"So you are McNabb's man?" queried Cameron with a smile, as he swung
his pack to the floor and seated himself upon the edge of a bunk. "Do
you know, we rather hoped I would not find you here."
"Why?" asked Wentworth, returning the smile.
"Pulp-wood has gone up since that contract was made. If the stuff were
to revert to us we could do much better with it."
"How much better?"
Cameron shot a keen glance at his questioner. "Well, considerably," he
answered non-committally.
"A dollar an acre?"
"Two of them."
A brief silence ensued, during which Wentworth was conscious that the
eyes of the other were upon him. "Seven dollars an acre," he said.
"Pretty high, isn't it, when you consider the inaccessibility to your
markets?"
Cameron laughed. "Inaccessibility to markets don't seem to be worrying
McNabb any. Bringing his paper mills into the woods seems to have
solved that problem. I was talking to the engineer in charge of his
road construction day before yesterday----"
"Engineer in charge of road construction!" exclaimed Wentworth. "What
road construction--where?"
"Why, north of here. You knew he was building a tote-road, didn't you?
I followed the blazed trail clear down to the rapids of the Shamattawa.
And he's pushing it, too--got twenty-five or thirty miles of it ready
for traffic."
"No--I didn't know he had begun construction," admitted Wentworth.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80