“Bully for John Cardigan!” Bryce declared. “I suppose we could make a little more money by cheapening our grade, but the quality of our lumber is so well known that it sells itself and saves us the expense of maintaining a corps of salesmen.”
“From what I hear tell o' the Colonel,” Dan observed sagely, “the least he ever wants is a hundred and fifty per cent. the best of it.”
“Yes,” old Zeb observed gravely, “an' so fur as I can see, he ain't none too perticular how he gets it.” He helped himself to a toothpick, and followed by the head sawyer, abruptly left the room—after the fashion of sawmill men and woodsmen, who eat as much as they can as quickly as they can and eventually die of old age rather than indigestion. Bryce ate his noonday meal in more leisurely fashion and at its conclusion stepped into the kitchen.
“Where do you live, cook?” he demanded of that functionary; and upon being informed, he retired to the office and called up the Sequoia meat-market.
“Bryce Cardigan speaking,” he informed the butcher. “Do you ever buy any pigs from our mill cook?”
“Not any more,” the butcher answered. “He stung me once with a dozen fine shoats. They looked great, but after I had slaughtered them and had them dressed, they turned out to be swill-fed hogs—swill and alfalfa.”
“Thank you.” Bryce hung up. “I knew that cook was wasteful,” he declared, turning to his father's old manager, one Thomas Sinclair. “He wastes food in order to take the swill home to his hogs—and nobody watches him. Things have certainly gone to the devil,” he continued.
“No fault of mine,” Sinclair protested. “I've never paid any attention to matters outside the office. Your father looked after everything else.”
Bryce looked at Sinclair. The latter was a thin, spare, nervous man in the late fifties, and though generally credited with being John Cardigan's manager, Bryce knew that Sinclair was in reality little more than a glorified bookkeeper—and a very excellent bookkeeper indeed. Bryce realized that in the colossal task that confronted him he could expect no real help from Sinclair.
“Yes,” he replied, “my father looked after everything else—while he could.”