plans were drawn, and shell-like buildings of mere slats and
slab sidings erected, while heavy, stone foundations were laid in the
firm, rocky soil to support the machinery, when it arrived. A game in
which Houston hurried from the forests to the mill and back again, now
riding the log sheds as a matter of swifter locomotion, instead of for
the thrill, as he once had done. Another month went by, to bring with
it the bill of lading which told that the saws, the beltings, the
planers and edgers and trimmers, and the half hundred other items of
machinery were at last on their way, a month of activities and--of
hopes.

For to Ba'tiste Renaud and Barry Houston there yet remained one faint
chance. The Blackburn crowd had taken on a gamble, one which, at the
time, had seemed safe enough; the investment of thousands of dollars
for a plant which they had believed firmly would be free of
competition. That plant could not hope for sufficient business to keep
it alive, with the railroad contract gone, and the bigger mill of
Houston and Renaud in successful operation. There would come the time
when they must forfeit that lease and contract through non-payment, or
agree to re-lease them to the original owner. But would that time
arrive soon enough? It was a grim possibility,--a gambling wager that
held forth hope, and at the same time threatened them with extinction.
For the same thing applied to Houston and Ba'tiste that applied to
Blackburn and Thayer. If they could not make good on their contract,
the other mill was ever ready to step in.

"Eet all depen'," said Ba'tiste more than once during the snowy,
frost-caked days in which they watched every freight train that pulled,
white-coated, over the range into Tabernacle. "Eet all depen' on the
future. Mebbe so, we make eet. Mebbe so, we do not. But we gamble,
eh, _mon_ Baree?"

"With our last cent," came the answer of the other man, and in the
voice was grimness and enthusiasm. It was a game of life or extinction
now.

March, and a few warm days, which melted the snows only that they might
crust again. Back and forth traveled the bobsled to Tabernacle, only
to meet with disappointment.

"I've wired the agent at Denver three times about that stuff," came the
announcement of the combined telegrapher and general supervisor of
freight at the little station. "He's told me that he'd let me know as
soon as it got in. But nothing's come yet."

A week more, and anoth