"No, it is a matter of fact—our agreement reads that way."
"I haven't seen the agreement, but no matter what it says, you have no right to run this business so as to ruin Mr. Wilbur," went on Owen warmly.
"Ruin him? Who says I am ruining him?"
"I do. You are doing your best to run behind on that railroad contract. Instead of sending lumber down to the river, you are sending it up to the flume, and you are not cutting half as much——"
"I won't listen!" shouted Ulmer Balasco. "I won't listen! I tell you I am master here. If I want to finish the flume I'll do it."
"After the railroad contract is finished, not before," came stubbornly from Owen. "All that lumber is going down to the Columbia just as fast as the cars and the creek can carry it."
"You defy me?" and now Ulmer Balasco shook his fist in the young lumberman's face.
Ulmer Balasco shook his fist in the young lumberman's face.