The Dolores star., 1920-12-17

and he added fiercely: "And I'll at
tend to the battle for Father. We
may lose, but that man Pennington
VIII know he's been In a fight before
we fin"
lie broke Off abruptly, for he had
Just remembered that he was IN dino
at the Pennington house the following
Thursday-and he was not the sort of
man who smilingly breaks bread with
his enemy.
All about Bryce were scenes of
activity, Of human endeavor, and to
him In that moment came the thought :;
My father brought all this to pass
| ana now the task Of continuing 1t is
mine! All those men who earn n
living In Cardigan's mill and on Cardi-
gan's dock-those sailors who sail the
ships that carry CardIgan's lumber
Into the distant marts of men-are de-
pendent upon me: and my father used
to tell me not to fail them. Must my
father have wrought all this in vain?
And must I stand by and see all this
go to satisfy the overwhelming ambition
Of stranger?" His big hands clench.
ed. mo-" he growled savagely. "Give
me your last five annual statements,
Mr. Sinclair, please"
The old servitor brought forth the
documents In question. Bryce stuffed
them into his pocket and left the office.
Three quarters Of an hour later he en-
tered the little amphtheater In the
Valley Of the Giants and paused with
an expression Of dismay. One of the
giants had fallen and lay stretched
across the little clearing In its de-
scent it had demolished the little
white stone over his mothers grave
and had driven the fragments of the
stone deep Into the earth.
The fact that the tree was down.
however, was secondary to the fact
that neither wind nor lightning had
brought 1t low, but rather the impious
hand of man; for the great jagged
stump showed all too plainly the
marks of cross-cut saw and axe; a
pile of chips four feet deep Uttered the
ground.
For fully minute Bryce stood
dumbly gazing upon the sacrilege be-
fore his rage and horror found vent in
words. "An enemy has done this
thing" he cried aloud to the wood.
goblns. "And over her gravel"
1t was burl tree. At the point
where Bryce paused a malignant
growth had developed on the trunk
of the tree, for all the world like
wart This was the burl,
so priced for table-tops and panelling
because of the fact that the twisted,
wavy, helter-skelter grain lends to the
wood nn extraordinary beauty when
polished. Bryce noted that the work
If removing this excrescence had been
very neatly. With a
.ross-cut saw the growth, perhaps ten
'eet in diameter, had been neatly |
sliced OFF much as housewife cuts |
slice after slice from loaf of bread.
He guessed that these slices. practi-
ally circular in shape. had been rolled
,ut of the woods to some conveyance
waiting to receive them.
What Bryce could not understand,
however, was the stupid brutality of |
he raiders in Telling the tree merely
ror that section of burl. By permit
ing the tree to stand and merely |
a staging up to the burl, the
after could have been removed with
out vital injury to the tree-whereas
Dy destroying the tree the wretches
had evidenced all too clearly to Bryce
A wanton desire to add insult to In
jury.
poor old Dad" he murmured.
I'm glad now he has been unable to |
get up here and see this. 1t would |
have broken his heart. I'll have this
troe made into fence posts and the
stu,up dynamited and removed this |
summer. After he is operated on ard
gets back his sight, he will come up |
here-and he must never know. Per
haps he will have forgotten how many
trees stood In this circle"
He paused. Peeping out from un-
der chip among the litter at his feet
In an instant Bryce had 1t
in his hand. The envelope was dirty
and weatherbeaten, but to a certain
extent the redwood chips under which
1t had lain hidden had served to pro-
tect It, and the writing on the face
was still leglble. The envelope was
empty and addressed to Jules Ron
deau, care of the Laguna Grande
Lumber company. Sequoia, California.
Bryce read and reread that address.
"Rondeau!" he muttered. Jules
Rondeau! I've heard that name be-
fore-ah, yes! Dad spoke of him last
night. He's PennIngton's woods-boss
and"
An enemy had done this thing-and
in nil the world John Cardigan had
hut one enemy-Colonel Seth Penning-
ton. Had Pennington sent his WOODS.
boss to do this dirty work out OF