Unending Devotion (Michigan Brides #1)(10)

None of his three camps was cutting and hauling the number of logs he needed them to. With the newest narrow-gauge track they’d laid last summer to the farthest camp, they should have an increase of at least fifteen percent over last winter.

But the figures weren’t adding up. In fact, he’d computed them enough times to know the camps were hauling less than last winter at this exact date.

He glanced at the wall to the large calendar, the only decoration in his sparsely furnished second-story office. He read through the familiar words printed across the top of the sheet in big black letters:





MCCORMICK LUMBER CO


Dealer in Pine Lumber, Logs, Laths, Shingles & Salt

Sixth & Water St., Bay City

He’d already drawn X’s across the first ten days of January, which meant it wouldn’t be long before Dad or his brother, Tierney, came up from Bay City to check on his progress. He never knew when one of them would show up. Neither had made the trek into the woods since before Thanksgiving, and Dad would be ready for an update by now.

Connell was determined to give them the kind of report they expected—the kind that reflected just how hard he and his men were working, the kind that showed McCormick Lumber coming out ahead of all the other companies in the area.

If only he could get his numbers to add up to more . . .

Connell let the legs of his chair slam to the ground. He jumped to his feet and tossed his spectacles onto his ledgers. “What am I going to do?”

He needed to figure out a way to increase production—from all his camps. But how could he require more of the men when they were already cutting and hauling from well before sunup to after sundown?

His boots clunked against the floor as he paced to the window, to the box stove, and then back to the window.

“Stop all that racket up there.” From the office below, Stuart Golden tapped a broom handle on the flimsy boards that separated one floor from the next. “Some of us have work to do around here.”

“That’s right,” Connell called with a grin. “Some of us do have work. So why don’t you get to it?”

Over the past two lumber seasons, Connell had rented an office above the Harrison Herald. As chief editor, Stuart had been willing to part with the room in an effort to sustain his weekly paper. Even if the office wasn’t fancy, it had sufficed. Not only did Connell have a private place where he could work on all the many details of his bookkeeping, but he could also conduct business with his foremen, timber cruisers, and all his other employees when they came to town to give him reports.

For all practical purposes, the office would serve as the headquarters for McCormick Lumber for the duration of their lumbering in Clare County. With all the other companies cutting logs in the area, Connell didn’t expect to be in Harrison for more than another year or two before they’d gotten everything out of the land that they needed. Based on previous statistics, he’d calculated they had exactly eighteen months before all the white pine in the area was gone.

He already had a couple of cruisers out to the north scouting for fresh tracts of pineland and reporting back to him with estimates of the number of pine trees per acre. As soon as his cruisers located valuable land that wasn’t already bought up, he’d make arrangements for McCormick Lumber to purchase it. Soon enough, he’d be busy planning for the new camps.

He liked Stuart Golden and the Hellers and several other townspeople who had become friends. But there was no sense getting too attached to a small town like Harrison when he wouldn’t be there for long.

That’s the way the lumber industry worked, the way his dad had run the business for the past twenty years. Through hard work and savvy, Dad had transformed himself from a poor, starving Irish immigrant into a millionaire.

And he expected nothing less than hard work and savvy from his sons.

A flash of color along Main Street drew Connell’s attention back to the window.

Lily Young picked up her skirts and dashed across the street like a schoolboy.

“That girl is something else,” he mumbled.

She stopped in front of Johnson’s Hotel. Wrapped in a heavy woolen coat, she stared at the big lettering across the front of the building. Her bright flowery skirt flapped in the wind, as out of place in the dull gray of winter as the girl herself was in the mostly male-populated lumber town.

She swiped aside a loose curl that slapped at her cheek and then stepped toward the double doors.

His muscles tightened. She couldn’t possibly intend to go inside. Couldn’t she see that the word Saloon was painted across the large front window, one bright red letter in each square pane?

There might not be much any of them could do to rid the town of the drinking and whoring that went on, but that didn’t mean he liked it or supported it. And he certainly didn’t think the establishment was the kind of place a decent young lady should enter—not at great peril to herself and her reputation.

Lily pushed open one of the doors and stepped inside.

“What? Is she crazy?” He spun from the window and clomped across the room, an anxious spark shooting through his gut like the snap of the crackling birch in the stove.

Without bothering to close the door of his office, he charged into the hallway and took the steps two at a time, hitting the bottom at full speed. He passed by the open door that led to Stuart’s printing press and headed straight for the front door.