When he had brought the last of his food supply up to the cabin, he
hauled the canoe back into a thicket and covered it with the glossy
green leaves of the salal. He folded his tent in a tight bundle and
strung it to a bough with a wire, out of reach of the wood rats.
These tasks completed, he began his survey of the standing timber on
his limit.
At best he could make only a rough estimate, less accurate than a
professional cruiser's would be, but sufficient to satisfy him. In a
week he was reasonably certain that the most liberal estimate left
less than half the quantity of merchantable timber for which he had
paid good money. The fir, as a British Columbia logging chance, was
all but negligible. What value resided there lay in the cedar alone.
By the time he had established this, the clear, cold, sunny days came
to an end. Rain began to drizzle half-heartedly out of a murky sky.
Overnight the rain changed to snow, great flat flakes eddying
soundlessly earthward in an atmosphere uncannily still. For two days
and a night this ballet of the snowflakes continued, until valley and
slope and the high ridges were two feet deep in the downy white.
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