The Valley of the Giants | Page 9

weep rather
violently.
"What are you crying about?" Bryce demanded. Girls were so hard to
understand.
"I'm go-going h-h-h-home to-morrow," she howled.
He was stricken with dismay and bade her desist from her vain
repinings. But her heart was broken, and somehow--Bryce appeared to
act automatically--he had his arm around her. "Don't cry, Shirley," he
pleaded. "It breaks my heart to see you cry. Do you want Midget? I'll
give her to you."
Between sobs Shirley confessed that the prospect of parting with him
and not Midget was provocative of her woe. This staggered Bryce and
pleased him immensely. And at parting she kissed him good-bye,
reiterating her opinion that he was the nicest, kindest boy she had ever
met or hoped to meet.
When Shirley and her uncle and aunt boarded the steamer for San
Francisco, Bryce stood disconsolate on the dock and waved to Shirley
until he could no longer discern her on the deck. Then he went home,
crawled up into the haymow and wept, for he had something in his
heart and it hurt. He thought of his elfin companion very frequently for
a week, and he lost his appetite, very much to Mrs. Tully's concern.
Then the steelhead trout began to run in Eel River, and the sweetest
event that can occur in any boy's existence--the sudden awakening to

the wonder and beauty of life so poignantly realized in his first
love-affair--was lost sight of by Bryce. In a month he had forgotten the
incident; in six months he had forgotten Shirley Sumner.

CHAPTER IV
The succeeding years of Bryce Cardigan's life, until he completed his
high-school studies and went East to Princeton, were those of the
ordinary youth in a small and somewhat primitive country town. He
made frequent trips to San Francisco with his father, taking passage on
the steamer that made bi-weekly trips between Sequoia and the
metropolis--as The Sequoia Sentinel always referred to San Francisco.
He was an expert fisherman, and the best shot with rifle or shot-gun in
the county; he delighted in sports and, greatly to the secret delight of
his father showed a profound interest in the latter's business.
Throughout the happy years of Bryce's boyhood his father continued to
enlarge and improve his sawmill, to build more schooners, and to
acquire more redwood timber. Lands, the purchase of which by
Cardigan a decade before had caused his neighbours to impugn his
judgment, now developed strategical importance. As a result those
lands necessary to consolidate his own holdings came to him at his own
price, while his adverse holdings that blocked the logging operations of
his competitors went from him--also at his own price. In fact, all well-
laid plans matured satisfactorily with the exception of one, and since it
has a very definite bearing on the story, the necessity for explaining it
is paramount.
Contiguous to Cardigan's logging operations to the east and north of
Sequoia, and comparatively close in, lay a block of two thousand acres
of splendid timber, the natural, feasible, and inexpensive outlet for
which, when it should be logged, was the Valley of the Giants. For
thirty years John Cardigan had played a waiting game with the owner
of that timber, for the latter was as fully obsessed with the belief that he
was going to sell it to John Cardigan at a dollar and a half per thousand
feet stumpage as Cardigan was certain he was going to buy it for a

dollar a thousand--when he should be ready to do so and not one
second sooner. He calculated, as did the owner of the timber, that the
time to do business would be a year or two before the last of Cardigan's
timber in that section should be gone.
Eventually the time for acquiring more timber arrived. John Cardigan,
meeting his neighbour on the street, accosted him thus:
"Look here, Bill: isn't it time we got together on that timber of yours?
You know you've been holding it to block me and force me to buy at
your figure."
"That's why I bought it," the other admitted smilingly. "Then, before I
realized my position, you checkmated me with that quarter-section in
the valley, and we've been deadlocked ever since."
"I'll give you a dollar a thousand stumpage for your timber, Bill."
"I want a dollar and a half."
"A dollar is my absolute limit."
"Then I'll keep my timber."
"And I'll keep my money. When I finish logging in my present holdings,
I'm going to pull out of that country and log twenty miles south of
Sequoia. I have ten thousand acres in the San Hedrin watershed.
Remember, Bill, the man who buys your timber will have to log it
through my land--and I'm not going to log that quarter-section in the