After the men had been paid off, perhaps a dozen of them hung around the yards awaiting evening and the rendezvous named by Orde. The rest drifted away full of good intentions, but did not show up again. Orde himself was busy up to the last moment, but finally stamped out of the office just as the boarding-house bell rang for supper. He surveyed what remained of his old crew and grinned.
“Well, boys, ready for trouble?” he greeted them. “Come on.”
They set out up the long reach of Water Street, their steel caulks biting deep into the pitted board-walks.
For nearly a mile the street was flanked solely by lumber-yards, small mills, and factories. Then came a strip of unimproved land, followed immediately by the wooden, ramshackle structures of Hell's Half-Mile.
In the old days every town of any size had its Hell's Half-Mile, or the equivalent. Saginaw boasted of its Catacombs; Muskegon, Alpena, Port Huron, Ludington, had their “Pens,” “White Rows,” “River Streets,” “Kilyubbin,” and so forth. They supported row upon row of saloons, alike stuffy and squalid; gambling hells of all sorts; refreshment “parlours,” where drinks were served by dozens of “pretty waiter-girls,” and huge dance-halls.
The proprietors of these places were a bold and unscrupulous lot. In their everyday business they had to deal with the most dangerous rough-and-tumble fighters this country has ever known; with men bubbling over with the joy of life, ready for quarrel if quarrel also spelled fun, drinking deep, and heavy-handed and fearless in their cups. But each of these rivermen had two or three hundred dollars to “blow” as soon as possible. The pickings were good. Men got rich very quickly at this business. And there existed this great advantage in favour of the dive-keeper: nobody cared what happened to a riverman. You could pound him over the head with a lead pipe, or drug his drink, or choke him to insensibility, or rob him and throw him out into the street, or even drop him tidily through a trap-door into the river flowing conveniently beneath. Nobody bothered—unless, of course, the affair was so bungled as to become public. The police knew enough to stay away when the drive hit town. They would have been annihilated if they had not. The only fly in the divekeeper's ointment was that the riverman would fight back.
And fight back he did, until from one end of his street to the other he had left the battered evidences of his skill as a warrior. His constant heavy lifting made him as hard as nails and as strong as a horse; the continual demand on his agility in riding the logs kept him active and prevented him from becoming muscle-bound; in his wild heart was not the least trace of fear of anything that walked, crawled, or flew. And he was as tireless as machinery, and apparently as indifferent to punishment as a man cast in iron.
Add to this a happy and complete disregard of consequences—to himself or others—of anything he did, and, in his own words, he was a “hard man to nick.”
As yet the season was too early for much joy along Hell's Half-Mile. Orde's little crew, and the forty or fifty men of the drive that had preceded him, constituted the rank and file at that moment in town. A little later, when all the drives on the river should be in, and those of its tributaries, and the men still lingering at the woods camps, at least five hundred woods-weary men would be turned loose. Then Hell's Half-Mile would awaken in earnest from its hibernation. The lights would blaze from day to day. From its opened windows would blare the music, the cries of men and women, the shuffle of feet, the noise of fighting, the shrieks of wild laughter, curses deep and frank and unashamed, songs broken and interrupted. Crews of men, arms locked, would surge up and down the narrow sidewalks, their little felt hats cocked one side, their heads back, their fearless eyes challenging the devil and all his works—and getting the challenge accepted. Girls would flit across the lit windows like shadows before flames, or stand in the doorways hailing the men jovially by name. And every few moments, above the roar of this wild inferno, would sound the sudden crash and the dull blows of combat. Only, never was heard the bark of the pistol. The fighting was fierce, and it included kicking with the sharp steel boot-caulks, biting and gouging; but it barred knives and firearms. And when Hell's Half-Mile was thus in full eruption, the citizens of Redding stayed away from Water Street after dark. “Drive's in,” said they, and had business elsewhere. And the next group of rivermen, hurrying toward the fun, broke into an eager dog-trot. “Taking the old town apart to-night,” they told each other. “Let's get in the game.”
To-night, however, the street was comparatively quiet. The saloons were of modified illumination. In many of them men stood drinking, but in a sociable rather than a hilarious mood. Old friends of the two drives were getting together for a friendly glass. The barkeepers were listlessly wiping the bars. The “pretty waiter-girls” gossiped with each other and yawned behind their hands. From several doorways Orde's little compact group was accosted by the burly saloonkeepers.
“Hullo, boys!” said they invariably, “glad to see you back. Come in and have a drink on me.”
Well these men knew that one free drink would mean a dozen paid for. But the rivermen merely shook their heads.
“Huh!” sneered one of the girls. “Them's no river-jacks! Them's just off the hay trail, I bet!”
But even this time-honoured and generally effective taunt was ignored.
In the middle of the third block Orde wheeled sharp to the left down a dark and dangerous-looking alley. Another turn to the right brought him into a very narrow street. Facing this street stood a three-story wooden structure, into which led a high-arched entrance up a broad half-flight of wooden steps. This was McNeill's.
As Orde and his men turned into the narrow street, a figure detached itself from the shadow and approached. Orde uttered an exclamation.
“You here, Newmark?” he cried.
“Yes,” replied that young man. “I want to see this through.”
“With those clothes?” marvelled Orde. “It's a wonder some of these thugs haven't held you up long ago! I'll get Johnny here to go back with you to the main street.”
“No,” argued Newmark, “I want to go in with you.”
“It's dangerous,” explained Orde. “You're likely to get slugged.”
“I can stand it if you can,” returned Newmark.
“I doubt it,” said Orde grimly. “However, it's your funeral. Come on, if you want to.”
McNeill's lower story was given over entirely to drinking. A bar ran down all one side of the room. Dozens of little tables occupied the floor. “Pretty waiter-girls” were prepared to serve drinks at these latter—and to share in them, at a commission. The second floor was a theatre, and the third a dance-hall. Beneath the building were still viler depths. From this basement the riverman and the shanty boy generally graduated penniless, and perhaps unconscious, to the street. Now, your lumber-jack did not customarily arrive at this stage without more or less lively doings en route; therefore McNeill's maintained a force of fighters. They were burly, sodden men, in striking contrast to the clean-cut, clear-eyed rivermen, but strong in their experience and their discipline. To be sure, they might not last quite as long as their antagonists could—a whisky training is not conducive to long wind—but they always lasted plenty long enough. Sand-bags and brass knuckles helped some, ruthless singleness of purpose counted, and team work finished the job. At times the storm rose high, but up to now McNeill had always ridden it.
Orde and his men entered the lower hall, as though sauntering in without definite aim. Perhaps a score of men were in the room. Two tables of cards were under way—with a great deal of noisy card-slapping that proclaimed the game merely friendly. Eight or ten other men wandered about idly, chaffing loudly with the girls, pausing to overlook the card games, glancing with purposeless curiosity at the professional gamblers sitting quietly behind their various lay-outs. It was a dull evening.
Orde wandered about with the rest, a wide, good-natured smile on his face.
“Start your little ball to rolling for that,” he instructed the roulette man, tossing down a bill. “Dropped again!” he lamented humorously. “Can't seem to have any luck.”
He drifted on to the crap game.
“Throw us the little bones, pardner,” he said. “I'll go you a five on it.”
He lost here, and so found himself at the table presided over by the three-card monte men. The rest of his party, who had according to instructions scattered about the place, now began quietly to gravitate in his direction.
“What kind of a lay-out is this?” inquired Orde.
The dealer held up the three cards face out.
“What kind of an eye have you got, bub?” he asked.
“Oh, I don't know. A pretty fair eye. Why?”
“Do you think you could pick out the jack when I throw them out like this?” asked the dealer.
“Sure! She's that one.”
“Well,” exclaimed the gambler with a pretence of disgust, “damn if you didn't! I bet you five dollars you can't do it again.”
“Take you!” replied Orde. “Put up your five.”
Again Orde was permitted to pick the jack.
“You've got the best eye that's been in this place since I got here,” claimed the dealer admiringly. “Here, Dennis,” said he to his partner, “try if you can fool this fellow.”
Dennis obligingly took the cards, threw them, and lost. By this time the men, augmented by the idlers not busy with the card games, had drawn close.
“Sail into 'em, bub,” encouraged one.
Whether it was that the gamblers, expert in the reading of a man's mood and intentions, sensed the fact that Orde might be led to plunge, or whether, more simply, they were using him as a capper to draw the crowd into their game, it would be difficult to say, but twice more they bungled the throw and permitted him to win.
Newmark plucked him at the sleeve.
“You're twenty dollars ahead,” he muttered. “Quit it! I never saw anybody beat this game that much before.”
Orde merely shrugged him off with an appearance of growing excitement, while an HABITUE of the place, probably one of the hired fighters, growled into Newmark's ear.
“Shut up, you damn dude!” warned this man. “Keep out of what ain't none of your business.”
“What limit do you put on this game, anyway?” Orde leaned forward, his eyes alight.
The two gamblers spoke swiftly apart.
“How much do you want to bet?” asked one.
“Would you stand for five hundred dollars?” asked Orde.
A dead silence fell on the group. Plainly could be heard the men's quickened breathing. The shouts and noise from the card parties blundered through the stillness. Some one tiptoed across and whispered in the ear of the nearest player. A moment later the chairs at the two tables scraped back. One of them fell violently to the floor. Their occupants joined the tense group about the monte game. All the girls drew near. Only behind the bar the white-aproned bartenders wiped their glasses with apparent imperturbability, their eyes, however, on their brass knuckles hanging just beneath the counter, their ears pricked up for the riot call.
The gambler pretended to deliberate, his cool, shifty eyes running over the group before him. A small door immediately behind him swung slowly ajar an inch or so.
“Got the money?” he asked.
“Have you?” countered Orde.
Apparently satisfied, the man nodded.
“I'll go you, bub, if I lose,” said he. “Lay out your money.”
Orde counted out nine fifty-dollar bills and five tens. Probably no one in the group of men standing about had realised quite how much money five hundred dollars meant until they saw it thus tallied out before them.
“All right,” said the gambler, taking up the cards.
“Hold on!” cried Orde. “Where's yours?”
“Oh, that's all right,” the gambler reassured him. “I'm with the house. I guess McNeill's credit is good,” he laughed.
“That may all be,” insisted Orde, “but I'm putting up my good money, and I expect to see good money put up in return.”
They wrangled over this point for some time, but Orde was obstinate. Finally the gamblers yielded. A canvass of the drawer, helped out by the bar and the other games, made up the sum. It bulked large on the table beside Orde's higher denominations.
The interested audience now consisted of the dozen men comprised by Orde's friends; nearly twice as many strangers, evidently rivermen; eight hangers-on of the joint, probably fighters and “bouncers”; half a dozen professional gamblers, and several waitresses. The four barkeepers still held their positions. Of these, the rivermen were scattered loosely back of Orde, although Orde's own friends had by now gathered compactly enough at his shoulder. The mercenaries and gamblers had divided, and flanked the table at either side. Newmark, a growing wonder and disgust creeping into his usually unexpressive face, recognised the strategic advantage of this arrangement. In case of difficulty, a determined push would separate the rivermen from the gamblers long enough for the latter to disappear quietly through the small door at the back.
“Satisfied?” inquired the gambler briefly.
“Let her flicker,” replied Orde with equal brevity.
A gasp of anticipation went up. Quite coolly the gambler made his passes. With equal coolness and not the slightest hesitation, Orde planted his great red fist on one of the cards.
“That is the jack,” he announced, looking the gambler in the eye.
“Oh, is it?” sneered the dealer. “Well, turn it over and let's see.”
“No!” roared Orde. “YOU TURN OVER THE OTHER TWO!”
A low oath broke from the gambler, and his face contorted in a spasm. The barkeepers slid out from behind the bar. For a moment the situation was tense and threatening. The dealer with a sweeping glance again searched the faces of those before him. In that moment, probably, he made up his mind that an open scandal must be avoided. Force and broken bones, even murder, might be all right enough under colour of right. If Orde had turned up for a jack the card on which he now held his fist, and then had attempted to prove cheating, a cry of robbery and a lively fight would have given opportunity for making way with the stakes. But McNeill's could not afford to be shown up before thirty interested rivermen as running an open-and-shut brace-game. However, the gambler made a desperate try at what he must have known was a very forlorn hope.
“That isn't the way this game is played,” said he. “Show up your jack.”
“It's the way I play it,” replied Orde sternly. “These gentlemen heard the bet.” He reached over and dexterously flipped over the other two cards. “You see, neither of these is the jack; this must be.”
“You win,” assented the gambler, after a pause.
Orde, his fist still on the third card, began pocketing the stakes with the other hand. The gambler reached, palm up, across the table.
“Give me the other card,” said he.
Orde picked it up, laughing. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, holding the bit of pasteboard tantalisingly outstretched, as though he were going to turn also this one face up. Then, quite deliberately he looked to right and to left where the fighters awaited their signal, laughed again, and handed the card to the gambler.
At once pandemonium broke loose. The rivermen of Orde's party fairly shouted with joy over the unexpected trick; the employees of the resort whispered apart; the gambler explained, low-voiced and angry, his reasons for not putting up a fight for so rich a stake.
“All to the bar!” yelled Orde.
They made a rush, and lined up and ordered their drinks. Orde poured his on the floor and took the glass belonging to the man next him.
“Get them to give you another, Tim,” said he. “No knock-out drops, if I can help it.”
The men drank, and some one ordered another round.
“Tim,” said Orde, low-voiced, “get the crowd together and we'll pull out. I've a thousand dollars on me, and they'll sand-bag me sure if I go alone. And let's get out right off.”
Ten minutes later they all stood safely on the lighted thoroughfare of Water Street.
“Good-night, boys,” said Orde. “Go easy, and show up at the booms Monday.”
He turned up the street toward the main part of the town. Newmark joined him.
“I'll walk a little ways with you,” he explained. “And I say, Orde, I want to apologise to you. 'Most of the evening I've been thinking you the worst fool I ever saw, but you can take care of yourself at every stage of the game. The trick was good, but your taking the other fellow's drink beat it.”
Orde heard no more of Newmark—and hardly thought of him—until over two weeks later.
In the meantime the riverman, assuming the more conventional garments of civilisation, lived with his parents in the old Orde homestead at the edge of town. This was a rather pretentious two-story brick structure, in the old solid, square architecture, surrounded by a small orchard, some hickories, and a garden. Orde's father had built it when he arrived in the pioneer country from New England forty years before. At that time it was considered well out in the country. Since then the town had crept to it, so that the row of grand old maples in front shaded a stone-guttered street. A little patch of corn opposite, and many still vacant lots above, placed it, however, as about the present limit of growth.
Jack Orde was the youngest and most energetic of a large family that had long since scattered to diverse cities and industries. He and Grandpa and Grandma Orde dwelt now in the big, echoing, old-fashioned house alone, save for the one girl who called herself the “help” rather than the servant. Grandpa Orde, now above sixty, was tall, straight, slender. His hair was quite white, and worn a little long. His features were finely chiselled and aquiline. From them looked a pair of piercing, young, black eyes. In his time, Grandpa Orde had been a mighty breaker of the wilderness; but his time had passed, and with the advent of a more intensive civilisation he had fallen upon somewhat straitened ways. Grandma Orde, on the other hand, was a very small, spry old lady, with a small face, a small figure, small hands and feet. She dressed in the then usual cap and black silk of old ladies. Half her time she spent at her housekeeping, which she loved, jingling about from cellar to attic store-room, seeing that Amanda, the “help,” had everything in order. The other half she sat in a wooden “Dutch” rocking-chair by a window overlooking the garden. Her silk-shod feet rested neatly side by side on a carpet-covered hassock, her back against a gay tapestried cushion. Near her purred big Jim, a maltese rumoured to weigh fifteen pounds. Above her twittered a canary.
And the interior of the house itself was in keeping. The low ceilings, the slight irregularities of structure peculiar to the rather rule-of-thumb methods of the earlier builders, the deep window embrasures due to the thickness of the walls, the unexpected passages leading to unsuspected rooms, and the fact that many of these apartments were approached by a step or so up or a step or so down—these lent to it a quaint, old-fashioned atmosphere enhanced further by the steel engravings, the antique furnishings, the many-paned windows, and all the belongings of old people who have passed from a previous generation untouched by modern ideas.
To this house and these people Orde came direct from the greatness of the wilderness and the ferocity of Hell's Half-Mile. Such contrasts were possible even ten or fifteen years ago. The untamed country lay at the doors of the most modern civilisation.
Newmark, reappearing one Sunday afternoon at the end of the two weeks, was apparently bothered. He examined the Orde place for some moments; walked on beyond it; finding nothing there, he returned, and after some hesitation turned in up the tar sidewalk and pulled at the old-fashioned wire bell-pull. Grandma Orde herself answered the door.
At sight of her fine features, her dainty lace cap and mitts, and the stiffness of her rustling black silks, Newmark took off his gray felt hat.
“Good-afternoon,” said he. “Will you kindly tell me where Mr. Orde lives?”
“This is Mr. Orde's,” replied the little old lady.
“Pardon me,” persisted Newmark, “I am looking for Mr. Jack Orde, and I was directed here. I am sorry to have troubled you.”
“Mr. Jack Orde lives here,” returned Grandma Orde. “He is my son. Would you like to see him?”
“If you please,” assented Newmark gravely, his thin, shrewd face masking itself with its usual expression of quizzical cynicism.
“Step this way, please, and I'll call him,” requested his interlocutor, standing aside from the doorway.
Newmark entered the cool, dusky interior, and was shown to the left into a dim, long room. He perched on a mahogany chair, and had time to notice the bookcases with the white owl atop, the old piano with the yellowing keys, the haircloth sofa and chairs, the steel engravings, and the two oil portraits, when Orde's large figure darkened the door.
For an instant the young man, who must just have come in from the outside sunshine, blinked into the dimness. Newmark, too, blinked back, although he could by this time see perfectly well.
Newmark had known Orde only as a riverman. Like most Easterners, then and now, he was unable to imagine a man in rough clothes as being anything but essentially a rough man. The figure he saw before him was decently and correctly dressed in what was then the proper Sunday costume. His big figure set off the cloth to advantage, and even his wind-reddened face seemed toned down and refined by the change in costume and surroundings.
“Oh, it's you, Mr. Newmark!” cried Orde in his hearty way, and holding out his hand. “I'm glad to see you. Where you been? Come on out of there. This is the 'company place.'” Without awaiting a reply, he led the way into the narrow hall, whence the two entered another, brighter room, in which Grandma Orde sat, the canary singing above her head.
“Mother,” said Orde, “this is Mr. Newmark, who was with us on the drive this spring.”
Grandma Orde laid her gold-bowed glasses and her black leather Bible on the stand beside her.
“Mr. Newmark and I spoke at the door,” said she, extending her frail hand with dignity. “If you were on the drive, Mr. Newmark, you must have been one of the High Privates in this dreadful war we all read about.”
Newmark laughed and made some appropriate reply. A few moments later, at Orde's suggestion, the two passed out a side door and back into the remains of the old orchard.
“It's pretty nice here under the trees,” said Orde. “Sit down and light up. Where you been for the last couple of weeks?”
“I caught Johnson's drive and went on down river with him to the lake,” replied Newmark, thrusting the offered cigar in one corner of his mouth and shaking his head at Orde's proffer of a light.
“You must like camp life.”
“I do not like it at all,” negatived Newmark emphatically, “but the drive interested me. It interested me so much that I've come back to talk to you about it.”
“Fire ahead,” acquiesced Orde.
“I'm going to ask you a few questions about yourself, and you can answer them or not, just as you please.”
“Oh, I'm not bashful about my career,” laughed Orde.
“How old are you?” inquired Newmark abruptly.
“Thirty.”
“How long have you been doing that sort of thing—driving, I mean?”
“Off and on, about six years.”
“Why did you go into that particular sort of thing?”
Orde selected a twig and carefully threw it at a lump in the turf.
“Because there's nothing ahead of shovelling but dirt,” he replied with a quaint grin.
“I see,” said Newmark, after a pause. “Then you think there's more future to that sort of thing than the sort of thing the rest of your friends go in for—law, and wholesale groceries, and banking and the rest of it?”
“There is for me,” replied Orde simply.
“Yet you're merely river-driving on a salary at thirty.”
Orde flushed slowly, and shifted his position.
“Exactly so—Mr. District Attorney,” he said drily.
Newmark started from his absorption in his questioning and shifted his unlighted cigar.
“Does sound like it,” he admitted; “but I'm not asking all this out of idle curiosity. I've got a scheme in my head that I think may work out big for us both.”
“Well,” assented Orde reservedly, “in that case—I'm foreman on this drive because my outfit went kerplunk two years ago, and I'm making a fresh go at it.”
“Failed?” inquired Newmark.
“Partner skedaddled,” replied Orde. “Now, if you're satisfied with my family history, suppose you tell me what the devil you're driving at.”
He was plainly restive under the cross-examination to which he had been subjected.
“Look here,” said Newmark, abruptly changing the subject, “you know that rapids up river flanked by shallows, where the logs are always going aground?”
“I do,” replied Orde, still grim.
“Well, why wouldn't it help to put a string of piers down both sides, with booms between them to hold the logs in the deeper water?”
“It would,” said Orde.
“Why isn't it done, then?”
“Who would do it?” countered Orde, leaning back more easily in the interest of this new discussion. “If Daly did it, for instance, then all the rest of the drivers would get the advantage of it for nothing.”
“Get them to pay their share.”
Orde grinned. “I'd like to see you get any three men to agree to anything on this river.”
“And a sort of dam would help at that Spruce Rapids?”
“Sure! If you improved the river for driving, she'd be easier to drive. That goes without saying.”
“How many firms drive logs on this stream?”
“Ten,” replied Orde, without hesitation.
“How many men do they employ?”
“Driving?” asked Orde.
“Driving.”
“About five hundred; a few more or less.”
“Now suppose,” Newmark leaned forward impressively, “suppose a firm should be organised to drive ALL the logs on the river. Suppose it improved the river with necessary piers, dams, and all the rest of it, so that the driving would be easier. Couldn't it drive with less than five hundred men, and couldn't it save money on the cost of driving?”
“It might,” agreed Orde.
“You know the conditions here. If such a firm should be organised and should offer to drive the logs for these ten firms at so much a thousand, do you suppose it would get the business?”
“It would depend on the driving firm,” said Orde. “You see, mill men have got to have their logs. They can't afford to take chances. It wouldn't pay.”
“Then that's all right,” agreed Newmark, with a gleam of satisfaction across his thin face. “Would you form a partnership with me having such an object in view?”
Orde threw back his head and laughed with genuine amusement.
“I guess you don't realise the situation,” said he. “We'd have to have a few little things like distributing booms, and tugs, and a lot of tools and supplies and works of various kinds.”
“Well, we'd get them.”
It was now Orde's turn to ask questions.
“How much are you worth?” he inquired bluntly.
“About twenty thousand dollars,” replied Newmark.
“Well, if I raise very much more than twenty thousand cents, I'm lucky just now.”
“How much capital would we have to have?” asked Newmark.
Orde thought for several minutes, twisting the petal of an old apple-blossom between his strong, blunt fingers.
“Somewhere near seventy-five thousand dollars,” he estimated at last.
“That's easy,” cried Newmark. “We'll make a stock company—say a hundred thousand shares. We'll keep just enough between us to control the company—say fifty-one thousand. I'll put in my pile, and you can pay for yours out of the earnings of the company.”
“That doesn't sound fair,” objected Orde.
“You pay interest,” explained Newmark. “Then we'll sell the rest of the stock to raise the rest of the money.”
“If we can,” interjected Orde.
“I think we can,” asserted Newmark.
Orde fell into a brown study, occasionally throwing a twig or a particle of earth at the offending lump in the turf. Overhead the migratory warblers balanced right-side up or up-side down, searching busily among the new leaves, uttering their simple calls. The air was warm and soft and still, the sky bright. Fat hens clucked among the grasses. A feel of Sunday was in the air.
“I must have something to live on,” said he thoughtfully at last.
“So must I,” said Newmark. “We'll have to pay ourselves salaries, of course, but the smaller the better at first. You'll have to take charge of the men and the work and all the rest of it—I don't know anything about that. I'll attend to the incorporating and the routine, and I'll try to place the stock. You'll have to see, first of all, whether you can get contracts from the logging firms to drive the logs.”
“How can I tell what to charge them?”
“We'll have to figure that very closely. You know where these different drives would start from, and how long each of them would take?”
“Oh, yes; I know the river pretty well.”
“Well, then we'll figure how many days' driving there is for each, and how many men there are, and what it costs for wages, grub, tools—we'll just have to figure as near as we can to the actual cost, and then add a margin for profit and for interest on our investment.”
“It might work out all right,” admitted Orde.
“I'm confident it would,” asserted Newmark. “And there'd be no harm figuring it all out, would there?”
“No,” agreed Orde, “that would be fun all right.”
At this moment Amanda appeared at the back door and waved an apron.
“Mr. Jack!” she called. “Come in to dinner.”
Newmark looked puzzled, and, as he arose, glanced surreptitiously at his watch. Orde seemed to take the summons as one to be expected, however. In fact, the strange hour was the usual Sunday custom in the Redding of that day, and had to do with the late-church freedom of Amanda and her like.
“Come in and eat with us,” invited Orde. “We'd be glad to have you.”
But Newmark declined.
“Come up to-morrow night, then, at half-past six, for supper,” Orde urged him. “We can figure on these things a little. I'm in Daly's all day, and hardly have time except evenings.”
To this Newmark assented. Orde walked with him down the deep-shaded driveway with the clipped privet hedge on one side, to the iron gate that swung open when one drove over a projecting lever. There he said good-bye.
A moment later he entered the long dining-room, where Grandpa and Grandma Orde were already seated. An old-fashioned service of smooth silver and ivory-handled steel knives gave distinction to the plain white linen. A tea-pot smothered in a “cosey” stood at Grandma Orde's right. A sirloin roast on a noble platter awaited Grandpa Orde's knife.
Orde dropped into his place with satisfaction.
“Shut up, Cheep!” he remarked to a frantic canary hanging in the sunshine.
“Your friend seems a nice-appearing young man,” said Grandma Orde. “Wouldn't he stay to dinner?”
“I asked him,” replied Orde, “but he couldn't. He and I have a scheme for making our everlasting fortunes.”
“Who is he?” asked grandma.
Orde dropped his napkin into his lap with a comical chuckle of dismay.
“Blest if I have the slightest idea, mother,” he said. “Newmark joined us on the drive. Said he was a lawyer, and was out in the woods for his health. He's been with us, studying and watching the work, ever since.”
“I think I'll go see Jane Hubbard this evening,” Orde remarked to his mother, as he arose from the table. This was his method of announcing that he would not be home for supper.
Jane Hubbard lived in a low one-story house of blue granite, situated amid a grove of oaks at the top of the hill. She was a kindly girl, whose parents gave her free swing, and whose house, in consequence, was popular with the younger people. Every Sunday she offered to all who came a “Sunday-night lunch,” which consisted of cold meats, cold salad, bread, butter, cottage cheese, jam, preserves, and the like, warmed by a cup of excellent tea. These refreshments were served by the guests themselves. It did not much matter how few or how many came.
On the Sunday evening in question Orde found about the usual crowd gathered. Jane herself, tall, deliberate in movement and in speech, kindly and thoughtful, talked in a corner with Ernest Colburn, who was just out of college, and who worked in a bank. Mignonne Smith, a plump, rather pretty little body with a tremendous aureole of hair like spun golden fire, was trying to balance a croquet-ball on the end of a ruler. The ball regularly fell off. Three young men, standing in attentive attitudes, thereupon dove forward in an attempt to catch it before it should hit the floor—which it generally did with a loud thump. A collapsed chair of slender lines stacked against the wall attested previous acrobatics. This much Orde, standing in the doorway, looked upon quite as the usual thing. Only he missed the Incubus. Searching the room with his eyes, he at length discovered that incoherent, desiccated, but persistent youth VIS-A-VIS with a stranger. Orde made out the white of her gown in the shadows, the willowy outline of her small and slender figure, and the gracious forward bend of her head.
The company present caught sight of Orde standing in the doorway, and suspended occupations to shout at him joyfully. He was evidently a favourite. The strange girl in the corner turned to him a white, long face, of which he could see only the outline and the redness of the lips where the lamplight reached them. She leaned slightly forward and the lips parted. Orde's muscular figure, standing square and uncompromising in the doorway, the out-of-door freshness of his complexion, the steadiness of his eyes laughing back a greeting, had evidently attracted her. Or perhaps anything was a relief from the Incubus.
“So you're back at last, are you, Jack?” drawled Jane in her lazy, good-natured way. “Come and meet Miss Bishop. Carroll, I want to present Mr. Orde.”
Orde bowed ceremoniously into the penumbra cast by the lamp's broad shade. The girl inclined gracefully her small head with the glossy hair. The Incubus, his thin hands clasped on his knee, his sallow face twisted in one of its customary wry smiles, held to the edge of his chair with characteristic pertinacity.
“Well, Walter,” Orde addressed him genially, “are you having a good time?”
“Yes-indeed!” replied the Incubus as though it were one word.
His chair was planted squarely to exclude all others. Orde surveyed the situation with good-humour.
“Going to keep the other fellow from getting a chance, I see.”
“Yes-indeed!” replied the Incubus.
Orde bent over, and with great ease lifted Incubus, chair, and all, and set him facing Mignonne Smith and the croquet-ball.
“Here, Mignonne,” said he, “I've brought you another assistant.”
He returned to the lamp, to find the girl, her dark eyes alight with amusement, watching him intently. She held the tip of a closed fan against her lips, which brought her head slightly forward in an attitude as though she listened. Somehow there was about her an air of poise, of absolute balanced repose quite different from Jane's rather awkward statics, and in direct contrast to Mignonne's dynamics.
“Walter is a very bright man in his own line,” said Orde, swinging forward a chair, “but he mustn't be allowed any monopolies.”
“How do you know I want him so summarily removed?” the girl asked him, without changing either her graceful attitude of suspended motion or the intentness of her gaze.
“Well,” argued Orde, “I got him to say all he ever says to any girl—'Yes-indeed!'—so you couldn't have any more conversation from him. If you want to look at him, why, there he is in plain sight. Besides, I want to talk to you myself.”
“Do you always get what you want?” inquired the girl.
Orde laughed.
“Any one can get anything he wants, if only he wants it bad enough,” he asserted.
The girl pondered this for a moment, and finally lowered and opened her fan, and threw back her head in a more relaxed attitude.
“Some people,” she amended. “However, I forgive you. I will even flatter you by saying I am glad you came. You look to have reached the age of discretion. I venture to say that these boys' idea of a lively evening is to throw bread about the table.”
Orde flushed a little. The last time he had supped at Jane Hubbard's, that was exactly what they did do.
“They are young, of course,” he said, “and you and I are very old and wise. But having a noisy, good time isn't such a great crime—or is it where you came from?”
The girl leaned forward, a sparkle of interest in her eyes.
“Are you and I going to fight?” she demanded.
“That depends on you,” returned Orde squarely, but with perfect good-humour.
They eyed each other a moment. Then the girl closed her fan, and leaned forward to touch him on the arm with it.
“You are quite right not to allow me to say mean things about your friends, and I am a nasty little snip.”
Orde bowed with sudden gravity.
“And they do throw bread,” said he.
They both laughed. She leaned back with a movement of satisfaction, seeming to sink into the shadows.
“Now, tell me; what do you do?”
“What do I do?” asked Orde, puzzled.
“Yes. Everybody does something out West here. It's a disgrace not to do something, isn't it?”
“Oh, my business! I'm a river-driver just now.”
“A river-driver?” she repeated, once more leaning forward. “Why, I've just been hearing a great deal about you.”
“That so?” he inquired.
“Yes, from Mrs. Baggs.”
“Oh!” said Orde. “Then you know what a drunken, swearing, worthless lot of bums and toughs we are, don't you?”
For the first time, in some subtle way she broke the poise of her attitude.
“There is Hell's Half-Mile,” she reminded him.
“Oh, yes,” said Orde bitterly, “there's Hell's Half-Mile! Whose fault is that? My rivermen's? My boys? Look here! I suppose you couldn't understand it, if you tried a month; but suppose you were working out in the woods nine months of the year, up early in the morning and in late at night. Suppose you slept in rough blankets, on the ground or in bunks, ate rough food, never saw a woman or a book, undertook work to scare your city men up a tree and into a hole too easy, risked your life a dozen times a week in a tangle of logs, with the big river roaring behind just waiting to swallow you; saw nothing but woods and river, were cold and hungry and wet, and so tired you couldn't wiggle, until you got to feeling like the thing was never going to end, and until you got sick of it way through in spite of the excitement and danger. And then suppose you hit town, where there were all the things you hadn't had—and the first thing you struck was Hell's Half-Mile. Say! you've seen water behind a jam, haven't you? Water-power's a good thing in a mill course, where it has wheels to turn; but behind a jam it just RIPS things—oh, what's the use talking! A girl doesn't know what it means. She couldn't understand.”
He broke off with an impatient gesture. She was looking at him intently, her lips again half-parted.
“I think I begin to understand a little,” said she softly. She smiled to herself. “But they are a hard and heartless class in spite of all their energy and courage, aren't they?” she drew him out.
“Hard and heartless!” exploded Orde. “There's no kinder lot of men on earth, let me tell you. Why, there isn't a man on that river who doesn't chip in five or ten dollars when a man is hurt or killed; and that means three or four days' hard work for him. And he may not know or like the injured man at all! Why—”
“What's all the excitement?” drawled Jane Hubbard behind them. “Can't you make it a to-be-continued-in-our-next? We're 'most starved.”
“Yes-indeed!” chimed in the Incubus.
The company trooped out to the dining-room where the table, spread with all the good things, awaited them.
“Ernest, you light the candles,” drawled Jane, drifting slowly along the table with her eye on the arrangements, “and some of you boys go get the butter and the milk-pitcher from the ice-box.”
To Orde's relief, no one threw any bread, although the whole-hearted fun grew boisterous enough before the close of the meal. Miss Bishop sat directly across from him. He had small chance of conversation with her in the hubbub that raged, but he gained full leisure to examine her more closely in the fuller illumination. Throughout, her note was of fineness. Her hands, as he had already noticed, were long, the fingers tapering; her wrists were finely moulded, but slender, and running without abrupt swelling of muscles into the long lines of her forearm; her figure was rounded, but built on the curves of slenderness; her piled, glossy hair was so fine that though it was full of wonderful soft shadows denied coarser tresses, its mass hardly did justice to its abundance. Her face, again, was long and oval, with a peculiar transparence to the skin and a peculiar faint, healthy circulation of the blood well below the surface, which relieved her complexion of pallor, but did not give her a colour. The lips, on the contrary, were satin red, and Orde was mildly surprised, after his recent talk, to find them sensitively moulded, and with a quaint, child-like quirk at the corners. Her eyes were rather contemplative, and so black as to resemble spots.
In spite of her half-scornful references to “bread-throwing,” she joined with evident pleasure in the badinage and more practical fun which struck the note of the supper. Only Orde thought to discern even in her more boisterous movements a graceful, courteous restraint, to catch in the bend of her head a dainty concession to the joy of the moment, to hear in the tones of her laughter a reservation of herself, which nevertheless was not at all a reservation, against the others.
After the meal was finished, each had his candle to blow out, and then all returned to the parlour, leaving the debris for the later attention of the “hired help.”
Orde with determination made his way to Miss Bishop's side. She smiled at him.
“You see, I am a hypocrite as well as a mean little snip,” said she. “I threw a little bread myself.”
“Threw bread?” repeated Orde. “I didn't see you.”
“The moon is made of green cheese,” she mocked him, “and there are countries where men's heads do grow beneath their shoulders.” She moved gracefully away toward Jane Hubbard. “Do you Western 'business men' never deal in figures of speech as well as figures of the other sort?” she wafted back to him over her shoulder.
“I was very stupid,” acknowledged Orde, following her.
She stopped and faced him in the middle of the room, smiling quizzically.
“Well?” she challenged.
“Well, what?” asked Orde, puzzled.
“I thought perhaps you wanted to ask me something.”
“Why?”
“Your following me,” she explained, the corners of her mouth smiling. “I had turned away—”
“I just wanted to talk to you,” said Orde.
“And you always get what you want,” she repeated. “Well?” she conceded, with a shrug of mock resignation. But the four other men here cut in with a demand.
“Music!” they clamoured. “We want music!”
With a nod, Miss Bishop turned to the piano, sweeping aside her white draperies as she sat. She struck a few soft chords, and then, her long hands wandering idly and softly up and down the keys, she smiled at them over her shoulder.
“What shall it be?” she inquired.
Some one thrust an open song-book on the rack in front of her. The others gathered close about, leaning forward to see.
Song followed song, at first quickly, then at longer intervals. At last the members of the chorus dropped away one by one to occupations of their own. The girl still sat at the piano, her head thrown back idly, her hands wandering softly in and out of melodies and modulations. Watching her, Orde finally saw only the shimmer of her white figure, and the white outline of her head and throat. All the rest of the room was gray from the concentration of his gaze. At last her hands fell in her lap. She sat looking straight ahead of her.
Orde at once arose and came to her.
“That was a wonderfully quaint and beautiful thing,” said he. “What was it?”
She turned to him, and he saw that the mocking had gone from her eyes and mouth, leaving them quite simple, like a child's.
“Did you like it?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Orde. He hesitated and stammered awkwardly. “It was so still and soothing, it made me think of the river sometimes about dusk. What was it?”
“It wasn't anything. I was improvising.”
“You made it up yourself?”
“It was myself, I suppose. I love to build myself a garden, and wander on until I lose myself in it. I'm glad there was a river in the garden—a nice, still, twilight river.”
She flashed up at him, her head sidewise.
“There isn't always.” She struck a crashing discord on the piano.
Every one looked up at the sudden noise of it.
“Oh, don't stop!” they cried in chorus, as though each had been listening intently.
The girl laughed up at Orde in amusement. Somehow this flash of an especial understanding between them to the exclusion of the others sent a warm glow to his heart.
“I do wish you had your harp here,” said Jane Hubbard, coming indolently forward. “You just ought to hear her play the harp,” she told the rest. “It's just the best thing you ever DID hear!”
At this moment the outside door opened to admit Mr and Mrs. Hubbard, who had, according to their usual Sunday custom, been spending the evening with a neighbour. This was the signal for departure. The company began to break up.
Orde pushed his broad shoulders in to screen Carroll Bishop from the others.
“Are you staying here?” he asked.
She opened her eyes wide at his brusqueness.
“I'm visiting Jane,” she replied at length, with an affectation of demureness.
“Are you going to be here long?” was Orde's next question.
“About a month.”
“I am coming to see you,” announced Orde. “Good-night.”
He took her hand, dropped it, and followed the others into the hall, leaving her standing by the lamp. She watched him until the outer door had closed behind him. Not once did he look back. Jane Hubbard, returning after a moment from the hall, found her at the piano again, her head slightly one side, playing with painful and accurate exactness a simple one-finger melody.
Orde walked home down the hill in company with the Incubus. Neither had anything to say; Orde because he was absorbed in thought, the Incubus because nothing occurred to draw from him his one remark. Their feet clipped sharply against the tar walks, or rang more hollow on the boards. Overhead the stars twinkled through the still-bare branches of the trees. With few exceptions the houses were dark. People “retired” early in Redding. An occasional hall light burned dimly, awaiting some one's return. At the gate of the Orde place, Orde roused himself to say good-night. He let himself into the dim-lighted hall, hung up his hat, and turned out the gas. For some time he stood in the dark, quite motionless; then, with the accuracy of long habitude, he walked confidently to the narrow stairs and ascended them. Subconsciously he avoided the creaking step, but outside his mother's door he stopped, arrested by a greeting from within.
“That you, Jack?” queried Grandma Orde.
For answer Orde pushed open the door, which stood an inch or so ajar, and entered. A dim light from a distant street-lamp, filtered through the branches of a tree, flickered against the ceiling. By its aid he made out the great square bed, and divined the tiny figure of his mother. He seated himself sidewise on the edge of the bed.
“Go to Jane's?” queried grandma in a low voice, to avoid awakening grandpa, who slept in the adjoining room.
“Yes,” replied Orde, in the same tone.
“Who was there?”
“Oh, about the usual crowd.”
He fell into an abstracted silence, which endured for several minutes.
“Mother,” said he abruptly, at last, “I've met the girl I want for my wife.”
Grandma Orde sat up in bed.
“Who is she?” she demanded.
“Her name is Carroll Bishop,” said Orde, “and she's visiting Jane Hubbard.”
“Yes, but WHO is she?” insisted Grandma Orde. “Where is she from?”
Orde stared at her in the dim light.
“Why, mother,” he repeated for the second time that day, “blest if I know that!”