She went back into the house. Rod sat talking to Thorn. Trout-fishing, the salmon run, timber, matters current along the B.C. coast. Westward of the float a set of boomsticks enclosed a floating mass of fresh-cut cedar in four-foot lengths, split to a size,—shingle bolts for the mills.
Oliver Thorn had owned for years a square mile of the finest timber on Valdez; magnificent fir close-ranked on the ridges, cool groves of cedar in shadowy lowlands. He held it indefeasibly, under a Crown grant. Rod knew that because he had once heard his father and Grove comment impatiently on the man's clear title, and wonder why in his circumstances he would neither sell nor cut the timber himself. Grove had observed caustically that some one had blundered. That particular stretch of woods was almost surrounded by the Norquay holdings. His father had merely shrugged his shoulders. Rod wondered idly now why a poor man did not turn those trees into useful cash. He uttered a modification of this thought.
Thorn smiled.
"I follow the wise course of greater folk," he said musingly. "Your people own miles and miles of timber, for instance. Yet they don't fill the woods with loggers and market every stick that can be cut. They log enough each year to bring in the necessary revenue. Isn't that about it?"
"Probably. I really don't know the family policy about timber, though."
"That's about it, I'd say," Thorn went on. "And mine, although it looks like a lazy man's tactics, is much the same. I bought this stretch of timber cheaply. By and by, when the time is ripe, I'll log it off or sell it to a logger. I'm doing just what the founder of your family did, Rod, and what your family continues to do. I'm holding property that will steadily increase in value."
He stopped to pick up his pipe and put a match to it. Then he continued in his slow, drawling voice.
"People have often thought me either a sluggard or a fool to sit tight here, as I've done. Some men would throw a crew of loggers in here, rip the heart out of this limit in a season, make twenty or thirty thousand dollars, and go somewhere else to do the same thing. Your pushing, bustling kind of man who doesn't see anything in the woods but so many thousand board feet per acre—that kind of man thinks I'm a damned fool."
"The fact is," he resumed, after a brief pause in this, the longest speech Rod ever heard him make, "I have no expensive social position to maintain, and I'm not keen to pile up a fortune. A reasonable amount of work is good for my liver. But working under pressure, driving other men, worrying over deals and prices and costs and contracts is not only distasteful to me, but I'm not good at it. I know because I did it for fifteen years. I not only didn't like it, but I didn't make money."
"You see," he turned to Rod, with a deprecating sort of smile, "men are born different. Some have a beak and claws to rend and tear, and they do rend and tear with the best. Some are bound to kick and gouge their way to the top of the dollar pile. For them that's the real object in life. Others have great foresight to grasp a great opportunity whenever it comes within reach. I imagine the first Norquay was that kind of man. And finally there's the fellow like me; more a dreamer than a doer; inclined to be contemplative rather than actively constructive—or destructive; more apt to take pleasure in seeing a tree grow than in cutting it down; able to work and plan and think clearly in respect of his individual acts, but somehow incapable of herding and driving and compelling other men to function for him. That's me. I pioneered in logging here on the coast. I was one of the first to introduce powerful machinery to handle this big timber. I made a little for myself now and then. But mostly I made money for some one else. And I got tired of going ahead under full steam. My wants are simple. My family's wants are simple. A reasonable amount of leisure. A reasonable amount of security. A chance to read and think. Freedom from hurry and worry. That seemed good enough for me. And this," he waved his hand toward the timber banked thick on the slopes behind his house, "has given it to me for several years. Each season I cut a few hundred dollars' worth of cedar,—without making a dent in the total. Each year the value of the stand increases. There's twenty-two million feet on my ground. When I choose to sell, it will bring me enough for a decent living as long as I'm likely to live, and something left over for Mary. That's good enough."