The Riverman by Stewart Edward White (page 5)

but would have little real effect on the main issue, which was that the German was getting down his logs with a crew of less than a dozen men. Nevertheless, Orde, in a vast spirit of fun, took delight in inventing and executing practical jokes of the general sort just described. For instance, at one spot where he had boomed the deeper channel from the rocks on either side, he shunted as many of Heinzman’s logs as came by handily through an opening he had made in the booms. There they grounded on the shallows–more work for the men following. Many of the logs in charge of the latter, however, catching the free current, overtook the rear, so that the number of the “H” logs in the drive was not materially diminished.

At first, as has been hinted, these various tactics had little effect. One day, however, the chore boy, who had been over to Spruce Rapids after mail, reported that an additional crew of twenty had been sent in to Heinzman’s drive. This was gratifying.

“We’re making him scratch gravel, boys, anyway,” said Orde.

The men entered into the spirit of the thing. In fact, their enthusiasm was almost too exuberant. Orde had constantly to negative new and ingenious schemes.

“No, boys,” said he, “I want to keep on the right side of the law. We may need it later.”

Meanwhile the entire length of the river was busy and excited. Heinzman’s logs were all blazed inside a week. The men passed the hatchets along the line, and slim chance did a marked log have of rescue once the poor thing fell into difficulties. With the strange and interesting tendency rivermen and woodsmen have of personifying the elements of their daily work, the men addressed the helpless timbers in tones of contempt.

“Thought you’d ride that rock, you —- —- —-,” said they, “and got left, did you? Well, lie there and be —- to you!”

And if chance offered, and time was not pressing, the riverman would give his helpless victim a jerk or so into a more difficult position. Times of rising water–when the sluice-gates above had been opened–were the most prolific of opportunities. Logs rarely jam on rising water, for the simple reason that constantly the surface area of the river is increasing, thus tending to separate the logs. On the other hand, falling water, tending to crowd the drive closer together, is especially prolific of trouble. Therefore, on flood water the watchers scattered along the stretches of the river had little to do–save strand Heinzman’s logs for him. And when flood water had passed, some of those logs were certainly high and dry.

Up to a certain point this was all very well. Orde took pains not to countenance it officially, and caused word to be passed about, that while he did not expect his men to help drive Heinzman’s logs, they must not go out of their way to strand them.

“If things get too bad, he’ll have spies down here to collect evidence on us,” said Orde, “and he’ll jug some of us for interference with his property. We don’t own the river.”

“How about them booms?” asked the Rough Red.

“I did own them,” explained Orde, “and I had a right to take them up when I had finished with them.”

This hint was enough. The men did not cease from a labour that tickled them mightily, but they adopted a code of signals. Strangers were not uncommon. Spectators came out often from the little towns and from the farms round-about. When one of these appeared the riverman nearest raised a long falsetto cry. This was taken up by his next neighbour and passed on. In a few minutes all that section of the drive knew that it would be wise to “lie low.” And inside of two weeks Orde had the great satisfaction of learning that Heinzman was working–and working hard–a crew of fifty men.

“A pretty fair crew, even if he was taking out his whole drive,” commented Orde.

The gods of luck seemed to be with the new enterprise. Although Orde had, of course, taken the utmost pains to foresee every contingency possible to guard against, nevertheless, as always when dealing with Nature’s larger forces, he anticipated some of those gigantic obstacles which continually render uncertain wilderness work. Nothing of the kind happened. There formed none of the tremendous white-water jams that pile up several million feet of logs, tax every resource of men, horses, and explosives, and require a week or so to break. No men were killed, and only two injured. No unexpected floods swept away works on which the drive depended. The water held out to carry the last stick of timber over the shallowest rapids. Weather conditions were phenomenal–and perfect. All up and down the river the work went with that vim and dash that is in itself an assurance of success. The Heinzman affair, which under auspices of evil augury might have become a serious menace to the success of the young undertaking, now served merely to add a spice of humour to the situation. Among the men gained currency a half-affectionate belief in “Orde’s luck.”

After this happy fashion the drive went, until at last it entered the broad, deep, and navigable stretches of the river from Redding to the lake. Here, barring the accident of an extraordinary flood, the troubles were over. On the broad, placid bosom of the stream the logs would float. A crew, following, would do the easy work of sacking what logs would strand or eddy in the lazy current; would roll into the faster waters the component parts of what were by courtesy called jams, but which were in reality pile-ups of a few hundred logs on sand bars mid-stream; and in the growing tepid warmth of summer would tramp pleasantly along the river trail. Of course, a dry year would make necessary a larger crew and more labour; of course, a big flood might sweep the logs past all defences into the lake for an irretrievable loss. But such floods come once in a century, and even the dryest of dry years could not now hang the drive. As Orde sat in his buckboard, ready to go into town for a first glimpse of Carroll in more than two months, he gazed with an immense satisfaction over the broad river moving brown and glacier-like as though the logs that covered it were viscid and composed all its substance. The enterprise was practically assured of success.

For a while now Orde was to have a breathing spell. A large number of men were here laid off. The remainder, under the direction of Jim Denning, would require little or no actual supervision. Until the jam should have reached the distributing booms above Monrovia, the affair was very simple. Before he left, however, he called Denning to him.

“Jim,” said he, “I’ll be down to see you through the sluiceways at Redding, of course. But now that you have a good, still stretch of river, I want you to have the boys let up on sacking out those “H” logs. And I want you to include in our drive all the Heinzman logs from above you possibly can. If you can fix it, let their drive drift down into ours.

“Then we’ll have to drive their logs for them,” objected Denning.

“Sure,” rejoined Orde, “but it’s easy driving; and if that crew of his hasn’t much to do, perhaps he’ll lay most of them off here at Redding.”

Denning looked at his principal for a moment, then a slow grin overspread his face. Without comment he turned back to camp, and Orde took up his reins.

XXV

“Oh, I’m so GLAD to get you back!” cried Carroll over and over again, as she clung to him. “I don’t live while you’re away. And every drop of rain that patters on the roof chills my heart, because I think of it as chilling you; and every creak of this old house at night brings me up broad awake, because I hear in it the crash of those cruel great timbers. Oh, oh, OH! I’m so glad to get you! You’re the light of my life; you’re my whole life itself!”–she smiled at him from her perch on his knee–“I’m silly, am I not?” she said. “Dear heart, don’t leave me again.”

“I’ve got to support an extravagant wife, you know,” Orde reminded her gravely.

“I know, of course,” she breathed, bending lightly to him. “You have your work in the world to do, and I would not have it otherwise. It is great work–wonderful work–I’ve been asking questions.”

Orde laughed.

“It’s work, just like any other. And it’s hard work,” said he.

She shook her head at him slowly, a mysterious smile on her lips. Without explaining her thought, she slipped from his knee and glided across to the tall golden harp, which had been brought from Monrovia. The light and diaphanous silk of her loose peignoir floated about her, defining the maturing grace of her figure. Abruptly she struck a great crashing chord.

Then, with an abandon of ecstasy she plunged into one of those wild and sea-blown saga-like rhapsodies of the Hungarians, full of the wind in rigging, the storm in the pines, of shrieking, vast forces hurtling unchained through a resounding and infinite space, as though deep down in primeval nature the powers of the world had been loosed. Back and forth, here and there, erratic and swift and sudden as lightning the theme played breathless. It fell.

“What is that?” gasped Orde, surprised to find himself tense, his blood rioting, his soul stirred.

She ran to him to hide her face in his neck.

“Oh, it’s you, you, you!” she cried.

He held her to him closely until her excitement had died.

“Do you think it is good to get quite so nervous, sweetheart?” he asked gently, then. “Remember–“

“Oh, I do, I do!” she broke in earnestly. “Every moment of my waking and sleeping hours I remember him. Always I keep his little soul before me as a light on a shrine. But to-night–oh! to-night I could laugh and shout aloud like the people in the Bible, with clapping of hands.” She snuggled herself close to Orde with a little murmur of happiness. “I think of all the beautiful things,” she whispered, “and of the noble things, and of the great things. He is going to be sturdy, like his father; a wonderful boy, a boy all of fire–“

“Like his mother,” said Orde.

She smiled up at him. “I want him just like you, dear,” she pleaded.

XXVI

Three days later the jam of the drive reached the dam at Redding. Orde took Carroll downtown in the buckboard. There a seat by the dam-watcher’s little house was given her, back of the brick factory buildings next the power canal, whence for hours she watched the slow onward movement of the sullen brown timbers, the smooth, polished-steel rush of the waters through the chute, the graceful certain movements of the rivermen. Some of the latter were brought up by Orde and introduced. They were very awkward, and somewhat embarrassed, but they all looked her straight in the eye, and Carroll felt somehow that back of their diffidence they were quite dispassionately appraising her. After a few gracious speeches on her part and monosyllabic responses on theirs, they blundered away. In spite of the scant communication, these interviews left something of a friendly feeling on both sides.

“I like your Jim Denning,” she told Orde; “he’s a nice, clean-cut fellow. And Mr. Bourke,” she laughed. “Isn’t he funny with his fierce red beard and his little eyes? But he simply adores you.”

Orde laughed at the idea of the Rough Red’s adoring anybody.

“It’s so,” she insisted, “and I like him for it–only I wish he were a little cleaner.”

She thought the feats of “log-riding” little less than wonderful, and you may be sure the knowledge of her presence did not discourage spectacular display. Finally, Johnny Challan, uttering a loud whoop, leaped aboard a log and went through the chute standing bolt upright. By a marvel of agility, he kept his balance through the white-water below, and emerged finally into the lower waters still proudly upright, and dry above the knees.

Carroll had arisen, the better to see.

“Why,” she cried aloud, “it’s marvellous! Circus riding is nothing to it!”

“No, ma’am,” replied a gigantic riverman who was working near at hand, “that ain’t nothin’. Ordinary, however, we travel that way on the river. At night we have the cookee pass us out each a goose- ha’r piller, and lay down for the night.”

Carroll looked at him in reproof. He grinned slowly.

“Don’t git worried about me, ma’am,” said he, “I’m hopeless. For twenty year now I been wearin’ crape on my hat in memory of my departed virtues.”

After the rear had dropped down river from Redding, Carroll and Orde returned to their deserted little box of a house at Monrovia.

Orde breathed deep of a new satisfaction in walking again the streets of this little sandy, sawdust-paved, shantyfied town, with its yellow hills and its wide blue river and its glimpse of the lake far in the offing. It had never meant anything to him before. Now he enjoyed every brick and board of it; he trod the broken, aromatic shingles of the roadway with pleasure; he tramped up the broad stairs and down the dark hall of the block with anticipation; he breathed the compounded office odour of ledgers, cocoa matting, and old cigar smoke in a long, reminiscent whiff; he took his seat at his roll-top desk, enchanted to be again in these homely though familiar surroundings.

“Hanged if I know what’s struck me,” he mused. “Never experienced any remarkable joy before in getting back to this sort of truck.”

Then, with a warm glow at the heart, the realisation was brought to him. This was home, and over yonder, under the shadow of the heaven-pointing spire, a slip of a girl was waiting for him.

He tried to tell her this when next he saw her.

“I felt that I ought to make you a little shrine, and burn candles to you, the way the Catholics do–“

“To the Mater Dolorosa?” she mocked.

He looked at her dark eyes so full of the sweetness of content, at her sensitive lips with the quaintly upturned corners, and he thought of what her home life had been and of the real sorrow that even yet must smoulder somewhere down in the deeps of her being.

“No,” said he slowly, “not that. I think my shrine will be dedicated to Our Lady of the Joyous Soul.”

The rest of the week Orde was absent up the river, superintending in a general way the latter progress of the drive, looking into the needs of the crews, arranging for supplies. The mills were all working now, busily cutting into the residue of last season’s logs. Soon they would need more.

At the booms everything was in readiness to receive the jam. The long swing arm slanting across the river channel was attached to its winch which would operate it. When shut it would close the main channel and shunt into the booms the logs floating in the river. There, penned at last by the piles driven in a row and held together at the top by bolted timbers, they would lie quiet. Men armed with pike-poles would then take up the work of distribution according to the brands stamped on the ends. Each brand had its own separate “sorting pens,” the lower end leading again into the open river. From these each owner’s property was rafted and towed to his private booms at his mill below.

Orde spent the day before the jam appeared in constructing what he called a “boomerang.”

“Invention of my own,” he explained to Newmark. “Secret invention just yet. I’m going to hold up the drive in the main river until we have things bunched, then I’m going to throw a big crew down here by the swing. Heinzman anticipates, of course, that I’ll run the entire drive into the booms and do all my sorting there. Naturally, if I turn his logs loose into the river as fast as I run across them, he will be able to pick them up one at a time, for he’ll only get them occasionally. If I keep them until everything else is sorted, only Heinzman’s logs will remain; and as we have no right to hold logs, we’ll have to turn them loose through the lower sorting booms, where he can be ready to raft them. In that way he gets them all right without paying us a cent. See?”

“Yes, I see,” said Newmark.

“Well,” said Orde, with a laugh, “here is where I fool him. I’m going to rush the drive into the booms all at once, but I’m going to sort out Heinzman’s logs at these openings near the entrance and turn them into the main channel.”

“What good will that do?” asked Newmark sceptically. “He gets them sorted just the same, doesn’t he?”

“The current’s fairly strong,” Orde pointed out, “and the river’s almighty wide. When you spring seven or eight million feet on a man, all at once and unexpected, and he with no crew to handle them, he’s going to keep almighty busy. And if he don’t stop them this side his mill, he’ll have to raft and tow them back; and if he don’t stop ’em this side the lake, he may as well kiss them all good bye– except those that drift into the bayous and inlets and marshes, and other ungodly places.”

“I see,” said Newmark drily.

“But don’t say a word anywhere,” warned Orde. “Secrecy is the watchword of success with this merry little joke.”

The boomerang worked like a charm. The men had been grumbling at an apparently peaceful yielding of the point at issue, and would have sacked out many of the blazed logs if Orde had not held them rigidly to it. Now their spirits flamed into joy again. The sorting went like clockwork. Orde, in personal charge, watched that through the different openings in his “boomerang” the “H” logs were shunted into the river. Shortly the channel was full of logs floating merrily away down the little blue wavelets. After a while Orde handed over his job to Tom North.

“Can’t stand it any longer, boys,” said he. “I’ve got to go down and see how the Dutchman is making it.”

“Come back and tell us!” yelled one of the crew.

“You bet I will!” Orde shouted back.

He drove the team and buckboard down the marsh road to Heinzman’s mill. There he found evidences of the wildest excitement. The mill had been closed down, and all the men turned in to rescue logs. Boats plied in all directions. A tug darted back and forth. Constantly the number of floating logs augmented, however. Many had already gone by.

“If you think you’re busy now,” said Orde to himself with a chuckle, “just wait until you begin to get LOGS.”

He watched for a few moments in silence.

“What’s he doing with that tug?” thought he. “O-ho! He’s stringing booms across the river to hold the whole outfit.”

He laughed aloud, turned his team about, and drove frantically back to the booms. Every few moments he chuckled. His eyes danced. Hardly could he wait to get there. Once at the camp, he leaped from the buckboard, with a shout to the stableman, and ran rapidly out over the booms to where the sorting of “H” logs was going merrily forward.

“He’s shut down his mill,” shouted Orde, “and he’s got all that gang of highbankers out, and every old rum-blossom in Monrovia, and I bet if you say ‘logs’ to him, he’d chase his tail in circles.”

“Want this job?” North asked him.

“No,” said Orde, suddenly fallen solemn, “haven’t time. I’m going to take Marsh and the SPRITE and go to town. Old Heinzman,” he added as an afterthought, “is stringing booms across the river– obstructing navigation.”

He ran down the length of the whole boom to where lay the two tugs.

“Marsh,” he called when still some distance away, “got up steam?”

There appeared a short, square, blue-clad man, with hard brown cheeks, a heavy bleached flaxen moustache, and eyes steady, unwavering, and as blue as the sky.

“Up in two minutes,” he answered, and descended from the pilot house to shout down a low door leading from the deck into the engine room.

“Harvey,” he commanded, “fire her up!”

A tall, good-natured negro reached the upper half of his body from the low door to seize an armful of the slabs piled along the narrow deck. Ten minutes later the SPRITE, a cloud of white smoke pouring from her funnel, was careening down the stretch of the river.

Captain Marsh guided his energetic charge among the logs floating in the stream with the marvellous second instinct of the expert tugboat man. A whirl of the wheel to the right, a turn to the left–the craft heeled strongly under the forcing of her powerful rudder to avoid by an arm’s-length some timbers fairly flung aside by the wash. The displacement of the rapid running seemed almost to press the water above the level of the deck on either side and about ten feet from the gunwale. As the low marshes and cat-tails flew past, Orde noted with satisfaction that many of the logs, urged one side by the breeze, had found lodgment among the reeds and in the bayous and inlets. One at a time, and painfully, these would have to be salvaged.

In a short time the mills’ tall smokestacks loomed in sight. The logs thickened until it was with difficulty that Captain Marsh could thread his way among them at all. Shortly Orde, standing by the wheel in the pilot-house, could see down the stretches of the river a crowd of men working antlike.

“They’ve got ’em stopped,” commented Orde. “Look at that gang working from boats! They haven’t a dozen ‘cork boots’ among ’em.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Captain Marsh.

“This is a navigable river, isn’t it?” replied Orde. “Run through!”

Marsh rang for half-speed and began to nose his way gently through the loosely floating logs. Soon the tug had reached the scene of activity, and headed straight for the slender line of booms hitched end to end and stretching quite across the river.

“I’m afraid we’ll just ride over them if we hit them too slow,” suggested Marsh.

Orde looked at his watch.

“We’ll be late for the mail unless we hurry,” said he. Marsh whirled the spokes of his wheel over and rang the engine-room bell. The water churned white behind, the tug careened.

“Vat you do! Stop!” cried Heinzman from one of the boats.

Orde stuck his head from the pilot-house door.

“You’re obstructing navigation!” he yelled. “I’ve got to go to town to buy a postage-stamp.”

The prow of the tug, accurately aimed by Marsh, hit square in the junction of two of the booms. Immediately the water was agitated on both sides and for a hundred feet or so by the pressure of the long poles sidewise. There ensued a moment of strain; then the links snapped, and the SPRITE plunged joyously through the opening. The booms, swept aside by the current, floated to either shore. The river was open.

Orde, his head still out the door, looked back. “Slow down, Marsh,” said he. “Let’s see the show.” Already the logs caught by the booms had taken their motion and had swept past the opening. Although the lonesome tug Heinzman had on the work immediately picked up one end of the broken boom, and with it started out into the river, she found difficulty in making headway against the sweep of the logs. After a long struggle she reached the middle of the river, where she was able to hold her own.

“Wonder what next?” speculated Orde. “How are they going to get the other end of the booms out from the other bank?”

Captain Marsh had reversed the SPRITE. The tug lay nearly motionless amidstream, her propeller slowly revolving.

Up river all the small boats gathered in a line, connected one to the other by a rope. The tug passed over to them the cable attached to the boom. Evidently the combined efforts of the rowboats were counted on to hold the half-boom across the current while the tug brought out the other half. When the tug dropped the cable, Orde laughed.

“Nobody but a Dutchman would have thought of that!” he cried. “Now for the fun!”

Immediately the weight fell on the small boats, they were dragged irresistibly backward. Even from a distance the three men on the SPRITE could make out the white-water as the oars splashed and churned and frantically caught crabs in a vain effort to hold their own. Marsh lowered his telescope, the tears streaming down his face.

“It’s better than a goat fight,” said he.

Futilely protesting, the rowboats were dragged backward, turned as a whip is snapped, and strung out along the bank below.

“They’ll have to have two tugs before they can close the break that way,” commented Orde.

“Sure thing,” replied Captain Marsh.

But at that moment a black smoke rolled up over the marshes, and shortly around the bend from above came the LUCY BELLE.

The LUCY BELLE was the main excuse for calling the river navigable. She made trips as often as she could between Redding and Monrovia. In luck, she could cover the forty miles in a day. It was no unusual thing, however, for the LUCY BELLE to hang up indefinitely on some one of the numerous shifting sand bars. For that reason she carried more imperishable freight than passengers. In appearance she was two-storied, with twin smokestacks, an iron Indian on her top, and a “splutter-behind” paddle-wheel.

“There comes his help,” said Orde. “Old Simpson would stop to pick up a bogus three-cent piece.”

Sure enough, on hail from one of the rowboats, the LUCY BELLE slowed down and stopped. After a short conference, she steamed clumsily over to get hold of one end of the booms. The tug took the other. In time, and by dint of much splashing, some collisions, and several attempts, the ends of the booms were united.

By this time, however, nearly all the logs had escaped. The tug, towing a string of rowboats, set out in pursuit.

The SPRITE continued on her way until beyond sight. Then she slowed down again. The LUCY BELLE churned around the bend, and turned in toward the tug.

“She’s going to speak us,” marvelled Orde. “I wonder what the dickens she wants.”

“Tug ahoy!” bellowed a red-faced individual from the upper deck. He was dressed in blue and brass buttons, carried a telescope in one hand, and was liberally festooned with gold braid and embroidered anchors.

“Answer him,” Orde commanded Marsh.

“Hullo there, commodore! what is it?” replied the tug captain.

The red-faced figure glared down for a moment.

“They want a tug up there at Heinzman’s. Can you go?”

“Sure!” cried Marsh, choking.

The LUCY BELLE sheered off magnificently.

“What do you think of that?” Marsh asked Orde.

“The commodore always acts as if that old raft was a sixty-gun frigate,” was Orde’s non-committal answer. “Head up stream again.”

Heinzman saw the SPRITE coming, and rowed out frantically, splashing at every stroke and yelling with every breath.

“Don’t you go through there! Vait a minute! Stop, I tell you!”

“Hold up!” said Orde to Marsh.

Heinzman rowed alongside, dropped his oars and mopped his brow.

“Vat you do?” he demanded heatedly.

“I forgot the money to buy my stamp with,” said Orde sweetly. “I’m going back to get it.”

“Not through my pooms!” cried Heinzman.

“Mr. Heinzman,” said Orde severely, “you are obstructing a navigable stream. I am doing business, and I cannot be interfered with.”

“But my logs!” cried the unhappy mill man.

“I have nothing to do with your logs. You are driving your own logs,” Orde reminded him.

Heinzman vituperated and pounded the gunwale.

“Go ahead, Marsh!” said Orde.

The tug gathered way. Soon Heinzman was forced to let go. For a second time the chains were snapped. Orde and Marsh looked back over the churning wake left by the SPRITE. The severed ends of the booms were swinging back toward either shore. Between them floated a rowboat. In the rowboat gesticulated a pudgy man. The river was well sprinkled with logs. Evidently the sorting was going on well.

“May as well go back to the works,” said Orde. “He won’t string them together again to-day–not if he waits for that tug he sent Simpson for.”

Accordingly, they returned to the booms, where work was suspended while Orde detailed to an appreciative audience the happenings below. This tickled the men immensely.

“Why, we hain’t sorted out more’n a million feet of his logs,” cried Rollway Charlie. “He hain’t SEEN no logs yet!”

They turned with new enthusiasm to the work of shunting “H” logs into the channel.

In ten minutes, however, the stableman picked his way out over the booms with a message for Orde.

“Mr. Heinzman’s ashore, and wants to see you,” said he.

Orde and Jim Denning exchanged glances.

“‘Coon’s come down,” said the latter.

Orde found the mill man pacing restlessly up and down before a steaming pair of horses. Newmark, perched on a stump, was surveying him sardonically and chewing the end of an unlighted cigar.

“Here you poth are!” burst out Heinzman, when Orde stepped ashore. “Now, this must stop. I must not lose my logs! Vat is your probosition?”

Newmark broke in quickly before Orde could speak.

“I’ve told Mr. Heinzman,” said he, “that we would sort and deliver the rest of his logs for two dollars a thousand.”

“That will be about it,” agreed Orde.

“But,” exploded Heinzman, “that is as much as you agreet to drive and deliffer my whole cut!”

“Precisely,” said Newmark.

“Put I haf all the eggspence of driving the logs myself. Why shoult I pay you for doing what I haf alretty paid to haf done?”

Orde chuckled.

“Heinzman,” said he, “I told you I’d make you scratch gravel. Now it’s time to talk business. You thought you were boring with a mighty auger, but it’s time to revise. We aren’t forced to bother with your logs, and you’re lucky to get out so easy. If I turn your whole drive into the river, you’ll lose more than half of it outright, and it’ll cost you a heap to salvage the rest. And what’s more, I’ll turn ’em in before you can get hold of a pile-driver. I’ll sort night and day,” he bluffed, “and by to-morrow morning you won’t have a stick of timber above my booms.” He laughed again. “You want to get down to business almighty sudden.”

When finally Heinzman had driven sadly away, and the whole drive, “H” logs included, was pouring into the main boom, Orde stretched his arms over his head in a luxury of satisfaction.

“That just about settles that campaign,” he said to Newmark.

“Oh, no, it doesn’t,” replied the latter decidedly.

“Why?” asked Orde, surprised. “You don’t imagine he’ll do anything more?”

“No, but I will,” said Newmark.

XXVII

Early in the fall the baby was born. It proved to be a boy. Orde, nervous as a cat after the ordeal of doing nothing, tiptoed into the darkened room. He found his wife weak and pale, her dark hair framing her face, a new look of rapt inner contemplation rendering even more mysterious her always fathomless eyes. To Orde she seemed fragile, aloof, enshrined among her laces and dainty ribbons. Hardly dared he touch her when she held her hand out to him weakly, but fell on his knees beside the bed and buried his face in the clothes. She placed a gentle hand caressingly on his head.

So they remained for some time. Finally he raised his eyes. She held her lips to him. He kissed them.

“It seems sort of make-believe even yet, sweetheart,” she smiled at him whimsically, “that we have a real, live baby all of our own.”

“Like other people,” said Orde.

“Not like other people at all!” she disclaimed, with a show of indignation.

Grandma Orde brought the newcomer in for Orde’s inspection. He looked gravely down on the puckered, discoloured bit of humanity with some feeling of disappointment, and perhaps a faint uneasiness. After a moment he voiced the latter.

“Is–do you think–that is–” he hesitated, “does the doctor say he’s going to be all right?”

“All right!” cried Grandma Orde indignantly. “I’d like to know if he isn’t all right now! What in the world do you expect of a new- born baby?”

But Carroll was laughing softly to herself on the bed. She held out her arms for the baby, and cuddled it close to her breast.

“He’s a little darling,” she crooned, “and he’s going to grow up big and strong, just like his daddy.” She put her cheek against the sleeping babe’s and looked up sidewise at the two standing above her. “But I know how you feel,” she said to her husband. “When they first showed him to me, I thought he looked like a peanut a thousand years old.”

Grandma Orde fairly snorted with indignation.

“Come to your old grandmother, who appreciates you!” she cried, possessing herself of the infant. “He’s a beautiful baby; one of the best-looking new-born babies I ever saw!”

Orde escaped to the open air. He had to go to the office to attend to some details of the business. With every step his elation increased. At the office he threw open his desk with a slam. Newmark jumped nervously and frowned. Orde’s big, open, and brusque manners bothered him as they would have bothered a cat.

“Got a son and heir over at my place,” called Orde in his big voice.

“This old firm’s got to rustle now, I tell you.”

“Congratulate you, I’m sure,” said Newmark rather shortly. “Mrs. Orde is doing well, I hope?”

“Fine, fine!” cried Orde.

Newmark dropped the subject and plunged into a business matter. Orde’s attention, however, was flighty. After a little while he closed his desk with another bang.

“No use!” said he. “Got to make it a vacation. I’m going to run over to see how the family is.”

Strangely enough, the young couple had not discussed before the question of a name. One evening at twilight, when Orde was perched at the foot of the bed, Carroll brought up the subject.

“He ought to be named for you,” she began timidly. “I know that, Jack, and I’d love to have another Jack Orde in the family; but, dear, I’ve been thinking about father. He’s a poor, forlorn old man, who doesn’t get much out of life. And it would please him so– oh, more than you can imagine such a thing could please anybody!”

She looked up at him doubtfully. Orde said nothing, but walked around the bed to where the baby lay in his little cradle. He leaned over and took the infant up in his gingerly awkward fashion.

“How are you to-day, Bobby Orde?” he inquired of the blinking mite.

XXVIII

The first season of the Boom Company was most successful. Its prospects for the future were bright. The drive had been delivered to its various owners at a price below what it had cost them severally, and without the necessary attendant bother. Therefore, the loggers were only too willing to renew their contracts for another year. This did not satisfy Newmark, however.

“What we want,” he told Orde, “is a charter giving us exclusive rights on the river, and authorising us to ask toll. I’m going to try and get one out of the legislature.”

He departed for Lansing as soon as the Assembly opened, and almost immediately became lost in one of those fierce struggles of politics not less bitter because concealed. Heinzman was already on the ground.

Newmark had the shadow of right on his side, for he applied for the charter on the basis of the river improvements already put in by his firm. Heinzman, however, possessed much political influence, a deep knowledge of the subterranean workings of plot and counterplot, and a “barrel.” Although armed with an apparently incontestable legal right, Newmark soon found himself fighting on the defensive. Heinzman wanted the improvements already existing condemned and sold as a public utility to the highest bidder. He offered further guarantees as to future improvements. In addition were other and more potent arguments proffered behind closed doors. Many cases resolved themselves into a bald question of cash. Others demanded diplomacy. Jobs, fat contracts, business favours, influence were all flung out freely–bribes as absolute as though stamped with the dollar mark. Newspapers all over the State were pressed into service. These, bought up by Heinzman and his prospective partners in a lucrative business, spoke virtuously of private piracy of what are now called public utilities, the exploiting of the people’s natural wealths, and all the rest of a specious reasoning the more convincing in that it was in many other cases only too true. The independent journals, uninformed of the rights of the case, either remained silent on the matter, or groped in a puzzled and undecided manner on both sides.

Against this secret but effective organisation Newmark most unexpectedly found himself pitted. He had anticipated being absent but a week; he became involved in an affair of months.

With decision he applied himself to the problem. He took rooms at the hotel, sent for Orde, and began at once to set in motion the machinery of opposition. The refreshed resources of the company were strained to the breaking point in order to raise money for this new campaign opening before it. Orde, returning to Lansing after a trip devoted to the carrying out of Newmark’s directions as to finances, was dismayed at the tangle of strategy and cross-strategy, innuendo, vague and formless cobweb forces by which he was surrounded. He could make nothing of them. They brushed his face, he felt their influence, yet he could place his finger on no tangible and comprehensible solidity. Among these delicate and complicated cross-currents Newmark moved silent, cold, secret. He seemed to understand them, to play with them, to manipulate them as elements of the game. Above them was the hollow shock of the ostensible battle–the speeches, the loud talk in lobbies, the newspaper virtue, indignation, accusations; but the real struggle was here in the furtive ways, in whispered words delivered hastily aside, in hotel halls on the way to and from the stairs, behind closed doors of rooms without open transoms.

Orde in comic despair acknowledged that it was all “too deep for him.” Nevertheless, it was soon borne in on him that the new company was struggling for its very right to existence. It had been doing that from the first; but now, to Orde the fight, the existence, had a new importance. The company up to this point had been a scheme merely, an experiment that might win or lose. Now, with the history of a drive behind it, it had become a living entity. Orde would have fought against its dissolution as he would have fought against a murder. Yet he had practically to stand one side, watching Newmark’s slender, gray-clad, tense figure gliding here and there, more silent, more reserved, more watchful every day.

The fight endured through most of the first half of the session. When finally it became evident to Heinzman that Newmark would win, he made the issue of toll rates the ditch of his last resistance, trying to force legal charges so low as to eat up the profits. At the last, however, the bill passed the board. The company had its charter.

At what price only Newmark could have told. He had fought with the tense earnestness of the nervous temperament that fights to win without count of the cost. The firm was established, but it was as heavily in debt as its credit would stand. Newmark himself, though as calm and reserved and precise as ever, seemed to have turned gray, and one of his eyelids had acquired a slight nervous twitch which persisted for some months. He took his seat at the desk, however, as calmly as ever. In three days the scandalised howls of bribery and corruption had given place in the newspapers to some other sensation.

“Joe,” said Orde to his partner, “how about all this talk? Is there really anything in it? You haven’t gone in for that business, have you?”

Newmark stretched his arms wearily.

“Press bought up,” he replied. “I know for a fact that old Stanford got five hundred dollars from some of the Heinzman interests. I could have swung him back for an extra hundred, but it wasn’t worth while. They howl bribery at us to distract attention from their own performances.”

With this evasive reply Orde contented himself. Whether it satisfied him or whether he was loath to pursue the subject further it would be impossible to say.

“It’s cost us plenty, anyway,” he said, after a moment. “The proposition’s got a load on it. It will take us a long time to get out of debt. The river driving won’t pay quite so big as we thought it would,” he concluded, with a rueful little laugh.

“It will pay plenty well enough,” replied Newmark decidedly, “and it gives us a vantage point to work from. You don’t suppose we are going to quit at river driving, do you? We want to look around for some timber of our own; there’s where the big money is. And perhaps we can buy a schooner or two and go into the carrying trade–the country’s alive with opportunity. Newmark and Orde means something to these fellows now. We can have anything we want, if we just reach out for it.”

His thin figure, ordinarily slightly askew, had straightened; his steel-gray, impersonal eyes had lit up behind the bowed glasses and were seeing things beyond the wall at which they gazed. Orde looked up at him with a sudden admiration.

“You’re the brains of this concern,” said he.

“We’ll get on,” replied Newmark, the fire dying from his eyes.

XXIX

In the course of the next eight years Newmark and Orde floated high on that flood of apparent prosperity that attends a business well conceived and passably well managed. The Boom and Driving Company made money, of course, for with the margin of fifty per cent or thereabouts necessitated by the temporary value of the improvements, good years could hardly fail to bring good returns. This, it will be remembered, was a stock company. With the profits from that business the two men embarked on a separate copartnership. They made money at this, too, but the burden of debt necessitated by new ventures, constantly weighted by the heavy interest demanded at that time, kept affairs on the ragged edge.

In addition, both Orde and Newmark were more inclined to extension of interests than to “playing safe.” The assets gained in one venture were promptly pledged to another. The ramifications of debt, property, mortgages, and expectations overlapped each other in a cobweb of interests.

Orde lived at ease in a new house of some size surrounded by grounds. He kept two servants: a blooded team of horses drew the successor to the original buckboard. Newmark owned a sail yacht of five or six tons, in which, quite solitary, he took his only pleasure. Both were considered men of substance and property, as indeed they were. Only, they risked dollars to gain thousands. A succession of bad years, a panic-contraction of money markets, any one of a dozen possible, though not probable, contingencies would render it difficult to meet the obligations which constantly came due, and which Newmark kept busy devising ways and means of meeting. If things went well–and it may be remarked that legitimately they should–Newmark and Orde would some day be rated among the millionaire firms. If things went ill, bankruptcy could not be avoided. There was no middle ground. Nor were Orde and his partner unique in this; practically every firm then developing or exploiting the natural resources of the country found itself in the same case.

Immediately after the granting of the charter to drive the river the partners had offered them an opportunity of acquiring about thirty million feet of timber remaining from Morrison and Daly’s original holdings. That firm was very anxious to begin development on a large scale of its Beeson Lake properties in the Saginaw waters. Daly proposed to Orde that he take over the remnant, and having confidence in the young man’s abilities, agreed to let him have it on long-time notes. After several consultations with Newmark, Orde finally completed the purchase. Below the booms they erected a mill, the machinery for which they had also bought of Daly, at Redding. The following winter Orde spent in the woods. By spring he had banked, ready to drive, about six million feet.

For some years these two sorts of activity gave the partners about all they could attend to. As soon as the drive had passed Redding, Orde left it in charge of one of his foremen while he divided his time between the booms and the mill. Late in the year his woods trips began, the tours of inspection, of surveying for new roads, the inevitable preparation for the long winter campaigns in the forest. As soon as the spring thaws began, once more the drive demanded his attention. And in marketing the lumber, manipulating the firm’s financial affairs, collecting its dues, paying its bills, making its purchases, and keeping oiled the intricate bearing points of its office machinery, Newmark was busy–and invaluable.

At the end of the fifth year the opportunity came, through a combination of a bad debt and a man’s death, to get possession of two lake schooners. Orde at once suggested the contract for a steam barge. Towing was then in its infancy. The bulk of lake traffic was by means of individual sailing ships–a method uncertain as to time. Orde thought that a steam barge could be built powerful enough not only to carry its own hold and deck loads, but to tow after it the two schooners. In this manner the crews could be reduced, and an approximate date of delivery could be guaranteed. Newmark agreed with him. Thus the firm, in accordance with his prophecy, went into the carrying trade, for the vessels more than sufficed for its own needs. The freighting of lumber added much to the income, and the carrying of machinery and other heavy freight on the return trip grew every year.

But by far the most important acquisition was that of the northern peninsula timber. Most operators called the white pine along and back from the river inexhaustible. Orde did not believe this. He saw the time, not far distant, when the world would be compelled to look elsewhere for its lumber supply, and he turned his eyes to the almost unknown North. After a long investigation through agents, and a month’s land-looking on his own account, he located and purchased three hundred million feet. This was to be paid for, as usual, mostly by the firm’s notes secured by its other property. It would become available only in the future, but Orde believed, as indeed the event justified, this future would prove to be not so distant as most people supposed.

As these interests widened, Orde became more and more immersed in them. He was forced to be away all of every day, and more than the bulk of every year. Nevertheless, his home life did not suffer for it.

To Carroll he was always the same big, hearty, whole-souled boy she had first learned to love. She had all his confidence. If this did not extend into business affairs, it was because Orde had always tried to get away from them when at home. At first Carroll had attempted to keep in the current of her husband’s activities, but as the latter broadened in scope and became more complex, she perceived that their explanation wearied him. She grew out of the habit of asking him about them. Soon their rapid advance had carried them quite beyond her horizon. To her, also, as to most women, the word “business” connoted nothing but a turmoil and a mystery.

In all other things they were to each other what they had been from the first. No more children had come to them. Bobby, however; had turned out a sturdy, honest little fellow, with more than a streak of his mother’s charm and intuition. His future was the subject of all Orde’s plans.

“I want to give him all the chance there is,” he explained to Carroll. “A boy ought to start where his father left off, and not have to do the same thing all over again. But being a rich man’s son isn’t much of a job.”

“Why don’t you let him continue your business?” smiled Carroll, secretly amused at the idea of the small person before them ever doing anything.

“By the time Bobby’s grown up this business will all be closed out,” replied Orde seriously.

He continued to look at his minute son with puckered brow, until Carroll smoothed out the wrinkles with the tips of her fingers.

“Of course, having only a few minutes to decide,” she mocked, “perhaps we’d better make up our minds right now to have him a street-car driver.”

“Yes!” agreed Bobby unexpectedly, and with emphasis.

Three years after this conversation, which would have made Bobby just eight, Orde came back before six of a summer evening, his face alight with satisfaction.

“Hullo, bub!” he cried to Bobby, tossing him to his shoulder. “How’s the kid?”

They went out together, while awaiting dinner, to see the new setter puppy in the woodshed.

“Named him yet?” asked Orde.

“Duke,” said Bobby.

Orde surveyed the animal gravely.

“Seems like a good name,” said he.

After dinner the two adjourned to the library, where they sat together in the “big chair,” and Bobby, squirmed a little sidewise in order the better to see, watched the smoke from his father’s cigar as it eddied and curled in the air.

“Tell a story,” he commanded finally.

“Well,” acquiesced Orde, “there was once a man who had a cow–“

“Once upon a time,” corrected Bobby.

He listened for a moment or so.

“I don’t like that story,” he then announced. “Tell the story about the bears.”

“But this is a new story,” protested Orde, “and you’ve heard about the bears so many times.”

“Bears,” insisted Bobby.

“Well, once upon a time there were three bears–a big bear and a middle-sized bear and a little bear–” began Orde obediently.

Bobby, with a sigh of rapture and content, curled up in a snug, warm little ball. The twilight darkened.

“Blind-man’s holiday!” warned Carroll behind them so suddenly that they both jumped. “And the sand man’s been at somebody, I know!”

She bore him away to bed. Orde sat smoking in the darkness, staring straight ahead of him into the future. He believed he had found the opportunity–twenty years distant–for which he had been looking so long.

XXX

After a time Carroll descended the stairs, chuckling. “Jack,” she called into the sitting-room, “come out on the porch. What do you suppose the young man did to-night?”

“Give it up,” replied Orde promptly. “No good guessing when it’s a question of that youngster’s performances. What was it?”

“He said his ‘Now I lay me,’ and asked blessings on you and me, and the grandpas and grandmas, and Auntie Kate, as usual. Then he stopped. ‘What else?’ I reminded him. ‘And,’ he finished with a rush, ‘make-Bobby-a-good-boy-and-give-him-plenty-of-bread-‘n-butter- ‘n-apple-sauce!'”

They laughed delightedly over this, clinging together like two children. Then they stepped out on the little porch and looked into the fathomless night. The sky was full of stars, aloof and calm, but waiting breathless on the edge of action, attending the word of command or the celestial vision, or whatever it is for which stars seem to wait. Along the street the dense velvet shade of the maples threw the sidewalks into impenetrable blackness. Sounds carried clearly. From the Welton’s, down the street, came the tinkle of a mandolin and an occasional low laugh from the group of young people that nightly frequented the front steps. Tree toads chirped in unison or fell abruptly silent as though by signal. All up and down the rows of houses whirred the low monotone of the lawn sprinklers, and the aroma of their wetness was borne cool and refreshing through the tepid air.

Orde and his wife sat together on the top step. He slipped his arm about her. They said nothing, but breathed deep of the quiet happiness that filled their lives.

The gate latch clicked and two shadowy figures defined themselves approaching up the concrete walk.

“Hullo!” called Orde cheerfully into the darkness.

“Hullo!” a man’s voice instantly responded.

“Taylor and Clara,” said Orde to Carroll with satisfaction. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

The lawyer and his wife mounted the steps. He was a quick, energetic, spare man, with lean cheeks, a bristling, clipped moustache, and a slight stoop to his shoulders. She was small, piquant, almost child-like, with a dainty up-turned nose, a large and lustrous eye, a constant, bird-like animation of manner–the Folly of artists, the adorable, lovable, harmless Folly standing tiptoe on a complaisant world.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” repeated Orde, as the two approached.

Clara Taylor stopped short and considered him for a moment.

“Let us away,” she said seriously to Carroll. “My prophetic soul tells me they are going to talk business, and if any more business is talked in my presence, I shall EXPIRE!”

Both men laughed, but Orde explained apologetically:

“Well, you know, Mrs. Taylor, these are my especially busy days for the firm, and I have to work my private affairs in when I can.”

“I thought Frank was very solicitous about my getting out in the air,” cried Clara. “Come, Carroll, let’s wander down the street and see Mina Heinzman.”

The two interlocked arms and sauntered along the walk. Both men lit cigars and sat on the top step of the porch.

“Look here, Taylor,” broke in Orde abruptly, “you told me the other day you had fifteen or twenty thousand you wanted to place somewhere.”

“Yes,” replied Taylor.

“Well, I believe I have just the proposition.”

“What is it?”

“California pine,” replied Orde.

“California pine?” repeated Taylor, after a slight pause. “Why California? That’s a long way off. And there’s no market, is there? Why way out there?”

“It’s cheap,” replied Orde succinctly. “I don’t say it will be good for immediate returns, nor even for returns in the near future, but in twenty or thirty years it ought to pay big on a small investment made now.”

Taylor shook his head doubtfully.

“I don’t see how you figure it,” he objected. “We have more timber than we can use in the East. Why should we go several thousand miles west for the same thing?”

“When our timber gives out, then we’ll HAVE to go west,” said Orde.

Taylor laughed.

“Laugh all you please,” rejoined Orde, “but I tell you Michigan and Wisconsin pine is doomed. Twenty or thirty years from now there won’t be any white pine for sale.”

“Nonsense!” objected Taylor. “You’re talking wild. We haven’t even begun on the upper peninsula. After that there’s Minnesota. And I haven’t observed that we’re quite out of timber on the river, or the Muskegon, or the Saginaw, or the Grand, or the Cheboygan–why, Great Scott! man, our children’s children’s children may be thinking of investing in California timber, but that’s about soon enough.”

“All tight,” said Orde quietly. “Well, what do you think of Indiana as a good field for timber investment?”

“Indiana!” cried Taylor, amazed. “Why, there’s no timber there; it’s a prairie.”

“There used to be. And all the southern Michigan farm belt was timbered, and around here. We have our stumps to show for it, but there are no evidences at all farther south. You’d have hard work, for instance, to persuade a stranger that Van Buren County was once forest.”

“Was it?” asked Taylor doubtfully.

“It was. You take your map and see how much area has been cut already, and how much remains. That’ll open your eyes. And remember all that has been done by crude methods for a relatively small demand. The demand increases as the country grows and methods improve. It would not surprise me if some day thirty or forty millions would constitute an average cut.* ‘Michigan pine exhaustless!’–those fellows make me sick!”

* At the present day some firms cut as high as 150,000,000 feet.

“Sounds a little more reasonable,” said Taylor slowly.

“It’ll sound a lot more reasonable in five or ten years,” insisted Orde, “and then you’ll see the big men rushing out into that Oregon and California country. But now a man can get practically the pick of the coast. There are only a few big concerns out there.”

“Why is it that no one–“

“Because,” Orde cut him short, “the big things are for the fellow who can see far enough ahead.”

“What kind of a proposition have you?” asked Taylor after a pause.

“I can get ten thousand acres at an average price of eight dollars an acre,” replied Orde.

“Acres? What does that mean in timber?”

“On this particular tract it means about four hundred million feet.”

“That’s about twenty cents a thousand.”

Orde nodded.

“And of course you couldn’t operate for a long time?”

“Not for twenty, maybe thirty, years,” replied Orde calmly.

“There’s your interest on your money, and taxes, and the risk of fire and–“

“Of course, of course,” agreed Orde impatiently, “but you’re getting your stumpage for twenty cents or a little more, and in thirty years it will be worth as high as a dollar and a half.” *

* At the present time (1908) sugar pine such as Orde described would cost $3.50 to $4.

“What!” cried Taylor.

“That is my opinion,” said Orde.

Taylor relapsed into thought.

“Look here, Orde,” he broke cut finally, “how old are you?”

“Thirty-eight. Why?”

“How much timber have you in Michigan?”

“About ten million that we’ve picked up on the river since the Daly purchase and three hundred million in the northern peninsula.”

“Which will take you twenty years to cut, and make you a million dollars or so?”

“Hope so.”

“Then why this investment thirty years ahead?”

“It’s for Bobby,” explained Orde simply. “A man likes to have his son continue on in his business. I can’t do it here, but there I can. It would take fifty years to cut that pine, and that will give Bobby a steady income and a steady business.”

“Bobby will be well enough off, anyway. He won’t have to go into business.”

Orde’s brow puckered.

“I know a man–Bobby is going to work. A man is not a success in life unless he does something, and Bobby is going to be a success. Why, Taylor,” he chuckled, “the little rascal fills the wood-box for a cent a time, and that’s all the pocket-money he gets. He’s saving now to buy a thousand-dollar boat. I’ve agreed to pool in half. At his present rate of income, I’m safe for about sixty years yet.”

“How soon are you going to close this deal?” asked Taylor, rising as he caught sight of two figures coming up the walk.

“I have an option until November 1,” replied Orde. “If you can’t make it, I guess I can swing it myself. By the way, keep this dark.”

Taylor nodded, and the two turned to defend themselves as best they could against Clara’s laughing attack.

XXXI

Orde had said nothing to Newmark concerning this purposed new investment, nor did he intend doing so.

“It is for Bobby,” he told himself, “and I want Bobby, and no one else, to run it. Joe would want to take charge, naturally. Taylor won’t. He knows nothing of the business.”

He walked downtown next morning busily formulating his scheme. At the office he found Newmark already seated at his desk, a pile of letters in front of him. Upon Orde’s boisterous greeting his nerves crisped slightly, but of this there was no outward sign beyond a tightening of his hands on the letter he was reading. Behind his eye-glasses his blue, cynical eyes twinkled like frost crystals. As always, he was immaculately dressed in neat gray clothes, and carried in one corner of his mouth an unlighted cigar.

“Joe,” said Orde, spinning a chair to Newmark’s roll-top desk and speaking in a low tone, “just how do we stand on that upper peninsula stumpage?”

“What do you mean? How much of it is there? You know that as well as I do–about three hundred million.”

“No; I mean financially.”

“We’ve made two payments of seventy-five thousand each, and have still two to make of the same amount.”

“What could we borrow on it?”

“We don’t want to borrow anything on it,” returned Newmark in a flash.

“Perhaps not; but if we should?”

“We might raise fifty or seventy-five thousand, I suppose.”

“Joe,” said Orde, “I want to raise about seventy-five thousand dollars on my share in this concern, if it can be done.”

“What’s up?” inquired Newmark keenly.

“It’s a private matter.”

Newmark said nothing, but for some time thought busily, his light blue eyes narrowed to a slit.

“I’ll have to figure on it a while,” said he at last, and turned back to his mail. All day he worked hard, with only a fifteen- minute intermission for a lunch which was brought up from the hotel below. At six o’clock he slammed shut the desk. He descended the stairs with Orde, from whom he parted at their foot, and walked precisely away, his tall, thin figure held rigid and slightly askew, his pale eyes slitted behind his eye-glasses, the unlighted cigar in one corner of his straight lips. To the occasional passerby he bowed coldly and with formality. At the corner below he bore to the left, and after a short walk entered the small one-story house set well back from the sidewalk among the clumps of oleanders. Here he turned into a study, quietly and richly furnished ten years in advance of the taste then prevalent in Monrovia, where he sank into a deep-cushioned chair and lit the much-chewed cigar. For some moments he lay back with his eyes shut. Then he opened them to look with approval on the dark walnut book-cases, the framed prints and etchings, the bronzed student’s lamp on the square table desk, the rugs on the polished floor. He picked up a magazine, into which he dipped for ten minutes.

The door opened noiselessly behind him.

“Mr. Newmark, sir,” came a respectful voice, “it is just short of seven.”

“Very well,” replied Newmark, without looking around.

The man withdrew as softly as he had come. After a moment, Newmark replaced the magazine on the table, yawned, threw aside the cigar, of which he had smoked but an inch, and passed from his study into his bedroom across the hall. This contained an exquisite Colonial four-poster, with a lowboy and dresser to match, and was papered and carpeted in accordance with these, its chief ornaments. Newmark bathed in the adjoining bathroom, shaved carefully between the two wax lights which were his whim, and dressed in what were then known as “swallow-tail” clothes. Probably he was the only man in Monrovia at that moment so apparelled. Then calmly, and with all the deliberation of one under fire of a hundred eyes, he proceeded to the dining-room, where waited the man who had a short time before reminded him of the hour. He was a solemn, dignified man, whose like was not to be found elsewhere this side the city. He, too, wore the “swallow-tail,” but its buttons were of gilt.

Newmark seated himself in a leather-upholstered mahogany chair before a small, round, mahogany table. The room was illuminated only by four wax candles with red shades. They threw into relief the polish of mahogany, the glitter of glass, the shine of silver, but into darkness the detail of massive sideboard, dull panelling, and the two or three dark-toned sporting prints on the wall.

“You may serve dinner, Mallock,” said Newmark.

He ate deliberately and with enjoyment the meal, exquisitely prepared and exquisitely presented to him. With it he drank a single glass of Burgundy–a deed that would, in the eyes of Monrovia, have condemned him as certainly as driving a horse on Sunday or playing cards for a stake. Afterward he returned to the study, whither Mallock brought coffee. He lit another cigar, opened a drawer in his desk, extracted therefrom some bank-books and small personal account books. From these he figured all the evening. His cigar went out, but he did not notice that, and chewed away quite contentedly on the dead butt. When he had finished, his cold eye exhibited a gleam of satisfaction. He had resolved on a course of action. At ten o’clock he went to bed.

Next morning Mallock closed the door behind him promptly upon the stroke of eight. It was strange that not one living soul but Mallock had ever entered Newmark’s abode. Curiosity had at first brought a few callers; but these were always met by the imperturbable servant with so plausible a reason for his master’s absence that the visitors had departed without a suspicion that they had been deliberately excluded. And as Newmark made no friends and excited little interest, the attempts to cultivate him gradually ceased.

“Orde,” said Newmark, as the former entered the office, “I think I can arrange this matter.”

Orde drew up a chair.

“I talked last evening with a man from Detroit named Thayer, who thinks he may advance seventy-five thousand dollars on a mortgage on our northern peninsula stumpage. For that, of course, we will give the firm’s note with interest at ten per cent. I will turn this over to you.”

“That’s–” began Orde.

“Hold on,” interrupted Newmark. “As collateral security you will deposit for me your stock in the Boom Company, indorsed in blank. If you do not pay the full amount of the firm’s note to Thayer, then the stock will be turned in to me.”

“I see,” said Orde.

“Now, don’t misunderstand me,” said Newmark drily. “This is your own affair, and I do not urge it on you. If we raise as much as seventy-five thousand dollars on that upper peninsula stumpage, it will be all it can stand, for next year we must make a third payment on it. If you take that money, it is of course proper that you pay the interest on it.”

“Certainly,” said Orde.

“And if there’s any possibility of the foreclosure of the mortgage, it is only right that you run all the risk of loss–not myself.”

“Certainly,” repeated Orde.

“From another point of view,” went on Newmark, “you are practically mortgaging your interest in the Boom Company for seventy-five thousand dollars. That would make, on the usual basis of a mortgage, your share worth above two hundred thousand–and four hundred thousand is a high valuation of our property.”

“That looks more than decent on your part,” said Orde.

“Of course, it’s none of my business what you intend to do with this,” went on Newmark, “but unless you’re SURE you can meet these notes, I should strongly advise against it.”

“The same remark applies to any mortgage,” rejoined Orde.

“Exactly.”

“For how long a time could I get this?” asked Orde at length.

“I couldn’t promise it for longer than five years,” replied Newmark.

“That would make about fifteen thousand a year?”

“And interest.”

“Certainly–and interest. Well, I don’t see why I can’t carry that easily on our present showing and prospects.”

“If nothing untoward happens,” insisted Newmark determined to put forward all objections possible.

“It’s not much risk,” said Orde hopefully. “There’s nothing surer than lumber. We’ll pay the notes easily enough as we cut, and the Boom Company’s on velvet now. What do our earnings figure, anyway?”

“We’re driving one hundred and fifty million at a profit of about sixty cents a thousand,” said Newmark.

“That’s ninety thousand dollars–in five years, four hundred and fifty thousand,” said Orde, sucking his pencil.

“We ought to clean up five dollars a thousand on our mill.”

“That’s about a hundred thousand on what we’ve got left.”

“And that little barge business nets us about twelve or fifteen thousand a year.”

“For the five years about sixty thousand more. Let’s see–that’s a total of say six hundred thousand dollars in five years.”

“We will have to take up in that time,” said Newmark, who seemed to have the statistics at his finger-tips, “the two payments on our timber, the note on the First National, the Commercial note, the remaining liabilities on the Boom Company–about three hundred thousand all told, counting the interest.”

Orde crumpled the paper and threw it into the waste basket.

“Correct,” said he. “Good enough. I ought to get along on a margin like that.”

He went over to his own desk, where he again set to figuring on his pad. The results he eyed a little doubtfully. Each year he must pay in interest the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars. Each year he would have to count on a proportionate saving of fifteen thousand dollars toward payment of the notes. In addition, he must live.

“The Orde family is going to be mighty hard up,” said he, whistling humorously.

But Orde was by nature and training sanguine and fond of big risks.

“Never mind; it’s for Bobby,” said he to himself. “And maybe the rate of interest will go down. And I’ll be able to borrow on the California tract if anything does go wrong.”

He put on his hat, thrust a bundle of papers into his pocket, and stepped across the hall into Taylor’s office.

The lawyer he found tipped back in his revolving chair, reading a printed brief.

“Frank,” began Orde immediately, “I came to see you about that California timber matter.”

Taylor laid down the brief and removed his eye-glasses, with which he began immediately to tap the fingers of his left hand.

“Sit down, Jack,” said he. “I’m glad you came in. I was going to try to see you some time to-day. I’ve been thinking the matter over very carefully since the other day, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is too steep for me. I don’t doubt the investment a bit, but the returns are too far off. Fifteen thousand means a lot more to me than it does to you, and I’ve got to think of the immediate future. I hope you weren’t counting on me–“

“Oh, that’s all right,” broke in Orde. “As I told you, I can swing the thing myself, and only mentioned it to you on the off chance you might want to invest. Now, what I want is this–” he proceeded to outline carefully the agreement between himself and Newmark while the lawyer took notes and occasionally interjected a question.

“All right,” said the latter, when the details had been mastered. “I’ll draw the necessary notes and papers.”

“Now,” went on Orde, producing the bundle of papers from his pocket, “here’s the abstract of title. I wish you’d look it over. It’s a long one, but not complicated, as near as I can make out. Trace seems to have acquired this tract mostly from the original homesteaders and the like, who, of course, take title direct from the government. But naturally there are a heap of them, and I want you to look it over to be sure everything’s shipshape.”

“All right,” agreed Taylor, reaching for the papers.

“One other thing,” concluded Orde, uncrossing his legs. “I want this investment to get no further than the office door. You see, this is for Bobby, and I’ve given a lot of thought to that sort of thing; and nothing spoils a man sooner than to imagine the thing’s all cut and dried for him, and nothing keeps him going like the thought that he’s got to rustle his own opportunities. You and I know that. Bobby’s going to have the best education possible; he’s going to learn to be a lumberman by practical experience, and that practical experience he’ll get with other people. No working for his dad in Bobby’s, I can tell you. When he gets through college, I’ll get him a little job clerking with some good firm, and he’ll have a chance to show what is in him and to learn the business from the ground up, the way a man ought to. Of course, I’ll make arrangements that he has a real chance. Then, when he’s worked into the harness a little, the old man will take him out and show him the fine big sugar pine and say to him, ‘There, my boy, there’s your opportunity, and you’ve earned it. How does ORDE AND SON sound to you?’ What do you think of it, Frank?”

Taylor nodded several times.

“I believe you’re on the right track, and I’ll help you all I can,” said he briefly.

“So, of course, I want to keep the thing dead secret,” continued Orde. “You’re the only man who knows anything about it. I’m not even going to buy directly under my own name. I’m going to incorporate myself,” he said, with a grin. “You know how those things will get out, and how they always get back to the wrong people.”

“Count on me,” Taylor assured him.

As Orde walked home that evening, after a hot day, his mind was full of speculation as to the immediate future. He had a local reputation for wealth, and no one knew better than himself how important it is for a man in debt to keep up appearances. Nevertheless, decided retrenchment would be necessary. After Bobby had gone to bed, he explained this to his wife.

“What’s the matter?” she asked quickly. “Is the firm losing money?”

“No,” replied Orde, “it’s a matter of reinvestment.” He hesitated. “It’s a dead secret, which I don’t want to get out, but I’m thinking of buying some western timber for Bobby when he grows up.”

Carroll laughed softly.

“You so relieve my mind,” she smiled at him. “I was afraid you’d decided on the street-car-driver idea. Why, sweetheart, you know perfectly well we could go back to the little house next the church and be as happy as larks.”

XXXII

In the meantime Newmark had closed his desk, picked his hat from the nail, and marched precisely down the street to Heinzman’s office. He found the little German in. Newmark demanded a private interview, and without preliminary plunged into the business that had brought him. He had long since taken Heinzman’s measure, as, indeed, he had taken the measure of every other man with whom he did or was likely to do business.

“Heinzman,” said he abruptly, “my partner wants to raise seventy- five thousand dollars for his personal use. I have agreed to get him that money from the firm.”

Heinzman sat immovable, his round eyes blinking behind his big spectacles.

“Proceed,” said he shrewdly.

“As security in case he cannot pay the notes the firm will have to give, he has signed an agreement to turn over to me his undivided one-half interest in our enterprises.”

“Vell? You vant to borrow dot money of me?” asked Heinzman. “I could not raise it.”

“I know that perfectly well,” replied Newmark coolly. “You are going to have difficulty meeting your July notes, as it is.”

Heinzman hardly seemed to breathe, but a flicker of red blazed in his eye.

“Proceed,” he repeated non-committally, after a moment. “I intend,” went on Newmark, “to furnish this money myself. It must, however, seem to be loaned by another. I want you to lend this money on mortgage.”

“What for?” asked Heinzman.

“For a one tenth of Orde’s share in case he does not meet those notes.”

“But he vill meet the notes,” objected Heinzman. “You are a prosperous concern. I know somethings of YOUR business, also.”

“He thinks he will,” rejoined Newmark grimly. “I will merely point out to you that his entire income is from the firm, and that from this income he must save twenty-odd thousand a year.

“If the firm has hard luck–” said Heinzman.

“Exactly,” finished Newmark.

“Vy you come to me?” demanded Heinzman at length.

“Well, I’m offering you a chance to get even with Orde. I don’t imagine you love him?”

“Vat’s de matter mit my gettin’ efen with you, too?” cried Heinzman. “Ain’t you beat me out at Lansing?”

Newmark smiled coldly under his clipped moustache.

“I’m offering you the chance of making anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand dollars.”

“Perhaps. And suppose this liddle scheme don’t work out?”

“And,” pursued Newmark calmly, “I’ll carry you over in your present obligations.” He suddenly hit the arm of his chair with his clenched fist. “Heinzman, if you don’t make those July payments, what’s to become of you? Where’s your timber and your mills and your new house–and that pretty daughter of yours?”

Heinzman winced visibly.

“I vill get an extension of time,” said he feebly.

“Will you?” countered Newmark.

The two men looked each other in the eye for a moment.

“Vell, maybe,” laughed Heinzman uneasily. “It looks to me like a winner.”

“All right, then,” said Newmark briskly. “I’ll make out a mortgage at ten per cent for you, and you’ll lend the money on it. At the proper time, if things happen that way, you will foreclose. That’s all you have to do with it. Then, when the timber land comes to you under the foreclose, you will reconvey an undivided nine-tenths’ interest–for proper consideration, of course, and without recording the deed.”

Heinzman laughed with assumed lightness.

“Suppose I fool you,” said he. “I guess I joost keep it for mineself.”

Newmark looked at him coldly.

“I wouldn’t,” he advised. “You may remember the member from Lapeer County in that charter fight? And the five hundred dollars for his vote? Try it on, and see how much evidence I can bring up. It’s called bribery in this State, and means penitentiary usually.”

“You don’t take a joke,” complained Heinzman.

Newmark arose.

“It’s understood, then?” he asked.

“How so I know you play fair?” asked the German.

“You don’t. It’s a case where we have to depend more or less on each other. But I don’t see what you stand to lose–and anyway you’ll get carried over those July payments,” Newmark reminded him.

Heinzman was plainly uneasy and slightly afraid of these new waters in which he swam.

“If you reduce the firm’s profits, he iss going to suspect,” he admonished.

“Who said anything about reducing the firm’s profits?” said Newmark impatiently. “If it does work out that way, we’ll win a big thing; if it does not, we’ll lose nothing.”

He nodded to Heinzman and left the office. His demeanour was as dry and precise as ever. No expression illuminated his impassive countenance. If he felt the slightest uneasiness over having practically delivered his intentions to the keeping of another, he did not show it. For one thing, an accomplice was absolutely essential. And, too, he held the German by his strongest passions– his avarice, his dread of bankruptcy, his pride, and his fear of the penitentiary. As he entered the office of his own firm, his eye fell on Orde’s bulky form seated at the desk. He paused involuntarily, and a slight shiver shook his frame from head to foot–the dainty, instinctive repulsion of a cat for a large robustious dog. Instantly controlling himself, he stepped forward.

“I’ve made the loan,” he announced.

Orde looked up with interest.

“The banks wouldn’t touch northern peninsula,” said Newmark steadily, “so I had to go to private individuals.”

“So you said. Don’t care who deals it out,” laughed Orde.

“Thayer backed out, so finally I got the whole amount from Heinzman,” Newmark announced.

“Didn’t know the old Dutchman was that well off,” said Orde, after a slight pause.

“Can’t tell about those secretive old fellows,” said Newmark.

Orde hesitated.

“I didn’t know he was friendly enough to lend us money.”

“Business is business,” replied Newmark.

XXXIII

There exists the legend of an eastern despot who, wishing to rid himself of a courtier, armed the man and shut him in a dark room. The victim knew he was to fight something, but whence it was to come, when, or of what nature he was unable to guess. In the event, while groping tense for an enemy, he fell under the fatal fumes of noxious gases.

From the moment Orde completed the secret purchase of the California timber lands from Trace, he became an unwitting participant in one of the strangest duels known to business history. Newmark opposed to him all the subtleties, all the ruses and expedients to which his position lent itself. Orde, sublimely unconscious, deployed the magnificent resources of strength, energy, organisation, and combative spirit that animated his pioneer’s soul. The occult manoeuverings of Newmark called out fresh exertions on the part of Orde.

Newmark worked under this disadvantage: he had carefully to avoid the slightest appearance of an attitude inimical to the firm’s very best prosperity. A breath of suspicion would destroy his plans. If the smallest untoward incident should ever bring it clearly before Orde that Newmark might have an interest in reducing profits, he could not fail to tread out the logic of the latter’s devious ways. For this reason Newmark could not as yet fight even in the twilight. He did not dare make bad sales, awkward transactions. In spite of his best efforts, he could not succeed, without the aid of chance, in striking a blow from which Orde could not recover. The profits of the first year were not quite up to the usual standard, but they sufficed. Newmark’s finesse cut in two the firm’s income of the second year. Orde roused himself. With his old-time energy of resource, he hurried the woods work until an especially big cut gave promise of recouping the losses of the year before. Newmark found himself struggling against a force greater than he had imagined it to be. Blinded and bound, it nevertheless made head against his policy. Newmark was forced to a temporary quiescence. He held himself watchful, intent, awaiting the opportunity which chance should bring.

Chance seemed by no means in haste. The end of the fourth year found Newmark puzzled. Orde had paid regularly the interest on his notes. How much he had been able to save toward the redemption of the notes themselves his partner was unable to decide. It depended entirely on how much the Ordes had disbursed in living expenses, whether or not Orde had any private debts, and whether or not he had private resources. In the meantime Newmark contented himself with tying up the firm’s assets in such a manner as to render it impossible to raise money on its property when the time should come.

What Orde regarded as a series of petty annoyances had made the problem of paying for the California timber a matter of greater difficulty than he had supposed it would be. A pressure whose points of support he could not place was closing slowly on him. Against this pressure he exerted himself. It made him a trifle uneasy, but it did not worry him. The margin of safety was not as broad as he had reckoned, but it existed. And in any case, if worse came to worst, he could always mortgage the California timber for enough to make up the difference–and more. Against this expedient, however, he opposed a sentimental obstinacy. It was Bobby’s, and he objected to encumbering it. In fact, Orde was capable of a prolonged and bitter struggle to avoid doing so. Nevertheless, it was there–an asset. A loan on its security would, with what he had set aside, more than pay the notes on the northern peninsula stumpage. Orde felt perfectly easy in his mind. He was in the position of many of our rich men’s sons who, quite sincerely and earnestly, go penniless to the city to make their way. They live on their nine dollars a week, and go hungry when they lose their jobs. They stand on their own feet, and yet–in case of severe illness or actual starvation–the old man is there! It gives them a courage to be contented on nothing. So Orde would have gone to almost any lengths to keep free “Bobby’s tract,” but it stood always between himself and disaster. And a loan on western timber could be paid off just as easily as a loan on eastern timber; when you came right down to that. Even could he have known his partner’s intentions, they would, on this account, have caused him no uneasiness, however angry they would have made him, or however determined to break the partnership. Even though Newmark destroyed utterly the firm’s profits for the remaining year and a half the notes had to run, he could not thereby ruin Orde’s chances. A loan on the California timber would solve all problems now. In this reasoning Orde would have committed the mistake of all large and generous temperaments when called upon to measure natures more subtle than their own. He would have underestimated both Newmark’s resources and his own grasp of situations.*

* The author has considered it useless to burden the course of the narrative with a detailed account of Newmark’s financial manoeuvres. Realising, however, that a large class of his readers might be interested in the exact particulars, he herewith gives a sketch of the transactions.

It will be remembered that at the time–1878–Orde first came in need of money for the purpose of buying the California timber, the firm, Newmark and Orde, owned in the northern peninsula 300,000,000 feet of pine. On this they had paid $150,000, and owed still a like amount. They borrowed $75,000 on it, giving a note secured by mortgage due in 1883. Orde took this, giving in return his note secured by the Boom Company’s stock. In 1879 and 1880 they made the two final payments on the timber; so that by the latter date they owned the land free of encumbrance save for the mortgage of $75,000. Since Newmark’s plan had always contemplated the eventual foreclosure of this mortgage, it now became necessary further to encumber the property. Otherwise, since a property worth considerably above $300,000 carried only a $75,000 mortgage, it would be possible, when the latter came due, to borrow a further sum on a second mortgage with which to meet the obligations of the first. Therefore Newmark, in 1881, approached Orde with the request that the firm raise $70,000 by means of a second mortgage on the timber. This $70,000 he proposed to borrow personally, giving his note due in 1885 and putting up the same collateral as Orde had– that is to say, his stock in the Boom Company. To this Orde could hardly in reason oppose an objection, as it nearly duplicated his own transaction of 1878. Newmark therefore, through Heinzman, lent this sum to himself.

It may now be permitted to forecast events in the line of Newmark’s reasoning.

If his plans should work out, this is what would happen: in 1883 the firm’s note for $75,000 would come due. Orde would be unable to pay it. Therefore at once his stock in the Boom Company would become the property of Newmark and Orde. Newmark would profess himself unable to raise enough from the firm to pay the mortgage. The second mortgage from which he had drawn his personal loan would render it impossible for the firm to raise more money on the land. A foreclosure would follow. Through Heinzman, Newmark would buy in. As he had himself loaned the money to himself–again through Heinzman–on the second mortgage, the latter would occasion him no loss.

The net results of the whole transaction would be: first, that Newmark would have acquired personally the 300,000,000 feet of northern peninsula timber; and, second, that Orde’s personal share in the stock company would flow be held in partnership by the two. Thus, in order to gain so large a stake, it would pay Newmark to suffer considerable loss jointly with Orde in the induced misfortunes of the firm.

Incidentally it might be remarked that Newmark, of course, purposed paying his own note to the firm when it should fall due in 1885, thus saving for himself the Boom Company stock which he had put up as collateral.

Affairs stood thus in the autumn before the year the notes would come due. The weather had been beautiful. A perpetual summer seemed to have embalmed the world in its forgetfulness of times and seasons. Navigation remained open through October and into November. No severe storms had as yet swept the lakes. The barge and her two tows had made one more trip than had been thought possible. It had been the intention to lay them up for the winter, but the weather continued so mild that Orde suggested they be laden with a consignment for Jones and Mabley, of Chicago.

“Did intend to ship by rail,” said he. “They’re all ‘uppers,’ so it would pay all right. But we can save all kinds of money by water, and they ought to skip over there in twelve to fifteen hours.”

Accordingly, the three vessels were laid alongside the wharves at the mill, and as fast as possible the selected lumber was passed into their holds. Orde departed for the woods to start the cutting as soon as the first belated snow should fall.

This condition seemed, however, to delay. During each night it grew