“I have Heinzman's contract all drawn,” said Newmark the next morning, “and I think I'll go around with you to the office.”
At the appointed time they found the little German awaiting them, a rotund smile of false good-nature illuminating his rosy face. Orde introduced his partner. Newmark immediately took charge of the interview.
“I have executed here the contract, and the bonds secured by Mr. Orde's and my shares of stock in the new company,” he explained. “It is only necessary that you affix your signature and summon the required witnesses.”
Heinzman reached his hands for the papers, beaming over his glasses at the two young men.
As he read, however, his smile vanished, and he looked up sharply.
“Vat is this?” he inquired, a new crispness in his voice. “You tolt me,” he accused Orde, “dot you were not brepared to break out the rollways. You tolt me you would egspect me to do that for myself.”
“Certainly,” agreed Orde.
“Vell, why do you put in this?” demanded Heinzman, reading from the paper in his hand. “'In case said rollways belonging to said parties of the second part are not broken out by the time the drive has reached them, and in case on demand said parties of the second part do refuse or do not exercise due diligence in breaking out said rollways, the said parties of the first part shall themselves break out said rollways, and the said parties of the second part do hereby agree to reimburse said parties of the first part at the rate of a dollar per thousand board feet.'”
“That is merely to protect ourselves,” struck in Newmark.
“But,” exploded Heinzman, his face purpling, “a dollar a tousand is absurd!”
“Of course it is,” agreed Newmark. “We expect it to be. But also we expect you to break out your own rollways in time. It is intended as a penalty in case you don't.”
“I vill not stand for such foolishness,” pounded Heinzman on the arm of his chair.
“Very well,” said Newmark crisply, reaching for the contract.
But Heinzman clung to it.
“It is absurd,” he repeated in a milder tone. “See, I vill strike it out.” He did so with a few dashes of the pen.
“We have no intention,” stated Newmark with decision, “of giving you the chance to hang up our drive.”
Heinzman caught his breath like a child about to cry out.
“So that is what you think!” he shouted at them. “That's the sort of men you think we are! I'll show you you cannot come into honest men's offices to insoolt them by such insinuations!” He tore the contract in pieces and threw it in the waste basket. “Get oudt of here!” he cried.
Newmark arose as dry and precise as ever. Orde was going red and white by turns, and his hands twitched.
“Then I understand you to refuse our offer?” asked Newmark coolly.
“Refuse! Yes! You and your whole kapoodle!” yelled Heinzman.
He hopped down and followed them to the grill door, repeating over and over that he had been insulted. The clerks stared in amazement.
Once at the foot of the dark stairs and in the open street, Orde looked up at the sky with a deep breath of relief.
“Whew!” said he, “that was a terror! We've gone off the wrong foot that time.”
Newmark looked at him with some amusement.
“You don't mean to say that fooled you!” he marvelled.
“What?” asked Orde.
“All that talk about insults, and the rest of the rubbish. He saw we had spotted his little scheme; and he had to retreat somehow. It was as plain as the nose on your face.”
“You think so?” doubted Orde.
“I know so. If he was mad at all, it was only at being found out.”
“Maybe,” said Orde.
“We've got an enemy on our hands in any case,” concluded Newmark, “and one we'll have to look out for, I don't know how he'll do it; but he'll try to make trouble on the river. Perhaps he'll try to block the stream by not breaking his rollways.”
“One of the first things we'll do will be to boom through a channel where Mr. Man's rollways will be,” said Orde.
A faint gleam of approval lit Newmark's eyes.
“I guess you'll be equal to the occasion,” said he drily.
Before the afternoon train, there remained four hours. The partners at once hunted out the little one-story frame building near the river in which Johnson conducted his business.
Johnson received them with an evident reserve of suspicion.
“I see no use in it,” said he, passing his hand over his hair “slicked” down in the lumber-jack fashion. “I can run me own widout help from any man.”
“Which seems to settle that!” said Newmark to Orde after they had left.
“Oh, well, his drive is small; and he's behind us,” Orde pointed out.
“True,” said Newmark thoughtfully.
“Now,” said Newmark, as they trudged back to their hotel to get lunch and their hand-bags. “I'll get to work at my part of it. This proposition of Heinzman's has given me an idea. I'm not going to try to sell this stock outside, but to the men who own timber along the river. Then they won't be objecting to the tolls; for if the company makes any profits, part will go to them.”
“Good idea!” cried Orde.
“I'll take these contracts, to show we can do the business.”
“All correct.”
“And I'll see about incorporation. Also I'll look about and get a proper office and equipments, and get hold of a book-keeper. Of course we'll have to make this our headquarters.”
“I suppose so,” said Orde a little blankly. After an instant he laughed. “Do you know, I hadn't thought of that? We'll have to live here, won't we?”
“Also,” went on Newmark calmly, “I'll buy the supplies to the best advantage I can, and see that they get here in good shape. I have our preliminary lists, and as fast as you think you need anything, send a requisition in to me, and I'll see to it.”
“And I?” inquired Orde.
“You'll get right at the construction. Get the booms built and improve the river where it needs it. Begin to get your crew—I'm not going to tell you how; you know better than I do. Only get everything in shape for next spring's drive. You can start right off. We have my money to begin on.”
Orde laughed and stretched his arms over his head.
“My! She's a nice big job, isn't she?” he cried joyously.
Orde, in spite of his activities, managed to see Carroll Bishop twice during the ensuing week.
On his return home late Monday afternoon, Grandma Orde informed him with a shrewd twinkle that she wanted him surely at home the following evening.
“I've asked in three or four of the young people for a candy pull,” said she.
“Who, mother?” asked Orde.
“Your crowd. The Smiths, Collinses, Jane Hubbard, and Her,” said Grandma Orde, which probably went to show that she had in the meantime been making inquiries, and was satisfied with them.
“Do you suppose they'll care for candy pulling?” hazarded Orde a little doubtfully.
“You mean, will she?” countered Grandma. “Well, I hope for both your sakes she is not beyond a little old-fashioned fun.”
So it proved. The young people straggled in at an early hour after supper—every one had supper in those days. Carroll Bishop and Jane arrived nearly the last. Orde stepped into the hall to help them with their wraps. He was surprised as he approached Miss Bishop to lift her cloak from her shoulders, to find that the top of her daintily poised head, with its soft, fine hair, came well below the level of his eyes. Somehow her poise, her slender grace of movement and of attitude, had lent her the impression of a stature she did not possess. To-night her eyes, while fathomless as ever, shone quietly in anticipation.
“Do you know,” she told Orde delightedly, “I have never been to a real candy pull in my life. It was so good of your mother to ask me. What a dear she looks to-night. And is that your father? I'm going to speak to him.”
She turned through the narrow door into the lighted, low-ceilinged parlour where the company were chatting busily. Orde mechanically followed her. He was arrested by the sound of Jane Hubbard's slow good-humoured voice behind him.
“Now, Jack,” she drawled, “I agree with you perfectly; but that is NO reason why I should be neglected entirely. Come and hang up my coat.”
Full of remorse, Orde turned. Jane Hubbard stood accusingly in the middle of the hall, her plain, shrewd, good-humoured face smiling faintly. Orde met her frank wide eyes with some embarrassment.
“Here it is,” said Jane, holding out the coat. “I don't much care whether you hang it up or not. I just wanted to call you back to wish you luck.” Her slow smile widened, and her gray eyes met his still more knowingly.
Orde seized the coat and her hand at the same time.
“Jane, you're a trump,” said he. “No wonder you're the most popular girl in town.”
“Of course I am, Jack,” she agreed indolently. She entered the parlour.
The candy pulling was a success. Of course everybody got burned a little and spattered a good deal; but that was to be expected. After the product had been broken and been piled on dishes, all trooped to the informal “back sitting-room,” where an open fire invited to stories and games of the quieter sort. Some of the girls sat in chairs, though most joined the men on the hearth.
Carroll Bishop, however, seemed possessed of a spirit of restlessness. The place seemed to interest her. She wandered here and there in the room, looking now at the walnut-framed photograph of Uncle Jim Orde, now at the great pink conch shells either side the door, now at the marble-topped table with its square paper-weight of polished agate and its glass “bell,” beneath which stood a very life-like robin. This “back sitting-room” contained little in the way of ornament. It was filled, on the contrary, with old comfortable chairs, and worn calf-backed books. The girl peered at the titles of these; but the gas-jets had been turned low in favour of the firelight, and she had to give over the effort to identify the volumes. Once she wandered close to Grandma Orde's cushioned wooden rocker, and passed her hand lightly over the old lady's shoulder.
“Do you mind if I look at things?” she asked. “It's so dear and sweet and old and different from our New York homes.”
“Look all you want to, dearie,” said Grandma Orde.
After a moment she passed into the dining-room. Here Orde found her, her hands linked in front of her.
“Oh, it is so quaint and delightful,” she exhaled slowly. “This dear, dear old house with its low ceilings and its queer haphazard lines, and its deep windows, and its old pictures, and queer unexpected things that take your breath away.”
“It is one of the oldest houses in town,” said Orde, “and I suppose it is picturesque. But, you see, I was brought up here, so I'm used to it.”
“Wait until you leave it,” said she prophetically, “and live away from it. Then all these things will come back to you to make your heart ache for them.”
They rambled about together, Orde's enthusiasm gradually kindling at the flame of her own. He showed her the marvellous and painstaking pencil sketch of Napoleon looking out over a maltese-cross sunset done by Aunt Martha at the age of ten. It hung framed in the upper hall.
“It has always been there, ever since I can remember,” said Orde, “and it has seemed to belong there. I've never thought of it as good or bad, just as belonging.”
“I know,” she nodded.
In this spirit also they viewed the plaster statue of Washington in the lower hall, and the Roger's group in the parlour. The glass cabinet of “curiosities” interested her greatly—the carved ivory chessmen, the dried sea-weeds, the stone from Sugar Loaf Rock, the bit from the wreck of the NORTH STAR, the gold and silver shells, the glittering geodes and pyrites, the sandal-wood fan, and all the hundred and one knick-knacks it was then the custom to collect under glass. They even ventured part way up the creaky attic stairs, but it was too dark to enter that mysterious region.
“I hear the drip of water,” she whispered, her finger on her lips.
“It's the tank,” said Orde.
“And has it a Dark Place behind it?” she begged.
“That's just what it has,” said he.
“And—tell me—are there real hair trunks with brass knobs on 'em?”
“Yes, mother has two or three.”
“O-o-h!” she breathed softly. “Don't tell me what's in them. I want to believe in brocades and sashes. Do you know,” she looked at him soberly, “I never had any dark places behind the tank, nor mysterious trunks, when I was a child.”
“You might begin now,” suggested Orde.
“Do you mean to insinuate I haven't grown up?” she mocked. “Thank you! Look OUT!” she cried suddenly, “the Boojum will catch us,” and picking up her skirts she fairly flew down the narrow stairs. Orde could hear the light swish of her draperies down the hall, and then the pat of her feet on the stair carpet of the lower flight.
He followed rather dreamily. A glance into the sitting-room showed the group gathered close around the fire listening to Lem Collin's attempt at a ghost story. She was not there. He found her, then, in the parlour. She was kneeling on the floor before the glass cabinet of curiosities, and she had quite flattened her little nose against the pane. At his exclamation she looked up with a laugh.
“This is the proper altitude from which to view a cabinet of curiosities,” said she, “and something tells me you ought to flatten your nose, too.” She held out both hands to be helped up. “Oh, WHAT a house for a child!” she cried.
After the company had gone, Orde stood long by the front gate looking up into the infinite spaces. Somehow, and vaguely, he felt the night to be akin to her elusive spirit. Farther and farther his soul penetrated into its depths; and yet other depths lay beyond, other mysteries, other unguessed realms. And yet its beauty was the simplicity of space and dark and the stars.
The next time he saw her was at her own house—or rather the house of the friend she visited. Orde went to call on Friday evening and was lucky enough to find the girls home and alone. After a decent interval Jane made an excuse and went out. They talked on a great variety of subjects, and with a considerable approach toward intimacy. Not until nearly time to go did Orde stumble upon the vital point of the evening. He had said something about a plan for the week following.
“But you forget that by that time I shall be gone,” said she.
“Gone!” he echoed blankly. “Where?”
“Home,” said she. “Don't you remember I am to go Sunday morning?”
“I thought you were going to stay a month.”
“I was, but I—certain things came up that made it necessary for me to leave sooner.”
“I—I'm sorry you're going,” stammered Orde.
“So am I,” said she. “I've had a very nice time here.”
“Then I won't see you again,” said Orde, still groping for realisation. “I must go to Monrovia to-morrow. But I'll be down to see you off.”
“Do come,” said she.
“It's not to be for good?” he expostulated. “You'll be coming back.”
She threw her hands palm out, with a pretty gesture of ignorance.
“That is in the lap of the gods,” said she.
“Will you write me occasionally?” he begged.
“As to that—” she began—“I'm a very poor correspondent.”
“But won't you write?” he insisted.
“I do not make it a custom to write to young men.”
“Oh!” he cried, believing himself enlightened. “Will you answer if I write you?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether there is a reply to make.”
“But may I write you?”
“I suppose I couldn't very well prevent you, if you were sure to put on a three-cent stamp.”
“Do you want me to?” persisted Orde.
She began gently to laugh, quite to herself, as though enjoying a joke entirely within her own personal privilege.
“You are so direct and persistent and boy-like,” said she presently. “Now if you'll be very good, and not whisper to the other little pupils, I'll tell you how they do such things usually.” She sat up straight from the depths of her chair, her white, delicately tapering forearms resting lightly on her knees. “Young men desiring to communicate with young ladies do not ask them bluntly. They make some excuse, like sending a book, a magazine, a marked newspaper, or even a bit of desired information. At the same time, they send notes informing the girl of the fact. The girl is naturally expected to acknowledge the politeness. If she wishes the correspondence to continue, she asks a question, or in some other way leaves an opening. Do you see?”
“Yes, I see,” said Orde, slightly crestfallen. “But that's a long time to wait. I like to feel settled about a thing. I wanted to know.”
She dropped back against the cushioned slant of her easy chair, and laughed again.
“And so you just up and asked!” she teased.
“I beg your pardon if I was rude,” he said humbly.
The laughter died slowly from her eyes.
“Don't,” she said. “It would be asking pardon for being yourself. You wanted to know: so you asked. And I'm going to answer. I shall be very glad to correspond with you and tell you about my sort of things, if you happen to be interested in them. I warn you: they are not very exciting.”
“They are yours,” said he.
She half rose to bow in mock graciousness, caught herself, and sank back.
“No, I won't,” she said, more than half to herself. She sat brooding for a moment; then suddenly her mood changed. She sprang up, shook her skirts free, and seated herself at the piano. To Orde, who had also arisen, she made a quaint grimace over her shoulder.
“Admire your handiwork!” she told him. “You are rapidly bringing me to 'tell the truth and shame the devil.' Oh, he must be dying of mortification this evening!” She struck a great crashing chord, holding the keys while the strings reverberated and echoed down slowly into silence again. “It isn't fair,” she went on, “for you big simple men to disarm us. I don't care! I have my private opinion of such brute strength. JE ME MOQUE!”
She wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. Then ruthlessly she drowned his reply in a torrent of music. Like mad she played, rocking her slender body back and forth along the key-board; holding rigid her fingers, her hands, and the muscles of her arms. The bass notes roared like the rumbling of thunder; the treble flashed like the dart of lightnings. Abruptly she muted the instrument. Silence fell as something that had been pent and suddenly released. She arose from the piano stool quite naturally, both hands at her hair.
“Aren't Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard dear old people?” said she.
“What is your address in New York?” demanded Orde. She sank into a chair nearby with a pretty uplifted gesture of despair.
“I surrender!” she cried, and then she laughed until the tears started from her eyes and she had to brush them away with what seemed to Orde an absurd affair to call a handkerchief. “Oh, you are delicious!” she said at last. “Well, listen. I live at 12 West Ninth Street. Can you remember that?” Orde nodded. “And now any other questions the prisoner can reply to without incriminating herself, she is willing to answer.” She folded her hands demurely in her lap.
Two days later Orde saw the train carry her away. He watched the rear car disappear between the downward slopes of two hills, and then finally the last smoke from the locomotive dissipate in the clear blue.
Declining Jane's kindly meant offer of a lift, he walked back to town.
The new firm plunged busily into its more pressing activities. Orde especially had an infinitude of details on his hands. The fat note-book in his side pocket filled rapidly with rough sketches, lists, and estimates. Constantly he interviewed men of all kinds—rivermen, mill men, contractors, boat builders, hardware dealers, pile-driver captains, builders, wholesale grocery men, cooks, axe-men, chore boys—all a little world in itself.
The signs of progress soon manifested themselves. Below Big Bend the pile-drivers were at work, the square masses of their hammers rising rapidly to the tops of the derricks, there to pause a moment before dropping swiftly to a dull THUMP! They were placing a long, compact row, which should be the outer bulwarks separating the sorting-booms from the channel of the river. Ashore the carpenters were knocking together a long, low structure for the cook-house and a larger building, destined to serve as bunk-house for the regular boom-crew. There would also be a blacksmith's forge, a storehouse, a tool and supply-house, a barn, and small separate shanties for the married men. Below more labourers with picks, shovels, axes, and scrapers were cutting out and levelling a road which would, when finished, meet the county road to town. The numerous bayous of great marsh were crossed by “float-bridges,” lying flat on the surface of the water, which spurted up in rhythmical little jets under the impact of hoofs. Down stream eight miles, below the mills, and just beyond where the drawbridge crossed over to Monrovia, Duncan McLeod's shipyards clipped and sawed, and steamed and bent and bolted away at two tugboats, the machinery for which was already being stowed in the hold of a vessel lying at wharf in Chicago. In the storerooms of hardware firms porters carried and clerks checked off chains, strap iron, bolts, spikes, staples, band iron, bar iron, peavies, cant-hooks, pike-poles, sledge-hammers, blocks, ropes, and cables.
These things took time and attention to details; also a careful supervision. The spring increased, burst into leaf and bloom, and settled into summer. Orde was constantly on the move. As soon as low water came with midsummer, however, he arranged matters to run themselves as far as possible, left with Newmark minute instructions as to personal supervision, and himself departed to Redding. Here he joined a crew which Tom North had already collected, and betook himself to the head of the river.
He knew exactly what he intended to do. Far back on the head-waters he built a dam. The construction of it was crude, consisting merely of log cribs filled with stone and debris placed at intervals across the bed of the stream, against which slanted logs made a face. The gate operated simply, and could be raised to let loose an entire flood. And indeed this was the whole purpose of the dam. It created a reservoir from which could be freed new supplies of water to eke out the dropping spring freshets.
Having accomplished this formidable labour—for the trees had to be cut and hauled, the stone carted, and the earth shovelled—the crew next moved down a good ten miles to where the river dropped over a rapids rough and full of boulders. Here were built and placed a row of stone-filled log cribs in a double row down stream to define the channel and to hold the drive in it and away from the shallows near either bank. The profile of these cribs was that of a right-angled triangle, the slanting side up stream. Booms chained between them helped deflect the drive from the shoals. Their more important office, however, was to give footing to the drivers.
For twenty-five miles then nothing of importance was undertaken. Two or three particularly bad boulders were split out by the explosion of powder charges; a number of snags and old trees were cut away and disposed of; the channel was carefully examined for obstructions of any kind whatever. Then the party came to the falls.
Here Orde purposed his most elaborate bit of rough engineering. The falls were only about fifteen feet high, but they fell straight down to a bed of sheer rock. This had been eaten by the eddies into pot-holes and crannies until a jagged irregular scoop-hollow had formed immediately underneath the fall. Naturally this implied a ledge below.
In flood time the water boiled and roared through this obstruction in a torrent. The saw logs, caught in the rush, plunged end on into the scoop-hollow, hit with a crash, and were spewed out below more or less battered, barked, and stripped. Sometimes, however, when the chance of the drive brought down a hundred logs together, they failed to shoot over the barrier of the ledge. Then followed a jam, a bad jam, difficult and dangerous to break. The falls had taken her usurious share of the lives the river annually demands as her toll.
This condition of affairs Orde had determined, if possible, to obviate. From the thirty-five or forty miles of river that lay above, and from its tributaries would come the bulk of the white and Norway pine for years to follow. At least two thirds of each drive Orde figured would come from above the fall.
“If,” said he to North, “we could carry an apron on a slant from just under the crest and over the pot-holes, it would shoot both the water and the logs off a better angle.”
“Sure,” agreed North, “but you'll have fun placing your apron with all that water running through. Why, it would drown us!”
“I've got a notion on that,” said Orde. “First thing is to get the material together.”
A hardwood forest topped the slope. Into this went the axe-men. The straightest trees they felled, trimmed, and dragged, down travoy trails they constructed, on sleds they built for the purpose, to the banks of the river. Here they bored the two holes through either end to receive the bolts when later they should be locked together side by side in their places. As fast as they were prepared, men with cant-hooks rolled them down the slope to a flat below the falls. They did these things swiftly and well, because they were part of the practised day's work, but they shook their heads at the falls.
After the trees had been cut in sufficient number—there were seventy-five of them, each twenty-six feet long—Orde led the way back up stream a half mile to a shallows, where he commanded the construction of a number of exaggerated sawhorses with very widespread slanting legs. In the meantime the cook-wagon and the bed-wagon had evidently been making many trips to Sand Creek, fifteen miles away, as was attested by a large pile of heavy planks. When the sawhorses were completed, Orde directed the picks and shovels to be brought up.
At this point the river, as has been hinted, widened over shoals. The banks at either hand, too, were flat and comparatively low. As is often the case in bends of rivers subject to annual floods, the banks sloped back for some distance into a lower black-ash swamp territory.
Orde set his men to digging a channel through this bank. It was no slight job, from one point of view, as the slope down into the swamp began only at a point forty or fifty feet inland; but on the other hand the earth was soft and free from rocks. When completed the channel gave passage to a rather feeble streamlet from the outer fringe of the river. The men were puzzled, but Orde, by the strange freak of his otherwise frank and open nature, as usual told nothing of his plans, even to Tom North.
“He can't expect to turn that river,” said Tim Nolan, who was once more with the crew. “He'd have to dig a long ways below that level to catch the main current—and then some.”
“Let him alone,” advised North, puffing at his short pipe. “He's wiser than a tree full of owls.”
Next Orde assigned two men to each of the queer-shaped sawhorses, and instructed them to place the horses in a row across the shallowest part of the river, and broadside to the stream. This was done. The men, half-way to their knees in the swift water, bore down heavily to keep their charges in place. Other men immediately began to lay the heavy planks side by side, perpendicular to and on the up-stream side of the horses. The weight of the water clamped them in place; big rocks and gravel shovelled on in quantity prevented the lower ends from rising; the wide slant of the legs directed the pressure so far downward that the horses were prevented from floating away. And slowly the bulk of the water, thus raised a good three feet above its former level, turned aside into the new channel and poured out to inundate the black-ash swamp beyond.
A good volume still poured over the top of the temporary dam and down to the fall; but it was by this expedient so far reduced that work became possible.
“Now, boys!” cried Orde. “Lively, while we've got the chance!”
By means of blocks and tackles and the team horses the twenty-six-foot logs were placed side by side, slanting from a point two feet below the rim of the fall to the ledge below. They were bolted together top and bottom through the four holes bored for that purpose. This was a confusing and wet business. Sufficient water still flowed in the natural channel of the river to dash in spray over the entire work. Men toiled, wet to the skin, their garments clinging to them, their eyes full of water, barely able to breathe, yet groping doggedly at it, and arriving at last. The weather was warm with the midsummer. They made a joke of the difficulty, and found inexhaustible humour in the fact that one of their number was an Immersion Baptist. When the task was finished, they pried the flash-boards from the improvised dam; piled them neatly beyond reach of high water; rescued the sawhorses and piled them also for a possible future use; blocked the temporary channel with a tree or so—and earth. The river, restored to its immemorial channel by these men who had so nonchalantly turned it aside, roared on, singing again the song it had until now sung uninterruptedly for centuries. Orde and his crew tramped back to the falls, and gazed on their handiwork with satisfaction. Instead of plunging over an edge into a turmoil of foam and eddies, now the water flowed smoothly, almost without a break, over an incline of thirty degrees.
“Logs'll slip over that slick as a gun barrel,” said Tom North. “How long do you think she'll last?”
“Haven't an idea,” replied Orde. “We may have to do it again next summer, but I don't think it. There's nothing but the smooth of the water to wear those logs until they begin to rot.”
Quite cheerfully they took up their long, painstaking journey back down the river.
Travel down the river was at times very pleasant, and at times very disagreeable. The ground had now hardened so that a wanigan boat was unnecessary. Instead, the camp outfit was transported in waggons, which often had to journey far inland, to make extraordinary detours, but which always arrived somehow at the various camping places. Orde and his men, of course, took the river trail.
The river trail ran almost unbroken for over a hundred miles of meandering way. It climbed up the high banks at the points, it crossed the bluffs along their sheer edges, it descended to the thickets in the flats, it crossed the swamps on pole-trails, it skirted the great, solemn woods. Sometimes, in the lower reaches, its continuity was broken by a town, but always after it recovered from its confusion it led on with purpose unvarying. Never did it desert for long the river. The cool, green still reaches, or the tumbling of the white-water, were always within its sight, sometimes beneath its very tread. When occasionally it cut in across a very long bend, it always sent from itself a little tributary trail which traced all the curves, and returned at last to its parent, undoubtedly with a full report of its task. And the trail was beaten hard by the feet of countless men, who, like Orde and his crew, had taken grave, interested charge of the river from her birth to her final rest in the great expanses of the Lake. It is there to-day, although the life that brought it into being has been gone from it these many years.
In midsummer Orde found the river trail most unfamiliar in appearance. Hardly did he recognise it in some places. It possessed a wide, leisurely expansiveness, an indolent luxury, a lazy invitation born of broad green leaves, deep and mysterious shadows, the growth of ferns, docks, and the like cool in the shade of the forest, the shimmer of aspens and poplars through the heat, the green of tangling vines, the drone of insects, the low-voiced call of birds, the opulent splashing of sun-gold through the woods, quite lacking to the hard, tight season in which his river work was usually performed. What, in the early year, had been merely a whip of brush, now had become a screen through whose waving, shifting interstices he caught glimpses of the river flowing green and cool. What had been bare timber amongst whose twigs and branches the full daylight had shone unobstructed, now had clothed itself in foliage and leaned over to make black and mysterious the water that flowed beneath. Countless insects hovered over the polished surface of that water. Dragon-flies cruised about. Little birds swooped silently down and fluttered back, intent on their tiny prey. Water-bugs skated hither and thither in apparently purposeless diagonals. Once in a great while the black depths were stirred. A bass rolled lazily over, carrying with him his captured insect, leaving on the surface of the water concentric rings which widened and died away.
The trail led the crew through many minor labours, all of which consumed time. At Reed's Mill Orde entered into diplomatic negotiations with Old Man Reed, whom he found singularly amenable. The skirmish in the spring seemed to have taken all the fight out of him; or perhaps, more simply, Orde's attitude toward him at that time had won him over to the young man's side. At any rate, as soon as he understood that Orde was now in business for himself, he readily came to an agreement. Thereupon Orde's crew built a new sluiceway and gate far enough down to assure a good head in the pond above. Other dam owners farther down the stream also signed agreements having to do with supplying water over and above what the law required of them. Above one particularly shallow rapid Orde built a dam of his own.
All this took time, and the summer months slipped away. Orde had fallen into the wild life as into a habit. He lived on the river or the trail. His face took on a ruddier hue than ever; his clothes faded to a nondescript neutral colour of their own; his hair below his narrow felt hat bleached three shades. He did his work, and figured on his schemes, and smoked his pipe, and occasionally took little trips to the nearest town, where he spent the day at the hotel desks reading and answering his letters. The weather was generally very warm. Thunder-storms were not infrequent. Until the latter part of August, mosquitoes and black flies were bad.
About the middle of September the crew had worked down as far as Redding, leaving behind them a river tamed, groomed, and harnessed for their uses. Remained still the forty miles between Redding and the Lake to be improved. As, however, navigation for light draught vessels extended as far as that city, Orde here paid off his men. A few days' work with a pile driver would fence the principal shoals from the channel.
He stayed over night with his parents, and at once took the train for Monrovia. There he made his way immediately to the little office the new firm had rented. Newmark had just come down.
“Hullo, Joe,” greeted Orde, his teeth flashing in contrast to the tan of his face. “I'm done. Anything new since you wrote last?”
Newmark had acquired his articles of incorporation and sold his stock. How many excursions, demonstrations, representations, and arguments that implied, only one who has undertaken the floating of a new and untried scheme can imagine. Perhaps his task had in it as much of difficulty as Orde's taming of the river. Certainly he carried it to as successful a conclusion. The bulk of the stock he sold to the log-owners themselves; the rest he scattered here and there and everywhere in small lots, as he was able. Some five hundred and thousand dollar blocks even went to Chicago. His own little fortune of twenty thousand he paid in for the shares that represented his half of the majority retained by himself and Orde. The latter gave a note at ten per cent for his proportion of the stock. Newmark then borrowed fifteen thousand more, giving as security a mortgage on the company's newly acquired property—the tugs, booms, buildings, and real estate. Thus was the financing determined. It left the company with obligations of fifteen hundred dollars a year in interest, expenses which would run heavily into the thousands, and an obligation to make good outside stock worth at par exactly forty-nine thousand dollars. In addition, Orde had charged against his account a burden of two thousand dollars a year interest on his personal debt. To offset these liabilities—outside the river improvements and equipments, which would hold little or no value in case of failure—the firm held contracts to deliver about one hundred million feet of logs. After some discussion the partners decided to allow themselves twenty-five hundred dollars apiece by way of salary.
“If we don't make any dividends at first,” Orde pointed out, “I've got to keep even on my interest.”
“You can't live on five hundred,” objected Newmark.
“I'll be on the river and at the booms six months of the year,” replied Orde, “and I can't spend much there.”
“I'm satisfied,” said Newmark thoughtfully, “I'm getting a little better than good interest on my own investment from the start. And in a few years after we've paid up, there'll be mighty big money in it.”
He removed his glasses and tapped his palm with their edge.
“The only point that is at all risky to me,” said he, “is that we have only one-season contracts. If for any reason we hang up the drive, or fail to deliver promptly, we're going to get left the year following. And then it's B-U-S-T, bust.”
“Well, we'll just try not to hang her,” replied Orde.