“A Seattle yarder properly handled can do anything but climb a tree,” Charlie had once boasted to her, in reference to his own machine.

It seemed quite possible to Stella, watching Jack Fyfe’s crew at work.  Steam was up in the donkey.  They carried a line from its drum through a snatch block ashore and jerked half a dozen logs crosswise before the scow in a matter of minutes.  Then the same cable was made fast to a sturdy fir, the engineer stood by, and the ponderous machine slid forward on its own skids, like an up-ended barrel on a sled, down off the scow, up the bank, smashing brush, branches, dead roots, all that stood in its path, drawing steadily up to the anchor tree as the cable spooled up on the drum.

A dozen men tailed on to the inch and a quarter cable and bore the loose end away up the path.  Presently one stood clear, waving a signal.  Again the donkey began to puff and quiver, the line began to roll up on the drum, and the big yarder walked up the slope under its own power, a locomotive unneedful of rails, making its own right of way.  Upon the platform built over the skids were piled the tools of the crew, sawed blocks for the fire box, axes, saws, grindstones, all that was necessary in their task.  At one o’clock they made their first move.  At two the donkey was vanished into that region where the chute-head lay, and the great firs stood waiting the slaughter.

By mid-afternoon Stella noticed an acceleration of numbers in the logs that came hurtling lakeward.  Now at shorter intervals arose the grinding sound of their arrival, the ponderous splash as each leaped to the water.  It was a good thing, she surmised—­for Charlie Benton.  She could not see where it made much difference to her whether ten logs a day or a hundred came down to the boomsticks.

Late that afternoon Katy vanished upon one of her periodic visits to the camp of her kindred around the point.  Bred out of doors, of a tribe whose immemorial custom it is that the women do all the work, the Siwash girl was strong as an ox, and nearly as bovine in temperament and movements.  She could lift with ease a weight that taxed Stella’s strength, and Stella Benton was no weakling, either.  It was therefore a part of Katy’s routine to keep water pails filled from the creek and the wood box supplied, in addition to washing dishes and carrying food to the table.  Katy slighted these various tasks occasionally.  She needed oversight, continual admonition, to get any job done in time.  She was slow to the point of exasperation.  Nevertheless, she lightened the day’s labor, and Stella put up with her slowness since she needs must or assume the entire burden herself.  This time Katy thoughtlessly left with both water pails empty.

Stella was just picking them up off the bench when a shadow darkened the door, and she looked around to see Jack Fyfe.

“How d’ do,” he greeted.