"Well, I knew the basin better than any of them, and I knew the coves of the inner sides of the two mountains were filled with virgin white oak and yellow poplar, timber without a peer in the world. I organized a company—lumber was Colonel Mason's line, you know, and it's mine, also—and we bought both timber and land from mountain's crest to mountain's crest at a very reasonable figure. Then we ordered machinery for a big sawmill, a geared locomotive and cars, and enough light steel rails to run a narrow-gauge road over the six miles that lie between this point and the new C. C. & O. Railway. Everything is in our favor. The logging is all either down grade or on a level; there never was a finer location for a mill and yards than can be had here in the basin; and the little railroad can follow the creek all the way down to the C. C. & O."
A number of the faces before him had hardened. He rose; it was like him to meet the adverse on his feet.
"But I haven't told you the best of it," he went on convincingly. "I have an agreement with the other members of the company by which I am to have any of the land that I may want, when the sawing is done, at two dollars an acre, and I'm willing to pass it on to you at the same price; also, I am willing to give you all work at good wages. I say I'm willing; I mean that I'm anxious. It's for you, my own people, that I'm doing—what I'm doing.
"I want to see every Wolfe by name living in his own comfortable cottage home, on his own little farm, here in Wolfe's Basin. I want us to have a school for the children, a little church, and a post office. I want us to have an ideal community here in this, one of the finest spots on the Almighty's earth. If you'll all stick to me, we'll have it. Now, men, I want to know who's going to stick?"
The eyes of all were turned upon Old Buck Wolfe. When he spoke, he would speak for the others. He sat with his shaggy head bent, a huge and actionless figure in the deepening dusk.
"Ef we don't fall in wi' yore idee, then what?" he asked, without raising his head.
"It's like this," Little Buck told him in a very businesslike voice: "my foster-parents, the Masons, sold every dollars' worth of property they had—except their home, and they even mortgaged that as heavily as it would stand—to get money enough to back me up, such was their faith in me. I've given them my promise that they shan't lose a single penny. If I don't get your help, I—I'll have to develop the timber interest without it. But I want your help!"
"Son," and the stern old mountaineer sat up straight, "onless the' happens to be somethin' ahind of it that I cain't yit see, we're all with ye, lock, stock, ramrod, barrel, and sights!"
"And I say God bless ye, Buck Wolfe!" cried a creaking, but happy old voice from behind him. "Nath, run to my house and let my little dawg out; he's been shet up all day, pore little devil."
Before he went in to super, the Arnold Mason that was exacted an ironclad promise from his father. Old Buck gave his word that, no matter what might happen, the Wolfes would nevermore take the first step in a fight with the Singletons.