Morrison & Daly had for many years carried on extensive logging
operations in the wilderness. The number of their camps was legion,
of their employees a multitude. Each spring they had gathered
in their capacious booms from thirty to fifty million feet of
pine logs.

Now at last, in the early eighties, they reached the end of their
holdings. Another winter would finish the cut. Two summers would
see the great mills at Beeson Lake dismantled or sold, while Mr.
Daly, the "woods partner" of the combination, would flit away to
the scenes of new and perhaps more extensive operations. At this
juncture Mr. Daly called to him John Radway, a man whom he knew to
possess extensive experience, a little capital, and a desire for
more of both.

"Radway," said he, when the two found themselves alone in the mill
office, "we expect to cut this year some fifty millions, which will
finish our pine holdings in the Saginaw waters. Most of this timber
lies over in the Crooked Lake district, and that we expect to put
in ourselves. We own, however, five million on the Cass Branch
which we would like to log on contract. Would you care to take
the job?"

"How much a thousand do you give?" asked Radway.

"Four dollars," replied the lumberman.

"I'll look at it," replied the jobber.

So Radway got the "descriptions" and a little map divided into