All this
forenoon I kept my eye on the office door--I can see it through a
mill winder; an' I'm tellin' you the old boss didn't show up till ten
o'clock, which the old man ain't never been a ten o'clock business
man at no time. Don't that prove the boy's took his place?"
Confused murmurs of affirmation and negation ran up and down the long
table. Dan tapped with his knife again. "You hear me," he warned.
"Thirty year I've been ridin' John Cardigan's log-carriages; thirty
year I've been gettin' everythin' out of a log it's possible to git
out, which is more'n you fellers at the trimmers can git out of a
board after I've sawed it off the cant. There's a lot o' you young
fellers that've been takin' John Cardigan's money under false
pretenses, so if I was you I'd keep both eyes on my job hereafter.
For a year I've been claimin' that good No. 2 stock has been chucked
into the slab-fire as refuge lumber." (Dan meant refuse lumber.) "But
it won't be done no more. The raftsman tells me he seen Bryce down at
the end o' the conveyin' belt givin' that refuge the once-over--so
step easy."
"What does young Cardigan know about runnin' a sawmill?" a planer-man
demanded bluntly. "They tell me he's been away to college an'
travellin' the past six years."
"Wa-ll," drawled the head sawyer, "you git to talkin' with him some
day an' see how much he knows about runnin' a sawmill.
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