ing. He turned to Doc. "I
don't get it, Doc," he said. "What's the deal?"

Doc kept chuckling. "It's them trees," he said. "There's no trees like
that on Mars."

"Oh," said Rusty.

I suppose it was just chance that Burt Holden was sitting behind us and
heard the talk. Burt is one of the newcomers. He'd come down from Grants
Pass and started a big lumber mill and logging outfit, and was trying to
freeze out the little operators.

He growled something about keeping quiet. That got Rusty and Lew kind of
mad, and Lew turned around and looked at Burt. Lew is even bigger than
Burt, and things might have got interesting, but I wanted to see the
rest of the picture. I nudged him and asked him if he had a chew. They
won't let you smoke in the show, but it's okay to chew, and most of us
were in the habit anyway, because there's too much danger of forest fire
when you smoke on the job.

Doc laughed every time the screen showed trees, and I could hear Burt
humping around in his seat like he was irritated.

* * * * *

At the end of the show we drifted over to the Owl Tavern and took a
table against the north wall, behind the pool tables and across from the
bar. Doc had put his dark glasses back on, and he sat facing the wall.

Not that many people apart from the Insiders knew Doc. He hadn't been
very active since the young medical doctor had come to Cave Junction in
1948, although he never turned down anyone who came for help, and as far
as I knew he'd never lost a patient unless he was already dead when Doc
got there.

We were kidding Lew because he was still wearing his tin hat and caulked
boots from work. "You figuring on starting early in the morning?" I
asked him. Rusty and Doc laughed. It was a good joke because we rode out
to the job in my jeep, and so we'd naturally get there at the same time.

Then Rusty sat up straighter and looked over at the bar. "Hey," he said,
"Pop's talking to Burt Holden." Pop Johnson owns our outfit. He's one of
the small operators that guys like Burt are trying to squeeze out.

"Hope he don't try to rook Pop into no deals," said Lew.

Doc tipped up his bottle of beer. In Oregon they don't sell anything but
beer in the taverns. "Times change," he said. "Back in 1900 all they
wanted was gold. Now they're trying to take all the trees."

"It's the big operators like Burt," I said. "Little guys like Pop can't
cut 'em as fast as they grow. The companies don't