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The cook, a thin-faced, sly man, with a penchant for the Police Gazette, secretly admired him.

“Luk’ out for th’ Rough Red; he’ll do ye!” he would whisper hoarsely when he passed the silent scaler.

But in the three days the Rough Red put his men to work on a little cabin. FitzPatrick at once took his scaling-rule from the corner and set out into the forest.

His business was, by measuring the diameter of each log, to ascertain and tabulate the number of board feet put in by the contractor. On the basis of his single report James Bourke would be paid for the season’s work. Inevitably he at once became James Bourke’s natural enemy, and so of every man in the crew with the possible exception of the cook.

Suppose you log a knoll which your eye tells you must grow at least a half-million; suppose you work conscientiously for twelve days; suppose your average has always been between forty and fifty thousand a day. And then suppose the scaler’s sheets credit you with only a little over the four hundred thousand! What would you think of it? Would you not be inclined to suspect that the scaler had cheated you in favour of his master? that you had been compelled by false figures to work a day or so for nothing?

FitzPatrick scaled honestly, for he was a just man, but exactitude and optimism of estimate never have approximated, and they did not in this case. The Rough Red grumbled, accused, swore, threatened. FitzPatrick smoked “Peerless,” and said nothing. Still it was not pleasant for him, alone there in the dark wilderness fifty miles from the nearest settlement, without a human being with whom to exchange a friendly word.

The two men early came to a clash over the methods of cutting. The Rough Red and his crew cut anywhere, everywhere, anyhow. The easiest way was theirs. Small timber they skipped, large timber they sawed high, tops they left rather than trim them into logs. FitzPatrick would not have the pine “slaughtered.”

“Ye’ll bend your backs a little, Jimmy Bourke,” said he, “and cut th’ stumps lower to th’ ground. There’s a bunch of shingles at least in every stump ye’ve left. And you must saw straighter. And th’ contract calls for eight inches and over; mind ye that. Don’t go to skippin’ th’ little ones because they won’t scale ye high. ‘Tis in the contract so. And I won’t have th’ tops left. There’s many a good log in them, an’ ye trim them fair and clean.”

“Go to hell, you–” shouted the Rough Red. “Where th’ blazes did ye learn so much of loggin’? I log th’ way me father logged, an’ I’m not to be taught by a high-banker from th’ Muskegon!”

Never would he acknowledge the wrong nor promise the improvement, but both were there, and both he and FitzPatrick knew it. The Rough Red chafed frightfully, but in a way his hands were tied. He could do nothing without the report; and it was too far out to send for another scaler, even if Daly would have given him one.

Finally in looking over a skidway he noticed that one log had not been blue-pencilled across the end. That meant that it had not been scaled; and that in turn meant that he, the Rough Red, would not be paid for his labour in cutting and banking it. At once he began to bellow through the woods.

“Hey! FitzPatrick! Come here, you blank-blanked-blank of a blank! Come here!”

The sealer swung leisurely down the travoy trail and fronted the other with level eyes.

“Well?” said he.

“Why ain’t that log marked?”

“I culled it.”

“Ain’t it sound and good? Is there a mark on it? A streak of punk or rot? Ain’t it good timber? What the hell’s th’ matter with it? You tried to do me out of that, you damn skunk.”

A log is culled, or thrown out, when, for any reason, it will not make good timber.