lazes did ye
learn so much of loggin'? I log th' way me father logged, an' I'm not to
be taught by a high-banker from th' Muskegon!"

Never would he acknowledge the wrong nor promise the improvement, but
both were there, and both he and FitzPatrick knew it. The Rough Red
chafed frightfully, but in a way his hands were tied. He could do
nothing without the report; and it was too far out to send for another
scaler, even if Daly would have given him one.

Finally in looking over a skidway he noticed that one log had not been
blue-pencilled across the end. That meant that it had not been scaled;
and that in turn meant that he, the Rough Red, would not be paid for his
labour in cutting and banking it. At once he began to bellow through the
woods.

"Hey! FitzPatrick! Come here, you blank-blanked-blank of a blank! Come
here!"

The sealer swung leisurely down the travoy trail and fronted the other
with level eyes.

"Well?" said he.

"Why ain't that log marked?"

"I culled it."

"Ain't it sound and good? Is there a mark on it? A streak of punk or
rot? Ain't it good timber? What the hell's th' matter with it? You tried
to do me out of that, you damn skunk."

A log is culled, or thrown out, when, for any reason, it will not make
good timber.

"I'll tell you, Jimmy Bourke," replied FitzPatrick, calmly, "th' stick
is sound and good, or was before your murderin' crew got hold of it, but
if ye'll take a squint at the butt of it ye'll see that your gang has
sawed her on a six-inch slant. They've wasted a good foot of th' log. I
spoke of that afore; an' now I give ye warnin' that I cull every log,
big or little, punk or sound, that ain't sawed square and true across
th' butt."

"Th' log is sound and good, an' ye'll scale it, or I'll know th' reason
why!"

"I will not," replied FitzPatrick.

The following day he culled a log in another and distant skidway whose
butt showed a slant of a good six inches. The day following he culled
another of the same sort on still another skidway. He examined it
closely, then sought the Rough Red.

"It is useless, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "to be hauling of the same poor
log from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail in
th' Crother tract, but it will do ye little good. I'll cull it wherever
I find it, and never will ye get th' scale of that log."

The Rough Red raised his hand, then dropped it again; whirled away with
a curse; whirled back with another, and spat o