They poured down in a stream till the river surface within
the boom-sticks was a brick-colored jam that gave off a pleasant
aromatic smell.
Then Hollister and his two men cast off the boom, let the current
sweep it down to Carr's new shingle mill below the Big Bend. When the
bolts were tallied in, Hollister got a check. He sat with pad and
pencil figuring for half an hour after he came home, after his men had
each shouldered a fifty-pound pack of supplies and gone back up the
hill. He gave over figuring at last. The thing was profitable. More so
than he had reckoned. He got up and went into the kitchen where Doris
was rolling pie crust on a board.
"We're off," he said, putting an arm around her. "If we can keep this
up all summer, I'll build a new wing on the house and bring you in a
piano to play with this winter."
Hollister himself now took a hand at cutting cedar. Each morning he
climbed that steep slope to the works, and each night he came trudging
down; and morning and night he would pause at a point where the trail
led along the rim of a sheer cliff, to look down on the valley below,
to look down on the roof of his own house and upon Bland's house
farther on.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197