ks who have built villages around the sawmills lug away
their houses if the mills are closed."

"Paper dominates in this valley nowadays, instead of lumber. Latisan,
you're old-fashioned!"

The young man, feeling his temper flame, lighted his pipe, avoiding too
quick retort.

"You stand to lose money in the lumber market, with conditions as they
are," proceeded Craig, loftily counseling another man about his own
business. The Comas director, intent on consolidation, had persistently
failed to understand the loyalty, half romantic, which was actuating the
old-line employers to protect faithful householders. "Let the workers
move down the river to our model town."

"And live in those beehives of yours, paying big rent, competing with
the riffraff help you hire from employment agencies? We can't see it
that way, Mr. Craig!"

"Look here! I've got some news for you. I've just pulled five of the
independents in with us--Gibson, Sprague, Tolman, Brinton, and Bodwell.
The Comas now controls the timber market on the Toban. How about logs
for your mills?"

Craig believed he was hitting Latisan five solid jolts to the jaw when
he named the recreant operators.

However, the young man had heard rumors of what the bludgeoning methods
of the Comas had accomplished; he surveyed Craig resolutely through the
pipe smoke.

He had come down from the Walpole tract that day in a spirit of new
confidence which put away all weariness from him. He was armed with a
powerful weapon. In his exultation, fired by youth's natural hankering
to vaunt success in an undertaking where his elders had failed, he was
willing to flourish the weapon.

Craig waggled a thick forefinger. "What are you going to saw, Latisan?"

"Two million feet from the Walpole tract--where no ax has chipped a tree
for twenty-five years."

It was a return jolt and it made the Comas man blink. "But nobody can
buy the right to cut there."

"I have bought the right, Mr. Craig. An air-tight stumpage
contract--passed on by the best lawyer in this county--a clear title."

"Latisan, the Comas has never been able to round up those heirs--and
what we can't do with all our resources can't be done by you."

"The Latisans know this region better than the Comas folks know it, sir.
Five cousins by hard hunting--two gravestones by good luck! All heirs
located! Why don't you congratulate me?"

Just then the Comas director was thinking instead of talking.

In his operations he