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Updated: May 21, 2025
Jest gimme your check for five hunderd dollars and I'll take your stocks of hardware off'n your hands at, say, fifty cents on the dollar, and we'll call it a day." "Scattergood, we got you where we want you. You can't hold out another sixty days." "Maybe. But, gentlemen, I guess we kin do business. I jest bought the only means of transportin' goods, wares, and merchandise into Coldriver.
The letter gave the information that two gentlemen named Crane and Keith had pooled their timber holdings on the east and west branches of Coldriver, and had filed papers for the incorporation of the Coldriver Lumber Company. This was important.
Foreclose with all promptitude was their word, and foreclose they did. With the result that legal notices were published to the effect that on the sixteenth day of June the dam, booms, cribbing, improvements, charter, contracts, and property of whatsoever nature belonging to the Coldriver Dam and Boom Company were to be sold at public auction on the steps of the county courthouse.
Next morning, Scattergood, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Ovid Nixon, alighted from the train in Coldriver. Deacon Pettybone happened to be standing on the depot platform. "Make you acquainted with Mis' Nixon," said Scattergood, with gravity.
"Marthy," said Postmaster Pratt. "I can't make out about Marthy, but I heard her a-singin' this mornin' 'fore breakfast. Fust time I heard her sing for more 'n a year." "Might 'a' been singin' to the baby," Scattergood suggested. "Naw, it was while she was gittin' breakfast. Jest the time she and Jed quarrels most powerful." During the day all of Coldriver called to see the mysterious infant.
It is true also that with the last winter coming on he had looked about for a chance to keep his small surplus at work for him, and his eyes had fallen upon the item of firewood. In Coldriver were a matter of sixty houses and a hotel, all of which derived their heat from hardwood chunks, and cooked their meals on range fires with sixteen-inch split wood.
It lay three miles below town, at the junction of the north and south branches of Coldriver. The juncture was in a big, marshy, untillable flat, from which hills rose abruptly. From the easterly end of the flat the augmented river squeezed in a roaring rapids through a sort of bottle neck. Scattergood stood on the hillside and looked upon this with satisfied eye.
Twenty-four hours later both Crane and Keith were in Coldriver, storming up to Lawyer Norton's office. Scattergood was in Boston and not visible. "What does this mean?" blustered Crane, displaying to Norton the notice mailed at Scattergood's direction. "What it says." "You can't stop us hauling to the river." Norton shrugged his shoulders. "You can use the state road." "Fifteen miles!
They figured Carp was a pal of Morrow's and all right. It was near morning then. Carp sent Bentley fanning for Coldriver to see if the sheriff was back and to bring out the posse if he hadn't turned up. He started out for the Three Bar himself.
Coldriver doubtless thought him idle, but he was studying the locality and the river with the eye of a commander who knew this was to be his battlefield. What Scattergood wanted now was to place himself astride Coldriver Valley, somewhere below the village, so that he could control the upper reaches of the stream. It was not difficult to find such a location.
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