Scattergood Baines Part 27

"Who bought 'em?"

"They're underwritten by the Commonwealth Security Trust Company."

"Want to know!... Got authority? Vested with authority to put it in writin'?"

"The contract, you mean?"

"Calculate to mean that."

"Yes."

"Lawyer acrost the street," said Scattergood.

"You can swing it?"

"Calculate to."

"You have the capital to make good?"

"Know I have, don't you? Wouldn't have come to me if you hadn't?"

"You'll have to borrow heavily."

"My lookout, hain't it? Don't need to worry you?"

"Not in the least."

"Lawyer's still acrost the street."

So Scattergood and Mr. Blossom went across the street and up the narrow stairs to Lawyer Norton's office, where a contract was drafted and signed, obligating Scattergood to deliver to the Higgins's Bridge Pulp Company twenty-five thousand cords of pulp, on or before May 1st, payment to be made on delivery. Mr. Blossom went away wearing a satisfied expression, and in the course of the day sent to Crane & Keith a brief message, a message of two words. "He bit," was the telegram.

Scattergood went back to his chair, and presently might have been seen to unlace his shoes absent-mindedly. For an hour he sat there, twiddling his bare toes. Then he got up, jerked Mr. Blossom's old jackknife from the post where it had been abandoned, and pocketed it.

"If nothin' else happens," he said to himself, "I'm figgered to make a profit of sixty cents and a tradin' knife."

There followed a very busy fall and winter for Scattergood. Not that he neglected his hardware store, but from its porch, and later from a post beside its big stove, he recruited men for his camps and directed the labor of cutting and piling pulpwood along the banks of Coldriver.

Also, from time to time, he visited various banks to borrow the money necessary to carry on the operation, sometimes on notes and collateral, sometimes on timber mortgages. The sum of his borrowing mounted and mounted, until, before the arrival of spring, his credit had been strained to the uttermost.

Nor had the pulp company been idle. Its new mills had arisen beside the river at Higgins's Bridge, machinery had been installed, and the little hamlet was beginning to speculate in town lots and to look forward to unexampled prosperity.

But before the ice was out of the river disquieting rumors began to breathe out of Higgins's Bridge. They were the meerest vapor of conjecture at first, apparently based upon no evidence whatever, but friends delighted to convey them to Scattergood, as friends always delight to perform such a disagreeable duty.

"Hear things hain't goin' right down to the new pulp mill," said Deacon Pettybone, one bitterly cold afternoon, when he came into Scattergood's store to thaw the icicles out of his spa.r.s.e beard.

"Do tell," said Scattergood.

"Be perty bad for you if they was to go wrong, wouldn't it?"

"Perty bad, Deacon."

"'Most ruin you, wouldn't it? Clean you out? Leave you with nothin'?"

"Hain't mortgaged my health. Hain't mortgaged my brains. Have them left, Deacon. Don't figger I'm clean bankrupt till them two is gone."

But it was to be noticed that Scattergood toasted his bare toes a great deal during the ensuing days. He scarcely put on his shoes except when he was going out to wallow through the drifts; and, as Coldriver knew, when Scattergood waggled his bare toes he was struggling with a problem.

Also it might have been noticed that he pored much over the detailed maps in the county atlas, studying the flow of streams and the lie of timber. It might have been seen that several large blocks of timber had been marked by Scattergood with red crosses, and that certain other limits had been blotted out in black. The black pieces were neither numerous nor individually extensive, but they belonged to Scattergood.

Those marked with red crosses were the property of Messrs. Crane & Keith.

Now, it may be taken as axiomatic that in those early days the value of a piece of timber depended upon its accessibility to flowing water down which logs might be driven. A medium piece of timber on the banks of a stream which came to plentiful flood in the spring was worth more in hard dollars and cents than a much larger and finer piece back in the hills. A piece of timber which had no access whatever to water approximated worthlessness. On the atlas, the largest pieces of Crane & Keith timber were back from the river--not too far back, but still separated from it by narrow strips which, for the most part, were farms.

Some few pieces ran down to the river, but it was apparent that Crane & Keith were looking to the future--buying timber when it was at its lowest, and preparing to hold for a better day. They had bought strategically. More than one tributary valley was in their hands, and, when the day ripened, small land purchases would connect their holdings, bring them to water, and place them in such a commanding position that the valley would be as surely theirs as if they owned every foot of it.

Inasmuch as Scattergood planned, himself, to control Coldriver Valley, the prospect was not pleasing to him.

Scattergood closed the atlas and put on his shoes. "Um!..." he said.

"Calculate that'll keep their minds off'n other things a spell. If they see me d.i.c.kerin' there, they won't figger I'm d.i.c.kerin' some place else."

If Scattergood had been a general, history would have recorded that he won his battles by making feints at some vulnerable point in the enemy's line, and then struck his major blow at a distance where he was not suspected to be operating at all.

It chanced that Crane & Keith were cutting timber from the Bottle--a valley so named. Their rollways were piled high, and it was time for them to team to the river. To reach the river they must pa.s.s through the Bottleneck and over the farm belonging to Old Man Plumm. There was another road into the valley--a public road--but it was a fifteen-mile haul. Old Man Plumm was a non-a.s.sertive person, and good-natured. His farm was a ramshackle, down-at-heels, worthless place, off which he gleaned the meagerest of livelihoods, so that he had not been averse to permitting Crane & Keith to traverse his land for a nominal consideration. It was cheaper for Crane & Keith than purchase--and so the matter stood.

Scattergood went across the road to Lawyer Norton's office.

"Goin' up Bottleneck way perty soon?" he asked.

"Not that I know of, Scattergood."

"Nice drive. Old Man Plumm's got a farm there."

"I know that, of course."

"Don't figger to visit him?"

"Why--" said Norton, beginning to see that Scattergood had something in view--"I could."

"Wouldn't try to buy the farm, would you?"

Norton hesitated. "I--I might."

"Cash?"

"Why, I suppose so."

"In your own name, eh? Not in anybody else's."

"How much should I pay?"

"Folks always pays what they have to--no more--no less. Immediate possession. Always a good thing. Got any money?"