The Challenge of the North | Page 4

that'll show the stuff that's in him. If he's a crook, I'll give him the chance to prove it." Reaching into a pigeon-hole of his desk, McNabb withdrew a thick packet of papers and removed the rubber band.
A few moments later Jean entered, the office followed by a rather well set up young man, whose tiny mustache was chopped square, like a miniature section of box hedge. "This is Mr. Wentworth, Dad," introduced the girl. "And now I'll leave you two men, because Oskar has promised to help me pick out a coat, and it's after ten o'clock. And, by the way, Dad, what kind of a coat shall I get? I want a good one."
"I'll warrant ye do! Well, just you tell Oskar to let you pick out a pony, or a crummer, or a baum marten, or a squirrel. They're all good."
As the door closed behind his daughter, old John McNabb motioned the younger man to a chair. "My daughter tells me you're an engineer," he began.
"Yes, sir, temporarily unemployed."
"Come up here on the Nettle River project, I hear. What's the matter? Couldn't you dam the river?"
"Oh, yes. The Nettle River presents no serious engineering problem. I spent four months on the ground and reported it favorably, and then all of a sudden, I was informed that the project had been abandoned, at least for the present. The trouble, I presume, was in the financing. It certainly was not because of any physical obstacles."
"What was the idea in building the dam in the first place?"
"Why, for power purposes. I believe it was their intention to induce manufacturing enterprises to locate in Terrace City, and to furnish them electric power at a low rate----"
"An' underbid me on the lightin' contract--an' then unload onto the city at a big profit."
Wentworth smiled. "I was not advised as to the financial end of it. I suppose, though, that that would have been the logical procedure."
Old John chuckled. "You're right, it would, with Fred Orcutt mixed up in it. But they didn't catch me nappin', an' I slipped the word to the city dads that I'd sell out to 'em, lock, stock, an' barrel, at a figure that would have meant a loss to Orcutt's crowd to meet. So I'm the one that busted the Nettle River bubble, an' seein' I knocked ye out of a job, it's no more than fair I should offer ye another."
"Why, thank you----"
"Don't thank me yet," interrupted McNabb. "Ye may not care to tackle it. It's a man's size job, in a man's country. Part of it's the same kind of work you've been doin' here--locatin' a dam to furnish power to run a pulp mill. Then you'll have to check up the land covered by that batch of options, an' explore a couple of rivers, an' locate more pulpwood, an' get options on it. An' lay out a road to the railway. It's in Canada, in the Gods Lake Country, three hundred miles north of the railhead."
"How soon would you expect me to start?"
"Monday wouldn't be none too soon; to-morrow would be better. It's this way. I've got options on better than half a million acres of pulpwood lyin' between Hayes River an' the Shamattawa. Ten years ago I cut the last of my pine, an' I got out my pencil an' begun to figure how I could keep in the woods. I pig-ironed a little--got out hardwood for the wooden specialty factories to cut up into spools, an' clothes-pins, an' oval dishes an' whatnot--an' then I turned my attention to the pulpwood. I figured it wouldn't be long before the papermills would be hollerin' for raw materials the way they was turnin' out the paper, so I nosed around a bit an' bought options on pulpwood land here an' there. An' now's the time to get busy, with the big newspapers an' the magazines all howlin' for paper, an' all the mills workin' overtime."
"Do you mean that you're going to manufacture paper yourself--way up there? How do you expect to get your product to market?"
"Easy enough. Make the paper in the woods, an' float it a little better than a hundred miles to Hudson Bay in barges, or scows. You see, the Shamattawa runs into Hayes River, an' Hayes River empties into the Bay just across a spit of land from Port Nelson. And the railway from The Pas to Port Nelson is being pushed to completion. With the paper on the Bay, I can ship by rail or boat to the market."
"And you want to locate the mill on the Hayes River?"
"No; the Hayes runs too flat. Either on the upper Shamattawa, or on Gods River, which lies between the two, an' flows into the Shamattawa. There's plenty of water in either one, an'