But it was not in Scattergood to sit idle while he waited for his stock to arrive.  Coldriver doubtless thought him idle, but he was studying the locality and the river with the eye of a commander who knew this was to be his battlefield.  What Scattergood wanted now was to place himself astride Coldriver Valley, somewhere below the village, so that he could control the upper reaches of the stream.  It was not difficult to find such a location.  It lay three miles below town, at the junction of the north and south branches of Coldriver.  The juncture was in a big, marshy, untillable flat, from which hills rose abruptly.  From the easterly end of the flat the augmented river squeezed in a roaring rapids through a sort of bottle neck.

Scattergood stood on the hillside and looked upon this with satisfied eye.

“A dam across that bottle neck,” he said to himself, “will flood that flat.  Reg’lar reservoy.  Millpond.  Git a twenty-foot fall here easy, maybe more.  Calc’late that’ll run about any mill folks’ll want to build.  And,” he scratched his head as a sort of congratulation to it for its efficiency, “I can’t study out how anybody’s agoin’ to git logs past here without dickerin’ with the man who owns the dam....”  Plenty of water twelve months a year to give free power; a flat made to order for reservoir or log pond; a complete and effective blockade of both branches of the river which came down from a country richly timbered!  It was one of the spots Scattergood had dreamed of.

Scattergood knew perfectly well he could not stop a log from passing his dam.  Nor could he shut off the stream.  Any dam he built must have a sluice which could be opened for the passage of timber, and all timber was entitled to “natural water.”  But, as he well knew, “natural water” was not always enough.  A dam at this point would raise the level on the bars of the flat so that logs would not jam, and a log which used the high water caused by the dam must pay for it.  What Scattergood had in mind was a dam and boom company.  It was his project to improve the river, to boom backwaters, to dynamite ledges, to make the river passable to logs in spring and fall.  It was his idea that such a company, in addition to demanding pay for the use of “improvements,” could contract with lumbermen up the river to drive their logs....  And a mill at this point!  Scattergood fairly licked his lips as he thought of the millions upon millions of feet of spruce to be sawed into lumber.

The firm foundation that Scattergood’s strategy rested upon was that lumbering had not really started in the valley.  The valley had not opened up, but lay undeveloped, waiting to be stirred to life.  Scattergood’s strength lay in that he could see ahead of to-day, and was patient to wait for the developments that to-morrow must bring.  To-day his foresight could get for him what would be impossible to-morrow.  If he stepped softly he could obtain a charter from the state to develop that river, which, when lumbering interests became actually engaged, would be fought by them to the last penny....  And he felt in his bones that day would not long be delayed.