build houses while the vast cloud of
European uncertainty hung over the nation. All across North America
the wind and weather had taken toll of roofs, and these must be
repaired. The nation did not cease to breed while its men died daily
by thousands. And with the signing of the armistice a flood of
immigration was let loose. British and French and Scandinavians and
swarms of people from Czecho-Slovakia and all the Balkan States,
hurried from devastated lands and impending taxes to a new country
glowing with the deceptive greenness of far fields. The population had
increased; the housing for it had not. So that rents went up and up
until economic factors exerted their inexorable pressure and the tap
of the carpenter's hammer and the ring of his saw began to sound in
every city, in every suburb, on new farms and lonely prairies.

Cedar shingles began to make fortunes for those who dealt in them on a
large scale. By midsummer Carr's mill on the Toba worked night and
day.

"Crowd your work, Hollister," Carr advised him. "I've been studying
this cedar situation from every angle. There will be an unlimited
demand and rising prices for about another year. By that time every
logging concern will be getting out cedar. The mills will be cutting
it by the million feet. They'll glut the market and the bottom will
drop out of this cedar boom. So get that stuff of yours out while the
going is good. We can use it all."

But labor was scarce. All the great industries were absorbing men,
striving to be first in the field of post-war production. Hollister
found it difficult to enlarge his crew. That was a lonely hillside
where his timber stood. Loggers preferred the big camps, the less
primitive conditions under which they must live and work. Hollister
saw that he would be unable to extend his operations until deep snow
shut down some of the northern camps that fall. Even so he did well
enough, much better than he had expected at the beginning. Bill
Hayes, he of the gray mustache and the ear-piercing faller's cry, was
a "long-stake" man. That is to say, old Bill knew his weaknesses, the
common weaknesses of the logger, the psychological reaction from hard
work, from sordid living, from the indefinable cramping of the spirit
that grows upon a man through months of monotonous labor. Town--a
pyrotechnic display among the bright lights--one dizzy swoop on the
wings of fictitious excitement--bought caresses--empty pockets--the
woods aga