The Riverman

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Riverman

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Orde repeated this to his associate.

"That was smooth enough sailing," he exulted.

"Yes," pondered Newmark, removing his glasses and tapping his thumb
with their edge. "Yes," he repeated, "that was smooth sailing.
What was that about rollways?"

"Oh, I told him we'd expect him to break out his own," said Orde.

"Yes, but what does that mean exactly?"

"Why," explained Orde, with a slight stare of surprise, "when the
logs are cut and hauled during the winter, they are banked on the
river-banks, and even in the river-channel itself. Then, when the
thaws come in the spring, these piles are broken down and set afloat
in the river."

"I see," said Newmark. "Well, but why shouldn't we undertake that
part of it? I should think that would he more the job of the river-
drivers."

"It would hold back our drive too much to have to stop and break
rollways," explained Orde.

The next morning they took the early train for Monrovia, where were
situated the big mills and the offices of the nine other lumber
companies. Within an hour they had descended at the small frame
terminal station, and were walking together up the village street.

Monrovia was at that time a very spread-out little place of perhaps
two thousand population. It was situated a half mile from Lake
Michigan, behind the sparsely wooded sand hills of its shore. From
the river, which had here grown to a great depth and width, its main
street ran directly at right angles. Four brick blocks of three
stories lent impressiveness to the vista. The stores in general,
however, were low frame structures. All faced broad plank sidewalks
raised above the street to the level of a waggon body. From this
main street ran off, to right and left, other streets, rendered
lovely by maple trees that fairly met across the way. In summer,
over sidewalk and roadway alike rested a dense, refreshing dark
shadow that seemed to throw from itself an odour of coolness. This
was rendered further attractive by the warm spicy odour of damp pine
that arose from the resilient surface of sawdust and shingles broken
beneath the wheels of traffic. Back from these trees, in wide,
well-cultivated lawns, stood the better residences. They were
almost invariably built of many corners, with steep roofs meeting
each other at all angles, with wide and ornamented red chimneys,
numerous windows, and much scroll work adorning each apex and
cornice. The ridge poles bristled in fancy foot-high palisades of
wood. Chimneys were provided with lightning-rods. Occasionally an
older structure, on square lines, recorded the era of a more
dignified architecture. Everywhere ran broad sidewalks and picket
fences. Beyond the better residence districts were the board
shanties of the mill workers.

Orde and Newmark tramped up the plank walk to the farthest brick
building. When they came to a cross street, they had to descend to
it by a short flight of steps on one side, and ascend from it by a
corresponding flight on the other. At the hotel, Newmark seated
himself in a rocking-chair next the big window.

"Good luck!" said he.

Orde mounted a wide, dark flight of stairs that led from the street
to a darker hall. The smell of stale cigars and cocoa matting was
in the air. Down the dim length of this hall he made his way to a
door, which without ceremony he pushed open.

He found himself in a railed-off space, separated from the main part
of the room by a high walnut grill.

"Mr. Heinzman in?" he asked of a clerk.

"I think so," replied the clerk, to whom evidently Orde was known.

Orde spent the rest of the morning with Heinzman, a very rotund,
cautious person of German extraction and accent. Heinzman occupied
the time in asking questions of all sorts about the new enterprise.
At twelve he had not in any way committed himself nor expressed an
opinion. He, however, instructed Orde to return the afternoon of
the following day.

"I vill see Proctor," said he.

Orde, rather exhausted, returned to find Newmark still sitting in
the rocking-chair with his unlighted cigar. The two had lunch
together, after which Orde, somewhat refreshed, started out. He
succeeded in getting two more promises of contracts and two more
deferred interviews.

"That's going a little faster," he told Newmark cheerfully.

The following morning, also, he was much encouraged by the reception
his plan gained from the other lumbermen. At lunch he recapitulated
to Newmark.

"That's four contracts already," said he, "and three more
practically a sure thing. Proctor and Heinzman are slower than
molasses about everything, and mean as pusley, and Johnson's up in
the air, the way he always is, for fear some one's going to do him."

"It isn't a bad outlook," admitted Newmark.

But Heinzman offered a new problem for Orde's consideration.

"I haf talked with Proctor," said he, "and ve like your scheme. If
you can deliffer our logs here for two dollars and a quarter, why,
that is better as ve can do it; but how do ve know you vill do it?"

"I'll guarantee to get them here all right," laughed Orde.

"But what is your guarantee good for?" persisted Heinzman blandly,
locking his fingers over his rotund little stomach. "Suppose the
logs are not deliffered--what then? How responsible are you
financially?"

"Well, we're investing seventy-five thousand dollars or so."

Heinzman rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and wafted the
imaginary pulverisation away.

"Worth that for a judgment," said he.

He allowed a pause to ensue.

"If you vill give a bond for the performance of your contract,"
pursued Heinzman, "that vould be satisfactory."

Orde's mind was struck chaotic by the reasonableness of this
request, and the utter impossibility of acceding to it.

"How much of a bond?" he asked.

"Twenty-fife thousand vould satisfy us," said Heinzman. "Bring us a
suitable bond for that amount and ve vill sign your contract."

Orde ran down the stairs to find Newmark. "Heinzman won't sign
unless we give him a bond for performance," he said in a low tone,
as he dropped into the chair next to Newmark.

Newmark removed his unlighted cigar, looked at the chewed end, and
returned it to the corner of his mouth.

"Heinzman has sense," said he drily. "I was wondering if ordinary
business caution was unknown out here."

"Can we get such a bond? Nobody would go on my bond for that
amount."

"Mine either," said Newmark. "We'll just have to let them go and
drive ahead without them. I only hope they won't spread the idea.
Better get those other contracts signed up as soon as we can."

With this object in view, Orde started out early the next morning,
carrying with him the duplicate contracts on which Newmark had been
busy.

"Rope 'em in," advised Newmark. "It's Saturday, and we don't want
to let things simmer over Sunday, if we can help it."

About eleven o'clock a clerk of the Welton Lumber Co. entered Mr.
Welton's private office to deliver to Orde a note.

"This just came by special messenger," he explained.

Orde, with an apology, tore it open. It was from Heinzman, and
requested an immediate interview. Orde delayed only long enough to
get Mr. Welton's signature, then hastened as fast as his horse could
take him across the drawbridge to the village.

Heinzman he found awaiting him. The little German, with his round,
rosy cheeks, his dot of a nose, his big spectacles, and his rotund
body, looked even more than usual like a spider or a Santa Clause--
Orde could not decide which.

"I haf been thinking of that bond," he began, waving a pudgy hand
toward a seat, "and I haf been talking with Proctor."

"Yes," said Orde hopefully.

"I suppose you would not be prepared to gif a bond?"

"I hardly think so."

"Vell, suppose ve fix him this way," went on Heinzman, clasping his
hands over his stomach and beaming through his spectacles. "
Proctor and I haf talked it ofer, and ve are agreet that the
probosition is a good one. Also ve think it is vell to help the
young fellers along." He laughed silently in such a manner as to
shake himself all over. "Ve do not vish to be too severe, and yet
ve must be assured that ve get our logs on time. Now, I unterstood
you to say that this new concern is a stock company."

Orde did not remember having said so, but he nodded.

"Vell, if you gif us a bond secured with stock in the new company,
that would be satisfactory to us."

Orde's face cleared.

"Do you mean that, Mr. Heinzman?"

"Sure. Ve must haf some security, but ve do not vish to be too hard
on you boys."

"Now, I call that a mighty good way out!" cried Orde.

"Make your contract out according to these terms, then," said
Heinzman, handing him a paper, "and bring it in Monday."

Orde glanced over the slip. It recited two and a quarter as the
agreed price; specified the date of delivery at Heinzman and
Proctor's booms; named twenty-five thousand dollars as the amount of
the bond, to be secured by fifty thousand dollars' worth of stock in
the new company. This looked satisfactery. Orde arose.

"I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Heinzman," said he. "I'll bring it
around Monday."

He had reached the gate to the grill before Heinzman called him
back.

"By the vay," the little German beamed up at him, swinging his fat
legs as the office-chair tipped back on its springs, "if it is to be
a stock company, you vill be selling some of the stock to raise
money, is it not so?"

"Yes," agreed Orde, "I expect so."

"How much vill you capitalise for?"

"We expect a hundred thousand ought to do the trick," replied Orde.

"Vell," said Heinzman, "ven you put it on the market, come and see
me." He nodded paternally at Orde, beaming through his thick
spectacles.

That evening, well after six, Orde returned to the hotel. After
freshening up in the marbled and boarded washroom, he hunted up
Newmark.

"Well, Joe," said he, "I'm as hungry as a bear. Come on, eat, and
I'll tell you all about it."

They deposited their hats on the racks and pushed open the swinging
screen doors that led into the dining-room. There they were taken
in charge by a marvellously haughty and redundant head-waitress, who
signalled them to follow down through ranks of small tables watched
by more stately damsels. Newmark, reserved and precise,
irreproachably correct in his neat gray, seemed enveloped in an
aloofness as impenetrable as that of the head-waitress herself.
Orde, however, was as breezy as ever. He hastened his stride to
overtake the head-waitress.

"Annie, be good!" he said in his jolly way. "We've got business to
talk. Put us somewhere alone."

Newmark nodded approval, and thrust his hand in his pocket. But
Annie looked up into Orde's frank, laughing face, and her lips
curved ever so faintly in the condescension of a smile.

"Sure, sorr," said she, in a most unexpected brogue.

"Well, I've got 'em all," said Orde, as soon as the waitress had
gone with the order. "But the best stroke of business you'd never
guess. I roped in Heinzman."

"Good!" approved Newmark briefly.

"It was really pretty decent of the little Dutchman. He agreed to
let us put up our stock as security. Of course, that security is
good only if we win out; and if we win out, why, then he'll get his
logs, so he won't have ame his brain cleared of its turmoil of
calculations, of guesses, of estimates, and of men. He saw clearly
the limited illumination cast downward by the lamp beneath its wide
shade, the graceful, white figure against the shadow of the easy
chair, the oval face cut in half by the lamplight to show plainly
the red lips with the quaint upward quirks at the corners, and dimly
the inscrutabny use for security. So it's just one way
of beating the devil around the bush. He evidently wanted to give
us the business, but he hated like the devil to pass up his rules--
you know how those old shellbacks are."

"H'm, yes," said Newmark.

The waitress sailed in through a violently kicked swinging door,
bearing aloft a tin tray heaped perilously. She slanted around a
corner in graceful opposition to the centrifugal, brought the tray
to port on a sort of landing stage by a pillar, and began
energetically to distribute small "iron-ware" dishes, each
containing a dab of something. When the clash of arrival had died,
Orde went on:

"I got into your department a little, too."

"How's that?" asked Newmark, spearing a baked potato. "Heinzman
said he'd buy some of our stock. He seems to think we have a pretty
good show."

Newmark paused, his potato half-way to his plate.

"Kind of him," said he after a moment. "Did he sign a contract?"

"It wasn't made out," Orde reminded him. "I've the memoranda here.
We'll make it out to-night. I am to bring it in Monday."

"I see we're hung up here over Sunday," observed Newmark. "No
Sunday trains to Redding."

Orde became grave.

"I know it. I tried to hurry matters to catch the six o'clock, but
couldn't make it." His round, jolly face fell sombre, as though a
light within had been extinguished. After a moment the light
returned. "Can't be helped," said he philosophically.

They ate hungrily, then drifted out into the office again, where
Orde lit a cigar.

"Now, let's see your memoranda," said Newmark.

He frowned over the three simple items for some time.

"It's got me," he confessed at last.

"What?" inquired Orde.

"What Heinzman is up to."

"What do you mean?" asked Orde, turning in his chair with an air of
slow surprise.

"It all looks queer to me. He's got something up his sleeve. Why
should he take a bond with that security from us? If we can't
deliver the logs, our company fails; that makes the stock worthless;
that makes the bond worthless--just when it is needed. Of course,
it's as plain as the nose on your face that he thinks the
proposition a good one and is trying to get control."

"Oh, no!" cried Orde, astounded.

"Orde, you're all right on the river," said Newmark, with a dry
little laugh, "but you're a babe in the woods at this game."

"But Heinzman is honest," cried Orde. "Why, he is a church member,
and has a class in Sunday-school."

Newmark selected a cigar from his case, examined it from end to end,
finally put it between his lips. The corners of his mouth were
twitching quietly with amusement.

"Besides, he is going to buy some stock," added Orde, after a
moment.

"Heinzman has not the slightest intention of buying a dollar's worth
of stock," asserted Newmark.

"But why--"

"--Did he make that bluff?" finished Newmark. "Because he wanted to
find out how much stock would be issued. You told him it would be a
hundred thousand dollars, didn't you?"

"Why--yes, I believe I did," said Orde, pondering. Newmark threw
back his head and laughed noiselessly.

"So now he knows that if we forfeit the bond he'll have controlling
interest," he pointed out.

Orde smoked rapidly, his brow troubled.

"But what I can't make out," reflected Newmark, "is why he's so sure
we'll have to forfeit."

I think he's just taking a long shot at it," suggested Orde, who
seemed finally to have decided against Newmark's opinion. "I
believe you're shying at mare's nests."

"Not he. He has some good reason for thinking we won't deliver the
logs. Why does he insist on putting in a date for delivery? None
of the others does."

"I don't know," replied Orde. "Just to put some sort of a time
limit on the thing, I suppose."

"You say you surely can get the drive through by then?"

Orde laughed.

"Sure? Why, it gives me two weeks' leeway over the worst possible
luck I could have. You're too almighty suspicious, Joe."

Newmark shook his head.

"You let me figure this out," said he.

But bedtime found him without a solution. He retired to his room
under fire of Orde's good-natured raillery. Orde himself shut his
door, the smile still on his lips. As he began removing his coat,
however, the smile died. The week had been a busy one. Hardly had
he exchanged a dozen words with his parents, for he had even been
forced to eat his dinner and supper away from home. This Sunday he
had promised himself to make his deferred but much-desired call on
Jane Hubbard--and her guest. He turned out the gas with a shrug of
resignation. For the first tile eyes and the hair with the soft shadows. With
a
sigh he felt asleep.

Some time in the night he was awakened by a persistent tapping on
the door. In the woodsman's manner, he was instantly broad awake.
He lit the gas and opened the door to admit Newmark, partially
dressed over his night gown.

"Orde," said he briefly and without preliminary, "didn't you tell me
the other day that rollways were piled both on the banks and IN the
river?"

"Yes, sometimes," said Orde. "Why?

"Then they might obstruct the river?"

"Certainly."

"I thought so!" cried Newmark, with as near an approach to
exultation as he ever permitted himself. "Now, just one other
thing: aren't Heinzman's rollways below most of the others?"

"Yes, I believe they are," said Orde.

"And, of course, it was agreed, as usual, that Heinzman was to break
out his own rollways?"

"I see," said Orde slowly. "You think he intends to delay things
enough so we can't deliver on the date agreed on."

"I know it," stated Newmark positively.

"But if he refuses to deliver the logs, no court of law will--"

"Law!" cried Newmark. "Refuse to deliver! You don't know that
kind. He won't refuse to deliver. There'll just be a lot of
inevitable delays, and his foreman will misunderstand, and all that.
You ought to know more about that than I do."

Orde nodded, his eye abstracted.

"It's a child-like scheme," commented Newmark. "If I'd had more
knowledge of the business, I'd have seen still above them the marshes and the
flats
where the river widened below the Big Bend. That would be the
location for the booms of the new company--a cheap property on which
the partners had already secured a valuation. And below he dropped
in imagination with the slackening current until between two greater
sand-hills than the rest the river ran out through the channel made
by two long piers to the lake--blue, restless, immeasurable. To
right and left stretched the long Michigan coast, with its low
yellow it sooner."

"I'd never have seen it at all," said Orde humbly. "You seem to be
the valuable member of this firm, Joe."

"In my way," said Newmark, "you in yours. We ought to make a good
team."

XII

Sunday afternoon, Orde, leaving Newmark to devices of his own,
walked slowly up the main street, turned to the right down one of
the shaded side residence streets that ended finally in a beautiful
glistening sand-hill. Up this he toiled slowly, starting at every
step avalanches and streams down the slope. Shortly he found
himself on the summit, and paused for a breath of air from the lake.

He was just above the tops of the maples, which seen from this angle
stretched away like a forest through which occasionally thrust roofs
and spires. Some distance beyond a number of taller buildings and
the red of bricks were visible. Beyond them still were other sand-
hills, planted raggedly with wind-twisted and stunted trees. But
between the brick buildings and these sand-hills flowed the river--
wide, deep, and still--bordered by the steamboat landings on the
town side and by fishermen's huts and net-racks and small boats on
the other. Orde seated himself on the smooth, clean sand and
removed his hat. He saw these things, and in imagination the far
upper stretches of the river, with the mills and yards and booms
extending for miles; andhills topped with the green of twisted pines, firs, and
beeches, with always its beach of sand, deep and dry to the very
edge of its tideless sea, strewn with sawlogs, bark, and the ancient
remains of ships.

After he had cooled he arose and made his way back to a pleasant
hardwood forest of maple and beech. Here the leaves were just
bursting from their buds. Underfoot the early spring flowers--the
hepaticas, the anemones, the trilium, the dog-tooth violets, the
quaint, early, bright-green undergrowths--were just reaching their
perfection. Migration was in full tide. Birds, little and big,
flashed into view and out again, busy in the mystery of their
northward pilgrimage, giving the appearance of secret and silent
furtiveness, yet each uttering his characteristic call from time to
time, as though for a signal to others of the host. The woods were
swarming as city streets, yet to Orde these little creatures were as
though invisible. He stood in the middle of a great multitude, he
felt himself under the observation of many bright eyes, he heard the
murmuring and twittering that proclaimed a throng, he sensed an
onward movement that flowed slowly but steadily toward the pole;
nevertheless, a flash of wings, a fluttering little body, the dip of
a hasty short flight, represented the visible tokens. Across the
pale silver sun of April their shadows flickered, and with them
flickered the tracery of new leaves and the delicacy of the lace-
like upper branches.

Orde walked slowly farther and farther into the forest, lost in an
enjoyment which he could not have defined accur snatched at the sand and sprayed
it
away in a beautiful plume.

"Isn't this REAL fun?" she asked him.

"Why, Miss Bishop!" cried Orde, finding his voice. "What are you
doing here?"

A faint shade of annoyance crossed her brow.

"Oh, I could ask the same of you; and then we'd talk about how
surprised we are, world without end," said she. "The important
thing is that here is sand to play in, and there is the Lake, and
here are we, and the day is charmed, and it's good to be alive. Sit
down and dig a hole! We've all the common days to explain things
in."

Orde laughed and seated himself to face her. Without further talk,
and quite gravely, they commenced to scoop out an excavation between
them, piling the sand over themselves and on either side as was most
convenient. As the hole grew deeper they had to lean over more and
more. Their heads sometimes brushed ever so lightly, their hands
perforce touched. Always the dry sand flowed from the edges
partially to fill in the result their efforts. Faster and faster
they scooped it out again. The excavation thus took on the shape of
a funnel. Her cheeks glowed pink, her eyes shone like stars.
Entirely was she absorbed in the task. At last a tiny commotion
manifested itself in the bottom of the funnel. Impulsively she laid
her hand on Orde's, to stop them. Fascinated, they watched. After
incredible though lilliputian upheavals, at lenately, but which was
so integral a portion of his nature that it had drawn him from the
banks and wholesale groceries to the woods. After a while he sat
down on a log and lit his pipe. Ahead the ground sloped upward.
Dimly through the half-fronds of the early season he could make out
the yellow of sands and the deep complementary blue of the sky above
them. He knew the Lake to lie just beyond. With the thought he
arose. A few moments later he stood on top the hill, gazing out
over the blue waters.

Very blue they were, with a contrasting snowy white fringe of waves
breaking gently as far up the coast as the eye could reach. The
beach, on these tideless waters, was hard and smooth only in the
narrow strip over which ran the wash of the low surf. All the rest
of the expanse of sand back to the cliff-like hills lay dry and
tumbled into hummocks and drifts, from which projected here a sawlog
cast inland from a raft by some long-past storm, there a slab, again
a ship's rib sticking gaunt and defiant from the shifting, restless
medium that would smother it. And just beyond the edge of the hard
sand, following the long curves of the wash, lay a dark, narrow line
of bark fragments.

The air was very clear and crystalline. The light-houses on the
ends of the twin piers, though some miles distant, seemed close at
hand. White herring gulls, cruising against the blue, flashed white
as the sails of a distant ship. A fresh breeze darkened the blue
velvet surface of the water, tumbled the white foam hissing up the
beach, blew forward over the dunes a fine hurrying mist of sand, and
bore to Orde at last the refreshment of the wide spaces. A woman,
walking slowly, bent her head against the force of this wind.

Orde watched her idly. She held to the better footing of the smooth
sand, which made it necessary that she retreat often before the
inrushing wash, sometimes rather hastily. Orde caught himself
admiring the grace of her deft and sudden movements, and the sway of
her willowy figure. Every few moments she turned and faced the
lake, her head thrown back, the wind whipping her garments about
her.

As she drew nearer, Orde tried in vain to catch sight of her face.
She looked down, watching the waters advance and recede; she wore a
brimmed hat bent around her head by means of some sort of veil tied
over the top and beneath her chin. When she had arrived nearly
opposite Orde she turned abruptly inland, and a moment later began
laboriously to climb the steep sand.

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