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The Riverman

by Stewart Edward White · English · Gutenberg #1099 · 610,691 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Riverman

Author: Stewart Edward White


        
Release date: November 1, 1997 [eBook #1099]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1099

Credits: Produced by Anonymous Volunteers, Thorild Vrang Bennett, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVERMAN ***

THE RIVERMAN

by Stewart Edward White




I


The time was the year 1872, and the place a bend in the river above a
long pond terminating in a dam. Beyond this dam, and on a flat
lower than it, stood a two-story mill structure. Save for a small,
stump-dotted clearing, and the road that led from it, all else was
forest. Here in the bottom-lands, following the course of the stream,
the hardwoods grew dense, their uppermost branches just beginning to
spray out in the first green of spring. Farther back, where the higher
lands arose from the swamp, could be discerned the graceful frond of
white pines and hemlock, and the sturdy tops of Norways and spruce.

A strong wind blew up the length of the pond. It ruffled the surface of
the water, swooping down in fan-shaped, scurrying cat's-paws, turning
the dark-blue surface as one turns the nap of velvet. At the upper end
of the pond it even succeeded in raising quite respectable wavelets,
which LAP LAP LAPPED eagerly against a barrier of floating logs that
filled completely the mouth of the inlet river. And behind this barrier
were other logs, and yet others, as far as the eye could see, so that
the entire surface of the stream was carpeted by the brown timbers. A
man could have walked down the middle of that river as down a highway.

On the bank, and in a small woods-opening, burned two fires, their smoke
ducking and twisting under the buffeting of the wind. The first of
these fires occupied a shallow trench dug for its accommodation, and was
overarched by a rustic framework from which hung several pails, kettles,
and pots. An injured-looking, chubby man in a battered brown derby hat
moved here and there. He divided his time between the utensils and an
indifferent youth--his “cookee.” The other, and larger, fire centred a
rectangle composed of tall racks, built of saplings and intended for the
drying of clothes. Two large tents gleamed white among the trees.

About the drying-fire were gathered thirty-odd men. Some were
half-reclining before the blaze; others sat in rows on logs drawn close
for the purpose; still others squatted like Indians on their heels,
their hands thrown forward to keep the balance. Nearly all were smoking
pipes.

Every age was represented in this group, but young men predominated. All
wore woollen trousers stuffed into leather boots reaching just to the
knee. These boots were armed on the soles with rows of formidable sharp
spikes or caulks, a half and sometimes even three quarters of an inch in
length. The tight driver's shoe and “stagged” trousers had not then come
into use. From the waist down these men wore all alike, as though in a
uniform, the outward symbol of their calling. From the waist up was more
latitude of personal taste. One young fellow sported a bright-coloured
Mackinaw blanket jacket; another wore a red knit sash, with tasselled
ends; a third's fancy ran to a bright bandana about his neck. Head-gear,
too, covered wide variations of broader or narrower brim, of higher or
lower crown; and the faces beneath those hats differed as everywhere
the human countenance differs. Only when the inspection, passing the
gradations of broad or narrow, thick or thin, bony or rounded, rested
finally on the eyes, would the observer have caught again the caste-mark
which stamped these men as belonging to a distinct order, and separated
them essentially from other men in other occupations. Blue and brown
and black and gray these eyes were, but all steady and clear with the
steadiness and clarity that comes to those whose daily work compels
them under penalty to pay close and undeviating attention to their
surroundings. This is true of sailors, hunters, plainsmen, cowboys,
and tugboat captains. It was especially true of the old-fashioned
river-driver, for a misstep, a miscalculation, a moment's forgetfulness
of the sullen forces shifting and changing about him could mean for
him maiming or destruction. So, finally, to one of an imaginative bent,
these eyes, like the “cork boots,” grew to seem part of the uniform, one
of the marks of their caste, the outward symbol of their calling.

“Blow, you son of a gun!” cried disgustedly one young fellow with a red
bandana, apostrophising the wind. “I wonder if there's ANY side of this
fire that ain't smoky!”

“Keep your hair on, bub,” advised a calm and grizzled old-timer.
“There's never no smoke on the OTHER side of the fire--whichever
that happens to be. And as for wind--she just makes holiday for the
river-hogs.”

“Holiday, hell!” snorted the younger man. “We ought to be down to Bull's
Dam before now--”

“And Bull's Dam is half-way to Redding,” mocked a reptilian and
red-headed giant on the log, “and Redding is the happy childhood home
of--”

The young man leaped to his feet and seized from a pile of tools a
peavy--a dangerous weapon, like a heavy cant-hook, but armed at the end
with a sharp steel shoe.

“That's about enough!” he warned, raising his weapon, his face suffused
and angry. The red-headed man, quite unafraid, rose slowly from the log
and advanced, bare-handed, his small eyes narrowed and watchful.

But immediately a dozen men interfered.

“Dry up!” advised the grizzled old-timer--Tom North by name. “You,
Purdy, set down; and you, young squirt, subside! If you're going to have
ructions, why, have 'em, but not on drive. If you don't look out, I'll
set you both to rustling wood for the doctor.”

At this threat the belligerents dropped muttering to their places. The
wind continued to blow, the fire continued to flare up and down, the men
continued to smoke, exchanging from time to time desultory and
aimless remarks. Only Tom North carried on a consecutive, low-voiced
conversation with another of about his own age.

“Just the same, Jim,” he was saying, “it is a little tough on the
boys--this new sluice-gate business. They've been sort of expectin' a
chance for a day or two at Redding, and now, if this son of a gun of a
wind hangs out, I don't know when we'll make her. The shallows at Bull's
was always bad enough, but this is worse.”

“Yes, I expected to pick you up 'way below,” admitted Jim, whose
“turkey,” or clothes-bag, at his side proclaimed him a newcomer. “Had
quite a tramp to find you.”

“This stretch of slack water was always a terror,” went on North, “and
we had fairly to pike-pole every stick through when the wind blew; but
now that dam's backed the water up until there reely ain't no current at
all. And this breeze has just stopped the drive dead as a smelt.”

“Don't opening the sluice-gates give her a draw?” inquired the newcomer.

“Not against this wind--and not much of a draw, anyway, I should guess.”

“How long you been hung?”

“Just to-day. I expect Jack will be down from the rear shortly. Ought
to see something's wrong when he runs against the tail of this jam of
ours.”

At this moment the lugubrious, round-faced man in the derby hat stepped
aside from the row of steaming utensils he had been arranging.

“Grub pile,” he remarked in a conversational tone of voice.

The group arose as one man and moved upon the heap of cutlery and of tin
plates and cups. From the open fifty-pound lard pails and kettles they
helped themselves liberally; then retired to squat in little groups here
and there near the sources of supply. Mere conversation yielded to an
industrious silence. Sadly the cook surveyed the scene, his arms folded
across the dirty white apron, an immense mental reservation accenting
the melancholy of his countenance. After some moments of contemplation
he mixed a fizzling concoction of vinegar and soda, which he drank. His
rotundity to the contrary notwithstanding, he was ravaged by a
gnawing dyspepsia, and the sight of six eggs eaten as a side dish to
substantials carried consternation to his interior.

So busily engaged was each after his own fashion that nobody observed
the approach of a solitary figure down the highway of the river. The
man appeared tiny around the upper bend, momently growing larger as he
approached. His progress was jerky and on an uneven zigzag, according
as the logs lay, by leaps, short runs, brief pauses, as a riverman
goes. Finally he stepped ashore just below the camp, stamped his
feet vigorously free of water, and approached the group around the
cooking-fire.

No one saw him save the cook, who vouchsafed him a stately and
lugubrious inclination of the head.

The newcomer was a man somewhere about thirty years of age, squarely
built, big of bone, compact in bulk. His face was burly, jolly, and
reddened rather than tanned by long exposure. A pair of twinkling
blue eyes and a humorously quirked mouth redeemed his countenance from
commonplaceness.

He spread his feet apart and surveyed the scene.

“Well, boys,” he remarked at last in a rollicking big voice, “I'm glad
to see the situation hasn't spoiled your appetites.”

At this they looked up with a spontaneous answering grin. Tom North laid
aside his plate and started to arise.

“Sit still, Tom,” interposed the newcomer. “Eat hearty. I'm going to
feed yet myself. Then we'll see what's to be done. I think first thing
you'd better see to having this wind turned off.”

After the meal was finished, North and his principal sauntered to the
water's edge, where they stood for a minute looking at the logs and the
ruffled expanse of water below.

“Might as well have sails on them and be done with it,” remarked Jack
Orde reflectively. “Couldn't hold 'em any tighter. It's a pity that old
mossback had to put in a mill. The water was slack enough before, but
now there seems to be no current at all.”

“Case of wait for the wind,” agreed Tom North. “Old Daly will be
red-headed. He must be about out of logs at the mill. The flood-water's
going down every minute, and it'll make the riffles above Redding a holy
fright. And I expect Johnson's drive will be down on our rear most any
time.”

“It's there already. Let's go take a look,” suggested Orde.

They picked their way around the edge of the pond to the site of the new
mill.

“Sluice open all right,” commented Orde. “Thought she might be closed.”

“I saw to that,” rejoined North in an injured tone.

“'Course,” agreed Orde, “but he might have dropped her shut on you
between times, when you weren't looking.”

He walked out on the structure and looked down on the smooth water
rushing through.

“Ought to make a draw,” he reflected. Then he laughed. “Tom, look here,”
 he called. “Climb down and take a squint at this.”

North clambered to a position below.

“The son of a gun!” he exclaimed.

The sluice, instead of bedding at the natural channel of the river,
had been built a good six feet above that level; so that, even with the
gates wide open, a “head” of six feet was retained in the slack water of
the pond.

“No wonder we couldn't get a draw,” said Orde. “Let's hunt up old
What's-his-name and have a pow-wow.”

“His name is plain Reed,” explained North. “There he comes now.”

“Sainted cats!” cried Orde, with one of his big, rollicking chuckles.
“Where did you catch it?”

The owner of the dam flapped into view as a lank and lengthy individual
dressed in loose, long clothes and wearing a-top a battered old “plug”
 hat, the nap of which seemed all to have been rubbed off the wrong way.

As he bore down on the intruders with tremendous, nervous strides,
they perceived him to be an old man, white of hair, cadaverous of
countenance, with thin, straight lips, and burning, fanatic eyes beneath
stiff and bushy brows.

“Good-morning, Mr. Reed,” shouted Orde above the noise of the water.

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” replied the apparition.

“Nice dam you got here,” went on Orde.

Reed nodded, his fiery eyes fixed unblinking on the riverman.

“But you haven't been quite square to us,” said Orde. “You aren't giving
us much show to get our logs out.”

“How so?” snapped the owner, his thin lips tightening.

“Oh, I guess you know, all right,” laughed Orde, clambering leisurely
back to the top of the dam. “That sluice is a good six foot too high.”

“Is that so!” cried the old man, plunging suddenly into a craze of
excitement. “Well, let me tell you this, Mr. Man, I'm giving you all the
law gives you, and that's the natural flow of the river, and not a thing
more will you get! You that comes to waste and destroy, to arrogate unto
yourselves the kingdoms of the yearth and all the fruits thereof, let me
tell you you can't override Simeon Reed! I'm engaged here in a peaceful
and fittin' operation, which is to feed the hungry by means of this
grist-mill, not to rampage and bring destruction to the noble forests
God has planted! I've give you what the law gives you, and nothin'
more!”

Somewhat astonished at this outbreak, the two rivermen stood for a
moment staring at the old man. Then a steely glint crept into Orde's
frank blue eye and the corners of his mouth tightened.

“We want no trouble with you, Mr. Reed,” said he, “and I'm no lawyer to
know what the law requires you to do and what it requires you not to do.
But I do know that this is the only dam on the river with sluices built
up that way, and I do know that we'll never get those logs out if we
don't get more draw on the water. Good-day.”

Followed by the reluctant North he walked away, leaving the gaunt figure
of the dam owner gazing after them, his black garments flapping about
him, his hands clasped behind his back, his ruffled plug hat thrust from
his forehead.

“Well!” burst out North, when they were out of hearing.

“Well!” mimicked Orde with a laugh.

“Are you going to let that old high-banker walk all over you?”

“What are you going to do about it, Tom? It's his dam.”

“I don't know. But you ain't going to let him bang us up here all
summer--”

“Sure not. But the wind's shifting. Let's see what the weather's like
to-morrow. To-day's pretty late.”




II


The next morning dawned clear and breathless. Before daylight the
pessimistic cook was out, his fire winking bravely against the darkness.
His only satisfaction of the long day came when he aroused the men from
the heavy sleep into which daily toil plunged them. With the first light
the entire crew were at the banks of the river.

As soon as the wind died the logs had begun to drift slowly out into
the open water. The surface of the pond was covered with the scattered
timbers floating idly. After a few moments the clank of the bars and
ratchet was heard as two of the men raised the heavy sluice-gate on the
dam. A roar of water, momently increasing, marked the slow rise of the
barrier. A very imaginative man might then have made out a tendency
forward on the part of those timbers floating nearest the centre of the
pond. It was a very sluggish tendency, however, and the men watching
critically shook their heads.

Four more had by this time joined the two men who had raised the
gate, and all together, armed with long pike poles, walked out on the
funnel-shaped booms that should concentrate the logs into the chute.
Here they prodded forward the few timbers within reach, and waited for
more.

These were a long time coming. Members of the driving crew leaped
shouting from one log to another. Sometimes, when the space across
was too wide to jump, they propelled a log over either by rolling it,
paddling it, or projecting it by the shock of a leap on one end. In
accomplishing these feats of tight-rope balance, they stood upright and
graceful, quite unconscious of themselves, their bodies accustomed
by long habit to nice and instant obedience to the almost unconscious
impulses of the brain. Only their eyes, intent, preoccupied, blazed out
by sheer will-power the unstable path their owners should follow. Once
at the forefront of the drive, the men began vigorously to urge the logs
forward. This they accomplished almost entirely by main strength, for
the sluggish current gave them little aid. Under the pressure of their
feet as they pushed against their implements, the logs dipped, rolled,
and plunged. Nevertheless, they worked as surely from the decks of these
unstable craft as from the solid earth itself.

In this manner the logs in the centre of the pond were urged forward
until, above the chute, they caught the slightly accelerated current
which should bring them down to the pike-pole men at the dam.
Immediately, when this stronger influence was felt, the drivers
zigzagged back up stream to start a fresh batch. In the meantime a great
many logs drifted away to right and left into stagnant water, where
they lay absolutely motionless. The moving of them was deferred for the
“sacking crew,” which would bring up the rear.

Jack Orde wandered back and forth over the work, his hands clasped
behind his back, a short pipe clenched between his teeth. To the edge of
the drive he rode the logs, then took to the bank and strolled down
to the dam. There he stood for a moment gazing aimlessly at the water
making over the apron, after which he returned to the work. No cloud
obscured the serene good-nature of his face. Meeting Tom North's
troubled glance, he grinned broadly.

“Told you we'd have Johnson on our necks,” he remarked, jerking his
thumb up river toward a rapidly approaching figure.

This soon defined itself as a tall, sun-reddened, very blond individual
with a choleric blue eye.

“What in hell's the matter here?” he yelled, as soon as he came within
hearing distance.

Orde made no reply, but stood contemplating the newcomer with a flicker
of amusement.

“What in hell's the matter?” repeated the latter violently.

“Better go there and inquire,” rejoined Orde drolly. “What ails you,
Johnson?”

“We're right at your rear,” cried the other, “and you ain't even made a
start gettin' through this dam! We'll lose the water next! Why in hell
ain't you through and gone?”

“Keep your shirt on,” advised Orde. “We're getting through as fast as
we can. If you want these logs pushed any faster, come down and do it
yourself.”

Johnson vouchsafed no reply, but splashed away over the logs, examining
in detail the progress of the work. After a little he returned within
hailing distance.

“If you can't get out logs, why do you take the job?” he roared, with
a string of oaths. “If you hang my drive, damn you, you'll catch it
for damages! It's gettin' to a purty pass when any old highbanker from
anywheres can get out and play jackstraws holdin' up every drive in the
river! I tell you our mills need logs, and what's more they're agoin' to
GIT them!”

He departed in a rumble of vituperation.

Orde laughed humorously at his foreman.

“Johnson gets so mad sometimes, his skin cracks,” he remarked.
“However,” he went on more seriously, “there's a heap in what he means,
if there ain't so much in what he says. I'll go labour with our old
friend below.”

He regained the bank, stopped to light his pipe, and sauntered, with
every appearance of leisure, down the bank, past the dam, to the mill
structure below.

Here he found the owner occupying a chair tilted back against the wall
of the building. His ruffled plug hat was thrust, as usual, well away
from his high and narrow forehead; the long broadcloth coat fell back to
reveal an unbuttoned waistcoat the flapping black trousers were hitched
up far enough to display woollen socks wrinkled about bony shanks. He
was whittling a pine stick, which he held pointing down between his
spread knees, and conversing animatedly with a young fellow occupying
another chair at his side.

“And there comes one of 'em now,” declaimed the old man dramatically.

Orde nodded briefly to the stranger, and came at once to business.

“I want to talk this matter over with you,” he began. “We aren't making
much progress. We can't afford to hang up the drive, and the water is
going down every day. We've got to have more water. I'll tell you what
we'll do: If you'll let us cut down the new sill, we'll replace it in
good shape when we get all our logs through.”

“No, sir!” promptly vetoed the old man.

“Well, we'll give you something for the privilege. What do you think is
fair?”

“I tell ye I'll give you your legal rights, and not a cent more,”
 replied the old man, still quietly, but with quivering nostrils.

“What is your name?” asked Orde.

“My name is Reed, sir.”

“Well, Mr. Reed, stop and think what this means. It's a more serious
matter than you think. In a little while the water will be so low in the
river that it will be impossible to take out the logs this year. That
means a large loss, of course, as you know.”

“I don't know nothin' about the pesky business, and I don't wan to,”
 snorted Reed.

“Well, there's borers, for one thing, to spoil a good many of the logs.
And think what it will mean to the mills. No logs means no lumber. That
is bankruptcy for a good many who have contracts to fulfil. And no logs
means the mills must close. Thousands of men will be thrown out of their
jobs, and a good many of them will go hungry. And with the stream full
of the old cutting, that means less to do next winter in the woods--more
men thrown out. Getting out a season's cut with the flood-water is
a pretty serious matter to a great many people, and if you insist on
holding us up here in this slack water the situation will soon become
alarming.”

“Ye finished?” demanded Reed grimly.

“Yes,” replied Orde.

The old man cast from him his half-whittled piece of pine. He closed his
jack-knife with a snap and thrust it in his pocket. He brought to earth
the front legs of his chair with a thump, and jammed his ruffled plug
hat to its proper place.

“And if the whole kit and kaboodle of ye starved out-right,” said he,
“it would but be the fulfillin' of the word of the prophet who says,
'So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave
thee, and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring
the sword upon thee. I the Lord have spoken it!'”

“That's your last word?” inquired Orde.

“That's my last word, and my first. Ye that make of God's smilin' land
waste places and a wilderness, by your own folly shall ye perish.”

“Good-day,” said Orde, whirling on his heel without further argument.

The young man, who had during this colloquy sat an interested and silent
spectator, arose and joined him. Orde looked at his new companion
a little curiously. He was a very slender young man, taut-muscled,
taut-nerved, but impassive in demeanour. He possessed a shrewd, thin
face, steel-gray, inscrutable eyes behind glasses. His costume was quite
simply an old gray suit of business clothes and a gray felt hat. At the
moment he held in his mouth an unlighted and badly chewed cigar.

“Nice, amiable old party,” volunteered Orde with a chuckle.

“Seems to be,” agreed the young man drily.

“Well, I reckon we'll just have to worry along without him,” remarked
Orde, striking his steel caulks into the first log and preparing to
cross out into the river where the work was going on.

“Wait a minute,” said the young fellow. “Have you any objections to my
hanging around a little to watch the work? My name is Newmark--Joseph
Newmark. I'm out in this country a good deal for my health. This thing
interests me.”

“Sure,” replied Orde, puzzled. “Look all you want to. The scenery's
free.”

“Yes. But can you put me up? Can I get a chance to stay with you a
little while?”

“Oh, as far as I'm concerned,” agreed Orde heartily. “But,” he
supplemented with one of his contagious chuckles, “I'm only river-boss.
You'll have to fix it up with the doctor--the cook, I mean,” he
explained, as Newmark look puzzled. “You'll find him at camp up behind
that brush. He's a slim, handsome fellow, with a jolly expression of
countenance.”

He leaped lightly out over the bobbing timbers, leaving Newmark to find
his way.

In the centre of the stream the work had been gradually slowing down to
a standstill with the subsidence of the first rush of water after the
sluice-gate was opened. Tom North, leaning gracefully against the shaft
of a peavy, looked up eagerly as his principal approached.

“Well, Jack,” he inquired, “is it to be peace or war?”

“War,” replied Orde briefly.




III


At this moment the cook stepped into view, and, making a trumpet of his
two hands, sent across the water a long, weird, and not unmusical cry.
The men at once began slowly to drift in the direction of the camp.
There, when the tin plates had all been filled, and each had found a
place to his liking, Orde addressed them. His manner was casual and
conversational.

“Boys,” said he, “the old mossback who owns that dam has come up here
loaded to scatter. He's built up the sill of that gate until we can't
get a draw on the water, and he refuses to give, lend, or sell us the
right to cut her out. I've made him every reasonable proposition, but
all I get back is quotations from the prophets. Now, we've got to get
those logs out--that's what we're here for. A fine bunch of whitewater
birlers we'd look if we got hung up by an old mossback in a plug hat.
Johnny Sims, what's the answer?”

“Cut her out,” grinned Johnny Sims briefly.

“Correct!” replied Orde with a chuckle. “Cut her out. But, my son, it's
against the law to interfere with another man's property.”

This was so obviously humourous in intent that its only reception
consisted of more grins from everybody.

“But,” went on Orde more seriously, “it's quite a job. We can't work
more than six or eight men at it at a time. We got to work as fast as we
can before the old man can interfere.”

“The nearest sheriff's at Spruce Rapids,” commented some one
philosophically.

“We have sixty men, all told,” said Orde. “We ought to be able to carry
it through.”

He filled his plate and walked across to a vacant place. Here he found
himself next to Newmark.

“Hello!” he greeted that young man, “fixed it with the doctor all
right?”

“Yes,” replied Newmark, in his brief, dry manner, “thanks! I think I
ought to tell you that the sheriff is not at Spruce Rapids, but at the
village--expecting trouble.”

Orde whistled, then broke into a roar of delight.

“Boys,” he called, “old Plug Hat's got the sheriff right handy. I guess
he sort of expected we'd be thinking of cutting through that dam. How'd
you like to go to jail?”

“I'd like to see any sheriff take us to jail, unless he had an army with
him,” growled one of the river-jacks.

“Has he a posse?” inquired Orde of Newmark.

“I didn't see any; but I understood in the village that the governor had
been advised to hold State troops in readiness for trouble.”

Orde fell into a brown study, eating mechanically. The men began an
eager and somewhat truculent discussion full of lawless and bloodthirsty
suggestion. Some suggested the kidnapping and sequestration of Reed
until the affair should be finished.

“How'd he get hold of his old sheriff, then?” they inquired with some
pertinence.

Orde, however, paid no attention to all this talk, but continued to
frown into space. At last his face cleared, and he slapped down his tin
plate so violently that the knife and fork jumped off into the dirt.

“I have it!” he cried aloud.

But he would not tell what he had. After the noon hour he instructed
a half-dozen men to provide themselves with saws, axes, picks, and
shovels, and all marched in the direction of the mill.

When within a hundred yards or so of that structure the advancing
riverman saw the lank, black figure of the mill owner flap into sight,
astride a bony old horse, and clatter away, coat-tails flying, up the
road and into the waiting forest.

“Now, boys!” cried Orde crisply. “He'll be back in an hour with the
sheriff. Lively!” He rapidly designated ten men of his crew. “You boys
get to work and make things hum. Get as much done as you can before the
sheriff comes.”

“He'll have to bring all of Spruce County to get me,” commented one of
those chosen, spitting on his hands.

“Me, too!” said others.

“Now, listen,” said Orde, holding them with an impressive gesture. “When
that sheriff comes, with or without a posse, I want you to go peaceably.
Understand?”

“Cave in? Not much!” cried Purdy.

“See here,” and Orde drew them aside to an earnest, low-voiced
conversation that lasted several minutes. When he had finished he
clapped each of them on the back, and all moved off, laughing, to the
dam.

“Now, boys,” he commanded the others, “no row without orders.
Understand? If there's going to be a fight, I'll give you the word
when.”

The chopping crew descended to the bottom of the sluice, the gate of
which had been shut, and began immediately to chop away at the apron.
As the water in the pond above had been drawn low by the morning's work,
none overflowed the gate, so the men were enabled to work dry. Below the
apron, of course, had been filled in with earth and stones. As soon
as the axe-men had effected an entry to this deposit, other men with
shovels and picks began to remove the filling.

The work had continued nearly an hour when Orde commanded the fifty or
more idlers back to camp.

“Get out, boys,” he ordered. “The sheriff will be here pretty quick now,
and I don't want any row. Get out of sight.”

“And leave them to fight her out alone? Guess not!” grumbled a tall,
burly individual with a red face.

Orde immediately walked directly to this man.

“Am I bossing this drive, or am I not?” he demanded.

The riverman growled something.

SMACK! SMACK! sounded Orde's fists. The man, taken by surprise, went
down in a heap, but immediately rebounded to his feet as though made
of rubber. But Orde had seized a peavy, and stood over against his
antagonist, the murderous weapon upraised.

“Lie down, you hound, or I'll brain you!” he roared at the top strength
of his great voice. “Want fight, do you? Well, you won't have to wait
till the sheriff gets here! You make a move!”

For a full half minute the man crouched breathless, and Orde, his ruddy
face congested, held his threatening attitude. Then he dropped his peavy
and stepped aside.

“March!” he commanded. “Get your turkey and hit the hay trail. You'll
get your time at Redding.”

The man sullenly arose and slouched away, grumbling under his breath.
Orde watched him from sight, then turned to the silent group, a new
crispness in his manner.

“Well?” he demanded.

Hesitating, they turned to the river trail, leaving the ten still
working at the sluice. When well within the fringe of the brush, Orde
called a halt. His customary good-humour seemed quite restored.

“Now, boys,” he commanded, “squat down and lay low. You give me an ache!
Don't you suppose I got this thing all figured out? If fight would do
any good, you know mighty well I'd fight. And the boys won't be in jail
any longer than it takes to get a wire to Daly to bail them out. Smoke
up, and don't bother.”

They filled their pipes and settled down to an enjoyment of the
situation. Ordinarily from very early in the morning until very late at
night the riverman is busy every instant at his dangerous and absorbing
work. Those affairs which do not immediately concern his task--as the
swiftness of rapids, the state of flood, the curves of streams, the
height of water, the obstructions of channels, the quantities of
logs--pass by the outer fringe of his consciousness, if indeed they
reach him at all. Thus, often he works all day up to his waist in a
current bearing the rotten ice of the first break-up, or endures the
drenching of an early spring rain, or battles the rigours of a
belated snow with apparent indifference. You or I would be exceedingly
uncomfortable; would require an effort of fortitude to make the plunge.
Yet these men, absorbed in the mighty problems of their task, have
little attention to spare to such things. The cold, the wet, the
discomfort, the hunger, the weariness, all pass as shadows on the
background. In like manner the softer moods of the spring rarely
penetrate through the concentration of faculties on the work. The warm
sun shines; the birds by thousands flutter and twitter and sing their
way north; the delicate green of spring, showered from the hand of the
passing Sower, sprinkles the tops of the trees, and gradually sifts down
through the branches; the great, beautiful silver clouds sail down
the horizon like ships of a statelier age, as totally without actual
existence to these men. The logs, the river--those are enough to strain
all the faculties a man possesses, and more.

So when, as now, a chance combination of circumstances brings them
leisure to look about them, the forest and the world of out-of-doors
comes to them with a freshness impossible for the city dweller to
realise. The surroundings are accustomed, but they bring new messages.
To most of them, these impressions never reach the point of coherency.
They brood, and muse, and expand in the actual and figurative warmth,
and proffer the general opinion that it is a damn fine day!

Another full half hour elapsed before the situation developed further.
Then Tom North's friend Jim, who had gathered his long figure on the top
of a stump, unclasped his knees and remarked that old Plug Hat was back.

The men arose to their feet and peered cautiously through the brush.
They saw Reed, accompanied by a thick-set man whom some recognised as
the sheriff of the county, approach the edge of the dam. A moment later
the working crew mounted to the top, stacked their tools neatly, resumed
their coats and jackets, and departed up the road in convoy of the
sheriff.

A gasp of astonishment broke from the concealed rivermen.

“Well, I'll be damned!” ejaculated one. “What are we comin' to? That's
the first time I ever see one lonesome sheriff gather in ten river-hogs
without the aid of a gatlin' or an ambulance! What's the matter with
that chicken-livered bunch, anyway?”

Orde watched them, his eyes expressionless, until they had disappeared
in the fringe of the forest Then he turned to the astonished group.

“Jim,” said he, “and you, Ellis, and you, and you, and you, and you,
get to work on that dam. And remember this, if you are arrested, go
peaceably. Any resistance will spoil the whole game.”

The men broke into mingled cheers and laughter as the full significance
of Orde's plan reached them. They streamed back to the dam, where they
perched proffering advice and encouragement to those about to descend.

Immediately, however, Reed was out, his eyes blazing either side his
hawk nose.

“Here!” he cried, “quit that! I'll have ye arrested!”

“Arrest ahead,” replied Orde coldly.

Reed stormed back and forth for a moment, then departed at full speed up
the road.

“Now, boys, get as much done as possible,” urged Orde. “We better get
back in the brush, or he may try to take in the whole b'iling of us on
some sort of a blanket warrant.”

“How about the other boys?” inquired North.

“I gave one of them a telegram to send to Daly,” replied Orde. “Daly
will be up to bail them out.”

Once more they hid in the woods; and again, after a longer interval, the
mill owner and the sheriff reappeared. Reed appeared to be expostulating
violently, and a number of times pointed up river; but the sheriff went
ahead stolidly to the dam, summoned those working below, and departed
up the road as before. Reed stood uncertain until he saw the rivermen
beginning to re-emerge from the brush, then followed the officer at top
speed.

Without the necessity of command, a half-dozen men leaped down on the
apron. The previous crews had made considerable progress in weakening
the heavy supports. As soon as these should be cut out and the backing
removed, the mere sawing through of the massive sill should carry away
the whole obstruction.

“Next time will decide it,” remarked Orde. “If the sheriff brings a
posse and sits down to lay for us, of course we won't be able to get
near to finish the job.”

“I didn't think that of George Morris,” commented Sims in an aggrieved
way. “He was a riverman himself once before he was sheriff.”

“He's got to obey orders, and serve a warrant when it's issued, of
course,” replied Orde to this. “What did you expect?”

At the end of another hour, which brought the time to four o'clock, the
sheriff made his third appearance--this time in a side-bar buggy.

“I wish I dared join that confab,” said Orde, “and hear what's going on,
but I'm afraid he'd jug me sure.”

“He wouldn't jug me,” spoke up Newmark. “I'll go down.”

“Bully for you!” agreed Orde.

The young man departed in his precise, methodical manner, picking his
way rather mincingly among the inequalities of the trail. In spite of
the worn and wrinkled condition of his garments, they retained something
of a city hang and smartness that sharply differentiated their wearer
from even the well-dressed citizens of a smaller town. They seemed to
match the refined, shrewd, but cold intelligence of his lean and nervous
face.

About sunset he returned from a scene which the distant spectators had
watched with breathless interest. It was in essence only a repetition of
the two that had preceded it, but Reed had evidently gone almost to the
point of violence in his insistence, and the sheriff had shaken him
off rudely. Finally, Morris and his six prisoners had trailed away. The
sheriff and North's friend occupied the seat of the buggy, while the
other five trudged peaceably alongside. Once again Reed clattered away
on his bony steed, but this time ahead of the official party.

With a whoop the river crew, now reduced to a scant dozen, rushed down
to meet the too deliberate Newmark.

“Well?” they demanded, crowding about him.

“Reed wanted the sheriff to stay and protect the dam,” reported Newmark
in his brief, dry manner. “Sheriff refused. Said his duty was simply
to arrest on warrant, and as often as Reed got out warrants, he'd serve
them. Reed said, then, he should get a posse and hunt up Orde and the
rest of them. Sheriff replied that as far as he could see, the terms of
his warrant were covered by the men he found working on the dam, Reed
demanded protection, Sheriff said for him to get an injunction, and it
would be enforced.”

“Well, that's all right,” interjected Orde with satisfaction. “We'll
have her cut through before he gets that injunction, and I guess I've
got men enough here and down river to get through before we're ALL
arrested.”

“Yes,” said Newmark, “that's all very well. But now he's gone to
telegraph the governor to send the troops.”

Orde whistled a jig tune.

“Kind of expected that, boys,” said he. “Let's see. The next train out
from Redding--They'll be here by five in the morning at soonest. Hope
it'll be later.”

“What will you do?” asked Newmark.

“Take chances,” replied Orde. “All you boys get to work. Zeke,” he
commanded one of the cookees, “go up road, and report if Morris comes
back. I reckon this time we'll have to scatter if he comes after us. I
hope we won't have to, though. Like to keep everything square on account
of this State troop business.”

The sun had dropped below the fringe of trees, which immediately etched
their delicate outlines against a pale, translucent green sky. Two
straight, thin columns of smoke rose from the neglected camp-fires.
Orde, glancing around him, noticed these.

“Doctor,” he commanded sharply, “get at your grub! Make some coffee
right off, and bring it down. Get the lanterns from the wanigan, and
bring them to the dam. Come on, boys!”

Over a score of men attacked the sluice-way, for by now part of the rear
crew had come down river. The pond above had recovered its volume.
Water was beginning to trickle over the top of the gate. In a short time
progress became difficult, almost impossible, The men worked up to their
knees in swift water. They could not see, and the strokes of axe or pick
lost much of their force against the liquid. Dusk fell. The fringe of
the forest became mysterious in its velvet dark. Silver streaks, of a
supernal calm, suggested the reaches of the pond. Above, the sky's
day surface unfolded and receded and dissolved and melted away until,
through the pale afterglow, one saw beyond into the infinities. Down
by the sluice a dozen lanterns flickered and blinked yellow against the
blue-blackness of the night.

After some time Orde called his crew off and opened the sluice-gates.
The water had become too deep for effective work, and a half hour's flow
would reduce the pressure. The time was occupied in eating and in drying
off about the huge fire the second cookee had built close at hand.

“Water cold, boys?” asked Orde.

“Some,” was his reply.

“Want to quit?” he inquired, with mock solicitude.

“Nary quit.”

Orde's shout of laughter broke the night silence of the whispering
breeze and the rushing water.

“We'll stick to 'em like death to a dead nigger,” was his comment.

Newmark, having extracted a kind of cardigan jacket from the bag he had
brought with him as far as the mill, looked at the smooth, iron-black
water and shivered.

When the meal was finished, the men lit their pipes and went back to
work philosophically. With entire absorption in the task, they dug,
chopped, and picked. The dull sound of blows, the gurgle and trickle
of the water, the occasional grunt or brief comment of a riverman alone
broke the calm of evening. Now that the sluice-gate was down and the
water had ceased temporarily to flow over it, the work went faster.
Orde, watching with the eye of an expert, vouchsafed to the taciturn
Newmark that he thought they'd make it.

Near midnight, however, a swaying lantern was seen approaching. Orde,
leaping to his feet with a curse at the boy on watch, heard the sound of
wheels. A moment later, Daly's bulky form stepped into the illumination
of the fire.

Orde wandered over to where his principal stood peering about him.

“Hullo!” said he.

“Oh, there you are!” cried Daly angrily. “What in hell you up to here?”

“Running logs,” replied Orde coolly.

“Running logs!” shouted Daly, tugging at his overcoat pocket, and
finally producing a much-folded newspaper. “How about this?”

Orde unfolded the paper and lowered it to the campfire. It was an extra,
screaming with wood type. He read it deliberately over.


WAR!


the headline ran.


RIOTING AND BLOODSHED IN THE WOODS

RIVERMEN AND DAM OWNERS CLASH!


There followed a vague and highly coloured statement to the effect that
an initial skirmish had left the field in possession of the rivermen,
in spite of the sheriff and a large posse, but that troops were being
rushed to the spot, and that this “high-handed defiance of authority”
 would undoubtedly soon be suppressed. It concluded truthfully with the
statement that the loss of life was as yet unknown.

Orde folded up the paper and handed it back.

“Don't you know any better than to get into that kind of a row down
here?” Daly had been saying. “Do you want to bring us up for good here?
Don't you realise that this isn't the northern peninsula? What are you
trying to do, any way?”

“Sure I do,” replied Orde placidly. “Come along here till I show you the
situation.”

Ten minutes later, Daly, relieved in his mind, was standing by the fire
drinking hot coffee and laughing at Orde's description of Reed's plug
hat.

To Orde's satisfaction, the sheriff did not reappear. Reed evidently now
pinned his faith to the State troops.

All night the work went on, the men spelling each other at intervals of
every few hours. By three o'clock the main abutments had been removed.
The gate was then blocked to prevent its fall when its nether support
should be withdrawn, and two men, leaning over cautiously, began at
arm's-length to deliver their axe-strokes against the middle of the
sill-timbers of the sluice itself, notching each heavy beam deeply that
the force of the current might finally break it in two. The night was
very dark, and very still. Even the night creatures had fallen into
the quietude that precedes the first morning hours. The muffled, spaced
blows of the axes, the low-voiced comments or directions of the workers,
the crackle of the fire ashore were thrown by contrast into an undue
importance. Men in blankets, awaiting their turn, slept close to the
blaze.

Suddenly the vast silence of before dawn was broken by a loud and
exultant yell from one of the axemen. At once the two scrambled to the
top of the dam. The blanketed figures about the fire sprang to life.
A brief instant later the snapping of wood fibres began like the rapid
explosions of infantry fire; a crash and bang of timbers smote the air;
and then the river, exultant, roaring with joy, rushed from its pent
quietude into the new passage opened for it. At the same moment, as
though at the signal, a single bird, premonitor of the yet distant day,
lifted up his voice, clearly audible above the tumult.

Orde stormed into the camp up stream, his eyes bright, his big voice
booming exultantly.

“Roll out, you river-hogs!” he shouted to those who had worked out their
shifts earlier in the night. “Roll out, you web-footed sons of guns, and
hear the little birds sing praise!”

Newmark, who had sat up the night through, and now shivered sleepily by
the fire, began to hunt around for the bed-roll he had, earlier in the
evening, dumped down somewhere in camp.

“I suppose that's all,” said he. “Just a case of run logs now. I'll turn
in for a little.”

But Orde, a thick slice of bread half-way to his lips, had frozen in an
attitude of attentive listening.

“Hark!” said he.

Faint, still in the depths of the forest, the wandering morning breeze
bore to their ears a sound whose difference from the louder noises
nearer at hand alone rendered it audible.

“The troops!” exclaimed Orde.

He seized a lantern and returned down the trail, followed eagerly by
Newmark and every man in camp.

“Troops coming!” said Orde to Daly.

The men drew a little to one side, watching the dim line of the forest,
dark against the paling sky. Shadows seemed to stir in its blackness.
They heard quite distinctly the clink of metal against metal. A man rode
out of the shadow and reined up by the fire. “Halt!” commanded a harsh
voice. The rivermen could make out the troops--three or four score of
them--standing rigid at attention. Reed, afoot now in favour of the
commanding officer, pushed forward.

“Who is in charge here?” inquired the officer crisply.

“I am,” replied Orde, stepping forward.

“I wish to inquire, sir, if you have gone mad to counsel your men to
resist civil authority?”

“I have not resisted civil authority,” replied Orde respectfully.

“It has been otherwise reported.”

“The reports have been false. The sheriff of this county has arrested
about twenty of my men single-handed and without the slightest trouble.”

“Mr. Morris,” cried the officer sharply.

“Yes?” replied the sheriff.

“Is what this man says true?”

“It sure is. Never had so little fuss arrestin' rivermen before in my
life.”

The officer's face turned a slow brick-red. For a moment he said
nothing, then exploded with the utmost violence.

“Then why the devil am I dragged up here with my men in the night?” he
cried. “Who's responsible for this insanity, anyway? Don't you know,” he
roared at Reed, who that moment swung within his range of vision,
“that I have no standing in the presence of civil law? What do you mean
getting me up here to your miserable little backwoods squabbles?”

Reed started to say something, but was immediately cut short by the
irate captain.

“I've nothing to do with that; settle it in court. And what's more,
you'll have something yourself to settle with the State! About, face!
Forward, march!”

The men faded into the gray light as though dissolved by it.

A deep and respectful silence fell upon the men, which was broken by
Orde's solemn and dramatic declamation.


     “The King of France and twice ten thousand men
      Marched up the hill, and then marched down again,”


he recited; then burst into his deep roar of laughter.

“Now you see, boys,” he said, digging his fists into his eyes, “if you'd
put up a row, what we'd have got into. No blue-coats in mine, thank you.
Well, push the grub pile, and then get at those logs. It's a case of
flood-water now.”

But Reed, having recovered from his astonishment, had still his say.

“I tell ye, I'm not done with ye yet,” he threatened, shaking his bony
forefinger in Orde's face. “I'll sue ye for damages, and I'll GIT 'em,
too.”

“See here, you old mossback,” said Orde, thrusting his bulky form to the
fore, “you sue just as soon as you want to. You can't get at it any too
quick to suit us. But just now you get out of this camp, and you stay
out. You're an old man, and we don't want to be rough with you, but
you're biting off more than you can chew. Skedaddle!”

Reed hesitated, waving his long arms about, flail-like, as though to
begin a new oration.

“Now, do hop along,” urged Orde. “We'll pay you any legitimate damages,
of course, but you can't expect to hang up a riverful of logs just on a
notion. And we're sick of you. Oh, hell, then! See here, you two; just
see that this man leaves camp.”

Orde turned square on his heel. Reed, after a glance at the two huge
rivermen approaching, beat a retreat to his mill, muttering and wrathful
still.

“Well, good-bye, boys,” said Daly, pulling on his overcoat; “I'll just
get along and bail the boys out of that village calaboose. I reckon
they've had a good night's rest. Be good!”

The fringe of trees to eastward showed clearly against the whitening
sky. Hundreds of birds of all kinds sang in an ecstasy. Another day
had begun. Already men with pike-poles were guiding the sullen timbers
toward the sluice-way.




IV


When Newmark awoke once more to interest in affairs, the morning was
well spent. On the river the work was going forward with the precision
of clockwork. The six-foot lowering of the sluice-way had produced a
fine current, which sucked the logs down from above. Men were busily
engaged in “sacking” them from the sides of the pond toward its centre,
lest the lowering water should leave them stranded. Below the dam
the jam crew was finding plenty to do in keeping them moving in the
white-water and the shallows. A fine sun, tempered with a prophetic
warmth of later spring, animated the scene. Reed had withdrawn to the
interior of his mill, and appeared to have given up the contest.

Some of the logs shot away down the current, running freely. To these
the crews were not required to pay any attention. With luck, a few of
the individual timbers would float ten, even twenty, miles before some
chance eddy or fortuitous obstruction would bring them to rest. Such
eddies and obstructions, however, drew a constant toll from the ranks of
the free-moving logs, so that always the volume of timbers floating
with the current diminished, and always the number of logs caught and
stranded along the sides of the river increased. To restore these to
the faster water was the especial province of the last and most expert
crew--the rear.

Orde discovered about noon that the jam crew was having its troubles.
Immediately below Reed's dam ran a long chute strewn with boulders,
which was alternately a shallow or a stretch of white-water according
as the stream rose or fell. Ordinarily the logs were flushed over this
declivity by opening the gate, behind which a head of water had
been accumulated. Now, however, the efficiency of the gate had been
destroyed. Orde early discovered that he was likely to have trouble in
preventing the logs rushing through the chute from grounding into a bad
jam on the rapids below.

For a time the jam crew succeeded in keeping the “wings” clear. In the
centre of the stream, however, a small jam formed, like a pier. Along
the banks logs grounded, and were rolled over by their own momentum into
places so shallow as to discourage any hope of refloating them unless
by main strength. As the sluicing of the nine or ten million feet that
constituted this particular drive went forward, the situation rapidly
became worse.

“Tom, we've got to get flood-water unless we want to run into an awful
job there,” said Orde to the foreman. “I wonder if we can't drop that
gate 'way down to get something for a head.”

The two men examined the chute and the sluice-gate attentively for some
time.

“If we could clear out the splinters and rubbish, we might spike a
couple of saplings on each side for the gate to slide down into,”
 speculated North. “Might try her on.”

The logs were held up in the pond, and a crew of men set to work to cut
away, as well as they might in the rush of water, the splintered ends of
the old sill and apron. It was hard work. Newmark, watching, thought it
impracticable. The current rendered footing impossible, so all the work
had to be done from above. Wet wood gripped the long saws vice-like,
so that a man's utmost strength could scarcely budge them. The water
deadened the force of axe-blows. Nevertheless, with the sure persistence
of the riverman, they held to it. Orde, watching them a few moments,
satisfied himself that they would succeed, and so departed up river to
take charge of the rear.

This crew he found working busily among some overflowed woods. They
were herding the laggards of the flock. The subsidence of the water
consequent upon the opening of the sluice-gate had left stranded and in
shallows many hundreds of the logs. These the men sometimes, waist deep
in the icy water, owing to the extreme inequality of the bottom, were
rolling over and over with their peavies until once more they floated.
Some few the rivermen were forced to carry bodily, ten men to a side,
the peavies clamped in as handles. When once they were afloat, the task
became easier. From the advantage of deadwood, stumps, or other logs
the “sackers” pushed the unwieldy timbers forward, leaping, splashing,
heaving, shoving, until at last the steady current of the main river
seized the logs and bore them away. With marvellous skill they topped
the dripping, bobby, rolling timbers, treading them over and over, back
and forth, in unconscious preservation of equilibrium.

There was a good deal of noise and fun at the rear. The crew had been
divided, and a half worked on either side the river. A rivalry developed
as to which side should advance fastest in the sacking. It became
a race. Momentary success in getting ahead of the other fellow was
occasion for exultant crowing, while a mishap called forth ironic cheers
and catcalls from the rival camp. Just as Orde came tramping up the
trail, one of the rivermen's caulks failed to “bite” on an unusually
smooth, barked surface. His foot slipped; the log rolled; he tried in
vain to regain his balance, and finally fell in with a heavy splash.

The entire river suspended work to send up a howl of delight. As the
unfortunate crawled out, dripping from head to foot, he was greeted by
a flood of sarcasm and profane inquiry that left no room for even his
acknowledged talents of repartee. Cursing and ashamed, he made his way
ashore over the logs, spirting water at every step. There he wrung out
his woollen clothes as dry as he could, and resumed work.

Hardly had Orde the opportunity to look about at the progress making,
however, before he heard his name shouted from the bank. Looking up, to
his surprise he saw the solemn cook waving a frantic dish-towel at him.
Nothing could induce the cook to attempt the logs.

“What is it, Charlie?” asked Orde, leaping ashore and stamping the loose
water from his boots.

“It's all off,” confided the cook pessimistically. “It's no good. He's
stopped us now.”

“What's off? Who's stopped what?”

“Reed. He's druv the men from the dam with a shotgun. We might as well
quit.”

“Shotgun, hey!” exclaimed Orde. “Well, the old son of a gun!” He thought
a moment, his lips puckered as though to whistle; then, as usual, he
laughed amusedly. “Let's go take a look at the army,” said he.

He swung away at a round pace, followed rather breathlessly by the cook.
The trail led through the brush across a little flat point, up over a
high bluff where the river swung in, down to another point, and across a
pole trail above a marsh to camp.

A pole trail consists of saplings laid end to end, and supported three
or four feet above wet places by means of sawbuck-like structures at
their extremities. To a river-man or a tight-rope dancer they are easy
walks. All others must proceed cautiously in contrite memory of their
sins.

Orde marched across the first two lengths confidently enough. Then he
heard a splash and lamentations. Turning, he perceived Charlie, covered
with mud, in the act of clambering up one of the small trestles.

“Ain't got no caulks!” ran the lamentations. “The ---- of a ---- of a
pole-trail, anyways!”

He walked ahead gingerly, threw his hands aloft, bent forward, then
suddenly protruded his stomach, held out one foot in front of him,
spasmodically half turned, and then, realising the case hopeless, wilted
like a wet rag, to clasp the pole trail both by arm and leg. This saved
him from falling off altogether, but swung him underneath, where he
hung like the sloths in the picture-books. A series of violent wriggles
brought him, red-faced and panting, astride the pole, whence, his
feelings beyond mere speech, he sadly eyed his precious derby, which
lay, crown up, in the mud below.

Orde contemplated the spectacle seriously.

“Sorry I haven't got time to enjoy you just now, Charlie,” he remarked.
“I'd take it slower, if I were you.”

He departed, catching fragments of vows anent never going on any more
errands for nobody, and getting his time if ever again he went away from
his wanigan.

Orde stopped short outside the fringe of brush to utter another
irrepressible chuckle of amusement.

The centre of the dam was occupied by Reed. The old man was still in
full regalia, his plug hat fuzzier than ever, and thrust even farther
back on his head, his coat-tails and loose trousers flapping at his
every movement as he paced back and forth with military precision. Over
his shoulder he carried a long percussion-lock shotgun. Not thirty
feet away, perched along the bank, for all the world like a row of
cormorants, sat the rivermen, watching him solemnly and in silence.

“What's the matter?” inquired Orde, approaching.

The old man surveyed him with a snort of disgust.

“If the law of the land don't protect me, I'll protect myself, sir,” he
proclaimed. “I give ye fair warning! I ain't a-going to have my property
interfered with no more.”

“But surely,” said Orde, “we have a right to run our logs through. It's
an open river.”

“And hev ye been running your logs through?” cried the old man
excitedly. “Hev ye? First off ye begin to tear down my dam; and then,
when the river begins a-roarin' and a-ragin' through, then you tamper
with my improvements furthermore, a-lowerin' the gate and otherwise
a-modifyin' my structure.”

Orde stepped forward to say something further. Immediately Reed wheeled,
his thumb on the hammer.

“All right, old Spirit of '76,” replied Orde. “Don't shoot; I'll come
down.”

He walked back to the waiting row, smiling quizzically.

“Well, you calamity howlers, what do you think of it?”

Nobody answered, but everybody looked expectant.

“Think he'd shoot?” inquired Orde of Tom North.

“I know he would,” replied North earnestly. “That crazy-headed kind are
just the fellers to rip loose.”

“I think myself he probably would,” agreed Orde.

“Surely,” spoke up Newmark, “whatever the status of the damage suits,
you have the legal right to run your logs.”

Orde rolled a quizzical eye in his direction.

“Per-fect-ly correct, son,” he drawled, “but we're engaged in the happy
occupation of getting out logs. By the time the law was all adjusted and
a head of steam up, the water'd be down. In this game, you get out logs
first, and think about law afterward.”

“How about legal damages?” insisted Newmark.

“Legal damages!” scoffed Orde. “Legal damages! Why, we count legal
damages as part of our regular expenses--like potatoes. It's lucky it's
so,” he added. “If anybody paid any attention to legal technicalities,
there'd never be a log delivered. A man always has enemies.

“Well, what are you going to do?” persisted Newmark.

Orde thrust back his felt hat and ran his fingers through his short,
crisp hair.

“There you've got me,” he confessed, “but, if necessary, we'll pile the
old warrior.”

He walked to the edge of the dam and stood looking down current. For
perhaps a full minute he remained there motionless, his hat clinging to
one side, his hand in his hair. Then he returned to the grimly silent
rivermen.

“Boys,” he commanded briefly, “get your peavies and come along.”

He led the way past the mill to the shallows below.

“There's a trifle of wading to do,” he announced. “Bring down two
logs--fairly big--and hold them by that old snag,” he ordered. “Whoa-up!
Easy! Hold them end on--no, pointing up stream--fix 'em about ten foot
apart--that's it! George, drive a couple of stakes each side of them
to hold 'em. Correct! Now, run down a couple dozen more and pile them
across those two--side on to the stream, of course. Roll 'em up--that's
the ticket!”

Orde had been splashing about in the shallow water, showing where
each timber was to be placed. He drew back, eyeing the result with
satisfaction. It looked rather like a small and bristly pier.

Next he cast his eye about and discovered a partially submerged boulder
on a line with the newly completed structure. Against this he braced
the ends of two more logs, on which he once more caused to be loaded
at right angles many timbers. An old stub near shore furnished him the
basis of a third pier. He staked a thirty-inch butt for a fourth; and
so on, until the piers, in conjunction with the small centre jam already
mentioned, extended quite across the river.

All this was accomplished in a very short time, and immediately below
the mill, but beyond sight from the sluice-gate of the dam.

“Now, boys,” commanded Orde, “shove off some shore logs, and let them
come down.”

“We'll have a jam sure,” objected Purdy stupidly.

“No, my son, would we?” mocked Orde. “I surely hope not!”

The stray logs floating down with the current the rivermen caught and
arranged to the best possible advantage about the improvised piers.
A good riverman understands the correlation of forces represented by
saw-logs and water-pressure. He knows how to look for the key-log in
breaking jams; and by the inverse reasoning, when need arises he can
form a jam as expertly as Koosy-oonek himself--that bad little god
who brings about the disagreeable and undesired--“who hides our pipes,
steals our last match, and brings rain on the just when they want to go
fishing.”

So in ten seconds after the shore logs began drifting down from above,
the jam was taking shape. Slowly it formed, low and broad. Then, as the
water gathered pressure, the logs began to slip over one another. The
weight of the topmost sunk those beneath to the bed of the stream. This
to a certain extent dammed back the water. Immediately the pressure
increased. More logs were piled on top. The piers locked the structure.
Below the improvised dam the water fell almost to nothing, and above it,
swirling in eddies, grumbling fiercely, bubbling, gurgling, searching
busily for an opening, the river, turned back on itself, gathered its
swollen and angry forces.

“That will do, boys,” said Orde with satisfaction.

He led the way to the bank and sat down. The men followed his example.
Every moment the water rose, and each instant, as more logs came down
the current, the jam became more formidable.

“Nothing can stand that pressure,” breathed Newmark, fascinated.

“The bigger the pressure the tighter she locks,” replied Orde, lighting
his pipe.

The high bank where the men sat lay well above the reach of the water.
Not so the flat on which stood Reed's mill. In order to take full
advantage of the water-power developed by the dam, the old man had
caused his structure to be built nearly at a level with the stream.
Now the river, backing up, rapidly overflowed this flat. As the jam
tightened by its own weight and the accumulation of logs, the water
fairly jumped from the lowest floor of the mill to the one above.

Orde had not long to wait for Reed's appearance. In less than five
minutes the old man descended on the group, somewhat of his martial air
abated, and something of a vague anxiety manifest in his eye.

“What's the matter here?” he demanded.

“Matter?” inquired Orde easily. “Oh, nothing much, just a little jam.”

“But it's flooding my mill!”

“So I perceive,” replied Orde, striking a match.

“Well, why don't you break it?”

“Not interested.”

The old warrior ran up the bank to where he could get a good view of his
property. The water was pouring into the first-floor windows.

“Here!” he cried, running back. “I've a lot of grain up-stairs. It'll be
ruined!”

“Not interested,” repeated Orde.

Reed was rapidly losing control of himself.

“But I've got a lot of money invested here!” he shouted. “You miserable
blackguard, you're ruining me!”

Orde replaced his pipe.

Reed ran back and forth frantically, disappeared, returned bearing an
antiquated pike-pole, and single-handed and alone attacked the jam!

Astonishment and delight held the rivermen breathless for a moment. Then
a roar of laughter drowned even the noise of the waters. Men pounded
each other on the back, rolled over and over, clutching handfuls of
earth, struggled weak and red-faced for breath as they saw against the
sky-line of the bristling jam the lank, flapping figure with the old
plug hat pushing frantically against the immovable statics of a mighty
power. The exasperation of delay, the anxiety lest success be lost
through the mulish and narrow-minded obstinacy of one man, the
resentment against another obstacle not to be foreseen and not to be
expected in a task redundantly supplied with obstacles of its own--these
found relief at last.

“By Jove!” breathed Newmark softly to himself. “Don Quixote and the
windmills!” Then he added vindictively, “The old fool!” although, of
course, the drive was not his personal concern.

Only Orde seemed to see the other side. And on Orde the responsibility,
uncertainty, and vexation had borne most heavily, for the success of the
undertaking was in his hands. With a few quick leaps he had gained the
old man's side.

“Look here, Reed,” he said kindly, “you can't break this jam. Come
ashore now, and let up. You'll kill yourself.”

Reed turned to him, a wild light in his eye.

“Break it!” he pleaded. “You're ruining me. I've got all my money in
that mill.”

“Well,” said Orde, “we've got a lot of money in our logs too. You
haven't treated us quite right.”

Reed glanced frantically toward the flood up stream.

“Come,” said Orde, taking him gently by the arm. “There's no reason you
and I shouldn't get along together all right. Maybe we're both a little
hard-headed. Let's talk it over.”

He led the old man ashore, and out of earshot of the rivermen.

At the end of ten minutes he returned.

“War's over, boys!” he shouted cheerfully. “Get in and break that jam.”

At once the crew swarmed across the log barrier to a point above the
centre pier. This they attacked with their peavies, rolling the top logs
off into the current below. In less than no time they had torn out
quite a hole in the top layer. The river rushed through the opening.
Immediately the logs in the wings were tumbled in from either side.
At first the men had to do all of the work, but soon the river itself
turned to their assistance. Timbers creaked and settled, or rose
slightly buoyant as the water loosened the tangle. Men trod on the edge
of expectation. Constantly the logs shifted, and as constantly the men
shifted also, avoiding the upheavals and grindings together, wary eyes
estimating the correlation of the forces into whose crushing reach a
single misstep would bring them. The movement accelerated each instant,
as the music of the play hastens to the climax. Wood fibres smashed.
The whole mass seemed to sink down and forward into a boiling of waters.
Then, with a creak and a groan, the jam moved, hesitated, moved again;
finally, urged by the frantic river, went out in a majestic crashing and
battering of logs.

At the first movement Newmark expected the rivermen to make their
escape. Instead, they stood at attention, their peavies poised, watching
cat-eyed the symptoms of the break. Twice or thrice several of the
men, observing something not evident to Newmark's unpractised eye, ran
forward, used their peavies vigorously for a moment or so, and stood
back to watch the result. Only at the very last, when it would seem that
some of them must surely he caught, did the river-jacks, using their
peavy-shafts as balancing poles, zigzag calmly to shore across the
plunging logs. Newmark seemed impressed.

“That was a close shave,” said he to the last man ashore.

“What?” inquired the riverman. “Didn't see it. Somebody fall down?”

“Why, no,” explained Newmark; “getting in off those logs without getting
caught.”

“Oh!” said the man indifferently, turning away.

The going out of the jam drained the water from the lower floors of the
mill; the upper stories and the grain were still safe.

By evening the sluice-gate had been roughly provided with pole guides
down which to slide to the bed of the river. The following morning saw
the work going on as methodically as ever. During the night a very
good head of water had gathered behind the lowered gate. The rear crew
brought down the afterguard of logs to the pond. The sluicers with their
long pike-poles thrust the logs into the chute. The jam crew, scattered
for many miles along the lower stretches, kept the drive going; running
out over the surface of the river like water-bugs to thrust apart logs
threatening to lock; leaning for hours on the shafts of their peavies
watching contemplatively the orderly ranks as they drifted by, sleepy,
on the bosom of the river; occasionally gathering, as the filling of
the river gave warning, to break a jam. By the end of the second day the
pond was clear, and as Charlie's wanigan was drifting toward the chute,
the first of Johnson's drive floated into the head of the pond.




V


Charlie's wanigan, in case you do not happen to know what such a thing
may be, was a scow about twenty feet long by ten wide. It was
very solidly constructed of hewn timbers, square at both ends, was
inconceivably clumsy, and weighed an unbelievable number of pounds.
When loaded, it carried all the bed-rolls, tents, provisions, cooking
utensils, tools, and a chest of tobacco, clothes, and other minor
supplies. It was managed by Charlie and his two cookees by means of
pike-poles and a long sweep at either end. The pike-poles assured
progress when the current slacked; the sweeps kept her head-on when
drifting with the stream.

Charlie's temperament was pessimistic at best. When the wanigan was
to be moved, he rose fairly to the heights of what might be called
destructive prophecy.

The packing began before the men had finished breakfast. Shortly after
daylight the wanigan, pushed strongly from shore by the pike-poles,
was drifting toward the chute. When the heavy scow threatened to turn
side-on, the sweeps at either end churned the water frantically in an
endeavour to straighten her out. Sometimes, by a misunderstanding, they
worked against each other. Then Charlie, raging from one to the other of
his satellites, frothed and roared commands and vituperations. His voice
rose to a shriek. The cookees, bewildered by so much violence, lost
their heads completely. Then Charlie abruptly fell to an exaggerated
calm. He sat down amidships on a pile of bags, and gazed with
ostentatious indifference out over the pond. Finally, in a voice fallen
almost to a whisper, and with an elaborate politeness, Charlie proffered
a request that his assistants acquire the sense God gave a rooster.
Newmark, who had elected to accompany the wanigan on its voyage,
evidently found it vastly amusing, for his eyes twinkled behind his
glasses. As the wanigan neared the sluice through which it must shoot
the flood-water, the excitement mounted to fever pitch. The water boiled
under the strokes of the long steering oars. The air swirled with the
multitude and vigour of Charlie's commands. As many of the driving crew
as were within distance gathered to watch. It was a supreme moment. As
Newmark looked at the smooth rim of the water sucking into the chute, he
began to wonder why he had come.

However, the noble ship was pointed right at last, and caught the faster
water head-on. Even Charlie managed to look cheerful for an instant, and
to grin at his passenger as he wiped his forehead with a very old, red
handkerchief.

“All right now,” he shouted.

Zeke and his mate took in the oars. The wanigan shot forward below the
gate--

WHACK! BUMP! BANG! and the scow stopped so suddenly that its four men
plunged forward in a miscellaneous heap, while Zeke narrowly escaped
going overboard. Almost immediately the water, backed up behind the
stern, began to overflow into the boat. Newmark, clearing his vision
as well as he could for lack of his glasses, saw that the scow had
evidently run her bow on an obstruction, and had been brought to a
standstill square beneath the sluice-gate. Men seemed to be running
toward them. The water was beginning to flow the entire length of the
boat. Various lighter articles shot past him and disappeared over the
side. Charlie had gone crazy and was grabbing at these, quite uselessly,
for as fast as he had caught one thing he let it go in favour of
another. The cookees, retaining some small degree of coolness, were
pushing uselessly with pike-poles.

Newmark had an inspiration. The more important matters, such as the
men's clothes-bags, the rolls of bedding, and the heavier supplies of
provisions, had not yet cut loose from their moorings, although the
rapid backing of the water threatened soon to convert the wanigan into
a chute for nearly the full volume of the current. He seized one of the
long oars, thrust the blade under the edge of a thwart astern laid the
shaft of the oar across the cargo, and by resting his weight on the
handle attempted to bring it down to bind the contents of the wanigan
to their places. The cookees saw what he was about, and came to his
assistance. Together they succeeded in bending the long hickory sweep
far enough to catch its handle-end under another, forward, thwart. The
second oar was quickly locked alongside the first, and not a moment too
soon. A rush of water forced them all to cling for their lives. The poor
old wanigan was almost buried by the river.

But now help was at hand. Two or three rivermen appeared at the edge of
the chute. A moment later old man Reed ran up, carrying a rope. This,
after some difficulty, was made fast to the bow of the wanigan. A dozen
men ran with the end of it to a position of vantage from which they
might be able to pull the bow away from the sunken obstruction, but
Orde, appearing above, called a halt. After consultation with
Reed, another rope was brought and the end of it tossed down to the
shipwrecked crew. Orde pointed to the stern of the boat, revolving his
hands in pantomime to show that the wanigan would be apt to upset if
allowed to get side-on when freed. A short rope led to the top of the
dam allowed the bow to be lifted free of the obstruction; a cable astern
prevented the current from throwing her broadside to the rush of waters;
another cable from the bow led her in the way she should go. Ten
minutes later she was pulled ashore out of the eddy below, very much
water-logged, and manned by a drenched and disgruntled crew.

But Orde allowed them little chance for lamentation.

“Hard luck!” he said briefly. “Hope you haven't lost much. Now get a
move on you and bail out. You've got to get over the shallows while this
head is on.”

“That's all the thanks you get,” grumbled Charlie to himself and the
other three as Orde moved away. “Work, slave, get up in the night,
drownd yourself--”

He happily discovered that the pails under the forward thwart had not
been carried away, and all started in to bail. It was a back-breaking
job, and consumed the greater part of two hours. Even at the end of that
time the wanigan, though dry of loose water, floated but sluggishly.

“'Bout two ton of water in them bed-rolls and turkeys,” grumbled
Charlie. “Well, get at it!”

Newmark soon discovered that the progress of the wanigan was looked upon
in the light of a side-show by the rivermen. Its appearance was
signal for shouts of delighted and ironic encouragement; its
tribulations--which at first, in the white-water, were many--the
occasion for unsympathetic and unholy joy. Charlie looked on all
spectators as enemies. Part of the time he merely glowered. Part of the
time he tried to reply in kind. To his intense disgust, he was taken
seriously in neither case.

In a couple of hours' run the wanigan had overtaken and left far behind
the rear of the drive. All about floated the logs, caroming gently one
against the other, shifting and changing the pattern of their brown
against the blue of the water. The current flowed strongly and smoothly,
but without obstruction. Everything went well. The banks slipped by
silently and mysteriously, like the unrolling of a panorama--little
strips of marshland, stretches of woodland where the great trees leaned
out over the river, thickets of overflowed swampland with the water
rising and draining among roots in a strange regularity of its own. The
sun shone warm. There was no wind. Newmark wrung out his outer
garments, and basked below the gunwale. Zeke and his companion pulled
spasmodically on the sweeps. Charlie, having regained his equanimity
together with his old brown derby, which he came upon floating sodden
in an eddy, marched up and down the broad gunwale with his pike-pole,
thrusting away such logs as threatened interference.

“Well,” said he at last, “we better make camp. We'll be down in the jam
pretty soon.”

The cookees abandoned the sweeps in favour of more pike-poles. By
pushing and pulling on the logs floating about them, they managed to
work the wanigan in close to the bank.

Charlie, a coil of rope in his hand, surveyed the prospects.

“We'll stop right down there by that little knoll,” he announced.

He leaped ashore, made a turn around a tree, and braced himself to snub
the boat, but unfortunately he had not taken into consideration the
“two ton” of water soaked up by the cargo. The weight of the craft
relentlessly dragged him forward. In vain he braced and struggled. The
end of the rope came to the tree; he clung for a moment, then let go,
and ran around the tree to catch it before it should slip into the
water.

By this time the wanigan had caught the stronger current at the bend and
was gathering momentum. Charlie tried to snub at a sapling, and broke
the sapling; on a stub, and uprooted the stub. Down the banks and
through the brush he tore at the end of his rope, clinging desperately,
trying at every solid tree to stop the career of his runaway, but in
every instance being forced by the danger of jamming his hands to let
go. Again he lost his derby. The landscape was a blur. Dimly he made
out the howls of laughter as the outfit passed a group of rivermen. Then
abruptly a ravine yawned before him, and he let go just in time to save
himself a fall. The wanigan, trailing her rope, drifted away.

Nor did she stop until she had overtaken the jam. There, her momentum
reduced by the closer crowding of the logs, she slowed down enough so
that Newmark and the cookees managed to work her to the bank and make
her fast.

That evening, after the wanigan's crew had accomplished a hard
afternoon's work pitching camp and drying blankets, the first of the
rear drifted in very late after a vain search for camp farther up
stream.

“For God's sake, Charlie,” growled one, “it's a wonder you wouldn't run
through to Redding and be done with it.”

Whereupon Charlie, who had been preternaturally calm all the afternoon,
uttered a shriek of rage, and with a carving-knife chased that man out
into the brush. Nor would he be appeased to the point of getting supper
until Orde himself had intervened.

“Well,” said Orde to Newmark later, around the campfire, “how does
river-driving strike you?”

“It is extremely interesting,” replied Newmark.

“Like to join the wanigan crew permanently?”

“No, thanks,” returned Newmark drily.

“Well, stay with us as long as you're having a good time,” invited Orde
heartily, but turning away from his rather uncommunicative visitor.

“Thank you,” Newmark acknowledged this, “I believe I will.”

“Well, Tommy,” called Orde across the fire to North, “I reckon we've got
to rustle some more supplies. That shipwreck of ours to-day mighty near
cleaned us out of some things. Lucky Charlie held his head and locked in
the bedding with those sweeps, or we'd have been strapped.”

“I didn't do it,” grumbled Charlie. “It was him.”

“Oh!” Orde congratulated Newmark. “Good work! I'm tickled to death you
belonged to that crew.”

“That old mossback Reed was right on deck with his rope,” remarked
Johnny Simms. “That was pretty decent of him.”

“Old skunk!” growled North. “He lost us two days with his damn nonsense.
You let him off too easy, Jack.”

“Oh, he's a poor old devil,” replied Orde easily. “He means well enough.
That's the way the Lord made him. He can't help how he's made.”




VI


During the thirty-three days of the drive, Newmark, to the surprise
of everybody, stayed with the work. Some of these days were very
disagreeable. April rains are cold and persistent--the proverbs as to
showers were made for another latitude. Drenched garments are bad enough
when a man is moving about and has daylight; but when night falls,
and the work is over, he likes a dry place and a change with which to
comfort himself. Dry places there were none. Even the interior of the
tents became sodden by continual exits and entrances of dripping men,
while dry garments speedily dampened in the shiftings of camp which, in
the broader reaches of the lower river, took place nearly every day. Men
worked in soaked garments, slept in damp blankets. Charlie cooked only
by virtue of persistence. The rivermen ate standing up, as close to
the sputtering, roaring fires as they could get. Always the work went
forward.

But there were other times when a golden sun rose each morning a little
earlier on a green and joyous world. The river ran blue. Migratory birds
fled busily northward--robins, flute-voiced blue-birds, warblers of
many species, sparrows of different kinds, shore birds and ducks, the
sweet-songed thrushes. Little tepid breezes wandered up and down,
warm in contrast to the faint snow-chill that even yet lingered in the
shadows. Sounds carried clearly, so that the shouts and banter of the
rivermen were plainly audible up the reaches of the river. Ashore moist
and aggressive green things were pushing up through the watery earth
from which, in shade, the last frost had not yet departed. At camp the
fires roared invitingly. Charlie's grub was hot and grateful. The fir
beds gave dreamless sleep.

Newmark followed the work of the log-drive with great interest. All day
long he tramped back and forth--on jam one day, on rear the next. He
never said much, but watched keenly, and listened to the men's banter
both on the work and about the evening's fire as though he enjoyed
it. Gradually the men got used to him, and ceased to treat him as an
outsider. His thin, eager face, his steel-blue, inquiring eyes behind
the glasses, his gray felt hat, his lank, tense figure in its gray,
became a familiar feature. They threw remarks to him, to which he
replied briefly and drily. When anything interesting was going on,
somebody told him about it. Then he hurried to the spot, no matter how
distant it might be. He used always the river trail; he never attempted
to ride the logs.

He seemed to depend most on observation, for he rarely asked any
questions. What few queries he had to proffer, he made to Orde himself,
waiting sometimes until evening to interview that busy and good-natured
individual. Then his questions were direct and to the point. They
related generally to the advisability of something he had seen done;
only rarely did they ask for explanation of the work itself. That
Newmark seemed capable of puzzling out for himself.

The drive, as has been said, went down as far as Redding in thirty-three
days. It had its share of tribulation. The men worked fourteen and
sixteen hours at times. Several bad jams relieved the monotony. Three
dams had to be sluiced through. Problems of mechanics arose to be solved
on the spot; problems that an older civilisation would have attacked
deliberately and with due respect for the seriousness of the situation
and the dignity of engineering. Orde solved them by a rough-and-ready
but very effective rule of thumb. He built and abandoned structures
which would have furnished opportunity for a winter's discussion to some
committees; just as, earlier in the work, the loggers had built through
a rough country some hundreds of miles of road better than railroad
grade, solid in foundation, and smooth as a turnpike, the quarter of
which would have occupied the average county board of supervisors
for five years. And while he was at it, Orde kept his men busy and
satisfied. Your white-water birler is not an easy citizen to handle. Yet
never once did the boss appear hurried or flustered. Always he
wandered about, his hands in his pockets, chewing a twig, his round,
wind-reddened face puckered humorously, his blue eyes twinkling, his
square, burly form lazily relaxed. He seemed to meet his men almost
solely on the plane of good-natured chaffing. Yet the work was done, and
done efficiently, and Orde was the man responsible.

The drive of which Orde had charge was to be delivered at the booms of
Morrison and Daly, a mile or so above the city of Redding. Redding was a
thriving place of about thirty thousand inhabitants, situated on a long
rapids some forty miles from Lake Michigan. The water-power developed
from the rapids explained Redding's existence. Most of the logs floated
down the river were carried through to the village at the lake coast,
where, strung up the river for eight or ten miles, stood a dozen or so
big saw-mills, with concomitant booms, yards, and wharves. Morrison and
Daly, however, had built a saw and planing mill at Redding, where
they supplied most of the local trade and that of the surrounding
country-side.

The drive, then, was due to break up as soon as the logs should be
safely impounded.

The last camp was made some six or eight miles above the mill. From that
point a good proportion of the rivermen, eager for a taste of the town,
tramped away down the road, to return early in the morning, more or less
drunk, but faithful to their job. One or two did not return.

Among the revellers was the cook, Charlie, commonly called The Doctor.
The rivermen early worked off the effects of their rather wild spree,
and turned up at noon chipper as larks. Not so the cook. He moped about
disconsolately all day; and in the evening, after his work had been
finished, he looked so much like a chicken with the pip that Orde's
attention was attracted.

“Got that dark-brown taste, Charlie?” he inquired with mock solicitude.

The cook mournfully shook his head.

“Large head? Let's feel your pulse. Stick out your tongue, sonny.”

“I ain't been drinking, I tell you!” growled Charlie.

“Drinking!” expostulated Orde, horrified. “Of course not! I hope none
of MY boys ever take a drink! But that lemon-pop didn't agree with your
stomach--now did it, Charlie?”

“I tell you I only had two glasses of beer!” cried Charlie, goaded, “and
I can prove it by Johnny Challan.”

Orde turned to survey the pink-cheeked, embarrassed young boy thus
designated.

“How many glasses did Johnny Challan have?” he inquired.

“He didn't drink none to speak of,” spoke up the boy.

“Then why this joyless demeanour?” begged Orde.

Charlie grumbled, fiercely inarticulate; but Johnny Challan interposed
with a chuckle of enjoyment.

“He got 'bunked.'”

“Tell us!” cried Orde delightedly.

“It was down at McNeill's place,” explained Johnny Challan; encouraged
by the interest of his audience. “They was a couple of sports there who
throwed out three cards on the table and bet you couldn't pick the jack.
They showed you where the jack was before they throwed, and it surely
looked like a picnic, but it wasn't.”

“Three-card monte,” said Newmark.

“How much?” asked Simms.

“About fifty dollars,” replied the boy.

Orde turned on the disgruntled cook.

“And you had fifty in your turkey, camping with this outfit of hard
citizens!” he cried. “You ought to lose it.”

Johnny Challan was explaining to his companions exactly how the game was
played.

“It's a case of keep your eye on the card, I should think,” said big Tim
Nolan. “If you got a quick enough eye to see him flip the card around,
you ought to be able to pick her.”

“That's what this sport said,” agreed Challan. “'Your eye agin my hand,'
says he.”

“Well, I'd like to take a try at her,” mused Tim.

But at this point Newmark broke into the discussion. “Have you a pack of
cards?” he asked in his dry, incisive manner.

Somebody rummaged in a turkey and produced the remains of an old deck.

“I don't believe this is a full deck,” said he, “and I think they's part
of two decks in it.”

“I only want three,” assured Newmark, reaching his hand for the pack.

The men crowded around close, those in front squatting, those behind
looking over their shoulders.

Newmark cleared a cracker-box of drying socks and drew it to him.

“These three are the cards,” he said, speaking rapidly. “There is the
jack of hearts. I pass my hands--so. Pick the jack, one of you,” he
challenged, leaning back from the cracker-box on which lay the three
cards, back up. “Any of you,” he urged. “You, North.”

Thus directly singled out, the foreman leaned forward and rather
hesitatingly laid a blunt forefinger on one of the bits of pasteboard.

Without a word, Newmark turned it over. It was the ten of spades.

“Let me try,” interposed Tim Nolan, pressing his big shoulders forward.
“I bet I know which it was that time; and I bet I can pick her next
time.”

“Oh, yes, you BET!” shrugged Newmark. “And that's where the card-sharps
get you fellows every time. Well, pick it,” said he, again deftly
flipping the cards.

Nolan, who had watched keenly, indicated one without hesitation. Again
it proved to be the ten of spades.

“Anybody else ambitious?” inquired Newmark. Everybody was ambitious;
and the young man, with inexhaustible patience, threw out the cards, the
corners of his mouth twitching sardonically at each wrong guess.

At length he called a halt.

“By this time I'd have had all your money,” he pointed out. “Now, I'll
pick the jack.”

For the last time he made his swift passes and distributed the cards.
Then quite calmly, without disturbing the three on the cracker-box, he
held before their eyes the jack of hearts.

An exclamation broke from the interested group. Tim Nolan, who was the
nearest, leaned forward and turned over the three on the board. They
were the eight of diamonds and two tens of spades.

“That's how the thing is worked nine times out of ten,” announced
Newmark. “Once in a while you'll run against a straight game, but not
often.”

“But you showed us the jack every time before you throwed them!” puzzled
Johnny Simms.

“Sleight of hand,” explained Newmark. “The simplest kind of palming.”

“Well, Charlie,” said big Tim, “looks to me as if you had just about as
much chance as a snowball in hell.”

“Where'd you get onto doing all that, Newmark?” inquired North. “You
ain't a tin horn yourself?”

Newmark laughed briefly. “Not I,” said he. “I learned a lot of those
tricks from a travelling magician in college.”

During this demonstration Orde had sat well in the background, his chin
propped on his hand, watching intently all that was going on. After
the comment and exclamations following the exposure of the method had
subsided, he spoke.

“Boys,” said he, “how game are you to get Charlie's money back--and then
some?”

“Try us,” returned big Tim.

“This game's at McNeill's, and McNeill's is a tough hole,” warned Orde.
“Maybe everything will go peaceful, and maybe not. And you boys that go
with me have got to keep sober. There isn't going to be any row unless
I say so, and I'm not taking any contract to handle a lot of drunken
river-hogs as well as go against a game.”

“All right,” agreed Nolan, “I'm with you.”

The thirty or so men of the rear crew then in camp signified their
intention to stay by the procession.

“You can't make those sharps disgorge,” counselled Newmark. “At the
first look of trouble they will light out. They have it all fixed. Force
won't do you much good--and may get some of you shot.”

“I'm not going to use force,” denied Orde. “I'm just going to play their
game. But I bet I can make it go. Only I sort of want the moral support
of the boys.”

“I tell you, you CAN'T win!” cried Newmark disgustedly. “It's a brace
game pure and simple.”

“I don't know about it's being pure,” replied Orde drolly, “but it's
simple enough, if you know how to make the wheels go 'round. How is it,
boys--will you back my play?”

And such was their confidence that, in face of Newmark's demonstration,
they said they would.




VII


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.”




VIII


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.”




IX


“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!”




X


Orde was up and out at six o'clock the following morning. By eight he
had reported for work at Daly's mill, where, with the assistance of a
portion of the river crew, he was occupied in sorting the logs in the
booms. Not until six o'clock in the evening did the whistle blow for the
shut-down. Then he hastened home, to find that Newmark had preceded him
by some few moments and was engaged in conversation with Grandma Orde.
The young man was talking easily, though rather precisely and with
brevity. He nodded to Orde and finished his remark.

After supper Orde led the way up two flights of narrow stairs to his
own room. This was among the gables, a chamber of strangely diversified
ceiling, which slanted here and there according to the demands of the
roof outside.

“Well,” said he, “I've made up my mind to-day to go in with you. It may
not work out, but it's a good chance, and I want to get in something
that looks like money. I don't know who you are, nor how much of a
business man you are or what your experience is, but I'll risk it.”

“I'm putting in twenty thousand dollars,” pointed out Newmark.

“And I'm putting in my everlasting reputation,” said Orde. “If we tell
these fellows that we'll get out their logs for them, and then don't do
it, I'll be DEAD around here.”

“So that's about a stand-off,” said Newmark. “I'm betting twenty
thousand on what I've seen and heard of you, and you're risking your
reputation that I don't want to drop my money.”

Orde laughed.

“And I reckon we're both right,” he responded.

“Still,” Newmark pursued the subject, “I've no objection to telling you
about myself. New York born and bred; experience with Cooper and Dunne,
brokers, eight years. Money from a legacy. Parents dead. No relatives to
speak to.”

Orde nodded gravely twice in acknowledgment.

“Now,” said Newmark, “have you had time to do any figuring?”

“Well,” replied Orde, “I got at it a little yesterday afternoon, and
a little this noon. I have a rough idea.” He produced a bundle of
scribbled papers from his coat-pocket. “Here you are. I take Daly as
a sample, because I've been with his outfit. It costs him to run and
deliver his logs one hundred miles about two dollars a thousand feet.
He's the only big manufacturer up here; the rest are all at Monrovia,
where they can get shipping by water. I suppose it costs the other
nine firms doing business on the river from two to two and a half a
thousand.”

Newmark produced a note-book and began to jot down figures.

“Do these men all conduct separate drives?” he inquired.

“All but Proctor and old Heinzman. They pool in together.”

“Now,” went on Newmark, “if we were to drive the whole river, how could
we improve on that?”

“Well, I haven't got it down very fine, of course,” Orde told him, “but
in the first place we wouldn't need so many men. I could run the river
on three hundred easy enough. That saves wages and grub on two hundred
right there. And, of course, a few improvements on the river would save
time, which in our case would mean money. We would not need so many
separate cook outfits and all that. Of course, that part of it we'd have
to get right down and figure on, and it will take time. Then, too, if
we agreed to sort and deliver, we'd have to build sorting booms down at
Monrovia.”

“Suppose we had all that. What, for example, do you reckon you could
bring Daly's logs down for?”

Orde fell into deep thought, from which he emerged occasionally to
scribble on the back of his memoranda.

“I suppose somewhere about a dollar,” he announced at last. He looked
up a trifle startled. “Why,” he cried, “that looks like big money! A
hundred per cent!”

Newmark watched him for a moment, a quizzical smile wrinkling the
corners of his eyes.

“Hold your horses,” said he at last. “I don't know anything about this
business, but I can see a few things. In the first place, close figuring
will probably add a few cents to that dollar. And then, of course, all
our improvements will be absolutely valueless to anybody after we've
got through using them. You said yesterday they'd probably stand us in
seventy-five thousand dollars. Even at a dollar profit, we'd have to
drive seventy-five million before we got a cent back. And, of
course, we've got to agree to drive for a little less than they could
themselves.”

“That's so,” agreed Orde, his crest falling.

“However,” said Newmark briskly, as he arose, “there's good money in it,
as you say. Now, how soon can you leave Daly?”

“By the middle of the week we ought to be through with this job.”

“That's good. Then we'll go into this matter of expense thoroughly, and
establish our schedule of rates to submit to the different firms.”

Newmark said a punctilious farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Orde.

“By the way,” said Orde to him at the gate, “where are you staying?”

“At the Grand.”

“I know most of the people here--all the young folks. I'd be glad to
take you around and get you acquainted.”

“Thank you,” replied Newmark, “you are very kind. But I don't go in much
for that sort of thing, and I expect to be very busy now on this new
matter; so I won't trouble you.”




XI


The new partners, as soon as Orde had released himself from Daly, gave
all their time to working out a schedule of tolls. Orde drew on his
intimate knowledge of the river and its tributaries, and the locations
of the different rollways, to estimate as closely as possible the time
it would take to drive them. He also hunted up Tom North and others
of the older men domiciled in the cheap boarding-houses of Hell's
Half-Mile, talked with them, and verified his own impressions. Together,
he and Newmark visited the supply houses, got prices, obtained lists.
All the evenings they figured busily, until at last Newmark expressed
himself as satisfied.

“Now, Orde,” said he, “here is where you come in. It's now your job to
go out and interview these men and get their contracts for driving their
next winter's cut.”

But Orde drew back.

“Look here, Joe,” he objected, “that's more in your line. You can talk
business to them better than I can.”

“Not a bit,” negatived Newmark. “They don't know me from Adam, and they
do know you, and all about you. We've got to carry this thing through at
first on our face, and they'd be more apt to entrust the matter to you
personally.”

“All right,” agreed Orde. “I'll start in on Daly.”

He did so the following morning. Daly swung his bulk around in his
revolving office-chair and listened attentively.

“Well, Jack,” said he, “I think you're a good riverman, and I believe
you can do it. I'd be only too glad to get rid of the nuisance of it,
let alone get it done cheaper. If you'll draw up your contract and bring
it in here, I'll sign it. I suppose you'll break out the rollways?”

“No,” said Orde; “we hadn't thought of doing more than the driving
and distributing. You'll have to deliver the logs in the river. Maybe
another year, after we get better organised, we'll be able to break
rollways--at a price per thousand--but until we get a-going we'll have
to rush her through.”

Orde repeated this to his associate.

“That was smooth enough sailing,” he exulted.

“Yes,” pondered Newmark, removing his glasses and tapping his thumb with
their edge. “Yes,” he repeated, “that was smooth sailing. What was that
about rollways?”

“Oh, I told him we'd expect him to break out his own,” said Orde.

“Yes, but what does that mean exactly?”

“Why,” explained Orde, with a slight stare of surprise, “when the
logs are cut and hauled during the winter, they are banked on the
river-banks, and even in the river-channel itself. Then, when the thaws
come in the spring, these piles are broken down and set afloat in the
river.”

“I see,” said Newmark. “Well, but why shouldn't we undertake that part
of it? I should think that would be more the job of the river-drivers.”

“It would hold back our drive too much to have to stop and break
rollways,” explained Orde.

The next morning they took the early train for Monrovia, where were
situated the big mills and the offices of the nine other lumber
companies. Within an hour they had descended at the small frame terminal
station, and were walking together up the village street.

Monrovia was at that time a very spread-out little place of perhaps two
thousand population. It was situated a half mile from Lake Michigan,
behind the sparsely wooded sand hills of its shore. From the river,
which had here grown to a great depth and width, its main street ran
directly at right angles. Four brick blocks of three stories lent
impressiveness to the vista. The stores in general, however, were low
frame structures. All faced broad plank sidewalks raised above the
street to the level of a waggon body. From this main street ran off,
to right and left, other streets, rendered lovely by maple trees that
fairly met across the way. In summer, over sidewalk and roadway alike
rested a dense, refreshing dark shadow that seemed to throw from itself
an odour of coolness. This was rendered further attractive by the
warm spicy odour of damp pine that arose from the resilient surface of
sawdust and shingles broken beneath the wheels of traffic. Back
from these trees, in wide, well-cultivated lawns, stood the better
residences. They were almost invariably built of many corners, with
steep roofs meeting each other at all angles, with wide and ornamented
red chimneys, numerous windows, and much scroll work adorning each apex
and cornice. The ridge poles bristled in fancy foot-high palisades of
wood. Chimneys were provided with lightning-rods. Occasionally an
older structure, on square lines, recorded the era of a more dignified
architecture. Everywhere ran broad sidewalks and picket fences. Beyond
the better residence districts were the board shanties of the mill
workers.

Orde and Newmark tramped up the plank walk to the farthest brick
building. When they came to a cross street, they had to descend to it
by a short flight of steps on one side, and ascend from it by a
corresponding flight on the other. At the hotel, Newmark seated himself
in a rocking-chair next the big window.

“Good luck!” said he.

Orde mounted a wide, dark flight of stairs that led from the street to a
darker hall. The smell of stale cigars and cocoa matting was in the
air. Down the dim length of this hall he made his way to a door, which
without ceremony he pushed open.

He found himself in a railed-off space, separated from the main part of
the room by a high walnut grill.

“Mr. Heinzman in?” he asked of a clerk.

“I think so,” replied the clerk, to whom evidently Orde was known.

Orde spent the rest of the morning with Heinzman, a very rotund,
cautious person of German extraction and accent. Heinzman occupied
the time in asking questions of all sorts about the new enterprise. At
twelve he had not in any way committed himself nor expressed an opinion.
He, however, instructed Orde to return the afternoon of the following
day.

“I vill see Proctor,” said he.

Orde, rather exhausted, returned to find Newmark still sitting in the
rocking-chair with his unlighted cigar. The two had lunch together,
after which Orde, somewhat refreshed, started out. He succeeded in
getting two more promises of contracts and two more deferred interviews.

“That's going a little faster,” he told Newmark cheerfully.

The following morning, also, he was much encouraged by the reception
his plan gained from the other lumbermen. At lunch he recapitulated to
Newmark.

“That's four contracts already,” said he, “and three more practically
a sure thing. Proctor and Heinzman are slower than molasses about
everything, and mean as pusley, and Johnson's up in the air, the way he
always is, for fear some one's going to do him.”

“It isn't a bad outlook,” admitted Newmark.

But Heinzman offered a new problem for Orde's consideration.

“I haf talked with Proctor,” said he, “and ve like your scheme. If you
can deliffer our logs here for two dollars and a quarter, why, that is
better as ve can do it; but how do ve know you vill do it?”

“I'll guarantee to get them here all right,” laughed Orde.

“But what is your guarantee good for?” persisted Heinzman blandly,
locking his fingers over his rotund little stomach. “Suppose the logs
are not deliffered--what then? How responsible are you financially?”

“Well, we're investing seventy-five thousand dollars or so.”

Heinzman rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and wafted the
imaginary pulverisation away.

“Worth that for a judgment,” said he.

He allowed a pause to ensue.

“If you vill give a bond for the performance of your contract,” pursued
Heinzman, “that vould be satisfactory.”

Orde's mind was struck chaotic by the reasonableness of this request,
and the utter impossibility of acceding to it.

“How much of a bond?” he asked.

“Twenty-fife thousand vould satisfy us,” said Heinzman. “Bring us a
suitable bond for that amount and ve vill sign your contract.”

Orde ran down the stairs to find Newmark. “Heinzman won't sign unless we
give him a bond for performance,” he said in a low tone, as he dropped
into the chair next to Newmark.

Newmark removed his unlighted cigar, looked at the chewed end, and
returned it to the corner of his mouth.

“Heinzman has sense,” said he drily. “I was wondering if ordinary
business caution was unknown out here.”

“Can we get such a bond? Nobody would go on my bond for that amount.”

“Mine either,” said Newmark. “We'll just have to let them go and drive
ahead without them. I only hope they won't spread the idea. Better get
those other contracts signed up as soon as we can.”

With this object in view, Orde started out early the next morning,
carrying with him the duplicate contracts on which Newmark had been
busy.

“Rope 'em in,” advised Newmark. “It's Saturday, and we don't want to let
things simmer over Sunday, if we can help it.”

About eleven o'clock a clerk of the Welton Lumber Co. entered Mr.
Welton's private office to deliver to Orde a note.

“This just came by special messenger,” he explained.

Orde, with an apology, tore it open. It was from Heinzman, and requested
an immediate interview. Orde delayed only long enough to get Mr.
Welton's signature, then hastened as fast as his horse could take him
across the drawbridge to the village.

Heinzman he found awaiting him. The little German, with his round, rosy
cheeks, his dot of a nose, his big spectacles, and his rotund body,
looked even more than usual like a spider or a Santa Clause--Orde could
not decide which.

“I haf been thinking of that bond,” he began, waving a pudgy hand toward
a seat, “and I haf been talking with Proctor.”

“Yes,” said Orde hopefully.

“I suppose you would not be prepared to gif a bond?”

“I hardly think so.”

“Vell, suppose ve fix him this way,” went on Heinzman, clasping his
hands over his stomach and beaming through his spectacles. “Proctor and
I haf talked it ofer, and ve are agreet that the probosition is a good
one. Also ve think it is vell to help the young fellers along.” He
laughed silently in such a manner as to shake himself all over. “Ve do
not vish to be too severe, and yet ve must be assured that ve get our
logs on time. Now, I unterstood you to say that this new concern is a
stock company.”

Orde did not remember having said so, but he nodded.

“Vell, if you gif us a bond secured with stock in the new company, that
would be satisfactory to us.”

Orde's face cleared.

“Do you mean that, Mr. Heinzman?”

“Sure. Ve must haf some security, but ve do not vish to be too hard on
you boys.”

“Now, I call that a mighty good way out!” cried Orde.

“Make your contract out according to these terms, then,” said Heinzman,
handing him a paper, “and bring it in Monday.”

Orde glanced over the slip. It recited two and a quarter as the agreed
price; specified the date of delivery at Heinzman and Proctor's booms;
named twenty-five thousand dollars as the amount of the bond, to be
secured by fifty thousand dollars' worth of stock in the new company.
This looked satisfactory. Orde arose.

“I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Heinzman,” said he. “I'll bring it around
Monday.”

He had reached the gate to the grill before Heinzman called him back.

“By the vay,” the little German beamed up at him, swinging his fat legs
as the office-chair tipped back on its springs, “if it is to be a stock
company, you vill be selling some of the stock to raise money, is it not
so?”

“Yes,” agreed Orde, “I expect so.”

“How much vill you capitalise for?”

“We expect a hundred thousand ought to do the trick,” replied Orde.

“Vell,” said Heinzman, “ven you put it on the market, come and see me.”
 He nodded paternally at Orde, beaming through his thick spectacles.

That evening, well after six, Orde returned to the hotel. After
freshening up in the marbled and boarded washroom, he hunted up Newmark.

“Well, Joe,” said he, “I'm as hungry as a bear. Come on, eat, and I'll
tell you all about it.”

They deposited their hats on the racks and pushed open the swinging
screen doors that led into the dining-room. There they were taken
in charge by a marvellously haughty and redundant head-waitress, who
signalled them to follow down through ranks of small tables watched
by more stately damsels. Newmark, reserved and precise, irreproachably
correct in his neat gray, seemed enveloped in an aloofness as
impenetrable as that of the head-waitress herself. Orde, however, was as
breezy as ever. He hastened his stride to overtake the head-waitress.

“Annie, be good!” he said in his jolly way. “We've got business to talk.
Put us somewhere alone.”

Newmark nodded approval, and thrust his hand in his pocket. But Annie
looked up into Orde's frank, laughing face, and her lips curved ever so
faintly in the condescension of a smile.

“Sure, sorr,” said she, in a most unexpected brogue.

“Well, I've got 'em all,” said Orde, as soon as the waitress had gone
with the order. “But the best stroke of business you'd never guess. I
roped in Heinzman.”

“Good!” approved Newmark briefly.

“It was really pretty decent of the little Dutchman. He agreed to let us
put up our stock as security. Of course, that security is good only if
we win out; and if we win out, why, then he'll get his logs, so he won't
have any use for security. So it's just one way of beating the devil
around the bush. He evidently wanted to give us the business, but
he hated like the devil to pass up his rules--you know how those old
shellbacks are.”

“H'm, yes,” said Newmark.

The waitress sailed in through a violently kicked swinging door, bearing
aloft a tin tray heaped perilously. She slanted around a corner in
graceful opposition to the centrifugal, brought the tray to port on a
sort of landing stage by a pillar, and began energetically to distribute
small “iron-ware” dishes, each containing a dab of something. When the
clash of arrival had died, Orde went on:

“I got into your department a little, too.”

“How's that?” asked Newmark, spearing a baked potato. “Heinzman said
he'd buy some of our stock. He seems to think we have a pretty good
show.”

Newmark paused, his potato half-way to his plate.

“Kind of him,” said he after a moment. “Did he sign a contract?”

“It wasn't made out,” Orde reminded him. “I've the memoranda here. We'll
make it out to-night. I am to bring it in Monday.”

“I see we're hung up here over Sunday,” observed Newmark. “No Sunday
trains to Redding.”

Orde became grave.

“I know it. I tried to hurry matters to catch the six o'clock, but
couldn't make it.” His round, jolly face fell sombre, as though a light
within had been extinguished. After a moment the light returned. “Can't
be helped,” said he philosophically.

They ate hungrily, then drifted out into the office again, where Orde
lit a cigar.

“Now, let's see your memoranda,” said Newmark.

He frowned over the three simple items for some time.

“It's got me,” he confessed at last.

“What?” inquired Orde.

“What Heinzman is up to.”

“What do you mean?” asked Orde, turning in his chair with an air of slow
surprise.

“It all looks queer to me. He's got something up his sleeve. Why should
he take a bond with that security from us? If we can't deliver the logs,
our company fails; that makes the stock worthless; that makes the bond
worthless--just when it is needed. Of course, it's as plain as the nose
on your face that he thinks the proposition a good one and is trying to
get control.”

“Oh, no!” cried Orde, astounded.

“Orde, you're all right on the river,” said Newmark, with a dry little
laugh, “but you're a babe in the woods at this game.”

“But Heinzman is honest,” cried Orde. “Why, he is a church member, and
has a class in Sunday-school.”

Newmark selected a cigar from his case, examined it from end to end,
finally put it between his lips. The corners of his mouth were twitching
quietly with amusement.

“Besides, he is going to buy some stock,” added Orde, after a moment.

“Heinzman has not the slightest intention of buying a dollar's worth of
stock,” asserted Newmark.

“But why--”

“--Did he make that bluff?” finished Newmark. “Because he wanted to find
out how much stock would be issued. You told him it would be a hundred
thousand dollars, didn't you?”

“Why--yes, I believe I did,” said Orde, pondering. Newmark threw back
his head and laughed noiselessly.

“So now he knows that if we forfeit the bond he'll have controlling
interest,” he pointed out.

Orde smoked rapidly, his brow troubled.

“But what I can't make out,” reflected Newmark, “is why he's so sure
we'll have to forfeit.”

“I think he's just taking a long shot at it,” suggested Orde, who seemed
finally to have decided against Newmark's opinion. “I believe you're
shying at mare's nests.”

“Not he. He has some good reason for thinking we won't deliver the logs.
Why does he insist on putting in a date for delivery? None of the others
does.”

“I don't know,” replied Orde. “Just to put some sort of a time limit on
the thing, I suppose.”

“You say you surely can get the drive through by then?”

Orde laughed.

“Sure? Why, it gives me two weeks' leeway over the worst possible luck I
could have. You're too almighty suspicious, Joe.”

Newmark shook his head.

“You let me figure this out,” said he.

But bedtime found him without a solution. He retired to his room under
fire of Orde's good-natured raillery. Orde himself shut his door, the
smile still on his lips. As he began removing his coat, however, the
smile died. The week had been a busy one. Hardly had he exchanged a
dozen words with his parents, for he had even been forced to eat his
dinner and supper away from home. This Sunday he had promised himself to
make his deferred but much-desired call on Jane Hubbard--and her guest.
He turned out the gas with a shrug of resignation. For the first
time his brain cleared of its turmoil of calculations, of guesses, of
estimates, and of men. He saw clearly the limited illumination cast
downward by the lamp beneath its wide shade, the graceful, white figure
against the shadow of the easy chair, the oval face cut in half by the
lamplight to show plainly the red lips with the quaint upward quirks at
the corners, and dimly the inscrutable eyes and the hair with the soft
shadows. With a sigh he fell asleep.

Some time in the night he was awakened by a persistent tapping on the
door. In the woodsman's manner, he was instantly broad awake. He lit
the gas and opened the door to admit Newmark, partially dressed over his
night gown.

“Orde,” said he briefly and without preliminary, “didn't you tell me the
other day that rollways were piled both on the banks and IN the river?”

“Yes, sometimes,” said Orde. “Why?

“Then they might obstruct the river?”

“Certainly.”

“I thought so!” cried Newmark, with as near an approach to exultation as
he ever permitted himself. “Now, just one other thing: aren't Heinzman's
rollways below most of the others?”

“Yes, I believe they are,” said Orde.

“And, of course, it was agreed, as usual, that Heinzman was to break out
his own rollways?”

“I see,” said Orde slowly. “You think he intends to delay things enough
so we can't deliver on the date agreed on.”

“I know it,” stated Newmark positively.

“But if he refuses to deliver the logs, no court of law will--”

“Law!” cried Newmark. “Refuse to deliver! You don't know that kind. He
won't refuse to deliver. There'll just be a lot of inevitable delays,
and his foreman will misunderstand, and all that. You ought to know more
about that than I do.”

Orde nodded, his eye abstracted.

“It's a child-like scheme,” commented Newmark. “If I'd had more
knowledge of the business, I'd have seen it sooner.”

“I'd never have seen it at all,” said Orde humbly. “You seem to be the
valuable member of this firm, Joe.”

“In my way,” said Newmark, “you in yours. We ought to make a good team.”




XII


Sunday afternoon, Orde, leaving Newmark to devices of his own, walked
slowly up the main street, turned to the right down one of the shaded
side residence streets that ended finally in a beautiful glistening
sand-hill. Up this he toiled slowly, starting at every step avalanches
and streams down the slope. Shortly he found himself on the summit, and
paused for a breath of air from the lake.

He was just above the tops of the maples, which seen from this angle
stretched away like a forest through which occasionally thrust roofs and
spires. Some distance beyond a number of taller buildings and the red
of bricks were visible. Beyond them still were other sand-hills, planted
raggedly with wind-twisted and stunted trees. But between the brick
buildings and these sand-hills flowed the river--wide, deep, and
still--bordered by the steamboat landings on the town side and by
fishermen's huts and net-racks and small boats on the other. Orde seated
himself on the smooth, clean sand and removed his hat. He saw these
things, and in imagination the far upper stretches of the river, with
the mills and yards and booms extending for miles; and still above them
the marshes and the flats where the river widened below the Big Bend.
That would be the location for the booms of the new company--a cheap
property on which the partners had already secured a valuation. And
below he dropped in imagination with the slackening current until
between two greater sand-hills than the rest the river ran out through
the channel made by two long piers to the lake--blue, restless,
immeasurable. To right and left stretched the long Michigan coast, with
its low yellow hills topped with the green of twisted pines, firs, and
beeches, with always its beach of sand, deep and dry to the very edge of
its tideless sea, strewn with sawlogs, bark, and the ancient remains of
ships.

After he had cooled he arose and made his way back to a pleasant
hardwood forest of maple and beech. Here the leaves were just bursting
from their buds. Underfoot the early spring flowers--the hepaticas,
the anemones, the trilium, the dog-tooth violets, the quaint, early,
bright-green undergrowths--were just reaching their perfection.
Migration was in full tide. Birds, little and big, flashed into view and
out again, busy in the mystery of their northward pilgrimage, giving
the appearance of secret and silent furtiveness, yet each uttering his
characteristic call from time to time, as though for a signal to others
of the host. The woods were swarming as city streets, yet to Orde these
little creatures were as though invisible. He stood in the middle of a
great multitude, he felt himself under the observation of many bright
eyes, he heard the murmuring and twittering that proclaimed a throng,
he sensed an onward movement that flowed slowly but steadily toward the
pole; nevertheless, a flash of wings, a fluttering little body, the dip
of a hasty short flight, represented the visible tokens. Across the pale
silver sun of April their shadows flickered, and with them flickered the
tracery of new leaves and the delicacy of the lace-like upper branches.

Orde walked slowly farther and farther into the forest, lost in an
enjoyment which he could not have defined accurately, but which was so
integral a portion of his nature that it had drawn him from the banks
and wholesale groceries to the woods. After a while he sat down on a
log and lit his pipe. Ahead the ground sloped upward. Dimly through the
half-fronds of the early season he could make out the yellow of sands
and the deep complementary blue of the sky above them. He knew the Lake
to lie just beyond. With the thought he arose. A few moments later he
stood on top the hill, gazing out over the blue waters.

Very blue they were, with a contrasting snowy white fringe of waves
breaking gently as far up the coast as the eye could reach. The beach,
on these tideless waters, was hard and smooth only in the narrow strip
over which ran the wash of the low surf. All the rest of the expanse of
sand back to the cliff-like hills lay dry and tumbled into hummocks and
drifts, from which projected here a sawlog cast inland from a raft by
some long-past storm, there a slab, again a ship's rib sticking gaunt
and defiant from the shifting, restless medium that would smother it.
And just beyond the edge of the hard sand, following the long curves of
the wash, lay a dark, narrow line of bark fragments.

The air was very clear and crystalline. The light-houses on the ends of
the twin piers, though some miles distant, seemed close at hand. White
herring gulls, cruising against the blue, flashed white as the sails of
a distant ship. A fresh breeze darkened the blue velvet surface of the
water, tumbled the white foam hissing up the beach, blew forward over
the dunes a fine hurrying mist of sand, and bore to Orde at last the
refreshment of the wide spaces. A woman, walking slowly, bent her head
against the force of this wind.

Orde watched her idly. She held to the better footing of the smooth
sand, which made it necessary that she retreat often before the
inrushing wash, sometimes rather hastily. Orde caught himself admiring
the grace of her deft and sudden movements, and the sway of her willowy
figure. Every few moments she turned and faced the lake, her head thrown
back, the wind whipping her garments about her.

As she drew nearer, Orde tried in vain to catch sight of her face. She
looked down, watching the waters advance and recede; she wore a brimmed
hat bent around her head by means of some sort of veil tied over the
top and beneath her chin. When she had arrived nearly opposite Orde she
turned abruptly inland, and a moment later began laboriously to climb
the steep sand.

The process seemed to amuse her. She turned her head sidewise to watch
with interest the hurrying, tumbling little cascades that slid from her
every step. From time to time she would raise her skirts daintily with
the tips of her fingers, and lean far over in order to observe with
interest how her feet sank to the ankles, and how the sand rushed from
either side to fill in the depressions. The wind carried up to Orde low,
joyous chuckles of delight, like those of a happy child.

As though directed by some unseen guide, her course veered more and more
until it led directly to the spot where Orde stood. When she was within
ten feet of him she at last raised her head so the young man could see
something besides the top of her hat. Orde looked plump into her eyes.

“Hullo!” she said cheerfully and unsurprised, and sank down cross-legged
at his feet.

Orde stood quite motionless, overcome by astonishment. Her face, its
long oval framed in the bands of the gray veil and the down-turned brim
of the hat, looked up smiling into his. The fresh air had deepened the
colour beneath her skin and had blown loose stray locks of the fine
shadow-filled hair. Her red lips, with the quaintly up-turned corners,
smiled at him with a new frankness, and the black eyes--the eyes so
black as to resemble spots--had lost their half-indolent reserve and
brimmed over quite frankly with the joy of life. She scooped up a
handful of the dry, clean sand from either side of her, raised it aloft,
and let it trickle slowly between her fingers. The wind snatched at the
sand and sprayed it away in a beautiful plume.

“Isn't this REAL fun?” she asked him.

“Why, Miss Bishop!” cried Orde, finding his voice. “What are you doing
here?”

A faint shade of annoyance crossed her brow.

“Oh, I could ask the same of you; and then we'd talk about how surprised
we are, world without end,” said she. “The important thing is that here
is sand to play in, and there is the Lake, and here are we, and the day
is charmed, and it's good to be alive. Sit down and dig a hole! We've
all the common days to explain things in.”

Orde laughed and seated himself to face her. Without further talk, and
quite gravely, they commenced to scoop out an excavation between
them, piling the sand over themselves and on either side as was most
convenient. As the hole grew deeper they had to lean over more and more.
Their heads sometimes brushed ever so lightly, their hands perforce
touched. Always the dry sand flowed from the edges partially to fill in
the result their efforts. Faster and faster they scooped it out again.
The excavation thus took on the shape of a funnel. Her cheeks glowed
pink, her eyes shone like stars. Entirely was she absorbed in the task.
At last a tiny commotion manifested itself in the bottom of the funnel.
Impulsively she laid her hand on Orde's, to stop them. Fascinated,
they watched. After incredible though lilliputian upheavals, at
length appeared a tiny black insect, struggling against the rolling,
overwhelming sands. With great care the girl scooped this newcomer
out and set him on the level ground. She looked up happily at Orde,
thrusting the loose hair from in front of her eyes.

“I was convinced we ought to dig a hole,” said she gravely. “Now, let's
go somewhere else.”

She arose to her feet, shaking the sand free from her skirts.

“I think, through these woods,” she decided. “Can we get back to town
this way?”

Receiving Orde's assurance, she turned at once down the slope through
the fringe of scrub spruces and junipers into the tall woods. Here the
air fell still. She remarked on how warm it seemed, and began to untie
from over her ears the narrow band of veil that held close her hat.

“Yes,” replied Orde. “The lumber-jacks say that the woods are the poor
man's overcoat.”

She paused to savour this, her head on one side, her arms upraised to
the knot.

“Oh, I like that!” said she, continuing her task. In a moment or so the
veil hung free. She removed it and the hat, and swung them both from one
finger, and threw back her head.

“Hear all the birds!” she said.

Softly she began to utter a cheeping noise between her lips and teeth,
low and plaintive. At once the volume of bird-sounds about increased;
the half-seen flashes became more frequent. A second later the twigs
were alive with tiny warblers and creepers, flirting from branch to
branch, with larger, more circumspect chewinks, catbirds, and finches
hopping down from above, very silent, very grave. In the depths of the
thickets the shyer hermit and olive thrushes and the oven birds revealed
themselves ghost-like, or as sea-growths lift into a half visibility
through translucent shadows the colour of themselves. All were very
intent, very earnest, very interested, each after his own manner, in the
comradeship of the featherhood he imagined to be uttering distressful
cries. A few, like the chickadees, quivered their wings, opened their
little mouths, fluttered down tiny but aggressive against the disaster.
Others hopped here and there restlessly, uttering plaintive, low-toned
cheeps. The shyest contented themselves by a discreet, silent, and
distant sympathy. Three or four freebooting Jays, attracted not so much
by the supposed calls for help as by curiosity, fluttered among the tops
of the trees, uttering their harsh notes.

Finally, the girl ended her performance in a musical laugh.

“Run away, Brighteyes,” she called. “It's all right; nobody's damaged.”

She waved her hand. As though at a signal, the host she had evoked
melted back into the shadows of the forest. Only the chickadee, impudent
as ever, retreated scolding rather ostentatiously, and the jays,
splendid in their ornate blue, screamed opinions at each other from the
tops of trees.

“How would you like to be a bird?” she inquired.

“Hadn't thought,” replied Orde.

“Don't you ever indulge in vain and idle speculations?” she inquired.
“Never mind, don't answer. It's too much to expect of a man.”

She set herself in idle motion down the slope, swinging the hat at the
end of its veil, pausing to look or listen, humming a little melody
between her closed lips, throwing her head back to breathe deep the warm
air, revelling in the woods sounds and woods odours and woods life with
entire self-abandonment. Orde followed her in silence. She seemed to
be quite without responsibility in regard to him; and yet an occasional
random remark thrown in his direction proved that he was not forgotten.
Finally they emerged from the beach woods.

They faced an open rolling country. As far as the eye could reach were
the old stumps of pine trees. Sometimes they stood in place, burned and
scarred, but attesting mutely the abiding place of a spirit long since
passed away. Sometimes they had been uprooted and dragged to mark the
boundaries of fields, where they raised an abatis of twisted roots to
the sky.

The girl stopped short as she came face to face with this open country.
The inner uplift, that had lent to her aspect the wide-eyed, careless
joy of a child, faded. In its place came a new and serious gravity. She
turned on him troubled eyes.

“You do this,” she accused him quite simply.

For answer he motioned to the left where below them lay a wide and
cultivated countryside--farmhouses surrounded by elms; compact wood lots
of hardwood; crops and orchards, all fair and pleasant across the bosom
of a fertile nature.

“And this,” said he. “That valley was once nothing but a pine
forest--and so was all the southern part of the State, the peach belt
and the farms. And for that matter Indiana, too, and all the other
forest States right out to the prairies. Where would we be now, if we
HADN'T done that?” he pointed across at the stump-covered hills.

Mischief had driven out the gravity from the girl's eyes. She had
lowered her head slightly sidewise as though to conceal their expression
from him.

“I was beginning to be afraid you'd say 'yes-indeed,'” said she.

Orde looked bewildered, then remembered the Incubus, and laughed.

“I haven't been very conversational,” he acknowledged.

“Certainly NOT!” she said severely. “That would have been very
disappointing. There has been nothing to say.” She turned and waved her
hat at the beech woods falling sombre against the lowering sun.

“Good-bye,” she said gravely, “and pleasant dreams to you. I hope those
very saucy little birds won't keep you awake.” She looked up at Orde.
“He was rather nice to us this afternoon,” she explained, “and it's
always well to be polite to them anyway.” She gazed steadily at Orde for
signs of amusement. He resolutely held his face sympathetic.

“Now I think we'll go home,” said she.

They made their way between the stumps to the edge of the sand-hill
overlooking the village. With one accord they stopped. The low-slanting
sun cast across the vista a sleepy light of evening.

“How would you like to live in a place like that all your life?” asked
Orde.

“I don't know.” She weighed her words carefully. “It would depend. The
place isn't of so much importance, it seems to me. It's the life one is
called to. It's whether one finds her soul's realm or not that a place
is liveable or not. I can imagine entering my kingdom at a railway
water-tank,” she said quaintly, “or missing it entirely in a big city.”

Orde looked out over the raw little village with a new interest.

“Of course I can see how a man's work can lie in a small place,” said
he; “but a woman is different.”

“Why is a woman different?” she challenged. “What is her 'work,' as you
call it; and why shouldn't it, as well as a man's, lie in a small place?
What is work--outside of drudgery--unless it is correspondence of one's
abilities to one's task?”

“But the compensations--” began Orde vaguely.

“Compensations?” she cried. “What do you mean? Here are the woods and
fields, the river, the lake, the birds, and the breezes. We'll check
them off against the theatre and balls. Books can be had here as well
as anywhere. As to people: in a large city you meet a great many,
and they're all busy, and unless you make an especial and particular
effort--which you're not likely to--you'll see them only casually and
once in a great while. In a small place you know fewer people; but you
know them intimately.” She broke off with a half-laugh. “I'm from New
York,” she stated humorously, “and you've magicked me into an eloquent
defense of Podunk!” She laughed up at Orde quite frankly. “Giant
Strides!” she challenged suddenly. She turned off the edge of the
sand-hill, and began to plunge down its slope, leaning far back, her
arms extended, increasing as much as possible the length of each step.
Orde followed at full speed. When the bottom was reached, he steadied
her to a halt. She shook herself, straightened her hat, and wound the
veil around it. Her whole aspect seemed to have changed with the descent
into the conventionality of the village street. The old, gentle though
capable and self-contained reserve had returned. She moved beside Orde
with dignity.

“I came down with Jane and Mrs. Hubbard to see Mr. Hubbard off on the
boat for Milwaukee last night,” she told him. “Of course we had to wait
over Sunday. Mrs. Hubbard and Jane had to see some relative or other;
but I preferred to take a walk.”

“Where are you staying?” asked Orde.

“At the Bennetts'. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes,” replied Orde.

They said little more until the Bennetts' gate was reached. Orde
declined to come in.

“Good-night,” she said. “I want to thank you. You did not once act as
though you thought I was silly or crazy. And you didn't try, as all the
rest of them would, to act silly too. You couldn't have done it; and
you didn't try. Oh, you may have felt it--I know!” She smiled one of her
quaint and quizzical smiles. “But men aren't built for foolishness. They
have to leave that to us. You've been very nice this afternoon; and it's
helped a lot. I'm good for quite a long stretch now. Good-night.”

She nodded to him and left him tongue-tied by the gate.

Orde, however, walked back to the hotel in a black rage with himself
over what he termed his imbecility. As he remembered it, he had made
just one consecutive speech that afternoon.

“Joe,” said he to Newmark, at the hotel office, “what's the plural form
of Incubus? I dimly remember it isn't 'busses.'”

“Incubi,” answered Newmark.

“Thanks,” said Orde gloomily.




XIII


“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.




XIV


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,” stammer

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