Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/180

 that,” regretted Abner. “I’ll say that, and I haven’t made a single stand there yet. I won’t tackle it now, but when I do it’ll take a day or two more’n this did and it’ll run under three million. We’ll find a lot of ledge and a sheer drop into a hog.”

Stanley pressed his lips firmly, as he screwed up his courage and then said, “Mr. Whitten, are you now ready to tell me about these stands?”

Bub exploded and Abner even was forced to admire, “I’ll say this fer ye, ye’re like a bull pup when it comes to hanging on. I was wondering if I’d sidetracked ye. Wal, when I paced off some seventy-five feet in a straight line and stopped and swung my eye ’round in a circle, the same having the distance paced as the radius, I was counting the sizeable trees in that circle. I was making a stand. I was gitting an idea how the timber ran. I took a sparsely growing lot and then a thick growth. Sometimes, if it runs even, five or six stands will tell the story. But if I had time I’d make five times that many on this piece, it being uneven. Of course you divided the total estimate by the number of stands, remember yer acreage and there ye have yer section. I’ve seen men that could estimate a section down to a