It was all one to Rod, a part of the inevitability of things. He would have preferred to let Phillips Arm retain its beauty and solitude, its forested valley a home for deer and bear and coveys of grouse, its shining river the highway of salmon to their spawning grounds. He would have cut the Valdez timber last of all, because he liked to look south from Hawk's Nest on a slope of unbroken green. But he had no voice in the matter. If they chose to strip the granite ribs of the earth to their primal nakedness, not of necessity but for an ambitious man's profit, he could only shrug his shoulders. He had his own row to hoe. Rod was beginning to suspect that if Grove were a throwback to some coarse, high-handed animalistic type, he himself was something of a variation from the true Norquay strain. Like did not always produce like. Here about him work went forward with a swing. A dozen carpenters wrought marvels of construction on shore, transforming raw lumber into bunk houses, cook shacks, office, blacksmith shop, commissary. The falling gangs kept intermittent shudders running through the hillsides above, where they threw down their daily score of great trees. The donkey engines hitched cables to stumps ashore, slid off their floats, hauled themselves puffing and grunting into the shadowy woods, black-bellied mechanical spiders drawing themselves along by a thread of twisted steel wire. A pile-driver crew with a two-ton steam hammer drove rows of sticks alongshore to enclose a booming ground. Another crew built a chute from tide-water to the first benchland. Men and powerful machinery directed with skill and energy wrought this transformation. In two weeks logs were plunging down the chute,--one hundred thousand board feet per diem. It was all new; machinery from Washington shops--steel cable from England--tools from Welland Vale--a logging boss from Oregon--men from every corner of the earth. To Rod there was a dual advantage in this. He saw the technique of preparation pass through every stage, emerge from apparent confusion to orderly, foreseen results. On the personal side he was merely one man in a crew. There were no old hands to make it easier or harder for him because he was a Norquay. The logging boss was a man with a reputation for getting out timber. It was almost a religion with him. Rod marked him shrewdly. If Jim Handy had any hopes or ambitions beyond so many thousand feet per day brought to tide-water Rod never learned what they were. The man was a human logging machine. Other men commended themselves to him only in so far as they were efficient in the woods. To Handy, owners and owners' sons were subordinate to the job itself. He was the most perfect example of a single-track mind Rod Norquay had ever encountered.