"Me 'n' my wife mostly holds the stock."
"Huh!... You'll handle the stuff, deliver it, and all that? What's your proposition?"
"Well, havin' been in business twenty-odd year, I kin buy mighty favorable. More so 'n you fellers. All I want's a livin' profit. Tell you what I'll do. I'll take this here contract like this: Goods to be delivered in your camps at actual cost of the stuff and freighting plus ten per cent. We'll keep stock on hand in depots, and deliver as needed. It'll save you all the trouble of handlin'. We'll carry the stock, and you pay once a month for what's delivered."
Crane called in Keith, and they discussed the proposition. It presented distinct advantages; might, indeed, save them money in addition to trouble. Bailey clinched the thing by showing an agreement with the stage line to transport the provisions at a price per hundred pounds notably lower than Crane and Keith imagined could be obtained, and went home carrying the contract Scattergood had sent him to get.
Scattergood put the paper away in his safe and sat back in his reinforced armchair, with placid satisfaction making benignant his face. "I calc'late," he said to himself, "that this here dicker'll keep Crane and Keith gropin' and wonderin' and scrutinizin' more or less—when it gits to their ears. Shouldn't be s'prised if it come to worry 'em a mite."
So, having created a diversion to conceal the movements of his main attack, Scattergood got out his maps and began scientifically to plan his fall and winter campaign.
Timber was his objective. Not a hundred acres of it, nor a thousand, but tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand acres of spruce-covered hills was the goal he had set. To control his valley he must have money; to get money for his developments he must have timber. Also, ownership of vast limits of growing spruce was necessary to the control of the valley. He must own more timber thereabouts than anybody else. He must dominate the timber situation. To a man whose total resources totaled a matter of fifty thousand dollars—the bulk of which was tied up in a dam and boom company as yet unproductive—this looked like a mouthful beyond his capacity to bite off. Even with timber in the back reaches selling at sixty-six cents an acre, a hundred thousand acres meant an investment of sixty-six thousand dollars. True, Scattergood could look forward to the day when that same timberland would be worth ten dollars an acre—a million dollars—but looking ahead would not produce a cent to-day.
Of timberlands, whose cut logs must go down Coldriver Valley to reach a market, Scattergood's maps showed him there were probably a quarter of a million acres—mostly spruce. Estimating with rigid conservatism, this would run eight thousand feet to the acre, or twenty billion feet of timber—and this did not take into consideration hardwood. In Scattergood's secret heart he wanted it all. All he might not be able to get, but he must have more than half—and that half distributed strategically.
It will be seen that Scattergood was content to wait. His motto was, "Grab a dollar to-day—but don't meddle with it if it interferes with a thousand dollars in ten years."
Scattergood's maps had been the work of two years. That they were accurate he knew, because he had set down on them most of the facts they showed. They were valuable, for, in Scattergood's rude printing, one could read upon them the owner of every piece of timber, every farm, the acreage in each piece of timber, with a careful estimate of the amount of timber to the acre—also its proportions of spruce, beech, birch, maple, ash.