"My dear girl," said he, "you'd better not let Sam Davis or any of Sam's kind hear you pass remarks like that. Sam would say exactly what he thought about such matters to his boss, or King George, or to the first lady of the land, regardless. Sabe? We're what you'll call primitive out here, yet. You want to forget that master and man business, the servant proposition, and proper respect, and all that rot. Outside the English colonies in one or two big towns, that attitude doesn't go in B.C. People in this neck of the woods stand pretty much on the same class footing, and you'll get in bad and get me in bad if you don't remember that. I've got ten loggers working for me in the woods. Whether they're impertinent or profane cuts no figure so long as they handle the job properly. They're men, you understand, not servants. None of them would hesitate to tell me what he thinks about me or anything I do. If I don't like it, I can fight him or fire him. They won't stand for the sort of airs you're accustomed to. They have the utmost respect for a woman, but a man is merely a two-legged male human like themselves, whether he wears mackinaws or broadcloth, has a barrel of money of none at all. This will seem odd to you at first, but you'll get used to it. You'll find things rather different out here."
"I suppose so," she agreed. "But it sounds queer. For instance, if one of papa's clerks or the chauffeur had spoken like that, he'd have been discharged on the spot."
"The logger's a different breed," Benton observed drily. "Or perhaps only the same breed manifesting under different conditions. He isn't servile. He doesn't have to be."
"Why the delay, though?" she reverted to the point. "I thought you were all ready to go."
"I am," Charlie enlightened. "But while I was at the store just now, Paul Abbey 'phoned from Vancouver to know if there was an up-lake boat in. His people are big lumber guns here, and it will accommodate him and won't hurt me to wait a couple of hours and drop him off at their camp. I've got more or less business dealings with them, and it doesn't hurt to be neighborly. He'd have to hire a gas-boat otherwise. Besides, Paul's a pretty good head."
This, of course, being strictly her brother's business, Stella forbore comment. She was weary of travel, tired with the tension of eternally being shunted across distances, anxious to experience once more that sense of restful finality which comes with a journey's end. But, in a measure her movements were no longer dependent upon her own volition.
They walked slowly along the broad roadway which bordered the lake until they came to a branchy maple, and here they seated themselves on the grassy turf in the shadow of the tree.
"Tell me about yourself," she said. "How do you like it here, and how are you getting on? Your letters home were always chiefly remarkable for their brevity."
"There isn't a great lot to tell," Benton responded. "I'm just beginning to get on my feet. A raw, untried youngster has a lot to learn and unlearn when he hits this tall timber. I've been out here five years, and I'm just beginning to realize what I'm equal to and what I'm not. I'm crawling over a hump now that would have been a lot easier if the governor hadn't come to grief the way he did. He was going to put in some money this fall. But I think I'll make it, anyway, though it will keep me digging and figuring. I have a contract for delivery of a million feet in September and another contract that I could take if I could see my way clear to finance the thing. I could clean up thirty thousand dollars net in two years if I had more cash to work on. As it is, I have to go slow, or I'd go broke. I'm holding two limits by the skin of my teeth. But I've got one good one practically for an annual pittance. If I make delivery on my contract according to schedule it's plain sailing. That about sizes up my prospects, Sis."
"You speak a language I don't understand," she smiled. "What does a million feet mean? And what's a limit?"