The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1920-03-18

the next few weeks the Colonel under
pretense of going hunting or fishing
on SQuaw creek. managed to make q
fairly accurate cursory cruise of the
Henderson misunderstanding which
he purchased it from the delighted
Bill for dollar and a quarter per
thousand feet stumpage.
No man is infallible and in plan
ming his logging operations in the San
Hedrin watershed John Cardigan
presently made the discovery thai he
had erred in judgment. That season.
from May to November. his woods
crew put thirty million feet of logs
INFO the San Hedrin river. while the
mill sawed on a reserve supply of logs
taken from the last of the old chop
pings adjacent to Squaw creek That
gear, however, the rainfall in the San
Hedrin country WAS fifty per cent.
less than normal, and by the first of
May of the following year Cardigans
WOods-creW had succeeded in driving
slightly less than half of the cut of
the preceding year to the boom on
tidewater at the mouth Of the river.
UNLESS the Lord'll gil us lot more
water in the river" the woods-boss
McTavish complained, 81 dinna see
how I'm to keep the mill runnin'."
He was taking John CARDIGAN rp the
river bank and explaining the situa-
ton. THE heavy butt-logs haze sunk
to the bottom he continued. "Wie a
normal head o. water, the lads'll move
them, but wi the drappie we have the
nee" He threw up his hamlike
hands despairingly.
Three days later a clOud-hurst filled
the river to the brim; it came at night
and swept the river clean of Cardi-
CAMS clear logs. Al army of jug
gernauts, they swept down on the
boiling torrent to tidewater, reaching
the bay shortly after the tide had
commenced to ebb
Now, chain is only as strong as
its weakest link, and a log-boom is
chaplet of small logs, linked end to
end by means of short chains; hence
when the vanguard of logs on the
lip of that flood reached the log
boom, the impetus of the charge was
too great to be resisted. Straight
through the weakest link in this boom
the huge saw-logs crashed and out
over Humboldt bar to the broad Pa
cific. With the ebb tide some of them
came back, while others, caught in
cross-currents bobbed about the hay
all night and finally beached at widely
scattered points. Out of the fifteen
million feet of logs less than three
million were salvaged, and this task
in itself was an expensive operation.
John Cardigan received the news
calmly. He turned from the manager
and walked away through his logged
over lands, across the little divide
and down into the quarter-Section of
green timber he had told McTavish
not to cut Once in the Valley of the
Giants he followed a wellworn foot
path to the little amphitheater, and
where the sunlight filtered through
like halo and fell on a plain little
white marble monument, he paused
and sat down on the now almost de
cayed sugar-pine windfall
I've come for little comfort,
sweetheart" he murmured to her who
slept beneath the stone. Then he
leaned back against a redwood Tree,
removed his hat, and closed his eyes,
holding his great gray head the While
a little to one side in a listening atti
1 tude. Long he sat there, IA great,
| time-bitten devotee at the shrine of
his comfort; and presently the har-
| ried look left his strong, kind face
/ and was replaced by little president
i smile-the sort of smile worn by one
who through bitter years has sought
/ something very, very precious and
has at length discovered it.