Halfway across the six-mile span she happened to look back, and a new
mark upon the western shore caught her eye. She found a glass and
leveled it on the spot. Two or three buildings, typical logging-camp
shacks of split cedar, rose back from the beach. Behind these again the
beginnings of a cut had eaten a hole in the forest,--a slashing
different from the ordinary logging slash, for it ran narrowly, straight
back through the timber; whereas the first thing a logger does is to cut
all the merchantable timber he can reach on his limit without moving his
donkey from the water. It was not more than two miles from their house.
"What new camp is that?" she asked Howe.
"Monohan's," he answered casually.
"I thought Jack owned all the shore timber to Medicine Point?" she said.
Howe shook his head.
"Uh-uh. Well, he does too, all but where that camp is. Monohan's got a
freak limit in there. It's half a mile wide and two miles straight back
from the beach. Lays between our holdin's like the ham in a sandwich.
Only," he added thoughtfully, "it's a blame thin piece uh ham. About the
poorest timber in a long stretch. I dunno why the Sam Hill he's cuttin'
it. But then he's doin' a lot uh things no practical logger would do."
Stella laid down the glasses. It was nothing to her, she told herself.
She had seen Monohan only once since the day Fyfe choked him, and then
only to exchange the barest civilities--and to feel her heart flutter at
the message his eyes telegraphed.
When she returned from the launch trip, Fyfe was home, and Charlie
Benton with him. She crossed the heavy rugs on the living room floor
noiselessly in her overshoes, carrying Jack Junior asleep in her arms.
And so in passing the door of Fyfe's den, she heard her brother say:
"But, good Lord, you don't suppose he'll be sap-head enough to try such
fool stunts as that? He couldn't make it stick, and he brings himself
within the law first crack; and the most he could do would be to annoy
you."
"You underestimate Monohan," Fyfe returned. "He'll play safe,
personally, so far as the law goes. He's foxy. I advise you to sell if
the offer comes again. If you make any more breaks at him, he'll figure
some way to get you. It isn't your fight, you know. You unfortunately
happen to be in the road."
"Damned if I do," Benton swore. "I'm all in the clear. There's no way he
can get me, and I'll tell him what I think of him again if he gives me
half a chance. I never liked him, anyhow. Why should I sell when I'm
just getting in real good shape to take that timber out myself? Why, I
can make a hundred thousand dollars in the next five years on that block
of timber. Besides, without being a sentimental sort of beggar, I don't
lose sight of the fact that you helped pull me out of a hole when I sure
needed a pull. And I don't like his high-handed style. No, if it comes
to a showdown, I'm with you, Jack, as far as I can go. What the hell
_can_ he do?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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