The Riverman
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Stewart Edward White >> The Riverman
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"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, or, 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, w 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 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
interlocutho 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 tomore 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.
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