Shoshone journal. [volume] (Shoshone, Idaho) 1884-1931, 1921-01-07

will know he's been In fight before
we fin"
He broke off abruptly, for he had
just remembered that he was to dine
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
and now the task of continuing It is
minel All those men who earn q
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 stand by and see all this
go to satisfy the overwhelming ambition
Of a strangerY His big hands clench-
ed. mo I" 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 amphitheater 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 a minute Bryce stood
dumbly gazing upon the sacrilege be-
fore his rage and horror found vent In
words. IAN enemy has done this
thing" he cried aloud to the wood
COLLINS. "And over her grave"
1t was a burl tree. At the point
where Bryce paused q malignant
growth had developed on the trunk
OF the tree, for all the world like a
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 an extraordinary beauty when |
polished. Bryce noted that the work |
Of removing this excrescence had been
very neatly. With a
saw the growth, perhaps ten
feet in diameter, had been neatly
sliced of much as a housewife cuts
slice after slice from a 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
or that section of burl. By permit
ing the tree TO stand and merely
building a staging up to the burl, the
after could have been removed with
ut vital injury to the tree-whereas
Y destroying the tree the wretches
ad evidenced all too clearly to Bryce
wanton desire to add insult to in
ury.
Poor old Dad!" he murmured.
I'm glad now he has been unable TO
ct up here and see this. 1t would
ave broken his heart. I'll have this
rec made into fence posts and the
lump dynamited and removed this
lmmer. After he is operated on ard
cts back his sight, he will come up
ere-and he must never know. Per-
APPS he will have forgotten how many
'ees stood in this circle"
He paused. Peeping out from I'M
er a chip among the litter at his feet
as the moldy corner of a white
lvelope. In an instant Bryce had it s
his hand The envelope was dirty {
nd weatherbeaten, but to a certain |
,tent the redwood chips under which
had lain hidden had served to pro- /
ct II, and the writing on the face S
as still legible. The envelope was I
npty and addressed to Jules Ron
.au, care of the Laguna Grande t
lmber company. Sequoia, California. h
Bryce read and reread that address.
he muttered. Jules t
1ndeaui I've heard that name be- {
re%ah, yes Dad spoke Of him last
ght. He's Penningtons woods-boss a
ID" S
An enemy had dono this thing-and k
all the world John Cardigan had fl
t one enemy-Colonel Seth Penning II
n. Had Pennington sent his woods p
IS to do this dirty work out of c
eer spite? Hardly. The section Of d
ri was gone, and this argued that S
2 question of spite had been purely h
matter of secondary consideration. lo
| u.