The Boss of Wind River/Chapter 1

S YOUNG Joe Kent entered the office of the Kent Lumber Company at nine o'clock he was conscious of a sudden pause in the morning's work. He felt rather than saw that the eyes of every employee were fixed upon him with an interest he had never before excited. And the quality of this interest, as he felt it, was curiously composite. In it there was a new respect, but mingled with misgivings; a sympathy repressed by the respect; a very dubious weighing of him, a comparison, a sizing up—a sort of mental shake of the head, as if the chances were in favour of his proving decidedly light in the balance; and running through it all was a waiting expectancy, frankly tinged with curiosity.

Kent nodded a somewhat embarrassed, comprehensive good morning, and as he did so a thick-set, grizzled man came forward and shook hands. This was Wright, the office and mill manager.

“The personal and important mail is on your desk, Mr. Kent,” he said. “Later I suppose you will want to go into the details of the business.”

“I expect Mr. Locke about ten o'clock,” Kent replied. “I thought we might have a little talk together then, if you have time.”

Wright smiled a little sadly. “My time is yours, you know. Just let me know when you want me.”

Kent opened the door of the private office that had been his father's, stepped in, and shut it. He glanced half expectantly at the big, leather-cushioned revolving chair behind the broad, flat-topped desk on which the morning's mail lay neatly stacked. The chair was empty. It came to him in a keen, stabbing pain that whenever in future he should enter this office which was now his, the chair would be empty—that the big, square, kindly, keen-eyed man whose business throne it had been would sit in it no more.

He seated himself at the desk, branded to right and left by countless cigars carelessly laid down, and drew the pile of correspondence to him. The topmost envelope bore no stamp, and as he saw his name upon it in the familiar, bold handwriting, his heart pounded and a lump rose in his throat. The fingers which slid a paper cutter beneath the flap were a trifle unsteady. He read:

Young Kent choked suddenly, put down the letter, and stared out of the window at a landscape which had become very indistinct and misty. Before him lay the silver bosom of the river, checkered with the long, black lines of the booms stretching from shore to anchor-pier, great water corrals for the herds of shaggy, brown logs that were driven down from their native forests every spring. The morning breeze, streaming through the open window, was laden with the clean, penetrating, never-to-be-forgotten odour of newly cut pine. The air was vibrant with the deep hum of distant machinery. The thunderous roll of the log-carriages, the high-pitched whine of the planers, the sharp notes of edgers and trimmers, blended into one grand harmony; and shouting through it at exactly spaced intervals came the sustained, ripping crash of the great saws as their teeth bit into the flesh of some forest giant, bound and prostrate on an iron bed of torment.

As he looked and listened, his eyes cleared of mists. For the first time he realized dimly that it was worth while. That the sounds he heard were part of a great song, a Song of Progress; the triumphant, virile song of the newest and greatest of nations, ringing from sea to sea across the breadth of a continent as it built itself, self-sustaining, strong, enduring.

And young Joe Kent, standing by the window facing his inheritance, was a fair representative of the average young American who works with his hands or with his head, and more often with both. There was nothing striking about him. He was of medium height, of medium weight, of medium good looks. From the top of his close-clipped brown head to the toes of his polished brown boots he was neat and trim and healthy and sound. Only, looking closer, an accurate observer might have noticed a breadth of shoulder and a depth of chest not apparent at first glance, and a sweep of lean jaw and set of mouth at variance with the frank, boyish good humour of the tanned face and brown eyes.

Kent left the window, settled himself in his father's seat with as business-like an air as he could assume, and proceeded to wade through the pile of correspondence.

In five minutes he was hopelessly bewildered. It was much less intelligible to him than Greek, for he was beautifully ignorant of the details of his father's business. It had been an understood thing between them that some day, in a year or two—no hurry at all about it—he should enter that office and master the details of that business against the time—how far off it looked then!—when it should devolve upon him to conduct it. But they had both put it off. He was young, just through college. A year of travel was merely a proper adjunct to a not particularly brilliant academic degree. And in the midst of it had come the cablegram summoning him home, where he arrived a scant twenty-four hours before his father's death.

And now, William Kent having been laid to rest on the sunny slope where the great, plumed elms whispered messages with every summer breeze to the dead below them, his son was called to con the business ship through unknown waters, without any knowledge of navigation or even of ordinary seamanship.

The letters which he scanned, reading the words but not getting the sense because he had not the remotest idea of what they were about, were for the most part exceedingly terse and business-like. They were the morning cream of the correspondence, skimmed from the mass by the practised hand of Wright, the manager; letters which, in the ordinary course of business, go direct to the head of the house to be passed upon.

But in this case the head of the house had rather vaguer ideas than his office boy as to how they should be handled. They dealt with timber berths, with logs, with lumber, with contracts made and to be made; in fact with almost everything that Joe Kent knew nothing about and with nothing that he knew anything about. And so, in utter despair, he was on the point of summoning Wright to elucidate matters when, after an emphatic rap, the door opened, admitting a burly, red-faced man of fifty.

This was Locke. He had the appearance of a prosperous farmer, and he was an exceedingly busy lawyer, with the reputation of a relentless fighter when once he took a case. He had been William Kent's friend as well as his legal adviser.

“Well, Joe,” said he, “getting into harness already?”

“I can get into it easy enough,” Joe replied; “but it's a lot too big for me.”

Locke nodded. “You'll grow. When I started I didn't know any more about law than you do about logs. You got that letter?”

“Yes, thanks. He said I might tie to you and Crooks.”

Locke looked out of the window because his eyes were filling. To disguise the fact he pretended to search his pockets for a cigar and growled:

“So you may, within limits. Got a smoke there? I'm out.” He lit one of William Kent's big, black cigars, leaned back in his chair, and crossed one leg over the other. “Now, then, Joe, where shall we start?” he asked. “I'm busy, and you ought to be. What do you know of your father's affairs, anyway?”

“Almost nothing,” young Kent admitted. “Say I don't know anything, and it will be about right. This letter hints at debts—mortgages and things, I suppose.”

“Mortgages and things!” repeated the lawyer. “Lord, what an unsophisticated young blood you are! I should say there were. Now here it is, as your father explained it to me.”

Kent tried to follow the lawyer's practised analysis, but did not altogether succeed. Three things emerged clearly. The mills, plant, and real estate were heavily mortgaged. There was an indebtedness to the Commercial Bank on notes made by William Kent and endorsed by Crooks. And there was a further indebtedness to them on Kent's notes alone, secured by a collateral mortgage on certain timber lands.

“Now, you see,” Locke concluded, “setting the assets against the liabilities you are solvent to the extent of sixty or seventy thousand dollars, or perhaps more. In all probability you could get that clear if you sold out. Properly managed for you by somebody else, it would yield an income of between three and four thousand dollars per annum. On that you could live comfortably, be free from worry, and die of dry-rot and Scotch highballs at about my age.”

“I'm going to run the business,” said Joe. “My father wished it; and anyway I'm going to.”

Locke smoked thoughtfully for some moments. “That's good talk,” he said at length. “I understand your feelings. But before you come to a definite conclusion take time to look at all sides of the question. The cold fact is that you have had no experience. The business is solvent, but too involved to give you much leeway. It is an expensive one to run, and you can't afford to make many mistakes. For seven months in the year your payroll and camp supply bill will run into five figures. Your father intended to make a big cut next winter and clear off some of the debt. Suppose you try that yourself. It means a big outlay. Can you swing it? Remember, you haven't got much rope; and if you fail and smash it won't be a case of living on three or four thousand a year, but of earning five or six hundred a year to live on.”

“I hadn't thought of it in just that way,” said Kent. “You see it's all new to me. But I'm going into it, sink or swim. My mind's made up.”

“I thought it would be,” said Locke with satisfaction. “If I were you I'd take Wright into my confidence from the start. He is a good man, and thinks as much of your interests as if they were his own.”

Wright, called in, listened to Locke's succinct statement without much surprise. “Of course, I knew these things already in a general way,” he commented.

“I have decided to carry on the business,” Joe told him. “What do you think of it?”

“The carrying or the business?”

“Both.”

“Well,” said Wright slowly, “the business might be in worse shape—a lot worse. With your father handling it there would be no trouble. With you—I don't know.”

“That's not very encouraging,” said Joe, endeavouring to smile at Locke, an effort not entirely successful. Locke said nothing.

“I don't mean to be discouraging,” said Wright. “It's a fact. I don't know. You see, you've never had a chance; you've no experience.”

“Well, I'm after it now,” said Kent. “Will you stay with me while I get it?”

“Of course I will,” said Wright heartily.

When Locke had gone Joe turned to his manager.

“Now,” he said, “will you please tell me what I ought to know about the business, just what we have on hand and what we must do to keep going? I don't know a thing about it, and I'm here to learn. I've got to. Make it as simple as you can. I'm not going to pretend I understand if I don't. Therefore I'll probably ask a lot of fool questions. You see, I'm showing you my hand, and I own up to you that there's nothing in it. But I won't show it to any one else. When I want to know things I'll come to you; but for all other people know to the contrary I'll be playing my own game. That is, till I'm capable of running the business without advice I'll run it on yours. I've got to make a bluff, and this is the only way I see of doing it. What do you think?”

“I think,” said Wright, “that it's the best thing you can do, though I wouldn't have suggested it myself. I'll give you the best I've got. An hour ago I was rather doubtful, but now I think you've got it in you to play a mighty good game of your own one of these days.”

Whereupon old Bob Wright and young Joe Kent shook hands with mutual respect—Wright because he had found that Kent was not a self-sufficient young ass, and Kent because Wright had treated him as a man instead of merely as an employer.