The Valley of the Giants Read online

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  THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS

  By Peter B. Kyne

  Author of Cappy Ricks, The Long Chance, Etc.

  Illustrated by Dean Cornwell

  TO MY WIFE

  THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS

  CHAPTER I

  In the summer of 1850 a topsail schooner slipped into the cove underTrinidad Head and dropped anchor at the edge of the kelp-fields. Fifteenminutes later her small-boat deposited on the beach a man armed withlong squirrel-rifle and an axe, and carrying food and clothing in abrown canvas pack. From the beach he watched the boat return and saw theschooner weigh anchor and stand out to sea before the northwest trades.When she had disappeared from his ken, he swung his pack to his broadand powerful back and strode resolutely into the timber at the mouth ofa little river.

  The man was John Cardigan; in that lonely, hostile land he was the firstpioneer. This is the tale of Cardigan and Cardigan's son, for in hischosen land the pioneer leader in the gigantic task of hewing a path forcivilization was to know the bliss of woman's love and of parenthood,and the sorrow that comes of the loss of a perfect mate; he was to knowthe tremendous joy of accomplishment and worldly success after infinitelabour; and in the sunset of life he was to know the dull despair offailure and ruin. Because of these things there is a tale to be told,the tale of Cardigan's son, who, when his sire fell in the fray, took upthe fight to save his heritage--a tale of life with its love and hate,its battle, victory, defeat, labour, joy, and sorrow, a tale of thatunconquerable spirit of youth which spurred Bryce Cardigan to lead aforlorn hope for the sake not of wealth but of an ideal. Hark, then, tothis tale of Cardigan's redwoods:

  Along the coast of California, through the secret valleys and over thetumbled foothills of the Coast Range, extends a belt of timber of anaverage width of thirty miles. In approaching it from the Oregon linethe first tree looms suddenly against the horizon--an outpost, as itwere, of the host of giants whose column stretches south nearly fourhundred miles to where the last of the rear-guard maintains eternalsentry go on the crest of the mountains overlooking Monterey Bay. Farin the interior of the State, beyond the fertile San Joaquin Valley, theallies of this vast army hold a small sector on the west slope of theSierras.

  These are the redwood forests of California, the only trees of theirkind in the world and indigenous only to these two areas within theState. The coast timber is known botanically as sequoia sempervirens,that in the interior as sequoia gigantea. As the name indicates, thelatter is the larger species of the two, although the fibre of thetimber is coarser and the wood softer and consequently less valuablecommercially than the sequoia sempervirens--which in Santa Cruz, SanMateo, Marin, and Sonoma counties has been almost wholly logged off,because of its accessibility. In northern Mendocino, Humboldt, and DelNorte counties, however, sixty years of logging seems scarcely to haveleft a scar upon this vast body of timber. Notwithstanding sixty yearsof attrition, there remain in this section of the redwood belt thousandsupon thousands of acres of virgin timber that had already attaineda vigorous growth when Christ was crucified. In their vast, sombrerecesses, with the sunlight filtering through their branches two hundredand fifty feet above, one hears no sound save the tremendous diapasonof the silence of the ages; here, more forcibly than elsewhere in theuniverse, is one reminded of the littleness of man and the glory of hiscreator.

  In sizes ranging from five to twenty feet in diameter, the brown trunksrise perpendicularly to a height of from ninety to a hundred and fiftyfeet before putting forth a single limb, which frequently is moremassive than the growth which men call a tree in the forests ofMichigan. Scattered between the giants, like subjects around their king,one finds noble fir, spruce, or pines, with some Valparaiso live oak,black oak, pepper-wood, madrone, yew, and cedar.

  In May and June, when the twisted and cowering madrone trees are puttingforth their clusters of creamy buds, when the white blossoms ofthe dogwoods line the banks of little streams, when the azaleas andrhododendrons, lovely and delicate as orchids, blaze a bed of glory, andthe modest little oxalis has thrust itself up through the brown carpetof pine-needles and redwood-twigs, these wonderful forests cast upon onea potent spell. To have seen them once thus in gala dress is to yearnthereafter to see them again and still again and grieve always in theknowledge of their inevitable death at the hands of the woodsman.

  John Cardigan settled in Humboldt County, where the sequoia sempervirensattains the pinnacle of its glory, and with the lust for conquest hot inhis blood, he filed upon a quarter-section of the timber almost on theshore of Humboldt Bay--land upon which a city subsequently was to bebuilt. With his double-bitted axe and crosscut saw John Cardigan broughtthe first of the redwood giants crashing to the earth above which it hadtowered for twenty centuries, and in the form of split posts, railroadties, pickets, and shakes, the fallen giant was hauled to tidewater inox-drawn wagons and shipped to San Francisco in the little two-mastedcoasting schooners of the period. Here, by the abominable magic ofbarter and trade, the dismembered tree was transmuted into dollars andcents and returned to Humboldt County to assist John Cardigan in histask of hewing an empire out of a wilderness.

  At a period in the history of California when the treasures of thecenturies were to be had for the asking or the taking, John Cardiganchose that which others elected to cast away. For him the fertile wheatand fruit-lands of California's smiling valleys, the dull placer gold inher foot-hill streams, and the free grass, knee deep, on her cattleand sheep-ranges held no lure; for he had been first among the Humboldtredwoods and had come under the spell of the vastness and antiquity, themajesty and promise of these epics of a planet. He was a big man with agreat heart and the soul of a dreamer, and in such a land as this it wasfitting he should take his stand.

  In that wasteful day a timber-claim was not looked upon as valuable. Theprice of a quarter-section was a pittance in cash and a brief residencein a cabin constructed on the claim as evidence of good faith to agovernment none too exacting in the restrictions with which it hedgedabout its careless dissipation of the heritage of posterity. Hence,because redwood timber-claims were easy to acquire, many men acquiredthem; but when the lure of greener pastures gripped these men andthe necessity for ready money oppressed, they were wont to sell theirholdings for a few hundred dollars. Gradually it became the fashionin Humboldt to "unload" redwood timber-claims on thrifty, far-seeing,visionary John Cardigan who appeared to be always in the market for anyclaim worth while.

  Cardigan was a shrewd judge of stumpage; with the calm certitude ofa prophet he looked over township after township and cunninglycheckerboarded it with his holdings. Notwithstanding the fact thathillside timber is the best, John Cardigan in those days preferred tobuy valley timber, for he was looking forward to the day when the timberon the watersheds should become available. He knew that when such timbershould be cut it would have to be hauled out through the valleys wherehis untouched holdings formed an impenetrable barrier to the exit!Before long the owners of timber on the watersheds would come to realizethis and sell to John Cardigan at a reasonable price.

  Time passed. John Cardigan no longer swung an axe or dragged a cross-cutsaw through a fallen redwood. He was an employer of labour now, wellknown in San Francisco as a manufacturer of split-redwood products, thepurchasers sending their own schooners for the cargo. And presently JohnCardigan mortgaged all of his timber holdings with a San Francisco bank,made a heap of his winnings, and like a true adventurer staked his allon a new venture--the first sawmill in Humboldt County. The timbers forit were hewed out by hand; the boards and planking were whipsawed.

  It was a tiny mill, judged by present-day standards, for in af
ourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut morethan twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan lookedat his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewaterand at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored thelogs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull-whackers to haul withox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan'smill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet of water at low tide.Also this dock was sufficiently far up the bay to be sheltered from theheavy seas that rolled in from Humboldt Bar, while the level landthat stretched inland to the timber-line constituted the only logicaltownsite on the bay.

  "Here," said John Cardigan to himself exultingly when a long-drawn wailtold him his circular saw was biting into the first redwood log to bemilled since the world began, "I shall build a city and call it Sequoia.By to-morrow I shall have cut sufficient timber to make a start. FirstI shall build for my employees better homes than the rude shacks andtent-houses they now occupy; then I shall build myself a fine residencewith six rooms, and the room that faces on the bay shall be the parlour.When I can afford it, I shall build a larger mill, employ more men, andbuild more houses. I shall encourage tradesmen to set up in business inSequoia, and to my city I shall present a church and a schoolhouse. Weshall have a volunteer fire department, and if God is good, I shall, ata later date, get out some long-length fir-timber and build a schoonerto freight my lumber to market. And she shall have three masts insteadof two, and carry half a million feet of lumber instead of two hundredthousand. First, however, I must build a steam tugboat to tow myschooner in and out over Humboldt Bar. And after that--ah, well! That issufficient for the present."