Is he the man who
has us where the hair is short?"
The old man nodded.
"The Squaw Creek timber deal, eh?" Bryce suggested.
Again the old man nodded. "You wrote me all about that," Bryce
continued. "You had him blocked whichever way he turned--so
effectually blocked, in fact, that the only pleasure he has derived
from his investment since is the knowledge that he owns two thousand
acres of timber with the exclusive right to pay taxes on it, walk in
it, look at it and admire it--in fact, do everything except log it,
mill it, and realize on his investment. It must make him feel like a
bally jackass."
"On the other hand," his father reminded him, "no matter what the
Colonel's feeling on that score may be, misery loves company, and not
until I had pulled out of the Squaw Creek country and started logging
in the San Hedrin watershed, did I realize that I had been
considerable of a jackass myself."
"Yes," Bryce admitted, "there can be no doubt but that you cut off
your nose to spite your face."
There was silence between them for several minutes. 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.
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