ack in a wooden armchair, his feet comfortably
elevated to the low rail about the stove, his pipe in mouth, his coat
off, and his waistcoat unbuttoned. At the sight of his homely, jolly
countenance, Bob experienced a pleasant sensation of slipping back from
an environment slightly off-focus to the normal, accustomed and real.
Nevertheless, at the first opportunity, he tested his new doubts by
Welton's common sense.

"I rode through our slash on 18," he remarked. "That's an awful mess."

"Slashes are," replied Welton succinctly.

"If the thing gets afire it will make a hot blaze."

"Sure thing," agreed Welton. "But we've never had one go yet--at least,
while we were working. There's men enough to corral anything like that."

"But we've always worked in a wet country," Bob pointed out. "Here it's
dry from April till October."

"Have to take chances, then; and jump on a fire quick if it starts,"
said Welton philosophically.

"These forest men advise certain methods of obviating the danger," Bob
suggested.

"Pure theory," returned Welton. "The theory's a good one, too," he
added. "That's where these college men are strong--only it isn't
practical. They mean well enough, but they haven't the knowledge. When
you look at anything broad enough, it looks easy. That's what busts so
many people in the lumber business." He rolled out one of his jolly
chuckles. "Lumber barons!" he chortled. "Oh, it's easy enough! Any
mossback can make money lumbering! Here's your stumpage at a dollar a
thousand, and there's your lumber at twenty! Simplest thing in the
world. Just the same there are more failures in the lumber business than
in any other I know anything about. Why is it?"

"Economic waste," put in Merker, who was leaning across the counter.

"Lack of experience," said Bob.

"A little of both," admitted Welton; "but it's more because the business
is made up of ten thousand little businesses. You have to conduct a
cruising business, and a full-fledged real estate and mortgage business;
you have to build houses and factories, make roads, build railroads; you
have to do a livery trade, and be on the market for a thousand little
things. Between the one dollar you pay for stumpage and the twenty
dollars you get for lumber lies all these things. Along comes your
hardware man and says, Here, why don't you put in my new kind of spark
arrestor; think how little it costs; what's fifty dollars to a
half-million-dollar business? The s