"
"We-ll," said old Bill, wagging his head sagely, "mebbe you can, an'
then again mebbe you can't. It took me a long time to figger out just
where I stood, but mebbe you're quicker at figgers than I am. Anyhow,
Colonel, good luck to you, whichever way the cat jumps."
This illuminating conversation had one effect on Colonel Seth
Pennington. It decided him to make haste slowly; so without taking
the trouble to make the acquaintance of John Cardigan, he returned to
Detroit, there to await the next move in this gigantic game of chess.
CHAPTER V
No man is infallible, and in planning his logging operations in the
San Hedrin watershed, John Cardigan presently made the discovery that
he had erred in judgment. That season, from May to November, his
woods-crew put thirty million feet of logs into the San Hedrin River,
while the mill sawed on a reserve supply of logs taken from the last
of the old choppings adjacent to Squaw Creek. 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.
"Unless the Lord'll gi' us a lot more water in the river," the woods-
boss McTavish complained, "I dinna see how I'm to keep the mill
runnin'.
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