“Well, that’s Pulaski all over!” remarked Ide at his elbow. “He’ll fell a saw-log across a brook any time so as to get across without wetting his feet, and then go off and leave the log there.”
He stood back and looked the young man over from head to feet, with the shrewd eye of one appraising goods.
“Mr. Wade,” he said, at last, “will you step into my back office with me a moment?”
When they were there, the store-keeper perched himself on a high stool, hooked his toes under a round, thrust his face forward, and said:
“Here’s my business, straight and to the point. I’m a little something in the lumbering line up this way, myself. What with land, stumpage rights, and tax titles I’ve got two townships, but they’re off the main river, and I haven’t done much with ’em. I’m going to be honest, and admit I can’t do much with ’em so long as Britt and his gang control roll-dams, flowage, and the water for the driving-pitch the way they do. They haven’t got the law with ’em, but that makes no difference to that crowd, the way they run things. Now, you don’t know the logging business, but a bright chap like you can learn it mighty quick. And you’ve shown to-day that there are some things you don’t have to learn, and that’s how to handle men—and that’s the big thing in this country as things are now. What I want to ask you, fair and plain, is, do you want a job?”
“What, as a prize-fighter?” asked the young man, surlily.
“No, s’r, but as a boss that can boss, and has got the courage to hold up his end on this river! I know this all sounds as though I were temporarily out of my head in a business way, but you’ve made a reputation in the last half hour here that’s worth ten thousand to the man that hires you. There’s money in the lumbering business, Mr. Wade. The men that are in it right are getting rich. But you’ve got to get into it picked end to. Here’s the way you and I are fixed: you might wait for ten years and not find the opportunity I’m offering you. I might wait ten years and not find just the man I could afford to take in with me. I’ve sized you. I know what sort your references will be when I ask for ’em. You seem right. Are you interested enough to listen to figures?”
And then Ide, accepting amazed silence as assent, rattled off into his details. At the end of half an hour Wade was listening with a new gleam of resolution in his eyes. At the end of an hour he was blotting his signature at the bottom of a preliminary article of agreement that was to serve until a lawyer could draw one more ample.