Kent’s liabilities were piling up and maturing; the general financial stringency was increasing, as predicted by Ackerman; his timber sales, taking into consideration the unprofitable contract with the Clancys, showed a very narrow margin; and the consensus of advice he received was to market his raw product while he could, reduce his liabilities as much as possible, and then sit tight and hope for better luck and better times.
For once fortune seemed to play into his hand, for while he was considering the question of opening negotiations for the disposal of the surplus logs the following spring he received a letter from Wismer & Holden, who were very large millmen and did little logging, either jobbing out such limits as they bought or buying their logs from loggers who had no mills. The letter stated that they wished to obtain from twenty million feet upward, in the log, deliverable at their booms not later than July 1st of the following year. They offered a good price, and were prepared to pay cash on delivery. And they wished to know if Kent could supply them with the above quantity of logs, or, if not, what part of it.
This was too good a proposition to be neglected, and Joe immediately took train and called on Wismer & Holden. In half an hour the preliminaries were settled.
“You understand,” said Wismer, “that we must have these logs by July 1st. A later date won’t do.”
“I can get them down by then, of course,” said Joe.
“Then we might as well close the deal now,” said Wismer, and called his stenographer. He dictated an agreement from a form which he took from his desk. In this agreement was a clause providing a penalty for non-delivery by the date named. Joe was not versed in legal terminology, but it read pretty stiff and he took objection to it.
“That’s our ordinary form of delivery contract,” said Wismer. “We have to protect ourselves somehow. We give you ample margin for delivery, you see, but we’ve got to have some guarantee that you’ll make good, because we make other contracts in the expectation of getting the logs by a certain date. If we didn’t get them we’d be up against it.”
That seemed reasonable enough, and Joe signed the instrument. But when a few days afterward he showed it to Locke, the lawyer pounced on that clause like a hawk, switched over to the last page, looked at Joe’s signature duly witnessed, and groaned.
“Boy, what on earth did you sign that for? Did they chloroform you?”
“What’s the matter with it?” asked Joe.