“You may be right; I can't judge,” Dalton thoughtfully agreed. “Now I could, of course, find an excuse for getting you dismissed, but I know you both too well to imagine that plan would work. You would go somewhere else, while though Helen is generous there's a hard streak in her. I really think she'd like you better afterwards if you carried your intentions out.”
He paused and smiled. “She got the money you object to in a very curious way—by refusing to indulge the wishes of our only rich relation. I was more compliant because his plans met my views, and he paid for my education, but when he died we found Helen had got her share and mine. I understand he told his lawyer that he still thought her wrong; but if she thought she was right, she was justified in refusing, and he admired her pluck.”
“She has pluck,” said Festing. “On the whole I don't think that makes things much better for me. Anyhow, I've taken this contract and I've got to stay with it.”
“I'll help you as far as I can,” said Dalton, who soon afterwards left the shack.
CHAPTER XX
FESTING GETS TO WORK
Mist rolled among the pines and it was raining hard when Festing led his team down the hill. He wore big rubber boots and slickers, and a heavy log trailed behind the horses through the mud. Some distance above the river the slope was gradual, and it was necessary to haul the logs to the skidway he had built. They would then run down without help; indeed, the difficulty was to stop them when they reached the track. Festing was wet and dirty, and the sweating horses were splashed. When he stopped to unhook the chain, three or four men came up with cant-poles, and struggling in the churned-up mire, rolled the log to the top of the incline.
A shallow, undulating trough scored the hillside, crossed at short intervals by small logs, split up the middle and laid with their round sides on top. It looked something like a switchback railway, only that while the incline varied, all the undulations ran down hill. A few logs rested insecurely on the top skids, and the men put the one Festing had brought below the rest. Then they threw down their poles and Festing looked about.
Water filled the hollows in the wavy line of skids, which vanished at the edge of a steeper dip and reappeared below, to plunge out of sight again. Its end was banked up with wet gravel near the track. Festing could not see the track, but the opposite side of the river was visible, with the island, near which two wire-ropes skimmed the surface of the flood. A man stood on the skids about half way down and presently waved his arm.