The Timber Pirate

by Charles Christopher Jenkins

I

Next morning the events of the previous evening all seemed to Hammond like a hazy dream. Only the sealed letter from Gildersleeve to Hon. J. J. Slack, M.P., president of the North Star Towing and Contracting Company, smacked of tangibility, for he saw nothing further of Gildersleeve, the girl with the high-arched eyebrows or even the U.S. consul, Eulas Daly. His sense of good form prevented him from prowling back through the compartment coach, and he was really pressed for time to dress and breakfast before the train pulled into Kam City.

His first experience was a disappointment. At the head office of the North Star Company he was informed that Hon. J. J. Slack was away at the Dominion capital on business, but would possibly be back before noon of the following day. He had therefore a wait of two days in the lakeport city.

Hammond improved his time by paying a visit to the sites of two enormous pulp and paper mills under course of construction near the water front. There was a curious rivalry of big interests told of there. The young man was the more interested on learning that one of these plants, the Kam City Pulp and Paper mill, was to derive its supply of pulp poles almost exclusively from the Nannabijou Limits, the largest in all the North, a government block on which the Kam City Company had secured conditional rights to the timber that very summer after a long legal battle with competitors and the signing of a hard and fast agreement with the Ontario government that their mill must be running to full capacity, manufacturing paper from wood cut on the Nannabijou Limits by October the twenty-third of that very year. In case they were not in a position to do so from any cause whatsoever they stood to lose all rights to the timber.

The stories which Hammond gained from various sources regarding this situation were conflicting and at best rather incoherent. Out of it all he gathered that it was the result of a war between two highly capitalised organisations to gain the supremacy. It seemed that originally both the North Star Company and the Kam City Company were applicants for the cutting rights on the Nannabijou, and because a pledge had been made by the government during an election campaign that not one pole might be cut and carried away from the limits unless it were manufactured into paper in Kam City, both companies, to prove their good faith, had purchased sites in Kam City and had started the building of their mills before their applications went in. The North Star Company was finally awarded the rights to the limits on an explicit agreement that they were to have their mill in full operation the following October. There was an additional stipulation that in order to renew their yearly rights on October the twenty-third they must commence the installation of their machinery by June the first. This latter clause, it was said, was added because of the North Star’s reputation for trickery, the government being determined that whoever cut the poles on the Nannabijou must be making paper from them on the specified date, October the twenty-third.

The North Star had immediately commenced cutting operations on the limits. The construction of their mill too was rushed, but June rolled around without them having received any machinery to install in it. On the other hand, the Kam City Company, who had gone on with their mill just the same as if they held the contract, were getting their machinery on the ground and had actually commenced the installation of some of it. The Kam City Company immediately made a second application for the cutting rights on the limits, claiming that the North Star Company had forfeited theirs through non-performance of contract. Then there ensued a battle royal in the courts and before the legislature.

There were weeks of lobbying, during which Slack, the president of the North Star, and a bevy of lawyers representing that company endeavoured to hold the cutting rights and gain an extension of time till the North Star completed their mill, making the claim, which may or may not have been true, that they could not secure delivery of the paper-making machinery on order on account of the steel famine which then existed. But the provincial government obstinately stood out for the terms of the agreement. Slack was seeking to bring higher political pressure to bear from Ottawa when the Kam City Company’s application was granted, their cutting rights to obtain from the date the North Star’s expired, October twenty-third, conditional that their mill should be in full operation on that date. In order that they might have wood to grind, an additional fiat was issued constraining the North Star to make delivery of their cut on the limits to the mill of the Kam City Company, at a price to be fixed by a commission, in sufficient time for the latter to commence operations, and in sufficient quantities to keep the said mills running during the subsequent winter months. On the twenty-third, the North Star were to surrender the limits to the Kam City organisation.

Then a strange thing happened. The North Star Company suddenly changed their tactics, bowed to the decree of the government and withdrew all their suits in the courts of law. Almost simultaneously, a number of members, who were known to be under the thumb of the North Star, brought down a rider to be inserted in the agreement with the Kam City Company to the effect that if the latter company, for any cause whatsoever, failed to have their mill in full operation by October the twenty-third and every prospect of continuous operation from then on, their rights should be cancelled and the same rights revert to the original holders, the North Star Company, the latter in such a case to get an extension of time for the installation of their machinery at their mill.

The Kam City Company’s lawyers made a brilliant battle for relief from this rider, which, they pointed out, would nullify their hard-won rights in case of unforeseen exigencies or accident. The North Star’s representatives pointed out that the North Star Company had had their rights cancelled on this very basis, and what had been considered fair treatment of one company should be fair to another. The government, tired of haggling and secretly fearing to further antagonise the powerful North Star Company, made the rider law which the Kam City Company must agree to live up to.

Thus was brought about the curious situation wherein the North Star Company, with a mill of their own practically completed except for the installation of machinery, were forced to cut and deliver wood from the Nannabijou for their rival. On the other hand, the Kam City Company had also to accept this system for the time being whether they liked it or not. It was obvious that they did so because they could not help themselves; they had to have millions of poles ready for immediate delivery at their city docks in time to live up to their agreement, and the North Star Company owned all the available tugs and machinery so necessary to rush the poles to the mill site.

For once it was believed that a coup had been put over on the wily North Star Company, but they took their medicine without murmur, and not only went on with the cutting and booming of poles at the limits as before, but rushed the completion of their huge pulp mill building. People wondered what they hoped to do with it, because the Nannabijou Limits now secured by the Kam City Company would give the latter the full advantage in paper-making competition, not only because they were by far the largest limits in the North, but because they were drained by the mighty Nannabijou River and its tributaries, simplifying the matter of transporting the poles to the lake-front from far inland. It was true that three other limits on the North Shore were controlled by companies believed to be subsidiaries of the North Star, but they were infinitely small in area compared with the Nannabijou forests.

At any rate, the two big pulp and paper mills were on their way and Kam City was getting the benefit of construction work that would total somewhere in the neighbourhood of six or seven million dollars, and the public, as usual, was mostly concerned with the wealth immediately in sight.