ond incision, and started forward again, while the newly sawn boards
traveled on to the trimmers and edgers, and thence to the drying racks.

Log after log skidded upon the carriage and was brought forward, while
Houston, fascinated, watched the kerf mark of the blade as it tore away
a slab-side. Then a touch on the arm and he followed Ba'tiste without.
The Canadian wandered thoughtfully about a moment, at last to approach
a newly stacked pile of lumber and lean against it. A second more and
he drew something to his side and stared at it.

"Oh, ho!" came at last. "M'sieu Houston, he will, what-you-say, fix
the can on the sawyer."

"Why?"

"First," said Ba'tiste quietly, "he waste a six-inch board on each
slab-side he take off. Un'stand? The first cut--when the bark, eet is
sliced off. He take too much. Eet is so easy. And then--look." He
drew his hand from its place of concealment, displaying a big thumb
measuring upon a small ruler. "See? Eet is an inch and a quarter.
Too thick."

"I know that much at least. Lumber should be cut at the mill an inch
and an eighth thick to allow for shrinkage to an inch--but not an inch
and a quarter."

"Bon!" Ba'tiste grinned. "Eet make a difference on a big log. Eight
cuts of the saw and a good board, eet is gone."

"No wonder I don't make money."

"There is much more. The trimmer and the edger, they take off too
much. They make eight-inch boards where there should be ten, and ten
where there should be twelve. You shall have a new crew."

"And a new manager," Houston said it quietly. The necessity for his
masquerade was fading swiftly now.

"And new men on the kilns. See!"

Far to one side, a great mass of lumber reared itself against the sky,
twisted and warped, the offal of the drying kilns. Ba'tiste shrugged
his shoulders.

"So! When the heat, eet is made too quick, the lumber twist. Eet is
so easy--when one wants some one to be tired and quit!"

To quit! It was all plain to Barry Houston now. Thayer had tried to
buy the mill when the elder Houston was alive. He had failed. Now, he
was striving for something else to make Houston the newcomer, Houston,
who was striving to succeed without the fundamentals of actual logging
experience, disgusted with the business and his contract with the dead.
The first year and a half of the fight had passed,--a losing
proposition; Barry could see why now, in warped lumber and thick-cut
boards, in broken mac