roll of bills from his sagging trousers pocket. "Calc'late you'll find
her there, Mr. Sheriff, and some besides. Make your change and gimme
back the rest."

"I'm waitin' on you, young feller," said the sheriff, eying the young
men.... "Ten thousand seven hundred I hear. Going at ten thousand seven
hundred--once.... Twice.... Three times!... Sold to Mr. Baines for
ten thousand seven hundred dollars...."

So ends the first epoch of Scattergood Baines's career in Coldriver
Valley. Here he emerges as a personage. From this point his fame began
to spread, and legend grew. Had he not, in two brief years, after
arriving with less than fifty dollars as a total capital, acquired a
profitable hardware store--donated in the beginning by competitors? Had
he not now, for the most part with money wrenched from Crane and Keith
by his dummy contracting, been enabled to bid in for ten thousand seven
hundred dollars a new property worth nearly four times that much? He was
a man into whose band wagon all were eager to clamber.

But Scattergood did not change. He went back to his hardware store and
waited--waited for Crane and Keith to start their inevitable logging
operations. For in his safe reposed ironclad contracts with those
gentlemen, covering the future for a decade, compelling them to pay him
sixty cents for every thousand feet of timber that floated down his
river. It was a good two years' work. He could well afford to wait....

Scattergood sat on the porch of his store, in the sunniest spot,
twiddling his bare toes.

"The way to make money," he said to the mountain opposite, "is to let