CHAPTER II.
In the network of streams draining the eastern portion of Michigan and known as the Saginaw waters, the great firm of 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.