When you are the boss of Cardigan's mill, you must keep
the wheels turning; you must never shut down the mill or the logging-
camps in dull times just to avoid a loss you can stand better than
your employees."
His hard, trembling old hand closed over the boy's. "I want you to be
a brave and honourable man," he concluded.
True to his word, when John Cardigan finished his logging in his old,
original holdings adjacent to Sequoia and Bill Henderson's Squaw
Creek timber, he quietly moved south with his Squaw Creek woods-gang
and joined the crew already getting out logs in the San Hedrin
watershed. Not until then did Bill Henderson realize that John
Cardigan had called his bluff--whereat he cursed himself for a fool
and a poor judge of human nature. He had tried a hold-up game and had
failed; a dollar a thousand feet stumpage was a fair price; for years
he had needed the money; and now, when it was too late, he realized
his error. Luck was with Henderson, however; for shortly thereafter
there came again to Sequoia one Colonel Seth Pennington, a
millionaire white-pine operator from Michigan. The Colonel's Michigan
lands had been logged off, and since he had had one taste of cheap
timber, having seen fifty-cent stumpage go to five dollars, the
Colonel, like Oliver Twist, desired some more of the same.
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