"Here it is!" growled Ide. "It's a picture of it! And if it ain't a good picture of the damnable reason why no one else but Pulaski Britt and his crowd can make a dollar on these waters, then I'm no judge. Here we are on Enchanted--mountain here and pond here! The dam at our pond will give us water enough to get us down to Britt's dam on Enchanted dead-water. Then we've got to deal with Britt. Law may be with us, but in dealin' with Britt up here in this section law is like a woodpecker tryin' to pull the teeth out of a cross-cut saw. Britt has got the foot of Enchanted Stream, and he controls Jerusalem Stream that gobbles Enchanted. That's our outlook to the east of us. Now to the west, and only two miles from our operation here, is Blunder Stream. Runs into Umcolcus main river, you see, like Jerusalem Stream away over here to the east. Straightaway run. Fed by Blunder Lake, up here ten miles to the north--that is, it ought to be fed! And it ought to be the stream to take our logs. But more than thirty years ago, without law or justice, Britt closed in the rightful western outlet of Blunder Lake with a big dam, and dug a canal from the eastern end to Jerusalem Stream, and every spring since then he's used the water for the Jerusalem drive. A half a dozen small operators have been to the legislature from time to time to get rights. Did they get 'em? Why, they didn't even get a decent look! Old King Spruce doesn't go to law or the legislature askin' for things. King Spruce takes them. Then the laborin' oar is with the chaps who try to take 'em away. Even if a thing is unrighteous, Wade, it doesn't stir much of a scandal in politics to keep it just as it is. It's what we're up against, I say!" He held down the map, his finger on Enchanted, as though typifying the power that held them and their interests helpless. Wade gazed upon the finger-end. He felt it pressing upon his hopes. His brows wrinkled, but he said nothing. "The Great Independents will make that name heard by the next legislature, I've no doubt," Ide went on, "but that's a year from now. In the mean time we've got five millions or so of timber here at this end, and its market and the money waitin' at the other end, which is Castonia. And there's another thing, Wade, and it's the biggest of all: we've got to hold our timber above the Hullin' Machine. Nature has fixed the place for us. There's the dead-water behind Hay Island. With Britt drivin' our logs, he'd ram 'em hell-whoopin' through the Hullin' Machine, and find an excuse for it, and then buy 'em in down-river at his own price. If we undertook to follow him down Enchanted and Jerusalem, he wouldn't leave enough water to drown a cat in. I'm taking the time to show you this thing as it stands, son. You've got to see all sides of it."