"It is a little difficult to understand what use timber-rights would be to anybody here," she said. "They could hardly get their lumber out, and there are very few people to sell it to if they put up a mill."
"I expect they mean to sell it me," said Devine, a trifle grimly.
"But you always cut what you wanted without asking anybody."
"I did. Still, it seems scarcely likely that I'm going to do it again. If anyone has located timber-rights—which he'd get for 'most nothing on a patent from the Crown—he has never worried about them until the Canopus began to pay. Of course, one has to put in timber as he takes out the ore, and it seems to have struck somebody that the men who started it on the Canopus had burnt off all the young firs they ought to have kept. That's why he bought those timber-rights up."
"Still there are thousands of them nobody can ever use, and you must have timber," said Barbara.
"Precisely!" said Devine. "That man figures that when I get it he's going to screw a big share of the profits in this mine out of me."
A portentous sparkle crept into Barbara's eyes, while Mrs. Devine, who knew her husband best, watched him with a little smile.
"But that is infamous extortion!" said the girl.
Devine laughed. "Well," he said, "it's not going to be good business for the man who puts up the game, but I don't quite see why he didn't strike Brooke for a few dollars as well. Men of his kind are like ostriches. They take in 'most anything."
He might have said more, but Brooke appeared in the doorway just then and stood still with, so Barbara fancied, a faint trace of disconcertion when he saw the women, until Devine turned to him.