The Riverman

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Riverman

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"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?"
s. 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.

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