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"Item three," he continued, and ticked it off on his third finger: "I want to see the feeder for a transcontinental line built into Sequoia from the south, for the reason that it will tap the Cardigan holdings in the San Hedrin watershed and give a tremendous value to timber which at the present time is rather a negative asset; consequently I would prefer to have that value created after Cardigan's San Hedrin timber has been merged with the assets of the Laguna Grande Lumber Company."
John Cardigan straightened up in his chair and laid the tip of his right index finger in the centre of the palm of his left hand. "Here was the situation, Bryce: The centre of my palm represents Sequoia; the end of my fingers represents the San Hedrin timber twenty miles south. Now, if the railroad built in from the south, you would win.
Bryce's thoughts harked back to that first season of logging in the San Hedrin, when the cloud-burst had caught the river filled with Cardigan logs and whirled them down to the bay, to crash through the log-boom at tidewater and continue out to the open sea.
That year, however, the rainfall in the San Hedrin country was fifty per cent. less than normal, and by the first of May of the following year Cardigan's woods-crew had succeeded in driving slightly less than half of the cut of the preceding year to the boom on tidewater at the mouth of the river.
But I was stubborn; I'd played the game so long, you know I didn't want to let that man Pennington outgame me. So I tackled the San Hedrin again. We put thirty million feet of logs into the river that year, and when the freshet came, McTavish managed to make a fairly successful drive.
The other laughed. "John," he declared, "you just haven't got the courage to pull out when your timber adjoining mine is gone, and move twenty miles south to the San Hedrin watershed. That will be too expensive a move, and you'll only be biting off your nose to spite your face. Come through with a dollar and a half, John." "I never bluff, Bill.
"A dollar is my absolute limit." "Then I'll keep my timber." "And I'll keep my money. When I finish logging in my present holdings, I'm going to pull out of that country and log twenty miles south of Sequoia. I have ten thousand acres in the San Hedrin watershed.
But if it built in from Grant's Pass, Oregon, on the north from the base of my hand, the terminus of the line would be Sequoia, twenty miles from your timber in the San Hedrin watershed!" Bryce nodded. "In which event," he replied, "we, would be in much the same position with our San Hedrin timber as Colonel Pennington is with his Squaw Creek timber.
I'll have to give him my timber adjoining his north of Sequoia, together with my Valley of the Giants, in return for the San Hedrin timber, to which he'll have a sheriff's deed. But the mill, all my old employees, with their numerous dependents gone, with you left land-poor and without a dollar to pay your taxes. Smashed like that!" And he drove his fist into the palm of his hand.
And I'm going right ahead with the building of the N.C.O. while our holdings down on the San Hedrin double in value, for the reason that within three years they will be accessible and can be logged over the rails of the Northwestern Pacific!" "Bryce," Shirley declared, "haven't I always told you I'd never permit you to build the N.C.O.?"
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