He scarcely put on his shoes except when
he was going out to wallow through the drifts; and, as Coldriver knew,
when Scattergood waggled his bare toes he was struggling with a
problem.
Also it might have been noticed that he pored much over the detailed
maps in the county atlas, studying the flow of streams and the lie of
timber. It might have been seen that several large blocks of timber had
been marked by Scattergood with red crosses, and that certain other
limits had been blotted out in black. The black pieces were neither
numerous nor individually extensive, but they belonged to Scattergood.
Those marked with red crosses were the property of Messrs. Crane &
Keith.
Now, it may be taken as axiomatic that in those early days the value of
a piece of timber depended upon its accessibility to flowing water down
which logs might be driven. A medium piece of timber on the banks of a
stream which came to plentiful flood in the spring was worth more in
hard dollars and cents than a much larger and finer piece back in the
hills. A piece of timber which had no access whatever to water
approximated worthlessness. On the atlas, the largest pieces of Crane &
Keith timber were back from the river--not too far back, but still
separated from it by narrow strips which, for the most part, were farms.
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