pa.s.sing of the coa.r.s.e shoes and calico dresses and the subst.i.tution of the kind of clothing all women of Moira's instinctive refinement and natural beauty long for, the girl became cheerful, animated, and imbued with the optimism of her years. At first old Sinclair resented the advent of a woman in the office; then he discovered that Moira's efforts lightened his own labours in exact proportion to the knowledge of the business which she a.s.similated from day to day.

Moira worked in the general office, and except upon occasions when Bryce desired to look at the books or Moira brought some doc.u.ment into the private office for his perusal, there were days during which his pleasant "Good morning, Moira," const.i.tuted the extent of their conversation. To John Cardigan, however, Moira was a ministering angel. Gradually she relieved Bryce of the care of the old man. She made a cushion for his easy-chair in the office; she read the papers to him, and the correspondence, and discussed with him the receipt and delivery of orders, the movements of the lumber-fleet, the comedies and tragedies of his people, which had become to him matters of the utmost importance. She brushed his hair, dusted his hat, and crowned him with it when he left the office at nightfall, and whenever Bryce was absent in the woods or in San Francisco, it fell to her lot to lead the old man to and from the house on the hill. To his starved heart her sweet womanly attentions were tremendously welcome, and gradually he formed the habit of speaking of her, half tenderly, half jokingly, as "my girl."

Bryce had been absent in San Francisco for ten days. He had planned to stay three weeks, but finding his business consummated in less time, he returned to Sequoia unexpectedly. Moira was standing at the tall bookkeeping desk, her beautiful dark head bent over the ledger, when he entered the office and set his suitcase in the corner.

"Is that you, Mr. Bryce?" she queried.

"The identical individual, Moira. How did you guess it was I?"

She looked up at him then, and her wonderful dark eyes lighted with a flame Bryce had not seen in them heretofore. "I knew you were coming," she replied simply.

"But how could you know? I didn't telegraph because I wanted to surprise my father, and the instant the boat touched the dock, I went overside and came directly here. I didn't even wait for the crew to run out the gangplank--so I know n.o.body could have told you I was due."

"That is quite right, Mr. Bryce. n.o.body told me you were coming, but I just knew, when I heard the Noyo whistling as she made the dock, that you were aboard, and I didn't look up when you entered the office because I wanted to verify my--my suspicion."

"You had a hunch, Moira. Do you get those telepathic messages very often?" He was crossing the office to shake her hand.

"I've never noticed particularly--that is, until I came to work here.

But I always know when you are returning after a considerable absence." She gave him her hand. "I'm so glad you're back."

"Why?" he demanded bluntly.

She flushed. "I--I really don't know, Mr. Bryce."

"Well, then," he persisted, "what do you think makes you glad?"

"I had been thinking how nice it would be to have you back, Mr.

Bryce. When you enter the office, it's like a breeze rustling the tops of the Redwoods. And your father misses you so; he talks to me a great deal about you. Why, of course we miss you; anybody would."

As he held her hand, he glanced down at it and noted how greatly it had changed during the past few months. The skin was no longer rough and brown, and the fingers, formerly stiff and swollen from hard work, were growing more shapely. From her hand his glance roved over the girl, noting the improvements in her dress, and the way the thick, wavy black hair was piled on top of her shapely head.

"It hadn't occurred to me before, Moira," he said with a bright impersonal smile that robbed his remark of all suggestion of masculine flattery, "but it seems to me I'm unusually glad to see you, also. You've been fixing your hair different."

The soft lambent glow leaped again into Moira's eyes. He had noticed her--particularly. "Do you like my hair done that way?" she inquired eagerly.

"I don't know whether I do or not. It's unusual--for you. You look mighty sweetly old-fashioned with it coiled in back--somewhat like an old-fashioned daguerreotype of my mother. Is this new style the latest in hairdressing in Sequoia?"

"I think so, Mr. Bryce. I copied it from Colonel Pennington's niece, Miss Sumner."

"Oh," he replied briefly. "You've met her, have you? I didn't know she was in Sequoia still."

"She's been away, but she came back last week. I went to the Valley of the Giants last Sat.u.r.day afternoon--"

Bryce interrupted. "You didn't tell my father about the tree that was cut, did you?" he demanded sharply.

"No."