t on the steamer's deck, watching green
shore and landlocked bays fall astern, feeling the steady throb of her
engines, hearing the swish and purl of a cleft sea parting at the bow
in white foam, rippling away in a churned wake at her stern.

He felt a mild regret that he went alone, and the edge of that was
dulled by the sure knowledge that he would not long be alone, only
until such time as he could build a cabin and transport supplies up to
the flat above the Big Bend, to that level spot where his tent and
canoe were still hidden, where he had made his first camp, and near
where the bolt chute was designed to spit its freight into the river.

It was curious to Hollister,--the manner in which Doris could see so
clearly this valley and river and the slope where his timber stood.
She could not only envision the scene of their home and his future
operations, but she could discuss these things with practical wisdom.
They had talked of living in the old cabin where he had found her
shelf of books, but there was a difficulty in that,--of getting up the
steep hill, of carrying laboriously up that slope each item of their
supplies, their personal belongings, such articles of furniture as
they needed; and Doris had suggested that they build their house in
the flat and let his men, the bolt cutters, occupy the cabin on the
hill.

He had two hired woodsmen with him, tools, food, bedding. When the
steamer set them on the float at the head of Toba Inlet, Hollister
left the men to bring the goods ashore in a borrowed dugout and
himself struck off along a line blazed through the woods which, one of
Carr's men informed him, led out near the upper curve of the Big Bend.

A man sometimes learns a great deal in the brief span of a few
minutes. When Hollister disembarked he knew the name of one man only
in Toba Valley, the directing spirit of the settlement, Sam Carr, whom
he had met in MacFarlan's office. But there were half a dozen loggers
meeting the weekly steamer. They were loquacious men, without
formality in the way of acquaintance. Hollister had more than trail
knowledge imparted to him. The name of the man who lived with his wife
at the top of the Big Bend was Mr. J. Harrington Bland; the logger
said that with a twinkle in his eye, a chuckle as of inner amusement.
Hollister understood. The man was a round peg in this region of square
holes; otherwise he would have been Jack Bland, or whatever the
misplaced initial stood for.