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THE timber situation in the Tomah country was surcharged.

When Ward Latisan came upon Rufus Craig, one afternoon in autumn, steel struck flint and trouble’s fuse was lighted.

Their meeting was on the Holeb tote road just below Hagas Falls.

Young Ward was the grandson of old John, a pioneer who was in his day a saw-log baron of the times of pumpkin pine; by heredity Ward was the foremost champion in the cause of the modern independent operators.

In his own way, Craig, the field director of the Comas Consolidated Paper Company, was the chief gladiator for an invading corporation which demanded monopoly of the Tomah timber by absorption of the independents.

Latisan tramped down the tote road from the shoulder of Holeb Mountain, where he had been cruising alone for a week on the Walpole tract, blazing timber for the choppers, marking out twitch roads and haul-downs, locating yards; his short-handled ax was in his belt, his lank haversack flapped on his back; he carried his calipers in one hand; with the other hand he fed himself raisins from his trousers pocket, munching as he went along. He had eaten the last of his scanty supply of biscuits and bacon; but, like other timber cruisers—all of them must travel light—he had his raisins to fall back on, doling them one by one, masticating them thoroughly and finding the nourishment adequate.

He had been on the go every day from sunup till dark; nights he cinched his belted jacket closely and slept as best he could, his back against a tree; he had cruised into every nook and corner of the tract, spending strength prodigally, but when he strode down the tote road his vitality enabled him to hit it off at a brisk gait; his belt was a few holes tighter, yet his fasting made him keenly awake; he was more alert to the joy of being alive in the glory of the crisp day; his cap was in his pocket, his tousled brown hair was rampant; and he welcomed the flood of sunshine on his bronzed face.

Craig was making his way along the tote road in a buckboard, with a driver. The road bristled with rocks and was pitted with hollows; the fat horses dragged their feet at a slow walk. Craig was a big man, a bit paunchy, and he grunted while he was bounced. He wore his city hard hat as if he wished by his headgear to distinguish himself from the herd of woodsmen whom he bossed.

Latisan overtook the toiling buckboard, and his stride was taking him past when Craig hailed.

“Ride?”

“No—thank you!” The negative was sharp. Privation and toil had put an edge on the young man’s temper, and the temper was not amiable where Craig was concerned.

“I’ve got some business to talk with you, Latisan.”

“If that’s so I can listen while I walk alongside.”

But Craig ordered the driver to halt. Then the Comas director swung around and faced Latisan. “I’m putting it up to you again—will you and your father sell to the Comas?”

“No, sir!”

“What is it going to be—a fight to a finish?”

“If you keep your hands off us saw-log fellows, Mr. Craig, there’ll be no fight. We were here first, you know!”

“That’s got nothing to do with the present situation, Latisan. We’ve built a million-dollar paper mill on the Toban, and it’s up to me to feed it with pulp stuff. We can’t lug our plant off in a shawl strap if supply fails.”

“Nor can the folks who have built villages around the sawmills lug away their houses if the mills are closed.”

“Paper dominates in this valley nowadays, instead of lumber. Latisan, you’re old-fashioned!”

The young man, feeling his temper flame, lighted his pipe, avoiding too quick retort.

“You stand to lose money in the lumber market, with conditions as they are,” proceeded Craig, loftily counseling another man about his own business. The Comas director, intent on consolidation, had persistently failed to understand the loyalty, half romantic, which was actuating the old-line employers to protect faithful householders. “Let the workers move down the river to our model town.”

“And live in those beehives of yours, paying big rent, competing with the riffraff help you hire from employment agencies? We can’t see it that way, Mr. Craig!”

“Look here! I’ve got some news for you. I’ve just pulled five of the independents in with us—Gibson, Sprague, Tolman, Brinton, and Bodwell. The Comas now controls the timber market on the Toban. How about logs for your mills?”

Craig believed he was hitting Latisan five solid jolts to the jaw when he named the recreant operators.

However, the young man had heard rumors of what the bludgeoning methods of the Comas had accomplished; he surveyed Craig resolutely through the pipe smoke.

He had come down from the Walpole tract that day in a spirit of new confidence which put away all weariness from him. He was armed with a powerful weapon. In his exultation, fired by youth’s natural hankering to vaunt success in an undertaking where his elders had failed, he was willing to flourish the weapon.

Craig waggled a thick forefinger. “What are you going to saw, Latisan?”

“Two million feet from the Walpole tract—where no ax has chipped a tree for twenty-five years.”

It was a return jolt and it made the Comas man blink. “But nobody can buy the right to cut there.”

“I have bought the right, Mr. Craig. An air-tight stumpage contract—passed on by the best lawyer in this county—a clear title.”

“Latisan, the Comas has never been able to round up those heirs—and what we can’t do with all our resources can’t be done by you.”

“The Latisans know this region better than the Comas folks know it, sir. Five cousins by hard hunting—two gravestones by good luck! All heirs located! Why don’t you congratulate me?”

Just then the Comas director was thinking instead of talking.

In his operations he was a cocksure individual, Mr. Craig was! In his hands, by his suggestion, his New York superiors had placed all the details of business in the field of the north country. He had promised consolidation with full belief in his ability to perform; one explicit promise had been that this season would mark the end of the opposition by the independents; the Comas would secure complete control of the Toban timber and fix prices. But here were the ringleader Latisans in a way to smash the corner which Craig had manipulated by bulldozing and bribery! In the past Craig had not bothered headquarters with any minute explanations of how he accomplished results. This crusher which threatened all his plans and promises would make a monkey of him in New York, he reflected.

“I want to say a last word to you, Mr. Craig,” continued Latisan, stiffly. “Probably we are now in for that fight on which you’ve been insisting. I don’t want to fight, but I’m ready for a fair stand-up. Just a moment, please!” Craig had barked a few oaths preliminary to an outpouring of his feelings. “I’m warning you to let up on those guerrilla tactics of yours. I propose to find out whether your big men in New York are backing you. I’m telling you now to your face, so you can’t accuse me later of carrying tales behind your back, of my intention to go to New York and report conditions to the president of the Comas.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“I do dare. I’m going. I expect you to run in ahead of me, but no matter. And speaking of tales behind a man’s back——”

Craig was having difficulty in finding speech for retort; Latisan was rushing the affair. Again Craig blustered, “Don’t you dare!”

“Yes, I do dare. When I went away last summer I had good reasons for keeping my plans to myself. I got back to the Toban and found slander accusing me of sporting in the city, deviling around with liquor and women. That’s a damnable lie!”

Latisan delivered the accusation hotly; there was unmistakable challenge in his demeanor. “You yourself have handed around some of that slander, Mr. Craig. I get it straight from men whose word is good!”

“I only said what others were saying.”

“I don’t know, of course, who started those stories, but I do know that they have been used against me. They have helped you, it seems! I wanted to keep my plans under cover—but I’ve got to protect myself with the truth, even if the truth gives you a tip. I went away to take a special course in hydraulic engineering, so as to know more about protecting the common rights in the flowage of this river.” He swung his hand to indicate the thundering falls of Hagas. “You have used your tongue to hurt my standing with some of the independents—they distrust my reliability and good faith—you have pulled in a few of them. The others will stand by me. Frankly, Mr. Craig, I don’t like your style! It’ll be a good thing for both of us if we have no more talk after this.” He walked rapidly down the tote road, not turning his head when Craig called furiously after him.

“Pretty uppish, ain’t he?” ventured the driver, touching the horses with the whip.

Craig, bouncing alone on the middle seat of the buckboard, grunted.

“Excuse me, Mr. Craig, but that’s some news—what he said about getting aholt of the old Walpole tract.”

The Comas boss did not comment.

The driver said nothing more for some time; he was a slouchy woodsman of numb wits; he chewed tobacco constantly with the slow jaw motion of a ruminating steer, and he looked straight ahead between the ears of the nigh horse, going through mental processes of a certain sort. “Now ’t I think of it, I wish I’d grabbed in with a question to young Latisan. But he doesn’t give anybody much of a chance to grab in when he’s talking. Still, I’d have liked to ask him something.” He maundered on in that strain for several minutes.

“Ask him what?” snapped Craig, tired of the monologue.

“Whuther he’s talked with my old aunt Dorcas about the heir who went off into the West somewheres. Grandson of the old sir who was the first Walpole of the Toban—real heir, if he’s still alive! My aunt Dorcas had letters about him, or from him, or something like that, only a few years ago.”

“Look here!” stormed Craig. “Why haven’t you said something about such letters or such an heir?”

“Nobody has ever asked me. And he’s prob’ly dead, anyway. Them lawyers know everything. And he’s a roving character, as I remember what my aunt said. No use o’ telling anybody about him—it would cost too much to find him.”

“Cost too much!” snarled the Comas director. “Oh, you——” But he choked back what he wanted to say about the man’s intellect. Craig pulled out notebook and pencil and began to fire questions.

Latisan was headed for home, the old family mansion in the village of Toban Deadwater where Ward and his widowed father kept bachelor’s hall, with a veteran woods cook to tend and do for them. The male cook was Ward’s idea. The young man had lived much in the woods, and the ways of women about the house annoyed him; a bit of clutter was more comfortable.

It was a long tramp to the Deadwater, but he knew the blazed-trail short cuts and took advantage of the light of the full moon for the last stage of the journey. He was eager to report progress and prospects to his father.

Ward was not anticipating much in the way of practical counsel from Garry Latisan.

Old John had been a Tartar, a blustering baron of the timberlands.

Garry, his son, had taken to books and study. He was slow and mild, deprecatory and forgiving. Ward Latisan had those saving qualities in a measure, but he was conscious in himself of the avatar of old John’s righteous belligerency when occasion prompted.

Ward, as he was trudging home, was trying to keep anger from clouding his judgment. When he felt old John stirring in him, young Latisan sought the mild counsel of Garry, and then went ahead on a line of action of his own; he was steering a safe course, he felt, by keeping about halfway between John’s violence in performance and Garry’s toleration.

Ward was the executive of the Latisan business and liked the job; his youth and vigor found zest in the adventures of the open. Old John’s timber man’s spirit had been handed along to the grandson. Ward finished his education at a seminary—and called it enough. His father urged him to go to college, but he went into the woods and was glad to be there, at the head of affairs.

The operations on the old tracts, thinned by many cuttings, had been keeping him closely on the job, because there were problems to be solved if profits were to be handled.

His stroke in getting hold of the Walpole tract promised profits without problems; there were just so many trees to cut down—and the river was handy!

In spite of his weariness, Ward sat till midnight on the porch with his father, going over their plans. The young man surveyed the Latisan mill and the houses of the village while he talked; the moon lighted all and the mill loomed importantly, reflected in the still water of the pond. If Craig prevailed, the mill and the homes must be left to rot, empty, idle, and worthless. As Ward viewed it, the honor of the Latisans was at stake; the spirit of old John blazed in the grandson; but he declared his intention to fight man fashion, if the fight were forced on him. He would go to the Comas headquarters in New York, he said, not to ask for odds or beg for favors, but to explain the situation and to demand that Craig be required to confine himself to the tactics of square business rivalry.

“And my course in engineering was a good investment; I can talk turkey to them about our dams and the flowage rights. I don’t believe they’re backing up Craig’s piracy!”

Garry Latisan agreed fully with his son and expressed the wistful wish, as he did regularly in their conferences, that he could be of more real help.

“Your sympathy and your praise are help enough, father,” Ward declared, with enthusiasm. “We’re sure of our cut; all I’m asking from the Comas is gangway for our logs. There must be square men at the head of that big corporation!”