en over to a solitary watchman.
The lake folk had chattered at this proceeding, and the chatter had come
to Stella's ears. He had put in two camps at the lake head, so she heard
indirectly: one on the lake shore, one on the Tyee River, a little above
the mouth. He had sixty men in each camp, and he was getting the name of
a driver. Three miles above his Tyee camp, she knew, lay the camp her
husband had put in during the early summer to cut a heavy limit of
cedar. Fyfe had only a small crew there.

She wondered a little why he spent so much time there, when he had
seventy-odd men working near home. But of course he had an able
lieutenant in Lefty Howe. And she could guess why Jack Fyfe kept away.
She was sorry for him--and for herself. But being sorry--a mere
semi-neutral state of mind--did not help matters, she told herself
gloomily.

Lefty Howe's wife was at the camp now, on one of her occasional visits.
Howe was going across the lake one afternoon to see a Siwash whom he had
engaged to catch and smoke a winter's supply of salmon for the camps.
Mrs. Howe told Stella, and on impulse Stella bundled Jack Junior into
warm clothing and went with them for the ride.

Halfway across the six-mile span she happened to look back, and a new
mark upon the western shore caught her eye. She found a glass and
leveled it on the spot. Two or three buildings, typical logging-camp
shacks of split cedar, rose back from the beach. Behind these again the
beginnings of a cut had eaten a hole in the forest,--a slashing
different from the ordinary logging slash, for it ran narrowly, straight
back through the timber; whereas the first thing a logger does is to cut
all the merchantable timber he can reach on his limit without moving his
donkey from the water. It was not more than two miles from their house.

"What new camp is that?" she asked Howe.

"Monohan's," he answered casually.

"I thought Jack owned all the shore timber to Medicine Point?" she said.

Howe shook his head.

"Uh-uh. Well, he does too, all but where that camp is. Monohan's got a
freak limit in there. It's half a mile wide and two miles straight back
from the beach. Lays between our holdin's like the ham in a sandwich.
Only," he added thoughtfully, "it's a blame thin piece uh ham. About the
poorest timber in a long stretch. I dunno why the Sam Hill he's cuttin'
it. But then he's doin' a lot uh things no practical logger would do."

Stella laid down the glasses. It was