"Man called Merril. Enterprising man. When he takes hold he makes things hum. If it were necessary to start a trade, he'd 'most carry your stuff for nothing."
"Juss so!" said the big rancher. "Kind of philanthropist. I've heard of him."
The man's face was vacantly expressionless, but Barbison, who glanced at him sharply, fancied that he had said enough on the subject. He had visited most of the settlements that could be reached from the coast, and had never neglected an opportunity for dropping a word about the Shasta and the new boat.
"Where's that stump-grubber fellow from?" he asked.
"Don't quite know," said one of the others. "Strikes me as an Ontario Scotchman. But the machine's an American notion; never saw one quite like it before."
The man in question stood up just then. He was big and gaunt and pale, but he wore ordinary city clothes, and when he and the others had inserted the screw-jack contrivance on a strip of thick planking under the sawn-off tree, he turned to the assembly.
"There are quite a few stump-pullers, and I've struck benighted men who used the chain-tackle tripod," he said. "I'm not saying it's inefficient, for when you put sufficient pressure upon the winch and it will not pull the stump up, it will pull the tripod down upon your head. This one pulls up all the time, and something has got to come if you work hard enough." Then he raised his hand to his two companions. "You look fit and strong. Show them you can heave."
They drew the sliding bar up to the head of the thing, and pulled it toward them several times, while their faces grew suffused and the veins rose gorged on their foreheads, for men in that country are proud of their vigor. There was a slow cracking and tearing of roots, but the great stump still stood immovable. Then the Shasta's engineer inquired what they fed upon, and their comrades flung them sardonic encouragement, while as they gasped and strained their muscles the screw slid slowly, turn by turn, through its socket. At last there was a sharp rending and a little murmur of applause as the big stump tilted and fell over on its side. Then the big rancher stood up on the veranda.
"It's smart work, but Dave and Charley are two of the smartest men round this settlement, and we want to test the thing in every way," he said. "There's another stump yonder, and I guess Mr. Fleming will put up a bottle of whisky for any three men who will knock five minutes off the record. We'll put Mr. Barbison and Jasper in to show what men who don't grub stumps can do."
There was a little laughter, for if Jasper, who slowly took off his jacket, was not accustomed to stump-grubbing, he was at least a man of splendid physique, and Barbison felt uneasy when he laid a great hand on his shoulder.