a present of?"

"I can't see ourselves digging down for sixty cents a thousand for
driving our logs--contracts or no contracts."

"Maybe we can buy him off."

"Hanged if I'll do that--we'll chase him off. Look here--he's got to
handle our logs. If he can't handle them we've got a right to put on our
own crew and drive them down--and charge back to him what it costs us.
Get the idea?"

"Not exactly."

"We deliver the logs as specified in the spring. Let him start his
drive. Then, I figure, he'll have some trouble with his men, and most
likely men he don't have trouble with will get into a row with
lumberjacks going out of camp. See? Men of his that we can't handle
we'll pitch into the river. Then we'll take charge with our men and make
the drive. On top of that we'll sue Scattergood for thirty or forty
cents a thousand--extra cost we've been put to by his inability to
handle the drive. That'll put a crimp in him--and if we keep after him
hot and heavy it won't take long to drive him out of the valley."

"Don't believe he's dangerous, anyhow. That last deal was bullhead
luck."

"Yes, but he's stirring around. We don't want anybody poking in. There's
a heap of money in this valley for us, if we can keep it to ourselves,
and the sooner the idea gets abroad that it isn't healthful to butt in,
the better."

"Guess you're right."

If Scattergood could have heard this conversation perhaps he would not
have been so gayly partaking of the softer joys of life. For that is
what Scattergood was doing. He had polished up his buggy, put his new
harness on his horse, and was driving out to make a social call. Not
only that, but it was a social call upon a lady!

Scattergood was lonely sometimes. In one of his moments of loneliness
it had occurred to him that a great many men had wives, and that wives
were, undoubtedly, a remarkably effective insurance against that
ailment.

"I gather," he said, in the course of a casual conversation with Sam
Kettleman, the grocer, "that wives is sometimes inconvenient and
sometimes tryin' on the temper, but on the whole they're returnin'
income on the investment."

"Some does and some doesn't," said Kettleman, lugubriously.

"Hotel grub," said Scattergood, "gets mighty similar. Roast beef and
roast pork! Roast pork and roast beef! Then cold roast pork and beef for
supper.... And me obliged, by the way I'm built, to pay extry board.
Sundays I always order me two dinners. Seems like a