The door closed on the two loggers. The three brothers looked at each other. "Cattle!" Grove broke out with quite unnecessary heat. "A mob like that attempting to dictate to us." "I'd hardly call two men a mob," Phil commented dryly. "It is scarcely dictating for men to state the conditions under which they are willing to work." "Are you going to let them stick you up like that?" Grove demanded unpleasantly. "Your way of putting it is offensive, but I know what you mean," Phil maintained his placidity. "I rather think I shall. I'm considering. We can certainly afford to give them a raise. Handy is a driver. He does get out--" "It isn't a question of affording it," Grove broke in. "It's a question of principle. You simply cannot afford to allow a crew of dissatisfied loggers to imagine for a minute that they can tell you how you're to run your business." "Handy, as I said," Phil went on unheeding, "does get out timber." "You mean," Rod supplemented, on the spur of an impulse, "he has the faculty of keeping a crew going at top speed, and they get out timber. Well, I can vouch for that, after twelve months under him. If these fellows were paid on the basis of production, they'd get bigger wages than they're asking. I made some calculations myself from time to time before I left the camp. Hall's figures are conservative. I got cost figures from the town office and reckoned the output. That Valdez camp for six months straight put out twenty per cent more timber per man than Hardwicke Island. I suppose you know that?" Phil nodded. "That high-rigger is almost too clever to be a logger," he observed. "Know anything about him, Rod? Notice the beggar's language? Most reasoned and unemotional presentment of a case I ever heard a logger make." "He's a good man on the job. He has been there since the camp opened," Rod prudently refrained from mentioning Andy's economic heresies. He liked Andy Hall and he foresaw Andy marked as an "agitator," that abused term which once tagged to a workingman makes him anathema to most employers. "In fact, I'd say old Jim has a crew it would be a pity to break up--if getting out timber efficiently is any object--for so small a matter as fifty cents a day--and bathtubs." "They never bathe," Grove sneered. "They don't look as if they did. I never got close enough to smell 'em, but I suppose they don't mind it themselves."