A Lass of the Lumberlands

Summary

In the untamed, unforgiving expanse of the lumberlands, where towering pines stand as both bounty and bane, we are introduced to the morally bankrupt figure of 'Dollar' Holmes. Driven by an insatiable avarice and a patriarchal obsession with siring a male heir, Holmes finds his ambitions threatened when a devastating forest fire obliterates half of his timber reserves, jeopardizing a lucrative contract with a powerful combine. The subsequent birth of a daughter, rather than the coveted son, plunges him into a furious, misogynistic rage, mirroring the external chaos with an internal tempest of disappointment. This dual blow propels Holmes further into depravity, leading him to collude with a bootlegger to intoxicate the neighboring Klamath tribe. Exploiting their inebriated state, he orchestrates a fraudulent land deal, seizing their ancestral timberlands and, crucially, gaining exclusive control over the region's vital log-floating river, thereby outmaneuvering the very trust that sought to ruin him. His triumph, however, is short-lived and blood-stained. Upon the return of Sleepy Dog, the Klamath chief, Holmes, in a fit of brutal expediency, murders him and disposes of his body over a precipice. This heinous act is witnessed by his terrified wife, who, clutching her infant daughter, flees into the perilous wilderness. Her desperate escape culminates in a harrowing struggle across a treacherous log jam, only for a violent explosion to hurl her and her child into the unforgiving currents, leaving their fate suspended in a vortex of Holmes's monstrous legacy.

Synopsis

Episode 1: "The Lumber Pirates" "Dollar" Holmes, so called because of his greed for money and power, is a small timberland owner in a region where both the trust and a tribe of Klamath Indians hold similar lands. He is under contract to the combine to deliver to it 10,000,000 feet of timber by a specified date. It is a rich deal. His wife is about to become a mother, and Holmes has set his heart fiercely on a boy to inherit the fortune he means to pile up. A forest fire sweeps away half of Holmes' standing timber. Greer, president of the trust, learning of this, writes a sneering letter hinting at Holmes' ruin unless he fulfills his contract on time. This he cannot do unless he obtains possession of the Indian lands adjoining his. Sleepy Dog, chief of the tribe, refuses to sell. Holmes' wife gives birth to a daughter, and he in a wild rage of double disappointment curses her and the babe, and rushes out of the cabin into the deep woods. He comes upon Dill, a bootlegger, surreptitiously selling whiskey to his loggers. Holmes promises to forebear punishing him if he will go into the Indian camp, from which Sleepy Dog is absent on a trip, and sell his stuff to the savages. The Klamaths are made drunk, and when they demand more whiskey Holmes offers them $100 apiece if they will deed their timber lands to him. They do so, and Holmes wires Greer that he will fulfill his contract; also that with acquisition of the Indian lands he has obtained exclusive right to use of the region's one river for log-floating purposes, thus cutting off the trust's lands from the market. The trust capitulates and accepts Holmes' terms, by which he is given a heavy interest in the combine and made a director. Sleepy Dog returns. Holmes quarrels with him, murders him and throws his body over a cliff. The crime is witnessed by Holmes' wife, a fact which he discovers. In terror of her life, the woman flees the cabin, carrying her infant in her arms. In trying to reach the farther bank of the river over a jam of logs she is hurled into the stream when a blast of dynamite blows up the king-log, and is whirled away in the current, clinging to a log and holding the babe in her arms.