Garry Latisan agreed fully with his son and expressed the wistful wish, as he did regularly in their conferences, that he could be of more real help.
“Your sympathy and your praise are help enough, father,” Ward declared, with enthusiasm. “We’re sure of our cut; all I’m asking from the Comas is gangway for our logs. There must be square men at the head of that big corporation!”
CHAPTER TWO
IN New York young Latisan plunged straight at his business.
The home office of the Comas Consolidated Company was in a towering structure in the metropolis’s financial district. On the translucent glass of many doors there was a big C with two smaller C’s nested. In the north country everybody called the corporation The Three C’s.
After a fashion, the sight of the portentous monogram made Ward feel more at home. Up where he lived the letters were familiar. Those nested C’s stood for wide-flung ownership along the rivers of the north. The monogram was daubed in blue paint on the ends of countless logs; it marked the boxes and barrels and sacks of mountains of supplies along the tote roads; it designated as the property of the Comas Company all sorts of possessions from log camps down to the cant dog in the hands of the humblest Polack toiler. Those nested C’s were dominant, assertive, and the folks of the north were awed by the everlasting reduplication along the rivers and in the forests.
Ward, indignantly seeking justice, resolved not to be awed in the castle of the giant. He presented himself at a gate and asked to see the president. The president could not be seen except by appointment, Latisan learned.
What was the caller’s business? Latisan attempted to explain, but he was halted by the declaration that all details in the timber country were left to Rufus Craig, field manager!
When Ward insisted that his previous talks with Craig had only made matters worse for all concerned, and when he pleaded for an opportunity to talk with somebody—anybody—at headquarters, he finally won his way to the presence of a sallow man who filmed his hard eyes and listened with an air of silent protest. He also referred Latisan back to Craig. “We don’t interfere with his management of details in the north.”