Big Timber | Page 8

finishing process had come to an abrupt stop before it was
complete. He had been a problem that her father and mother had
discussed in guarded tones. Sending him West had been a hopeful
experiment, and in the West that abounding spirit which manifested
itself in one continual round of minor escapades appeared to have
found a natural outlet. She recalled that latterly their father had taken to
speaking of Charlie in accents of pride. He was developing the one
ambition that Benton senior could thoroughly understand and properly

appreciate, the desire to get on, to grasp opportunities, to achieve
material success, to make money.
Just as her father, on the few occasions when he talked business before
her, spoke in a big way of big things as the desirable ultimate, so now
Charlie spoke, with plans and outlook to match his speech. In her
father's point of view, and in Charlie's now, a man's personal life did
not seem to matter in comparison with getting on and making money.
And it was with that personal side of existence that Stella Benton was
now chiefly concerned. She had never been required to adjust herself to
an existence that was wholly taken up with getting on to the complete
exclusion of everything else. Her work had been to play. She could
scarce conceive of any one entirely excluding pleasure and diversion
from his or her life. She wondered if Charlie had done so. And if not,
what ameliorating circumstances, what social outlet, might be found to
offset, for her, continued existence in this isolated region of towering
woods. So far as her first impressions went, Roaring Lake appeared to
be mostly frequented by lumberjacks addicted to rude speech and
strong drink.
"Are there many people living around this lake?" she inquired. "It is
surely a beautiful spot. If we had this at home, there would be a
summer cottage on every hundred yards of shore."
"Be a long time before we get to that stage here," Benton returned.
"And scenery in B.C. is a drug on the market; we've got Europe backed
off the map for tourist attractions, if they only knew it. No, about the
only summer home in this locality is the Abbey place at Cottonwood
Point. They come up here every summer for two or three months.
Otherwise I don't know of any lilies of the field, barring the hotel
people, and they, being purely transient, don't count. There's the
Abbey-Monohan outfit with two big logging camps, my outfit, Jack
Fyfe's, some hand loggers on the east shore, and the R.A.T. at the head
of the lake. That's the population--and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles
long and eight wide."
"Are there any nice girls around?" she asked.

Benton grinned widely.
"Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs and the
hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the lake except
Lefty Howe's wife,--Lefty's Jack Fyfe's foreman,--and she's fat and past
forty. I told you it was a God-forsaken hole as far as society is
concerned, Stell."
"I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize such
a--such a social blankness, until one actually experiences it. Anyway, I
don't know but I'll appreciate utter quiet for awhile. But what do you do
with yourself when you're not working?"
"There's seldom any such time," he answered. "I tell you, Stella, I've
got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to shoot at, and I'm
going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and high water. I have no
time to play, and there's no place to play if I had. I don't intend to
muddle along making a pittance like a hand logger. I want a stake; and
then it'll be time to make a splurge in a country where a man can get a
run for his money."
"If that's the case," she observed, "I'm likely to be a handicap to you,
am I not?"
"Lord, no," he smiled. "I'll put you to work too, when you get rested up
from your trip. You stick with me, Sis, and you'll wear diamonds."
She laughed with him at this, and leaving the shady maple they walked
up to the hotel, where Benton proposed that they get a canoe and
paddle to where Roaring River flowed out of the lake half a mile
westward, to kill the time that must elapse before the three-thirty train.
The St. Allwoods' car was rolling out to Hopyard when they came back.
By the time Benton had turned the canoe over to the boathouse man
and reached the wharf, the horn of the returning machine sounded
down the road. They waited. The car came to a stop at the abutting
wharf. The driver handed two