ed trapper
showed in the doorway. One o'clock came and went. Two--three.
Houston still waited. Four--and a scratch on the door. It was
Golemar, followed a moment later by a grinning, twinkling-eyed Ba'tiste.

"_Bon_! Good!" he exclaimed. "See, Golemar? What I say to you? He
wait up for Ba'teese. _Bon_! Now--_alert, mon ami_! The pencil and
the paper!"

He slumped into a chair and dived into a pocket of his red shirt, to
bring forth a mass of scribbled sheets, to stare at them, striving
studiously to make out the writing.

"Ba'teese, he put eet down by a match in the shelter of a lumber pile,"
came at last. "Eet is all, what-you-say, scramble up. But we shall
see--ah, _oui_--we shall see. Now," he looked toward Houston, waiting
anxiously with paper and pencil, "we shall put eet in the list. So.
One million ties, seven by eight by eight feet, at the one dollar and
the forty cents. Put that down."

"I have it. But what--"

"Wait! Five thousan' bridge timber, ten by ten by sixteen feet, at the
three dollar and ninety cents."

"Yes--"

"Ten thousand feet of the four by four, at--"

"Ba'tiste!" Houston had risen suddenly. "What have you got there?"

The trapper grinned and pulled at his gray-splotched beard.

"Oh, ho! Golemar! He wan' to know. Shall we tell heem, eh? Ah,
_oui_--" he shook his big shoulders and spread his hands. "Eet is--the
copy of the bid!"

"The copy? The bid?"

"From the Blackburn mill. There is no one aroun'. Ba'teese, he go
through a window. Ba'teese, he find heem--in a file. And he bring
back the copy."

"Then--"

"M'sieu Houston, he too will bid. But he will make it lower. And
this," he tapped the scribbled scraps of paper, "is cheaper than any
one else. Eet is because of the location. M'sieu Houston--he know
what they bid. He will make eet cheaper."

"But what with, Ba'tiste? We haven't a mill to saw the stuff, in the
first place. This ramshackle thing we're setting up now couldn't even
begin to turn out the ties alone. The bid calls for ten thousand laid
down at Tabernacle, the first of June. We might do that, but how on
earth would we ever keep up with the rest? The boxings, the rough
lumber, the two by fourteen's finished, the dropped sidings and groved
roofing, and lath and ceiling and rough fencings and all the rest?
What on earth will we do it with?"

"What with?" Ba'tiste waved an arm grandiloquently. "With the future!"

"It's tak