"Juss so!" said the rancher. "Boys, you cut them—hard. Now, those apples. S'pose you had good parent stocks, could you bud on to them—and how'd you do it? Guess that would suit some sorts better than whip-grafting."
One might have fancied that Barbison was for a moment a trifle disconcerted, but he smiled airily. "Just how you'd bud on anything else. I'd wax the thread."
"You hear him, boys?" said the rancher. "What you want to do is to wax your thread."
They were very quiet, but perhaps not unusually so, for the clearers of those forests are, except on occasion, generally silent men. Barbison looked at them reflectively.
"Raising the fruit's only half the trouble, anyway," he said. "The big question everywhere is how to put it on the market; and if I can be of any use in that direction, you have only to command me. Seems to me the Government's tired of making roads."
"What's the matter with the steamboat?" asked somebody. "Never had no trouble since we hauled our stuff down to the Shasta."
Barbison's smile was sympathetic now. "I guess you're not going to haul your stuff down to her very much longer. She's played out, and run by little, struggling men who can't get credit for the patching up that ought to be done on her, and who'll have nothing to meet claims with if she breaks down and spoils your freight some day. That's a sure thing. From what I heard in Vancouver, the bottom's just ready to drop out of the concern. You want to think of that. Creditors have a lien on freight, too, when a boat's held up for debt."
"Then if I sent down my potatoes or fat steers in her, somebody could seize them for the money the company owed?" asked another rancher.
"That's the law," said Barbison, and there was nothing in his companions' manner to suggest that they did not in the least believe him. "Now, there's some talk about another firm putting a smart new boat on. Plenty money behind that crowd, and when she comes round it might suit you considerably better to make a deal with them."
"Who's running the thing?"