CHAPTER V
No man is infallible, and in planning his logging operations in the SanHedrin watershed, John Cardigan presently made the discovery that he haderred in judgment. That season, from May to November, his woods-crew putthirty million feet of logs into the San Hedrin River, while themill sawed on a reserve supply of logs taken from the last of the oldchoppings adjacent to Squaw Creek. That year, however, the rainfall inthe San Hedrin country was fifty per cent. less than normal, and by thefirst of May of the following year Cardigan's woods-crew had succeededin driving slightly less than half of the cut of the preceding year tothe boom on tidewater at the mouth of the river.
"Unless the Lord'll gi' us a lot more water in the river," thewoods-boss McTavish complained, "I dinna see how I'm to keep the millrunnin'." He was taking John Cardigan up the riverbank and explainingthe situation. "The heavy butt-logs hae sunk to the bottom," hecontinued. "Wie a normal head o' water, the lads'll move them, butwi' the wee drappie we have the noo--" He threw up his hamlike handsdespairingly.
Three days later a cloud-burst filled the river to the brim; it cameat night and swept the river clean of Cardigan's clear logs, An armyof Juggernauts, they swept down on the boiling torrent to tidewater,reaching the bay shortly after the tide had commenced to ebb.
Now, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and a log-boom isa chaplet of a small logs, linked end to end by means of short chains;hence when the vanguard of logs on the lip of that flood reached thelog-boom, the impetus of the charge was too great to be resisted.Straight through the weakest link in this boom the huge saw-logs crashedand out over Humboldt Bar to the broad Pacific. With the ebb tide someof them came back, while others, caught in cross-currents, bobbed aboutthe Bay all night and finally beached at widely scattered points. Outof the fifteen million feet of logs less than three million feet weresalvaged, and this task in itself was an expensive operation.
John Cardigan received the news calmly. "Thank God we don't have acloud-burst more than once in ten years," he remarked to his manager."However, that is often enough, considering the high cost of this one.Those logs were worth eight dollars a thousand feet, board measure,in the millpond, and I suppose we've lost a hundred thousand dollars'worth."
He turned from the manager and walked away through the drying yard, upthe main street of Sequoia, and on into the second-growth timber at theedge of the town. Presently he emerged on the old, decaying skid-roadand continued on through his logged-over lands, across the little divideand down into the quarter-section of green timber he had told McTavishnot to cut. Once in the Valley of the Giants, he followed a well-wornfoot-path to the little amphitheatre, and where the sunlight filteredthrough like a halo and fell on a plain little white marble monument, hepaused and sat down on the now almost decayed sugar-pine windfall.
"I've come for a little comfort, sweetheart," he murmured to her whoslept beneath the stone. Then he leaned back against a redwood tree,removed his hat, and closed his eyes, holding his great gray head thewhile a little to one side in a listening attitude. Long he sat there,a great, time-bitten devotee at the shrine of his comfort; and presentlythe harried look left his strong, kind face and was replaced by a littleprescient smile--the sort of smile worn by one who through bitter yearshas sought something very, very precious and has at length discoveredit.