*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1099 ***

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,” stammered Orde.

“So am I,” said she. “I've had a very nice time here.”

“Then I won't see you again,” said Orde, still groping for realisation.
“I must go to Monrovia to-morrow. But I'll be down to see you off.”

“Do come,” said she.

“It's not to be for good?” he expostulated. “You'll be coming back.”

She threw her hands palm out, with a pretty gesture of ignorance.

“That is in the lap of the gods,” said she.

“Will you write me occasionally?” he begged.

“As to that--” she began--“I'm a very poor correspondent.”

“But won't you write?” he insisted.

“I do not make it a custom to write to young men.”

“Oh!” he cried, believing himself enlightened. “Will you answer if I
write you?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether there is a reply to make.”

“But may I write you?”

“I suppose I couldn't very well prevent you, if you were sure to put on
a three-cent stamp.”

“Do you want me to?” persisted Orde.

She began gently to laugh, quite to herself, as though enjoying a joke
entirely within her own personal privilege.

“You are so direct and persistent and boy-like,” said she presently.
“Now if you'll be very good, and not whisper to the other little pupils,
I'll tell you how they do such things usually.” She sat up straight from
the depths of her chair, her white, delicately tapering forearms resting
lightly on her knees. “Young men desiring to communicate with young
ladies do not ask them bluntly. They make some excuse, like sending
a book, a magazine, a marked newspaper, or even a bit of desired
information. At the same time, they send notes informing the girl of the
fact. The girl is naturally expected to acknowledge the politeness. If
she wishes the correspondence to continue, she asks a question, or in
some other way leaves an opening. Do you see?”

“Yes, I see,” said Orde, slightly crestfallen. “But that's a long time
to wait. I like to feel settled about a thing. I wanted to know.”

She dropped back against the cushioned slant of her easy chair, and
laughed again.

“And so you just up and asked!” she teased.

“I beg your pardon if I was rude,” he said humbly.

The laughter died slowly from her eyes.

“Don't,” she said. “It would be asking pardon for being yourself. You
wanted to know: so you asked. And I'm going to answer. I shall be very
glad to correspond with you and tell you about my sort of things, if
you happen to be interested in them. I warn you: they are not very
exciting.”

“They are yours,” said he.

She half rose to bow in mock graciousness, caught herself, and sank
back.

“No, I won't,” she said, more than half to herself. She sat brooding
for a moment; then suddenly her mood changed. She sprang up, shook her
skirts free, and seated herself at the piano. To Orde, who had also
arisen, she made a quaint grimace over her shoulder.

“Admire your handiwork!” she told him. “You are rapidly bringing me
to 'tell the truth and shame the devil.' Oh, he must be dying of
mortification this evening!” She struck a great crashing chord, holding
the keys while the strings reverberated and echoed down slowly into
silence again. “It isn't fair,” she went on, “for you big simple men
to disarm us. I don't care! I have my private opinion of such brute
strength. JE ME MOQUE!”

She wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. Then ruthlessly she drowned
his reply in a torrent of music. Like mad she played, rocking her
slender body back and forth along the key-board; holding rigid her
fingers, her hands, and the muscles of her arms. The bass notes roared
like the rumbling of thunder; the treble flashed like the dart of
lightnings. Abruptly she muted the instrument. Silence fell as something
that had been pent and suddenly released. She arose from the piano stool
quite naturally, both hands at her hair.

“Aren't Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard dear old people?” said she.

“What is your address in New York?” demanded Orde. She sank into a chair
nearby with a pretty uplifted gesture of despair.

“I surrender!” she cried, and then she laughed until the tears started
from her eyes and she had to brush them away with what seemed to Orde an
absurd affair to call a handkerchief. “Oh, you are delicious!” she said
at last. “Well, listen. I live at 12 West Ninth Street. Can you remember
that?” Orde nodded. “And now any other questions the prisoner can reply
to without incriminating herself, she is willing to answer.” She folded
her hands demurely in her lap.

Two days later Orde saw the train carry her away. He watched the rear
car disappear between the downward slopes of two hills, and then finally
the last smoke from the locomotive dissipate in the clear blue.

Declining Jane's kindly meant offer of a lift, he walked back to town.




XV


The new firm plunged busily into its more pressing activities. Orde
especially had an infinitude of details on his hands. The fat note-book
in his side pocket filled rapidly with rough sketches, lists, and
estimates. Constantly he interviewed men of all kinds--rivermen, mill
men, contractors, boat builders, hardware dealers, pile-driver captains,
builders, wholesale grocery men, cooks, axe-men, chore boys--all a
little world in itself.

The signs of progress soon manifested themselves. Below Big Bend the
pile-drivers were at work, the square masses of their hammers rising
rapidly to the tops of the derricks, there to pause a moment before
dropping swiftly to a dull THUMP! They were placing a long, compact row,
which should be the outer bulwarks separating the sorting-booms from
the channel of the river. Ashore the carpenters were knocking together
a long, low structure for the cook-house and a larger building, destined
to serve as bunk-house for the regular boom-crew. There would also be a
blacksmith's forge, a storehouse, a tool and supply-house, a barn, and
small separate shanties for the married men. Below more labourers with
picks, shovels, axes, and scrapers were cutting out and levelling a road
which would, when finished, meet the county road to town. The numerous
bayous of great marsh were crossed by “float-bridges,” lying flat on the
surface of the water, which spurted up in rhythmical little jets under
the impact of hoofs. Down stream eight miles, below the mills, and just
beyond where the drawbridge crossed over to Monrovia, Duncan McLeod's
shipyards clipped and sawed, and steamed and bent and bolted away at two
tugboats, the machinery for which was already being stowed in the hold
of a vessel lying at wharf in Chicago. In the storerooms of hardware
firms porters carried and clerks checked off chains, strap iron, bolts,
spikes, staples, band iron, bar iron, peavies, cant-hooks, pike-poles,
sledge-hammers, blocks, ropes, and cables.

These things took time and attention to details; also a careful
supervision. The spring increased, burst into leaf and bloom, and
settled into summer. Orde was constantly on the move. As soon as
low water came with midsummer, however, he arranged matters to run
themselves as far as possible, left with Newmark minute instructions as
to personal supervision, and himself departed to Redding. Here he joined
a crew which Tom North had already collected, and betook himself to the
head of the river.

He knew exactly what he intended to do. Far back on the head-waters he
built a dam. The construction of it was crude, consisting merely of log
cribs filled with stone and debris placed at intervals across the bed
of the stream, against which slanted logs made a face. The gate operated
simply, and could be raised to let loose an entire flood. And indeed
this was the whole purpose of the dam. It created a reservoir from which
could be freed new supplies of water to eke out the dropping spring
freshets.

Having accomplished this formidable labour--for the trees had to be cut
and hauled, the stone carted, and the earth shovelled--the crew next
moved down a good ten miles to where the river dropped over a rapids
rough and full of boulders. Here were built and placed a row of
stone-filled log cribs in a double row down stream to define the channel
and to hold the drive in it and away from the shallows near either bank.
The profile of these cribs was that of a right-angled triangle, the
slanting side up stream. Booms chained between them helped deflect the
drive from the shoals. Their more important office, however, was to give
footing to the drivers.

For twenty-five miles then nothing of importance was undertaken. Two
or three particularly bad boulders were split out by the explosion
of powder charges; a number of snags and old trees were cut away and
disposed of; the channel was carefully examined for obstructions of any
kind whatever. Then the party came to the falls.

Here Orde purposed his most elaborate bit of rough engineering. The
falls were only about fifteen feet high, but they fell straight down to
a bed of sheer rock. This had been eaten by the eddies into pot-holes
and crannies until a jagged irregular scoop-hollow had formed
immediately underneath the fall. Naturally this implied a ledge below.

In flood time the water boiled and roared through this obstruction in
a torrent. The saw logs, caught in the rush, plunged end on into the
scoop-hollow, hit with a crash, and were spewed out below more or less
battered, barked, and stripped. Sometimes, however, when the chance of
the drive brought down a hundred logs together, they failed to shoot
over the barrier of the ledge. Then followed a jam, a bad jam, difficult
and dangerous to break. The falls had taken her usurious share of the
lives the river annually demands as her toll.

This condition of affairs Orde had determined, if possible, to obviate.
From the thirty-five or forty miles of river that lay above, and from
its tributaries would come the bulk of the white and Norway pine for
years to follow. At least two thirds of each drive Orde figured would
come from above the fall.

“If,” said he to North, “we could carry an apron on a slant from just
under the crest and over the pot-holes, it would shoot both the water
and the logs off a better angle.”

“Sure,” agreed North, “but you'll have fun placing your apron with all
that water running through. Why, it would drown us!”

“I've got a notion on that,” said Orde. “First thing is to get the
material together.”

A hardwood forest topped the slope. Into this went the axe-men. The
straightest trees they felled, trimmed, and dragged, down travoy trails
they constructed, on sleds they built for the purpose, to the banks of
the river. Here they bored the two holes through either end to receive
the bolts when later they should be locked together side by side in
their places. As fast as they were prepared, men with cant-hooks rolled
them down the slope to a flat below the falls. They did these things
swiftly and well, because they were part of the practised day's work,
but they shook their heads at the falls.

After the trees had been cut in sufficient number--there were
seventy-five of them, each twenty-six feet long--Orde led the way back
up stream a half mile to a shallows, where he commanded the construction
of a number of exaggerated sawhorses with very widespread slanting legs.
In the meantime the cook-wagon and the bed-wagon had evidently been
making many trips to Sand Creek, fifteen miles away, as was attested by
a large pile of heavy planks. When the sawhorses were completed, Orde
directed the picks and shovels to be brought up.

At this point the river, as has been hinted, widened over shoals. The
banks at either hand, too, were flat and comparatively low. As is often
the case in bends of rivers subject to annual floods, the banks sloped
back for some distance into a lower black-ash swamp territory.

Orde set his men to digging a channel through this bank. It was no
slight job, from one point of view, as the slope down into the swamp
began only at a point forty or fifty feet inland; but on the other hand
the earth was soft and free from rocks. When completed the channel gave
passage to a rather feeble streamlet from the outer fringe of the river.
The men were puzzled, but Orde, by the strange freak of his otherwise
frank and open nature, as usual told nothing of his plans, even to Tom
North.

“He can't expect to turn that river,” said Tim Nolan, who was once more
with the crew. “He'd have to dig a long ways below that level to catch
the main current--and then some.”

“Let him alone,” advised North, puffing at his short pipe. “He's wiser
than a tree full of owls.”

Next Orde assigned two men to each of the queer-shaped sawhorses, and
instructed them to place the horses in a row across the shallowest
part of the river, and broadside to the stream. This was done. The men,
half-way to their knees in the swift water, bore down heavily to keep
their charges in place. Other men immediately began to lay the heavy
planks side by side, perpendicular to and on the up-stream side of the
horses. The weight of the water clamped them in place; big rocks and
gravel shovelled on in quantity prevented the lower ends from rising;
the wide slant of the legs directed the pressure so far downward that
the horses were prevented from floating away. And slowly the bulk of
the water, thus raised a good three feet above its former level, turned
aside into the new channel and poured out to inundate the black-ash
swamp beyond.

A good volume still poured over the top of the temporary dam and down to
the fall; but it was by this expedient so far reduced that work became
possible.

“Now, boys!” cried Orde. “Lively, while we've got the chance!”

By means of blocks and tackles and the team horses the twenty-six-foot
logs were placed side by side, slanting from a point two feet below the
rim of the fall to the ledge below. They were bolted together top
and bottom through the four holes bored for that purpose. This was a
confusing and wet business. Sufficient water still flowed in the natural
channel of the river to dash in spray over the entire work. Men toiled,
wet to the skin, their garments clinging to them, their eyes full of
water, barely able to breathe, yet groping doggedly at it, and arriving
at last. The weather was warm with the midsummer. They made a joke of
the difficulty, and found inexhaustible humour in the fact that one of
their number was an Immersion Baptist. When the task was finished, they
pried the flash-boards from the improvised dam; piled them neatly beyond
reach of high water; rescued the sawhorses and piled them also for
a possible future use; blocked the temporary channel with a tree or
so--and earth. The river, restored to its immemorial channel by these
men who had so nonchalantly turned it aside, roared on, singing again
the song it had until now sung uninterruptedly for centuries. Orde and
his crew tramped back to the falls, and gazed on their handiwork with
satisfaction. Instead of plunging over an edge into a turmoil of foam
and eddies, now the water flowed smoothly, almost without a break, over
an incline of thirty degrees.

“Logs'll slip over that slick as a gun barrel,” said Tom North. “How
long do you think she'll last?”

“Haven't an idea,” replied Orde. “We may have to do it again next
summer, but I don't think it. There's nothing but the smooth of the
water to wear those logs until they begin to rot.”

Quite cheerfully they took up their long, painstaking journey back down
the river.

Travel down the river was at times very pleasant, and at times very
disagreeable. The ground had now hardened so that a wanigan boat was
unnecessary. Instead, the camp outfit was transported in waggons, which
often had to journey far inland, to make extraordinary detours, but
which always arrived somehow at the various camping places. Orde and his
men, of course, took the river trail.

The river trail ran almost unbroken for over a hundred miles of
meandering way. It climbed up the high banks at the points, it crossed
the bluffs along their sheer edges, it descended to the thickets in
the flats, it crossed the swamps on pole-trails, it skirted the great,
solemn woods. Sometimes, in the lower reaches, its continuity was broken
by a town, but always after it recovered from its confusion it led on
with purpose unvarying. Never did it desert for long the river. The
cool, green still reaches, or the tumbling of the white-water, were
always within its sight, sometimes beneath its very tread. When
occasionally it cut in across a very long bend, it always sent from
itself a little tributary trail which traced all the curves, and
returned at last to its parent, undoubtedly with a full report of its
task. And the trail was beaten hard by the feet of countless men, who,
like Orde and his crew, had taken grave, interested charge of the river
from her birth to her final rest in the great expanses of the Lake. It
is there to-day, although the life that brought it into being has been
gone from it these many years.

In midsummer Orde found the river trail most unfamiliar in appearance.
Hardly did he recognise it in some places. It possessed a wide,
leisurely expansiveness, an indolent luxury, a lazy invitation born of
broad green leaves, deep and mysterious shadows, the growth of ferns,
docks, and the like cool in the shade of the forest, the shimmer of
aspens and poplars through the heat, the green of tangling vines, the
drone of insects, the low-voiced call of birds, the opulent splashing of
sun-gold through the woods, quite lacking to the hard, tight season in
which his river work was usually performed. What, in the early year,
had been merely a whip of brush, now had become a screen through whose
waving, shifting interstices he caught glimpses of the river flowing
green and cool. What had been bare timber amongst whose twigs and
branches the full daylight had shone unobstructed, now had clothed
itself in foliage and leaned over to make black and mysterious the water
that flowed beneath. Countless insects hovered over the polished surface
of that water. Dragon-flies cruised about. Little birds swooped silently
down and fluttered back, intent on their tiny prey. Water-bugs skated
hither and thither in apparently purposeless diagonals. Once in a great
while the black depths were stirred. A bass rolled lazily over, carrying
with him his captured insect, leaving on the surface of the water
concentric rings which widened and died away.

The trail led the crew through many minor labours, all of which consumed
time. At Reed's Mill Orde entered into diplomatic negotiations with Old
Man Reed, whom he found singularly amenable. The skirmish in the spring
seemed to have taken all the fight out of him; or perhaps, more simply,
Orde's attitude toward him at that time had won him over to the young
man's side. At any rate, as soon as he understood that Orde was now in
business for himself, he readily came to an agreement. Thereupon Orde's
crew built a new sluiceway and gate far enough down to assure a good
head in the pond above. Other dam owners farther down the stream also
signed agreements having to do with supplying water over and above what
the law required of them. Above one particularly shallow rapid Orde
built a dam of his own.

All this took time, and the summer months slipped away. Orde had fallen
into the wild life as into a habit. He lived on the river or the
trail. His face took on a ruddier hue than ever; his clothes faded to a
nondescript neutral colour of their own; his hair below his narrow felt
hat bleached three shades. He did his work, and figured on his schemes,
and smoked his pipe, and occasionally took little trips to the nearest
town, where he spent the day at the hotel desks reading and answering
his letters. The weather was generally very warm. Thunder-storms were
not infrequent. Until the latter part of August, mosquitoes and black
flies were bad.

About the middle of September the crew had worked down as far as
Redding, leaving behind them a river tamed, groomed, and harnessed for
their uses. Remained still the forty miles between Redding and the
Lake to be improved. As, however, navigation for light draught vessels
extended as far as that city, Orde here paid off his men. A few days'
work with a pile driver would fence the principal shoals from the
channel.

He stayed over night with his parents, and at once took the train for
Monrovia. There he made his way immediately to the little office the new
firm had rented. Newmark had just come down.

“Hullo, Joe,” greeted Orde, his teeth flashing in contrast to the tan of
his face. “I'm done. Anything new since you wrote last?”

Newmark had acquired his articles of incorporation and sold his stock.
How many excursions, demonstrations, representations, and arguments that
implied, only one who has undertaken the floating of a new and untried
scheme can imagine. Perhaps his task had in it as much of difficulty as
Orde's taming of the river. Certainly he carried it to as successful a
conclusion. The bulk of the stock he sold to the log-owners themselves;
the rest he scattered here and there and everywhere in small lots, as
he was able. Some five hundred and thousand dollar blocks even went to
Chicago. His own little fortune of twenty thousand he paid in for the
shares that represented his half of the majority retained by himself and
Orde. The latter gave a note at ten per cent for his proportion of the
stock. Newmark then borrowed fifteen thousand more, giving as security
a mortgage on the company's newly acquired property--the tugs, booms,
buildings, and real estate. Thus was the financing determined. It
left the company with obligations of fifteen hundred dollars a year in
interest, expenses which would run heavily into the thousands, and an
obligation to make good outside stock worth at par exactly forty-nine
thousand dollars. In addition, Orde had charged against his account a
burden of two thousand dollars a year interest on his personal debt. To
offset these liabilities--outside the river improvements and equipments,
which would hold little or no value in case of failure--the firm held
contracts to deliver about one hundred million feet of logs. After some
discussion the partners decided to allow themselves twenty-five hundred
dollars apiece by way of salary.

“If we don't make any dividends at first,” Orde pointed out, “I've got
to keep even on my interest.”

“You can't live on five hundred,” objected Newmark.

“I'll be on the river and at the booms six months of the year,” replied
Orde, “and I can't spend much there.”

“I'm satisfied,” said Newmark thoughtfully, “I'm getting a little better
than good interest on my own investment from the start. And in a few
years after we've paid up, there'll be mighty big money in it.”

He removed his glasses and tapped his palm with their edge.

“The only point that is at all risky to me,” said he, “is that we have
only one-season contracts. If for any reason we hang up the drive, or
fail to deliver promptly, we're going to get left the year following.
And then it's B-U-S-T, bust.”

“Well, we'll just try not to hang her,” replied Orde.




XVI


Orde's bank account, in spite of his laughing assertion to Newmark,
contained some eleven hundred dollars. After a brief but comprehensive
tour of inspection over all the works then forward, he drew a hundred
of this and announced to Newmark that business would take him away for
about two weeks.

“I have some private affairs to attend to before settling down to
business for keeps,” he told Newmark vaguely.

At Redding, whither he went to pack his little sole-leather trunk, he
told Grandma Orde the same thing. She said nothing at the time, but
later, when Grandpa Orde's slender figure had departed, very courteous,
very erect, very dignified, with its old linen duster flapping around
it, she came and stood by the man leaning over the trunk.

“Speak to her, Jack,” said she quietly. “She cares for you.”

Orde looked up in astonishment, but he did not pretend to deny the
implied accusation as to his destination.

“Why, mother!” he cried. “She's only seen me three or four times! It's
absurd--yet.”

“I know,” nodded Grandma Orde, wisely. “I know. But you mark my words;
she cares for you.”

She said nothing more, but stood looking while Orde folded and laid
away, his head bent low in thought. Then she placed her hand for
an instant on his shoulder and went away. The Ordes were not a
demonstrative people.

The journey to New York was at that time very long and disagreeable, but
Orde bore it with his accustomed stoicism. He had visited the metropolis
before, so it was not unfamiliar to him. He was very glad, however, to
get away from the dust and monotony of the railroad train. The September
twilight was just falling. Through its dusk the street lamps were
popping into illumination as the lamp-lighter made his rapid way. Orde
boarded a horse-car and jingled away down Fourth Avenue. He was pleased
at having arrived, and stretched his legs and filled his lungs twice
with so evident an enjoyment that several people smiled.

His comfort was soon disturbed, however, by an influx of people boarding
the car at Twenty-third Street. The seats were immediately filled, and
late comers found themselves obliged to stand in the aisle. Among these
were several women. The men nearest buried themselves in the papers
after the almost universal metropolitan custom. Two or three arose to
offer their seats, among them Orde. When, however, the latter had turned
to indicate to one of the women the vacated seat, he discovered it
occupied by a chubby and flashily dressed youth of the sort common
enough in the vicinity of Fourteenth Street; impudent of eye, cynical of
demeanour, and slightly contemptuous of everything unaccustomed. He had
slipped in back of Orde when that young man arose, whether under
the impression that Orde was about to get off the car or from sheer
impudence, it would be impossible to say.

Orde stared at him, a little astonished.

“I intended that seat for this lady,” said Orde, touching him on the
shoulder.

The youth looked up coolly.

“You don't come that!” said he.

Orde wasted no time in discussion, which no doubt saved the necessity of
a more serious disturbance. He reached over suddenly, seized the
youth by the collar, braced his knee against the seat, and heaved the
interloper so rapidly to his feet that he all but plunged forward among
the passengers sitting opposite.

“Your seat, madam,” said Orde.

The woman, frightened, unwilling to become the participant of a scene
of any sort, stood looking here and there. Orde, comprehending her
embarrassment, twisted his antagonist about, and, before he could
recover his equilibrium sufficiently to offer resistance, propelled him
rapidly to the open door, the passengers hastily making way for them.

“Now, my friend,” said Orde, releasing his hold on the other's collar,
“don't do such things any more. They aren't nice.”

Trivial as the incident was, it served to draw Orde to the particular
notice of an elderly man leaning against the rear rail. He was a very
well-groomed man, dressed in garments whose fit was evidently the
product of the highest art, well buttoned up, well brushed, well cared
for in every way. In his buttonhole he wore a pink carnation, and in his
gloved hand he carried a straight, gold-headed cane. A silk hat covered
his head, from beneath which showed a slightly empurpled countenance,
with bushy white eyebrows, a white moustache, and a pair of rather
bloodshot, but kindly, blue eyes. In spite of his somewhat pudgy
rotundity, he carried himself quite erect, in a manner that bespoke the
retired military man.

“You have courage, sir,” said this gentleman, inclining his bead gravely
to Orde.

The young man laughed in his good-humoured fashion.

“Not much courage required to root out that kind of a skunk,” said he
cheerfully.

“I refer to the courage of your convictions. The young men of this
generation seem to prefer to avoid public disturbances. That breed is
quite capable of making a row, calling the police, raising the deuce,
and all that.”

“What of it?” said Orde.

The elderly gentleman puffed out his cheeks.

“You are from the West, are you not?” he stated, rather than asked.

“We call it the East out there,” said Orde. “It's Michigan.”

“I should call that pretty far west,” said the old gentleman.

Nothing more was said. After a block or two Orde descended on his way to
a small hotel just off Broadway. The old gentleman saluted. Orde nodded
good-humouredly. In his private soul he was a little amused at the old
boy. To his view a man and clothes carried to their last refinement were
contradictory terms.

Orde ate, dressed, and set out afoot in search of Miss Bishop's address.
He arrived in front of the house a little past eight o'clock, and, after
a moment's hesitation, mounted the steps and rang the bell.

The door swung silently back to frame an impassive man-servant dressed
in livery. To Orde's inquiry he stated that Miss Bishop had gone out
to the theatre. The young man left his name and a message of regret. At
this the footman, with an irony so subtle as to be quite lost on Orde,
demanded a card. Orde scribbled a line in his note-book, tore it out,
folded it, and left it. In it he stated his regret, his short residence
in the city, and desired an early opportunity to call. Then he departed
down the brownstone steps, totally unconscious of the contempt he had
inspired in the heart of the liveried man behind him.

He retired early and arose early, as had become his habit. When he
descended to the office the night clerk, who had not yet been relieved,
handed him a note delivered the night before. Orde ripped it open
eagerly.


“MY DEAR MR. ORDE:

“I was so sorry to miss you that evening because of a stupid play. Come
around as early as you can to-morrow morning. I shall expect you.

“Sincerely yours,

“CARROLL BISHOP.”


Orde glanced at the clock, which pointed to seven. He breakfasted, read
the morning paper, finally started leisurely in the direction of West
Ninth Street. He walked slowly, so as to consume more time, then at
University Place was seized with a panic, and hurried rapidly to his
destination. The door was answered by the same man who had opened the
night before, but now, in some indefinable way, his calm, while flawless
externally, seemed to have lifted to a mere surface, as though he might
hastily have assumed his coat. To Orde's inquiry he stated with great
brevity that Miss Bishop was not yet visible, and prepared to close the
door.

“You are mistaken,” said Orde, with equal brevity, and stepped inside.
“I have an engagement with Miss Bishop. Tell her Mr. Orde is here.”

The man departed in some doubt, leaving Orde standing in the gloomy
hall. That young man, however, quite cheerfully parted the heavy
curtains leading into a parlour, and sat down in a spindle-legged chair.
At his entrance, a maid disappeared out another door, carrying with her
the implements of dusting and brushing.

Orde looked around the room with some curiosity. It was long, narrow,
and very high. Tall windows admitted light at one end. The illumination
was, however, modified greatly by hangings of lace covering all the
windows, supplemented by heavy draperies drawn back to either side. The
embrasure was occupied by a small table, over which seemed to flutter
a beautiful marble Psyche. A rubber plant, then as now the mark of the
city and suburban dweller, sent aloft its spare, shiny leaves alongside
a closed square piano. The lack of ornaments atop the latter bespoke
the musician. Through the filtered gloom of the demi-light Orde surveyed
with interest the excellent reproductions of the Old World masterpieces
framed on the walls--“Madonnas” by Raphael, Murillo, and Perugino,
the “Mona Lisa,” and Botticelli's “Spring”--the three oil portraits
occupying the large spaces; the spindle-legged chairs and tables, the
tea service in the corner, the tall bronze lamp by the piano, the neat
little grate-hearth, with its mantel of marble; the ormolu clock, all
the decorous and decorated gentility which marked the irreproachable
correctness of whoever had furnished the apartment. Dark and heavy
hangings depended in front of a double door leading into another room
beyond. Equally dark and heavy hangings had closed behind Orde as he
entered. An absolute and shrouded stillness seemed to settle down upon
him. The ormolu clock ticked steadily. Muffled sounds came at long
intervals from behind the portieres. Orde began to feel oppressed and
subdued.

For quite three quarters of an hour he waited without hearing any
other indications of life than the muffled sounds just remarked upon.
Occasionally he shifted his position, but cautiously, as though he
feared to awaken some one. The three oil portraits stared at him with
all the reserved aloofness of their painted eyes. He began to doubt
whether the man had announced him at all.

Then, breaking the stillness with almost startling abruptness, he heard
a clear, high voice saying something at the top of the stairs outside.
A rhythmical SWISH of skirts, punctuated by the light PAT-PAT of a
girl tripping downstairs, brought him to his feet. A moment later the
curtains parted and she entered, holding out her hand.

“Oh, I did keep you waiting such a long time!” she cried.

He stood holding her hand, suddenly unable to say a word, looking at her
hungrily. A flood of emotion, of which he had had no prevision, swelled
up within him to fill his throat. An almost irresistible impulse all but
controlled him to crush her to him, to kiss her lips and her throat, to
lose his fingers in the soft, shadowy fineness of her hair. The crest
of the wave passed almost immediately, but it left him shaken. A faint
colour deepened under the transparence of her skin; her fathomless black
eyes widened ever so little; she released her hand.

“It was good of you to come so promptly,” said she. “I'm so anxious to
hear all about the dear people at Redding.”

She settled gracefully in one of the little chairs. Orde sat down, once
more master of himself, but still inclined to devour her with his gaze.
She was dressed in a morning gown, all laces and ribbons and long,
flowing lines. Her hair was done low on the back of her head and on the
nape of her neck. The blood ebbed and flowed beneath her clear skin.
A faint fragrance of cleanliness diffused itself about her--the cool,
sweet fragrance of daintiness. They entered busily into conversation.
Her attitudes were no longer relaxed and languidly graceful as in the
easy chairs under the lamplight. She sat forward, her hands crossed on
her lap, a fire smouldering deep beneath the cool surface lights of her
eyes.

The sounds in the next room increased in volume, as though several
people must have entered that apartment. In a moment or so the curtains
to the hall parted to frame the servant.

“Mrs. Bishop wishes to know, miss,” said that functionary, “if you're
not coming to breakfast.”

Orde sprang to his feet.

“Haven't you had your breakfast yet?” he cried, conscience stricken.

“Didn't you gather the fact that I'm just up?” she mocked him. “I assure
you it doesn't matter. The family has just come down.”

“But,” cried Orde, “I wasn't here until nine o'clock. I thought, of
course, you'd be around. I'm mighty sorry--”

“Oh, la la!” she cried, cutting him short. “What a bother about nothing.
Don't you see--I'm ahead a whole hour of good talk.”

“You see, you told me in your note to come early,” said Orde.

“I forgot you were one of those dreadful outdoor men. You didn't see any
worms, did you? Next time I'll tell you to come the day after.”

Orde was for taking his leave, but this she would not have.

“You must meet my family,” she negatived. “For if you're here for so
short a time we want to see something of you. Come right out now.”

Orde thereupon followed her down a narrow, dark hall, squeezed between
the stairs and the wall, to a door that opened slantwise into a
dining-room the exact counterpart in shape to the parlour at the other
side of the house. Only in this case the morning sun and more diaphanous
curtains lent an air of brightness, further enhanced by a wire stand of
flowers in the bow-windows.

The centre of the room was occupied by a round table, about which
were grouped several people of different ages. With her back to the
bow-window sat a woman well beyond middle age, but with evidently some
pretensions to youth. She was tall, desiccated, quick in movement. Dark
rings below her eyes attested either a nervous disease, an hysterical
temperament, or both. Immediately at her left sat a boy of about
fourteen years of age, his face a curious contradiction between a
naturally frank and open expression and a growing sullenness. Next him
stood a vacant chair, evidently for Miss Bishop. Opposite lolled a young
man, holding a newspaper in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. He
was very handsome, with a drooping black moustache, dark eyes, under
lashes almost too luxuriant, and a long, oval face, dark in complexion,
and a trifle sardonic in expression. In the VIS-A-VIS to Mrs. Bishop,
Orde was surprised to find his ex-military friend of the street
car. Miss Bishop performed the necessary introductions, which each
acknowledged after his fashion, but with an apparent indifference that
dashed Orde, accustomed to a more Western cordiality. Mrs. Bishop held
out a languidly graceful hand, the boy mumbled a greeting, the young man
nodded lazily over his newspaper. Only General Bishop, recognising him,
arose and grasped his hand, with a real, though rather fussy, warmth.

“My dear sir,” he cried, “I am honoured to see you again. This, my
dear,” he addressed his wife, “is the young man I was telling you
about--in the street car,” he explained.

“How very interesting,” said Mrs. Bishop, with evidently no
comprehension and less interest.

Gerald Bishop cast an ironically amused glance across at Orde. The boy
looked up at him quickly, the sullenness for a moment gone from his
face.

Carroll Bishop appeared quite unconscious of an atmosphere which seemed
to Orde strained, but sank into her place at the table and unfolded
her napkin. The silent butler drew forward a chair for Orde, and stood
looking impassively in Mrs. Bishop's direction.

“You will have some breakfast with us?” she inquired. “No? A cup of
coffee, at least?”

She began to manipulate the coffee pot, without paying the slightest
attention to Orde's disclaimer. The general puffed out his cheeks, and
coughed a bit in embarrassment.

“A good cup of coffee is never amiss to an old campaigner,” he said to
Orde. “It's as good as a full meal in a pinch. I remember when I was a
major in the Eleventh, down near the City of Mexico, in '48, the time
Hardy's command was so nearly wiped out by that viaduct--” He half
turned toward Orde, his face lighting up, his fingers reaching for the
fork with which, after the custom of old soldiers, to trace the chart of
his reminiscences.

Mrs. Bishop rattled her cup and saucer with an uncontrollably nervous
jerk of her slender body. For some moments she had awaited a chance to
get the general's attention. “Spare us, father,” she said brusquely.
“Will you have another cup of coffee?”

The old gentleman, arrested in mid-career, swallowed, looked a trifle
bewildered, but subsided meekly.

“No, thank you, my dear,” said he, and went furiously at his breakfast.

Orde, overwhelmed by embarrassment, discovered that none of the others
had paid the incident the slightest attention. Only on the lips of
Gerald Bishop he surprised a fine, detached smile.

At this moment the butler entered bearing the mail. Mrs. Bishop tore
hers open rapidly, dropping the mangled envelopes at her side. The
contents of one seemed to vex her.

“Oh!” she cried aloud. “That miserable Marie! She promised me to have it
done to-day, and now she puts it off until Monday. It's too provoking!”
 She turned to Orde for sympathy. “Do you know ANYTHING more aggravating
than to work and slave to the limit of endurance, and then have
everything upset by the stupidity of some one else?”

Orde murmured an appropriate reply, to which Mrs. Bishop paid no
attention whatever. She started suddenly up from the table.

“I must see about it!” she cried. “I plainly see I shall have to do it
myself. I WILL do it myself. I promised it for Sunday.”

“You mustn't do another stitch, mother,” put in Carroll Bishop
decidedly. “You know what the doctor told you. You'll have yourself down
sick.”

“Well, see for yourself!” cried Mrs. Bishop. “That's what comes of
leaving things to others! If I'd done it myself, it would have saved me
all this bother and fuss, and it would have been done. And now I've got
to do it anyway.”

“My dear,” put in the general, “perhaps Carroll can see Marie about it.
In any case, there's nothing to work yourself up into such an excitement
about.”

“It's very easy for you to talk, isn't it?” cried Mrs. Bishop, turning
on him. “I like the way you all sit around like lumps and do nothing,
and then tell me how I ought to have done it. John, have the carriage
around at once.” She turned tensely to Orde. “I hope you'll excuse me,”
 she said very briefly; “I have something very important to attend to.”

Carroll had also risen. Orde held out his hand.

“I must be going,” said he.

“Well,” she conceded, “I suppose I'd better see if I can't help mother
out. But you'll come in again. Come and dine with us this evening.
Mother will be delighted.”

As Mrs. Bishop had departed from the room, Orde had to take for granted
the expression of this delight. He bowed to the other occupants of
the table. The general was eating nervously. Gerald's eyes were fixed
amusedly on Orde.

To Orde's surprise, he was almost immediately joined on the street by
young Mr. Bishop, most correctly appointed.

“Going anywhere in particular?” he inquired. “Let's go up the avenue,
then. Everybody will be out.”

They turned up the great promenade, a tour of which was then, even more
than now, considered obligatory on the gracefully idle. Neither said
anything--Orde because he was too absorbed in the emotions this
sudden revelation of Carroll's environment had aroused in him; Gerald,
apparently, because he was too indifferent. Nevertheless it was the
young exquisite who finally broke the silence.

“It was an altar cloth,” said he suddenly.

“What?” asked Orde, rather bewildered.

“Mother is probably the most devout woman in New York,” went on Gerald's
even voice. “She is one of the hardest workers in the church. She keeps
all the fast days, and attends all the services. Although she has no
strength to speak of, she has just completed an elaborate embroidered
altar cloth. The work she accomplished while on her knees. Often she
spent five or six hours a day in that position. It was very devout, but
against the doctor's orders, and she is at present much pulled down.
Finally she gave way to persuasion to the extent of sending the
embroidery out to be bound and corded. As a result, the altar cloth will
not be done for next Sunday.”

He delivered this statement in a voice absolutely colourless, without
the faintest trace discernible of either approval or disapproval,
without the slightest irony, yet Orde felt vaguely uncomfortable.

“It must have been annoying to her,” he said gravely, “and I hope she
will get it done in time. Perhaps Miss Bishop will be able to do it.”

“That,” said Gerald, “is Madison Square--or perhaps you know New York?
My sister would, of course, be only too glad to finish the work, but I
fear that my mother's peculiarly ardent temperament will now insist on
her own accomplishment of the task. But perhaps you do not understand
temperaments?”

“Very little, I'm afraid,” confessed Orde.

They walked on for some distance farther.

“Your father was in the Mexican War?” said Orde, to change the trend of
his own thoughts.

“He was a most distinguished officer. I believe he received the Medal of
Honour for a part in the affair of the Molina del Rey.”

“What command had he in the Civil War?” asked Orde. “I fooled around the
outskirts of that a little myself.”

“My father resigned from the army in '54,” replied Gerald, with his
cool, impersonal courtesy.

“That was too bad; just before the chance for more service,” said Orde.

“Army life was incompatible with my mother's temperament,” stated
Gerald.

Orde said nothing more. It was Gerald's turn to end the pause.

“You are from Redding, of course,” said he. “My sister is very
enthusiastic about the place. You are in business there?”

Orde replied briefly, but, forced by the direct, cold, and polite
cross-questioning of his companion, he gave the latter a succinct idea
of the sort of operations in which he was interested.

“And you,” he said at last; “I suppose you're either a broker or lawyer;
most men are down here.”

“I am neither one nor the other,” stated Gerald. “I am possessed of a
sufficient income from a legacy to make business unnecessary.”

“I don't believe I'd care to--be idle,” said Orde vaguely.

“There is plenty to occupy one's time,” replied Gerald. “I have my
clubs, my gymnasium, my horse, and my friends.”

“Isn't there anything that particularly attracts you?” asked Orde.

The young man's languid eyes grew thoughtful, and he puffed more
strongly on his cigarette.

“I should like,” said he slowly, at last, “to enter the navy.”

“Why don't you?” asked Orde bluntly.

“Certain family reasons make it inexpedient at present,” said Gerald.
“My mother is in a very nervous state; she depends on us, and any hint
of our leaving her is sufficient to render her condition serious.”

By this time the two young men were well uptown. On Gerald's initiative,
they turned down a side street, and shortly came to a stop.

“That is my gymnasium,” said Gerald, pointing to a building across the
way. “Won't you come in with me? I am due now for my practice.”




XVII


Orde's evening was a disappointment to him. Mrs. Bishop had, by
Carroll's report, worked feverishly at the altar cloth all the
afternoon. As a consequence, she had gone to bed with a bad headache.
This state of affairs seemed to throw the entire family into a state
of indecision. It was divided in mind as to what to do, the absolute
inutility of any effort balancing strongly against a sense of what the
invalid expected.

“I wonder if mother wouldn't like just a taste of this beef,” speculated
the general, moving fussily in his chair. “I believe somebody ought to
take some up. She MIGHT want it.”

The man departed with the plate, but returned a few moments later,
impassive--but still with the plate.

“Has she got her hot-water bag?” asked the boy unexpectedly.

“Yes, Master Kendrick,” replied the butler.

After a preoccupied silence the general again broke out:

“Seems to me somebody ought to be up there with her.”

“You know, father, that she can't stand any one in the room,” said
Carroll equably.

Toward the close of the meal, however, a distant bell tinkled faintly.
Every one jumped as though guilty. Carroll said a hasty excuse and ran
out. After ringing the bell, the invalid had evidently anticipated its
answer by emerging from her room to the head of the stairs, for Orde
caught the sharp tones of complaint, and overheard something about “take
all night to eat a simple meal, when I'm lying here suffering.”

At the end of an interval a maid appeared in the doorway to say that
Miss Carroll sent word she would not be down again for a time, and did
not care for any more dinner. This seemed to relieve the general's mind
of responsibility. He assumed his little fussy air of cheerfulness,
told several stories of the war, and finally, after Kendrick had left,
brought out some whisky and water. He winked slyly at Orde.

“Can't do this before the youngsters, you know,” he chirruped craftily.

Throughout the meal Gerald had sat back silent, a faint amusement in his
eye. After dinner he arose, yawned, consulted his watch, and departed,
pleading an engagement. Orde lingered some time, listening to the
general, in the hope that Carroll would reappear. She did not, so
finally he took his leave.

He trudged back to his hotel gloomily. The day had passed in a most
unsatisfactory manner, according to his way of looking at it. Yet he had
come more clearly to an understanding of the girl; her cheerfulness, her
unselfishness, and, above all, the sweet, beautiful philosophy of life
that must lie back, to render her so uncomplainingly the slave of the
self-willed woman, yet without the indifferent cynicism of Gerald, the
sullen, yet real, partisanship of Kendrick, or the general's week-kneed
acquiescence.

The next morning he succeeded in making an arrangement by letter for an
excursion to the newly projected Central Park. Promptly at two o'clock
he was at the Bishops' house. To his inquiry the butler said that Mrs.
Bishop had recovered from her indisposition, and that Miss Bishop would
be down immediately. Orde had not long to wait for her. The SWISH,
PAT-PAT of her joyous descent of the stairs brought him to his feet. She
swept aside the portieres, and stood between their folds, bidding him
welcome.

“I'm so sorry about last night,” said she, “but poor mother does depend
on me so at such times. Isn't it a gorgeous day to walk? It won't be
much like OUR woods, will it? But it will be something. OH, I'm so glad
to get out!”

She was in one of her elfish moods, the languid grace of her sleepy-eyed
moments forgotten. With a little cry of rapture she ran to the piano,
and dashed into a gay, tinkling air with brilliancy and abandon. Her
head, surmounted by a perky, high-peaked, narrow-brimmed hat, with a
flaming red bird in front, glorified by the braid and “waterfall” of
that day, bent forward and turned to flash an appeal for sympathy toward
Orde.

“There, I feel more able to stay on earth!” she cried, springing to her
feet. “Now I'll get on my gloves and we'll start.”

She turned slowly before the mirror, examining quite frankly the hang
of her skirt, the fit of her close-cut waist, the turn of the adorable
round, low-cut collars that were then the mode.

“It pays to be particular; we are in New York,” she answered, or
parried, Orde's glance of admiration.

The gloves finally drawn on and buttoned, Orde held aside the portieres,
and she passed fairly under his uplifted hand. He wanted to drop his
arm about her, this slender girl with her quaint dignity, her bird-like
ways, her gentle, graceful, mysterious, feminine soul. The flame-red
bird lent its colour to her cheeks; her eyes, black and fathomless, the
pupils wide in this dim light, shone with two stars of delight.

But, as they moved toward the massive front doors, Mrs. Bishop came
down the stairs behind them. She, too, was dressed for the street. She
received Orde's greeting and congratulation over her improved health
in rather an absent manner. Indeed, as soon as she could hurry this
preliminary over, she plunged into what evidently she considered a more
important matter.

“You aren't thinking of going out, are you?” she asked Carroll.

“I told you, mother; don't you remember? Mr. Orde and I are going to get
a little air in the park.”

“I'm sorry,” said Mrs. Bishop, with great brevity and decision, “but
I'm going to the rectory to help Mr. Merritt, and I shall want you to go
too, to see about the silver.”

“But, mother,” expostulated Carroll, “wouldn't Marie do just as well?”

“You know very well she can't be trusted without direction.”

“I DO so want to go to the park,” said Carroll wistfully. Mrs. Bishop's
thin, nervous figure jerked spasmodically. “There is very little asked
of you from morning until night,” she said, with some asperity, “and I
should think you'd have some slight consideration for the fact that I'm
just up from a sick bed to spare me all you could. Besides which, you
do very little for the church. I won't insist. Do exactly as you think
best.”

Carroll threw a pathetic glance at Orde.

“How soon are you going?” she asked her mother.

“In about ten minutes,” replied Mrs. Bishop; “as soon as I've seen
Honorine about the dinner.” She seemed abruptly to realise that the
amenities demanded something of her. “I'm sorry we must go so soon,” she
said briefly to Orde, “but of course church business--We shall hope to
see you often.”

Once more Orde held aside the curtains. The flame-bird drooped from the
twilight of the hall into the dimness of the parlour. All the brightness
seemed to have drained from the day, and all the joy of life seemed
to have faded from the girl's soul. She sank into a chair, and tried
pathetically to smile across at Orde.

“I'm such a baby about disappointments,” said she.

“I know,” he replied, very gently.

“And it's such a blue and gold day.”

“I know,” he repeated.

She twisted her glove in her lap, a bright spot of colour burning in
each cheek.

“Mother is not well, and she has a great deal to try her. Poor mother!”
 she said softly, her head cast down.

“I know,” said Orde in his gentle tones.

After a moment he arose to go. She remained seated, her head down.

“I'm sorry about this afternoon,” said he cheerfully, “but it couldn't
be helped, could it? Jane used to tell me about your harp playing. I'm
going to come in to hear you this evening. May I?”

“Yes,” she said, in a stifled voice, and held out her hand. She sat
quite still until she heard the front door close after him; then she ran
to the curtains and looked after his sturdy, square figure, as it swung
up the street.

“Well done; oh, well done, gentle heart!” she breathed after him. Then
she went back to the piano.

But Orde's mouth, could she have seen it, was set in grim lines, and
his feet, could she have heard them, rang on the pavement with quite
superfluous vigour. He turned to the left, and, without pause, walked
some ten or twelve miles.

The evening turned out very well, fortunately; Orde could not have stood
much more. They had the parlour quite to themselves. Carroll took the
cover from the tall harp, and, leaning her cheek against it, she played
dreamily for a half hour. Her arms were bare, and as her fingers reached
out lingeringly and caressingly to draw the pure, golden chords from
the golden instrument, her soft bosom pressed against the broad
sounding board. There is about the tones of a harp well played something
luminous, like rich, warm sunlight. When the girl muted the strings at
last, it seemed to Orde as though all at once the room had perceptibly
darkened. He took his leave finally, his spirit soothed and restored.

Tranquillity was not for long, however. Orde's visits were, naturally,
as frequent as possible. To them almost instantly Mrs. Bishop opposed
the strong and intuitive jealousy of egotism. She had as yet no fears as
to the young man's intentions, but instinctively she felt an influence
that opposed her own supreme dominance. In consequence, Orde had much
time to himself. Carroll and the rest of the family, with the possible
exception of Gerald, shared the belief that the slightest real
opposition to Mrs. Bishop would suffice to throw her into one of her
“spells,” a condition of alarming and possibly genuine collapse. “To
drive mother into a spell” was an expression of the worst possible
domestic crime. It accused the perpetrator--through Mrs. Bishop--of
forgetting the state of affairs, of ingratitude for care and affection,
of common inhumanity, and of impiety in rendering impossible of
performance the multifarious church duties Mrs. Bishop had invented and
assumed as so many particularly shining virtues. Orde soon discovered
that Carroll went out in society very little for the simple reason that
she could never give an unqualified acceptance to an invitation. At the
last moment, when she had donned her street wraps and the carriage was
at the door, she was liable to be called back, either to assist at some
religious function, which, by its sacred character, was supposed to have
precedence over everything, or to attend a nervous crisis, brought on
by some member of the household, or by mere untoward circumstances. The
girl always acquiesced most sweetly in these recurrent disappointments.
And the very fact that she accepted few invitations gave Orde many more
chances to see her, in spite of Mrs. Bishop's increasing exactions.
He did not realise this fact, however, but ground his teeth and clung
blind-eyed to his temper whenever the mother cut short his visits or
annulled his engagements on some petty excuse of her own. He could
almost believe these interruptions malicious, were it not that he soon
discovered Mrs. Bishop well disposed toward him personally whenever he
showed himself ready to meet her even quarter way on the topics that
interested her--the church and her health.

In this manner the week passed. Orde saw as much as he could of Miss
Bishop. The remainder of the time he spent walking the streets and
reading in the club rooms to which Gerald's courtesy had given him
access. Gerald himself seemed to be much occupied. Precisely at eleven
every morning, however, he appeared at the gymnasium for his practice;
and in this Orde dropped into the habit of joining him. When the young
men first stripped in each other's presence, they eyed each other with
a secret surprise. Gerald's slender and elegant body turned out to be
smoothly and gracefully muscled on the long lines of the Flying Mercury.
His bones were small, but his flesh was hard, and his skin healthy with
the flow of blood beneath. Orde, on the other hand, had earned from the
river the torso of an ancient athlete. The round, full arch of his chest
was topped by a mass of clean-cut muscle; across his back, beneath
the smooth skin, the muscles rippled and ridged and dimpled with every
movement; the beautiful curve of the deltoids, from the point of the
shoulder to the arm, met the other beautiful curve of the unflexed
biceps and that fulness of the back arm so often lacking in a one-sided
development; the surface of the abdomen showed the peculiar corrugation
of the very strong man; the round, columnar neck arose massive.

“By Jove!” said Gerald, roused at last from his habitual apathy.

“What's the matter?” asked Orde, looking up from tying the rubber-soled
shoes that Gerald had lent him.

“Murphy,” called Gerald, “come here.”

A very hairy, thick-set, bullet-headed man, the type of
semi-professional “handlers,” emerged from somewhere across the
gymnasium.

“Do you think you could down this fellow?” asked Gerald.

Murphy looked Orde over critically.

“Who ye ringin' in on me?” he inquired.

“This is a friend of mine,” said Gerald severely.

“Beg your pardon. The gentleman is well put up. How much experience has
he had?”

“Ever box much?” Gerald asked Orde.

“Box?” Orde laughed. “Never had time for that sort of thing. Had the
gloves on a few times.”

“Where did you get your training, sir?” asked the handler.

“My training?” repeated Orde, puzzled. “Oh, I see! I was always pretty
heavy, and I suppose the work on the river keeps a man in pretty good
shape.”

Gerald's languor had vanished, and a glint had appeared in his eye that
would have reminded Orde of Miss Bishop's most mischievous mood could he
have seen it.

“Put on the gloves with Murphy,” he suggested, “will you? I'd like to
see you two at it.”

“Surely,” agreed Orde good-naturedly. “I'm not much good at it, but I'd
just as soon try.” He was evidently not in the least afraid to meet the
handler, though as evidently without much confidence in his own skill.

“All right; I'll be with you in a second,” said Gerald, disappearing. In
the anteroom he rung a bell, and to the boy who leisurely answered its
summons he said rapidly:

“Run over to the club and find Mr. Winslow, Mr. Clark, and whoever
else is in the smoking room, and tell them from me to come over to the
gymnasium. Tell them there's some fun on.”

Then he returned to the gymnasium floor, where Murphy was answering
Orde's questions as to the apparatus. While the two men were pulling on
the gloves, Gerald managed a word apart with the trainer.

“Can you do him, Murph?” he whispered.

“Sure!” said the handler. “Them kind's always as slow as dray-horses.
They gets muscle-bound.”

“Give it to him,” said Gerald, “but don't kill him. He's a friend of
mine.”

Then he stepped back, the same joy in his soul that inspires a
riverman when he encounters a high-banker; a hunter when he takes out a
greenhorn, or a cowboy as he watches the tenderfoot about to climb the
bronco.

“Time!” said he.

The first round was sharp. When Gerald called the end, Orde grinned at
him cheerfully.

“Don't look like I was much at this game, does it?” said he. “I wouldn't
pull down many persimmons out of that tree. Your confounded man's too
lively; I couldn't hit him with a shotgun.”

Orde had stood like a rock, his feet planted to the floor, while Murphy
had circled around him hitting at will. Orde hit back, but without
landing. Nevertheless Murphy, when questioned apart, did not seem
satisfied.

“The man's pig-iron,” said he. “I punched him plenty hard enough, and it
didn't seem to jar him.”

The gallery at one end the running track had by now half filled with
interested spectators.

“Time!” called Gerald for round two.

This time Murphy went in more viciously, aiming and measuring his blows
accurately. Orde stood as before, a humourous smile of self-depreciation
on his face, hitting back at the elusive Murphy, but without much
effect, his feet never stirring in their tracks. The handler used his
best tactics and landed almost at will, but without apparent damage. He
grew ugly--finally lost his head.

“Well, if ye will have it!” he muttered, and aimed what was intended as
a knockout blow.

Gerald uttered a half cry of warning as his practised eye caught
Murphy's intention. The blow landed. Orde's head snapped back, but to
the surprise of every one the punch had no other effect, and a quick
exchange of infighting sent Murphy staggering back from the encounter.
The smile had disappeared from Orde's face, and his eye had calmed.

“Look here,” he called to Gerald, “I don't understand this game very
well. At school we used 'taps.' Is a man supposed to hit hard?”

Gerald hesitated, then looked beyond Orde to the gallery. To a man it
made frantic and silent demonstration.

“Of course you hit,” he replied. “You can't hurt any one with those big
gloves.”

Orde turned back to his antagonist. The latter advanced once more,
his bullet head sunk between his shoulders, his little eyes twinkling.
Evidently Mr. Bishop's friend would now take the aggressive, and forward
movement would deliver an extra force to the professional's blows.

Orde did not wait for Murphy, however. Like a tiger he sprang forward,
hitting out fiercely, first with one hand then with the other. Murphy
gave ground, blocked, ducked, exerted all a ring general's skill either
to stop or avoid the rush. Orde followed him insistent. Several times he
landed, but always when Murphy was on the retreat, so the blows had
not much weight. Several times Murphy ducked in and planted a number of
short-arm jabs at close range. The round ended almost immediately to a
storm of applause from the galleries.

“What do you think of his being muscle-bound?” Gerald asked Murphy, as
the latter flung himself panting on the wrestling mat for his rest.

“He's quick as chained lightning,” acknowledged the other grudgingly.
“But I'll get him. He can't keep that up; he'll be winded in half a
minute.”

Orde sat down on a roll of mat. His smile had quite vanished, and he
seemed to be awaiting eagerly the beginning of the next round.

“Time!” called Gerald for the third.

Orde immediately sprang at his adversary, repeating the headlong rush
with which the previous round had ended. Murphy blocked, ducked, and
kept away, occasionally delivering a jolt as opportunity offered,
awaiting the time when Orde's weariness would leave him at the other's
mercy. That moment did not come. The young man hammered away tirelessly,
insistently, delivering a hurricane of his two-handed blows, pressing
relentlessly in as Murphy shifted and gave ground, his head up, his
eyes steady, oblivious to the return hammering the now desperate handler
opposed to him. Two minutes passed without perceptible slackening
in this terrific pace. The gallery was in an uproar, and some of the
members were piling down the stairs to the floor. Perspiration stood out
all over Murphy's body. His blows failed of their effect, and some of
Orde's were landing. At length, bewildered more by the continuance than
the violence of the attack, he dropped his ring tactics and closed in to
straight slugging, blow against blow, stand up, give and take.

As he saw his opponent stand, Orde uttered a sound of satisfaction.
He dropped slightly his right shoulder behind his next blow. The glove
crashed straight as a pile-driver through Murphy's upraised hands to
his face, which it met with a smack. The trainer, lifted bodily from
the ground, was hurled through the air, to land doubled up against the
supports of a parallel bars. There he lay quite still, his palms up, his
head sunk forward.

Orde stared at him a moment in astonishment, as though expecting him
to arise. When, however, he perceived that Murphy was in reality
unconscious, he tore off the gloves and ran forward to kneel by the
professional's side.

“I didn't suppose one punch like that would hurt him,” he muttered to
the men crowding around. “Especially with the gloves. Do you suppose
he's killed?”

But already Murphy's arms were making aimless motions, and a deep breath
raised his chest.

“He's just knocked out,” reassured one of the men, examining the
prostrate handler with a professional attention. “He'll be as good as
ever in five minutes. Here,” he commanded one of the gymnasium rubbers
who had appeared, “lend a hand here with some water.”

The clubmen crowded about, all talking at once.

“You're a wonder, my friend,” said one.

“By Jove, he's hardly breathing fast after all that rushing,” said a
second.

“So you didn't think one punch like that would hurt him,” quoted another
with good-natured sarcasm.

“No,” said Orde, simply. “I've hit men that hard before with my bare
fist.”

“Did they survive?”

“Surely.”

“What kind of armour-plates were they, in heaven's name?”

Orde had recovered his balance and humour.

“Just plain ordinary rivermen,” said he with a laugh.

“Gentlemen,” struck in Gerald, “I want to introduce you to my friend.”
 He performed the introductions. It was necessary for him to explain
apart that Orde was in reality his friend, an amateur, a chance visitor
in the city. All in all, the affair made quite a little stir, and went
far to give Orde a standing with these sport-loving youths.

Finally Gerald and Orde were permitted to finish their gymnasium
practice. Murphy had recovered, and came forward.

“You have a strong punch, sir, and you're a born natural fighter, sir,”
 said he. “If you had a few lessons in boxing, sir, I'd put you against
the best.”

But later, when the young men were resting, each under his sheet after
a rub-down, the true significance of the affair for Orde came out. Since
the fight, Gerald's customary lassitude of manner seemed quite to have
left him. His eye was bright, a colour mounted beneath the pale olive of
his skin, the almost effeminate beauty of his countenance had animated.
He looked across at Orde several times, hesitated, and at last decided
to speak.

“Look here, Orde,” said he, “I want to confess something to you. When
you first came here three days ago, I had lots of fun with myself about
you. You know your clothes aren't quite the thing, and I thought your
manner was queer, and all that. I was a cad. I want to apologise. You're
a man, and I like you better than any fellow I've met for a long time.
And if there's any trouble--in the future--that is--oh, hang it, I'm on
your side--you know what I mean!”

Orde smiled slowly.

“Bishop,” was his unexpected reply, “you're not near so much of a dandy
as you think you are.”




XVIII


Affairs went thus for a week. Orde was much at the Bishop residence,
where he was cordially received by the general, where he gained an
occasional half-hour with Carroll, and where he was almost ignored by
Mrs. Bishop in her complete self-absorption. Indeed, it is to be doubted
whether he attained any real individuality to that lady, who looked on
all the world outside her family as useful or useless to the church.

In the course of the happy moments he had alone with Carroll, he
arrived at a more intimate plane of conversation with her. He came to an
understanding of her unquestioning acceptance of Mrs. Bishop's attitude.
Carroll truly believed that none but herself could perform for her
mother the various petty offices that lady demanded from her next of
kin, and that her practical slavery was due by every consideration of
filial affection. To Orde's occasional tentative suggestion that the
service was of a sort better suited to a paid companion or even a
housemaid, she answered quite seriously that it made mother nervous to
have others about her, and that it was better to do these things than to
throw her into a “spell.” Orde chafed at first over seeing his precious
opportunities thus filched from him; later he fretted because he
perceived that Carroll was forced, however willingly, to labours beyond
her strength, to irksome confinement, and to that intimate and wearing
close association with the abnormal which in the long run is bound to
deaden the spirit. He lost sight of his own grievance in the matter.
With perhaps somewhat of exaggeration he came mightily to desire for her
more of the open air, both of body and spirit. Often when tramping back
to his hotel he communed savagely with himself, turning the problem over
and over in his mind until, like a snowball, it had gathered to itself
colossal proportions.

And in his hotel room he brooded over the state of affairs until his
thoughts took a very gloomy tinge indeed. To begin with, in spite of his
mother's assurance, he had no faith in his own cause. His acquaintance
with Carroll was but an affair of months, and their actual meetings
comprised incredibly few days. Orde was naturally humble-minded. It
did not seem conceivable to him that he could win her without a long
courtship. And superadded was the almost intolerable weight of Carroll's
ideas as to her domestic duties. Although Orde held Mrs. Bishop's
exactions in very slight esteem, and was most sceptical in regard to
the disasters that would follow their thwarting, nevertheless he had to
confess to himself that all Carroll's training, life, the very purity
and sweetness of her disposition lent the situation an iron reality for
her. He became much discouraged.

Nevertheless, at the very moment when he had made up his mind that it
would be utterly useless even to indulge in hope for some years to come,
he spoke. It came about suddenly, and entirely without premeditation.

The two had escaped for a breath of air late in the evening. Following
the conventions, they merely strolled to the end of the block and back,
always within sight of the house. Fifth Avenue was gay with illumination
and the prancing of horses returning uptown or down to the Washington
Square district. In contrast the side street, with its austere rows of
brownstone houses, each with its area and flight of steps, its spaced
gas lamps, its deserted roadway, seemed very still and quiet. Carroll
was in a tired and pensive mood. She held her head back, breathing
deeply.

“It's only a little strip, but it's the stars,” said she, looking up to
the sky between the houses. “They're so quiet and calm and big.”

She seemed to Orde for the first time like a little girl. The maturer
complexities which we put on with years, with experience, and with the
knowledge of life had for the moment fallen from her, leaving merely the
simple soul of childhood gazing in its eternal wonder at the stars. A
wave of tenderness lifted Orde from his feet. He leaned over, his breath
coming quickly.

“Carroll!” he said.

She looked up at him, and shrank back.

“No, no! You mustn't,” she cried. She did not pretend to misunderstand.
The preliminaries seemed in some mysterious fashion to have been said
long ago.

“It's life or death with me,” he said.

“I must not,” she cried, fluttering like a bird. “I promised myself long
ago that I must always, ALWAYS take care of mother.”

“Please, please, dear,” pleaded Orde. He had nothing more to say than
this, just the simple incoherent symbols of pleading; but in such crises
it is rather the soul than the tongue that speaks. His hand met hers and
closed about it. It did not respond to his grasp, nor did it draw away,
but lay limp and warm and helpless in his own.

She shook her head slowly.

“Don't you care for me, dear?” asked Orde very gently.

“I have no right to tell you that,” answered she. “I have tried, oh, so
hard, to keep you from saying this, for I knew I had no right to hear
you.”

Orde's heart leaped with a wild exultation.

“You do care for me!” he cried.

They had mounted the steps and stood just within the vestibule. Orde
drew her toward him, but she repulsed him gently.

“No,” she shook her head. “Please be very good to me. I'm very weak.”

“Carroll!” cried Orde. “Tell me that you love me! Tell me that you'll
marry me!”

“It would kill mother if I should leave her,” she said sadly.

“But you must marry me,” pleaded Orde. “We are made for each other. God
meant us for each other.”

“It would have to be after a great many years,” she said doubtfully.

She pulled the bell, which jangled faintly in the depths of the house.

“Good-night,” she said. “Come to me to-morrow. No, you must not come
in.” She cut short Orde's insistence and the eloquence that had just
found its life by slipping inside the half-open door and closing it
after her.

Orde stood for a moment uncertain; then turned away and walked up the
street, his eyes so blinded by the greater glory that he all but ran
down an inoffensive passer-by.

At the hotel he wrote a long letter to his mother. The first part was
full of the exultation of his discovery. He told of his good fortune
quite as something just born, utterly forgetting his mother's
predictions before he came East. Then as the first effervescence died,
a more gloomy view of the situation came uppermost. To his heated
imagination the deadlock seemed complete. Carroll's devotion to what she
considered her duty appeared unbreakable. In the reaction Orde doubted
whether he would have it otherwise. And then his fighting blood surged
back to his heart. All the eloquence, the arguments, the pleadings he
should have commanded earlier in the evening hurried belated to their
posts. After the manner of the young and imaginative when in the
white fire of emotion, he began dramatising scenes between Carroll and
himself. He saw them plainly. He heard the sound of his own voice as
he rehearsed the arguments which should break her resolution. A woman's
duty to her own soul; her obligation toward the man she could make or
mar by her love; her self-respect; the necessity of a break some time;
the advantage of having the crisis over with now rather than later; a
belief in the ultimate good even to Mrs. Bishop of throwing that
lady more on her own resources; and so forth and so on down a list of
arguments obvious enough or trivial enough, but all inspired by the soul
of fervour, all ennobled by the spirit of truth that lies back of the
major premise that a woman should cleave to a man, forsaking all others.
Orde sat back in his chair, his eyes vacant, his pen all but falling
from his hand. He did not finish the letter to his mother. After a while
he went upstairs to his own room.

The fever of the argument coursed through his veins all that long night.
Over and over again he rehearsed it in wearisome repetition until it had
assumed a certain and almost invariable form. And when he had reached
the end of his pleading he began it over again, until the daylight found
him weary and fevered. He arose and dressed himself. He could eat no
breakfast. By a tremendous effort of the will he restrained himself from
going over to Ninth Street until the middle of the morning.

He entered the drawing-room to find her seated at the piano. His heart
bounded, and for an instant he stood still, summoning his forces to the
struggle for which he had so painfully gathered his ammunition. She did
not look up as he approached until he stood almost at her shoulder. Then
she turned to him and held out both her hands.

“It is no use, Jack,” she said. “I care for you too much. I will marry
you whenever you say.”




XIX


Orde left that evening early. This was at Carroll's request. She
preferred herself to inform her family of the news.

“I don't know yet how mother is going to get along,” said she. “Come
back to-morrow afternoon and see them all.”

The next morning Orde, having at last finished and despatched the letter
to his mother, drifted up the avenue and into the club. As he passed
the smoking room he caught sight of Gerald seated in an armchair by the
window. He entered the room and took a seat opposite the young fellow.

Gerald held out his hand silently, which the other took.

“I'm glad to hear it,” said Gerald at last. “Very glad. I told you I
was on your side.” He hesitated, then went on gravely: “Poor Carroll is
having a hard time, though. I think it's worse than she expected. It's
no worse than I expected. You are to be one of the family, so I am going
to give you a piece of advice. It's something, naturally, I wouldn't
speak of otherwise. But Carroll is my only sister, and I want her to be
happy. I think you are the man to make her so, but I want you to avoid
one mistake. Fight it out right now, and never give back the ground you
win.”

“I feel that,” replied Orde quietly.

“Mother made father resign from the army; and while he's a dear old boy,
he's never done anything since. She holds me--although I see through
her--possibly because I'm weak or indifferent, possibly because I have
a silly idea I can make a bad situation better by hanging around. She is
rapidly turning Kendrick into a sullen little prig, because he believes
implicitly all the grievances against the world and the individual she
pours out to him. You see, I have no illusions concerning my family.
Only Carroll has held to her freedom of soul, because that's the joyous,
free, sweet nature of her, bless her! For the first time she's pitted
her will against mother's, and it's a bad clash.”

“Your mother objected?” asked Orde.

Gerald laughed a little bitterly. “It was very bad,” said he. “You've
grown horns, hoofs, and a tail overnight. There's nothing too criminal
to have escaped your notice. I have been forbidden to consort with you.
So has the general. The battle of last night had to do with your coming
to the house at all. As it is not Carroll's house, naturally she has no
right to insist.”

“I shall not be permitted to see her?” cried Orde.

“I did not say that. Carroll announced then quite openly that she would
see you outside. I fancy that was the crux of the matter. Don't you
see? The whole affair shifted ground. Carroll has offered direct
disobedience. Oh, she's a bully little fighter!” he finished in admiring
accents. “You can't quite realise what she's doing for your sake; she's
not only fighting mother, but her own heart.”

Orde found a note at the hotel, asking him to be in Washington Square at
half-past two.

Carroll met him with a bright smile.

“Things aren't quite right at home,” she said. “It is a great shock to
poor mother at first, and she feels very strongly. Oh, it isn't you,
dear; it's the notion that I can care for anybody but her. You see,
she's been used to the other idea so long that I suppose it seemed a
part of the universe to her. She'll get used to it after a little, but
it takes time.”

Orde examined her face anxiously. Two bright red spots burned on her
cheeks; her eyes flashed with a nervous animation, and a faint shade had
sketched itself beneath them.

“You had a hard time,” he murmured, “you poor dear!”

She smiled up at him.

“We have to pay for the good things in life, don't we, dear? And they
are worth it. Things will come right after a little. We must not be too
impatient. Now, let's enjoy the day. The park isn't so bad, is it?”

At five o'clock Orde took her back to her doorstep, where he left her.

This went on for several days.

At the end of that time Orde could not conceal from himself that the
strain was beginning to tell. Carroll's worried expression grew from
day to day, while the animation that characterised her manner when
freed from the restraint became more and more forced. She was as though
dominated by some inner tensity, which she dared not relax even for a
moment. To Orde's questionings she replied as evasively as she could,
assuring him always that matters were going as well as she had expected;
that mother was very difficult; that Orde must have patience, for things
would surely come all right. She begged him to remain quiescent until
she gave him the word; and she implored it so earnestly that Orde,
though he chafed, was forced to await the turn of events. Every
afternoon she met him, from two to five. The situation gave little
opportunity for lovers' demonstrations. She seemed entirely absorbed by
the inner stress of the struggle she was going through, so that hardly
did she seem able to follow coherently even plans for the future. She
appeared, however, to gain a mysterious refreshment from Orde's
mere proximity; so gradually he, with that streak of almost feminine
intuition which is the especial gift to lovers, came to the point of
sitting quite silent with her, clasping her hand out of sight of the
chance passer-by. When the time came to return, they arose and walked
back to Ninth Street, still in silence. At the door they said good-bye.
He kissed her quite soberly.

“I wish I could help, sweetheart,” said he.

She shook her head at him.

“You do help,” she replied.

From Gerald at the club, Orde sought more intimate news of what was
going on. For several days, however, the young man absented himself from
his usual haunts. It was only at the end of the week that Orde succeeded
in finding him.

“No,” Gerald answered his greeting, “I haven't been around much. I've
been sticking pretty close home.”

Little by little, Orde's eager questions drew out the truth of the
situation. Mrs. Bishop had shut herself up in a blind and incredible
obstinacy, whence she sallied with floods of complaints, tears,
accusations, despairs, reproaches, vows, hysterics--all the battery
of the woman misunderstood, but in which she refused to listen to a
consecutive conversation. If Carroll undertook to say anything,
the third word would start her mother off into one of her long and
hysterical tirades. It was very wearing, and there seemed to be nothing
gained from day to day. Her child had disobeyed her. And as a climax,
she had assumed the impregnable position of a complete prostration,
wherein she demanded the minute care of an invalid in the crisis of a
disorder. She could bear no faintest ray of illumination, no lightest
footfall. In a hushed twilight she lay, her eyes swathed, moaning feebly
that her early dissolution at the hands of ingratitude was imminent.
Thus she established a deadlock which was likely to continue
indefinitely. The mere mention of the subject nearest Carroll's heart
brought the feeble complaint:

“Do you want to kill me?”

The only scrap of victory to be snatched from this stricken field
was the fact that Carroll insisted on going to meet her lover every
afternoon. The invalid demanded every moment of her time, either for
personal attendance or in fulfilment of numerous and exacting church
duties. An attempt, however, to encroach thus on the afternoon hours met
a stone wall of resolution on Carroll's part.

This was the situation Orde gathered from his talk with Gerald. Though
he fretted under the tyranny exacted, he could see nothing which could
relieve the situation save his own withdrawal. He had already long
over-stayed his visit; important affairs connected with his work
demanded his attention, he had the comfort of Carroll's love assured;
and the lapse of time alone could be depended on to change Mrs. Bishop's
attitude, a consummation on which Carroll seemed set. Although Orde felt
all the lively dissatisfaction natural to a newly accepted lover who
had gained slight opportunity for favours, for confidences, even for the
making of plans, nevertheless he could see for the present nothing else
to do.

The morning after he had reached this conclusion he again met Gerald
at the gymnasium. That young man, while as imperturbable and languid in
movement as ever, concealed an excitement. He explained nothing until
the two, after a shower and rub-down, were clothing themselves leisurely
in the empty couch-room.

“Orde,” said Gerald suddenly, “I'm worried about Carroll.”

Orde straightened his back and looked steadily at Gerald, but said
nothing.

“Mother has commenced bothering her again. It wasn't so bad as long as
she stuck to daytime, but now she's taken to prowling in a dozen times a
night. I hear their voices for an hour or so at a time. I'm afraid it's
beginning to wear on Carroll more than you realise.”

“Thank you,” said Orde briefly.

That afternoon with Carroll he took the affair firmly in hand.

“This thing has come to the point where it must stop,” said he, “and
I'm going to stop it. I have some rights in the matter of the health and
comfort of the girl I love.”

“What do you intend to do?” asked Carroll, frightened.

“I shall have it out with your mother,” replied Orde.

“You mustn't do that,” implored Carroll. “It would do absolutely no
good, and would just result in a quarrel that could never be patched
up.”

“I don't know as I care particularly,” said Orde.

“But I do. Think--she is my mother.”

Orde stirred uneasily with a mental reservation as to selfishness, but
said nothing.

“And think what it means to a girl to be married and go away from home
finally without her parent's consent. It's the most beautiful and sacred
thing in her life, and she wants it to be perfect. It's worth waiting
and fighting a little for. After all, we are both young, and we have
known each other such a very short time.”

So she pleaded with him, bringing forward all the unanswerable arguments
built by the long average experience of the world--arguments which
Orde could not refute, but whose falsity to the situation he felt most
keenly. He could not specify without betraying Gerald's confidence.
Raging inwardly, he consented to a further armistice.

At his hotel he found a telegram. He did not open it until he had
reached his own room. It was from home, urging his immediate return for
the acceptance of some contracted work.

“To hell with the contracted work!” he muttered savagely, and calling a
bell-boy, sent an answer very much to that effect. Then he plunged his
hands into his pockets, stretched out his legs, and fell into a deep and
gloomy meditation.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in!” he called, without turning his head.

He heard the door open and shut. After a moment he looked around.
Kendrick Bishop stood watching him.

Orde lit the gas.

“Hello, Kendrick!” said he. “Sit down.” The boy made no reply. Orde
looked at him curiously, and saw that he was suffering from an intense
excitement. His frame trembled convulsively, his lips were white, his
face went red and pale by turns. Evidently he had something to say, but
could not yet trust his voice. Orde sat down and waited.

“You've got to let my mother alone,” he managed to say finally.

“I have done nothing to your mother, Kendrick,” said Orde kindly.

“You've brought her to the point of death,” asserted Keudrick violently.
“You're hounding her to her grave. You're turning those she loves best
against her.”

Orde thought to catch the echo of quotation in these words.

“Did your mother send you to me?” he asked.

“If we had any one else worth the name of man in the family, I wouldn't
have to come,” said Kendrick, almost in the manner of one repeating a
lesson.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Orde after a moment of thought.

“Go away,” cried Kendrick. “Stop this unmanly contest against a
defenceless woman.”

“I cannot do that,” replied Orde quietly.

Kendrick's face assumed a livid pallor, and his eyes seemed to turn
black with excitement. Trembling in every limb, but without hesitation,
he advanced on Orde, drew a short riding-whip from beneath his coat, and
slashed the young man across the face. Orde made an involuntary movement
to arise, but sank back, and looked steadily at the boy. Once again
Kendrick hit; raised his arm for the third time; hesitated. His lips
writhed, and then, with a sob, he cast the little whip from him and
burst from the room.

Orde sat without moving, while two red lines slowly defined themselves
across his face. The theatrical quality of the scene and the turgid
rhetorical bathos of the boy's speeches attested his youth and the
unformed violence of his emotions. Did they also indicate a rehearsal,
or had the boy merely been goaded to vague action by implicit belief in
a woman's vagaries? Orde did not know, but the incident brought home to
him, as nothing else could, the turmoil of that household.

“Poor youngster!” he concluded his reverie, and went to wash his face in
hot water.

He had left Carroll that afternoon in a comparatively philosophical
and hopeful frame of mind. The next day she came to him with hurried,
nervous steps, her usually pale cheeks mounting danger signals of
flaming red, her eyes swimming. When she greeted him she choked, and two
of the tears overflowed. Quite unmindful of the nursemaids across the
square, Orde put his arm comfortingly about her shoulder. She hid her
face against his sleeve and began softly to cry.

Orde did not attempt as yet to draw from her the cause of this unusual
agitation. A park bench stood between two dense bushes, screened from
all directions save one. To this he led her. He comforted her as one
comforts a child, stroking clumsily her hair, murmuring trivialities
without meaning, letting her emotion relieve itself. After awhile she
recovered somewhat her control of herself and sat up away from him,
dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief dampened into a tiny wad. But
even after she had shaken her head vigorously at last, and smiled up at
him rather tremulously in token that the storm was over, she would not
tell him that anything definite had happened to bring on the outburst.

“I just needed you,” she said, “that's all. It's just nothing but being
a woman, I think. You'll get used to little things like that.”

“This thing has got to quit!” said he grimly.

She said nothing, but reached up shyly and touched his face where
Kendrick's whip had stung, and her eyes became very tender. A carriage
rolled around Washington Arch, and, coming to a stand, discharged its
single passenger on the pavement.

“Why, it's Gerald!” cried Carroll, surprised.

The young man, catching sight of them, picked his way daintily and
leisurely toward them. He was, as usual, dressed with meticulous nicety,
the carnation in his button-hole, the gloss on his hat and shoes, the
freshness on his gloves, the correct angle on his stick. His dark, long
face with its romantic moustache, and its almost effeminate soft eyes,
was as unemotional and wearied as ever. As he approached, he raised his
stick slightly by way of salutation.

“I have brought,” said he, “a carriage, and I wish you would both do me
the favour to accompany me on a short excursion.”

Taking their consent for granted, he signalled the vehicle, which
rapidly approached.

The three--Carroll and Orde somewhat bewildered--took their seats.
During a brief drive, Gerald made conversation on different topics,
apparently quite indifferent as to whether or not his companions
replied. After an interval the carriage drew up opposite a brown-stone
dwelling on a side street. Gerald rang the bell, and a moment later the
three were ushered by a discreet and elderly maid into a little square
reception-room immediately off the hall. The maid withdrew.

Gerald carefully deposited his top hat on the floor, placed in it his
gloves, and leaned his stick against its brim.

“I have brought you here, among other purposes, to hear from me a little
brief wisdom drawn from experience and the observation of life,” he
began, addressing his expectant and curious guests. “That wisdom is
briefly this: there comes a time in the affairs of every household when
a man must assert himself as the ruler. In all the details he may depend
on the woman's judgment, experience, and knowledge, but when it comes to
the big crises, where life is deflected into one channel or the other,
then, unless the man does the deciding, he is lost for ever, and
his happiness, and the happiness of those who depend on him. This is
abstruse, but I come to the particular application shortly.

“But moments of decision are always clouded by many considerations. The
decision is sure to cut across much that is expedient, much that seems
to be necessary, much that is dear. Carroll remembers the case of our
own father. The general would have made a name for himself in the army;
his wife demanded his retirement; he retired, and his career ended. That
was the moment of his decision. It is very easy to say, in view of that
simple statement, that the general was weak in yielding to his wife, but
a consideration of the circumstances--”

“Why do you say all this?” interrupted Orde.

Gerald raised his hand.

“Believe me, it is necessary, as you will agree when you have heard me
through. Mrs. Bishop was in poor health; the general in poor financial
circumstances. The doctors said the Riviera. Mrs. Bishop's parents, who
were wealthy, furnished the money for her sojourn in that climate. She
could not bear to be separated from her husband. A refusal to resign
then, a refusal to accept the financial aid offered, would have been
cast against him as a reproach--he did not love his wife enough to
sacrifice his pride, his ambition, his what-you-will. Nevertheless, that
was his moment of decision.

“I could multiply instances, yet it would only accumulate needless
proof. My point is that in these great moments a man can afford to
take into consideration only the affair itself. Never must he think of
anything but the simple elements of the problem--he must ignore whose
toes are trodden upon, whose feelings are hurt, whose happiness is
apparently marred. For note this: if a man does fearlessly the right
thing, I am convinced that in the readjustment all these conflicting
interests find themselves bettered instead of injured. You want a
concrete instance? I believe firmly that if the general had kept to his
army life, and made his wife conform to it, after the storm had passed
she would have settled down to a happy existence. I cannot prove it--I
believe it.”

“This may be all very true, Gerald,” said Orde, “but I fail to see why
you have brought us to this strange house to tell it.”

“In a moment,” replied Gerald. “Have patience. Believing that
thoroughly, I have come in the last twenty-four hours to a decision.
That this happens not to affect my own immediate fortunes does not seem
to me to invalidate my philosophy.”

He carefully unbuttoned his frock coat, crossed his legs, produced a
paper and a package from his inside pocket, and eyed the two before him.

“I have here,” he went on suddenly, “marriage papers duly made out;
in this package is a plain gold ring; in the next room is waiting, by
prearrangement, a very good friend of mine in the clergy. Personally I
am at your disposal.”

He looked at them expectantly.

“The very thing!” “Oh, no!” cried Orde and Carroll in unison.

Nevertheless, in spite of this divergence of opinion, ten minutes later
the three passed through the door into the back apartment--Carroll still
hesitant, Orde in triumph, Gerald as correct and unemotional as ever.

In this back room they found waiting a young clergyman conversing easily
with two young girls. At the sight of Carroll, these latter rushed
forward and overwhelmed her with endearments. Carroll broke into a
quickly suppressed sob and clasped them close to her.

“Oh, you dears!” she cried, “I'm so glad you're here!” She flashed a
grateful look in Gerald's direction, and a moment later took occasion to
press his arm and whisper:

“You've thought of everything! You're the dearest brother in the world!”

Gerald received this calmly, and set about organising the ceremony. In
fifteen minutes the little party separated at the front door, amid a
chatter of congratulations and good wishes. Mr. and Mrs. Orde entered
the cab and drove away.




XX


“Oh, it IS the best way, dear, after all!” cried Carroll, pressing close
to her husband. “A few minutes ago I was all doubts and fears, but now
I feel so safe and settled,” she laughed happily. “It is as though I
had belonged to you always, you old Rock of Gibraltar! and anything that
happens now will come from the outside, and not from the inside, won't
it, dear?”

“Yes, sweetheart,” said Orde.

“Poor mother! I wonder how she'll take it.”

“We'll soon know, anyway,” replied Orde, a little grimly.

In the hallway of the Bishop house Orde kissed her.

“Be brave, sweetheart,” said he, “but remember that now you're my wife.”

She nodded at him gravely and disappeared.

Orde sat in the dim parlour for what seemed to be an interminable
period. Occasionally the sounds of distant voices rose to his ear and
died away again. The front door opened to admit some one, but Orde
could not see who it was. Twice a scurrying of feet overhead seemed to
indicate the bustle of excitement. The afternoon waned. A faint whiff
of cooking, escaping through some carelessly open door, was borne to
his nostrils. It grew dark, but the lamps remained unlighted. Finally he
heard the rustle of the portieres, and turned to see the dim form of the
general standing there.

“Bad business! bad business!” muttered the old man. “It's very hard
on me. Perhaps you did the right thing--you must be good to her--but I
cannot countenance this affair. It was most high-handed, sir!”

The portieres fell again, and he disappeared.

Finally, after another interval, Carroll returned. She went immediately
to the gas-fixture, which she lit. Orde then saw that she was sobbing
violently. She came to him, and for a moment hid her face against his
breast. He patted her hair, waiting for her to speak. After a little she
controlled herself.

“How was it?” asked Orde, then.

She shivered.

“I never knew people could be so cruel,” she complained in almost a
bewildered manner. “Jack, we must go to-night. She--she has ordered me
out of the house, and says she never wants to see my face again.” She
broke down for a second. “Oh, Jack! she can't mean that. I've always
been a good daughter to her. And she's very bitter against Gerald. Oh!
I told her it wasn't his fault, but she won't listen. She sent for
that odious Mr. Merritt--her rector, you know--and he supported her. I
believe he's angry because we did not go to him. Could you believe
such a thing! And she's shut herself up in her air of high virtue, and
underneath it she's, oh, so angry!”

“Well, it's natural she should be upset,” comforted Orde. “Don't think
too much of what she does now. Later she'll get over it.”

Carroll shivered again.

“You don't know, dear, and I'm not going to tell you. Why,” she cried,
“she told me that you and I were in a conspiracy to drive her to her
grave so we could get her money!”

“She must be a little crazy,” said Orde, still pacifically.

“Come, help me,” said Carroll. “I must get my things.”

“Can't you just pack a bag and leave the rest until tomorrow? It's about
hungry time.”

“She says I must take every stitch belonging to me tonight.”

They packed trunks until late that night, quite alone. Gerald had
departed promptly after breaking the news, probably without realising
to what a pass affairs would come. A frightened servant, evidently in
disobedience of orders and in fear of destruction, brought them a tray
of food, which she put down on a small table and hastily fled. In a room
down the hall they could hear the murmur of voices where Mrs. Bishop
received spiritual consolation from her adviser. When the trunks were
packed, Orde sent for a baggage waggon. Carroll went silently from place
to place, saying farewell to such of her treasures as she had made up
her mind to leave. Orde scribbled a note to Gerald, requesting him
to pack up the miscellanies and send them to Michigan by freight. The
baggage man and Orde carried the trunks downstairs. No one appeared.
Carroll and Orde walked together to the hotel. Next morning an interview
with Gerald confirmed them in their resolution of immediate departure.

“She is set in her opposition now, and at present she believes firmly
that her influence will separate you. Such a state of mind cannot be
changed in an hour.”

“And you?” asked Carroll.

“Oh, I,” he shrugged, “will go on as usual. I have my interests.”

“I wish you would come out in our part of the country,” ventured Orde.

Gerald smiled his fine smile.

“Good-bye,” said he. “Going to a train is useless, and a bore to
everybody.”

Carroll threw herself on his neck in an access of passionate weeping.

“You WILL write and tell me of everything, won't you?” she begged.

“Of course. There now, good-bye.”

Orde followed him into the hall.

“It would be quite useless to attempt another interview?” he inquired.

Gerald made a little mouth.

“I am in the same predicament as yourselves,” said he, “and have since
nine this morning taken up my quarters at the club. Please do not tell
Carroll; it would only pain her.”

At the station, just before they passed in to the train, the general
appeared.

“There, there!” he fussed. “If your mother should hear of my being here,
it would be a very bad business, very bad. This is very sad; but--well,
good-bye, dear; and you, sir, be good to her. And write your daddy,
Carroll. He'll be lonesome for you.” He blew his nose very loudly and
wiped his glasses. “Now, run along, run along,” he hurried them. “Let us
not have any scenes. Here, my dear, open this envelope when you are well
started. It may help cheer the journey. Not a word!”

He hurried them through the gate, paying no heed to what they were
trying to say. Then he steamed away and bustled into a cab without once
looking back.

When the train had passed the Harlem River and was swaying its uneven
way across the open country, Carroll opened the envelope. It contained a
check for a thousand dollars.

“Dear old daddy!” she murmured. “Our only wedding present!”

“You are the capitalist of the family,” said Orde. “You don't know
how poor a man you've married. I haven't much more than the proverbial
silver watch and bad nickel.”

She reached out to press his hand in reassurance. He compared it
humorously with his own.

“What a homely, knotted, tanned old thing it is by yours,” said he.

“It's a strong hand,” she replied soberly, “it's a dear hand.” Suddenly
she snatched it up and pressed it for a fleeting instant against her
cheek, looking at him half ashamed.




XXI


The winter months were spent at Monrovia, where Orde and his wife lived
for a time at the hotel. This was somewhat expensive, but Orde was not
quite ready to decide on a home, and he developed unexpected opposition
to living at Redding in the Orde homestead.

“No, I've been thinking about it,” he told Grandma Orde. “A young couple
should start out on their own responsibility. I know you'd be glad to
have us, but I think it's better the other way. Besides, I must be at
Monrovia a good deal of the time, and I want Carroll with me. She can
make you a good long visit in the spring, when I have to go up river.”

To this Grandma Orde, being a wise old lady, had to nod her assent,
although she would much have liked her son near her.

At Monrovia, then, they took up their quarters. Carroll soon became
acquainted with the life of the place. Monrovia, like most towns of its
sort and size, consisted of an upper stratum of mill owners and lumber
operators, possessed of considerable wealth, some cultivation,
and definite social ideas; a gawky, countrified, middle estate of
storekeepers, catering both to the farm and local trade and the lumber
mill operatives, generally of Holland extraction, who dwelt in simple
unpainted board shanties. The class first mentioned comprised a small
coterie, among whom Carroll soon found two or three congenials--Edith
Fuller, wife of the young cashier in the bank; Valerie Cathcart, whose
husband had been killed in the Civil War; Clara Taylor, wife of the
leading young lawyer of the village; and, strangely enough, Mina
Heinzman, the sixteen-year-old daughter of old Heinzman, the lumberman.
Nothing was more indicative of the absolute divorce of business and
social life than the unbroken evenness of Carroll's friendship for the
younger girl. Though later the old German and Orde locked in serious
struggle on the river, they continued to meet socially quite as usual;
and the daughter of one and the wife of the other never suspected
anything out of the ordinary. This impersonality of struggle has always
been characteristic of the pioneer business man's good-nature.

Newmark received the news of his partner's sudden marriage without
evincing any surprise, but with a sardonic gleam in one corner of his
eye. He called promptly, conversed politely for a half hour, and then
took his leave.

“How do you like him?” asked Orde, when he had gone.

“He looks like a very shrewd man,” replied Carroll, picking her words
for fear of saying the wrong thing.

Orde laughed.

“You don't like him,” he stated.

“I don't dislike him,” said Carroll. “I've not a thing against him.
But we could never be in the slightest degree sympathetic. He and I
don't--don't--”

“Don't jibe,” Orde finished for her. “I didn't much think you would. Joe
never was much of a society bug.” It was on the tip of Carroll's
tongue to reply that “society bugs” were not the only sort she could
appreciate, but she refrained. She had begun to realise the extent of
her influence over her husband's opinion.

Newmark did not live at the hotel. Early in the fall he had rented a
small one-story house situated just off Main Street, set well back from
the sidewalk among clumps of oleanders. Into this he retired as a snail
into its shell. At first he took his meals at the hotel, but later he
imported an impassive, secretive man-servant, who took charge of
him completely. Neither master nor man made any friends, and in fact
rebuffed all advances. One Sunday, Carroll and Orde, out for a walk,
passed this quaint little place, with its picket fence.

“Let's go in and return Joe's call,” suggested Orde.

Their knock at the door brought the calm valet.

“Mr. Newmark is h'out, sir,” said he. “Yes, sir, I'll tell him that you
called.”

They turned away. As they sauntered down the little brick-laid walk,
Carroll suddenly pressed close to her husband's arm.

“Jack,” she begged, “I want a little house like that, for our very own.”

“We can't afford it, sweetheart.”

“Not to own,” she explained, “just to rent. It will be next best to
having a home of our own.”

“We'd have to have a girl, dear,” said Orde, “and we can't even afford
that, yet.”

“A girl!” cried Carroll indignantly. “For us two!”

“You couldn't do the housework and the cooking,” said Orde. “You've
never done such a thing in your life, and I won't have my little girl
slaving.”

“It won't be slaving, it will be fun--just like play-housekeeping,”
 protested Carroll. “And I've got to learn some time. I was brought up
most absurdly, and I realise it now.”

“We'll see,” said Orde vaguely.

The subject was dropped for the time being. Later Carroll brought it up
again. She was armed with several sheets of hotel stationery, covered
with figures showing how much cheaper it would be to keep house than to
board.

“You certainly make out a strong case--on paper,” laughed Orde. “If you
buy a rooster and a hen, and she raises two broods, at the end of a
year you'll have twenty-six; and if they all breed--even allowing half
roosters--you'll have over three hundred; and if they all breed, you'll
have about thirty-five hundred; and if--”

“Stop! stop!” cried Carroll, covering her ears.

“All right,” agreed Orde equably, “but that's the way it figures. Funny
the earth isn't overrun with chickens, isn't it?”

She thrust her tables of figures into her desk drawer. “You're just
making fun of me always,” she said reproachfully.

Two days later Orde took her one block up the street to look at a
tiny little house tucked on a fifty-foot lot beneath the shadow of the
church.

“It's mighty little,” said he. “I'll have to go out in the hall to
change my collar, and we couldn't have more than two people at a time to
call on us.”

“It's a dear!” said she, “and I'm not so e-nor-mous myself, whatever YOU
may be.”

They ended by renting the little house, and Carroll took charge of it
delightedly. What difficulties she overcame, and what laughable and
cryable mistakes she made only those who have encountered a like
situation could realise. She learned fast, however, and took a real
pride in her tiny box of a home. A piano was, of course, out of the
question, but the great golden harp occupied one corner, or rather
one side, of the parlour. Standing thus enshrouded in its covering, it
rather resembled an august and tremendous veiled deity. To Carroll's
great delight, Orde used solemnly to go down on all fours and knock
his forehead thrice on the floor before it when he entered the house
at evening. When the very cold weather came and they had to light the
base-burner stove, which Orde stoutly maintained occupied all the other
half of the parlour, the harp's delicate constitution necessitated its
standing in the hall. Nevertheless, Carroll had great comfort from it.
While Orde was away at the office, she whispered through its mellow
strings her great happiness, the dreams for her young motherhood which
would come in the summer, the vague and lingering pain over the hapless
but beloved ones she had left behind her in her other life. Then she
arose refreshed, and went about the simple duties of her tiny domain.

The winter was severe. All the world was white. The piles of snow along
the sidewalks grew until Carroll could hardly look over them. Great
fierce winds swept in from the lake. Sometimes Orde and his wife drove
two miles to the top of the sand hills, where first they had met in this
their present home, and looked out beyond the tumbled shore ice to the
steel-gray, angry waters. The wind pricked their faces, and, going
home, the sleigh-bells jingled, the snowballs from the horses' hoofs hit
against the dash, the cold air seared the inside of their nostrils. When
Orde helped Carroll from beneath the warm buffalo robes, she held up to
him a face glowing with colour, framed in the soft fluffy fur of a hood.

“You darling!” he cried, and stooped to kiss her smooth, cold cheek.

When he had returned from the stable around the corner, he found the lit
lamp throwing its modified light and shade over the little round table.
He shook down the base-burner vigorously, thrust several billets of wood
in its door, and turned to meet her eyes across the table.

“Kind of fun being married, isn't it?” said he.

“Kind of,” she admitted, nodding gravely.

The business of the firm was by now about in shape. All the boom
arrangements had been made; the two tugs were in the water and their
machinery installed; supplies and equipments were stored away; the
foremen of the crews engaged, and the crews themselves pretty well
picked out. Only there needed to build the wanigan, and to cart in the
supplies for the upper river works before the spring break-up and the
almost complete disappearance of the roads. Therefore, Orde had the good
fortune of unusual leisure to enjoy these first months with his
bride. They entered together the Unexplored Country, and found it more
wonderful than they had dreamed. Almost before they knew it, January and
February had flown.

“We must pack up, sweetheart,” said Orde.

“It's only yesterday that we came,” she cried regretfully.

They took the train for Redding, were installed in the gable room,
explored together for three days the delights of the old-fashioned
house, the spicy joys of Grandma Orde's and Amanda's cookery, the almost
adoring adulation of the old folks. Then Orde packed his “turkey,”
 assumed his woods clothes, and marched off down the street carrying his
bag on his back.

“He looks like an old tramp in that rig,” said Grandma Orde, closing the
storm door.

“He looks like a conqueror of wildernesses!” cried Carroll, straining
her eyes after his vanishing figure. Suddenly she darted after him,
calling in her high, bird-like tones. He turned and came back to her.
She clasped him by the shoulders, reluctant to let him go.

“Good-bye,” she said at last. “You'll take better care of my sweetheart
than you ever did of Jack Orde, won't you, dear?”




XXII


Orde had reconnoitred the river as a general reconnoitres his
antagonist, and had made his dispositions as the general disposes of his
army, his commissary, his reserves. At this point five men could keep
the river clear; at that rapid it would require twenty; there a dozen
would suffice for ordinary contingencies, and yet an emergency might
call for thirty--those thirty must not be beyond reach. In his mind's
eye he apportioned the sections of the upper river. Among the remoter
wildernesses every section must have its driving camp. The crews of
each, whether few or many, would be expected to keep clear and running
their own “beats” on the river. As far as the rear crew should overtake
these divisions, either it would absorb them or the members of them
would be thrown forward beyond the lowermost beat, to take charge of a
new division down stream. When the settled farm country or the little
towns were reached, many of the driving camps would become unnecessary;
the men could be boarded out at farms lying in their beats. A continual
advance would progress toward the Lake, the drive crews passing and
repassing each other like pigeons in the sown fields. Each of these
sections would be in charge of a foreman, whose responsibility ceased
with the delivery of the logs to the men next below. A walking boss
would trudge continually the river trail, or ride the logs down stream,
holding the correlation of these many units. Orde himself would drive up
and down the river, overseeing the whole plan of campaign, throwing the
camps forward, concentrating his forces here, spreading them elsewhere,
keeping accurately in mind the entire situation so that he could say
with full confidence: “Open Dam Number One for three hours at nine
o'clock; Dam Number Two for two hours and a half at ten thirty,” and so
on down the line; sure that the flood waters thus released would arrive
at the right moment, would supplement each other, and would so space
themselves as to accomplish the most work with the least waste. In that
one point more than in any other showed the expert. The water was his
ammunition, a definite and limited quantity of it. To “get the logs out
with the water” was the last word of praise to be said for the river
driver. The more logs, the greater the glory.

Thus it can readily be seen, this matter was rather a campaign than a
mere labour, requiring the men, the munitions, the organisation, the
tactical ability, the strategy, the resourcefulness, the boldness, and
the executive genius of a military commander.

To all these things, and to the distribution of supplies and implements
among the various camps, Orde had attended. The wanigan for the rear
crew was built. The foremen and walking boss had been picked out.
Everything was in readiness. Orde was satisfied with the situation
except that he found himself rather short-handed. He had counted on
three hundred men for his crews, but scrape and scratch as he would, he
was unable to gather over two hundred and fifty. This matter was not
so serious, however, as later, when the woods camps should break up, he
would be able to pick up more workmen.

“They won't be rivermen like my old crew, though,” said Orde regretfully
to Tom North, the walking boss. “I'd like to steal a few from some of
those Muskegon outfits.”

Until the logs should be well adrift, Orde had resolved to boss the rear
crew himself.

As the rear was naturally the farthest up stream, Orde had taken also
the contract to break the rollways belonging to Carlin, which in the
season's work would be piled up on the bank. Thus he could get to work
immediately at the break-up, and without waiting for some one else. The
seven or eight million feet of lumber comprised in Carlin's drive would
keep the men below busy until the other owners, farther down and up the
tributaries, should also have put their season's cut afloat.

The ice went out early, to Orde's satisfaction. As soon as the river
ran clear in its lower reaches he took his rear crew in to Carlin's
rollways.

This crew was forty in number, and had been picked from the best--a
hard-bitten, tough band of veterans, weather beaten, scarred in numerous
fights or by the backwoods scourge of small-pox, compact, muscular,
fearless, loyal, cynically aloof from those not of their cult,
out-spoken and free to criticise--in short, men to do great things under
the strong leader, and to mutiny at the end of three days under the
weak. They piled off the train at Sawyer's, stamped their feet on the
board platform of the station, shouldered their “turkeys,” and straggled
off down the tote-road. It was an eighteen-mile walk in. The ground had
loosened its frost. The footing was ankle-deep in mud and snow-water.

Next morning, bright and early, the breaking of the rollways began.
During the winter the logs had been hauled down ice roads to the river,
where they were “banked” in piles twenty, and even thirty, feet in
height. The bed of the stream itself was filled with them for a mile,
save in a narrow channel left down through the middle to allow for some
flow of water; the banks were piled with them, side on, ready to roll
down at the urging of the men.

First of all, the entire crew set itself, by means of its peavies, to
rolling the lower logs into the current, where they were rapidly borne
away. As the waters were now at flood, this was a quick and easy labour.
Occasionally some tiers would be stuck together by ice, in which case
considerable prying and heaving was necessary in order to crack them
apart. But forty men, all busily at work, soon had the river full. Orde
detailed some six or eight to drop below in order that the river might
run clear to the next section, where the next crew would take up the
task. These men, quite simply, walked to the edges of the rollway,
rolled a log apiece into the water, stepped aboard, leaned against their
peavies, and were swept away by the swift current. The logs on which
they stood whirled in the eddies, caromed against other timbers,
slackened speed, shot away; never did the riders alter their poses of
easy equilibrium. From time to time one propelled his craft ashore
by hooking to and pushing against other logs. There he stood on some
prominent point, leaning his chin contemplatively against the thick
shaft of his peavy, watching the endless procession of the logs drifting
by. Apparently he was idle, but in reality his eyes missed no shift of
the ordered ranks. When a slight hitch or pause, a subtle change in the
pattern of the brown carpet caught his attention, he sprang into life.
Balancing his peavy across his body, he made his way by short dashes
to the point of threatened congestion. There, working vigorously, swept
down stream with the mass, he pulled, hauled, and heaved, forcing the
heavy, reluctant timbers from the cohesion that threatened trouble
later. Oblivious to his surroundings, he wrenched and pried desperately.
The banks of the river drifted by. Point succeeded point, as though
withdrawn up stream by some invisible manipulator. The river appeared
stationary, the banks in motion. Finally he heard at his elbow the voice
of the man stationed below him, who had run out from his own point.

“Hullo, Bill,” he replied to this man, “you old slough hog! Tie into
this this!”

“All the time!” agreed Bill cheerfully.

In a few moments the danger was averted, the logs ran free. The rivermen
thereupon made their uncertain way back to shore, where they took the
river trail up stream again to their respective posts.

At noon they ate lunches they had brought with them in little canvas
bags, snatched before they left the rollways from a supply handy by the
cook. In the meantime the main crew were squatting in the lea of the
brush, devouring a hot meal which had been carried to them in wooden
boxes strapped to the backs of the chore boys. Down the river and up its
tributaries other crews, both in the employ of Newmark and Orde and of
others, were also pausing from their cold and dangerous toil. The river,
refreshed after its long winter, bent its mighty back to the great
annual burden laid upon it.

By the end of the second day the logs actually in the bed of the stream
had been shaken loose, and a large proportion of them had floated
entirely from sight. It now became necessary to break down the rollways
piled along the tops of the banks.

The evening of this day, however, Orde received a visit from Jim
Denning, the foreman of the next section below, bringing with him
Charlie, the cook of Daly's last year's drive. Leaving him by the larger
fire, Jim Denning drew his principal one side.

“This fellow drifted in to-night two days late after a drunk, and he
tells an almighty queer story,” said he. “He says a crew of bad men
from the Saginaw, sixty strong, have been sent in by Heinzman. He says
Heinzman hired them to come over not to work, but just to fight and
annoy us.”

“That so?” said Orde. “Well, where are they?”

“Don't know. But he sticks by his story, and tells it pretty straight.”

“Bring him over, and let's hear it,” said Orde.

“Hullo, Charlie!” he greeted the cook when the latter stood before him.
“What's this yarn Jim's telling me?”

“It's straight, Mr. Orde,” said the cook. “There's a big crew brought in
from the Saginaw Waters to do you up. They're supposed to be over here
to run his drive, but really they're goin' to fight and raise hell. For
why would he want sixty men to break out them little rollways of his'n
up at the headwaters?”

“Is that where they've gone?” asked Orde like a flash.

“Yes, sir. And he only owns a 'forty' up there, and it ain't more'n half
cut, anyway.”

“I didn't know he owned any.”

“Yes, sir. He bought that little Johnson piece last winter. I been
workin' up there with a little two-horse crew since January. We didn't
put up more'n a couple hundred thousand.”

“Is he breaking out his rollways below?” Orde asked Denning.

“No, sir,” struck in Charlie, “he ain't.”

“How do you happen to be so wise?” inquired Orde, “Seems to me you know
about as much as old man Solomon.”

“Well,” explained Charlie, “you see it's like this. When I got back from
the woods last week, I just sort of happened into McNeill's place. I
wasn't drinkin' a drop!” he cried virtuously, in answer to Orde's smile.

“Of course not,” said Orde. “I was just thinking of the last time we
were in there together.”

“That's just it!” cried Charlie. “They was always sore at you about
that. Well, I was lyin' on one of those there benches back of the
'Merican flags in the dance hall 'cause I was very sleepy, when in blew
old man Heinzman and McNeill himself. I just lay low for black ducks
and heard their talk. They took a look around, but didn't see no one, so
they opened her up wide.”

“What did you hear?” asked Orde.

“Well, McNeill he agreed to get a gang of bad ones from the Saginaw to
run in on the river, and I heard Heinzman tell him to send 'em in to
headwaters. And McNeill said, 'That's all right about the cash, Mr.
Heinzman, but I been figgerin' on gettin' even with Orde for some
myself.'”

“Is that all?” inquired Orde.

“That's about all,” confessed Charlie.

“How do you know he didn't hire them to carry down his drive for him?
He'd need sixty men for his lower rollways, and maybe they weren't all
to go to headwaters?” asked Orde by way of testing Charlie's beliefs.

“He's payin' them four dollars a day,” replied Charlie simply. “Now,
who'd pay that fer just river work?”

Orde nodded at Jim Denning.

“Hold on, Charlie,” said he. “Why are you giving all this away if you
were working for Heinzman?”

“I'm working for you now,” replied Charlie with dignity. “And, besides,
you helped me out once yourself.”

“I guess it's a straight tip all right,” said Orde to Denning, when the
cook had resumed his place by the fire.

“That's what I thought. That's why I brought him up.”

“If that crew's been sent in there, it means only one thing at that end
of the line,” said Orde.

“Sure. They're sent up to waste out the water in the reservoir and hang
this end of the drive,” replied Denning.

“Correct,” said Orde. “The old skunk knows his own rollways are so far
down stream that he's safe, flood water or no flood water.”

A pause ensued, during which the two smoked vigorously.

“What are you going to do about it?” asked Denning at last.

“What would you do?” countered Orde.

“Well,” said Denning slowly, and with a certain grim joy, “I don't bet
those Saginaw river-pigs are any more two-fisted than the boys on this
river. I'd go up and clean 'em out.”

“Won't do,” negatived Orde briefly. “In the first place, as you know
very well, we're short-handed now, and we can't spare the men from the
work. In the second place, we'd hang up sure, then; to go up in that
wilderness, fifty miles from civilisation, would mean a first-class row
of too big a size to handle. Won't do!”

“Suppose you get a lawyer,” suggested Denning sarcastically.

Orde laughed with great good-humour

“Where'd our water be by the time he got an injunction for us?”

He fell into a brown study, during which his pipe went out.

“Jim,” he said finally, “it isn't a fair game. I don't know what to do.
Delay will hang us; taking men off the work will hang us. I've just got
to go up there myself and see what can be done by talking to them.”

“Talking to them!” Denning snorted. “You might as well whistle down the
draught-pipe of hell! If they're just up there for a row, there'll be
whisky in camp; and you can bet McNeill's got some of 'em instructed on
YOUR account. They'll kill you, sure!”

“I agree with you it's risky,” replied Orde. “I'm scared; I'm willing to
admit it. But I don't see what else to do. Of course he's got no rights,
but what the hell good does that do us after our water is gone? And Jim,
my son, if we hang this drive, I'll be buried so deep I never will dig
out. No; I've got to go. You can stay up here in charge of the rear
until I get back. Send word by Charlie who's to boss your division while
you're gone.”




XXIII


Orde tramped back to Sawyer's early next morning, hitched into the light
buckboard the excellent team with which later, when the drive should
spread out, he would make his longest jumps, and drove to head-waters.
He arrived in sight of the dam about three o'clock. At the edge of the
clearing he pulled up to survey the scene.

A group of three small log-cabins marked the Johnson, and later the
Heinzman, camp. From the chimneys a smoke arose. Twenty or thirty
rivermen lounged about the sunny side of the largest structure. They
had evidently just arrived, for some of their “turkeys” were still piled
outside the door. Orde clucked to his horses, and the spidery wheels of
the buckboard swung lightly over the wet hummocks of the clearing, to
come to a stop opposite the men. Orde leaned forward against his knees.

“Hullo, boys!” said he cheerfully.

No one replied, though two or three nodded surlily. Orde looked them
over with some interest.

They were a dirty, unkempt, unshaven, hard-looking lot, with bloodshot
eyes, a flicker of the dare-devil in expression, beyond the first youth,
hardened into an enduring toughness of fibre--bad men from the Saginaw,
in truth, and, unless Orde was mistaken, men just off a drunk, and
therefore especially dangerous; men eager to fight at the drop of
the hat, or sooner, to be accommodating, and ready to employ in
their assaults all the formidable and terrifying weapons of the
rough-and-tumble; reckless, hard, irreverrent, blasphemous, to be gained
over by no words, fair or foul; absolutely scornful of any and all
institutions imposed on them by any other but the few men whom they
acknowledged as their leaders. And to master these men's respect
there needed either superlative strength, superlative recklessness, or
superlative skill.

“Who's your boss?” asked Orde.

“The Rough Red,” growled one of the men without moving.

Orde had heard of this man, of his personality and his deeds. Like
Silver Jack of the Muskegon, his exploits had been celebrated in song. A
big, broad-faced man, with a red beard, they had told him, with little,
flickering eyes, a huge voice that bellowed through the woods in a
torrent of commands and imprecations, strong as a bull, and savage as
a wild beast. A hint of his quality will suffice from the many stories
circulated about him. It was said that while jobbing for Morrison and
Daly, in some of that firm's Saginaw Valley holdings, the Rough Red had
discovered that a horse had gone lame. He called the driver of that team
before him, seized an iron starting bar, and with it broke the man's
leg. “Try th' lameness yourself, Barney Mallan,” said he. To appeal to
the charity of such a man would be utterly useless. Orde saw this point.
He picked up his reins and spoke to his team.

But before the horses had taken three steps, a huge riverman had planted
himself squarely in the way. The others rising, slowly surrounded the
rig.

“I don't know what you're up here for,” growled the man at the horses'
heads, “but you wanted to see the boss, and I guess you'd better see
him.”

“I intend to see him,” said Orde sharply. “Get out of the way and let me
hitch my team.”

He drove deliberately ahead, forcing the man to step aside, and stopped
his horses by a stub. He tied them there and descended, to lean his back
also against the log walls of the little house.

After a few moments a huge form appeared above the river bank at some
forty rods' distance.

“Yonder he comes now,” vouchsafed the man nearest Orde.

Orde made out the great square figure of the boss, his soft hat, his
flaming red beard, his dingy mackinaw coat, his dingy black-and-white
checked flannel shirt, his dingy blue trousers tucked into high socks,
and, instead of driving boots, his ordinary lumberman's rubbers. As a
spot of colour, he wore a flaming red knit sash, with tassels. Before
he had approached near enough to be plainly distinguishable, he began
to bellow at the men, commanding them, with a mighty array of oaths,
to wake up and get the sluice-gate open. In a moment or so he had
disappeared behind some bushes that intervened in his approach to the
house. His course through them could be traced by the top of his cap,
which just showed above them. In a moment he thrust through the brush
and stood before Orde.

For a moment he stared at the young man, and then, with a wild Irish
yell, leaped upon him. Orde, caught unawares and in an awkward position,
was hardly able even to struggle against the gigantic riverman.
Indeed, before he had recovered his faculties to the point of offering
determined resistance, he was pinned back against the wall by his
shoulders, and the Rough Red's face was within two feet of his own.

“And how are ye, ye ould darlint?” shouted the latter, with a roll of
oaths.

“Why, Jimmy Bourke!” cried Orde, and burst into a laugh.

The Rough Red jerked him to his feet, delivered a bear hug that nearly
crushed his ribs, and pounded him mightily on the back.

“You ould snoozer!” he bellowed. “Where the blankety blank in blank did
you come from? Byes,” he shouted to the men, “it's me ould boss on th'
Au Sable six year back--that time, ye mind, whin we had th' ice jam!
Glory be! but I'm glad to see ye!”

Orde was still laughing.

“I didn't know you'd turned into the Rough Red, Jimmy,” said he. “I
don't believe we were either of us old enough for whiskers then, were
we?”

The Rough Red grinned.

“Thrue for ye!” said he. “And what have ye been doing all these years?”

“That's just it, Jimmy,” said Orde, drawing the giant one side, out of
ear-shot. “All my eggs are in one basket, and it's a mean trick of you
to hire out for filthy lucre to kick that basket.”

“What do ye mane?” asked the Rough Red, fixing his twinkling little eyes
on Orde.

“You don't mean to tell me,” countered Orde, glancing down at the
other's rubber-shod feet, “that this crew has been sent up here just to
break out those measly little rollways?”

“Thim?” said the Rough Red. “Thim? Hell, NO! Thim's my bodyguard. They
can lick their weight in wild cats, and I'd loike well to see the gang
of highbankers that infists this river thry to pry thim out. We weren't
sint here to wurrk; we were sint here to foight.”

“Fight? Why?” asked Orde.

“Oh, I dunno,” replied the Rough Red easily. “Me boss and the blank of a
blank blanked blank that's attimptin' to droive this river has some sort
of a row.”

“Jimmy,” said Orde, “didn't you know that I am the gentleman last
mentioned?”

“What!”

“I'm driving this river, and that's my dam-keeper you've got hid away
somewhere here, and that's my water you're planning to waste!”

“What?” repeated the Rough Red, but in a different tone of voice.

“That's right,” said Orde.

In a tone of vast astonishment, the Rough Red mentioned his probable
deserts in the future life.

“Luk here, Jack,” said he after a moment, “here's a crew of white-water
birlers that ye can't beat nowheres. What do you want us to do? We're
now gettin' four dollars a day AN' board from that murderin' ould
villain, Heinzman, SO WE CAN AFFORD TO WURRK FOR YOU CHEAP.”

Orde hesitated.

“Oh, please do now, darlint!” wheedled the Rough Red, his little eyes
agleam with mischief. “Sind us some oakum and pitch and we'll caulk yure
wanigan for ye. Or maybe some more peavies, and we'll hilp ye on yure
rollways. And till us, afore ye go, how ye want this dam, and that's the
way she'll be. Come, now, dear! and ain't ye short-handed now?”

Orde slapped his knee and laughed.

“This is sure one hell of a joke!” he cried.

“And ain't it now?” said the Rough Red, smiling with as much
ingratiation as he was able.

“I'll take you boys on,” said Orde at last, “at the usual wages--dollar
and a half for the jam, three for the rear. I doubt if you'll see much
of Heinzman's money when this leaks out.”




XXIV


Thus Orde, by the sheer good luck that sometimes favours men engaged in
large enterprises, not only frustrated a plan likely to bring failure to
his interests, but filled up his crews. It may be remarked here, as well
as later, that the “terrors of the Saginaw” stayed with the drive to
its finish, and proved reliable and tractable in every particular. Orde
scattered them judiciously, so there was no friction with the local men.
The Rough Red he retained on the rear.

Here the breaking of the rollways had reached a stage more exciting both
to onlooker and participant than the mere opening of the river channel.
Huge stacks of logs piled sidewise to the bank lined the stream for
miles. When the lowermost log on the river side was teased and pried
out, the upper tiers were apt to cascade down with a roar, a crash, and
a splash. The man who had done the prying had to be very quick-eyed,
very cool, and very agile to avoid being buried under the tons of timber
that rushed down on him. Only the most reliable men were permitted at
this initial breaking down. Afterwards the crew rolled in what logs
remained.

The Rough Red's enormous strength, dare-devil spirit, and nimbleness of
body made him invaluable at this dangerous work. Orde, too, often took a
hand in some of the more ticklish situations. In old days, before he
had attained the position of responsibility that raised the value of his
time beyond manual work, he had been one of the best men on the river at
breaking bank rollways. A slim, graceful, handsome boy of twenty, known
as “Rollway Charlie,” also distinguished himself by the quickness and
certainty of his work. Often the men standing near lost sight of him
entirely in the spray, the confusion, the blur of the breaking rollways,
until it seemed certain he must have perished. Nevertheless, always he
appeared at right or left, sometimes even on a log astream, nonchalant,
smiling, escaped easily from the destructive power he had loosed. Once
in the stream the logs ran their appointed course, watched by the men
who herded them on their way. And below, from the tributaries, from the
other rollways a never-ending procession of recruits joined this great
brown army on its way to the lake, until for miles and miles the river
was almost a solid mass of logs.

The crews on the various beats now had their hands full to keep the logs
running. The slightest check at any one point meant a jam, for there
was no way of stopping the unending procession. The logs behind
floated gently against the obstruction and came to rest. The brown mass
thickened. As far as the eye could reach the surface of the water was
concealed. And then, as the slow pressure developed from the three
or four miles of logs forced against each other by the pushing of the
current, the breast of the jam began to rise. Timbers up-ended, crossed,
interlocked, slid one over the other, mounted higher and higher in the
formidable game of jack-straws the loss of which spelled death to the
players.

Immediately, and with feverish activity, the men nearest at hand
attacked the work. Logs on top they tumbled and rolled into the current
below. Men beneath the breast tugged and pried in search of the key logs
causing all the trouble. Others “flattened out the wings,” hoping to get
a “draw” around the ends. As the stoppage of the drive indicated to
the men up and down stream that a jam had formed, they gathered at the
scene--those from above over the logs, those from below up the river
trail.

Rarely, unless in case of unusual complications, did it take more than
a few hours at most to break the jam. The breast of it went out with a
rush. More slowly the wings sucked in. Reluctantly the mass floating on
the surface for miles up stream stirred, silently moved forward. For a
few minutes it was necessary to watch carefully until the flow onward
steadied itself, until the congestion had spaced and ordered as before.
Then the men moved back to their posts; the drive was resumed. At night
the river was necessarily left to its own devices. Rivermen, with the
touch of superstition inseparably connected with such affairs, believe
implicitly that “logs run free at night.” Certainly, though it might
be expected that each morning would reveal a big jam to break, such was
rarely the case. The logs had usually stopped, to be sure, but generally
in so peaceful a situation as easily to be started on by a few minutes'
work. Probably this was because they tended to come to rest in the slow,
still reaches of the river, through which, in daytime, they would be
urged by the rivermen.

Jams on the river, contrary to general belief, are of very common
occurrence. Throughout the length of the drive there were probably
three or four hang-ups a day. Each of these had to be broken, and in the
breaking was danger. The smallest misstep, the least slowness in reading
the signs of the break, the slightest lack of promptness in acting on
the hint or of agility in leaping from one to the other of the plunging
timbers, the faintest flicker from rigid attention to the antagonist
crouching on the spring, would mean instant death to the delinquent.
Thus it was literally true that each one of these men was called upon
almost daily to wager his personal skill against his destruction.

In the meantime the rear was “sacking” its way as fast as possible,
moving camp with the wanigan whenever necessary, working very hard and
very cold and very long. In its work, however, beyond the breaking of
the rollways, was little of the spectacular.

Orde, after the rear was well started, patrolled the length of the
drive in his light buckboard. He had a first-class team of young
horses--high-spirited, somewhat fractious, but capable on a pinch
of their hundred miles in a day. He handled them well over the rough
corduroys and swamp roads. From jam to rear and back again he travelled,
pausing on the river banks to converse earnestly with one of the
foremen, surveying the situation with the bird's-eye view of the
general. At times he remained at one camp for several days watching the
trend of the work. The improvements made during the preceding summer
gave him the greatest satisfaction, especially the apron at the falls.

“We'd have had a dozen bad jams here before now with all these logs in
the river,” said he to Tim Nolan, who was in charge of that beat.

“And as it is,” said Tim, “we've had but the one little wing jam.”

The piers to define the channel along certain shallows also saved the
rear crew much labour in the matter of stranded logs. Everything was
very satisfactory. Even old man Reed held to his chastened attitude,
and made no trouble. In fact, he seemed glad to turn an honest penny by
boarding the small crew in charge of sluicing the logs.

No trouble was experienced until Heinzman's rollways were reached.
Here Orde had, as he had promised his partner, boomed a free channel to
prevent Heinzman from filling up the entire river-bed with his rollways.
When the jam of the drive had descended the river as far as this, Orde
found that Heinzman had not yet begun to break out. Hardly had Orde's
first crew passed, however, when Heinzman's men began to break down the
logs into the drive. Long before the rear had caught up, all Heinzman's
drive was in the water, inextricably mingled with the sixty or eighty
million feet Orde had in charge.

The situation was plain. All Heinzman now had to do was to retain a
small crew, which should follow after the rear in order to sack what
logs the latter should leave stranded. This amounted practically to
nothing. As it was impossible in so great a mass of timbers, and in the
haste of a pressing labour, to distinguish or discriminate against
any single brand, Heinzman was in a fair way to get his logs sent down
stream with practically no expense.

“Vell, my boy,” remarked the German quite frankly to Orde as they met on
the road one day, “looks like I got you dis time, eh?”

Orde laughed, also with entire good-humour.

“If you mean your logs are going down with ours, why I guess you have.
But you paste this in your hat: you're going to keep awful busy, and
it's going to cost you something yet to get 'em down.”

To Newmark, on one of his occasional visits to the camps, Orde detailed
the situation.

“It doesn't amount to much,” said he, “except that it complicates
matters. We'll make him scratch gravel, if we have to sit up nights and
work overtime to do it. We can't injure him or leave his logs, but we
can annoy him a lot.”

The state of affairs was perfectly well known to the men, and the entire
river entered into the spirit of the contest. The drivers kept a sharp
lookout for “H” logs, and whenever possible thrust them aside into
eddies and backwaters. This, of course, merely made work for the sackers
Heinzman had left above the rear. Soon they were in charge of a very
fair little drive of their own. Their lot was not enviable. Indeed, only
the pressure of work prevented some of the more aggressive of Orde's
rear--among whom could be numbered the Rough Red--from going back and
“cleaning out” this impertinent band of hangers-on. One day two of the
latter, conducting the jam of the miniature drive astern, came within
reach of the Rough Red. The latter had lingered in hopes of rescuing his
peavy, which had gone overboard. To lose one's peavy is, among rivermen,
the most mortifying disgrace. Consequently, the Rough Red was in a fit
mood for trouble. He attacked the two single-handed. A desperate battle
ensued, which lasted upward of an hour. The two rivermen punched,
kicked, and battered the Rough Red in a manner to tear his clothes,
deprive him to some extent of red whiskers, bloody his face, cut his
shoulder, and knock loose two teeth. The Rough Red, more than the equal
of either man singly, had reciprocated in kind. Orde, driving in toward
the rear from a detour to avoid a swamp, heard, and descended from his
buckboard. Tying his horses to trees, he made his way through the brush
to the scene of conflict. So winded and wearied were the belligerents
by now that he had no difficulty in separating them. He surveyed their
wrecks with a sardonic half smile.

“I call this a draw,” said he finally. His attitude became threatening
as the two up-river men, recovering somewhat, showed ugly symptoms.
“Git!” he commanded. “Scat! I guess you don't know me. I'm Jack Orde.
Jimmy and I together could do a dozen of you.” He menaced them until,
muttering, they had turned away.

“Well, Jimmy,” said he humorously, “you look as if you'd been run
through a thrashing machine.”

“Those fellers make me sick!” growled the Rough Red.

Orde looked him over again.

“You look sick,” said he.

When the buckboard drew into camp, Orde sent Bourke away to repair
damages while he called the cookee to help unpack several heavy boxes
of hardware. They proved to contain about thirty small hatchets, well
sharpened, and each with a leather guard. When the rear crew had come in
that night, Orde distributed the hatchets.

“Boys,” said he, “while you're on the work, I want you all to keep a
watch-out for these “H” logs, and whenever you strike one I want you to
blaze it plainly, so there won't be any mistake about it.”

“What for?” asked one of the Saginaw men as he received his hatchet.

But the riverman who squatted next nudged him with his elbow.

“The less questions you ask Jack, the more answers you'll get. Just do
what you're told to on this river and you'll see fun sure.”

Three days later the rear crew ran into the head of the pond above
Reed's dam. To every one's surprise, Orde called a halt on the work and
announced a holiday.

Now, holidays are unknown on drive. Barely is time allowed for eating
and sleeping. Nevertheless, all that day the men lay about in complete
idleness, smoking, talking, sleeping in the warm sun. The river,
silenced by the closed sluice-gates, slept also. The pond filled with
logs. From above, the current, aided by a fair wind, was driving down
still other logs--the forerunners of the little drive astern. At sight
of these, some of the men grumbled. “We're losin' what we made,” said
they. “We left them logs, and sorted 'em out once already.”

Orde sent a couple of axe-men to blaze the newcomers. A little before
sundown he ordered the sluice-gates of the dam opened.

“Night work,” said the men to one another. They knew, of course, that
in sluicing logs, the gate must be open a couple of hours before the
sluicing begins in order to fill the river-bed below. Logs run ahead
faster than the water spreads.

Sure enough, after supper Orde suddenly appeared among them, the
well-known devil of mischief dancing in his eyes and broadening his
good-natured face.

“Get organised, boys,” said he briskly. “We've got to get this pond all
sluiced before morning, and there's enough of us here to hustle it right
along.”

The men took their places. Orde moved here and there, giving his
directions.

“Sluice through everything but the “H” logs,” he commanded. “Work them
off to the left and leave them.”

Twilight, then dark, fell. After a few moments the moon, then just past
its full, rose behind the new-budding trees. The sluicing, under the
impetus of a big crew, went rapidly.

“I bet there's mighty near a million an hour going through there,”
 speculated Orde, watching the smooth, swift, but burdened waters of the
chute.

And in this work the men distinguished easily the new white blaze-marks
on Heinzman's logs; so they were able without hesitation to shunt them
one side into the smoother water, as Orde had commanded.

About two o'clock the last log shot through.

“Now, boys,” said Orde, “tear out the booms.”

The chute to the dam was approached, as has been earlier explained, by
two rows of booms arranged in a V, or funnel, the apex of which emptied
into the sluice-way, and the wide, projecting arms of which embraced
the width of the stream. The logs, floating down the pond, were thus
concentrated toward the sluice. Also, the rivermen, walking back and
forth the length of the booms, were able easily to keep the drive
moving.

Now, however, Orde unchained these boom logs. The men pushed them
ashore. There as many as could find room on either side the boom-poles
clamped in their peavies, and, using these implements as handles,
carried the booms some distance back into the woods. Then everybody
tramped back and forth, round and about, to confuse the trail. Orde was
like a mischievous boy at a school prank. When the last timber had been
concealed, he lifted up his deep voice in a roar of joy, in which the
crew joined.

“Now let's turn in for a little sleep,” said be.

This situation, perhaps a little cloudy in the reader's mind, would
have cleared could he have looked out over the dam pond the following
morning. The blazed logs belonging to Heinzman, drifting slowly, had
sucked down into the corner toward the power canal where, caught against
the grating, they had jammed. These logs would have to be floated
singly, and pushed one by one against the current across the pond and
into the influence of the sluice-gate. Some of them would be hard to
come at.

“I guess that will keep them busy for a day or two,” commented Orde, as
he followed the rear down to where it was sacking below the dam.

This, as Orde had said, would be sufficiently annoying to Heinzman,
but would have little real effect on the main issue, which was that the
German was getting down his logs with a crew of less than a dozen men.
Nevertheless, Orde, in a vast spirit of fun, took delight in inventing
and executing practical jokes of the general sort just described. For
instance, at one spot where he had boomed the deeper channel from the
rocks on either side, he shunted as many of Heinzman's logs as came by
handily through an opening he had made in the booms. There they grounded
on the shallows--more work for the men following. Many of the logs in
charge of the latter, however, catching the free current, overtook the
rear, so that the number of the “H” logs in the drive was not materially
diminished.

At first, as has been hinted, these various tactics had little effect.
One day, however, the chore boy, who had been over to Spruce Rapids
after mail, reported that an additional crew of twenty had been sent in
to Heinzman's drive. This was gratifying.

“We're making him scratch gravel, boys, anyway,” said Orde.

The men entered into the spirit of the thing. In fact, their enthusiasm
was almost too exuberant. Orde had constantly to negative new and
ingenious schemes.

“No, boys,” said he, “I want to keep on the right side of the law. We
may need it later.”

Meanwhile the entire length of the river was busy and excited.
Heinzman's logs were all blazed inside a week. The men passed the
hatchets along the line, and slim chance did a marked log have of
rescue once the poor thing fell into difficulties. With the strange
and interesting tendency rivermen and woodsmen have of personifying the
elements of their daily work, the men addressed the helpless timbers in
tones of contempt.

“Thought you'd ride that rock, you ---- ---- ----,” said they, “and got
left, did you? Well, lie there and be ---- to you!”

And if chance offered, and time was not pressing, the riverman would
give his helpless victim a jerk or so into a more difficult position.
Times of rising water--when the sluice-gates above had been opened--were
the most prolific of opportunities. Logs rarely jam on rising water,
for the simple reason that constantly the surface area of the river
is increasing, thus tending to separate the logs. On the other hand,
falling water, tending to crowd the drive closer together, is especially
prolific of trouble. Therefore, on flood water the watchers scattered
along the stretches of the river had little to do--save strand
Heinzman's logs for him. And when flood water had passed, some of those
logs were certainly high and dry.

Up to a certain point this was all very well. Orde took pains not to
countenance it officially, and caused word to be passed about, that
while he did not expect his men to help drive Heinzman's logs, they must
not go out of their way to strand them.

“If things get too bad, he'll have spies down here to collect evidence
on us,” said Orde, “and he'll jug some of us for interference with his
property. We don't own the river.”

“How about them booms?” asked the Rough Red.

“I did own them,” explained Orde, “and I had a right to take them up
when I had finished with them.”

This hint was enough. The men did not cease from a labour that tickled
them mightily, but they adopted a code of signals. Strangers were not
uncommon. Spectators came out often from the little towns and from
the farms round-about. When one of these appeared the riverman nearest
raised a long falsetto cry. This was taken up by his next neighbour and
passed on. In a few minutes all that section of the drive knew that it
would be wise to “lie low.” And inside of two weeks Orde had the great
satisfaction of learning that Heinzman was working--and working hard--a
crew of fifty men.

“A pretty fair crew, even if he was taking out his whole drive,”
 commented Orde.

The gods of luck seemed to be with the new enterprise. Although Orde
had, of course, taken the utmost pains to foresee every contingency
possible to guard against, nevertheless, as always when dealing with
Nature's larger forces, he anticipated some of those gigantic obstacles
which continually render uncertain wilderness work. Nothing of the kind
happened. There formed none of the tremendous white-water jams that pile
up several million feet of logs, tax every resource of men, horses, and
explosives, and require a week or so to break. No men were killed, and
only two injured. No unexpected floods swept away works on which the
drive depended. The water held out to carry the last stick of timber
over the shallowest rapids. Weather conditions were phenomenal--and
perfect. All up and down the river the work went with that vim and dash
that is in itself an assurance of success. The Heinzman affair, which
under auspices of evil augury might have become a serious menace to the
success of the young undertaking, now served merely to add a spice
of humour to the situation. Among the men gained currency a
half-affectionate belief in “Orde's luck.”

After this happy fashion the drive went, until at last it entered the
broad, deep, and navigable stretches of the river from Redding to the
lake. Here, barring the accident of an extraordinary flood, the troubles
were over. On the broad, placid bosom of the stream the logs would
float. A crew, following, would do the easy work of sacking what logs
would strand or eddy in the lazy current; would roll into the faster
waters the component parts of what were by courtesy called jams, but
which were in reality pile-ups of a few hundred logs on sand bars
mid-stream; and in the growing tepid warmth of summer would tramp
pleasantly along the river trail. Of course, a dry year would make
necessary a larger crew and more labour; of course, a big flood might
sweep the logs past all defences into the lake for an irretrievable
loss. But such floods come once in a century, and even the dryest of dry
years could not now hang the drive. As Orde sat in his buckboard, ready
to go into town for a first glimpse of Carroll in more than two months,
he gazed with an immense satisfaction over the broad river moving brown
and glacier-like as though the logs that covered it were viscid and
composed all its substance. The enterprise was practically assured of
success.

For a while now Orde was to have a breathing spell. A large number
of men were here laid off. The remainder, under the direction of Jim
Denning, would require little or no actual supervision. Until the jam
should have reached the distributing booms above Monrovia, the affair
was very simple. Before he left, however, he called Denning to him.

“Jim,” said he, “I'll be down to see you through the sluiceways at
Redding, of course. But now that you have a good, still stretch of
river, I want you to have the boys let up on sacking out those “H” logs.
And I want you to include in our drive all the Heinzman logs from above
you possibly can. If you can fix it, let their drive drift down into
ours.

“Then we'll have to drive their logs for them,” objected Denning.

“Sure,” rejoined Orde, “but it's easy driving; and if that crew of his
hasn't much to do, perhaps he'll lay most of them off here at Redding.”

Denning looked at his principal for a moment, then a slow grin
overspread his face. Without comment he turned back to camp, and Orde
took up his reins.




XXV


“Oh, I'm so GLAD to get you back!” cried Carroll over and over again,
as she clung to him. “I don't live while you're away. And every drop of
rain that patters on the roof chills my heart, because I think of it as
chilling you; and every creak of this old house at night brings me
up broad awake, because I hear in it the crash of those cruel great
timbers. Oh, oh, OH! I'm so glad to get you! You're the light of my
life; you're my whole life itself!”--she smiled at him from her perch on
his knee--“I'm silly, am I not?” she said. “Dear heart, don't leave me
again.”

“I've got to support an extravagant wife, you know,” Orde reminded her
gravely.

“I know, of course,” she breathed, bending lightly to him. “You have
your work in the world to do, and I would not have it otherwise. It is
great work--wonderful work--I've been asking questions.”

Orde laughed.

“It's work, just like any other. And it's hard work,” said he.

She shook her head at him slowly, a mysterious smile on her lips.
Without explaining her thought, she slipped from his knee and glided
across to the tall golden harp, which had been brought from Monrovia.
The light and diaphanous silk of her loose peignoir floated about her,
defining the maturing grace of her figure. Abruptly she struck a great
crashing chord.

Then, with an abandon of ecstasy she plunged into one of those wild and
sea-blown saga-like rhapsodies of the Hungarians, full of the wind in
rigging, the storm in the pines, of shrieking, vast forces hurtling
unchained through a resounding and infinite space, as though deep down
in primeval nature the powers of the world had been loosed. Back and
forth, here and there, erratic and swift and sudden as lightning the
theme played breathless. It fell.

“What is that?” gasped Orde, surprised to find himself tense, his blood
rioting, his soul stirred.

She ran to him to hide her face in his neck.

“Oh, it's you, you, you!” she cried.

He held her to him closely until her excitement had died.

“Do you think it is good to get quite so nervous, sweetheart?” he asked
gently, then. “Remember--”

“Oh, I do, I do!” she broke in earnestly. “Every moment of my waking and
sleeping hours I remember him. Always I keep his little soul before me
as a light on a shrine. But to-night--oh! to-night I could laugh and
shout aloud like the people in the Bible, with clapping of hands.” She
snuggled herself close to Orde with a little murmur of happiness. “I
think of all the beautiful things,” she whispered, “and of the noble
things, and of the great things. He is going to be sturdy, like his
father; a wonderful boy, a boy all of fire--”

“Like his mother,” said Orde.

She smiled up at him. “I want him just like you, dear,” she pleaded.




XXVI


Three days later the jam of the drive reached the dam at Redding.
Orde took Carroll downtown in the buckboard. There a seat by the
dam-watcher's little house was given her, back of the brick factory
buildings next the power canal, whence for hours she watched the slow
onward movement of the sullen brown timbers, the smooth, polished-steel
rush of the waters through the chute, the graceful certain movements of
the rivermen. Some of the latter were brought up by Orde and introduced.
They were very awkward, and somewhat embarrassed, but they all looked
her straight in the eye, and Carroll felt somehow that back of their
diffidence they were quite dispassionately appraising her. After a few
gracious speeches on her part and monosyllabic responses on theirs, they
blundered away. In spite of the scant communication, these interviews
left something of a friendly feeling on both sides.

“I like your Jim Denning,” she told Orde; “he's a nice, clean-cut
fellow. And Mr. Bourke,” she laughed. “Isn't he funny with his fierce
red beard and his little eyes? But he simply adores you.”

Orde laughed at the idea of the Rough Red's adoring anybody.

“It's so,” she insisted, “and I like him for it--only I wish he were a
little cleaner.”

She thought the feats of “log-riding” little less than wonderful,
and you may be sure the knowledge of her presence did not discourage
spectacular display. Finally, Johnny Challan, uttering a loud whoop,
leaped aboard a log and went through the chute standing bolt upright. By
a marvel of agility, he kept his balance through the white-water below,
and emerged finally into the lower waters still proudly upright, and dry
above the knees.

Carroll had arisen, the better to see.

“Why,” she cried aloud, “it's marvellous! Circus riding is nothing to
it!”

“No, ma'am,” replied a gigantic riverman who was working near at hand,
“that ain't nothin'. Ordinary, however, we travel that way on the river.
At night we have the cookee pass us out each a goose-ha'r piller, and
lay down for the night.”

Carroll looked at him in reproof. He grinned slowly.

“Don't git worried about me, ma'am,” said he, “I'm hopeless. For
twenty year now I been wearin' crape on my hat in memory of my departed
virtues.”

After the rear had dropped down river from Redding, Carroll and Orde
returned to their deserted little box of a house at Monrovia.

Orde breathed deep of a new satisfaction in walking again the streets of
this little sandy, sawdust-paved, shantyfied town, with its yellow hills
and its wide blue river and its glimpse of the lake far in the offing.
It had never meant anything to him before. Now he enjoyed every brick
and board of it; he trod the broken, aromatic shingles of the roadway
with pleasure; he tramped up the broad stairs and down the dark hall of
the block with anticipation; he breathed the compounded office odour
of ledgers, cocoa matting, and old cigar smoke in a long, reminiscent
whiff; he took his seat at his roll-top desk, enchanted to be again in
these homely though familiar surroundings.

“Hanged if I know what's struck me,” he mused. “Never experienced any
remarkable joy before in getting back to this sort of truck.”

Then, with a warm glow at the heart, the realisation was brought to him.
This was home, and over yonder, under the shadow of the heaven-pointing
spire, a slip of a girl was waiting for him.

He tried to tell her this when next he saw her.

“I felt that I ought to make you a little shrine, and burn candles to
you, the way the Catholics do--”

“To the Mater Dolorosa?” she mocked.

He looked at her dark eyes so full of the sweetness of content, at her
sensitive lips with the quaintly upturned corners, and he thought of
what her home life had been and of the real sorrow that even yet must
smoulder somewhere down in the deeps of her being.

“No,” said he slowly, “not that. I think my shrine will be dedicated to
Our Lady of the Joyous Soul.”

The rest of the week Orde was absent up the river, superintending in a
general way the latter progress of the drive, looking into the needs
of the crews, arranging for supplies. The mills were all working now,
busily cutting into the residue of last season's logs. Soon they would
need more.

At the booms everything was in readiness to receive the jam. The long
swing arm slanting across the river channel was attached to its winch
which would operate it. When shut it would close the main channel and
shunt into the booms the logs floating in the river. There, penned at
last by the piles driven in a row and held together at the top by bolted
timbers, they would lie quiet. Men armed with pike-poles would then take
up the work of distribution according to the brands stamped on the ends.
Each brand had its own separate “sorting pens,” the lower end leading
again into the open river. From these each owner's property was rafted
and towed to his private booms at his mill below.

Orde spent the day before the jam appeared in constructing what he
called a “boomerang.”

“Invention of my own,” he explained to Newmark. “Secret invention just
yet. I'm going to hold up the drive in the main river until we have
things bunched, then I'm going to throw a big crew down here by the
swing. Heinzman anticipates, of course, that I'll run the entire drive
into the booms and do all my sorting there. Naturally, if I turn his
logs loose into the river as fast as I run across them, he will be able
to pick them up one at a time, for he'll only get them occasionally. If
I keep them until everything else is sorted, only Heinzman's logs will
remain; and as we have no right to hold logs, we'll have to turn them
loose through the lower sorting booms, where he can be ready to raft
them. In that way he gets them all right without paying us a cent. See?”

“Yes, I see,” said Newmark.

“Well,” said Orde, with a laugh, “here is where I fool him. I'm going
to rush the drive into the booms all at once, but I'm going to sort out
Heinzman's logs at these openings near the entrance and turn them into
the main channel.”

“What good will that do?” asked Newmark sceptically. “He gets them
sorted just the same, doesn't he?”

“The current's fairly strong,” Orde pointed out, “and the river's
almighty wide. When you spring seven or eight million feet on a man, all
at once and unexpected, and he with no crew to handle them, he's going
to keep almighty busy. And if he don't stop them this side his mill,
he'll have to raft and tow them back; and if he don't stop 'em this side
the lake, he may as well kiss them all good bye--except those that drift
into the bayous and inlets and marshes, and other ungodly places.”

“I see,” said Newmark drily.

“But don't say a word anywhere,” warned Orde. “Secrecy is the watchword
of success with this merry little joke.”

The boomerang worked like a charm. The men had been grumbling at an
apparently peaceful yielding of the point at issue, and would have
sacked out many of the blazed logs if Orde had not held them rigidly
to it. Now their spirits flamed into joy again. The sorting went like
clockwork. Orde, in personal charge, watched that through the different
openings in his “boomerang” the “H” logs were shunted into the river.
Shortly the channel was full of logs floating merrily away down the
little blue wavelets. After a while Orde handed over his job to Tom
North.

“Can't stand it any longer, boys,” said he. “I've got to go down and see
how the Dutchman is making it.”

“Come back and tell us!” yelled one of the crew.

“You bet I will!” Orde shouted back.

He drove the team and buckboard down the marsh road to Heinzman's mill.
There he found evidences of the wildest excitement. The mill had been
closed down, and all the men turned in to rescue logs. Boats plied in
all directions. A tug darted back and forth. Constantly the number of
floating logs augmented, however. Many had already gone by.

“If you think you're busy now,” said Orde to himself with a chuckle,
“just wait until you begin to get LOGS.”

He watched for a few moments in silence.

“What's he doing with that tug?” thought he. “O-ho! He's stringing booms
across the river to hold the whole outfit.”

He laughed aloud, turned his team about, and drove frantically back to
the booms. Every few moments he chuckled. His eyes danced. Hardly could
he wait to get there. Once at the camp, he leaped from the buckboard,
with a shout to the stableman, and ran rapidly out over the booms to
where the sorting of “H” logs was going merrily forward.

“He's shut down his mill,” shouted Orde, “and he's got all that gang of
highbankers out, and every old rum-blossom in Monrovia, and I bet if you
say 'logs' to him, he'd chase his tail in circles.”

“Want this job?” North asked him.

“No,” said Orde, suddenly fallen solemn, “haven't time. I'm going to
take Marsh and the SPRITE and go to town. Old Heinzman,” he added as
an afterthought, “is stringing booms across the river--obstructing
navigation.”

He ran down the length of the whole boom to where lay the two tugs.

“Marsh,” he called when still some distance away, “got up steam?”

There appeared a short, square, blue-clad man, with hard brown cheeks,
a heavy bleached flaxen moustache, and eyes steady, unwavering, and as
blue as the sky.

“Up in two minutes,” he answered, and descended from the pilot house to
shout down a low door leading from the deck into the engine room.

“Harvey,” he commanded, “fire her up!”

A tall, good-natured negro reached the upper half of his body from the
low door to seize an armful of the slabs piled along the narrow deck.
Ten minutes later the SPRITE, a cloud of white smoke pouring from her
funnel, was careening down the stretch of the river.

Captain Marsh guided his energetic charge among the logs floating in the
stream with the marvellous second instinct of the expert tugboat man.
A whirl of the wheel to the right, a turn to the left--the craft
heeled strongly under the forcing of her powerful rudder to avoid by
an arm's-length some timbers fairly flung aside by the wash. The
displacement of the rapid running seemed almost to press the water
above the level of the deck on either side and about ten feet from the
gunwale. As the low marshes and cat-tails flew past, Orde noted with
satisfaction that many of the logs, urged one side by the breeze, had
found lodgment among the reeds and in the bayous and inlets. One at a
time, and painfully, these would have to be salvaged.

In a short time the mills' tall smokestacks loomed in sight. The logs
thickened until it was with difficulty that Captain Marsh could thread
his way among them at all. Shortly Orde, standing by the wheel in the
pilot-house, could see down the stretches of the river a crowd of men
working antlike.

“They've got 'em stopped,” commented Orde. “Look at that gang working
from boats! They haven't a dozen 'cork boots' among 'em.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Captain Marsh.

“This is a navigable river, isn't it?” replied Orde. “Run through!”

Marsh rang for half-speed and began to nose his way gently through the
loosely floating logs. Soon the tug had reached the scene of activity,
and headed straight for the slender line of booms hitched end to end and
stretching quite across the river.

“I'm afraid we'll just ride over them if we hit them too slow,”
 suggested Marsh.

Orde looked at his watch.

“We'll be late for the mail unless we hurry,” said he. Marsh whirled
the spokes of his wheel over and rang the engine-room bell. The water
churned white behind, the tug careened.

“Vat you do! Stop!” cried Heinzman from one of the boats.

Orde stuck his head from the pilot-house door.

“You're obstructing navigation!” he yelled. “I've got to go to town to
buy a postage-stamp.”

The prow of the tug, accurately aimed by Marsh, hit square in the
junction of two of the booms. Immediately the water was agitated on both
sides and for a hundred feet or so by the pressure of the long poles
sidewise. There ensued a moment of strain; then the links snapped, and
the SPRITE plunged joyously through the opening. The booms, swept aside
by the current, floated to either shore. The river was open.

Orde, his head still out the door, looked back. “Slow down, Marsh,” said
he. “Let's see the show.” Already the logs caught by the booms had taken
their motion and had swept past the opening. Although the lonesome tug
Heinzman had on the work immediately picked up one end of the broken
boom, and with it started out into the river, she found difficulty in
making headway against the sweep of the logs. After a long struggle she
reached the middle of the river, where she was able to hold her own.

“Wonder what next?” speculated Orde. “How are they going to get the
other end of the booms out from the other bank?”

Captain Marsh had reversed the SPRITE. The tug lay nearly motionless
amidstream, her propeller slowly revolving.

Up river all the small boats gathered in a line, connected one to the
other by a rope. The tug passed over to them the cable attached to the
boom. Evidently the combined efforts of the rowboats were counted on
to hold the half-boom across the current while the tug brought out the
other half. When the tug dropped the cable, Orde laughed.

“Nobody but a Dutchman would have thought of that!” he cried. “Now for
the fun!”

Immediately the weight fell on the small boats, they were dragged
irresistibly backward. Even from a distance the three men on the SPRITE
could make out the white-water as the oars splashed and churned and
frantically caught crabs in a vain effort to hold their own. Marsh
lowered his telescope, the tears streaming down his face.

“It's better than a goat fight,” said he.

Futilely protesting, the rowboats were dragged backward, turned as a
whip is snapped, and strung out along the bank below.

“They'll have to have two tugs before they can close the break that
way,” commented Orde.

“Sure thing,” replied Captain Marsh.

But at that moment a black smoke rolled up over the marshes, and shortly
around the bend from above came the LUCY BELLE.

The LUCY BELLE was the main excuse for calling the river navigable. She
made trips as often as she could between Redding and Monrovia. In luck,
she could cover the forty miles in a day. It was no unusual thing,
however, for the LUCY BELLE to hang up indefinitely on some one of
the numerous shifting sand bars. For that reason she carried more
imperishable freight than passengers. In appearance she was
two-storied, with twin smokestacks, an iron Indian on her top, and a
“splutter-behind” paddle-wheel.

“There comes his help,” said Orde. “Old Simpson would stop to pick up a
bogus three-cent piece.”

Sure enough, on hail from one of the rowboats, the LUCY BELLE slowed
down and stopped. After a short conference, she steamed clumsily over to
get hold of one end of the booms. The tug took the other. In time, and
by dint of much splashing, some collisions, and several attempts, the
ends of the booms were united.

By this time, however, nearly all the logs had escaped. The tug, towing
a string of rowboats, set out in pursuit.

The SPRITE continued on her way until beyond sight. Then she slowed down
again. The LUCY BELLE churned around the bend, and turned in toward the
tug.

“She's going to speak us,” marvelled Orde. “I wonder what the dickens
she wants.”

“Tug ahoy!” bellowed a red-faced individual from the upper deck. He was
dressed in blue and brass buttons, carried a telescope in one hand, and
was liberally festooned with gold braid and embroidered anchors.

“Answer him,” Orde commanded Marsh.

“Hullo there, commodore! what is it?” replied the tug captain.

The red-faced figure glared down for a moment.

“They want a tug up there at Heinzman's. Can you go?”

“Sure!” cried Marsh, choking.

The LUCY BELLE sheered off magnificently.

“What do you think of that?” Marsh asked Orde.

“The commodore always acts as if that old raft was a sixty-gun frigate,”
 was Orde's non-committal answer. “Head up stream again.”

Heinzman saw the SPRITE coming, and rowed out frantically, splashing at
every stroke and yelling with every breath.

“Don't you go through there! Vait a minute! Stop, I tell you!”

“Hold up!” said Orde to Marsh.

Heinzman rowed alongside, dropped his oars and mopped his brow.

“Vat you do?” he demanded heatedly.

“I forgot the money to buy my stamp with,” said Orde sweetly. “I'm going
back to get it.”

“Not through my pooms!” cried Heinzman.

“Mr. Heinzman,” said Orde severely, “you are obstructing a navigable
stream. I am doing business, and I cannot be interfered with.”

“But my logs!” cried the unhappy mill man.

“I have nothing to do with your logs. You are driving your own logs,”
 Orde reminded him.

Heinzman vituperated and pounded the gunwale.

“Go ahead, Marsh!” said Orde.

The tug gathered way. Soon Heinzman was forced to let go. For a second
time the chains were snapped. Orde and Marsh looked back over the
churning wake left by the SPRITE. The severed ends of the booms were
swinging back toward either shore. Between them floated a rowboat. In
the rowboat gesticulated a pudgy man. The river was well sprinkled with
logs. Evidently the sorting was going on well.

“May as well go back to the works,” said Orde. “He won't string them
together again to-day--not if he waits for that tug he sent Simpson
for.”

Accordingly, they returned to the booms, where work was suspended while
Orde detailed to an appreciative audience the happenings below. This
tickled the men immensely.

“Why, we hain't sorted out more'n a million feet of his logs,” cried
Rollway Charlie. “He hain't SEEN no logs yet!”

They turned with new enthusiasm to the work of shunting “H” logs into
the channel.

In ten minutes, however, the stableman picked his way out over the booms
with a message for Orde.

“Mr. Heinzman's ashore, and wants to see you,” said he.

Orde and Jim Denning exchanged glances.

“'Coon's come down,” said the latter.

Orde found the mill man pacing restlessly up and down before a
steaming pair of horses. Newmark, perched on a stump, was surveying him
sardonically and chewing the end of an unlighted cigar.

“Here you poth are!” burst out Heinzman, when Orde stepped ashore. “Now,
this must stop. I must not lose my logs! Vat is your probosition?”

Newmark broke in quickly before Orde could speak.

“I've told Mr. Heinzman,” said he, “that we would sort and deliver the
rest of his logs for two dollars a thousand.”

“That will be about it,” agreed Orde.

“But,” exploded Heinzman, “that is as much as you agreet to drive and
deliffer my whole cut!”

“Precisely,” said Newmark.

“Put I haf all the eggspence of driving the logs myself. Why shoult I
pay you for doing what I haf alretty paid to haf done?”

Orde chuckled.

“Heinzman,” said he, “I told you I'd make you scratch gravel. Now it's
time to talk business. You thought you were boring with a mighty auger,
but it's time to revise. We aren't forced to bother with your logs, and
you're lucky to get out so easy. If I turn your whole drive into the
river, you'll lose more than half of it outright, and it'll cost you a
heap to salvage the rest. And what's more, I'll turn 'em in before you
can get hold of a pile-driver. I'll sort night and day,” he bluffed,
“and by to-morrow morning you won't have a stick of timber above my
booms.” He laughed again. “You want to get down to business almighty
sudden.”

When finally Heinzman had driven sadly away, and the whole drive, “H”
 logs included, was pouring into the main boom, Orde stretched his arms
over his head in a luxury of satisfaction.

“That just about settles that campaign,” he said to Newmark.

“Oh, no, it doesn't,” replied the latter decidedly.

“Why?” asked Orde, surprised. “You don't imagine he'll do anything
more?”

“No, but I will,” said Newmark.




XXVII


Early in the fall the baby was born. It proved to be a boy. Orde,
nervous as a cat after the ordeal of doing nothing, tiptoed into the
darkened room. He found his wife weak and pale, her dark hair framing
her face, a new look of rapt inner contemplation rendering even more
mysterious her always fathomless eyes. To Orde she seemed fragile,
aloof, enshrined among her laces and dainty ribbons. Hardly dared he
touch her when she held her hand out to him weakly, but fell on his
knees beside the bed and buried his face in the clothes. She placed a
gentle hand caressingly on his head.

So they remained for some time. Finally he raised his eyes. She held her
lips to him. He kissed them.

“It seems sort of make-believe even yet, sweetheart,” she smiled at him
whimsically, “that we have a real, live baby all of our own.”

“Like other people,” said Orde.

“Not like other people at all!” she disclaimed, with a show of
indignation.

Grandma Orde brought the newcomer in for Orde's inspection. He looked
gravely down on the puckered, discoloured bit of humanity with some
feeling of disappointment, and perhaps a faint uneasiness. After a
moment he voiced the latter.

“Is--do you think--that is--” he hesitated, “does the doctor say he's
going to be all right?”

“All right!” cried Grandma Orde indignantly. “I'd like to know if he
isn't all right now! What in the world do you expect of a new-born
baby?”

But Carroll was laughing softly to herself on the bed. She held out her
arms for the baby, and cuddled it close to her breast.

“He's a little darling,” she crooned, “and he's going to grow up big
and strong, just like his daddy.” She put her cheek against the sleeping
babe's and looked up sidewise at the two standing above her. “But I know
how you feel,” she said to her husband. “When they first showed him to
me, I thought he looked like a peanut a thousand years old.”

Grandma Orde fairly snorted with indignation.

“Come to your old grandmother, who appreciates you!” she cried,
possessing herself of the infant. “He's a beautiful baby; one of the
best-looking new-born babies I ever saw!”

Orde escaped to the open air. He had to go to the office to attend to
some details of the business. With every step his elation increased. At
the office he threw open his desk with a slam. Newmark jumped nervously
and frowned. Orde's big, open, and brusque manners bothered him as they
would have bothered a cat.

“Got a son and heir over at my place,” called Orde in his big voice.

“This old firm's got to rustle now, I tell you.”

“Congratulate you, I'm sure,” said Newmark rather shortly. “Mrs. Orde is
doing well, I hope?”

“Fine, fine!” cried Orde.

Newmark dropped the subject and plunged into a business matter. Orde's
attention, however, was flighty. After a little while he closed his desk
with another bang.

“No use!” said he. “Got to make it a vacation. I'm going to run over to
see how the family is.”

Strangely enough, the young couple had not discussed before the question
of a name. One evening at twilight, when Orde was perched at the foot of
the bed, Carroll brought up the subject.

“He ought to be named for you,” she began timidly. “I know that, Jack,
and I'd love to have another Jack Orde in the family; but, dear, I've
been thinking about father. He's a poor, forlorn old man, who doesn't
get much out of life. And it would please him so--oh, more than you can
imagine such a thing could please anybody!”

She looked up at him doubtfully. Orde said nothing, but walked around
the bed to where the baby lay in his little cradle. He leaned over and
took the infant up in his gingerly awkward fashion.

“How are you to-day, Bobby Orde?” he inquired of the blinking mite.




XXVIII


The first season of the Boom Company was most successful. Its prospects
for the future were bright. The drive had been delivered to its various
owners at a price below what it had cost them severally, and without the
necessary attendant bother. Therefore, the loggers were only too willing
to renew their contracts for another year. This did not satisfy Newmark,
however.

“What we want,” he told Orde, “is a charter giving us exclusive rights
on the river, and authorising us to ask toll. I'm going to try and get
one out of the legislature.”

He departed for Lansing as soon as the Assembly opened, and almost
immediately became lost in one of those fierce struggles of politics not
less bitter because concealed. Heinzman was already on the ground.

Newmark had the shadow of right on his side, for he applied for the
charter on the basis of the river improvements already put in by his
firm. Heinzman, however, possessed much political influence, a deep
knowledge of the subterranean workings of plot and counterplot, and a
“barrel.” Although armed with an apparently incontestable legal right,
Newmark soon found himself fighting on the defensive. Heinzman wanted
the improvements already existing condemned and sold as a public utility
to the highest bidder. He offered further guarantees as to future
improvements. In addition were other and more potent arguments proffered
behind closed doors. Many cases resolved themselves into a bald question
of cash. Others demanded diplomacy. Jobs, fat contracts, business
favours, influence were all flung out freely--bribes as absolute as
though stamped with the dollar mark. Newspapers all over the State were
pressed into service. These, bought up by Heinzman and his prospective
partners in a lucrative business, spoke virtuously of private piracy
of what are now called public utilities, the exploiting of the people's
natural wealths, and all the rest of a specious reasoning the more
convincing in that it was in many other cases only too true. The
independent journals, uninformed of the rights of the case, either
remained silent on the matter, or groped in a puzzled and undecided
manner on both sides.

Against this secret but effective organisation Newmark most unexpectedly
found himself pitted. He had anticipated being absent but a week; he
became involved in an affair of months.

With decision he applied himself to the problem. He took rooms at the
hotel, sent for Orde, and began at once to set in motion the machinery
of opposition. The refreshed resources of the company were strained to
the breaking point in order to raise money for this new campaign opening
before it. Orde, returning to Lansing after a trip devoted to the
carrying out of Newmark's directions as to finances, was dismayed at
the tangle of strategy and cross-strategy, innuendo, vague and formless
cobweb forces by which he was surrounded. He could make nothing of them.
They brushed his face, he felt their influence, yet he could place his
finger on no tangible and comprehensible solidity. Among these delicate
and complicated cross-currents Newmark moved silent, cold, secret. He
seemed to understand them, to play with them, to manipulate them as
elements of the game. Above them was the hollow shock of the ostensible
battle--the speeches, the loud talk in lobbies, the newspaper virtue,
indignation, accusations; but the real struggle was here in the furtive
ways, in whispered words delivered hastily aside, in hotel halls on the
way to and from the stairs, behind closed doors of rooms without open
transoms.

Orde in comic despair acknowledged that it was all “too deep for him.”
 Nevertheless, it was soon borne in on him that the new company was
struggling for its very right to existence. It had been doing that
from the first; but now, to Orde the fight, the existence, had a new
importance. The company up to this point had been a scheme merely, an
experiment that might win or lose. Now, with the history of a drive
behind it, it had become a living entity. Orde would have fought against
its dissolution as he would have fought against a murder. Yet he had
practically to stand one side, watching Newmark's slender, gray-clad,
tense figure gliding here and there, more silent, more reserved, more
watchful every day.

The fight endured through most of the first half of the session. When
finally it became evident to Heinzman that Newmark would win, he made
the issue of toll rates the ditch of his last resistance, trying to
force legal charges so low as to eat up the profits. At the last,
however, the bill passed the board. The company had its charter.

At what price only Newmark could have told. He had fought with the tense
earnestness of the nervous temperament that fights to win without count
of the cost. The firm was established, but it was as heavily in debt as
its credit would stand. Newmark himself, though as calm and reserved and
precise as ever, seemed to have turned gray, and one of his eyelids had
acquired a slight nervous twitch which persisted for some months. He
took his seat at the desk, however, as calmly as ever. In three days
the scandalised howls of bribery and corruption had given place in the
newspapers to some other sensation.

“Joe,” said Orde to his partner, “how about all this talk? Is there
really anything in it? You haven't gone in for that business, have you?”

Newmark stretched his arms wearily.

“Press bought up,” he replied. “I know for a fact that old Stanford got
five hundred dollars from some of the Heinzman interests. I could have
swung him back for an extra hundred, but it wasn't worth while. They
howl bribery at us to distract attention from their own performances.”

With this evasive reply Orde contented himself. Whether it satisfied
him or whether he was loath to pursue the subject further it would be
impossible to say.

“It's cost us plenty, anyway,” he said, after a moment. “The
proposition's got a load on it. It will take us a long time to get
out of debt. The river driving won't pay quite so big as we thought it
would,” he concluded, with a rueful little laugh.

“It will pay plenty well enough,” replied Newmark decidedly, “and it
gives us a vantage point to work from. You don't suppose we are going to
quit at river driving, do you? We want to look around for some timber
of our own; there's where the big money is. And perhaps we can buy a
schooner or two and go into the carrying trade--the country's alive with
opportunity. Newmark and Orde means something to these fellows now. We
can have anything we want, if we just reach out for it.”

His thin figure, ordinarily slightly askew, had straightened; his
steel-gray, impersonal eyes had lit up behind the bowed glasses and were
seeing things beyond the wall at which they gazed. Orde looked up at him
with a sudden admiration.

“You're the brains of this concern,” said he.

“We'll get on,” replied Newmark, the fire dying from his eyes.




XXIX


In the course of the next eight years Newmark and Orde floated high on
that flood of apparent prosperity that attends a business well conceived
and passably well managed. The Boom and Driving Company made money,
of course, for with the margin of fifty per cent or thereabouts
necessitated by the temporary value of the improvements, good years
could hardly fail to bring good returns. This, it will be remembered,
was a stock company. With the profits from that business the two men
embarked on a separate copartnership. They made money at this, too, but
the burden of debt necessitated by new ventures, constantly weighted
by the heavy interest demanded at that time, kept affairs on the ragged
edge.

In addition, both Orde and Newmark were more inclined to extension of
interests than to “playing safe.” The assets gained in one venture
were promptly pledged to another. The ramifications of debt, property,
mortgages, and expectations overlapped each other in a cobweb of
interests.

Orde lived at ease in a new house of some size surrounded by grounds.
He kept two servants: a blooded team of horses drew the successor to the
original buckboard. Newmark owned a sail yacht of five or six tons, in
which, quite solitary, he took his only pleasure. Both were considered
men of substance and property, as indeed they were. Only, they
risked dollars to gain thousands. A succession of bad years, a
panic-contraction of money markets, any one of a dozen possible, though
not probable, contingencies would render it difficult to meet the
obligations which constantly came due, and which Newmark kept busy
devising ways and means of meeting. If things went well--and it may be
remarked that legitimately they should--Newmark and Orde would some day
be rated among the millionaire firms. If things went ill, bankruptcy
could not be avoided. There was no middle ground. Nor were Orde and
his partner unique in this; practically every firm then developing or
exploiting the natural resources of the country found itself in the same
case.

Immediately after the granting of the charter to drive the river the
partners had offered them an opportunity of acquiring about thirty
million feet of timber remaining from Morrison and Daly's original
holdings. That firm was very anxious to begin development on a large
scale of its Beeson Lake properties in the Saginaw waters. Daly proposed
to Orde that he take over the remnant, and having confidence in the
young man's abilities, agreed to let him have it on long-time notes.
After several consultations with Newmark, Orde finally completed the
purchase. Below the booms they erected a mill, the machinery for which
they had also bought of Daly, at Redding. The following winter Orde
spent in the woods. By spring he had banked, ready to drive, about six
million feet.

For some years these two sorts of activity gave the partners about all
they could attend to. As soon as the drive had passed Redding, Orde left
it in charge of one of his foremen while he divided his time between the
booms and the mill. Late in the year his woods trips began, the tours of
inspection, of surveying for new roads, the inevitable preparation for
the long winter campaigns in the forest. As soon as the spring thaws
began, once more the drive demanded his attention. And in marketing the
lumber, manipulating the firm's financial affairs, collecting its dues,
paying its bills, making its purchases, and keeping oiled the
intricate bearing points of its office machinery, Newmark was busy--and
invaluable.

At the end of the fifth year the opportunity came, through a combination
of a bad debt and a man's death, to get possession of two lake
schooners. Orde at once suggested the contract for a steam barge.
Towing was then in its infancy. The bulk of lake traffic was by means
of individual sailing ships--a method uncertain as to time. Orde thought
that a steam barge could be built powerful enough not only to carry its
own hold and deck loads, but to tow after it the two schooners. In this
manner the crews could be reduced, and an approximate date of delivery
could be guaranteed. Newmark agreed with him. Thus the firm, in
accordance with his prophecy, went into the carrying trade, for the
vessels more than sufficed for its own needs. The freighting of lumber
added much to the income, and the carrying of machinery and other heavy
freight on the return trip grew every year.

But by far the most important acquisition was that of the northern
peninsula timber. Most operators called the white pine along and back
from the river inexhaustible. Orde did not believe this. He saw the
time, not far distant, when the world would be compelled to look
elsewhere for its lumber supply, and he turned his eyes to the almost
unknown North. After a long investigation through agents, and a month's
land-looking on his own account, he located and purchased three hundred
million feet. This was to be paid for, as usual, mostly by the firm's
notes secured by its other property. It would become available only
in the future, but Orde believed, as indeed the event justified, this
future would prove to be not so distant as most people supposed.

As these interests widened, Orde became more and more immersed in them.
He was forced to be away all of every day, and more than the bulk of
every year. Nevertheless, his home life did not suffer for it.

To Carroll he was always the same big, hearty, whole-souled boy she
had first learned to love. She had all his confidence. If this did not
extend into business affairs, it was because Orde had always tried to
get away from them when at home. At first Carroll had attempted to keep
in the current of her husband's activities, but as the latter broadened
in scope and became more complex, she perceived that their explanation
wearied him. She grew out of the habit of asking him about them. Soon
their rapid advance had carried them quite beyond her horizon. To her,
also, as to most women, the word “business” connoted nothing but a
turmoil and a mystery.

In all other things they were to each other what they had been from the
first. No more children had come to them. Bobby, however; had turned out
a sturdy, honest little fellow, with more than a streak of his mother's
charm and intuition. His future was the subject of all Orde's plans.

“I want to give him all the chance there is,” he explained to Carroll.
“A boy ought to start where his father left off, and not have to do the
same thing all over again. But being a rich man's son isn't much of a
job.”

“Why don't you let him continue your business?” smiled Carroll, secretly
amused at the idea of the small person before them ever doing anything.

“By the time Bobby's grown up this business will all be closed out,”
 replied Orde seriously.

He continued to look at his minute son with puckered brow, until Carroll
smoothed out the wrinkles with the tips of her fingers.

“Of course, having only a few minutes to decide,” she mocked, “perhaps
we'd better make up our minds right now to have him a street-car
driver.”

“Yes!” agreed Bobby unexpectedly, and with emphasis.

Three years after this conversation, which would have made Bobby just
eight, Orde came back before six of a summer evening, his face alight
with satisfaction.

“Hullo, bub!” he cried to Bobby, tossing him to his shoulder. “How's the
kid?”

They went out together, while awaiting dinner, to see the new setter
puppy in the woodshed.

“Named him yet?” asked Orde.

“Duke,” said Bobby.

Orde surveyed the animal gravely.

“Seems like a good name,” said he.

After dinner the two adjourned to the library, where they sat together
in the “big chair,” and Bobby, squirmed a little sidewise in order the
better to see, watched the smoke from his father's cigar as it eddied
and curled in the air.

“Tell a story,” he commanded finally.

“Well,” acquiesced Orde, “there was once a man who had a cow--”

“Once upon a time,” corrected Bobby.

He listened for a moment or so.

“I don't like that story,” he then announced. “Tell the story about the
bears.”

“But this is a new story,” protested Orde, “and you've heard about the
bears so many times.”

“Bears,” insisted Bobby.

“Well, once upon a time there were three bears--a big bear and a
middle-sized bear and a little bear--” began Orde obediently.

Bobby, with a sigh of rapture and content, curled up in a snug, warm
little ball. The twilight darkened.

“Blind-man's holiday!” warned Carroll behind them so suddenly that they
both jumped. “And the sand man's been at somebody, I know!”

She bore him away to bed. Orde sat smoking in the darkness, staring
straight ahead of him into the future. He believed he had found the
opportunity--twenty years distant--for which he had been looking so
long.




XXX


After a time Carroll descended the stairs, chuckling. “Jack,” she called
into the sitting-room, “come out on the porch. What do you suppose the
young man did to-night?”

“Give it up,” replied Orde promptly. “No good guessing when it's a
question of that youngster's performances. What was it?”

“He said his 'Now I lay me,' and asked blessings on you and me, and the
grandpas and grandmas, and Auntie Kate, as usual. Then he stopped.
'What else?' I reminded him. 'And,' he finished with a rush,
'make-Bobby-a-good-boy-and-give-him-plenty-of-bread-'n-butter-'n
apple-sauce!'”

They laughed delightedly over this, clinging together like two children.
Then they stepped out on the little porch and looked into the fathomless
night. The sky was full of stars, aloof and calm, but waiting breathless
on the edge of action, attending the word of command or the celestial
vision, or whatever it is for which stars seem to wait. Along the
street the dense velvet shade of the maples threw the sidewalks into
impenetrable blackness. Sounds carried clearly. From the Welton's, down
the street, came the tinkle of a mandolin and an occasional low laugh
from the group of young people that nightly frequented the front steps.
Tree toads chirped in unison or fell abruptly silent as though by
signal. All up and down the rows of houses whirred the low monotone of
the lawn sprinklers, and the aroma of their wetness was borne cool and
refreshing through the tepid air.

Orde and his wife sat together on the top step. He slipped his arm about
her. They said nothing, but breathed deep of the quiet happiness that
filled their lives.

The gate latch clicked and two shadowy figures defined themselves
approaching up the concrete walk.

“Hullo!” called Orde cheerfully into the darkness.

“Hullo!” a man's voice instantly responded.

“Taylor and Clara,” said Orde to Carroll with satisfaction. “Just the
man I wanted to see.”

The lawyer and his wife mounted the steps. He was a quick, energetic,
spare man, with lean cheeks, a bristling, clipped moustache, and
a slight stoop to his shoulders. She was small, piquant, almost
child-like, with a dainty up-turned nose, a large and lustrous eye,
a constant, bird-like animation of manner--the Folly of artists, the
adorable, lovable, harmless Folly standing tiptoe on a complaisant
world.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” repeated Orde, as the two approached.

Clara Taylor stopped short and considered him for a moment.

“Let us away,” she said seriously to Carroll. “My prophetic soul tells
me they are going to talk business, and if any more business is talked
in my presence, I shall EXPIRE!”

Both men laughed, but Orde explained apologetically:

“Well, you know, Mrs. Taylor, these are my especially busy days for the
firm, and I have to work my private affairs in when I can.”

“I thought Frank was very solicitous about my getting out in the air,”
 cried Clara. “Come, Carroll, let's wander down the street and see Mina
Heinzman.”

The two interlocked arms and sauntered along the walk. Both men lit
cigars and sat on the top step of the porch.

“Look here, Taylor,” broke in Orde abruptly, “you told me the other day
you had fifteen or twenty thousand you wanted to place somewhere.”

“Yes,” replied Taylor.

“Well, I believe I have just the proposition.”

“What is it?”

“California pine,” replied Orde.

“California pine?” repeated Taylor, after a slight pause. “Why
California? That's a long way off. And there's no market, is there? Why
way out there?”

“It's cheap,” replied Orde succinctly. “I don't say it will be good
for immediate returns, nor even for returns in the near future, but in
twenty or thirty years it ought to pay big on a small investment made
now.”

Taylor shook his head doubtfully.

“I don't see how you figure it,” he objected. “We have more timber than
we can use in the East. Why should we go several thousand miles west for
the same thing?”

“When our timber gives out, then we'll HAVE to go west,” said Orde.

Taylor laughed.

“Laugh all you please,” rejoined Orde, “but I tell you Michigan and
Wisconsin pine is doomed. Twenty or thirty years from now there won't be
any white pine for sale.”

“Nonsense!” objected Taylor. “You're talking wild. We haven't even begun
on the upper peninsula. After that there's Minnesota. And I haven't
observed that we're quite out of timber on the river, or the Muskegon,
or the Saginaw, or the Grand, or the Cheboygan--why, Great Scott! man,
our children's children's children may be thinking of investing in
California timber, but that's about soon enough.”

“All tight,” said Orde quietly. “Well, what do you think of Indiana as a
good field for timber investment?”

“Indiana!” cried Taylor, amazed. “Why, there's no timber there; it's a
prairie.”

“There used to be. And all the southern Michigan farm belt was timbered,
and around here. We have our stumps to show for it, but there are no
evidences at all farther south. You'd have hard work, for instance, to
persuade a stranger that Van Buren County was once forest.”

“Was it?” asked Taylor doubtfully.

“It was. You take your map and see how much area has been cut already,
and how much remains. That'll open your eyes. And remember all that has
been done by crude methods for a relatively small demand. The demand
increases as the country grows and methods improve. It would not
surprise me if some day thirty or forty millions would constitute an
average cut. [*] 'Michigan pine exhaustless!'--those fellows make me sick!”

     * At the present day some firms cut as high as 150,000,000
     feet.

“Sounds a little more reasonable,” said Taylor slowly.

“It'll sound a lot more reasonable in five or ten years,” insisted
Orde, “and then you'll see the big men rushing out into that Oregon and
California country. But now a man can get practically the pick of the
coast. There are only a few big concerns out there.”

“Why is it that no one--”

“Because,” Orde cut him short, “the big things are for the fellow who
can see far enough ahead.”

“What kind of a proposition have you?” asked Taylor after a pause.

“I can get ten thousand acres at an average price of eight dollars an
acre,” replied Orde.

“Acres? What does that mean in timber?”

“On this particular tract it means about four hundred million feet.”

“That's about twenty cents a thousand.”

Orde nodded.

“And of course you couldn't operate for a long time?”

“Not for twenty, maybe thirty, years,” replied Orde calmly.

“There's your interest on your money, and taxes, and the risk of fire
and--”

“Of course, of course,” agreed Orde impatiently, “but you're getting
your stumpage for twenty cents or a little more, and in thirty years it
will be worth as high as a dollar and a half.” [*]

     * At the present time (1908) sugar pine such as Orde
     described would cost $3.50 to $4.

“What!” cried Taylor.

“That is my opinion,” said Orde.

Taylor relapsed into thought.

“Look here, Orde,” he broke out finally, “how old are you?”

“Thirty-eight. Why?”

“How much timber have you in Michigan?”

“About ten million that we've picked up on the river since the Daly
purchase and three hundred million in the northern peninsula.”

“Which will take you twenty years to cut, and make you a million dollars
or so?”

“Hope so.”

“Then why this investment thirty years ahead?”

“It's for Bobby,” explained Orde simply. “A man likes to have his son
continue on in his business. I can't do it here, but there I can. It
would take fifty years to cut that pine, and that will give Bobby a
steady income and a steady business.”

“Bobby will be well enough off, anyway. He won't have to go into
business.”

Orde's brow puckered.

“I know a man--Bobby is going to work. A man is not a success in life
unless he does something, and Bobby is going to be a success. Why,
Taylor,” he chuckled, “the little rascal fills the wood-box for a cent a
time, and that's all the pocket-money he gets. He's saving now to buy a
thousand-dollar boat. I've agreed to pool in half. At his present rate
of income, I'm safe for about sixty years yet.”

“How soon are you going to close this deal?” asked Taylor, rising as he
caught sight of two figures coming up the walk.

“I have an option until November 1,” replied Orde. “If you can't make
it, I guess I can swing it myself. By the way, keep this dark.”

Taylor nodded, and the two turned to defend themselves as best they
could against Clara's laughing attack.




XXXI


Orde had said nothing to Newmark concerning this purposed new
investment, nor did he intend doing so.

“It is for Bobby,” he told himself, “and I want Bobby, and no one else,
to run it. Joe would want to take charge, naturally. Taylor won't. He
knows nothing of the business.”

He walked downtown next morning busily formulating his scheme. At the
office he found Newmark already seated at his desk, a pile of letters
in front of him. Upon Orde's boisterous greeting his nerves crisped
slightly, but of this there was no outward sign beyond a tightening of
his hands on the letter he was reading. Behind his eye-glasses his
blue, cynical eyes twinkled like frost crystals. As always, he was
immaculately dressed in neat gray clothes, and carried in one corner of
his mouth an unlighted cigar.

“Joe,” said Orde, spinning a chair to Newmark's roll-top desk and
speaking in a low tone, “just how do we stand on that upper peninsula
stumpage?”

“What do you mean? How much of it is there? You know that as well as I
do--about three hundred million.”

“No; I mean financially.”

“We've made two payments of seventy-five thousand each, and have still
two to make of the same amount.”

“What could we borrow on it?”

“We don't want to borrow anything on it,” returned Newmark in a flash.

“Perhaps not; but if we should?”

“We might raise fifty or seventy-five thousand, I suppose.”

“Joe,” said Orde, “I want to raise about seventy-five thousand dollars
on my share in this concern, if it can be done.”

“What's up?” inquired Newmark keenly.

“It's a private matter.”

Newmark said nothing, but for some time thought busily, his light blue
eyes narrowed to a slit.

“I'll have to figure on it a while,” said he at last, and turned back
to his mail. All day he worked hard, with only a fifteen-minute
intermission for a lunch which was brought up from the hotel below. At
six o'clock he slammed shut the desk. He descended the stairs with Orde,
from whom he parted at their foot, and walked precisely away, his tall,
thin figure held rigid and slightly askew, his pale eyes slitted behind
his eye-glasses, the unlighted cigar in one corner of his straight lips.
To the occasional passerby he bowed coldly and with formality. At the
corner below he bore to the left, and after a short walk entered the
small one-story house set well back from the sidewalk among the clumps
of oleanders. Here he turned into a study, quietly and richly furnished
ten years in advance of the taste then prevalent in Monrovia, where he
sank into a deep-cushioned chair and lit the much-chewed cigar. For some
moments he lay back with his eyes shut. Then he opened them to look with
approval on the dark walnut book-cases, the framed prints and etchings,
the bronzed student's lamp on the square table desk, the rugs on the
polished floor. He picked up a magazine, into which he dipped for ten
minutes.

The door opened noiselessly behind him.

“Mr. Newmark, sir,” came a respectful voice, “it is just short of
seven.”

“Very well,” replied Newmark, without looking around.

The man withdrew as softly as he had come. After a moment, Newmark
replaced the magazine on the table, yawned, threw aside the cigar, of
which he had smoked but an inch, and passed from his study into
his bedroom across the hall. This contained an exquisite Colonial
four-poster, with a lowboy and dresser to match, and was papered and
carpeted in accordance with these, its chief ornaments. Newmark bathed
in the adjoining bathroom, shaved carefully between the two wax
lights which were his whim, and dressed in what were then known as
“swallow-tail” clothes. Probably he was the only man in Monrovia at that
moment so apparelled. Then calmly, and with all the deliberation of one
under fire of a hundred eyes, he proceeded to the dining-room, where
waited the man who had a short time before reminded him of the hour. He
was a solemn, dignified man, whose like was not to be found elsewhere
this side the city. He, too, wore the “swallow-tail,” but its buttons
were of gilt.

Newmark seated himself in a leather-upholstered mahogany chair before a
small, round, mahogany table. The room was illuminated only by four wax
candles with red shades. They threw into relief the polish of mahogany,
the glitter of glass, the shine of silver, but into darkness the detail
of massive sideboard, dull panelling, and the two or three dark-toned
sporting prints on the wall.

“You may serve dinner, Mallock,” said Newmark.

He ate deliberately and with enjoyment the meal, exquisitely prepared
and exquisitely presented to him. With it he drank a single glass of
Burgundy--a deed that would, in the eyes of Monrovia, have condemned him
as certainly as driving a horse on Sunday or playing cards for a stake.
Afterward he returned to the study, whither Mallock brought coffee. He
lit another cigar, opened a drawer in his desk, extracted therefrom some
bank-books and small personal account books. From these he figured all
the evening. His cigar went out, but he did not notice that, and chewed
away quite contentedly on the dead butt. When he had finished, his cold
eye exhibited a gleam of satisfaction. He had resolved on a course of
action. At ten o'clock he went to bed.

Next morning Mallock closed the door behind him promptly upon the stroke
of eight. It was strange that not one living soul but Mallock had ever
entered Newmark's abode. Curiosity had at first brought a few callers;
but these were always met by the imperturbable servant with so plausible
a reason for his master's absence that the visitors had departed without
a suspicion that they had been deliberately excluded. And as Newmark
made no friends and excited little interest, the attempts to cultivate
him gradually ceased.

“Orde,” said Newmark, as the former entered the office, “I think I can
arrange this matter.”

Orde drew up a chair.

“I talked last evening with a man from Detroit named Thayer, who thinks
he may advance seventy-five thousand dollars on a mortgage on our
northern peninsula stumpage. For that, of course, we will give the
firm's note with interest at ten per cent. I will turn this over to
you.”

“That's--” began Orde.

“Hold on,” interrupted Newmark. “As collateral security you will deposit
for me your stock in the Boom Company, indorsed in blank. If you do not
pay the full amount of the firm's note to Thayer, then the stock will be
turned in to me.”

“I see,” said Orde.

“Now, don't misunderstand me,” said Newmark drily. “This is your own
affair, and I do not urge it on you. If we raise as much as seventy-five
thousand dollars on that upper peninsula stumpage, it will be all it
can stand, for next year we must make a third payment on it. If you take
that money, it is of course proper that you pay the interest on it.”

“Certainly,” said Orde.

“And if there's any possibility of the foreclosure of the mortgage, it
is only right that you run all the risk of loss--not myself.”

“Certainly,” repeated Orde.

“From another point of view,” went on Newmark, “you are practically
mortgaging your interest in the Boom Company for seventy-five thousand
dollars. That would make, on the usual basis of a mortgage, your share
worth above two hundred thousand--and four hundred thousand is a high
valuation of our property.”

“That looks more than decent on your part,” said Orde.

“Of course, it's none of my business what you intend to do with this,”
 went on Newmark, “but unless you're SURE you can meet these notes, I
should strongly advise against it.”

“The same remark applies to any mortgage,” rejoined Orde.

“Exactly.”

“For how long a time could I get this?” asked Orde at length.

“I couldn't promise it for longer than five years,” replied Newmark.

“That would make about fifteen thousand a year?”

“And interest.”

“Certainly--and interest. Well, I don't see why I can't carry that
easily on our present showing and prospects.”

“If nothing untoward happens,” insisted Newmark determined to put
forward all objections possible.

“It's not much risk,” said Orde hopefully. “There's nothing surer
than lumber. We'll pay the notes easily enough as we cut, and the Boom
Company's on velvet now. What do our earnings figure, anyway?”

“We're driving one hundred and fifty million at a profit of about sixty
cents a thousand,” said Newmark.

“That's ninety thousand dollars--in five years, four hundred and fifty
thousand,” said Orde, sucking his pencil.

“We ought to clean up five dollars a thousand on our mill.”

“That's about a hundred thousand on what we've got left.”

“And that little barge business nets us about twelve or fifteen thousand
a year.”

“For the five years about sixty thousand more. Let's see--that's a total
of say six hundred thousand dollars in five years.”

“We will have to take up in that time,” said Newmark, who seemed to have
the statistics at his finger-tips, “the two payments on our timber,
the note on the First National, the Commercial note, the remaining
liabilities on the Boom Company--about three hundred thousand all told,
counting the interest.”

Orde crumpled the paper and threw it into the waste basket.

“Correct,” said he. “Good enough. I ought to get along on a margin like
that.”

He went over to his own desk, where he again set to figuring on his
pad. The results he eyed a little doubtfully. Each year he must pay in
interest the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars. Each year
he would have to count on a proportionate saving of fifteen thousand
dollars toward payment of the notes. In addition, he must live.

“The Orde family is going to be mighty hard up,” said he, whistling
humorously.

But Orde was by nature and training sanguine and fond of big risks.

“Never mind; it's for Bobby,” said he to himself. “And maybe the rate
of interest will go down. And I'll be able to borrow on the California
tract if anything does go wrong.”

He put on his hat, thrust a bundle of papers into his pocket, and
stepped across the hall into Taylor's office.

The lawyer he found tipped back in his revolving chair, reading a
printed brief.

“Frank,” began Orde immediately, “I came to see you about that
California timber matter.”

Taylor laid down the brief and removed his eye-glasses, with which he
began immediately to tap the fingers of his left hand.

“Sit down, Jack,” said he. “I'm glad you came in. I was going to try
to see you some time to-day. I've been thinking the matter over very
carefully since the other day, and I've come to the conclusion that it
is too steep for me. I don't doubt the investment a bit, but the returns
are too far off. Fifteen thousand means a lot more to me than it does to
you, and I've got to think of the immediate future. I hope you weren't
counting on me--”

“Oh, that's all right,” broke in Orde. “As I told you, I can swing the
thing myself, and only mentioned it to you on the off chance you might
want to invest. Now, what I want is this--” he proceeded to outline
carefully the agreement between himself and Newmark while the lawyer
took notes and occasionally interjected a question.

“All right,” said the latter, when the details had been mastered. “I'll
draw the necessary notes and papers.”

“Now,” went on Orde, producing the bundle of papers from his pocket,
“here's the abstract of title. I wish you'd look it over. It's a long
one, but not complicated, as near as I can make out. Trace seems to have
acquired this tract mostly from the original homesteaders and the like,
who, of course, take title direct from the government. But naturally
there are a heap of them, and I want you to look it over to be sure
everything's shipshape.”

“All right,” agreed Taylor, reaching for the papers.

“One other thing,” concluded Orde, uncrossing his legs. “I want this
investment to get no further than the office door. You see, this is
for Bobby, and I've given a lot of thought to that sort of thing; and
nothing spoils a man sooner than to imagine the thing's all cut and
dried for him, and nothing keeps him going like the thought that he's
got to rustle his own opportunities. You and I know that. Bobby's
going to have the best education possible; he's going to learn to be a
lumberman by practical experience, and that practical experience he'll
get with other people. No working for his dad in Bobby's, I can tell
you. When he gets through college, I'll get him a little job clerking
with some good firm, and he'll have a chance to show what is in him and
to learn the business from the ground up, the way a man ought to. Of
course, I'll make arrangements that he has a real chance. Then, when
he's worked into the harness a little, the old man will take him out and
show him the fine big sugar pine and say to him, 'There, my boy, there's
your opportunity, and you've earned it. How does ORDE AND SON sound to
you?' What do you think of it, Frank?”

Taylor nodded several times.

“I believe you're on the right track, and I'll help you all I can,” said
he briefly.

“So, of course, I want to keep the thing dead secret,” continued Orde.
“You're the only man who knows anything about it. I'm not even going
to buy directly under my own name. I'm going to incorporate myself,” he
said, with a grin. “You know how those things will get out, and how they
always get back to the wrong people.”

“Count on me,” Taylor assured him.

As Orde walked home that evening, after a hot day, his mind was full of
speculation as to the immediate future. He had a local reputation for
wealth, and no one knew better than himself how important it is for a
man in debt to keep up appearances. Nevertheless, decided retrenchment
would be necessary. After Bobby had gone to bed, he explained this to
his wife.

“What's the matter?” she asked quickly. “Is the firm losing money?”

“No,” replied Orde, “it's a matter of reinvestment.” He hesitated. “It's
a dead secret, which I don't want to get out, but I'm thinking of buying
some western timber for Bobby when he grows up.”

Carroll laughed softly.

“You so relieve my mind,” she smiled at him. “I was afraid you'd decided
on the street-car-driver idea. Why, sweetheart, you know perfectly well
we could go back to the little house next the church and be as happy as
larks.”




XXXII


In the meantime Newmark had closed his desk, picked his hat from the
nail, and marched precisely down the street to Heinzman's office. He
found the little German in. Newmark demanded a private interview, and
without preliminary plunged into the business that had brought him. He
had long since taken Heinzman's measure, as, indeed, he had taken
the measure of every other man with whom he did or was likely to do
business.

“Heinzman,” said he abruptly, “my partner wants to raise seventy-five
thousand dollars for his personal use. I have agreed to get him that
money from the firm.”

Heinzman sat immovable, his round eyes blinking behind his big
spectacles.

“Proceed,” said he shrewdly.

“As security in case he cannot pay the notes the firm will have to give,
he has signed an agreement to turn over to me his undivided one-half
interest in our enterprises.”

“Vell? You vant to borrow dot money of me?” asked Heinzman. “I could not
raise it.”

“I know that perfectly well,” replied Newmark coolly. “You are going to
have difficulty meeting your July notes, as it is.”

Heinzman hardly seemed to breathe, but a flicker of red blazed in his
eye.

“Proceed,” he repeated non-committally, after a moment. “I intend,” went
on Newmark, “to furnish this money myself. It must, however, seem to be
loaned by another. I want you to lend this money on mortgage.”

“What for?” asked Heinzman.

“For a one tenth of Orde's share in case he does not meet those notes.”

“But he vill meet the notes,” objected Heinzman. “You are a prosperous
concern. I know somethings of YOUR business, also.”

“He thinks he will,” rejoined Newmark grimly. “I will merely point
out to you that his entire income is from the firm, and that from this
income he must save twenty-odd thousand a year.

“If the firm has hard luck--” said Heinzman.

“Exactly,” finished Newmark.

“Vy you come to me?” demanded Heinzman at length.

“Well, I'm offering you a chance to get even with Orde. I don't imagine
you love him?”

“Vat's de matter mit my gettin' efen with you, too?” cried Heinzman.
“Ain't you beat me out at Lansing?”

Newmark smiled coldly under his clipped moustache.

“I'm offering you the chance of making anywhere from thirty to fifty
thousand dollars.”

“Perhaps. And suppose this liddle scheme don't work out?”

“And,” pursued Newmark calmly, “I'll carry you over in your present
obligations.” He suddenly hit the arm of his chair with his clenched
fist. “Heinzman, if you don't make those July payments, what's to become
of you? Where's your timber and your mills and your new house--and that
pretty daughter of yours?”

Heinzman winced visibly.

“I vill get an extension of time,” said he feebly.

“Will you?” countered Newmark.

The two men looked each other in the eye for a moment.

“Vell, maybe,” laughed Heinzman uneasily. “It looks to me like a
winner.”

“All right, then,” said Newmark briskly. “I'll make out a mortgage at
ten per cent for you, and you'll lend the money on it. At the proper
time, if things happen that way, you will foreclose. That's all you
have to do with it. Then, when the timber land comes to you under the
foreclose, you will reconvey an undivided nine-tenths' interest--for
proper consideration, of course, and without recording the deed.”

Heinzman laughed with assumed lightness.

“Suppose I fool you,” said he. “I guess I joost keep it for mineself.”

Newmark looked at him coldly.

“I wouldn't,” he advised. “You may remember the member from Lapeer
County in that charter fight? And the five hundred dollars for his vote?
Try it on, and see how much evidence I can bring up. It's called bribery
in this State, and means penitentiary usually.”

“You don't take a joke,” complained Heinzman.

Newmark arose.

“It's understood, then?” he asked.

“How so I know you play fair?” asked the German.

“You don't. It's a case where we have to depend more or less on each
other. But I don't see what you stand to lose--and anyway you'll get
carried over those July payments,” Newmark reminded him.

Heinzman was plainly uneasy and slightly afraid of these new waters in
which he swam.

“If you reduce the firm's profits, he iss going to suspect,” he
admonished.

“Who said anything about reducing the firm's profits?” said Newmark
impatiently. “If it does work out that way, we'll win a big thing; if it
does not, we'll lose nothing.”

He nodded to Heinzman and left the office. His demeanour was as dry and
precise as ever. No expression illuminated his impassive countenance. If
he felt the slightest uneasiness over having practically delivered his
intentions to the keeping of another, he did not show it. For one thing,
an accomplice was absolutely essential. And, too, he held the German by
his strongest passions--his avarice, his dread of bankruptcy, his pride,
and his fear of the penitentiary. As he entered the office of his own
firm, his eye fell on Orde's bulky form seated at the desk. He paused
involuntarily, and a slight shiver shook his frame from head to
foot--the dainty, instinctive repulsion of a cat for a large robustious
dog. Instantly controlling himself, he stepped forward.

“I've made the loan,” he announced.

Orde looked up with interest.

“The banks wouldn't touch northern peninsula,” said Newmark steadily,
“so I had to go to private individuals.”

“So you said. Don't care who deals it out,” laughed Orde.

“Thayer backed out, so finally I got the whole amount from Heinzman,”
 Newmark announced.

“Didn't know the old Dutchman was that well off,” said Orde, after a
slight pause.

“Can't tell about those secretive old fellows,” said Newmark.

Orde hesitated.

“I didn't know he was friendly enough to lend us money.”

“Business is business,” replied Newmark.




XXXIII


There exists the legend of an eastern despot who, wishing to rid himself
of a courtier, armed the man and shut him in a dark room. The victim
knew he was to fight something, but whence it was to come, when, or of
what nature he was unable to guess. In the event, while groping tense
for an enemy, he fell under the fatal fumes of noxious gases.

From the moment Orde completed the secret purchase of the California
timber lands from Trace, he became an unwitting participant in one of
the strangest duels known to business history. Newmark opposed to him
all the subtleties, all the ruses and expedients to which his position
lent itself. Orde, sublimely unconscious, deployed the magnificent
resources of strength, energy, organisation, and combative spirit that
animated his pioneer's soul. The occult manoeuverings of Newmark called
out fresh exertions on the part of Orde.

Newmark worked under this disadvantage: he had carefully to avoid the
slightest appearance of an attitude inimical to the firm's very best
prosperity. A breath of suspicion would destroy his plans. If the
smallest untoward incident should ever bring it clearly before Orde that
Newmark might have an interest in reducing profits, he could not fail
to tread out the logic of the latter's devious ways. For this reason
Newmark could not as yet fight even in the twilight. He did not dare
make bad sales, awkward transactions. In spite of his best efforts, he
could not succeed, without the aid of chance, in striking a blow from
which Orde could not recover. The profits of the first year were not
quite up to the usual standard, but they sufficed. Newmark's finesse cut
in two the firm's income of the second year. Orde roused himself. With
his old-time energy of resource, he hurried the woods work until an
especially big cut gave promise of recouping the losses of the year
before. Newmark found himself struggling against a force greater than
he had imagined it to be. Blinded and bound, it nevertheless made head
against his policy. Newmark was forced to a temporary quiescence. He
held himself watchful, intent, awaiting the opportunity which chance
should bring.

Chance seemed by no means in haste. The end of the fourth year found
Newmark puzzled. Orde had paid regularly the interest on his notes.
How much he had been able to save toward the redemption of the notes
themselves his partner was unable to decide. It depended entirely on how
much the Ordes had disbursed in living expenses, whether or not Orde had
any private debts, and whether or not he had private resources. In the
meantime Newmark contented himself with tying up the firm's assets in
such a manner as to render it impossible to raise money on its property
when the time should come.

What Orde regarded as a series of petty annoyances had made the problem
of paying for the California timber a matter of greater difficulty than
he had supposed it would be. A pressure whose points of support he could
not place was closing slowly on him. Against this pressure he exerted
himself. It made him a trifle uneasy, but it did not worry him. The
margin of safety was not as broad as he had reckoned, but it existed.
And in any case, if worse came to worst, he could always mortgage
the California timber for enough to make up the difference--and more.
Against this expedient, however, he opposed a sentimental obstinacy.
It was Bobby's, and he objected to encumbering it. In fact, Orde
was capable of a prolonged and bitter struggle to avoid doing so.
Nevertheless, it was there--an asset. A loan on its security would, with
what he had set aside, more than pay the notes on the northern peninsula
stumpage. Orde felt perfectly easy in his mind. He was in the position
of many of our rich men's sons who, quite sincerely and earnestly, go
penniless to the city to make their way. They live on their nine dollars
a week, and go hungry when they lose their jobs. They stand on their own
feet, and yet--in case of severe illness or actual starvation--the old
man is there! It gives them a courage to be contented on nothing. So
Orde would have gone to almost any lengths to keep free “Bobby's tract,”
 but it stood always between himself and disaster. And a loan on western
timber could be paid off just as easily as a loan on eastern timber;
when you came right down to that. Even could he have known his partner's
intentions, they would, on this account, have caused him no uneasiness,
however angry they would have made him, or however determined to break
the partnership. Even though Newmark destroyed utterly the firm's
profits for the remaining year and a half the notes had to run, he could
not thereby ruin Orde's chances. A loan on the California timber would
solve all problems now. In this reasoning Orde would have committed
the mistake of all large and generous temperaments when called upon to
measure natures more subtle than their own. He would have underestimated
both Newmark's resources and his own grasp of situations. [*]


     * The author has considered it useless to burden the course
     of the narrative with a detailed account of Newmark's
     financial manoeuvres. Realising, however, that a large class
     of his readers might be interested in the exact particulars,
     he herewith gives a sketch of the transactions.

     It will be remembered that at the time--1878--Orde first
     came in need of money for the purpose of buying the
     California timber, the firm, Newmark and Orde, owned in the
     northern peninsula 300,000,000 feet of pine. On this they
     had paid $150,000, and owed still a like amount. They
     borrowed $75,000 on it, giving a note secured by mortgage
     due in 1883. Orde took this, giving in return his note
     secured by the Boom Company's stock. In 1879 and 1880 they
     made the two final payments on the timber; so that by the
     latter date they owned the land free of encumbrance save for
     the mortgage of $75,000. Since Newmark's plan had always
     contemplated the eventual foreclosure of this mortgage, it
     now became necessary further to encumber the property.
     Otherwise, since a property worth considerably above
     $300,000 carried only a $75,000 mortgage, it would be
     possible, when the latter came due, to borrow a further sum
     on a second mortgage with which to meet the obligations of
     the first. Therefore Newmark, in 1881, approached Orde with
     the request that the firm raise $70,000 by means of a second
     mortgage on the timber. This $70,000 he proposed to borrow
     personally, giving his note due in 1885 and putting up the
     same collateral as Orde had--that is to say, his stock in
     the Boom Company. To this Orde could hardly in reason oppose
     an objection, as it nearly duplicated his own transaction of
     1878. Newmark therefore, through Heinzman, lent this sum to
     himself.

     It may now be permitted to forecast events in the line of
     Newmark's reasoning.

     If his plans should work out, this is what would happen: in
     1883 the firm's note for $75,000 would come due. Orde would
     be unable to pay it. Therefore at once his stock in the Boom
     Company would become the property of Newmark and Orde.
     Newmark would profess himself unable to raise enough from
     the firm to pay the mortgage. The second mortgage from which
     he had drawn his personal loan would render it impossible
     for the firm to raise more money on the land. A foreclosure
     would follow. Through Heinzman, Newmark would buy in. As he
     had himself loaned the money to himself--again through
     Heinzman--on the second mortgage, the latter would occasion
     him no loss.

     The net results of the whole transaction would be: first,
     that Newmark would have acquired personally the 300,000,000
     feet of northern peninsula timber; and, second, that Orde's
     personal share in the stock company would flow be held in
     partnership by the two. Thus, in order to gain so large a
     stake, it would pay Newmark to suffer considerable loss
     jointly with Orde in the induced misfortunes of the firm.

     Incidentally it might be remarked that Newmark, of course,
     purposed paying his own note to the firm when it should fall
     due in 1885, thus saving for himself the Boom Company stock
     which he had put up as collateral.


Affairs stood thus in the autumn before the year the notes would come
due. The weather had been beautiful. A perpetual summer seemed to have
embalmed the world in its forgetfulness of times and seasons. Navigation
remained open through October and into November. No severe storms had as
yet swept the lakes. The barge and her two tows had made one more trip
than had been thought possible. It had been the intention to lay them
up for the winter, but the weather continued so mild that Orde suggested
they be laden with a consignment for Jones and Mabley, of Chicago.

“Did intend to ship by rail,” said he. “They're all 'uppers,' so it
would pay all right. But we can save all kinds of money by water, and
they ought to skip over there in twelve to fifteen hours.”

Accordingly, the three vessels were laid alongside the wharves at the
mill, and as fast as possible the selected lumber was passed into their
holds. Orde departed for the woods to start the cutting as soon as the
first belated snow should fall.

This condition seemed, however, to delay. During each night it grew
cold. The leaves, after their blaze and riot of colour, turned crisp and
crackly and brown. Some of the little, still puddles were filmed with
what was almost, but not quite ice. A sheen of frost whitened the house
roofs and silvered each separate blade of grass on the lawns. But by
noon the sun, rising red in the veil of smoke that hung low in the
snappy air, had mellowed the atmosphere until it lay on the cheek like a
caress. No breath of wind stirred. Sounds came clearly from a distance.
Long V-shaped flights of geese swept athwart the sky, very high up, but
their honking came faintly to the ear. And yet, when the sun, swollen
to the great dimensions of the rising moon, dipped blood-red through the
haze; the first premonitory tingle of cold warned one that the grateful
warmth of the day had been but an illusion of a season that had gone.
This was not summer, but, in the quaint old phrase, Indian summer, and
its end would be as though the necromancer had waved his wand.

To Newmark, sitting at his desk, reported Captain Floyd of the steam
barge NORTH STAR.

“All loaded by noon, sir,” he said.

Newmark looked up in surprise.

“Well, why do you tell me?” he inquired.

“I want your orders.”

“My orders? Why?”

“This is a bad time of year,” explained Captain Floyd, “and the storm
signal's up. All the signs are right for a blow.”

Newmark whirled in his chair.

“A blow!” he cried. “What of it? You don't come in every time it blows,
do you?”

“You don't know the lakes, sir, at this time of year,” insisted Captain
Floyd.

“Are you afraid?” sneered Newmark.

Captain Floyd's countenance burned a dark red.

“I only want your orders,” was all he said. “I thought we might wait to
see.”

“Then go,” snapped Newmark. “That lumber must get to the market. You
heard Mr. Orde's orders to sail as soon as you were loaded.”

Captain Floyd nodded curtly and went out without further comment.

Newmark arose and looked out of the window. The sun shone as balmily
soft as ever. English sparrows twittered and fought outside. The warm
smell of pine shingles rose from the street. Only close down to the
horizon lurked cold, flat, greasy-looking clouds; and in the direction
of the Government flag-pole he caught the flash of red from the lazily
floating signal. He was little weatherwise, and he shook his head
sceptically. Nevertheless it was a chance, and he took it, as he had
taken a great many others.




XXXIV


To Carroll's delight, Orde returned unexpectedly from the woods late
that night. He was so busy these days that she welcomed any chance to
see him. Much to his disappointment, Bobby had been taken duck-hunting
by his old friend, Mr. Kincaid. Next morning, however, Orde told Carroll
his stay would be short and that his day would be occupied.

“I'd take old Prince and get some air,” he advised. “You're too much
indoors. Get some friend and drive around. It's fine and blowy out, and
you'll get some colour in your cheeks.”

After breakfast Carroll accompanied her husband to the front door. When
they opened it a blast of air rushed in, whirling some dead leaves with
it.

“I guess the fine weather's over,” said Orde, looking up at the sky.

A dull lead colour had succeeded the soft gray of the preceding balmy
days. The heavens seemed to have settled down closer to the earth.
A rising wind whistled through the branches of the big maple trees,
snatching the remaining leaves in handfuls and tossing them into the
air. The tops swayed like whips. Whirlwinds scurried among the piles of
dead leaves on the lawns, scattering them, chasing them madly around and
around in circles.

“B-r-r-r!” shivered Carroll. “Winter's coming.”

She kept herself busy about the house all the morning; ate her lunch in
solitude. Outside, the fierce wind, rising in a crescendo shriek, howled
around the eaves. The day darkened, but no rain fell. At last Carroll
resolved to take her husband's advice. She stopped for Mina Heinzman,
and the two walked around to the stable, where the men harnessed old
Prince into the phaeton.

They drove, the wind at their backs, across the drawbridge, past the
ship-yards, and out beyond the mills to the Marsh Road. There, on either
side the causeway, miles and miles of cat-tails and reeds bent and
recovered under the snatches of the wind. Here and there showed glimpses
of ponds or little inlets, the surface of the water ruffled and dark
blue. Occasionally one of these bayous swung in across the road. Then
the two girls could see plainly the fan-like cat's-paws skittering here
and there as though panic-stricken by the swooping, invisible monster
that pursued them.

Carroll and Mina Heinzman had a good time. They liked each other very
much, and always saw a great deal to laugh at in the things about them
and in the subjects about which they talked. When, however, they turned
toward home, they were forced silent by the mighty power of the wind
against them. The tears ran from their eyes as though they were crying;
they had to lower their heads. Hardly could Carroll command vision clear
enough to see the road along which she was driving. This was really
unnecessary, for Prince was buffeted to a walk. Thus they crawled along
until they reached the turn-bridge, where the right-angled change
in direction gave them relief. The river was full of choppy waves,
considerable in size. As they crossed, the SPRITE darted beneath them,
lowering her smokestack as she went under the bridge.

They entered Main Street, where was a great banging and clanging of
swinging signs and a few loose shutters. All the sidewalk displays of
vegetables and other goods had been taken in, and the doors, customarily
wide open, were now shut fast. This alone lent to the street quite a
deserted air, which was emphasised by the fact that actually not a rig
of any sort stood at the curbs. Up the empty roadway whirled one after
the other clouds of dust hurried by the wind.

“I wonder where all the farmers' wagons are?” marvelled the practical
Mina. “Surely they would not stay home Saturday afternoon just for this
wind!”

Opposite Randall's hardware store her curiosity quite mastered her.

“Do stop!” she urged Carroll. “I want to run in and see what's the
matter.”

She was gone but a moment, and returned, her eyes shining with
excitement.

“Oh, Carroll!” she cried, “there are three vessels gone ashore off the
piers. Everybody's gone to see.”

“Jump in!” said Carroll. “We'll drive out. Perhaps they'll get out the
life-saving crew.”

They drove up the plank road over the sand-hill, through the beech
woods, to the bluff above the shore. In the woods they were somewhat
sheltered from the wind, although even there the crash of falling
branches and the whirl of twigs and dead leaves advertised that the
powers of the air were abroad; but when they topped the last rise, the
unobstructed blast from the open Lake hit them square between the eyes.

Probably a hundred vehicles of all descriptions were hitched to trees
just within the fringe of woods. Carroll, however, drove straight ahead
until Prince stood at the top of the plank road that led down to the
bath houses. Here she pulled up.

Carroll saw the lake, slate blue and angry, with white-capped billows
to the limit of vision. Along the shore were rows and rows of breakers,
leaping, breaking, and gathering again, until they were lost in a tumble
of white foam that rushed and receded on the sands. These did not look
to be very large until she noticed the twin piers reaching out from the
river's mouth. Each billow, as it came in, rose sullenly above them,
broke tempestuously to overwhelm the entire structure of their ends, and
ripped inshore along their lengths, the crest submerging as it ran every
foot of the massive structures. The piers and the light-houses at their
ends looked like little toys, and the compact black crowd of people on
the shore below were as small as Bobby's tin soldiers.

“Look there--out farther!” pointed Mina.

Carroll looked, and rose to her feet in excitement.

Three little toy ships--or so they seemed compared to the mountains of
water--lay broadside-to, just inside the farthest line of breakers. Two
were sailing schooners. These had been thrown on their beam ends, their
masts pointing at an angle toward the beach. Each wave, as it reached,
stirred them a trifle, then broke in a deluge of water that for a moment
covered their hulls completely from sight. With a mighty suction the
billow drained away, carrying with it wreckage. The third vessel was a
steam barge. She, too, was broadside to the seas, but had caught in some
hole in the bar so that she lay far down by the head. The shoreward side
of her upper works had, for some freakish reason, given away first, so
now the interior of her staterooms and saloons was exposed to view as in
the cross-section of a model ship. Over her, too, the great waves
hurled themselves, each carrying away its spoil. To Carroll it seemed
fantastically as though the barge were made of sugar, and that each sea
melted her precisely as Bobby loved to melt the lump in his chocolate by
raising and lowering it in a spoon.

And the queer part of it all was that these waves, so mighty in their
effects, appeared to the woman no different from those she had often
watched in the light summer blows that for a few hours raise the “white
caps” on the lake. They came in from the open in the same swift yet
deliberate ranks; they gathered with the same leisurely pauses; they
broke with the same rush and roar. They seemed no larger, but everything
else had been struck small--the tiny ships, the toy piers, the ant-like
swarm of people on the shore. She looked on it as a spectacle. It had as
yet no human significance.

“Poor fellows!” cried Mina.

“What?” asked Carroll.

“Don't you see them?” queried the other.

Carroll looked, and in the rigging of the schooner she made out a number
of black objects.

“Are those men?--up the masts?” she cried.

She set Prince in motion toward the beach.

At the foot of the bluff the plank road ran out into the deep sand.
Through this the phaeton made its way heavily. The fine particles were
blown in the air like a spray, mingling with the spume from the lake,
stinging Carroll's face like so many needles. Already the beach was
strewn with pieces of wreckage, some of it cast high above the wash,
others still thrown up and sucked back by each wave, others again rising
and falling in the billows. This wreckage constituted a miscellaneous
jumble, although most of it was lumber from the deck-loads of the
vessels. Intermingled with the split and broken yellow boards were bits
of carving and of painted wood. Carroll saw one piece half buried in the
sand which bore in gilt two huge letters, A R. A little farther, bent
and twisted, projected the ornamental spear which had pointed the way
before the steamer's bow. Portions of the usual miscellaneous freight
cargo carried on every voyage were scattered along the shore--boxes,
barrels, and crates. Five or six men had rolled a whisky barrel beyond
the reach of the water, had broached it, and now were drinking in turn
from a broken and dingy fragment of a beer-schooner. They were very
dirty; their hair had fallen over their eyes, which were bloodshot;
the expression of their faces was imbecile. As the phaeton passed, they
hailed its occupants in thick voices, shouting against the wind maudlin
invitations to drink.

The crowd gathered at the pier comprised fully half the population of
Monrovia. It centred about the life saving crew, whose mortar was
being loaded. A stove-in lifeboat mutely attested the failure of other
efforts. The men worked busily, ramming home the powder sack, placing
the projectile with the light line attached, attending that the reel ran
freely. Their chief watched the seas and winds through his glasses. When
the preparations were finished, he adjusted the mortar, and pulled
the string. Carroll had seen this done in practice. Now, with the
recollection of that experience in mind, she was astonished at the
feeble report of the piece, and its freedom from the dense white clouds
of smoke that should have enveloped it. The wind snatched both noise and
vapour away almost as soon as they were born. The dart with its trailer
of line rose on a long graceful curve. The reel sang. Every member of
the crowd unconsciously leaned forward in attention. But the resistance
of the wind and the line early made itself felt. Slower and slower
hummed the reel. There came a time when the missile seemed to hesitate,
then fairly to stand in equilibrium. Finally, in an increasingly abrupt
curve, it descended into the sea. By a good three hundred yards the shot
had failed to carry the line over the vessels.

“There's Mr. Bradford,” said Carroll, waving her hand. “I wish he'd come
and tell us something about it.”

The banjo-playing village Brummell saw the signal and came, his face
grave.

“Couldn't they get the lifeboats out to them?” asked Carroll as he
approached.

“You see that one,” said Bradford, pointing. “Well, the other's in
kindling wood farther up the beach.”

“Anybody drowned?” asked Mina quickly.

“No, we got 'em out. Mr. Cam's shoulder is broken.” He glanced down at
himself comically, and the girls for the first time noticed that beneath
the heavy overcoat his garments were dripping.

“But surely they'll never get a line over with the mortar!” said
Carroll. “That last shot fell so far short!”

“They know it. They've shot a dozen times. Might as well do something.”

“I should think,” said Mina, “that they'd shoot from the end of the
pier. They'd be ever so much nearer.”

“Tried it,” replied Bradford succinctly. “Nearly lost the whole
business.”

Nobody said anything for some time, but all looked helplessly to where
the vessels--from this elevation insignificant among the tumbling
waters--were pounding to pieces.

At this moment from the river a trail of black smoke became visible over
the point of sand-hill that ran down to the pier. A smokestack darted
into view, slowed down, and came to rest well inside the river-channel.
There it rose and fell regularly under the influence of the swell that
swung in from the lake. The crowd uttered a cheer, and streamed in the
direction of the smokestack.

“Come and see what's up,” suggested Bradford.

He hitched Prince to a log sticking up at an angle from the sand, and
led the way to the pier.

There they had difficulty in getting close enough to see; but Bradford,
preceding the two women, succeeded by patience and diplomacy in forcing
a way. The SPRITE was lying close under the pier, the top of her
pilot-house just about level with the feet of the people watching
her. She rose and fell with the restless waters. Fat rope-yarn bumpers
interposed between her sides and the piling. The pilot-house was empty,
but Harvey, the negro engineer, leaned, elbows crossed against the sill
of his little square door, smoking his pipe.

“I wouldn't go out there for a million dollars!” cried a man excitedly
to Carroll and Bradford. “Nothing on earth could live in that sea!
Nothing! I've run a tug myself in my time, and I know what I'm talking
about!”

“What are they going to do?” asked Carroll.

“Haven't you heard!” cried the other, turning to her. “Where you been?
This is one of Orde's tugs, and she's going to try to get a line to them
vessels. But I wouldn't--”

Bradford did not wait for him to finish. He turned abruptly, and with an
air of authority brushed toward the tug, followed closely by Carroll and
Mina. At the edge of the pier was the tug's captain, Marsh, listening
to earnest expostulation by a half-dozen of the leading men of the town,
among whom were both Newmark and Orde.

As the three came within earshot Captain Marsh spit forth the stump of
cigar he had been chewing.

“Gentlemen,” said he crisply, “that isn't the question. I think I can
do it; and I'm entirely willing to take all personal risks. The thing is
hazardous and it's Mr. Orde's tug. It's for him to say whether he wants
to risk her.”

“Good Lord, man, what's the tug in a case like this!” cried Orde,
who was standing near. Carroll looked at him proudly, but she did not
attempt to make her presence known.

“I thought so,” replied Captain Marsh. “So it's settled. I'll take her
out, if I can get a crew. Harvey, step up here!”

The engineer slowly hoisted his long figure through the breast-high
doorway, dragged his legs under him, then with extraordinary agility
swung to the pier, his teeth shining like ivory in his black face.

“Yas, suh!” said he.

“Harvey,” said Captain Marsh briskly, “we're going to try to get a line
aboard those vessels out there. It's dangerous. You don't have to go if
you don't want to. Will you go?”

Harvey removed his cap and scratched his wool. The grin faded from his
good-natured countenance.

“You-all goin', suh?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“I reckon I'll done haif to go, too,” said Harvey simply. Without
further word he swung lightly back to the uneasy craft below him, and
began to toss the slabs from the deck into the hold.

“I want a man with me at the wheel, two to handle the lines, and one to
fire for Harvey,” said Captain Marsh to the crowd in general.

“That's our job,” announced the life-saving captain.

“Well, come on then. No use in delay,” said Captain Marsh.

The four men from the life-saving service dropped aboard. The five then
went over the tug from stem to stern, tossing aside all movables,
and lashing tight all essentials. From the pilot-house Captain Marsh
distributed life preservers. Harvey declined his.

“Whaf-for I want dat?” he inquired. “Lots of good he gwine do me down
here!”

Then all hatches were battened down. Captain Marsh reached up to shake
the hand which Orde, stooping, offered him.

“I'll try to bring her back all right, sir,” said he.

“To hell with the tug!” cried Orde, impatient at this insistence on the
mere property aspect. “Bring yourself back.”

Captain Marsh deliberately lit another cigar and entered the pilot-house
with the other men.

“Cast off!” he cried; and the silent crowd heard clearly the single
sharp bell ringing for attention, and then the “jangler” that called for
full speed ahead. Awed, they watched the tiny sturdy craft move out into
the stream and point to the fury of the open lake.

“Brave chaps! Brave chaps!” said Dr. McMullen to Carroll as they turned
away. The physician drew his tall slender figure to its height. “Brave
chaps, every one of them. But, do you know, to my mind, the bravest of
them all are that nigger--and his fireman--nailed down in the hold where
they can't see nor know what's going on, and if--if--” the good doctor
blew his nose vigorously five or six times--“well, it's just like a rat
in a hole.” He shook his head vigorously and looked out to sea. “I read
last evening, sir,” said he to Bradford, “in a blasted fool medical
journal I take, that the race is degenerating. Good God!”

The tug had rounded the end of the pier. The first of her thousand
enemies, sweeping in from the open, had struck her fair. A great sheet
of white water, slanting back and up, shot with terrific impact against
the house and beyond. For an instant the little craft seemed buried;
but almost immediately the gleam of her black hull showed her plunging
forward dauntlessly.

“That's nothin'!” said the tug captain who had first spoken. “Wait 'til
she gets outside!” The watchers streamed down from the pier for a better
view. Carroll and Miss Heinzman followed. They saw the staunch little
craft drive into three big seas, each of which appeared to bury her
completely, save for her upper works. She managed, however, to keep her
headway.

“She can stand that, all right,” said one of the life-saving crew who
had been watching her critically. “The trouble will come when she drops
down to the vessels.”

In spite of the heavy smashing of head-on seas the SPRITE held her
course straight out.

“Where's she going, anyway?” marvelled little Mr. Smith, the stationer.
“She's away beyond the wrecks already.”

“Probably Marsh has found the seas heavier than he thought and is afraid
to turn her broadside,” guessed his companion.

“Afraid, hell!” snorted a riverman who overheard.

Nevertheless the SPRITE was now so distant that the loom of the great
seas on the horizon swallowed her from view, save when she rose on the
crest of some mighty billow.

“Well, what is he doing 'way out there then?” challenged Mr. Smith's
friend with some asperity.

“Do'no,” replied the riverman, “but whatever it is, it's all right as
long as Buck Marsh is at the wheel.”

“There, she's turned now,” Mr. Smith interposed.

Beneath the trail of black smoke she had shifted direction. And then
with startling swiftness the SPRITE darted out of the horizon into full
view. For the first time the spectators realised the size and weight of
the seas. Not even the sullen pounding to pieces of the vessels on the
bar had so impressed them as the sight of the tug coasting with railroad
speed down the rush of a comber like a child's toy-boat in the surf. One
moment the whole of her deck was visible as she was borne with the wave;
the next her bow alone showed high as the back suction caught her and
dragged her from the crest into the hollow. A sea rose behind. Nothing
of the tug was to be seen. It seemed that no power or skill could
prevent her feeling overwhelmed. Yet somehow always she staggered out
of the gulf until she caught the force of the billow and was again cast
forward like a chip.

“Maybe they ain't catchin' p'ticular hell at that wheel to hold her from
yawing!” muttered the tug captain to his neighbour, who happened to be
Mr. Duncan, the minister.

Almost before Carroll had time to see that the little craft was coming
in, she had arrived at the outer line of breakers. Here the combers,
dragged by the bar underneath, crested, curled over, and fell with a
roar, just as in milder weather the surf breaks on the beach. When the
SPRITE rushed at this outer line of white-water, a woman in the crowd
screamed.

But at the edge of destruction the SPRITE came to a shuddering stop. Her
powerful propellers had been set to the reverse. They could not hold
her against the forward fling of the water, but what she lost thus she
regained on the seaward slopes of the waves and in their hollows. Thus
she hovered on the edge of the breakers, awaiting her chance.

As long as the seas rolled in steadily, and nothing broke, she was safe.
But if one of the waves should happen to crest and break, as many of
them did, the weight of water catching the tug on her flat, broad stern
deck would indubitably bury her. The situation was awful in its extreme
simplicity. Would Captain Marsh see his opportunity before the law of
chances would bring along the wave that would overwhelm him?

A realisation of the crisis came to the crowd on the beach. At once
the terrible strain of suspense tugged at their souls. Each conducted
himself according to his nature. The hardy men of the river and
the woods set their teeth until the cheek muscles turned white, and
blasphemed softly and steadily. Two or three of the townsmen walked up
and down the space of a dozen feet. One, the woman who had screamed,
prayed aloud in short hysterical sentences.

“O God! Save them, O Lord! O Lord!”

Orde stood on top of a half-buried log, his hat in his hand, his
entire being concentrated on the manoeuvre being executed. Only Newmark
apparently remained as calm as ever, leaning against an upright timber,
his arms folded, and an unlighted cigar as usual between his lips.

Methodically every few moments he removed his eyeglasses and wiped the
lenses free of spray.

Suddenly, without warning, occurred one of those inexplicable lulls that
interpose often amid the wildest uproars. For the briefest instant other
sounds than the roar of the wind and surf were permitted the multitude
on the beach. They heard the grinding of timbers from the stricken
ships, and the draining away of waters. And distinctly they heard the
faint, far tinkle of the jangler calling again for “full speed ahead.”

Between two waves the SPRITE darted forward directly for the nearest of
the wrecks. Straight as an arrow's flight she held until from the crowd
went up a groan.

“She'll collide!” some one put it into words.

But at the latest moment the tug swerved, raced past, and turned on a
long diagonal across the end of the bar toward the piers.

Captain Marsh had chosen his moment with exactitude. To the utmost he
had taken advantage of the brief lull of jumbled seas after the “three
largest waves” had swept by. Yet in shallow water and with the strong
inshore set, even that lull was all too short. The SPRITE was staggered
by the buffets of the smaller breakers; her speed was checked, her stern
was dragged around. For an instant it seemed that the back suction would
hold her in its grip. She tore herself from the grasp of the current.
Enveloped in a blinding hail of spray she struggled desperately to
extricate herself from the maelstrom in which she was involved before
the resumption of the larger seas should roll her over and over to
destruction.

Already these larger seas were racing in from the open. To Carroll,
watching breathless and wide-eyed in that strange passive and receptive
state peculiar to imaginative natures, they seemed alive. And the
SPRITE, too, appeared to be, not a fabric and a mechanism controlled by
men, but a sentient creature struggling gallantly on her own volition.

Far out in the lake against the tumbling horizon she saw heave up for
a second the shoulder of a mighty wave. And instinctively she perceived
this wave as a deadly enemy of the little tug, and saw it bending all
its great energies to hurrying in on time to catch the victim before it
could escape. To this wave she gave all her attention, watching for
it after it had sunk momentarily below its fellows, recognising it
instantly as it rose again. The spasms of dismay and relief among the
crowd about her she did not share at all. The crises they indicated did
not exist for her. Until the wave came in, Carroll knew, the SPRITE,
no matter how battered and tossed, would be safe. Her whole being was
concentrated in a continually shifting calculation of the respective
distances between the tug and the piers, the tug and the relentlessly
advancing wave.

“Oh, go!” she exhorted the SPRITE under her breath.

Then the crowd, too, caught with its slower perceptions the import
of the wave. Carroll felt the electric thrill of apprehension shiver
through it. Huge and towering, green and flecked with foam the wave came
on now calmly and deliberately as though sure. The SPRITE was off the
end of the pier when the wave lifted her, just in the position her enemy
would have selected to crush her life out against the cribs. Slowly the
tug rose against its shoulder, was lifted onward, poised; and then
with a swift forward thrust the wave broke, smothering the pier and
lighthouse beneath tons of water.

A low, agonised wail broke from the crowd. And then--and then--over
beyond the pier down which the wave, broken and spent but formidable
still, was ripping its way, they saw gliding a battered black stack from
which still poured defiantly clouds of gray smoke.

For ten seconds the spectators could not believe their eyes. They had
distinctly seen the SPRITE caught between a resistless wall of water
and the pier; where she should have been crushed like the proverbial
egg-shell. Yet there she was--or her ghost.

Then a great cheer rose up against the wind. The crowd went crazy. Mere
acquaintances hugged each other and danced around and around through
the heavy sands. Several women had hysterics. The riverman next to Mr.
Duncan opened his mouth and swore so picturesquely that, as he afterward
told his chum, “I must've been plumb inspired for the occasion.” Yet it
never entered Mr. Duncan's ministerial head to reprove the blasphemy.
Orde jumped down from his half-buried log and clapped his hat on his
head. Newmark did not alter his attitude nor his expression.

The SPRITE was safe. For the few moments before she glided the length of
the long pier to stiller water this fact sufficed.

“I wonder if she got the line aboard,” speculated the tug-boat captain
at last.

The crowd surged over to the piers again. Below them rose and fell the
SPRITE. All the fancy scroll-work of her upper works, the cornice of her
deck house, the light rigging of her cabin had disappeared, leaving raw
and splintered wood to mark their attachments. The tall smokestack
was bent awry, but its supports had held, which was fortunate since
otherwise the fires would have been drowned out. At the moment, Captain
Marsh was bending over examining a bad break in the overhang--the only
material damage the tug had sustained.

At sight of him the crowd set up a yell. He paid no attention. One of
the life-saving men tossed a mooring line ashore. It was seized by a
dozen men. Then for the first time somebody noticed that although the
tug had come to a standstill, her screw was still turning slowly over
and over, holding her against the erratic strong jerking of a slender
rope that ran through her stern chocks and into the water.

“He got it aboard!” yelled the man, pointing.

Another cheer broke out. The life-saving crew leaped to the deck.
They were immediately followed by a crowd of enthusiasts eager to
congratulate and question. But Captain Marsh would have none of them.

“Get off my tug!” he shouted. “Do you want to swamp her? What do you
suppose we put that line aboard for? Fun? Get busy and use it! Rescue
that crew now!”

Abashed, the enthusiasts scrambled back. The life-saving crew took
charge. It was necessary to pass the line around the end of the pier
and back to the beach. This was a dangerous job, and one requiring
considerable power and ingenuity, for the strain on the line imposed
by the waters was terrific; and the breaking seas rendered work on the
piers extremely hazardous. However, the life-saving captain took charge
confidently enough. His crew began to struggle out the pier, while
volunteers, under his personal direction, manipulated the reel.

A number of the curious lingered about the SPRITE. Marsh and Orde were
in consultation over the smashed stern, and did not look as though they
cared to be disturbed. Harvey leaned out his little square door.

“Don' know nuffin 'bout it,” said he, “'ceptin' she done rolled 'way
over 'bout foh times. Yass she did, suh! I know. I felt her doin' it.”

“No,” he answered a query. “I wasn't what you-all would call scairt,
that is, not really SCAIRT--jess a little ne'vous. All I had to do was
to feed her slabs and listen foh my bell. You see, Cap'n Ma'sh, he was
in cha'ge.”

“No, sir,” Captain Marsh was saying emphatically to his employer.
“I can't figure it out except on one thing. You see it's stove from
UNDERNEATH. A sea would have smashed it from above.”

“Perhaps you grounded in between seas out there,” suggested Orde.

Marsh smiled grimly.

“I reckon I'd have known it,” said he. “No, sir! It sounds wild, but
it's the only possible guess. That last sea must've lifted us bodily
right over the corner of the pier.”

“Well--maybe,” assented Orde doubtfully.

“Sure thing,” repeated Marsh with conviction.

“Well, you'd better not tell 'em so unless you want to rank in with Old
Man Ananias,” ended Orde. “It was a good job. Pretty dusty out there,
wasn't it?”

“Pretty dusty,” grinned Marsh.

They turned away together and were at once pounced on by Leopold Lincoln
Bunn, the local reporter, a callow youth aflame with the chance for a
big story of more than local interest.

“Oh, Captain Marsh!” he cried. “How did you get around the pier? It
looked as though the wave had you caught.”

Orde glanced at his companion in curiosity.

“On roller skates,” replied Marsh.

Leopold tittered nervously.

“Could you tell me how you felt when you were out there in the worst of
it?” he inquired.

“Oh, hell!” said Marsh grumpily, stalking away.

“Don't interview for a cent, does he?” grinned Orde.

“Oh, Mr. Orde! Perhaps you--”

“Don't you think we'd better lend a hand below?” suggested Orde,
pointing to the beach.

The wild and picturesque work of rescue was under way. The line had
been successfully brought to the left of the lighthouse. To it had been
attached the rope, and to that the heavy cable. These the crew of the
schooner had dragged out and made fast to a mast. The shore end passed
over a tall scissors. When the cable was tightened the breeches buoy was
put into commission, and before long the first member of the crew was
hauled ashore, plunging in and out of the waves as the rope tightened or
slackened. He was a flaxen-haired Norwegian, who stamped his feet, shook
his body and grinned comically at those about him. He accepted with
equanimity a dozen drinks of whisky thrust at him from all sides,
swigged a mug of the coffee a few practical women were making over
an open fire, and opposed to Leopold Lincoln Bunn's frantic efforts a
stolid and baffling density. Of none of these attentions did he seem to
stand in especial need.

The crew and its volunteers worked quickly. When the last man had come
ashore, the captain of the life-saving service entered the breeches buoy
and caused himself to be hauled through the smother to the wreck. After
an interval, a signal jerked back. The buoy was pulled in empty and the
surf car substituted. In it were piled various utensils of equipment.
One man went with it, and several more on its next trip, until nearly
the whole crew were aboard the wreck.

Carroll and Mina stayed until dusk and after, watching the long heavy
labour of rescue. Lines had to be rocketed from the schooner to the
other vessels. Then by their means cable communication had to be
established with the shore. After this it was really a matter of routine
to run the crew to the beach, though cruel, hard work, and dangerous.
The wrecks were continually swept by the great seas; and at any moment
the tortured fabrics might give way, might dissolve completely in the
elements that so battered them. The women making the hot coffee found
their services becoming valuable. Big fires of driftwood were ignited.
They were useful for light as well as warmth.

By their illumination finally Orde discovered the two girls standing,
and paused long enough in his own heavy labour of assistance to draw
Carroll one side.

“You'd better go home now, sweetheart,” said he. “Bobby'll be waiting
for you, and the girls may be here in the crowd somewhere. There'll be
nobody to take care of him.”

“I suppose so,” she assented. “But hasn't it been exciting? Whose
vessels were they; do you know?”

Orde glanced at her strangely.

“They were ours,” said he.

She looked up at him, catching quickly the wrinkles of his brow and the
harassed anxiety in his eyes. Impulsively she pulled him down to her and
kissed him.

“Never mind, dear,” said she. “I care only if you do.”

She patted his great shoulders lightly and smiled up at him.

“Run, help!” she cried. “And come home as soon as you can. I'll have
something nice and hot all ready for you.”

She turned away, the smile still on her lips; but as soon as she was out
of sight, her face fell grave.

“Come, Mina!” she said to the younger girl. “Time to go.”

They toiled through the heavy sand to where, hours ago, they had left
Prince. That faithful animal dozed in his tracks and awoke reluctantly.

Carroll looked back. The fires leaped red and yellow. Against them
were the silhouettes of people, and in the farther circle of their
illumination were more people cast in bronze that flickered red. In
contrast to their glow the night was very dark. Only from the lake there
disengaged a faint gray light where the waters broke. The strength of
the failing wind still lifted the finer particles of sand. The organ of
the pounding surf filled the night with the grandeur of its music.




XXXV


Orde mounted the office stairs next day with a very heavy step. The loss
of the NORTH STAR and of the two schooners meant a great deal to him at
that time.

“It kicks us into somewhat of a hole,” he grumbled to Newmark.

“A loss is never pleasant,” replied the latter, “and it puts us out of
the carrying business for awhile. But we're insured.”

“I can't understand why Floyd started,” said Orde. “He ought to know
better than to face sure prospects of a fall blow. I'll tan his soul for
that, all right!”

“I'm afraid I'm partly responsible for his going,” put in Newmark.

“You!” cried Orde.

“Yes. You see that Smith and Mabley shipment was important enough
to strain a point for--and it's only twenty-four hours or so--and it
certainly didn't look to see me as if it were going to blow very soon.
Poor Floyd feels bad enough. He's about sick.”

Orde for the first time began to appreciate the pressure of his
circumstances. The loss on the cargo of “uppers” reached about 8,000,000
feet; which represented $20,000 in money. As for the NORTH STAR and her
consorts, save for the insurance, they were simply eliminated. They had
represented property. Now they were gone. The loss of $60,000 or so on
them, however, did not mean a diminution of the company's present cash
resources to that amount; and so did not immediately affect Orde's
calculations as to the payment of the notes which were now soon to come
due.

At this time the woods work increasingly demanded his attention.
He disappeared for a week, his organising abilities claimed for the
distribution of the road crews. When he returned to the office, Newmark,
with an air of small triumph, showed him contracts for the construction
of three new vessels.

“I get them for $55,000,” said he, “with $30,000 of it on long time.”

“Without consulting me!” cried Orde.

Newmark explained carefully that the action, seemingly so abrupt, had
really been taking advantage of a lucky opportunity.

“Otherwise,” he finished, “we shouldn't have been able to get the
job done for another year, at least. If that big Cronin contract goes
through--well, you know what that would mean in the shipyards--nobody
would get even a look-in. And McLeod is willing, in the meantime, to
give us a price to keep his men busy. So you see I had to close at once.
You can see what a short chance it was.”

“It's a good chance, all right,” admitted Orde; “but--why--that is,
I thought perhaps we'd job our own freighting for awhile--it never
occurred to me we'd build any more vessels until we'd recovered a
little.”

“Recovered,” Newmark repeated coldly. “I don't see what 'recovered' has
to do with it. If the mill burned down, we'd rebuild, wouldn't we? Even
if we were embarrassed--which we're not--we'd hardly care to acknowledge
publicly that we couldn't keep up our equipment. And as we're making
twelve or fifteen thousand a year out of our freighting, it seems to me
too good a business to let slip into other hands.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Orde, a trifle helplessly.

“Therefore I had to act without you,” Newmark finished. “I knew you'd
agree. That's right: isn't it?” he insisted.

“Yes, that's right,” agreed Orde drearily.

“You'll find copies of the contract on your desk,” Newmark closed the
matter. “And there's the tax lists. I wish you'd run them over.”

“Joe,” replied Orde, “I--I don't think I'll stay down town this morning.
I--”

Newmark glanced up keenly.

“You don't look a bit well,” said he; “kind of pale around the gills.
Bilious. Don't believe that camp grub quite agrees with you for a steady
diet.”

“Yes, that must be it,” assented Orde.

He closed his desk and went out. Newmark turned back to his papers. His
face was expressionless. From an inner pocket he produced a cigar which
he thrust between his teeth. The corners of his mouth slowly curved in a
grim smile.

Orde did not go home. Instead, he walked down Main Street to the docks
where he jumped into a rowboat lying in a slip, and with a few rapid
strokes shot out on the stream. In his younger days he had belonged to
a boat club, and had rowed in the “four.” He still loved the oar, and
though his racing days were past, he maintained a clean-lined, rather
unstable little craft which it was his delight to propel rapidly with
long spoon-oars whenever he needed exercise. To-day, however, he was
content to drift.

The morning was still and golden. The crispness of late fall had infused
a wine into the air. The sky was a soft, blue-gray; the sand-hills
were a dazzling yellow. Orde did not try to think; he merely faced the
situation, staring it in the face until it should shrink to its true
significance.

One thing he felt distinctly; yet could not without a struggle bring
himself to see. The California lands must be mortgaged. If he could
raise a reasonable sum of money on them, he would still be perfectly
able to meet his notes. He hated fiercely to raise that money.

It was entirely a matter of sentiment. Orde realised the fact clearly,
and browbeat his other self with a savage contempt. Nevertheless his
dream had been to keep the western timber free and unencumbered--for
Bobby. Dreams are harder to give up than realities.

He fell into the deepest reflections which were broken only when the
pounding of surf warned him he had drifted almost to the open lake.
After all, there was no essential difference between owing money to a
man in Michigan and to a man in California. That was the net result of
his struggle.

“When the time comes, we'll just borrow that money on a long-time
mortgage, like sensible people,” he said aloud, “and quit this
everlasting scrabbling.”

Back to town he pulled with long vigorous strokes, skittering his
feathered spoon-oars lightly over the tops of the wavelets. At the slip
he made fast the boat, and a few minutes later re-entered the office,
his step springy, his face glowing. Newmark glanced up.

“Hullo!” said he. “Back again? You look better.”

“Exercise,” said Orde, in his hearty manner. “Exercise, old boy! You
ought to try it. Greatest thing in the world. Just took a row to the end
of the piers and back, and I'm as fit as a fiddle!”




XXXVI


Orde immediately set into motion the machinery of banking to borrow on
the California timber. Taylor took charge of this, as the only man in
Monrovia who had Orde's confidence. At the end of a necessary delay Orde
received notice that the West had been heard from. He stepped across the
hall to the lawyer's office.

“Well, Frank,” said he, “glad we managed to push it through with so
little trouble.”

Taylor arose, shut carefully the door into his outer office, walked
to the window, looked contemplatively out upon the hotel backyard, and
returned to his desk.

“But there is trouble,” said he curtly.

“What's the matter?” asked Orde.

“The banks refuse the loan.”

Orde stared at him in blank astonishment.

“Refuse!” he echoed.

“Absolutely.”

“What grounds can they possibly have for that?”

“I can't make out exactly from these advices. It's something about the
title.”

“But I thought you went over the title.”

“I did,” stated Taylor emphatically; “and I'll stake my reputation as
a lawyer that everything is straight and clear from the Land Office
itself. I've wired for an explanation; and we ought surely to know
something definite by tomorrow.”

With this uncertainty Orde was forced to be content. For the first time
in his business career a real anxiety gnawed at his vitals. He had been
in many tight places; but somehow heretofore success or failure had
seemed to him about immaterial, like points gained or conceded in the
game; a fresh start was always so easy, and what had been already won as
yet unreal. Now the game itself was at issue. Property, reputation, and
the family's future were at stake. When the three had lived in the tiny
house by the church, it had seemed that no adversity could touch them.
But now that long use had accustomed them to larger quarters, servants,
luxuries, Orde could not conceive the possibility of Carroll's ever
returning to that simplest existence. Carroll could have told him
otherwise; but of course he did not as yet bring the possibility before
her. She had economised closely, these last few years. Orde was proud
of her. He was also fiercely resentful that his own foolishness, or
untoward circumstances, or a combination of both should jeopardise her
future. Therefore he awaited further news with the greatest impatience.

The message came the following day, as Taylor had predicted. Taylor
handed it to him without comment.

“Land Office under investigation,” Orde read. “Fraudulent entries
suspected. All titles clouded until decision is reached.”

“What do you suppose that means?” asked Orde, although he knew well
enough.

Taylor glanced up at his dull eyes with commiseration.

“They simply won't lend good money on an uncertainty,” said he.

“Frank,” said Orde, rousing himself with an effort, “I've got to be
here. I couldn't get away this winter if my life depended on it. And I
won't even have time to pay much attention to it from here. I want you
to go to California and look after those interests for me. Never mind
your practice, man,” as Taylor tried to interrupt him. “Make what
arrangements you please; but go. It'll be like a sort of vacation to
you. You need one. And I'll make it worth your while. Take Clara
with you. She'll like California. Now don't say no. It's important.
Straighten it out as quick as you can: and the minute it IS straight
borrow that money on it, and send it on p.d.q.”

Taylor thoughtfully tapped his palm with the edge of his eye-glasses.

“All right,” he said at last.

“Good!” cried Orde, rising and holding out his hand.

He descended the dark stairs to the street, where he turned down toward
the river. There he sat on a pile for nearly an hour, quite oblivious to
the keen wind of latter November which swept up over the scum ice from
the Lake. At length he hopped down and made his way to the office of the
Welton Lumber Co.

“Look here, Welton,” he demanded abruptly when he had reached that
operator's private office, “how much of a cut are you going to make this
year?”

“About twenty million,” replied Welton. “Why?”

“Just figuring on the drive,” said Orde, nodding a farewell.

He had the team harnessed, and, assuming his buffalo-fur coat, drove to
the offices of all the men owning timber up and down the river. When he
had collected his statistics, he returned to his desk, where he filled
the backs of several envelopes with his characteristically minute
figures. At the close of his calculations he nodded his head vigorously
several times.

“Joe,” he called across to his partner, “I'm going to cut that whole
forty million we have left.”

Newmark did not turn. After a moment his dry expressionless voice came
back.

“I thought that we figured that as a two-years' job.”

“We did, but I'm going to clean up the whole thing this year.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

“Sure thing,” replied Orde. Then under his breath, and quite to himself,
he added: “I've got to!”




XXXVII


The duel had now come to grapples. Orde was fighting for his very life.
The notes given by Newmark and Orde would come due by the beginning of
the following summer. Before that time Orde must be able to meet them
personally, or, as by the agreement with Newmark, his stock in the Boom
Company would be turned in to the firm. This would, of course, spell
nearly a total loss of it, as far as Orde was concerned.

The chief anxiety under which the riverman laboured, however, was
the imminent prospect of losing under the mortgage all the Northern
Peninsula timber. He had thought that the firm would be able to step in
for its redemption, even if he personally found himself unable to
meet the obligation. Three hundred million feet would seem to be too
important a matter to let go under so small a mortgage. Now as the time
approached, he realised that if he could not pay the notes, the firm
would certainly be unable to do so. What with the second mortgage,
due two years later, and to be met by Newmark; with the outstanding
obligations; with the new enterprise of the vessels ordered from Duncan
McLeod, Newmark and Orde would be unable to raise anything like the
necessary amount. To his personal anxieties Orde added a deep and bitter
self-reproach at having involved his partner in what amounted to a total
loss.

Spurred doubly by these considerations, then, he fell upon the woods
work with unparalleled ferocity. A cut and sale of the forty million
feet remaining of the firm's up-river holdings, together with the tolls
to be collected for driving the river that spring would, if everything
went right and no change in the situation took place, bring Orde through
the venture almost literally by “the skin of his teeth.” To cut forty
million feet, even in these latter days of improvements then unknown,
would be a task to strain to the utmost every resource of energy,
pluck, equipment and organisation. In 1880-81 the operators on the river
laughed good-humouredly over an evident madness.

Nevertheless Orde accomplished the task. To be sure he was largely
helped by a favourable winter. The cold weather came early and continued
late. Freezing preceded the snow, which was deep enough for good
travoying and to assure abundant freshet water in the spring, but not
too deep to interfere with the work. Orde increased his woods force;
and, contrary to his custom, he drove them mercilessly. He was that
winter his own walking-boss, and lived constantly in the woods. The
Rough Red had charge of the banking, where his aggressive, brutal
personality kept the rollways free from congestion. For congestion there
means delay in unloading the sleighs; and that in turn means a drag in
the woods work near the skidways at the other end of the line. Tom North
and Tim Nolan and Johnny Sims and Jim Denning were foremen back in the
forest. Every one had an idea, more or less vague, that the Old Fellow
had his back to the wall. Late into the night the rude torches, made
quite simply from brown stone jugs full of oil and with wicks in their
necks, cast their flickering glare over the ice of the haul-roads. And
though generally in that part of Michigan the thaws begin by the first
or second week in March, this year zero weather continued even to the
eighth of April. When the drive started, far up toward headwaters, the
cut was banked for miles along the stream, forty million feet of it to
the last timber.

The strain over, Orde slept the clock around and awoke to the further
but familiar task of driving the river. He was very tired; but his
spirit was at peace. As always after the event, he looked back on his
anxieties with a faint amusement over their futility.

From Taylor he had several communications. The lawyer confessed himself
baffled as to the purpose and basis of the Land Office investigation.
The whole affair appeared to be tangled in a maze of technicalities and
a snarl of red-tape which it would take some time to unravel. In the
meantime Taylor was enjoying himself; and was almost extravagant in his
delight over the climate and attractions of Southern California.

Orde did not much care for this delay. He saw his way clear to meeting
his obligations without the necessity of hypothecating the California
timber; and was the better pleased for it. With the break-up of spring
he started confidently with the largest drive in the history of the
river, a matter of over two hundred million feet.

This tremendous mass of timber moved practically in three sections. The
first, and smallest, comprised probably thirty millions. It started
from the lowermost rollways on the river, drove rapidly through the
more unobstructed reaches, and was early pocketed above Monrovia in
the Company's distributing booms. The second and largest section of a
hundred million came from the main river and its largest tributaries. It
too made a safe drive; and was brought to rest in the main booms and in
a series of temporary or emergency booms built along the right bank and
upstream from the main works. The third section containing a remainder
of about seventy million had by the twenty-sixth of June reached the
slack water above the city of Redding.




XXXVIII


The morning of June twenty-sixth dawned clear. Orde was early on the
road before the heat of the day. He drove his buckboard rapidly over the
twelve miles that separated his home from the distributing booms, for he
wanted at once to avoid the heat of the first sun and to arrive at the
commencement of the day's work. After a glance at the river, he entered
the tiny office and set about the examination of the tally sheets left
by the foreman. While he was engaged in this checking, the foreman, Tom
North, entered.

“The river's rising a little”? he remarked conversationally as he
reached for the second set of tally boards.

“You're crazy,” muttered Orde, without looking up. “It's clear as a
bell; and there have been no rains reported from anywhere.”

“It's rising a little, just the same,” insisted North, going out.

An hour later Orde, having finished his clerical work, walked out over
the booms. The water certainly had risen; and considerably at that. A
decided current sucked through the interstices in the piling. The penned
logs moved uneasily.

“I should think it was rising!” said Orde to himself, as he watched the
slowly moving water. “I wonder what's up. It can't be merely those rains
three days ago.”

He called one of the younger boys to him, Jimmy Powers by name.

“Here, Jimmy,” said he, “mark one of these piles and keep track of how
fast the water rises.”

For some time the river remained stationary, then resumed its slow
increase. Orde shook his head.

“I don't like June floods,” he told Tom North. “A fellow can understand
an ordinary spring freshet, and knows about how far it will go; but
these summer floods are so confounded mysterious. I can't figure out
what's struck the old stream, unless they're having almighty heavy rains
up near headwaters.”

By three o'clock in the afternoon Jimmy Powers reported a rise since
morning of six inches. The current had proportionately increased in
power.

“Tom,” said Orde to the old riverman, “I'm going to send Marsh down for
the pile-drivers and some cable. The barge company has some fifteen inch
manilla.”

North laughed.

“What in blazes do you expect to do with that?” he inquired.

“We may need them,” Orde stated with conviction. “Everything's safe
enough now; and probably will continue so; but I can't afford to take
chances. If those logs ever break through they'll go on out to Lake
Michigan and there they wouldn't be worth the salvage.”

Tom North stared at his principal in surprise.

“That's a mighty long chance,” he commented. “Never knew you to come so
near croaking before, Jack.”

“If this drive goes out, it surely busts me,” replied Orde, “and I'm not
taking even long chances.”

Captain Marsh, returning with the SPRITE, brought an evening paper
and news from the telegraph offices. A cloudburst in the China Creek
district followed by continued heavy rains was responsible for the
increased water. The papers mentioned this only incidentally, and in
explanation. Their columns were filled with an account of the big log
jam that had formed above the iron railroad bridge. The planing mill's
booms had given way under pressure and the contents had piled down
stream against the buttresses. Before steps could be taken to clear the
way, the head of the drive, hurried by the excess water, had piled in on
top. Immediately a jam formed, increasing in weight each moment, until
practically the entire third section had piled up back of the bridge.

The papers occupied themselves with the picturesque side of the affair.
None expressed any anxiety as to the bridge. It was a new structure,
each of whose bents weighed over a hundred tons. A fall of a few inches
only would suffice to lock the jam solidly, thus relieving whatever
pressure the mass exerted against the iron bridge. That the water would
shortly go down was of course inevitable at this time of year. It would
be a big jam for the rivermen to break, however.

“Do you think you'll go up there?” asked North.

Orde shook his head.

“They're in a nice pickle,” he acknowledged; “but Nolan's in charge and
will do his best. I think we may have troubles of our own right here at
home.”

He slept that night at the booms. The water, contrary to all
expectation, rose steadily. By morning it had crept so far up the piles
that there began to be danger that it would overflow their tops. In that
case, of course, the logs in the booms would also run out.

“Guess it's time we did a little work,” remarked Orde.

He set a crew of men to raising the height of the piling by tying logs
firmly to the bolted timbers atop. This would take care of an extra
two feet of water; a two feet beyond all previous records. Another crew
stretched the fifteen inch manilla cables across the field of logs in
order to segregate them into several units of mass, and so prevent them
from piling up at the down-stream end of the enclosure. The pile-driver
began to drop its hammer at spots of weakness. In spite of the
accelerated current and the increased volume of the river, everything
was soon shipshape and safe.

“We're all right now,” said Orde. “The only thing I'm a little uneasy
about is those confounded temporary booms upstream. Still they're all
right unless they get to piling up. Then we'll have to see what we can
do to hold them. I think as soon as the driver is through down at the
sorting end, she'd better drive a few clumps of piles to strengthen the
swing when it is shut. Then if the logs pile down on us from above, we
can hold them there.”

About two hours later the pile-driver moved up. The swing was opened;
and the men began to drive clumps of piles in such a position as to
strengthen the swing when the latter should be shut. It was a slow
job. Each pile had to be taken from the raft at the stern of the scow,
erected in the “carrier,” and pounded into place by the heavy hammer
raised and let drop in the derrick at the bow.

Long before the task was finished, the logs in the temporary booms had
begun to slide atop one another, to cross and tangle, until at last
the river bed inside the booms was filled with a jam of formidable
dimensions. From beneath it the water boiled in eddies. Orde, looking at
it, roused himself to sudden activity.

“Get a move on,” he advised Captain Aspinwall of the driver. “If that
jam breaks on us, we want to be ready; and if it don't break before you
get this swing strengthened, maybe we can hold her where she is. There's
no earthly doubt that those boom piles will never stand up when they get
the full pressure of the freshet.”

He departed up river on a tour of inspection from which he returned
almost immediately.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” he cried. “She can't last much longer!”

Indeed even to the men on the pile-driver, evidences of the pressure
sustained by the slender boom piles were not wanting. Above the steady
gurgle of the water and the intermittent puffing and other noises of the
work, they could hear a creaking and groaning of timbers full of portent
to those who could read the signs.

The driver's crew laboured desperately, hoisting the piles into the
carriage, tripping the heavy hammer, sending it aloft again, binding
feverishly the clumps of piles together by means of cables. Each man
worked with an eye over his shoulder, fearful of the power that menaced
him.

Two of the clumps had been placed and bound; a third was nearly
finished, when suddenly, with a crack and a roar the upper booms gave
way, projecting their logs upon the opening and the driver.

The half dozen members of the crew, caught utterly unaware in spite
of the half warning they had been receiving for an hour past, were
scattered by the winds of a panic. Two or three flung themselves on
their faces; several ran from one end of the scow to the other; one
leaped into the river! Imminent destruction seemed upon them.

Tom North, at the winch that operated the arm of the swing, however,
retained his presence of mind. At the first sag outward of the boom
piles he set in operation the machinery that closed the gate. Clumsy and
slow as was his mechanism, he nevertheless succeeded in getting the
long arm started. The logs, rushing in back of it, hurried it shut.
Immediately they jammed again, and heaped up in a formidable tangle
behind the barrier. Tom North, his little black pipe between his teeth,
stood calm, the lever of his winch in his hand. A short three feet from
the spot on which he stood, the first saw log of the many that might
have overwhelmed him thrust forward its ugly head. The wash of the water
lifted the huge pile-driver bodily and deposited it with a crash half on
the bank and half in the water.

Instantly after the first break Orde had commenced running out over the
booms from the shore.

“Good boy, Tom!” he shot at North as he passed.

Across the breast of the jam he hurried, and to the other bank where
the pile-driver lay. The crew had recovered from their panic, and were
ashore gazing curiously underneath the scow. Captain Aspinwall examined
the supports of the derrick on deck.

“That was lucky,” said Orde briefly to Aspinwall. “How's the damage?
Stove you in?”

“I--I don't think so,” replied the captain, turning a rather perturbed
face to Orde.

“That's good. I'll send over the tug to help get her afloat. We've got
our work cut out for us now. As soon as you're afloat, blow your whistle
and I'll come over to tell you what to do.”

“You don't expect me to work my driver under the face of that jam!”
 cried the captain.

“Certainly,” snapped Orde, wheeling.

“Not me!” said Aspinwall positively. “I know when I've got enough!”

“What's the matter?” asked Orde.

“It isn't safe,” replied the captain; “and I don't intend to risk my men
or my driver.”

Orde stood for a moment stock-still; then with a snort of anger he
leaped to the deck, seized the man by the neck and thrust him bodily
over the side to the bank.

“Safe, you white-livered skunk!” he roared. “Safe! Go over in the middle
of that ten-acre lot and lie down on your face and see if you feel safe
there! Get out; the whole pack of you! I'm in charge here now.”

Captain Aspinwall picked himself up, his face red with anger.

“Get off my driver,” he snarled. “Put that man off.”

Orde seized a short heavy bar.

“This driver is requisitioned,” said he. “Get out! I haven't time to
fool with you. I've got to save my logs.”

They hesitated; and while they did so Tom North and some others of the
crew came running across the jam.

“Get a cable to the winch,” Orde shouted at these as soon as they were
within hearing. “And get Marsh up here with the SPRITE. We've got to get
afloat.”

He paid no more attention to the ejected crew. The latter, overawed
by the rivermen, who now gathered in full force, took the part of
spectators.

A few minutes' hard work put the driver afloat. Fortunately its raft of
piles had not become detached in the upheaval.

“Tom,” said Orde briskly to North, “you know the pile-driver business.
Pick out your crew, and take charge.”

In ten seconds of time the situation had changed from one of comparative
safety to one of extreme gravity. The logs, broken loose from the upper
temporary booms, now jammed against the swing and against the other logs
already filling the main booms. Already the pressure was beginning to
tell, as the water banked up behind the mass. The fifteen-inch cables
tightened slowly but mightily; some of the piles began to groan and rub
one against the other; here and there a log deliberately up-ended above
the level.

Orde took charge of the situation in its entirety, as a general might.
He set North immediately to driving clumps each of sixteen piles, bound
to solidity by chains, and so arranged in angles and slants as to direct
the enormous pressure toward either bank, thus splitting the enemy's
power. The small driver owned by the Boom Company drove similar clumps
here, there and everywhere that need arose or weakness developed.
Seventy-five men opposed, to the weight of twenty million tons of logs
and a river of water, the expedients invented by determination and
desperation.

As in a virulent disease, the symptoms developed rapidly when once the
course of the malady was assured. After the first rush, when the upper
booms broke, nothing spectacular occurred. Steadily and relentlessly the
logs, packed close together down to the very bed of the stream, pressed
outward against the frail defences. Orde soon found himself forced from
the consideration of definite plans of campaign. He gave over formal
defences, and threw his energies to saving the weak places which rapidly
developed. By the most tremendous exertions he seemed but just able
to keep even. So closely balanced was the equilibrium between the
improvisation of defence and the increase of pressure behind the jam
that it seemed as if even a moment's breathing spell would bring the
deluge. Piles quivered, bent slowly outward--immediately, before the
logs behind them could stir, the pile-driver must do its work. Back
and forth darted the SPRITE and her sister-tug the SPRAY towing the
pile-drivers or the strings of piles. Under the frowning destruction
that a breath might loosen, the crews had to do their work. And if ever
that breath should come, there would be no chance for escape. Crushed
and buried, the men and their craft alike would be borne with the
breaking jam to an unknown grave in the Lake. Every man knew it.

Darkness came. No one stopped for food. By the light of lanterns the
struggle went on, doubly terrifying in the mystery of night. By day
the men, practised in such matters, could at least judge of the
probabilities of a break. At night they had to work blindly, uncertain
at what moment the forces they could not see would cut loose to
overwhelm them.

Morning found no change in the situation. The water rose steadily;
the logs grew more and more restive; the defences weaker and more
inadequate. Orde brought out steaming pails of coffee which the men
gulped down between moments. No one thought of quitting. They were afire
with the flame of combat, and were set obstinately on winning even in
the face of odds. About ten o'clock they were reinforced by men from the
mills downstream. The Owners of those mills had no mind to lose their
logs. Another pile-driver was also sent up from the Government work.
Without this assistance the jam must surely have gone out. Spectators
marvelled how it held as it did. The mass seemed constantly to quiver
on the edge of motion. Here and there over the surface of the jam single
logs could be seen popping suddenly into the air, propelled as an apple
seed is projected from between a boy's thumb and forefinger. Some of
the fifteen-inch cables stretched to the shore parted. One, which passed
once around an oak tree before reaching its shore anchorage, actually
buried itself out of sight in the hard wood. Bunches of piles bent,
twisted, or were cut off as though they had been but shocks of Indian
corn. The current had become so swift that the tugs could not hold the
drivers against it; and as a consequence, before commencing operations,
special mooring piles had to be driven. Each minute threatened to bring
an end to the jam, yet it held; and without rest the dogged little
insects under its face toiled to gain an inch on the waters.




XXXIX


All that day and the next night the fight was hand to hand, without the
opportunity of a breathing space. Then Orde, bareheaded and dishevelled,
strung to a high excitement, but cool as a veteran under fire, began to
be harassed by annoyances. The piles provided for the drivers gave out.
Newmark left, ostensibly to purchase more. He did not return. Tom North
and Jim Denning, their eyes burning deep in their heads for lack of
sleep, came to Orde holding to him symbolically their empty hands.

“No more piles,” they said briefly.

“Get 'em,” said Orde with equal brevity. “Newmark will have enough here
shortly. In the meantime, get them.”

North and his friend disappeared, taking with them the crews of the
drivers and the two tugs. After an interval they returned towing small
rafts of the long timbers. Orde did not make any inquiries; nor until
days later did he see a copy of the newspaper telling how a lawless gang
of rivermen had driven away the railroad men and stolen the railroad's
property. These piles lasted five or six hours. Tom North placed and
drove them accurately and deliberately, quite unmindful of the constant
danger. A cold fire seemed to consume the man, inflaming his courage and
his dogged obstinacy. Once a wing of the jam broke suddenly just as his
crew had placed a pile in the carrier. The scow was picked up, whirled
around, carried bodily a hundred feet, and deposited finally with a
crash. The instant the craft steadied and even before any one could tell
whether or no the danger was past, Tom cut loose the hammer and drove
that pile!

“I put you in that carrier to be DROVE!” he shouted viciously, “and
drove you'll be, if we ARE goin' to hell!”

When the SPRAY shouldered the scow back to position that one pile
was left standing upright in the channel, a monument to the blind
determination of the man.

Fortunately the wing break carried with it but a few logs; but it
sufficed to show, if demonstration were needed, what would happen if any
more serious break should occur.

Orde was everywhere. Long since he had lost his hat; and over his
forehead and into his eyes the strands of his hair whipped tousled and
unkempt. Miles and miles he travelled; running along the tops of the
booms, over the surface of the jam, spying the weakening places, and
hurrying to them a rescue. He seemed tireless, omnipresent, alive to
every need. It was as though his personality alone held in correlation
these struggling forces; as though were he to relax for an instant his
effort they would burst forth with the explosion of long-pent energies.

Toward noon the piles gave out again.

“Where in HELL is Newmark!” exploded Orde, and immediately was himself
again, controlled and resourceful. He sent North and a crew of men to
cut piles from standing timber in farm wood lots near the river.

“Haul them out with your winch,” said he. “If the owners object, stand
them off with your peavies. Get them anyway.”

About three of the afternoon the LUCY BELLE splattered up stream from
the village, carrying an excursion to see the jam. Captain Simpson
brought her as close in as possible. The waves raised by her awkward
paddle-wheel and her clumsy lines surged among the logs and piles. Orde
looked on this with distrust.

“Go tell him to pull out of that,” he instructed Jimmy Powers “The
confounded old fool ought to know better than that. Tell him it's
dangerous. If the jam goes out, it'll carry him to Kingdom Come.”

Jimmy Powers returned red-faced from his interview.

“He told me to go to hell,” he said shortly.

“Oh, he did,” snapped Orde. “I should think we had enough without that
old idiot!”

With the short nervous leaps of a suppressed anger he ran down to where
the SPRITE had just towed the Number One driver into a new position.

“Lay me alongside the LUCY BELLE,” he told Marsh.

But Simpson, in a position of importance at last, was disinclined to
listen. He had worn his blue clothes and brass buttons for a good many
years in charge only of boxes and barrels. Now at a stroke he found
himself commander over tenscore people. Likewise, at fifty cents a head,
he foresaw a good thing as long as high water should last. He had risen
nobly to the occasion; for he had even hoisted his bunting and brought
with him the local brass band. Orde, brusque in his desire to hurry
through an affair of minor importance, rubbed the man the wrong way.

“I reckon I've some rights on this river,” Captain Simpson concluded the
argument, “and I ain't agoin' to be bulldozed out of them.”

The excursionists, typical “trippers” from Redding, Holland, Monrovia
and Muskegon, cheered this sentiment and jeered at Orde.

Orde nodded briefly.

“Marsh,” said he to his captain in a low voice, “get a crew and take
them in charge. Run 'em off.”

As soon as the tug touched the piling, he was off and away, paying no
further attention to a matter already settled. Captain Marsh called a
dozen rivermen to him; laid the SPRITE alongside the LUCY BELLE, and in
spite of Simpson's scandalised protests and an incipient panic among
the passengers, thrust aside the regular crew of the steamship and
took charge. Quite calmly he surveyed the scene. From the height of the
steamer's bridge he could see abroad over the country. A warm June sun
flooded the landscape which was filled with the peace of early summer.
The river seemed to flow smoothly and quietly enough, in spite of the
swiftness of its current and the swollen volume of its waters. Only up
stream where the big jam shrugged and groaned did any element jar on
the peace of the scene; and even that, in contrast to the rest of the
landscape, afforded small hint to the inexperienced eye of the imminence
of a mighty destruction.

Captain Marsh paid little attention to all this. His eye swept rapidly
up and down where the banks used to be until he saw a cross current
deeper than the rest sweeping in athwart the inundated fields. He swung
over the wheel and rang to the engine-room for half speed ahead. Slowly
the LUCY BELLE answered. Quite calmly Captain Marsh rammed her through
the opening and out over the cornfields. The LUCY BELLE was a typical
river steamboat, built light in the draught in order to slide over the
numerous shifting bars to be encountered in her customary business. When
Captain Marsh saw that he had hit the opening, he rang for full speed,
and rammed the poor old LUCY BELLE hard aground in about a foot of water
through which a few mournful dried cornstalks were showing their heads.
Then, his hands in his pockets, he sauntered out of the pilot-house to
the deck.

“Now if you want to picnic,” he told the astonished and frightened
excursionists, “go to it!”

With entire indifference to the water, he vaulted over the low rail and
splashed away. The rivermen and the engineer who had accompanied him
lingered only long enough to start up the band.

“Now you're safe as a cow tied to a brick wall,” said the Rough Red,
whose appearance alone had gone far toward overawing the passengers. “Be
joyful. Start up the music. Start her up, I tell you!”

The band hastily began to squawk, very much out of time, and somewhat
out of tune.

“That's right,” grinned the Rough Red savagely, “keep her up. If you
quit before I get back to work, I'll come back and take you apart.”

They waded through the shallow water in the cornfield. After them wafted
the rather disorganised strains of WHOA, EMMA. Captain Simpson was
indulging in what resembled heat apoplexy. After a time the LUCY BELLE'S
crew recovered their scattered wits sufficiently to transport the
passengers in small boats to a point near the county road, whence all
trudged to town. The LUCY BELLE grew in the cornfield until several
weeks later, when time was found to pull her off on rollers.

Arrived at the booms Captain Marsh shook the loose water from his legs.

“All right, sir,” he reported to Orde. “I ran 'em ashore yonder.”

Orde looked up, brushing the hair from his eyes. He glanced in the
direction of the cornfield, and a quick grin flickered across the
absorbed expression of his face.

“I should think you did,” said he briefly. “I guess that'll end the
excursion business. Now take Number Two up below the swing; and then
run down and see if you can discover Tom. He went somewhere after piles
about an hour ago.”

Down river the various mill owners were busy with what men they had left
in stringing defences across the river in case Orde's works should go
out. When Orde heard this he swore vigourously.

“Crazy fools,” he spat out. “They'd be a lot better off helping here. If
this goes out, their little booms won't amount to a whiff of wind.”

He sent word to that effect; but, lacking the enforcement of his
personal presence his messages did not carry conviction, and the
panic-stricken owners continued to labour, each according to his ideas,
on what Orde's clearer vision saw to be a series of almost comical
futilities. However, Welton answered the summons. Orde hailed his coming
with a shout.

“I want a dredge,” he yelled, as soon as the lumberman was within
distance. “I believe we can relieve the pressure somewhat by a channel
into Steam's bayou. Get that Government dredge up and through the bayou
as soon as you can.”

“All right,” said Welton briefly. “Can you hold her?”

“I've got to hold her,” replied Orde between his clenched teeth. “Have
you seen Newmark? Where in HELL is Newmark? I need him for fifty things,
and he's disappeared off the face of the earth! Purdy! that second
cable! She's snapped a strand! Get a reinforcing line on her!” He ran in
the direction of the new danger without another thought of Welton.

By the late afternoon casual spectators from the countryside had
gathered in some number. The bolder or more curious of these added a
further touch of anxiety to the situation by clambering out over the jam
for a better view. Orde issued instructions that these should keep off
the logs; but in spite of that, with the impertinent perseverance of the
sight-seer, many persisted from time to time, when the rivermen were too
busily engaged to attend to them, in venturing out where they were not
only in danger but also in the way. Tom North would have none of this on
his pile-driver. If a man was not actually working, he had no business
on Number One.

“But,” protested a spectator mildly, “I OWN this driver. I haven't
any objections to your grabbing her in this emergency, even if you did
manhandle my captain; but surely you are not going to keep me off my own
property?”

“I don't give a tinker's damn who you are,” replied North sturdily. “If
you're not working, you get off.”

And get off he did.

The broad deck of the pile-driver scow was a tempting point from which
to survey the work, and the ugly jam, and the water boiling angrily, and
the hollow-eyed, dishevelled maniacs who worked doggedly with set teeth
as though they had not already gone without two nights' sleep. North
had often to order ashore intruders, until his temper shortened to
the vanishing point. One big hulking countryman attempted to argue
the point. North promptly knocked him overboard into the shallow water
between the driver and the bank. He did not rise; so North fished for
him in the most matter-of-fact way with a boat hook, threw him on the
bank unconscious, and went on driving piles! The incident raised a laugh
among the men.

But flesh and blood has its limit of endurance; and that limit was
almost reached. Orde heard the first premonitions of reaction in
the mild grumblings that arose. He knew these men well from his long
experience with them. Although the need for struggle against the
tireless dynamics of the river was as insistent as ever; although it
seemed certain that a moment's cessation of effort would permit the
enemy an irretrievable gain, he called a halt on the whole work.

“Boys,” said he, irrelevantly, “let's have a smoke?”

He set the example by throwing himself full length against a slanting
pile and most leisurely filling his pipe. The men stared a moment;
then followed his example. A great peace of evening filled the sky. The
horizon lay low and black against the afterglow. Beneath it the river
shone like silver. Only the groaning, the heave and shrugging of the
jam, and the low threatening gurgle of hurrying waters reminded the
toil-weary men of the enemy's continued activity. Over beyond the rise
of land that lay between the river and Stearn's Bayou could be seen
the cloud of mingled smoke and steam that marked the activities of the
dredge. For ten minutes they rested in the solace of tobacco. Orde
was apparently more at ease than any of the rest, but each instant
he expected to hear the premonitory CRACK that would sound the end of
everything. Finally he yawned, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and got
to his feet.

“Now,” said he, a new ring in his voice, “come on and let's get
something DONE!”

They responded to a man.




XL


By midnight the water seemed to have gone down slightly. Half the
crew snatched a little sleep. For several hours more the issue hung
aggravatingly in equilibrium. Then, with the opening of the channel into
Stearn's Bayou the heaviest pressure was relieved. For the moment the
acute danger point was passed.

Orde spent the next two days in strengthening the defences. The men were
able to take their quota of meals and of sleep. Merely the working
hours were longer than usual. Orde himself slept little, and was still
possessed by a feverish activity. The flood continued at about the
same volume. Until the water should subside, the danger could not be
considered completely over with.

In these few days of comparative leisure Orde had time to look about
him and to receive news. The jam had been successfully held at the iron
railroad bridge above Redding; but only by the most strenuous efforts.
Braces of oak beams had been slanted where they would do the most good;
chains strengthened the weaker spots; and on top of all ton after ton of
railroad iron held the whole immovably. Nolan had enjoyed the advantage
of a “floating” jam; of convenient facilities incident to a large city;
and of an aroused public sentiment that proffered him all the help he
could use. Monrovia, little village that it was, had not grasped
the situation. Redding saw it clearly. The loss of the timber
alone--representing some millions of dollars' worth of the sawed
product--would mean failure of mill companies, of banks holding their
paper, and so of firms in other lines of business; and besides would
throw thousands of men out of employment. Furthermore, what was quite as
serious, should the iron bridge give way, the wooden bridges below
could hardly fail to go out. Railroad communication between eastern and
western Michigan would be entirely cut off. For a season industry of
every description would be practically paralysed. Therefore Nolan had
all the help he required. Every device known was employed to strengthen
the jam. For only a few hours was the result in doubt. Then as the
CLARION jubilantly expressed it, “It's a hundred dollars to an old hat
she holds!”

Orde received all this with satisfaction, but with a slight scepticism.

“It's a floating jam; and it gets a push from underneath,” he pointed
out. “It's probably safe; but another flood might send it out.”

“The floods are going down,” said North.

“Good Lord; I hope so!” said Orde.

Newmark sent word that a sudden fit of sickness had confined him to the
house.

“Didn't think of a little thing like piles,” said Orde to himself.
“Well, that's hardly fair. Joe couldn't have realised when he left here
just how bad things were.”

For two days, as has been said, nothing happened. Then Orde decided
to break out a channel through the jam itself. This was a necessary
preliminary to getting the logs in shape for distribution. An opening
was made in the piles, and the rivermen, with pike-pole and peavy, began
cautiously to dig their way through the tangled timbers. The Government
pile-driver, which had finally been sent up from below, began placing
five extra booms at intervals down stream to capture the drift as fast
as it was turned loose. From the mills and private booms crews came to
assist in the labour. The troubles appeared to be quite over, when word
came from Redding that the waters were again rising. Ten minutes later
Leopold Lincoln Bunn, the local reporter, came flapping in on Randall's
old white horse, like a second Paul Revere, crying that the iron bridge
had gone, and the logs were racing down river toward the booms.

“It just went out!” he answered the eager exclamations of the men who
crowded around him. “That's all I know. It went out! And the other
bridges! Sure! All but the Lake Shore! Don't know why that didn't go
out. No; the logs didn't jam there; just slid right under!”

“That settles it,” said Welton, turning away.

“You aren't going to quit!” cried Orde.

“Certainly. You're crazy!” said Welton with some asperity. “If they
can't stop a little jam with iron, what are your wooden defences going
to amount to against the whole accumulation? When those logs hit the
tail of this jam, she'll go out before you can wink.”

He refused to listen to argument.

“It's sure death,” said he, “and I'm not going to sacrifice my men for
nothing, even if they'd stay.”

Other owners among the bystanders said the same thing. An air of
profound discouragement had fallen on them all. The strain of the fight
was now telling. The utmost that human flesh and blood was capable
of had been accomplished; a hard-won victory had been gained by the
narrowest of narrow margins. In this new struggle the old odds were
still against them, and in addition the strength that had pushed aside
Redding's best effort, augmented by the momentum of a powerful current.
It was small wonder they gave up.

Already the news was spreading among the workers on the jams. As man
shouted to man, each shouldered his peavy and came running ashore, eager
question on his lips. Orde saw the Government driver below casting loose
from her moorings. A moment later her tug towed her away to some side
bayou of safety out of the expected rush to the Lake.

“But we can hold her!” cried Orde in desperation. “Have a little nerve
with you. You aren't going to quit like that!”

He swept them with his eye; then turned away from them with a gesture of
despair. They watched him gravely and silently.

“It's no use, boy,” said old Carlin; “it's sure death.”

“Sure death!” Orde laughed bitterly. “All right; sure death, then. Isn't
there a man in this crowd that will tackle this sort of sure death with
me?”

“I'm with you.”

“And me,” said North and the Rough Red in a breath.

“Good!” cried Orde. “You, too, Johnny Sims? and Purdy? and Jimmy Powers?
Bully boys!”

“I reckon you'll need the tug,” said Marsh.

A dozen more of Orde's personal following volunteered. At once his good
humour returned; and his easy leisurely confidence in himself.

“We've got to close that opening, first thing,” said he. “Marsh, tow the
pile-driver up there.”

He caused a heavy line to be run from a tree, situated around the bend
down stream, to the stern of the driver.

“Now if you have to,” he told North, who had charge, “let go all holds,
and the line will probably swing you around out of danger. We on the tug
will get out as best we can.”

The opening was to be closed by piles driven in groups of sixteen bound
together by chains. The clumps were connected one to the other by a
system of boom logs and ropes to interpose a continuous barrier. The
pile-driver placed the clumps; while the tug attended to the connecting
defences.

“Now, boys,” said Orde as his last word, “if she starts to go, save
yourselves the best way you can. Never mind the driver. STAY ON TOP!”

Slowly the tug and her consort nosed up through the boiling water.

“She's rising already,” said Orde to Marsh, watching the water around
the piles.

“Yes, and that jam's going out before many minutes,” supplemented the
tugboat captain grimly.

Both these statements were only too true. Although not fifteen minutes
before, the jam had lain locked in perfect safety, now the slight rise
of the waters had lifted and loosened the mass until it rose fairly on
the quiver.

“Work fast!” Orde called to the men on the pile-driver. “If we can close
the opening before those Redding logs hit us, we may be able to turn
them into our new channel.”

He did not add that if the opening were not closed before the jam broke,
as break it would in a very few moments, the probabilities were that
both pile-driver and tug would be destroyed. Every man knew that
already.

Tom North ordered a pile placed in the carriage; the hammer descended.
At once, like battering rams logs began to shoot up from the depths of
the river end foremost all about them. These timbers were projected with
tremendous force, leaping sometimes half their length above the surface
of the water. If any of them had hit either the tug or the pile-driver
squarely, it would have stove and sunk the craft. Fortunately this did
not happen; but Marsh hastily towed the scow back to a better position.
The pile had evidently been driven into the foot of the jam itself, thus
loosening timbers lying at the bottom of the river.

The work went forward as rapidly as possible. Four times the jam
shrugged and settled; but four times it paused on the brink of
discharge. Three of the clumps had been placed and bound; and fifteen
piles of the last clump had been driven.

“One more pile!” breathed Orde, his breath quickening a trifle as he
glanced up stream.

The hammer in the high derrick ran smoothly to the top, paused, and
fell. A half dozen times more it ripped. Then without delay the heavy
chains were thrown around the winch, and the steam power began to draw
the clumps together.

“Done!” cried Tom North, straightening his back.

“And a job in time, too,” said Johnny Sims, indicating the creaking and
tottering jam.

North unmoored, and the driver dropped back with the current and around
the bend where she was snubbed by the safety line already mentioned.

Immediately the tug churned forward to accomplish the last duty, that
of binding the defences together by means of chains and cables. Two men
leaped to the floating booms and moved her fore and aft. Orde and the
Rough Red set about the task. Methodically they worked from either end
toward the middle. When they met finally, Orde directed his assistant to
get aboard the tug.

“I'll tie this one, Jimmy,” said he.

Aboard the tug all was tense preparation. Marsh grasped alertly
the spokes of the wheel. In the engine-room Harvey, his hand on the
throttle, stood ready to throw her wide open at the signal. Armed with
sharp axes two men prepared to cut the mooring lines on a sign from the
Rough Red. They watched his upraised hand. When it should descend, their
axes must fall.

“Look out,” the Rough Red warned Orde, who was methodically tying the
last cumbersome knot, “she's getting ready!”

Orde folded the knot over without reply. Up stream the jam creaked,
groaned, settled deliberately forward, cutting a clump of piles like
straw.

“She's coming!” cried the Rough Red.

“Give me every second you can,” said Orde, without looking up. He was
just making the last turns.

The mass toppled slowly, fell into the swift current, and leaped with a
roar. The Rough Red watched with cat-like attention.

“Jump!” he cried at last, and his right arm descended.

With the shout and the motion several things happened simultaneously.
Orde leaped blindly for the rail, where he was seized and dragged aboard
by the Rough Red; the axes fell, Marsh whirled over the wheel, Harvey
threw open his throttle. The tug sprang from its leash like a hound.
And behind the barrier the logs, tossing and tumbling, the white spray
flying before their onslaught, beat in vain against the barrier, like
raging wild beasts whose prey has escaped.

“Close call,” said Orde briefly.

“Bet you,” replied Marsh.

Neither referred to the tug's escape; but to the fortunate closing of
the opening.




XLI


Orde now took steps to deflect into the channel recently dredged to
Stearn's Bayou the mass of the logs racing down stream from Redding. He
estimated that he had still two hours or so in which to do the work. In
this time he succeeded by the severest efforts in establishing a rough
shunt into the new channel. The logs would come down running free. Only
the shock of their impact against the tail of the jam already formed was
to be feared. Orde hoped to be able to turn the bulk of them aside.

This at first he succeeded in doing; and very successfully as affecting
the pressure on the jam below. The first logs came scattering. Then in
a little while the surface of the river was covered with them; they
shouldered each other aside in their eagerness to outstrip the rushing
water; finally they crowded down more slowly, hardly able to make their
way against the choking of the river banks, but putting forth in the
very effort to proceed a tremendous power. To the crew working in the
channel dredged through to Steam's Bayou the affair was that of driving
a rather narrow and swift stream, only exaggerated. By quick and skilful
work they succeeded in keeping the logs in motion. A large proportion of
the timbers found their way into the bayou. Those that continued on down
the river could hardly have much effect on the jam.

The work was breathless in its speed. From one to another sweat-bathed,
panting man the logs were handed on. As yet only the advance of the big
jam had arrived at the dredged channel.

Orde looked about him and realised this.

“We can't keep this up when the main body hits us,” he panted to his
neighbour, Jim Denning. “We'll have to do some more pile-driver work.”

He made a rapid excursion to the boom camp, whence he returned with
thirty or forty of the men who had given up work on the jam below.

“Here, boys,” said he, “you can at least keep these logs moving in this
channel for a couple of hours. This isn't dangerous.”

He spoke quite without sarcastic intent; but the rivermen, already over
their first panic, looked at each other a trifle shamefacedly.

“I'll tie into her wherever you say,” said one big fellow. “If you
fellows are going back to the jam, I'm with you.”

Two or three more volunteered. The remainder said nothing, but in
silence took charge of the dredged channel.

Orde and his men now returned to the jam where, on the pile-driver, the
tugs, and the booms, they set methodically to strengthening the defences
as well as they were able.

“She's holding strong and dandy,” said Orde to Tom North, examining
critically the clumps of piles. “That channel helps a lot in more ways
than one. It takes an awful lot of water out of the river. As long as
those fellows keep the logs moving, I really believe we're all right.”

But shortly the water began to rise again, this time fairly by leaps.
In immediate response the jam increased its pressure. For the hundredth
time the frail wooden defences opposed to millions of pounds were tested
to the very extreme of their endurance. The clumps of piles sagged
outward; the network of chains and cables tightened and tightened
again, drawing ever nearer the snapping point. Suddenly, almost without
warning, the situation had become desperate.

And for the first time Orde completely lost his poise and became
fluently profane. He shook his fist against the menacing logs; he
apostrophised the river, the high water, the jam, the deserters, Newmark
and his illness, ending finally in a general anathema against any and
all streams, logs, and floods. Then he stormed away to see if anything
had gone wrong at the dredged channel.

“Well,” said Tom North, “they've got the old man real good and mad this
time.”

The crew went on driving piles, stringing cables, binding chains,
although, now that the inspiration of Orde's combative spirit was
withdrawn the labours seemed useless, futile, a mere filling in of the
time before the supreme moment when they would be called upon to pay the
sacrifice their persistence and loyalty had proffered for the altar of
self-respect and the invincibility of the human Soul.

At the dredged channel Orde saw the rivermen standing idle, and,
half-blind with anger he burst upon them demanding by this, that and the
other what they meant. Then he stopped short and stared.

Square across the dredged channel and completely blocking it lay a
single span of an iron bridge. Although twisted and misshapen, it was
still intact, the framework of its overhead truss-work retaining its
cage-like shape. Behind it the logs had of course piled up in a jam,
which, sinking rapidly to the bed of the channel, had dammed back the
water.

“Where in hell did that drop from?” cried Orde.

“Come down on top the jam,” explained a riverman. “Must have come way
from Redding. We just couldn't SCARE her out of here.”

Orde, suddenly fallen into a cold rage, stared at the obstruction, both
fists clenched at his side.

“Too bad, boy,” said Welton at his elbow. “But don't take it too hard.
You've done more than any of the rest of us could. And we're all losers
together.”

Orde looked at him strangely.

“That about settles it,” repeated Welton.

“Settle!” cried Orde. “I should think not.”

Welton smiled quaintly.

“Don't you know when you're licked?”

“Licked, hell!” said Orde. “We've just begun to fight.”

“What can you do?”

“Get that bridge span out of there, of course.”

“How?”

“Can't we blow her up with powder?”

“Ever try to blow up iron?”

“There must be some way.”

“Oh, there is,” replied Welton. “Of course--take her apart bolt by bolt
and nut by nut.”

“Send for the wrenches, then,” snapped Orde.

“But it would take two or three days, even working night and day.”

“What of it?”

“But it would be too late--it would do no good--”

“Perhaps not,” interrupted Orde; “but it will be doing something,
anyway. Look here, Welton, are you game? If you'll get that bridge out
in two days I'll hold the jam.”

“You can't hold that jam two hours, let alone two days,” said Welton
decidedly.

“That's my business. You're wasting time. Will you send for lanterns and
wrenches and keep this crew working?”

“I will,” said Welton.

“Then do it.”

During the next two days the old scenes were all relived, with back of
them the weight of the struggle that had gone before. The little crew
worked as though mad. Excepting them, no one ventured on the river,
for to be caught in the imminent break meant to die. Old spars, refuse
timbers of all sorts--anything and everything was requisitioned that
might help form an obstruction above or below water. Piles were taken
where they could be found. Farmer's trees were cut down. Pines belonging
to divers and protesting owners were felled and sharpened. Some
were brought in by rail. Even the inviolate Government supply was
commandeered. The Railroad Company had a fine lot which, with remarkable
shortsightedness and lack of public spirit, they refused to sell at any
price. The crew took them by force. Once Captain Marsh was found up to
his waist in water, himself felling the trees of a wood, and dragging
them to the river by a cable attached to the winch of his tug. Night
followed day; and day night again. None of the crews realised the fact.
The men were caught in the toils of a labour ceaseless and eternal.
Never would it end, just as never had it begun. Always were they to
handle piles, steam hammers and the implements of their trade, menaced
by a jam on the point of breaking, wet by a swollen and angry flood,
over-arched by a clear calm sky or by the twinkling peaceful stars. Long
since had they ceased to reckon with the results of what they did,
the consequences either to themselves or to the jam. Mechanically they
performed their labour. Perhaps the logs would kill them. Perhaps these
long, black, dripping piles they drove were having some effect on the
situation. Neither possibility mattered.

Then all at once, as though a faucet had been turned off, the floods
slackened.

“They've opened the channel,” said Orde dully. His voice sounded to
himself very far away. Suddenly the external world, too, seemed removed
to a distance, far from his centre of consciousness. He felt himself
moving in strange and distorted surroundings; he heard himself repeating
to each of a number of wavering, gigantic figures the talismanic words
that had accomplished the dissolution of the earth for himself: “They've
opened the channel.” At last he felt hard planks beneath his feet, and,
shaking his head with an effort, he made out the pilot-house of the
SPRITE and a hollow-eyed man leaning against it. “They've opened the
channel, Marsh,” he repeated. “I guess that'll be all.” Then quite
slowly he sank to the deck, sound asleep.

Welton, returning from his labours with the iron bridge and the
jam, found them thus. Men slept on the deck of the tug, aboard the
pile-driver. Two or three had even curled up in the crevices of the jam,
resting in the arms of the monster they had subdued.




XLII


When Newmark left, in the early stages of the jam, he gave scant thought
to the errand on which he had ostensibly departed. Whether or nor Orde
got a supply of piles was to him a matter of indifference. His hope,
or rather preference was that the jam should go out; but he saw clearly
what Orde, blinded by the swift action of the struggle, was as yet
unable to perceive. Even should the riverman succeed in stopping the
jam, the extraordinary expenses incidental to the defence and to the
subsequent salvaging, untangling and sorting would more than eat up the
profits of the drive. Orde would then be forced to ask for an extension
of time on his notes.

On arriving in Monrovia, he drove to his own house. To Mallock he issued
orders.

“Go to the office and tell them I am ill,” said he, “and then hunt
up Mr. Heinzman, wherever he is, and tell him I want to see him
immediately.”

He did not trouble to send word directly to Orde, up river; but left
him to be informed by the slow process of filtration through the
bookkeepers. The interim of several hours before Heinzman appeared he
spent very comfortably in his easy chair, dipping into a small volume of
Montaigne.

At length the German was announced. He entered rather red and
breathless, obviously surprised to find Newmark at home.

“Dot was a terrible jam,” said he, mopping his brow and sinking into a
chair. “I got lots of logs in it.”

Newmark dismissed the subject with an abrupt flip of his unlighted
cigar.

“Heinzman,” said he, “in three weeks at the latest Orde will come to you
asking for a renewal of the notes you hold against our firm. You must
refuse to make such a renewal.”

“All righdt,” agreed Heinzman.

“He'll probably offer you higher interest. You must refuse that. Then
when the notes are overdue you must begin suit in foreclosure.”

“All righdt,” repeated Heinzman a little restlessly. “Do you think he
vill hold that jam?”

Newmark shrugged his shoulders swiftly.

“I got lots of logs in that jam. If that jam goes out I vill lose a heap
of money.”

“Well, you'll make quite a heap on this deal,” said Newmark carelessly.

“Suppose he holds it,” said Heinzman, pausing. “I hate like the mischief
to joomp on him.”

“Rot!” said Newmark decisively. “That's what he's there for.” He looked
at the German sharply. “I suppose you know just how deep you're in
this?”

“Oh, I ain't backing oudt,” negatived Heinzman. “Not a bit.”

“Well, then, you know what to do,” said Newmark, terminating the
interview.




XLIII


Little by little the water went down. The pressure, already considerably
relieved by the channel into Stearn's Bayou, slackened every hour. Orde,
still half dazed with his long-delayed sleep, drove back along the marsh
road to town.

His faculties were still in the torpor that follows rest after
exhaustion. The warm July sun, the breeze from the Lake, the flash of
light from the roadside water, these were all he had room for among his
perceptions. He was content to enjoy them, and to anticipate drowsily
the keen pleasure of seeing Carroll again. In the rush of the jam he had
heard nothing from her. For all he knew she and Bobby might have been
among the spectators on the bank; he had hardly once left the river. It
did not seem to him strange that Carroll should not have been there to
welcome him after the struggle was over. Rarely did she get to the booms
in ordinary circumstances. This episode of the big jam was, after all,
nothing but part of the day's work to Orde; a crisis, exaggerated it is
true, but like many other crises a man must meet and cope with on the
river. There was no reason why Carroll should drive the twelve miles
between Monrovia and the booms, unless curiosity should take her.

As the team left the marsh road for the county turnpike past the mills
and lumberyards, Orde shook himself fully awake. He began to review
the situation. As Newmark had accurately foreseen, he came almost
immediately to a realisation that the firm would not be able to meet
the notes given to Heinzman. Orde had depended on the profits from the
season's drive to enable him to make up the necessary amount. Those
profits would be greatly diminished, if not wiped out entirely, by the
expenses, both regular and irregular, incurred in holding the jam; by
the damage suits surely to be brought by the owners of the piles, trees,
pile-drivers and other supplies and materials requisitioned in the heat
of the campaign; and by the extra labour necessary to break out the jam
and to sort the logs according to their various destinations.

“I'll have to get an extension of time,” said Orde to himself. “Of
course Joe will let me have more time on my own personal note to the
firm. And Heinzman surely ought to--I saved a lot of his logs in that
jam. And if he doesn't want to, I guess an offer of a little higher
interest will fetch him.”

Ordinarily the state of affairs would have worried him, for it was
exactly the situation he had fought against so hard. But now he was too
wearied in soul and body. He dismissed the subject from his mind. The
horses, left almost to themselves, lapsed into a sleepy jog. After a
little they passed the bridge and entered the town. Warm spicy odours of
pine disengaged themselves from the broken shingles and sawdust of the
roadway, and floated upward through the hot sunshine. The beautiful
maples with their dense shadows threw the sidewalks into coolness.
Up one street and down another the horses took their accustomed way.
Finally they pulled up opposite the Orde house. Orde hitched the horses,
and, his step quickening in anticipation, sprang up the walk and into
the front door.

“Hullo, sweetheart!” he called cheerily.

The echoes alone answered him. He cried again, and yet again, with a
growing feeling of disappointment that Carroll should happen to be from
home. Finally a door opened and shut in the back part of the house. A
moment later Mary, the Irish servant girl, came through the dining-room,
caught sight of Orde, threw her apron over her head, and burst into
one of those extravagant demonstrations of grief peculiar to the
warm-hearted of her class.

Orde stopped short, a sinking at his heart.

“What is it, Mary?” he asked very quietly.

But the girl only wept the louder, rocking back and forth in a fresh
paroxysm of grief. Beside himself with anxiety Orde sprang forward
to shake her by the arm, to shower her with questions. These elicited
nothing but broken and incoherent fragments concerning “the missus,”
 “oh, the sad day!” “and me lift all alone with Bobby, me heart
that heavy,” and the like, which served merely to increase Orde's
bewilderment and anxiety. At this moment Bobby himself appeared from the
direction of the kitchen. Orde, frantic with alarm, fell upon his son.
Bobby, much bewildered by all this pother, could only mumble something
about “smallpox,” and “took mamma away with doctor.”

“Where? where, Bobby?” cried Orde, fairly shaking the small boy by the
shoulder. He felt like a man in a bad dream, trying to reach a goal that
constantly eluded him.

At this moment a calm, dry voice broke through the turmoil of questions
and exclamations. Orde looked up to see the tall, angular form of Doctor
McMullen standing in the doorway.

“It's all right,” said the doctor in answer to Orde's agonised
expression. “Your wife was exposed to smallpox and is at my house to
avoid the danger of spreading contagion. She is not ill.”

Having thus in one swift decisive sentence covered the ground of Orde's
anxiety, he turned to the sniffling servant.

“Mary,” said he sternly, “I'm ashamed of you! What kind of an exhibition
is this? Go out to the kitchen and cook us some lunch!” He watched her
depart with a humourous quirk to his thin lips. “Fool Irish!” he said
with a Scotchman's contempt. “I meant to head you off before you got
home, but I missed you. Come in and sit down, and I'll tell you about
it.”

“You're quite sure Mrs. Orde is well?” insisted Orde.

“Absolutely. Never better. As well as you are.”

“Where was she exposed?”

“Down at Heinzman's. You know--or perhaps you don't--that old Heinzman
is the worst sort of anti-vaccination crank. Well, he's reaped the
reward.”

“Has he smallpox?” asked Orde. “Why, I thought I remembered seeing him
up river only the other day.”

“No; his daughter.”

“Mina?”

“Yes. Lord knows where she got it. But get it she did. Mrs. Orde
happened to be with her when she was taken with the fever and
distressing symptoms that begin the disease. As a neighbourly deed she
remained with the girl. Of course no one could tell it was smallpox at
that time. Next day, however, the characteristic rash appeared on the
thighs and armpits, and I diagnosed the case.” Dr. McMullen laughed
a little bitterly. “Lord, you ought to have seen them run! Servants,
neighbours, friends--they all skedaddled, and you couldn't have driven
them back with a steam-roller! I telegraphed to Redding for a nurse.
Until she came Mrs. Orde stayed by, like a brick. Don't know what I
should have done without her. There was nobody to do anything at all.
As soon as the nurse came Mrs. Orde gave up her post. I tell you,”
 cried Doctor McMullen with as near an approach to enthusiasm as he ever
permitted himself, “there's a sensible woman! None of your story-book
twaddle about nursing through the illness, and all that. When her
usefulness was ended, she knew enough to step aside gracefully. There
was not much danger as far as she was concerned. I had vaccinated her
myself, you know, last year. But she MIGHT take the contagion and she
wanted to spare the youngster. Quite right. So I offered her quarters
with us for a couple of weeks.”

“How long ago was this?” asked Orde, who had listened with a warm glow
of pride to the doctor's succinct statement.

“Seven days.”

“How is Mina getting on?”

“She'll get well. It was a mild case. Fever never serious after the
eruption appeared. I suppose I'll have old Heinzman on my hands,
though.”

“Why; has he taken it?”

“No; but he will. Emotional old German fool. Rushed right in when he
heard his daughter was sick. Couldn't keep him out. And he's been with
her or near her ever since.”

“Then you think he's in for it?”

“Sure to be,” replied Dr. McMullen. “Unless a man has been vaccinated,
continuous exposure means infection in the great majority of cases.”

“Hard luck,” said Orde thoughtfully. “I'm going to step up to your house
and see Mrs. Orde.”

“You can telephone her,” said the doctor. “And you can see her if you
want to. Only in that case I should advise your remaining away from
Bobby until we see how things turn out.”

“I see,” said Orde. “Well,” he concluded with a sigh, after a moment's
thought, “I suppose I'd better stay by the ship.”

He called up Dr. McMullen's house on the telephone.

“Oh, it's good to hear your voice again,” cried Carroll, “even if I
can't see you! You must promise me right after lunch to walk up past the
house so I can see you. I'll wave at you from the window.”

“You're a dear, brave girl, and I'm proud of you,” said Orde.

“Nonsense! There was no danger at all. I'd been vaccinated recently. And
somebody had to take care of poor Mina until we could get help. How's
Bobby?”




XLIV


After lunch Orde went downtown to his office where for some time he sat
idly looking over the mail. About three o'clock Newmark came in.

“Hullo, Joe,” said Orde with a slight constraint, “sorry to hear you've
been under the weather. You don't look very sick now.”

“I'm better,” replied Newmark, briefly; “this is my first appearance.”

“Too bad you got sick just at that time,” said Orde; “we needed you.”

“So I hear. You may rest assured I'd have been there if possible.”

“Sure thing,” said Orde, heartily, his slight resentment dissipating, as
always, in the presence of another's personality. “Well, we had a lively
time, you bet, all right; and got through about by the skin of our
teeth.” He arose and walked over to Newmark's desk, on the edge of which
he perched. “It's cost us considerable; and it's going to cost us a lot
more, I'll have to get an extension on those notes.”

“What's that?” asked Newmark, quickly.

Orde picked up a paper knife and turned it slowly between his fingers.

“I don't believe I'll be able to meet those notes. So many things have
happened--”

“But,” broke in Newmark, “the firm certainly cannot do so. I've been
relying on your assurance that you would take them up personally. Our
resources are all tied up.”

“Can't we raise anything more on the Northern Peninsula timber?” asked
Orde.

“You ought to know we can't,” cried Newmark, with an appearance of
growing excitement. “The last seventy-five thousand we borrowed for me
finishes that.”

“Can't you take up part of your note?”

“My note comes due in 1885,” rejoined Newmark with cold disgust. “I
expect to take it up then. But I can't until then. I hadn't expected
anything like this.”

“Well, don't get hot,” said Orde vaguely. “I only thought that Northern
Peninsula stuff might be worth saving any way we could figure it.”

“Worth saving!” snorted Newmark, whirling in his chair.

“Well, keep your hair on,” said Orde, on whom Newmark's manner was
beginning to have its effect, as Newmark intended it should. “You have
my Boom Company stock as security.”

“Pretty security for the loss of a tract like the Upper Peninsula
timber!”

“Well, it's the security you asked for, and suggested,” said Orde.

“I thought you'd surely be able to pay it,” retorted Newmark, now secure
in the position he desired to take, that of putting Orde entirely in the
wrong.

“Well, I expected to pay it; and I'll pay it yet,” rejoined Orde. “I
don't think Heinzman will stand in his own light rather than renew the
notes.”

He seized his hat and departed. Once in the street, however, his
irritation passed. As was the habit of the man, he began more clearly
to see Newmark's side, and so more emphatically to blame himself.
After all, when he got right down to the essentials, he could not but
acknowledge that Newmark's anger was justified. For his own private ends
he had jeopardised the firm's property. More of a business man might
have reflected that Newmark, as financial head, should have protected
the firm against all contingencies; should have seen to it that it met
Heinzman's notes, instead of tying up its resources in unnecessary
ways. Orde's own delinquency bulked too large in his eyes to admit his
perception of this. By the time he had reached Heinzman's office, the
last of his irritation had vanished. Only he realised clearly now that
it would hardly do to ask Newmark for a renewal of the personal note on
which depended his retention of his Boom Company stock unless he could
renew the Heinzman note also. This is probably what Newmark intended.

“Mr. Heinzman?” he asked briefly of the first clerk.

“Mr. Heinzman is at home ill,” replied the bookkeeper.

“Already?” said Orde. He drummed on the black walnut rail thoughtfully.
The notes came due in ten days. “How bad is he?”

The clerk looked up curiously. “Can't say. Probably won't be back for a
long time. It's smallpox, you know.”

“True,” said Orde. “Well, who's in charge?”

“Mr. Lambert. You'll find him in the private office.”

Orde passed through the grill into the inner room.

“Hullo, Lambert,” he addressed the individual seated at Heinzman's desk.
“So you're the boss, eh?”

Lambert turned, showing a perfectly round face, ornamented by a dot of a
nose, two dots of eyes set rather close together, and a pursed up
mouth. His skin was very brown and shiny, and was so filled by the flesh
beneath as to take the appearance of having been inflated.

“Yes, I'm the boss,” said he non-committally.

Orde dropped into a chair.

“Heinzman holds some notes due against our people in ten days,” said he.
“I came in to see about their renewal. Can you attend to it?”

“Yes, I can attend to it,” replied Lambert. He struck a bell; and to the
bookkeeper who answered he said: “John, bring me those Newmark and Orde
papers.”

Orde heard the clang of the safe door. In a moment the clerk returned
and handed to Lambert a long manilla envelope. Lambert opened this quite
deliberately, spread its contents on his knee, and assumed a pair of
round spectacles.

“Note for seventy-five thousand dollars with interest at ten per cent.
Interest paid to January tenth. Mortgage deed on certain lands described
herein.”

“That's it,” said Orde.

Lambert looked up over his spectacles.

“I want to renew the note for another year,” Orde explained.

“Can't do it,” replied Lambert, removing and folding the glasses.

“Why not?”

“Mr. Heinzman gave me especial instructions in regard to this matter
just before his daughter was taken sick. He told me if you came when
he was not here--he intended to go to Chicago yesterday--to tell you he
would not renew.”

“Why not?” asked Orde blankly.

“I don't know that.”

“But I'll give him twelve per cent for another year.”

“He said not to renew, even if you offered higher interest.”

“Do you happen to know whether he intends anything in regard to this
mortgage?”

“He instructed me to begin suit in foreclosure immediately.”

“I don't understand this,” said Orde.

Lambert shook his head blandly. Orde thought for a moment.

“Where's your telephone?” he demanded abruptly.

He tried in vain to get Heinzman at his house. Finally the telephone
girl informed him that although messages had come from the stricken
household, she had been unable to get an answer to any of her numerous
calls, and suspected the bell had been removed. Finally Orde left the
office at a loss how to proceed next. Lambert, secretly overjoyed at
this opportunity of exercising an unaccustomed and autocratic power,
refused to see beyond his instructions. Heinzman's attitude puzzled
Orde. A foreclosure could gain Heinzman no advantage of immediate
cash. Orde was forced to the conclusion that the German saw here a
good opportunity to acquire cheap a valuable property. In that case a
personal appeal would avail little.

Orde tramped out to the end of the pier and back, mulling over the
tangled problem. He was pressed on all sides--by the fatigue after his
tremendous exertions of the past two weeks; by his natural uneasiness in
regard to Carroll; and finally by this new complication which threatened
the very basis of his prosperity. Nevertheless the natural optimism of
the man finally won its ascendency.

“There's the year of redemption on that mortgage,” he reminded himself.
“We may be able to do something in that time. I don't know just what,”
 he added whimsically, with a laugh at himself. He became grave. “Poor
Joe,” he said, “this is pretty tough on him. I'll have to make it up to
him somehow. I can let him in on that California deal, when the titles
are straightened out.”




XLV


Orde did not return to the office; he felt unwilling to face Newmark
until he had a little more thoroughly digested the situation. He spent
the rest of the afternoon about the place, picking up the tool house,
playing with Bobby, training Duke, the black and white setter dog. Three
or four times he called up Carroll by telephone; and three or four times
he passed Dr. McMullen's house to shout his half of a long-distance and
fragmentary conversation with her. He ate solemnly with Bobby at six
o'clock, the two quite subdued over the vacant chair at the other end
of the table. After dinner they sat on the porch until Bobby's bed-time.
Orde put his small son to bed, and sat talking with the youngster as
long as his conscience would permit. Then he retired to the library,
where, for a long time, he sat in twilight and loneliness. Finally, when
he could no longer distinguish objects across the room, he arose with a
sigh, lit the lamp, and settled himself to read.

The last of the twilight drained from the world, and the window panes
turned a burnished black. Through the half-open sashes sucked a warm
little breeze, swaying the long lace curtains back and forth. The hum
of lawn-sprinklers and the chirping of crickets and tree-frogs came with
it.

One by one the lawn-sprinklers fell silent. Gradually there descended
upon the world the deep slumbrous stillness of late night; a stillness
compounded of a thousand and one mysterious little noises repeated
monotonously over and over until their identity was lost in
accustomedness. Occasionally the creak of timbers or the sharp scurrying
of a mouse in the wall served more to accentuate than to break this
night silence.

Orde sat lost in reverie, his book in his lap. At stated intervals the
student lamp at his elbow flared slightly, then burned clear again after
a swallow of satisfaction in its reservoir. These regular replenishments
of the oil supply alone marked the flight of time.

Suddenly Orde leaned forward, his senses at the keenest attention. After
a moment he arose and quietly walked toward the open window. Just as he
reached the casement and looked out, a man looked in. The two stared at
each other not two feet apart.

“Good Lord! Heinzman!” cried Orde in a guarded voice. He stepped
decisively through the window, seized the German by the arm, and drew
him one side.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Heinzman was trembling violently as though from a chill.

“Dake me somewheres,” he whispered hoarsely. “Somewheres quick. I haf
broke quarantine, and dey vill be after me.”

“The place for you is at your own house,” said Orde, his anger rising.
“What do you mean by coming here and exposing my house to infection?”

Heinzman began to blubber; choked, shivered all over, and cried aloud
with an expression of the greatest agony:

“You must dake me somewheres. I must talk with you and your goot wife. I
haf somedings to say to you.” He in his turn grasped Orde by the arm. “I
haf broke quarantine to gome and tell you. Dey are dere mit shotguns to
kill me if I broke quarantine. And I haf left my daughter, my daughter
Mina, all alone mit dose people to come and tell you. And now you don't
listen.”

He wrung his hands dramatically, his soft pudgy body shaking.

“Come with me,” said Orde briefly.

He led the way around the house to the tool shed. Here he lit a lantern,
thrust forward one nail keg, and sat down on another.

Heinzman sat down on the nail keg, almost immediately arose, walked up
and down two or three times, and resumed his seat.

Orde looked at him curiously. He was half dressed, without a collar,
his thin hair unkempt. The usual bright colour of his cheeks had become
livid, and the flesh, ordinarily firm and elastic, had fallen in folds
and wrinkles. His eyes burned bright as though from some internal fire.
A great restlessness possessed him. Impulsively Orde leaned forward to
touch his hand. It was dry and hot.

“What is it, Heinzman?” he asked quietly, fully prepared for the
vagaries of a half delirium.

“Ach, Orde!” cried the German, “I am tortured mit HOLLENQUALLE--what you
call?--hell's fire. You, whose wife comes in and saves my Mina when the
others runs away. You, my best friends! It is SCHRECKLICH! She vas the
noblest, the best, the most kindest--”

“If you mean Mrs. Orde's staying with Mina,” broke in Orde, “it was only
what any one should have done, in humanity; and I, for one, am only too
glad she had the chance. You mustn't exaggerate. And now you'd better
get home where you can be taken care of. You're sick.”

“No, no, my friend,” said Heinzman, vigourously shaking his head. “She
might take the disease. She might die. It vas noble.” He shuddered. “My
Mina left to die all alone!”

Orde rose to his feet with decision.

“That is all right,” said he. “Carroll was glad of the chance. Now let
me get you home.”

But Heinzman's excitement had suddenly died.

“No,” said he, extending his trembling hand; “sit down. I want to talk
business.”

“You are in no condition to talk business,” said Orde.

“No!” cried Heinzman with unexpected vigour. “Sit down! Listen to me!
Dot's better. I haf your note for sefenty-five t'ousand dollars. No?”

Orde nodded.

“Dot money I never lent you. NO! I'm not crazy. Sit still! I know my
name is on dot note. But the money came from somewheres else. It came
from your partner, Joseph Newmark.”

Orde half rose from his keg.

“Why? What?” he asked in bewilderment.

“Den ven you could not pay the note, I vas to foreclose and hand over
dot Northern Peninsula land to Joseph Newmark, your partner.”

“Impossible!” cried Orde.

“I vas to get a share. It vas a trick.”

“Go on,” said Orde grimly.

“Dere is no go on. Dot is all.”

“Why do you come to tell me now?”

“Because for more than one year now I say to mineself, 'Carl Heinzman,
you vas one dirty scoundrel. You vas dishonest; a sneak; a thief';
I don't like to call myself names like dose. It iss all righdt to be
smart; but to be a thief!”

“Why didn't you pull out?” asked Orde.

“I couldn't!” cried Heinzman piteously. “How could I? He haf me cold.
I paid Stanford five hundred dollars for his vote on the charter; and
Joseph Newmark, he know dot; he can PROVE it. He tell me if I don't do
what he say, he put me in jail. Think of dot! All my friends go back on
me; all my money gone; maybe my daughter Mina go back on me, too. How
could I?”

“Well, he can still put you in prison,” said Orde.

“Vot I care?” cried Heinzman, throwing up both his arms. “You and your
wife are my friends. She save my Mina. DU LIEBER GOTT! If my daughter
had died, vot good iss friends and money? Vot good iss anything? I don't
vant to live! And ven I sit dere by her always something ask me: 'Vy you
do dot to the peoples dot safe your Mina?' And ven she look at me, her
eyes say it; and in the night everything cry out at me; and I get sick,
and I can't stand it no longer, and I don't care if he send me to prison
or to hell, no more.”

His excitement died. He sat listless, his eyes vacant, his hands between
his knees.

“Vell, I go,” he said at last.

“Have you that note?” asked Orde.

“Joseph Newmark, he keeps it most times,” replied Heinzman, “but now it
is at my office for the foreclosure. I vill not foreclose; he can send
me to the penitentiary.”

“Telephone Lambert in the morning to give it to me. No; here. Write an
order in this notebook.”

Heinzman wrote the required order.

“I go,” said he, suddenly weary.

Orde accompanied him down the street. The German was again light-headed
with the fever, mumbling about his daughter, the notes, Carroll, the
voices that had driven him to righteousness. By some manoeuvring Orde
succeeded in slipping him through the improvised quarantine without
discovery. Then the riverman with slow and thoughtful steps returned
to where the lamp in the study still marked off with the spaced
replenishments from its oil reservoir the early morning hours.




XLVI


Morning found Orde still seated in the library chair. His head was sunk
forward on his chest; his hands were extended listless, palms up, along
the arms of the chair; his eyes were vacant and troubled. Hardly once in
the long hours had he shifted by a hair's breadth his position. His body
was suspended in an absolute inaction while his spirit battered at the
walls of an impasse. For, strangely enough, Orde did not once, even
for a single instant, give a thought to the business aspects of the
situation--what it meant to him and his prospects or what he could
do about it. Hurt to the soul he stared at the wreck of a friendship.
Nothing will more deeply sicken the heart of a naturally loyal man than
to discover baseless his faith in some one he has thoroughly trusted.

Orde had liked Newmark. He had admired heartily his clearness of
vision, his financial skill, his knowledge of business intricacies,
his imperturbable coolness, all the abilities that had brought him to
success. With a man of Orde's temperament, to admire is to like; and to
like is to invest with all good qualities. He had constructed his ideal
of a friend, with Newmark as a basis; and now that this, which had
seemed to him as solid a reality as a brick block, had dissolved into
nothing, he found himself in the necessity of refashioning his whole
world. He was not angry at Newmark. But he was grieved down to the
depths of his being.

When the full sun shone into the library, he aroused himself to change
his clothes. Then, carrying those he had just discarded, he slipped out
of the house and down the street. Duke, the black and white setter dog,
begged to follow him. Orde welcomed the animal's company. He paused only
long enough to telephone from the office telling Carroll he would be out
of town all day. Then he set out at a long swinging gait over the hills.
By the time the sun grew hot, he was some miles from the village and in
the high beech woods. There he sat down, his back to a monster tree.
All day long he gazed steadily on the shifting shadows and splotches
of sunlight; on the patches of blue sky, the dazzling white clouds that
sailed across them; on the waving, whispering frond that over-arched
him, and the deep cool shadows beneath. The woods creatures soon became
accustomed to his presence. Squirrels of the several varieties that
abounded in the Michigan forests scampered madly after each other in
spirals around the tree trunks, or bounded across the ground in long
undulating leaps. Birds flashed and called and disappeared mysteriously.
A chewink, brave in his black and white and tan uniform, scratched
mightily with great two-footed swoops that threw the vegetable mould
over Orde's very feet. Blazoned butterflies--the yellow and black
turnus, the dark troilus, the shade-loving nymphalis--flickered in and
out of the patches of sunlight. Orde paid them no attention. The noon
heat poured down through the forest isles like an incense. Overhead
swung the sun, and down the slope until the long shafts of its light
lifted wand-like across the tree trunks.

At this hint of evening Orde shook himself and arose. He was little
nearer the readjustment he sought than he had been the previous night.

He reached home a little before six o'clock. To his surprise he found
Taylor awaiting him. The lawyer had written nothing as to his return.

“I had things pretty well in shape,” he said, after the first greetings
had been exchanged, “and it would do no good to stay away any longer.”

“Then the trouble is over?” asked Orde.

“I wouldn't say that,” replied Taylor; “but you can rest easy as to the
title to your lands. The investigation had no real basis to it. There
may have been some small individual cases of false entry; but nothing on
which to ground a real attack.”

“When can I borrow on it?”

“Not for a year or two, I should say. There's an awful lot of red-tape
to unwind, as there always is in such cases.”

“Oh,” said Orde in some disappointment.

Taylor hesitated, removed his eye-glasses, wiped them carefully, and
replaced them. He glanced at Orde sidelong through his keen, shrewd
eyes.

“I have something more to tell you; something that will be painful,”
 said he.

Orde looked up quickly.

“Well; what is it?” he asked.

“The general cussedness of all this investigation business had me
puzzled, until at last I made up my mind to do a little investigating on
my own account. It all looked foolish to me. Somebody or something must
be back of all this performance. I was at it all the time I was West,
between times on regular business, of course. I didn't make much out of
my direct efforts--they cover things up well in those matters--but at
last I got on a clue by sheer accident. There was one man behind all
this. He was--”

“Joe Newmark,” said Orde quietly.

“How did you know that?” cried Taylor in astonishment.

“I didn't know, Frank; I just guessed.”

“Well, you made a good guess. It was Newmark. He'd tied up the land in
this trumped-up investigation so you could not borrow on it.”

“How did he find out I owned any land?” asked Orde.

“That I couldn't tell you. Must have been a leak somewhere.”

“Quite likely,” said Orde calmly.

Taylor looked at his principal in some wonder.

“Well, I must say you take it coolly enough,” said he at last.

Orde smiled.

“Do I?” said he.

“Of course,” went on Taylor after a moment, “we have a strong
presumption of conspiracy to get hold of your Boom Company stock,
which I believe you put up as security. But I don't see how we have any
incontestable proof of it.”

“Proof? What more do we want?”

“We'd have no witness to any of these transactions; nor have we
documentary proofs. It's merely moral certainty; and moral certainty
isn't much in a court of law. I'll see him, if you say so, though, and
scare him into some sort of an arrangement.”

Orde shook his head.

“No,” said he decidedly. “Rather not. I'll run this. Please say
nothing.”

“Of course not!” interjected Taylor, a trifle indignantly.

“And I'll figure out what I want to do.”

Orde pressed Taylor to stay to supper; but the latter declined. After
a few moments' conversation on general topics the lawyer took his
departure, secretly marvelling over the phlegmatic way in which Orde
had taken what had been to Taylor, when he first stumbled against it, a
shocking piece of news.




XLVII


Orde did not wish to return to the office until he had worked his
problem out; so, to lend his absence the colour of naturalness, he
drove back next morning to the booms. There he found enough to keep him
occupied all that day and the next. As in those times the long distance
telephone had not yet been attempted, he was cut off from casual
communication with the village. Late in the afternoon he returned home.

A telephone to Carroll apprised him that all was well with her. A few
moments later the call sounded, and Orde took a message that caused him
to look grave and to whistle gently with surprise. He ate supper with
Bobby. About star-time he took his hat and walked slowly down the street
beneath the velvet darkness of the maples. At Newmark's he turned in
between the oleanders.

Mallock answered his ring.

“No, sir, Mr. Newmark is out, sir,” said Mallock. “I'll tell him you
called, sir,” and started respectfully but firmly to close the door.

But Orde thrust his foot and knee in the opening.

“I'll come in and wait,” said he quietly.

“Yes, sir, this way, sir,” said Mallock, trying to indicate the
dining-room, where he wished Orde to sit until he could come at his
master's wishes in the matter.

Orde caught the aroma of tobacco and the glimmer of light to the left.
Without reply he turned the knob of the door and entered the library.

There he found Newmark in evening dress, seated in a low easy chair
beneath a lamp, smoking, and reading a magazine. At Orde's appearance
in the doorway, he looked up calmly, his paper knife poised, keeping the
place.

“Oh, it's you, Orde,” said he.

“Your man told me you were not in,” said Orde.

“He was mistaken. Won't you sit down?”

Orde entered the room and mechanically obeyed Newmark's suggestion,
his manner preoccupied. For some time he stared with wrinkled brow at a
point above the illumination of the lamp. Newmark, over the end of his
cigar, poised a foot from his lips, watched the riverman with a cool
calculation.

“Newmark,” Orde began abruptly at last, “I know all about this deal.”

“What deal?” asked Newmark, after a barely perceptible pause.

“This arrangement you made with Heinzman.”

“I borrowed some money from Heinzman for the firm.”

“Yes; and you supplied that money yourself.”

Newmark's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Orde glanced toward him,
then away again, as though ashamed.

“Well,” said Newmark at last, “what of it?”

“If you had the money to lend why didn't you lend it direct?”

“Because it looks better to mortgage to an outside holder.”

An expression of profound disgust flitted across Orde's countenance.
Newmark smiled covertly, and puffed once or twice strongly on his nearly
extinct cigar.

“That was not the reason,” went on Orde. “You agreed with Heinzman to
divide when you succeeded in foreclosing me out of the timber lands
given as security. Furthermore you instructed Floyd to go out on the eve
of that blow in spite of his warnings; and you contracted with McLeod
for the new vessels; and you've tied us up right and left for the sole
purpose of pinching us down where we couldn't meet those notes. That's
the only reason you borrowed the seventy-five thousand on your own
account; so we couldn't borrow it to save ourselves.”

“It strikes me you are interesting but inconclusive,” said Newmark, as
Orde paused again.

“That sort of thing is somewhat of a facer,” went on Orde without the
slightest attention to the interjection. “It took me some days to work
it out in all its details; but I believe I understand it all now. I
don't quite understand how you discovered about my California timber.
That 'investigation' was a very pretty move.”

“How the devil did you get onto that?” cried Newmark, startled for a
moment out of his cool attitude of cynical aloofness.

“Then you acknowledge it?” shot in Orde quick as a flash.

Newmark laughed in amusement.

“Why shouldn't I? Of course Heinzman blabbed. You couldn't have got it
all anywhere else.”

Orde arose to his feet, and half sat again on the arm of his chair.

“Now I'll tell you what we will do in this matter,” said he crisply.

But Newmark unexpectedly took the aggressive.

“We'll follow,” said he, “the original programme, as laid down by
myself. I'm tired of dealing with blundering fools. Heinzman's mortgage
will be foreclosed; and you will hand over as per the agreement your
Boom Company stock.”

Orde stared at him in amazement.

“I must say you have good nerve,” he said; “you don't seem to realise
that you are pretty well tangled up. I don't know what they call it:
criminal conspiracy, or something of that sort, I suppose. So far from
handing over to you the bulk of my property, I can send you to the
penitentiary.”

“Nonsense,” rejoined Newmark, leaning forward in his turn. “I know you
too well, Jack Orde. You're a fool of more kinds than I care to count,
and this is one of the kinds. Do you seriously mean to say that you dare
try to prosecute me? Just as sure as you do, I'll put Heinzman in the
pen too. I've got it on him, COLD. He's a bribe giver--and somewhat of a
criminal conspirator himself.”

“Well,” said Orde.

Newmark leaned back with an amused little chuckle. “If the man hadn't
come to you and given the whole show away, you'd have lost every cent
you owned. He did you the biggest favour in his power. And for your
benefit I'll tell you what you can easily substantiate; I forced him
into this deal with me. I had this bribery case on him; and in addition
his own affairs were all tied up.”

“I knew that,” replied Orde.

“What had the man to gain by telling you?” pursued Newmark. “Nothing at
all. What had he to lose? Everything: his property, his social position,
his daughter's esteem, which the old fool holds higher than any of them.
You could put me in the pen, perhaps--with Heinzman's testimony. But
the minute Heinzman appears on the stand, I'll land him high and dry and
gasping, without a chance to flop.”

He paused a moment to puff at his cigar. Finding it had gone out, he
laid the butt carefully on the ash tray at his elbow.

“I'm not much used to giving advice,” he went on, “least of all when it
is at all likely to be taken. But I'll offer you some. Throw Heinzman
over. Let him go to the pen. He's been crooked, and a fool.”

“That's what you'd do, I suppose,” said Orde.

“Exactly that. You owe nothing to Heinzman; but something to what
you would probably call repentance, but which is in reality a mawkish
sentimentality of weakness. However, I know you, Jack Orde, from top to
bottom; and I know you're fool enough not to do it. I'm so sure of it
that I dare put it to you straight; you could never bring yourself to
the point of destroying a man who had sacrificed himself for you.”

“You seem to have this game all figured out,” said Orde with contempt.

Newmark leaned back in his chair. Two bright red spots burned in his
ordinarily sallow cheeks. He half closed his eyes.

“You're right,” said he with an ill-concealed satisfaction. “If you play
a game, play it through. Each man is different; for each a different
treatment is required. The game is infinite, wonderful, fascinating to
the skilful.” He opened his eyes and looked over at Orde with a mild
curiosity. “I suppose men are about all of one kind to you.”

“Two,” said Orde grimly; “the honest men and the scoundrels.”

“Well,” said the other, “let's settle this thing. The fact remains that
the firm owes a note to Heinzman, which it cannot pay. You owe a note to
the firm which you cannot pay. All this may be slightly irregular; but
for private reasons you do not care to make public the irregularity. Am
I right so far?”

Orde, who had been watching him with a slightly sardonic smile, nodded.

“Well, what I want out of this--”

“You might hear the other side,” interrupted Orde. “In the first place,”
 said he, producing a bundle of papers, “I have the note and the mortgage
in my possession.”

“Whence Heinzman will shortly rescue them, as soon as I get to see him,”
 countered Newmark. “You acknowledge that I can force Heinzman; and you
can hardly refuse him.”

“If you force Heinzman, he'll land you,” Orde pointed out.

“There is Canada for me, with no extradition. He travels with heavier
baggage. I have the better trumps.”

“You'd lose everything.”

“Not quite,” smiled Newmark. “And, as usual, you are forgetting the
personal equation. Heinzman is--Heinzman. And I am I.”

“Then I suppose this affidavit from Heinzman as to the details of all
this is useless for the same reason?”

Newmark's thin lips parted in another smile.

“Correct,” said he.

“But you're ready to compromise below the face of the note?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

Newmark hesitated.

“I'll tell you,” said he; “because I know you well enough to realise
that there is a point where your loyalty to Heinzman would step aside in
favour of your loyalty to your family.”

“And you think you know where that point is?”

“It's the basis of my compromise.”

Orde began softly to laugh. “Newmark, you're as clever as the devil,”
 said he. “But aren't you afraid to lay out your cards this way?”

“Not with you,” replied Newmark, boldly; “with anybody else on earth,
yes. With you, no.”

Orde continued to laugh, still in the low undertone.

“The worst of it is, I believe you're right,” said he at last. “You have
the thing sized up; and there isn't a flaw in your reasoning. I always
said that you were the brains of this concern. If it were not for one
thing, I'd compromise sure; and that one thing was beyond your power to
foresee.”

He paused. Newmark's eyes half-closed again, in a quick darting effort
of his brain to run back over all the elements of the game he was
playing. Orde waited in patience for him to speak.

“What is it?” asked Newmark at last. “Heinzman died of smallpox at four
o'clock this afternoon,” said Orde.




XLVIII


Newmark did not alter his attitude nor his expression, but his face
slowly went gray. For a full minute he sat absolutely motionless, his
breath coming and going noisily through his contracted nostrils. Then
he arose gropingly to his feet, and started toward one of the two doors
leading from the room.

“Where are you going?” asked Orde quietly.

Newmark steadied himself with an effort.

“I'm going to get myself a drink in my bedroom,” he snapped. “Any
objections?”

“No,” replied Orde. “None. After you get your drink, come back. I want
to talk to you.”

Newmark snarled at him: “You needn't be afraid I'll run away. How'd I
get out of town?”

“I know it wouldn't pay you to run away,” said Orde.

Newmark passed out through the door. Orde looked thoughtfully at
Heinzman's affidavit, which, duly disinfected, had been handed him by
Dr. McMullen as important; and thrust it and the other papers into his
inside pocket. Then he arose to his feet and glided softly across the
room to take a position close to the door through which Newmark had
departed in quest of his drink. For a half minute he waited. Finally
the door swung briskly inward. Like a panther, as quickly and as
noiselessly, Orde sprang forward. A short but decisive struggle ensued.
In less than ten seconds Orde had pinioned Newmark's arms to his side
where he held them immovable with one of his own. The other hand he ran
down Newmark's right arm to the pocket. There followed an instant of
silent resistance. Then with a sharp cry of mingled anger and pain
Newmark snatched his hand out and gazed a trifle amazedly at the half
crushed fingers. Orde drew forth the revolver Newmark had grasped
concealed in the coat pocket.

Without hesitation he closed and locked the bedroom door; turned the key
in the lock of the other; tried and fastened the window. The revolver
he opened; spilled out the cartridges into his hand; and then tossed the
empty weapon to Newmark, who had sunk into the chair by the lamp.

“There's your plaything,” said he. “So you wanted that affidavit, did
you? Now we have the place to ourselves; and we'll thresh this matter
out.”

He paused, collecting his thoughts.

“I don't need to tell you that I've got you about where you live,” said
he finally. “Nor what I think of you. The case is open and shut; and I
can send you over the road for the best part of your natural days. Also
I've got these notes and the mortgage.”

“Quit it,” growled Newmark, “you've got me. Send me up; and be damned.”

“That's the question,” went on Orde slowly. “I've been at it three days,
without much time off for sleep. You hurt me pretty bad, Joe. I trusted
you; and I thought of you as a friend.”

Newmark stirred slightly with impatience.

“I had a hard time getting over that part of it; and about
three-quarters of what was left in the world looked mighty like ashes
for awhile. Then I began to see this thing a little clearer. We've been
together a good many years now; and as near as I can make out you've
been straight as a string with me for eight of them. Then I suppose the
chance came and before you knew it you were in over your neck.”

He looked, half-pleading toward Newmark. Newmark made no sign.

“I know that's the way it might be. A man thinks he's mighty brave; and
so he is, as long as he can see what's coming, and get ready for it. But
some day an emergency just comes up and touches him on the shoulder,
and he turns around and sees it all of a sudden. Then he finds he's a
coward. It's pretty hard for me to understand dishonesty, or how a man
can be dishonest. I've tried, but I can't do it. Crookedness isn't my
particular kind of fault. But I do know this: that we every one of us
have something to be forgiven for by some one. I guess I've got a temper
that makes me pretty sorry sometimes. Probably you don't see how it's
possible for a man to get crazy mad about little things. That isn't your
particular kind of fault.”

“Oh, for God's sake, drop that preaching. It makes me sick!” broke out
Newmark.

Orde smiled whimsically.

“I'm not preaching,” he said; “and even if I were, I've paid a good
many thousands of dollars, it seems, to buy the right to say what I
damn please. And if you think I'm working up to a Christian forgiveness
racket, you're very much mistaken. I'm not. I don't forgive you; and I
surely despise your sort. But I'm explaining to you--no, to myself--just
what I've been at for three days.”

“Well, turn me over to your sheriff, and let's get through with this,”
 said Newmark sullenly. “I suppose you've got that part of it all fixed.”

Orde rose.

“Look here, Newmark, that's just what I've been coming to, just what
I've had such a hard time to get hold of. I felt it, but I couldn't
put my finger on it. Now I know. I'm not going to hand you over to any
sheriff; I'm going to let you off. No,” he continued, in response to
Newmark's look of incredulous amazement, “it isn't from any fool notion
of forgiveness. I told you I didn't forgive you. But I'm not going to
burden my future life with you. That's just plain, ordinary selfishness.
I suppose I really ought to jug you; but if I do, I'll always carry with
me the thought that I've taken it on myself to judge a man. And I don't
believe any man is competent to judge another. I told you why--or tried
to--a minute or so ago. I've lived clean, and I've enjoyed the world
as a clean open-air sort of proposition--like a windy day--and I always
hope to. I'd rather drop this whole matter. In a short time I'd forget
you; you'd pass out of my life entirely. But if we carry this thing
through to a finish, I'd always have the thought with me that I'd put
you in the pen; that you are there now. I don't like the notion. I'd
rather finish this up right here and now and get it over and done with
and take a fresh start.” He paused and wiped his brow, wet with the
unusual exertion of this self-analysis. “I think a fellow ought to act
always as if he was making the world. He ought to try not to put things
in it that are going to make it an unpleasant or an evil world. We
don't always do it; but we ought to try. Now if I were making a world, I
wouldn't put a man in a penitentiary in it. Of course there's dangerous
criminals.” He glanced at Newmark a little anxiously. “I don't believe
you're that. You're sharp and dishonest, and need punishment; but you
don't need extinction. Anyway, I'm not going to bother my future with
you.”

Newmark, who had listened to this long and rambling exposition with
increasing curiosity and interest, broke into a short laugh.

“You've convicted me,” he said. “I'm a most awful failure. I thought I
knew you; but this passes all belief.”

Orde brushed this speech aside as irrelevant.

“Our association, of course, comes to an end. There remain the terms of
settlement. I could fire you out of this without a cent, and you'd have
to git. But that wouldn't be fair. I don't give a damn for you; but it
wouldn't be fair to me. Now as for the Northern Peninsula timber, you
have had seventy-five thousand out of that and have lent me the same
amount. Call that quits. I will take up your note when it comes due; and
destroy the one given to Heinzman. For all your holdings in our common
business I will give you my note without interest and without time for
one hundred thousand dollars. That is not its face value, nor anything
like it, but you have caused me directly and indirectly considerable
loss. I don't know how soon I can pay this note; but it will be paid.”

“All right,” agreed Newmark.

“Does that satisfy you?”

“I suppose it's got to.”

“Very well. I have the papers here all made out. They need simply to be
signed and witnessed. Timbull is the nearest notary.”

He unlocked the outside door.

“Come,” said he.

In silence the two walked the block and a half to the notary's house.
Here they were forced to wait some time while Timbull dressed himself
and called the necessary witnesses. Finally the papers were executed. In
the street Newmark paused significantly. But Orde did not take the hint.

“Are you coming with me?” asked Newmark.

“I am,” replied Orde. “There is one thing more.”

In silence once more they returned to the shadowy low library filled
with its evidences of good taste. Newmark threw himself into the
armchair. He was quite recovered, once again the imperturbable, coldly
calculating, cynical observer. Orde relocked the door, and turned to
face him.

“You have five days to leave town,” he said crisply. “Don't ever show up
here again. Let me have your address for the payment of this note.”

He took two steps forward.

“I've let you off from the pen because I didn't want my life bothered
with the thought of you. But you've treated me like a hound. I've been
loyal to the firm's interests from the start; and I've done my best by
it. You knifed me in the back. You're a dirty, low-lived skunk. If you
think you're going to get off scot-free, you're mightily mistaken.”

He advanced two steps more. Newmark half arose.

“What do you mean?” he asked in some alarm.

“I mean that I'm going to give you about the worst licking you ever
heard TELL of,” replied Orde, buttoning his coat.




XLIX


Five minutes later Orde emerged from Newmark's house, softly rubbing the
palm of one hand over the knuckles of the other. At the front gate he
paused to look up at the stars. Then he shut it decisively behind him.

Up through the maple shaded streets he walked at a brisk pace, breathing
deep, unconsciously squaring back his shoulders. The incident was
behind him. In his characteristic decisive manner he had wiped the whole
disagreeable affair off the slate. The copartnership with its gains and
losses, its struggles and easy sailing was a thing of the past. Only
there remained, as after a flood the sediment, a final result of it all,
the balance between successes and failures, a ground beneath the feet
of new aspirations. Orde had the Northern Peninsula timber; the Boom
Company; and the carrying trade. They were all burdened with debt, it
is true, but the riverman felt surging within him the reawakened and
powerful energy for which optimism is another name. He saw stretching
before him a long life of endeavour, the sort of endeavour he enjoyed,
exulted in; and in it he would be untrammelled and alone. The idea
appealed to him. Suddenly he was impatient for the morrow that he might
begin.

He turned out of the side street. His own house lay before him, dark
save for the gas jet in the hallway and the single lamp in the library.
A harmony of softly touched chords breathed out through the open window.
He stopped; then stole forward softly until he stood looking in through
the doorway.

Carroll sat leaning against the golden harp, her shining head with the
soft shadows bent until it almost touched the strings. Her hands were
straying idly over accustomed chords and rich modulations, the plaintive
half-music of reverie. A soft light fell on her slender figure; half
revealed the oval of her cheek and the sweep of her lashes.

Orde crept to her unheard. Gently he clasped her from behind.
Unsurprised she relinquished the harp strings and sank back against his
breast with a happy little sigh.

“Kind of fun being married, isn't it, sweetheart?” he repeated their
quaint formula.

“Kind of,” she replied; and raised her face to his.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Riverman, by Stewart Edward White

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1099 ***