Edward spoke up. “But victualing is not the greatest expense. Corn and hay for the oxen. Hay is almost twenty dollars a ton and we last year used more than five thousand tons. Corn is a dollar a bushel and the oxen will gorge on four thousand bushels the season. The oxen are dear and so are the drivers — twenty thousand dollars in costs. Then there are timberland purchases and palms to be greased, especially in procuring the so-called Indian lands that the idiot Congress strives to keep from us with its ‘Nonintercourse Act.’ ”
Freegrace muttered, “In what other country must businessmen trouble with murderous barbarians coddled by the government?”
Edward continued on his set path. “We have high survey expenses, and though we have been cutting most on our own lands and have our own mills and so have few stumpage or mill rent costs, there are a hundred other expenses — axes and tools, grindstones, oil, iron, blacksmiths and their forges, log boomage and lockage.” The clerk’s pen scratched violently as he tried to keep up with Edward’s rapid speaking.
Cyrus thought James looked puzzled and said, “Sir, boomage is the cost for making booms to hold the logs in a body and lockage—” But Edward disliked being interrupted and said curtly, “Cyrus, you may please save your explanations for later. I am sure James understands the terms. What we need to discuss today is first, the precipitous decline in large, first-rate white pine, and second, the persistent problem of timber thieves plundering our holdings and other cheatings and malfeasances. And among the thieves those who manufacture shingles and clapboards are the most terrible dishonest. The thieves are worse on the public lands, but they show no hesitation in cutting Duke trees. New Brunswick loggers are the bane of the forest. Wherever they see it they cut it and then run with it. New Brunswick has no thriving farms nor vigorous towns. Its residents are the locusts of the forest. We regard New Brunswickers as our enemies.” He stopped to draw breath, reviewed what he had said and allowed that “the problem might be somewhat ameliorated if ever the boundary lines with Canada were clearly drawn.” He was stuttering a bit, uneasy with James Duke’s presence — the man too closely resembled his dictatorial father, Sedley, who had made Edward’s life miserable with harping and picking. And James’s awful watch fob flashing its censorious stare rattled him.
James leaned back. He had planned to tell his cousins over the evening dinner that the widow Posey Brandon had accepted his proposal of marriage and that they had set the wedding date for May. After news of Mr. Brandon’s death from pneumonia in Virginia he had waited a decent interval — twenty-four hours — before proposing to her. She had accepted on the spot and he had embraced her and tried to seal the betrothal with a tender kiss. How surprised he had been by the fierce and spitty ardor with which she returned his dry kiss. Later, much later, he was to think back on it and interpret it as a warning, a warning he did not — could not — heed. But now his brain whirred with alarming scenarios of how his cousins would take the news that he was marrying the daughter of David Breeley, a New Brunswick logging contractor. He had not yet met his future father-in-law, but from what Posey told him he had no doubt that Mr. Breeley flourished a free hand with the ax, damnation to any damned border.
James, gazing out the window, saw a distant smudge in the sky that he had learned to recognize as a body of passenger pigeons.
Cyrus spoke up. “I thought we were to hear today of new markets — was I mistaken in this apprehension?”
“Not at all,” said Lennart, speaking out of turn to judge by Edward’s glare. James guessed that Lennart too often put himself forward. “We are shipping more and more lumber every year, and not from Boston, but out of Bangor. We have heard that Cuba wants sugar boxes. Freegrace is in correspondence with a Cuban dignitary on this possibility. The West Indies are hungry for everything — boards, shingles, clapboards, pickets and lath, hemlock bark, even some hardwood. Even some hackmatack knees. We cannot send enough shiploads to the West Indies, and of course we bring back rum, sugar and molasses. Many European cities have discovered the utility of wood paving blocks, and such a market allows us to dispose of wood otherwise wasted. And not only Europe, but Charleston, Buenos Aires, yes, even Australia. I have not mentioned the growing coast trade.”
“We are straying from the subject,” said Freegrace.
“Quite, and thank you, Freegrace, for hauling us back so smartly,” said Edward. “Well, then, Armenius Breitsprecher, our timberland looker since his father passed on, was gulled with a false map and a false report for the lands on the White Moose branch and we have just now discovered the fraud. The surveyor’s map showed that the timber grew thick along a watercourse, the north branch of the Moose, but the reality proved the stream lay miles distant from the pine. Breitsprecher says he went to see the timber at the time, now four years past, but it was winter and deep snow. The surveyor insisted the frozen stream lay under the snow beneath their feet. And because of the waist-deep snow Armenius could not thoroughly investigate the trees. He admits it. So the report on which we based our purchase indicated a good stream and a hundred million of pine. In fact, there were only fourteen million. And a distant stream. We had great expenses in road building and drawing the timber out with hired ox teams. The question now is whether or not we should continue to retain Breitsprecher as our land looker. He made an expensive error. He relied overly on a thieving surveyor.”
Freegrace sighed. “Yes, we could discharge Breitsprecher but he is an experienced and able land looker and has served us for many years and made Duke and Sons a great deal of money. This is almost the only instance of bad judgment on his part. I know he regrets it. I suggest we speak sternly to him but retain his services.”
“I agree,” said Lennart Vogel. “Judgment of the costs and profit to be obtained from a standing forest is difficult and takes many years of experienced looking.” He, too, had noticed the unwinking watch fob and felt the presence of the unknown original.
“What do you think, Cyrus?”
“Why, how difficult can it be to find good timberland judges? Surely Breitsprecher is not the only fellow who can look at trees. Are there not legions of such men trooping through the forest?” He leaned back carelessly in his chair, crossed one leg over the other and dandled his right foot.
Edward spoke again. “There are indeed, most of them crooked scalawags who tender false reports about the quality of the pine, all sound trees, of course, which turn into core-rotted hulks when the ax smites. James, what do you think?”
“If he has been an honest employee all these years — how long has he worked for us?”
“Since he was a boy under the tutelage of his father, say thirty-odd years now.”
“After thirty years of faithful service and only one misjudgment of a lying surveyor, it seems to me extreme to let the man go. I argue to keep him on.”
“All in favor,” droned Freegrace. “Now, let us pass on to the problems of trespass and plundering, which grow apace. We have put out warning notices that trespassing on our woodlands will lead to prosecution. We only hope the notices are noticed!”
He flourished a paper and read aloud:
This gives notice that the Timber marked D&S stacked on Distress Brook Lot 17 is the property of Duke & Sons, Boston. All persons are hereby warned not to meddle with same or drive it from where it now lays or risk prosecution. Measures will be taken to detect persons evading this notice.