The Valley of the Giants

by Peter B. Kyne

  CHAPTER XIV

  Colonel Seth Pennington looked up sourly as a clerk entered his privateoffice. "Well?" he demanded brusquely. When addressing his employees,the Colonel seldom bothered to assume his pontifical manner.

  "Mr. Bryce Cardigan is waiting to see you, sir."

  "Very well. Show him in."

  Bryce entered. "Good morning, Colonel," he said pleasantly and brazenlythrust out his hand.

  "Not for me, my boy," the Colonel assured him. "I had enough of thatlast night. We'll just consider the hand-shaking all attended to, ifyou please. Have a chair; sit down and tell me what I can do to make youhappy."

  "I'm delighted to find you in such a generous frame of mind, Colonel.You can make me genuinely happy by renewing, for ten years on the sameterms as the original contract, your arrangement to freight the logs ofthe Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company from the woods to tidewater."

  Colonel Pennington cleared his throat with a propitiatory "Ahem-m-m!"Then he removed his gold spectacles and carefully wiped them with a silkhandkerchief, as carefully replaced them upon his aristocratic nose, andthen gazed curiously at Bryce.

  "Upon my soul!" he breathed.

  "I realized, of course, that this is reopening an issue which you havebeen pleased to regard as having been settled in the last letter myfather had from you, and wherein you named terms that were absolutelyprohibitive."

  "My dear young friend! My very dear young friend! I must protest atbeing asked to discuss this matter. Your father and I have been over itin detail; we failed to agree, and that settles it. As a matter of fact,I am not in position to handle your logs with my limited rolling-stock,and that old hauling contract which I took over when I bought the mills,timber-lands, and logging railroad from the late Mr. Henderson andincorporated into the Laguna Grande Lumber Company, has been anembarrassment I have longed to rid myself of. Under those circumstancesyou could scarcely expect me to saddle myself with it again, at yourmere request and solely to oblige you."

  "I did not expect you to agree to my request. I am not quite thatoptimistic," Bryce replied evenly.

  "Then why did you ask me?"

  "I thought that possibly, if I reopened negotiations, you might have areasonable counter-proposition to suggest."

  "I haven't thought of any."

  "I suppose if I agreed to sell you that quarter-section of timber inthe little valley over yonder" (he pointed to the east) "and the naturaloutlet for your Squaw Creek timber, you'd quickly think of one," Brycesuggested pointedly.

  "No, I am not in the market for that Valley of the Giants, as youridealistic father prefers to call it. Once I would have purchased it fordouble its value, but at present I am not interested."

  "Nevertheless it would be an advantage for you to possess it."

  "My dear boy, the possession of that big timber is an advantage I expectto enjoy before I acquire many more gray hairs. But I do not expect topay for it."

  "Do you expect me to offer it to you as a bonus for renewing our haulingcontract?"

  The Colonel snapped his fingers. "By George," he declared, "that's abright idea, and a few months ago I would have been inclined to considerit very seriously. But now--"

  "You figure you've got us winging, eh?" Bryce was smiling pleasantly.

  "I am making no admissions," Pennington responded enigmatically "--norany hauling contracts for my neighbour's logs," he added.

  "You may change your mind."

  "Never."

  "I suppose I'll have to abandon logging in Township Nine and go back tothe San Hedrin," Bryce sighed resignedly.

  "If you do, you'll go broke. You can't afford it. You're on the verge ofinsolvency this minute."

  "I suppose, since you decline to haul our logs, after the expirationof our present contract, and in view of the fact that we are notfinancially able to build our own logging railroad, that the wisestcourse my father and I could pursue would be to sell our timber inTownship Nine to you. It adjoins your holdings in the same township"

  "I had a notion the situation would begin to dawn upon you." The Colonelwas smiling now; his handsome face was gradually assuming the expressionpontifical. "I'll give you a dollar a thousand feet stumpage for it."

  "On whose cruise?"

  "Oh, my own cruisers will estimate it."

  "I'm afraid I can't accept that offer. We paid a dollar and a half forit, you know, and if we sold it to you at a dollar, the sale would notbring us sufficient money to take up our bonded indebtedness; we'd onlyhave the San Hedrin timber and the Valley of the Giants left, and sincewe cannot log either of these at present, naturally we'd be out ofbusiness."

  "That's the way I figured it, my boy."

  "Well--we're not going out of business."

  "Pardon me for disagreeing with you. I think you are."

  "Not much! We can't afford it."

  The Colonel smiled benignantly. "My dear boy, my very dear young friend,listen to me. Your paternal ancestor is the only human being who hasever succeeded in making a perfect monkey of me. When I wanted topurchase from him a right of way through his absurd Valley of theGiants, in order that I might log my Squaw Creek timber, he refusedme. And to add insult to injury, he spouted a lot of rot about his bigtrees, how much they meant to him, and the utter artistic horror ofrunning a logging-train through the grove--particularly since he plannedto bequeath it to Sequoia as a public park. He expects the city to growup to it during the next twenty years.

  "My boy, that was the first bad break your father made. His second breakwas his refusal to sell me a mill-site. He was the first man in thiscounty, and he had been shrewd enough to hog all the water-front realestate and hold onto it. I remember he called himself a progressivecitizen, and when I asked him why he was so assiduously blocking thewheels of progress, he replied that the railroad would build in fromthe south some day, but that when it did, its builders would have to beassured of terminal facilities on Humboldt Bay. 'By holding intact thespot where rail and water are bound to meet,' he told me, 'I insure theterminal on tidewater which the railroad must have before consenting tobuild. But if I sell it to Tom, Dick, and Harry, they will be certain togouge the railroad when the latter tries to buy it from them. They mayscare the railroad away.'"

  "Naturally!" Bryce replied. "The average human being is a hog, andmerciless when he has the upper hand. He figures that a bird in the handis worth two in the bush. My father, on the contrary, has always plannedfor the future. He didn't want that railroad blocked by land-speculatorsand its building delayed. The country needed rail connection with theoutside world, and moreover his San Hedrin timber isn't worth a hootuntil that feeder to a transcontinental road shall be built to tap it."

  "But he sold Bill Henderson the mill-site on tidewater that he refusedto sell me, and later I had to pay Henderson's heirs a whooping pricefor it. And I haven't half the land I need."

  "But he needed Henderson then. They had a deal on together. You mustremember, Colonel, that while Bill Henderson held that Squaw Creektimber he later sold you, my father would never sell him a mill-site.Can't you see the sporting point of view involved? My father and BillHenderson were good-natured rivals; for thirty years they had triedto outgame each other on that Squaw Creek timber. Henderson thought hecould force my father to buy at a certain price, and my father thoughthe could force Henderson to sell at a lesser price; they were perfectlyfrank about it with each other and held no grudges. Of course, afteryou bought Henderson out, you foolishly took over his job of trying tooutgame my father. That's why you bought Henderson out, isn't it? Youhad a vision of my father's paying you a nice profit on your investment,but he fooled you, and now you're peeved and won't play."

  Bryce hitched his chair farther toward the Colonel. "Why shouldn't mydad be nice to Bill Henderson after the feud ended?" he continued. "Theycould play the game together then, and they did. Colonel, why can't yoube as sporty as Henderson and my father? They fought each other, butthey fought fairly and in the open, and they never lost the respect and
liking each had for the other."

  "I will not renew your logging contract. That is final, young man. Noman can ride me with spurs and get away with it."

  "Oh, I knew that yesterday."

  "Then why have you called on me to-day, taking up my time on a deadissue?"

  "I wanted to give you one final chance to repent. I know your plan.You have it in your power to smash the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company,acquire it at fifty per cent. of its value, and merge its assets withyour Laguna Grande Lumber Company. You are an ambitious man. You wantto be the greatest redwood manufacturer in California, and in orderto achieve your ambitions, you are willing to ruin a competitor: youdecline to play the game like a thoroughbred."

  "I play the game of business according to the rules of the game; I donothing illegal, sir."

  "And nothing generous or chivalrous. Colonel, you know your plea of ashortage of rolling-stock is that the contract for hauling our logs hasbeen very profitable and will be more profitable in the future if youwill accept a fifty-cent-per-thousand increase on the freight-rate andrenew the contract for ten years."

  "Nothing doing, young man. Remember, you are not in a position to askfavours."

  "Then I suppose we'll have to go down fighting?"

  "I do not anticipate much of a fight."

  "You'll get as much as I can give you."

  "I'm not at all apprehensive."

  "And I'll begin by running your woods-boss out of the country."

  "Ah-h!"

  "You know why, of course--those burl panels in your dining room. Rondeaufelled a tree in our Valley of the Giants to get that burl for you,Colonel Pennington."

  Pennington flushed. "I defy you to prove that," he almost shouted.

  "Very well. I'll make Rondeau confess; perhaps he'll even tell mewho sent him after the burl. Upon my word, I think you inspired thatdastardly raid. At any rate, I know Rondeau is guilty, and you, as hisemployer and the beneficiary of his crime, must accept the odium."

  The Colonel's face went white. "I do not admit anything except thatyou appear to have lost your head, young man. However, for the sake ofargument: granting that Rondeau felled that tree, he did it under theapprehension that your Valley of the Giants is a part of my Squaw Creektimber adjoining."

  "I do not believe that. There was malice in the act--brutality even; formy mother's grave identified the land as ours, and Rondeau felled thetree on her tombstone."

  "If that is so, and Rondeau felled that tree--I do not believe he did--Iam sincerely sorry, Cardigan, Name your price and I will pay you for thetree. I do not desire any trouble to develop over this affair."

  "You can't pay for that tree," Bryce burst forth. "No pitiful humanbeing can pay in dollars and cents for the wanton destruction of God'shandiwork. You wanted that burl and when my father was blind and couldno longer make his Sunday pilgrimage up to that grove, your woods-bosswent up and stole that which you knew you could not buy."

  "That will be about all from you, young man. Get out of my office. Andby the way, forget that you have met my niece."

  "It's your office--so I'll get out. As for your second command"--hesnapped his fingers in Pennington's face--"fooey!"

  When Bryce had gone, the Colonel hurriedly called his logging-camp onthe telephone and asked for Jules Rondeau, only to be informed, by thetimekeeper who answered the telephone, that Rondeau was up in the greentimber with the choppers and could not be gotten to the telephone inless than two hours.

  "Do not send for him, then," Pennington commanded. "I'm coming up onthe eleven-fifteen train and will talk to him when he comes in for hislunch."

  At eleven o'clock, and just as the Colonel was leaving to board theeleven-fifteen logging-train bound empty for the woods, Shirley Sumnermade her appearance in his office.

  "Uncle Seth," she complained, "I'm lonesome. The bookkeeper tells meyou're going up to the logging-camp. May I go with you?"

  "By all means. Usually I ride in the cab with the engineer and fireman;but if you're coming, I'll have them hook on the caboose. Step lively,my dear, or they'll be holding the train for us and upsetting ourschedule."