The Riverman

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Riverman

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

"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
cou.

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.

Ordnted 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-bmysterious 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 caressio 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 ehind" 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 ngly 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, whrather 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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24