In which we are introduced to Mr. Kite and Mr. Boyd, better known as Even and Odd, and the enterprise of logging and those occupations which supported it.

In Wisconsin and Minnesota white pine forests covered better than half of the entire territory, before settlement; so densely covered it that a squirrel could travel leaping limb-to-limb from the shore of Green Bay to the Lake of the Woods, almost a thousand miles, without ever touching ground, and its 150-foot mature trees were prized for sailing masts, so tall, so straight, so indomitable they were.

They----sons of the industry who had decimated the forests of New England----had started cutting them down in earnest after the Civil War ended, and in less than a single human generation, before the century was over, they were virtually all gone.