The Riverman

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Riverman

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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 a
t 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?" be 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."

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