THE RIVERMAN

by Stewart Edward White

CONTENTS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

XXXVII

XXXVIII

XXXIX

XL

XLI

XLII

XLIII

XLIV

XLV

XLVI

XLVII

XLVIII

XLIX

I

The best family board games for rainy daystime was the year 1872, and the place a bend in the river above a long pond terminating in a dam. Beyond this dam, and on a flat lower than it, stood a two-story mill structure. Save for a small, stump-dotted clearing, and the road that led from it, all else was forest. Here in the bottom-lands, following the course of the stream, the hardwoods grew dense, their uppermost branches just beginning to spray out in the first green of spring. Farther back, where the higher lands arose from the swamp, could be discerned the graceful frond of white pines and hemlock, and the sturdy tops of Norways and spruce.

A strong wind blew up the length of the pond. It ruffled the surface of the water, swooping down in fan-shaped, scurrying cat's-paws, turning the dark-blue surface as one turns the nap of velvet. At the upper end of the pond it even succeeded in raising quite respectable wavelets, which LAP LAP LAPPED eagerly against a barrier of floating logs that filled completely the mouth of the inlet river. And behind this barrier were other logs, and yet others, as far as the eye could see, so that the entire surface of the stream was carpeted by the brown timbers. A man could have walked down the middle of that river as down a highway.

On the bank, and in a small woods-opening, burned two fires, their smoke ducking and twisting under the buffeting of the wind. The first of these fires occupied a shallow trench dug for its accommodation, and was overarched by a rustic framework from which hung several pails, kettles, and pots. An injured-looking, chubby man in a battered brown derby hat moved here and there. He divided his time between the utensils and an indifferent youth—his “cookee.” The other, and larger, fire centred a rectangle composed of tall racks, built of saplings and intended for the drying of clothes. Two large tents gleamed white among the trees.

About the drying-fire were gathered thirty-odd men. Some were half-reclining before the blaze; others sat in rows on logs drawn close for the purpose; still others squatted like Indians on their heels, their hands thrown forward to keep the balance. Nearly all were smoking pipes.

Every age was represented in this group, but young men predominated. All wore woollen trousers stuffed into leather boots reaching just to the knee. These boots were armed on the soles with rows of formidable sharp spikes or caulks, a half and sometimes even three quarters of an inch in length. The tight driver's shoe and “stagged” trousers had not then come into use. From the waist down these men wore all alike, as though in a uniform, the outward symbol of their calling. From the waist up was more latitude of personal taste. One young fellow sported a bright-coloured Mackinaw blanket jacket; another wore a red knit sash, with tasselled ends; a third's fancy ran to a bright bandana about his neck. Head-gear, too, covered wide variations of broader or narrower brim, of higher or lower crown; and the faces beneath those hats differed as everywhere the human countenance differs. Only when the inspection, passing the gradations of broad or narrow, thick or thin, bony or rounded, rested finally on the eyes, would the observer have caught again the caste-mark which stamped these men as belonging to a distinct order, and separated them essentially from other men in other occupations. Blue and brown and black and gray these eyes were, but all steady and clear with the steadiness and clarity that comes to those whose daily work compels them under penalty to pay close and undeviating attention to their surroundings. This is true of sailors, hunters, plainsmen, cowboys, and tugboat captains. It was especially true of the old-fashioned river-driver, for a misstep, a miscalculation, a moment's forgetfulness of the sullen forces shifting and changing about him could mean for him maiming or destruction. So, finally, to one of an imaginative bent, these eyes, like the “cork boots,” grew to seem part of the uniform, one of the marks of their caste, the outward symbol of their calling.

“Blow, you son of a gun!” cried disgustedly one young fellow with a red bandana, apostrophising the wind. “I wonder if there's ANY side of this fire that ain't smoky!”

“Keep your hair on, bub,” advised a calm and grizzled old-timer. “There's never no smoke on the OTHER side of the fire—whichever that happens to be. And as for wind—she just makes holiday for the river-hogs.”

“Holiday, hell!” snorted the younger man. “We ought to be down to Bull's Dam before now—”

“And Bull's Dam is half-way to Redding,” mocked a reptilian and red-headed giant on the log, “and Redding is the happy childhood home of—”

The young man leaped to his feet and seized from a pile of tools a peavy—a dangerous weapon, like a heavy cant-hook, but armed at the end with a sharp steel shoe.

“That's about enough!” he warned, raising his weapon, his face suffused and angry. The red-headed man, quite unafraid, rose slowly from the log and advanced, bare-handed, his small eyes narrowed and watchful.

But immediately a dozen men interfered.

“Dry up!” advised the grizzled old-timer—Tom North by name. “You, Purdy, set down; and you, young squirt, subside! If you're going to have ructions, why, have 'em, but not on drive. If you don't look out, I'll set you both to rustling wood for the doctor.”

At this threat the belligerents dropped muttering to their places. The wind continued to blow, the fire continued to flare up and down, the men continued to smoke, exchanging from time to time desultory and aimless remarks. Only Tom North carried on a consecutive, low-voiced conversation with another of about his own age.

“Just the same, Jim,” he was saying, “it is a little tough on the boys—this new sluice-gate business. They've been sort of expectin' a chance for a day or two at Redding, and now, if this son of a gun of a wind hangs out, I don't know when we'll make her. The shallows at Bull's was always bad enough, but this is worse.”

“Yes, I expected to pick you up 'way below,” admitted Jim, whose “turkey,” or clothes-bag, at his side proclaimed him a newcomer. “Had quite a tramp to find you.”

“This stretch of slack water was always a terror,” went on North, “and we had fairly to pike-pole every stick through when the wind blew; but now that dam's backed the water up until there reely ain't no current at all. And this breeze has just stopped the drive dead as a smelt.”

“Don't opening the sluice-gates give her a draw?” inquired the newcomer.

“Not against this wind—and not much of a draw, anyway, I should guess.”

“How long you been hung?”

“Just to-day. I expect Jack will be down from the rear shortly. Ought to see something's wrong when he runs against the tail of this jam of ours.”

At this moment the lugubrious, round-faced man in the derby hat stepped aside from the row of steaming utensils he had been arranging.

“Grub pile,” he remarked in a conversational tone of voice.

The group arose as one man and moved upon the heap of cutlery and of tin plates and cups. From the open fifty-pound lard pails and kettles they helped themselves liberally; then retired to squat in little groups here and there near the sources of supply. Mere conversation yielded to an industrious silence. Sadly the cook surveyed the scene, his arms folded across the dirty white apron, an immense mental reservation accenting the melancholy of his countenance. After some moments of contemplation he mixed a fizzling concoction of vinegar and soda, which he drank. His rotundity to the contrary notwithstanding, he was ravaged by a gnawing dyspepsia, and the sight of six eggs eaten as a side dish to substantials carried consternation to his interior.

So busily engaged was each after his own fashion that nobody observed the approach of a solitary figure down the highway of the river. The man appeared tiny around the upper bend, momently growing larger as he approached. His progress was jerky and on an uneven zigzag, according as the logs lay, by leaps, short runs, brief pauses, as a riverman goes. Finally he stepped ashore just below the camp, stamped his feet vigorously free of water, and approached the group around the cooking-fire.

No one saw him save the cook, who vouchsafed him a stately and lugubrious inclination of the head.

The newcomer was a man somewhere about thirty years of age, squarely built, big of bone, compact in bulk. His face was burly, jolly, and reddened rather than tanned by long exposure. A pair of twinkling blue eyes and a humorously quirked mouth redeemed his countenance from commonplaceness.

He spread his feet apart and surveyed the scene.

“Well, boys,” he remarked at last in a rollicking big voice, “I'm glad to see the situation hasn't spoiled your appetites.”

At this they looked up with a spontaneous answering grin. Tom North laid aside his plate and started to arise.

“Sit still, Tom,” interposed the newcomer. “Eat hearty. I'm going to feed yet myself. Then we'll see what's to be done. I think first thing you'd better see to having this wind turned off.”

After the meal was finished, North and his principal sauntered to the water's edge, where they stood for a minute looking at the logs and the ruffled expanse of water below.

“Might as well have sails on them and be done with it,” remarked Jack Orde reflectively. “Couldn't hold 'em any tighter. It's a pity that old mossback had to put in a mill. The water was slack enough before, but now there seems to be no current at all.”

“Case of wait for the wind,” agreed Tom North. “Old Daly will be red-headed. He must be about out of logs at the mill. The flood-water's going down every minute, and it'll make the riffles above Redding a holy fright. And I expect Johnson's drive will be down on our rear most any time.”

“It's there already. Let's go take a look,” suggested Orde.

They picked their way around the edge of the pond to the site of the new mill.

“Sluice open all right,” commented Orde. “Thought she might be closed.”

“I saw to that,” rejoined North in an injured tone.

“'Course,” agreed Orde, “but he might have dropped her shut on you between times, when you weren't looking.”

He walked out on the structure and looked down on the smooth water rushing through.

“Ought to make a draw,” he reflected. Then he laughed. “Tom, look here,” he called. “Climb down and take a squint at this.”

North clambered to a position below.

“The son of a gun!” he exclaimed.

The sluice, instead of bedding at the natural channel of the river, had been built a good six feet above that level; so that, even with the gates wide open, a “head” of six feet was retained in the slack water of the pond.

“No wonder we couldn't get a draw,” said Orde. “Let's hunt up old What's-his-name and have a pow-wow.”

“His name is plain Reed,” explained North. “There he comes now.”

“Sainted cats!” cried Orde, with one of his big, rollicking chuckles. “Where did you catch it?”

The owner of the dam flapped into view as a lank and lengthy individual dressed in loose, long clothes and wearing a-top a battered old “plug” hat, the nap of which seemed all to have been rubbed off the wrong way.

As he bore down on the intruders with tremendous, nervous strides, they perceived him to be an old man, white of hair, cadaverous of countenance, with thin, straight lips, and burning, fanatic eyes beneath stiff and bushy brows.

“Good-morning, Mr. Reed,” shouted Orde above the noise of the water.

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” replied the apparition.

“Nice dam you got here,” went on Orde.

Reed nodded, his fiery eyes fixed unblinking on the riverman.

“But you haven't been quite square to us,” said Orde. “You aren't giving us much show to get our logs out.”

“How so?” snapped the owner, his thin lips tightening.

“Oh, I guess you know, all right,” laughed Orde, clambering leisurely back to the top of the dam. “That sluice is a good six foot too high.”

“Is that so!” cried the old man, plunging suddenly into a craze of excitement. “Well, let me tell you this, Mr. Man, I'm giving you all the law gives you, and that's the natural flow of the river, and not a thing more will you get! You that comes to waste and destroy, to arrogate unto yourselves the kingdoms of the yearth and all the fruits thereof, let me tell you you can't override Simeon Reed! I'm engaged here in a peaceful and fittin' operation, which is to feed the hungry by means of this grist-mill, not to rampage and bring destruction to the noble forests God has planted! I've give you what the law gives you, and nothin' more!”

Somewhat astonished at this outbreak, the two rivermen stood for a moment staring at the old man. Then a steely glint crept into Orde's frank blue eye and the corners of his mouth tightened.

“We want no trouble with you, Mr. Reed,” said he, “and I'm no lawyer to know what the law requires you to do and what it requires you not to do. But I do know that this is the only dam on the river with sluices built up that way, and I do know that we'll never get those logs out if we don't get more draw on the water. Good-day.”

Followed by the reluctant North he walked away, leaving the gaunt figure of the dam owner gazing after them, his black garments flapping about him, his hands clasped behind his back, his ruffled plug hat thrust from his forehead.

“Well!” burst out North, when they were out of hearing.

“Well!” mimicked Orde with a laugh.

“Are you going to let that old high-banker walk all over you?”

“What are you going to do about it, Tom? It's his dam.”

“I don't know. But you ain't going to let him bang us up here all summer—”

“Sure not. But the wind's shifting. Let's see what the weather's like to-morrow. To-day's pretty late.”

II

The next morning dawned clear and breathless. Before daylight the pessimistic cook was out, his fire winking bravely against the darkness. His only satisfaction of the long day came when he aroused the men from the heavy sleep into which daily toil plunged them. With the first light the entire crew were at the banks of the river.

As soon as the wind died the logs had begun to drift slowly out into the open water. The surface of the pond was covered with the scattered timbers floating idly. After a few moments the clank of the bars and ratchet was heard as two of the men raised the heavy sluice-gate on the dam. A roar of water, momently increasing, marked the slow rise of the barrier. A very imaginative man might then have made out a tendency forward on the part of those timbers floating nearest the centre of the pond. It was a very sluggish tendency, however, and the men watching critically shook their heads.

Four more had by this time joined the two men who had raised the gate, and all together, armed with long pike poles, walked out on the funnel-shaped booms that should concentrate the logs into the chute. Here they prodded forward the few timbers within reach, and waited for more.

These were a long time coming. Members of the driving crew leaped shouting from one log to another. Sometimes, when the space across was too wide to jump, they propelled a log over either by rolling it, paddling it, or projecting it by the shock of a leap on one end. In accomplishing these feats of tight-rope balance, they stood upright and graceful, quite unconscious of themselves, their bodies accustomed by long habit to nice and instant obedience to the almost unconscious impulses of the brain. Only their eyes, intent, preoccupied, blazed out by sheer will-power the unstable path their owners should follow. Once at the forefront of the drive, the men began vigorously to urge the logs forward. This they accomplished almost entirely by main strength, for the sluggish current gave them little aid. Under the pressure of their feet as they pushed against their implements, the logs dipped, rolled, and plunged. Nevertheless, they worked as surely from the decks of these unstable craft as from the solid earth itself.

In this manner the logs in the centre of the pond were urged forward until, above the chute, they caught the slightly accelerated current which should bring them down to the pike-pole men at the dam. Immediately, when this stronger influence was felt, the drivers zigzagged back up stream to start a fresh batch. In the meantime a great many logs drifted away to right and left into stagnant water, where they lay absolutely motionless. The moving of them was deferred for the “sacking crew,” which would bring up the rear.

Jack Orde wandered back and forth over the work, his hands clasped behind his back, a short pipe clenched between his teeth. To the edge of the drive he rode the logs, then took to the bank and strolled down to the dam. There he stood for a moment gazing aimlessly at the water making over the apron, after which he returned to the work. No cloud obscured the serene good-nature of his face. Meeting Tom North's troubled glance, he grinned broadly.

“Told you we'd have Johnson on our necks,” he remarked, jerking his thumb up river toward a rapidly approaching figure.

This soon defined itself as a tall, sun-reddened, very blond individual with a choleric blue eye.

“What in hell's the matter here?” he yelled, as soon as he came within hearing distance.

Orde made no reply, but stood contemplating the newcomer with a flicker of amusement.

“What in hell's the matter?” repeated the latter violently.

“Better go there and inquire,” rejoined Orde drolly. “What ails you, Johnson?”

“We're right at your rear,” cried the other, “and you ain't even made a start gettin' through this dam! We'll lose the water next! Why in hell ain't you through and gone?”

“Keep your shirt on,” advised Orde. “We're getting through as fast as we can. If you want these logs pushed any faster, come down and do it yourself.”

Johnson vouchsafed no reply, but splashed away over the logs, examining in detail the progress of the work. After a little he returned within hailing distance.

“If you can't get out logs, why do you take the job?” he roared, with a string of oaths. “If you hang my drive, damn you, you'll catch it for damages! It's gettin' to a purty pass when any old highbanker from anywheres can get out and play jackstraws holdin' up every drive in the river! I tell you our mills need logs, and what's more they're agoin' to GIT them!”

He departed in a rumble of vituperation.

Orde laughed humorously at his foreman.

“Johnson gets so mad sometimes, his skin cracks,” he remarked. “However,” he went on more seriously, “there's a heap in what he means, if there ain't so much in what he says. I'll go labour with our old friend below.”

He regained the bank, stopped to light his pipe, and sauntered, with every appearance of leisure, down the bank, past the dam, to the mill structure below.

Here he found the owner occupying a chair tilted back against the wall of the building. His ruffled plug hat was thrust, as usual, well away from his high and narrow forehead; the long broadcloth coat fell back to reveal an unbuttoned waistcoat the flapping black trousers were hitched up far enough to display woollen socks wrinkled about bony shanks. He was whittling a pine stick, which he held pointing down between his spread knees, and conversing animatedly with a young fellow occupying another chair at his side.

“And there comes one of 'em now,” declaimed the old man dramatically.

Orde nodded briefly to the stranger, and came at once to business.

“I want to talk this matter over with you,” he began. “We aren't making much progress. We can't afford to hang up the drive, and the water is going down every day. We've got to have more water. I'll tell you what we'll do: If you'll let us cut down the new sill, we'll replace it in good shape when we get all our logs through.”

“No, sir!” promptly vetoed the old man.

“Well, we'll give you something for the privilege. What do you think is fair?”

“I tell ye I'll give you your legal rights, and not a cent more,” replied the old man, still quietly, but with quivering nostrils.

“What is your name?” asked Orde.

“My name is Reed, sir.”

“Well, Mr. Reed, stop and think what this means. It's a more serious matter than you think. In a little while the water will be so low in the river that it will be impossible to take out the logs this year. That means a large loss, of course, as you know.”

“I don't know nothin' about the pesky business, and I don't wan to,” snorted Reed.

“Well, there's borers, for one thing, to spoil a good many of the logs. And think what it will mean to the mills. No logs means no lumber. That is bankruptcy for a good many who have contracts to fulfil. And no logs means the mills must close. Thousands of men will be thrown out of their jobs, and a good many of them will go hungry. And with the stream full of the old cutting, that means less to do next winter in the woods—more men thrown out. Getting out a season's cut with the flood-water is a pretty serious matter to a great many people, and if you insist on holding us up here in this slack water the situation will soon become alarming.”

“Ye finished?” demanded Reed grimly.

“Yes,” replied Orde.

The old man cast from him his half-whittled piece of pine. He closed his jack-knife with a snap and thrust it in his pocket. He brought to earth the front legs of his chair with a thump, and jammed his ruffled plug hat to its proper place.

“And if the whole kit and kaboodle of ye starved out-right,” said he, “it would but be the fulfillin' of the word of the prophet who says, 'So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee, and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee. I the Lord have spoken it!'”

“That's your last word?” inquired Orde.

“That's my last word, and my first. Ye that make of God's smilin' land waste places and a wilderness, by your own folly shall ye perish.”

“Good-day,” said Orde, whirling on his heel without further argument.

The young man, who had during this colloquy sat an interested and silent spectator, arose and joined him. Orde looked at his new companion a little curiously. He was a very slender young man, taut-muscled, taut-nerved, but impassive in demeanour. He possessed a shrewd, thin face, steel-gray, inscrutable eyes behind glasses. His costume was quite simply an old gray suit of business clothes and a gray felt hat. At the moment he held in his mouth an unlighted and badly chewed cigar.

“Nice, amiable old party,” volunteered Orde with a chuckle.

“Seems to be,” agreed the young man drily.

“Well, I reckon we'll just have to worry along without him,” remarked Orde, striking his steel caulks into the first log and preparing to cross out into the river where the work was going on.

“Wait a minute,” said the young fellow. “Have you any objections to my hanging around a little to watch the work? My name is Newmark—Joseph Newmark. I'm out in this country a good deal for my health. This thing interests me.”

“Sure,” replied Orde, puzzled. “Look all you want to. The scenery's free.”

“Yes. But can you put me up? Can I get a chance to stay with you a little while?”

“Oh, as far as I'm concerned,” agreed Orde heartily. “But,” he supplemented with one of his contagious chuckles, “I'm only river-boss. You'll have to fix it up with the doctor—the cook, I mean,” he explained, as Newmark look puzzled. “You'll find him at camp up behind that brush. He's a slim, handsome fellow, with a jolly expression of countenance.”

He leaped lightly out over the bobbing timbers, leaving Newmark to find his way.

In the centre of the stream the work had been gradually slowing down to a standstill with the subsidence of the first rush of water after the sluice-gate was opened. Tom North, leaning gracefully against the shaft of a peavy, looked up eagerly as his principal approached.

“Well, Jack,” he inquired, “is it to be peace or war?”

“War,” replied Orde briefly.

III

At this moment the cook stepped into view, and, making a trumpet of his two hands, sent across the water a long, weird, and not unmusical cry. The men at once began slowly to drift in the direction of the camp. There, when the tin plates had all been filled, and each had found a place to his liking, Orde addressed them. His manner was casual and conversational.

“Boys,” said he, “the old mossback who owns that dam has come up here loaded to scatter. He's built up the sill of that gate until we can't get a draw on the water, and he refuses to give, lend, or sell us the right to cut her out. I've made him every reasonable proposition, but all I get back is quotations from the prophets. Now, we've got to get those logs out—that's what we're here for. A fine bunch of whitewater birlers we'd look if we got hung up by an old mossback in a plug hat. Johnny Sims, what's the answer?”

“Cut her out,” grinned Johnny Sims briefly.

“Correct!” replied Orde with a chuckle. “Cut her out. But, my son, it's against the law to interfere with another man's property.”

This was so obviously humourous in intent that its only reception consisted of more grins from everybody.

“But,” went on Orde more seriously, “it's quite a job. We can't work more than six or eight men at it at a time. We got to work as fast as we can before the old man can interfere.”

“The nearest sheriff's at Spruce Rapids,” commented some one philosophically.

“We have sixty men, all told,” said Orde. “We ought to be able to carry it through.”

He filled his plate and walked across to a vacant place. Here he found himself next to Newmark.

“Hello!” he greeted that young man, “fixed it with the doctor all right?”

“Yes,” replied Newmark, in his brief, dry manner, “thanks! I think I ought to tell you that the sheriff is not at Spruce Rapids, but at the village—expecting trouble.”

Orde whistled, then broke into a roar of delight.

“Boys,” he called, “old Plug Hat's got the sheriff right handy. I guess he sort of expected we'd be thinking of cutting through that dam. How'd you like to go to jail?”

“I'd like to see any sheriff take us to jail, unless he had an army with him,” growled one of the river-jacks.

“Has he a posse?” inquired Orde of Newmark.

“I didn't see any; but I understood in the village that the governor had been advised to hold State troops in readiness for trouble.”

Orde fell into a brown study, eating mechanically. The men began an eager and somewhat truculent discussion full of lawless and bloodthirsty suggestion. Some suggested the kidnapping and sequestration of Reed until the affair should be finished.

“How'd he get hold of his old sheriff, then?” they inquired with some pertinence.

Orde, however, paid no attention to all this talk, but continued to frown into space. At last his face cleared, and he slapped down his tin plate so violently that the knife and fork jumped off into the dirt.

“I have it!” he cried aloud.

But he would not tell what he had. After the noon hour he instructed a half-dozen men to provide themselves with saws, axes, picks, and shovels, and all marched in the direction of the mill.

When within a hundred yards or so of that structure the advancing riverman saw the lank, black figure of the mill owner flap into sight, astride a bony old horse, and clatter away, coat-tails flying, up the road and into the waiting forest.

“Now, boys!” cried Orde crisply. “He'll be back in an hour with the sheriff. Lively!” He rapidly designated ten men of his crew. “You boys get to work and make things hum. Get as much done as you can before the sheriff comes.”

“He'll have to bring all of Spruce County to get me,” commented one of those chosen, spitting on his hands.

“Me, too!” said others.

“Now, listen,” said Orde, holding them with an impressive gesture. “When that sheriff comes, with or without a posse, I want you to go peaceably. Understand?”

“Cave in? Not much!” cried Purdy.

“See here,” and Orde drew them aside to an earnest, low-voiced conversation that lasted several minutes. When he had finished he clapped each of them on the back, and all moved off, laughing, to the dam.

“Now, boys,” he commanded the others, “no row without orders. Understand? If there's going to be a fight, I'll give you the word when.”

The chopping crew descended to the bottom of the sluice, the gate of which had been shut, and began immediately to chop away at the apron. As the water in the pond above had been drawn low by the morning's work, none overflowed the gate, so the men were enabled to work dry. Below the apron, of course, had been filled in with earth and stones. As soon as the axe-men had effected an entry to this deposit, other men with shovels and picks began to remove the filling.

The work had continued nearly an hour when Orde commanded the fifty or more idlers back to camp.

“Get out, boys,” he ordered. “The sheriff will be here pretty quick now, and I don't want any row. Get out of sight.”

“And leave them to fight her out alone? Guess not!” grumbled a tall, burly individual with a red face.

Orde immediately walked directly to this man.

“Am I bossing this drive, or am I not?” he demanded.

The riverman growled something.

SMACK! SMACK! sounded Orde's fists. The man, taken by surprise, went down in a heap, but immediately rebounded to his feet as though made of rubber. But Orde had seized a peavy, and stood over against his antagonist, the murderous weapon upraised.

“Lie down, you hound, or I'll brain you!” he roared at the top strength of his great voice. “Want fight, do you? Well, you won't have to wait till the sheriff gets here! You make a move!”

For a full half minute the man crouched breathless, and Orde, his ruddy face congested, held his threatening attitude. Then he dropped his peavy and stepped aside.

“March!” he commanded. “Get your turkey and hit the hay trail. You'll get your time at Redding.”

The man sullenly arose and slouched away, grumbling under his breath. Orde watched him from sight, then turned to the silent group, a new crispness in his manner.

“Well?” he demanded.

Hesitating, they turned to the river trail, leaving the ten still working at the sluice. When well within the fringe of the brush, Orde called a halt. His customary good-humour seemed quite restored.

“Now, boys,” he commanded, “squat down and lay low. You give me an ache! Don't you suppose I got this thing all figured out? If fight would do any good, you know mighty well I'd fight. And the boys won't be in jail any longer than it takes to get a wire to Daly to bail them out. Smoke up, and don't bother.”

They filled their pipes and settled down to an enjoyment of the situation. Ordinarily from very early in the morning until very late at night the riverman is busy every instant at his dangerous and absorbing work. Those affairs which do not immediately concern his task—as the swiftness of rapids, the state of flood, the curves of streams, the height of water, the obstructions of channels, the quantities of logs—pass by the outer fringe of his consciousness, if indeed they reach him at all. Thus, often he works all day up to his waist in a current bearing the rotten ice of the first break-up, or endures the drenching of an early spring rain, or battles the rigours of a belated snow with apparent indifference. You or I would be exceedingly uncomfortable; would require an effort of fortitude to make the plunge. Yet these men, absorbed in the mighty problems of their task, have little attention to spare to such things. The cold, the wet, the discomfort, the hunger, the weariness, all pass as shadows on the background. In like manner the softer moods of the spring rarely penetrate through the concentration of faculties on the work. The warm sun shines; the birds by thousands flutter and twitter and sing their way north; the delicate green of spring, showered from the hand of the passing Sower, sprinkles the tops of the trees, and gradually sifts down through the branches; the great, beautiful silver clouds sail down the horizon like ships of a statelier age, as totally without actual existence to these men. The logs, the river—those are enough to strain all the faculties a man possesses, and more.

So when, as now, a chance combination of circumstances brings them leisure to look about them, the forest and the world of out-of-doors comes to them with a freshness impossible for the city dweller to realise. The surroundings are accustomed, but they bring new messages. To most of them, these impressions never reach the point of coherency. They brood, and muse, and expand in the actual and figurative warmth, and proffer the general opinion that it is a damn fine day!

Another full half hour elapsed before the situation developed further. Then Tom North's friend Jim, who had gathered his long figure on the top of a stump, unclasped his knees and remarked that old Plug Hat was back.

The men arose to their feet and peered cautiously through the brush. They saw Reed, accompanied by a thick-set man whom some recognised as the sheriff of the county, approach the edge of the dam. A moment later the working crew mounted to the top, stacked their tools neatly, resumed their coats and jackets, and departed up the road in convoy of the sheriff.

A gasp of astonishment broke from the concealed rivermen.

“Well, I'll be damned!” ejaculated one. “What are we comin' to? That's the first time I ever see one lonesome sheriff gather in ten river-hogs without the aid of a gatlin' or an ambulance! What's the matter with that chicken-livered bunch, anyway?”

Orde watched them, his eyes expressionless, until they had disappeared in the fringe of the forest Then he turned to the astonished group.

“Jim,” said he, “and you, Ellis, and you, and you, and you, and you, get to work on that dam. And remember this, if you are arrested, go peaceably. Any resistance will spoil the whole game.”

The men broke into mingled cheers and laughter as the full significance of Orde's plan reached them. They streamed back to the dam, where they perched proffering advice and encouragement to those about to descend.

Immediately, however, Reed was out, his eyes blazing either side his hawk nose.

“Here!” he cried, “quit that! I'll have ye arrested!”

“Arrest ahead,” replied Orde coldly.

Reed stormed back and forth for a moment, then departed at full speed up the road.

“Now, boys, get as much done as possible,” urged Orde. “We better get back in the brush, or he may try to take in the whole b'iling of us on some sort of a blanket warrant.”

“How about the other boys?” inquired North.

“I gave one of them a telegram to send to Daly,” replied Orde. “Daly will be up to bail them out.”

Once more they hid in the woods; and again, after a longer interval, the mill owner and the sheriff reappeared. Reed appeared to be expostulating violently, and a number of times pointed up river; but the sheriff went ahead stolidly to the dam, summoned those working below, and departed up the road as before. Reed stood uncertain until he saw the rivermen beginning to re-emerge from the brush, then followed the officer at top speed.

Without the necessity of command, a half-dozen men leaped down on the apron. The previous crews had made considerable progress in weakening the heavy supports. As soon as these should be cut out and the backing removed, the mere sawing through of the massive sill should carry away the whole obstruction.

“Next time will decide it,” remarked Orde. “If the sheriff brings a posse and sits down to lay for us, of course we won't be able to get near to finish the job.”

“I didn't think that of George Morris,” commented Sims in an aggrieved way. “He was a riverman himself once before he was sheriff.”

“He's got to obey orders, and serve a warrant when it's issued, of course,” replied Orde to this. “What did you expect?”

At the end of another hour, which brought the time to four o'clock, the sheriff made his third appearance—this time in a side-bar buggy.

“I wish I dared join that confab,” said Orde, “and hear what's going on, but I'm afraid he'd jug me sure.”

“He wouldn't jug me,” spoke up Newmark. “I'll go down.”

“Bully for you!” agreed Orde.

The young man departed in his precise, methodical manner, picking his way rather mincingly among the inequalities of the trail. In spite of the worn and wrinkled condition of his garments, they retained something of a city hang and smartness that sharply differentiated their wearer from even the well-dressed citizens of a smaller town. They seemed to match the refined, shrewd, but cold intelligence of his lean and nervous face.

About sunset he returned from a scene which the distant spectators had watched with breathless interest. It was in essence only a repetition of the two that had preceded it, but Reed had evidently gone almost to the point of violence in his insistence, and the sheriff had shaken him off rudely. Finally, Morris and his six prisoners had trailed away. The sheriff and North's friend occupied the seat of the buggy, while the other five trudged peaceably alongside. Once again Reed clattered away on his bony steed, but this time ahead of the official party.

With a whoop the river crew, now reduced to a scant dozen, rushed down to meet the too deliberate Newmark.

“Well?” they demanded, crowding about him.

“Reed wanted the sheriff to stay and protect the dam,” reported Newmark in his brief, dry manner. “Sheriff refused. Said his duty was simply to arrest on warrant, and as often as Reed got out warrants, he'd serve them. Reed said, then, he should get a posse and hunt up Orde and the rest of them. Sheriff replied that as far as he could see, the terms of his warrant were covered by the men he found working on the dam, Reed demanded protection, Sheriff said for him to get an injunction, and it would be enforced.”

“Well, that's all right,” interjected Orde with satisfaction. “We'll have her cut through before he gets that injunction, and I guess I've got men enough here and down river to get through before we're ALL arrested.”

“Yes,” said Newmark, “that's all very well. But now he's gone to telegraph the governor to send the troops.”

Orde whistled a jig tune.

“Kind of expected that, boys,” said he. “Let's see. The next train out from Redding—They'll be here by five in the morning at soonest. Hope it'll be later.”

“What will you do?” asked Newmark.

“Take chances,” replied Orde. “All you boys get to work. Zeke,” he commanded one of the cookees, “go up road, and report if Morris comes back. I reckon this time we'll have to scatter if he comes after us. I hope we won't have to, though. Like to keep everything square on account of this State troop business.”

The sun had dropped below the fringe of trees, which immediately etched their delicate outlines against a pale, translucent green sky. Two straight, thin columns of smoke rose from the neglected camp-fires. Orde, glancing around him, noticed these.

“Doctor,” he commanded sharply, “get at your grub! Make some coffee right off, and bring it down. Get the lanterns from the wanigan, and bring them to the dam. Come on, boys!”

Over a score of men attacked the sluice-way, for by now part of the rear crew had come down river. The pond above had recovered its volume. Water was beginning to trickle over the top of the gate. In a short time progress became difficult, almost impossible, The men worked up to their knees in swift water. They could not see, and the strokes of axe or pick lost much of their force against the liquid. Dusk fell. The fringe of the forest became mysterious in its velvet dark. Silver streaks, of a supernal calm, suggested the reaches of the pond. Above, the sky's day surface unfolded and receded and dissolved and melted away until, through the pale afterglow, one saw beyond into the infinities. Down by the sluice a dozen lanterns flickered and blinked yellow against the blue-blackness of the night.

After some time Orde called his crew off and opened the sluice-gates. The water had become too deep for effective work, and a half hour's flow would reduce the pressure. The time was occupied in eating and in drying off about the huge fire the second cookee had built close at hand.

“Water cold, boys?” asked Orde.

“Some,” was his reply.

“Want to quit?” he inquired, with mock solicitude.

“Nary quit.”

Orde's shout of laughter broke the night silence of the whispering breeze and the rushing water.

“We'll stick to 'em like death to a dead nigger,” was his comment.

Newmark, having extracted a kind of cardigan jacket from the bag he had brought with him as far as the mill, looked at the smooth, iron-black water and shivered.

When the meal was finished, the men lit their pipes and went back to work philosophically. With entire absorption in the task, they dug, chopped, and picked. The dull sound of blows, the gurgle and trickle of the water, the occasional grunt or brief comment of a riverman alone broke the calm of evening. Now that the sluice-gate was down and the water had ceased temporarily to flow over it, the work went faster. Orde, watching with the eye of an expert, vouchsafed to the taciturn Newmark that he thought they'd make it.

Near midnight, however, a swaying lantern was seen approaching. Orde, leaping to his feet with a curse at the boy on watch, heard the sound of wheels. A moment later, Daly's bulky form stepped into the illumination of the fire.

Orde wandered over to where his principal stood peering about him.

“Hullo!” said he.

“Oh, there you are!” cried Daly angrily. “What in hell you up to here?”

“Running logs,” replied Orde coolly.

“Running logs!” shouted Daly, tugging at his overcoat pocket, and finally producing a much-folded newspaper. “How about this?”

Orde unfolded the paper and lowered it to the campfire. It was an extra, screaming with wood type. He read it deliberately over.

WAR!

the headline ran.

RIOTING AND BLOODSHED IN THE WOODS RIVERMEN AND DAM OWNERS CLASH!

There followed a vague and highly coloured statement to the effect that an initial skirmish had left the field in possession of the rivermen, in spite of the sheriff and a large posse, but that troops were being rushed to the spot, and that this “high-handed defiance of authority” would undoubtedly soon be suppressed. It concluded truthfully with the statement that the loss of life was as yet unknown.

Orde folded up the paper and handed it back.

“Don't you know any better than to get into that kind of a row down here?” Daly had been saying. “Do you want to bring us up for good here? Don't you realise that this isn't the northern peninsula? What are you trying to do, any way?”

“Sure I do,” replied Orde placidly. “Come along here till I show you the situation.”

Ten minutes later, Daly, relieved in his mind, was standing by the fire drinking hot coffee and laughing at Orde's description of Reed's plug hat.

To Orde's satisfaction, the sheriff did not reappear. Reed evidently now pinned his faith to the State troops.

All night the work went on, the men spelling each other at intervals of every few hours. By three o'clock the main abutments had been removed. The gate was then blocked to prevent its fall when its nether support should be withdrawn, and two men, leaning over cautiously, began at arm's-length to deliver their axe-strokes against the middle of the sill-timbers of the sluice itself, notching each heavy beam deeply that the force of the current might finally break it in two. The night was very dark, and very still. Even the night creatures had fallen into the quietude that precedes the first morning hours. The muffled, spaced blows of the axes, the low-voiced comments or directions of the workers, the crackle of the fire ashore were thrown by contrast into an undue importance. Men in blankets, awaiting their turn, slept close to the blaze.

Suddenly the vast silence of before dawn was broken by a loud and exultant yell from one of the axemen. At once the two scrambled to the top of the dam. The blanketed figures about the fire sprang to life. A brief instant later the snapping of wood fibres began like the rapid explosions of infantry fire; a crash and bang of timbers smote the air; and then the river, exultant, roaring with joy, rushed from its pent quietude into the new passage opened for it. At the same moment, as though at the signal, a single bird, premonitor of the yet distant day, lifted up his voice, clearly audible above the tumult.

Orde stormed into the camp up stream, his eyes bright, his big voice booming exultantly.

“Roll out, you river-hogs!” he shouted to those who had worked out their shifts earlier in the night. “Roll out, you web-footed sons of guns, and hear the little birds sing praise!”

Newmark, who had sat up the night through, and now shivered sleepily by the fire, began to hunt around for the bed-roll he had, earlier in the evening, dumped down somewhere in camp.

“I suppose that's all,” said he. “Just a case of run logs now. I'll turn in for a little.”

But Orde, a thick slice of bread half-way to his lips, had frozen in an attitude of attentive listening.

“Hark!” said he.

Faint, still in the depths of the forest, the wandering morning breeze bore to their ears a sound whose difference from the louder noises nearer at hand alone rendered it audible.

“The troops!” exclaimed Orde.

He seized a lantern and returned down the trail, followed eagerly by Newmark and every man in camp.

“Troops coming!” said Orde to Daly.

The men drew a little to one side, watching the dim line of the forest, dark against the paling sky. Shadows seemed to stir in its blackness. They heard quite distinctly the clink of metal against metal. A man rode out of the shadow and reined up by the fire. “Halt!” commanded a harsh voice. The rivermen could make out the troops—three or four score of them—standing rigid at attention. Reed, afoot now in favour of the commanding officer, pushed forward.

“Who is in charge here?” inquired the officer crisply.

“I am,” replied Orde, stepping forward.

“I wish to inquire, sir, if you have gone mad to counsel your men to resist civil authority?”

“I have not resisted civil authority,” replied Orde respectfully.

“It has been otherwise reported.”

“The reports have been false. The sheriff of this county has arrested about twenty of my men single-handed and without the slightest trouble.”

“Mr. Morris,” cried the officer sharply.

“Yes?” replied the sheriff.

“Is what this man says true?”

“It sure is. Never had so little fuss arrestin' rivermen before in my life.”

The officer's face turned a slow brick-red. For a moment he said nothing, then exploded with the utmost violence.

“Then why the devil am I dragged up here with my men in the night?” he cried. “Who's responsible for this insanity, anyway? Don't you know,” he roared at Reed, who that moment swung within his range of vision, “that I have no standing in the presence of civil law? What do you mean getting me up here to your miserable little backwoods squabbles?”

Reed started to say something, but was immediately cut short by the irate captain.

“I've nothing to do with that; settle it in court. And what's more, you'll have something yourself to settle with the State! About, face! Forward, march!”

The men faded into the gray light as though dissolved by it.

A deep and respectful silence fell upon the men, which was broken by Orde's solemn and dramatic declamation.

“The King of France and twice ten thousand men      Marched up the hill, and then marched down again,” 

he recited; then burst into his deep roar of laughter.

“Now you see, boys,” he said, digging his fists into his eyes, “if you'd put up a row, what we'd have got into. No blue-coats in mine, thank you. Well, push the grub pile, and then get at those logs. It's a case of flood-water now.”

But Reed, having recovered from his astonishment, had still his say.

“I tell ye, I'm not done with ye yet,” he threatened, shaking his bony forefinger in Orde's face. “I'll sue ye for damages, and I'll GIT 'em, too.”

“See here, you old mossback,” said Orde, thrusting his bulky form to the fore, “you sue just as soon as you want to. You can't get at it any too quick to suit us. But just now you get out of this camp, and you stay out. You're an old man, and we don't want to be rough with you, but you're biting off more than you can chew. Skedaddle!”

Reed hesitated, waving his long arms about, flail-like, as though to begin a new oration.

“Now, do hop along,” urged Orde. “We'll pay you any legitimate damages, of course, but you can't expect to hang up a riverful of logs just on a notion. And we're sick of you. Oh, hell, then! See here, you two; just see that this man leaves camp.”

Orde turned square on his heel. Reed, after a glance at the two huge rivermen approaching, beat a retreat to his mill, muttering and wrathful still.

“Well, good-bye, boys,” said Daly, pulling on his overcoat; “I'll just get along and bail the boys out of that village calaboose. I reckon they've had a good night's rest. Be good!”

The fringe of trees to eastward showed clearly against the whitening sky. Hundreds of birds of all kinds sang in an ecstasy. Another day had begun. Already men with pike-poles were guiding the sullen timbers toward the sluice-way.

IV

When Newmark awoke once more to interest in affairs, the morning was well spent. On the river the work was going forward with the precision of clockwork. The six-foot lowering of the sluice-way had produced a fine current, which sucked the logs down from above. Men were busily engaged in “sacking” them from the sides of the pond toward its centre, lest the lowering water should leave them stranded. Below the dam the jam crew was finding plenty to do in keeping them moving in the white-water and the shallows. A fine sun, tempered with a prophetic warmth of later spring, animated the scene. Reed had withdrawn to the interior of his mill, and appeared to have given up the contest.

Some of the logs shot away down the current, running freely. To these the crews were not required to pay any attention. With luck, a few of the individual timbers would float ten, even twenty, miles before some chance eddy or fortuitous obstruction would bring them to rest. Such eddies and obstructions, however, drew a constant toll from the ranks of the free-moving logs, so that always the volume of timbers floating with the current diminished, and always the number of logs caught and stranded along the sides of the river increased. To restore these to the faster water was the especial province of the last and most expert crew—the rear.

Orde discovered about noon that the jam crew was having its troubles. Immediately below Reed's dam ran a long chute strewn with boulders, which was alternately a shallow or a stretch of white-water according as the stream rose or fell. Ordinarily the logs were flushed over this declivity by opening the gate, behind which a head of water had been accumulated. Now, however, the efficiency of the gate had been destroyed. Orde early discovered that he was likely to have trouble in preventing the logs rushing through the chute from grounding into a bad jam on the rapids below.

For a time the jam crew succeeded in keeping the “wings” clear. In the centre of the stream, however, a small jam formed, like a pier. Along the banks logs grounded, and were rolled over by their own momentum into places so shallow as to discourage any hope of refloating them unless by main strength. As the sluicing of the nine or ten million feet that constituted this particular drive went forward, the situation rapidly became worse.

“Tom, we've got to get flood-water unless we want to run into an awful job there,” said Orde to the foreman. “I wonder if we can't drop that gate 'way down to get something for a head.”

The two men examined the chute and the sluice-gate attentively for some time.

“If we could clear out the splinters and rubbish, we might spike a couple of saplings on each side for the gate to slide down into,” speculated North. “Might try her on.”

The logs were held up in the pond, and a crew of men set to work to cut away, as well as they might in the rush of water, the splintered ends of the old sill and apron. It was hard work. Newmark, watching, thought it impracticable. The current rendered footing impossible, so all the work had to be done from above. Wet wood gripped the long saws vice-like, so that a man's utmost strength could scarcely budge them. The water deadened the force of axe-blows. Nevertheless, with the sure persistence of the riverman, they held to it. Orde, watching them a few moments, satisfied himself that they would succeed, and so departed up river to take charge of the rear.

This crew he found working busily among some overflowed woods. They were herding the laggards of the flock. The subsidence of the water consequent upon the opening of the sluice-gate had left stranded and in shallows many hundreds of the logs. These the men sometimes, waist deep in the icy water, owing to the extreme inequality of the bottom, were rolling over and over with their peavies until once more they floated. Some few the rivermen were forced to carry bodily, ten men to a side, the peavies clamped in as handles. When once they were afloat, the task became easier. From the advantage of deadwood, stumps, or other logs the “sackers” pushed the unwieldy timbers forward, leaping, splashing, heaving, shoving, until at last the steady current of the main river seized the logs and bore them away. With marvellous skill they topped the dripping, bobby, rolling timbers, treading them over and over, back and forth, in unconscious preservation of equilibrium.

There was a good deal of noise and fun at the rear. The crew had been divided, and a half worked on either side the river. A rivalry developed as to which side should advance fastest in the sacking. It became a race. Momentary success in getting ahead of the other fellow was occasion for exultant crowing, while a mishap called forth ironic cheers and catcalls from the rival camp. Just as Orde came tramping up the trail, one of the rivermen's caulks failed to “bite” on an unusually smooth, barked surface. His foot slipped; the log rolled; he tried in vain to regain his balance, and finally fell in with a heavy splash.

The entire river suspended work to send up a howl of delight. As the unfortunate crawled out, dripping from head to foot, he was greeted by a flood of sarcasm and profane inquiry that left no room for even his acknowledged talents of repartee. Cursing and ashamed, he made his way ashore over the logs, spirting water at every step. There he wrung out his woollen clothes as dry as he could, and resumed work.

Hardly had Orde the opportunity to look about at the progress making, however, before he heard his name shouted from the bank. Looking up, to his surprise he saw the solemn cook waving a frantic dish-towel at him. Nothing could induce the cook to attempt the logs.

“What is it, Charlie?” asked Orde, leaping ashore and stamping the loose water from his boots.

“It's all off,” confided the cook pessimistically. “It's no good. He's stopped us now.”

“What's off? Who's stopped what?”

“Reed. He's druv the men from the dam with a shotgun. We might as well quit.”

“Shotgun, hey!” exclaimed Orde. “Well, the old son of a gun!” He thought a moment, his lips puckered as though to whistle; then, as usual, he laughed amusedly. “Let's go take a look at the army,” said he.

He swung away at a round pace, followed rather breathlessly by the cook. The trail led through the brush across a little flat point, up over a high bluff where the river swung in, down to another point, and across a pole trail above a marsh to camp.

A pole trail consists of saplings laid end to end, and supported three or four feet above wet places by means of sawbuck-like structures at their extremities. To a river-man or a tight-rope dancer they are easy walks. All others must proceed cautiously in contrite memory of their sins.

Orde marched across the first two lengths confidently enough. Then he heard a splash and lamentations. Turning, he perceived Charlie, covered with mud, in the act of clambering up one of the small trestles.

“Ain't got no caulks!” ran the lamentations. “The —— of a —— of a pole-trail, anyways!”

He walked ahead gingerly, threw his hands aloft, bent forward, then suddenly protruded his stomach, held out one foot in front of him, spasmodically half turned, and then, realising the case hopeless, wilted like a wet rag, to clasp the pole trail both by arm and leg. This saved him from falling off altogether, but swung him underneath, where he hung like the sloths in the picture-books. A series of violent wriggles brought him, red-faced and panting, astride the pole, whence, his feelings beyond mere speech, he sadly eyed his precious derby, which lay, crown up, in the mud below.

Orde contemplated the spectacle seriously.

“Sorry I haven't got time to enjoy you just now, Charlie,” he remarked. “I'd take it slower, if I were you.”

He departed, catching fragments of vows anent never going on any more errands for nobody, and getting his time if ever again he went away from his wanigan.

Orde stopped short outside the fringe of brush to utter another irrepressible chuckle of amusement.

The centre of the dam was occupied by Reed. The old man was still in full regalia, his plug hat fuzzier than ever, and thrust even farther back on his head, his coat-tails and loose trousers flapping at his every movement as he paced back and forth with military precision. Over his shoulder he carried a long percussion-lock shotgun. Not thirty feet away, perched along the bank, for all the world like a row of cormorants, sat the rivermen, watching him solemnly and in silence.

“What's the matter?” inquired Orde, approaching.

The old man surveyed him with a snort of disgust.

“If the law of the land don't protect me, I'll protect myself, sir,” he proclaimed. “I give ye fair warning! I ain't a-going to have my property interfered with no more.”

“But surely,” said Orde, “we have a right to run our logs through. It's an open river.”

“And hev ye been running your logs through?” cried the old man excitedly. “Hev ye? First off ye begin to tear down my dam; and then, when the river begins a-roarin' and a-ragin' through, then you tamper with my improvements furthermore, a-lowerin' the gate and otherwise a-modifyin' my structure.”

Orde stepped forward to say something further. Immediately Reed wheeled, his thumb on the hammer.

“All right, old Spirit of '76,” replied Orde. “Don't shoot; I'll come down.”

He walked back to the waiting row, smiling quizzically.

“Well, you calamity howlers, what do you think of it?”

Nobody answered, but everybody looked expectant.

“Think he'd shoot?” inquired Orde of Tom North.

“I know he would,” replied North earnestly. “That crazy-headed kind are just the fellers to rip loose.”

“I think myself he probably would,” agreed Orde.

“Surely,” spoke up Newmark, “whatever the status of the damage suits, you have the legal right to run your logs.”

Orde rolled a quizzical eye in his direction.

“Per-fect-ly correct, son,” he drawled, “but we're engaged in the happy occupation of getting out logs. By the time the law was all adjusted and a head of steam up, the water'd be down. In this game, you get out logs first, and think about law afterward.”

“How about legal damages?” insisted Newmark.

“Legal damages!” scoffed Orde. “Legal damages! Why, we count legal damages as part of our regular expenses—like potatoes. It's lucky it's so,” he added. “If anybody paid any attention to legal technicalities, there'd never be a log delivered. A man always has enemies.

“Well, what are you going to do?” persisted Newmark.

Orde thrust back his felt hat and ran his fingers through his short, crisp hair.

“There you've got me,” he confessed, “but, if necessary, we'll pile the old warrior.”

He walked to the edge of the dam and stood looking down current. For perhaps a full minute he remained there motionless, his hat clinging to one side, his hand in his hair. Then he returned to the grimly silent rivermen.

“Boys,” he commanded briefly, “get your peavies and come along.”

He led the way past the mill to the shallows below.

“There's a trifle of wading to do,” he announced. “Bring down two logs—fairly big—and hold them by that old snag,” he ordered. “Whoa-up! Easy! Hold them end on—no, pointing up stream—fix 'em about ten foot apart—that's it! George, drive a couple of stakes each side of them to hold 'em. Correct! Now, run down a couple dozen more and pile them across those two—side on to the stream, of course. Roll 'em up—that's the ticket!”

Orde had been splashing about in the shallow water, showing where each timber was to be placed. He drew back, eyeing the result with satisfaction. It looked rather like a small and bristly pier.

Next he cast his eye about and discovered a partially submerged boulder on a line with the newly completed structure. Against this he braced the ends of two more logs, on which he once more caused to be loaded at right angles many timbers. An old stub near shore furnished him the basis of a third pier. He staked a thirty-inch butt for a fourth; and so on, until the piers, in conjunction with the small centre jam already mentioned, extended quite across the river.

All this was accomplished in a very short time, and immediately below the mill, but beyond sight from the sluice-gate of the dam.

“Now, boys,” commanded Orde, “shove off some shore logs, and let them come down.”

“We'll have a jam sure,” objected Purdy stupidly.

“No, my son, would we?” mocked Orde. “I surely hope not!”

The stray logs floating down with the current the rivermen caught and arranged to the best possible advantage about the improvised piers. A good riverman understands the correlation of forces represented by saw-logs and water-pressure. He knows how to look for the key-log in breaking jams; and by the inverse reasoning, when need arises he can form a jam as expertly as Koosy-oonek himself—that bad little god who brings about the disagreeable and undesired—“who hides our pipes, steals our last match, and brings rain on the just when they want to go fishing.”

So in ten seconds after the shore logs began drifting down from above, the jam was taking shape. Slowly it formed, low and broad. Then, as the water gathered pressure, the logs began to slip over one another. The weight of the topmost sunk those beneath to the bed of the stream. This to a certain extent dammed back the water. Immediately the pressure increased. More logs were piled on top. The piers locked the structure. Below the improvised dam the water fell almost to nothing, and above it, swirling in eddies, grumbling fiercely, bubbling, gurgling, searching busily for an opening, the river, turned back on itself, gathered its swollen and angry forces.

“That will do, boys,” said Orde with satisfaction.

He led the way to the bank and sat down. The men followed his example. Every moment the water rose, and each instant, as more logs came down the current, the jam became more formidable.

“Nothing can stand that pressure,” breathed Newmark, fascinated.

“The bigger the pressure the tighter she locks,” replied Orde, lighting his pipe.

The high bank where the men sat lay well above the reach of the water. Not so the flat on which stood Reed's mill. In order to take full advantage of the water-power developed by the dam, the old man had caused his structure to be built nearly at a level with the stream. Now the river, backing up, rapidly overflowed this flat. As the jam tightened by its own weight and the accumulation of logs, the water fairly jumped from the lowest floor of the mill to the one above.

Orde had not long to wait for Reed's appearance. In less than five minutes the old man descended on the group, somewhat of his martial air abated, and something of a vague anxiety manifest in his eye.

“What's the matter here?” he demanded.

“Matter?” inquired Orde easily. “Oh, nothing much, just a little jam.”

“But it's flooding my mill!”

“So I perceive,” replied Orde, striking a match.

“Well, why don't you break it?”

“Not interested.”

The old warrior ran up the bank to where he could get a good view of his property. The water was pouring into the first-floor windows.

“Here!” he cried, running back. “I've a lot of grain up-stairs. It'll be ruined!”

“Not interested,” repeated Orde.

Reed was rapidly losing control of himself.

“But I've got a lot of money invested here!” he shouted. “You miserable blackguard, you're ruining me!”

Orde replaced his pipe.

Reed ran back and forth frantically, disappeared, returned bearing an antiquated pike-pole, and single-handed and alone attacked the jam!

Astonishment and delight held the rivermen breathless for a moment. Then a roar of laughter drowned even the noise of the waters. Men pounded each other on the back, rolled over and over, clutching handfuls of earth, struggled weak and red-faced for breath as they saw against the sky-line of the bristling jam the lank, flapping figure with the old plug hat pushing frantically against the immovable statics of a mighty power. The exasperation of delay, the anxiety lest success be lost through the mulish and narrow-minded obstinacy of one man, the resentment against another obstacle not to be foreseen and not to be expected in a task redundantly supplied with obstacles of its own—these found relief at last.

“By Jove!” breathed Newmark softly to himself. “Don Quixote and the windmills!” Then he added vindictively, “The old fool!” although, of course, the drive was not his personal concern.

Only Orde seemed to see the other side. And on Orde the responsibility, uncertainty, and vexation had borne most heavily, for the success of the undertaking was in his hands. With a few quick leaps he had gained the old man's side.

“Look here, Reed,” he said kindly, “you can't break this jam. Come ashore now, and let up. You'll kill yourself.”

Reed turned to him, a wild light in his eye.

“Break it!” he pleaded. “You're ruining me. I've got all my money in that mill.”

“Well,” said Orde, “we've got a lot of money in our logs too. You haven't treated us quite right.”

Reed glanced frantically toward the flood up stream.

“Come,” said Orde, taking him gently by the arm. “There's no reason you and I shouldn't get along together all right. Maybe we're both a little hard-headed. Let's talk it over.”

He led the old man ashore, and out of earshot of the rivermen.

At the end of ten minutes he returned.

“War's over, boys!” he shouted cheerfully. “Get in and break that jam.”

At once the crew swarmed across the log barrier to a point above the centre pier. This they attacked with their peavies, rolling the top logs off into the current below. In less than no time they had torn out quite a hole in the top layer. The river rushed through the opening. Immediately the logs in the wings were tumbled in from either side. At first the men had to do all of the work, but soon the river itself turned to their assistance. Timbers creaked and settled, or rose slightly buoyant as the water loosened the tangle. Men trod on the edge of expectation. Constantly the logs shifted, and as constantly the men shifted also, avoiding the upheavals and grindings together, wary eyes estimating the correlation of the forces into whose crushing reach a single misstep would bring them. The movement accelerated each instant, as the music of the play hastens to the climax. Wood fibres smashed. The whole mass seemed to sink down and forward into a boiling of waters. Then, with a creak and a groan, the jam moved, hesitated, moved again; finally, urged by the frantic river, went out in a majestic crashing and battering of logs.

At the first movement Newmark expected the rivermen to make their escape. Instead, they stood at attention, their peavies poised, watching cat-eyed the symptoms of the break. Twice or thrice several of the men, observing something not evident to Newmark's unpractised eye, ran forward, used their peavies vigorously for a moment or so, and stood back to watch the result. Only at the very last, when it would seem that some of them must surely he caught, did the river-jacks, using their peavy-shafts as balancing poles, zigzag calmly to shore across the plunging logs. Newmark seemed impressed.

“That was a close shave,” said he to the last man ashore.

“What?” inquired the riverman. “Didn't see it. Somebody fall down?”

“Why, no,” explained Newmark; “getting in off those logs without getting caught.”

“Oh!” said the man indifferently, turning away.

The going out of the jam drained the water from the lower floors of the mill; the upper stories and the grain were still safe.

By evening the sluice-gate had been roughly provided with pole guides down which to slide to the bed of the river. The following morning saw the work going on as methodically as ever. During the night a very good head of water had gathered behind the lowered gate. The rear crew brought down the afterguard of logs to the pond. The sluicers with their long pike-poles thrust the logs into the chute. The jam crew, scattered for many miles along the lower stretches, kept the drive going; running out over the surface of the river like water-bugs to thrust apart logs threatening to lock; leaning for hours on the shafts of their peavies watching contemplatively the orderly ranks as they drifted by, sleepy, on the bosom of the river; occasionally gathering, as the filling of the river gave warning, to break a jam. By the end of the second day the pond was clear, and as Charlie's wanigan was drifting toward the chute, the first of Johnson's drive floated into the head of the pond.

V

Charlie's wanigan, in case you do not happen to know what such a thing may be, was a scow about twenty feet long by ten wide. It was very solidly constructed of hewn timbers, square at both ends, was inconceivably clumsy, and weighed an unbelievable number of pounds. When loaded, it carried all the bed-rolls, tents, provisions, cooking utensils, tools, and a chest of tobacco, clothes, and other minor supplies. It was managed by Charlie and his two cookees by means of pike-poles and a long sweep at either end. The pike-poles assured progress when the current slacked; the sweeps kept her head-on when drifting with the stream.

Charlie's temperament was pessimistic at best. When the wanigan was to be moved, he rose fairly to the heights of what might be called destructive prophecy.

The packing began before the men had finished breakfast. Shortly after daylight the wanigan, pushed strongly from shore by the pike-poles, was drifting toward the chute. When the heavy scow threatened to turn side-on, the sweeps at either end churned the water frantically in an endeavour to straighten her out. Sometimes, by a misunderstanding, they worked against each other. Then Charlie, raging from one to the other of his satellites, frothed and roared commands and vituperations. His voice rose to a shriek. The cookees, bewildered by so much violence, lost their heads completely. Then Charlie abruptly fell to an exaggerated calm. He sat down amidships on a pile of bags, and gazed with ostentatious indifference out over the pond. Finally, in a voice fallen almost to a whisper, and with an elaborate politeness, Charlie proffered a request that his assistants acquire the sense God gave a rooster. Newmark, who had elected to accompany the wanigan on its voyage, evidently found it vastly amusing, for his eyes twinkled behind his glasses. As the wanigan neared the sluice through which it must shoot the flood-water, the excitement mounted to fever pitch. The water boiled under the strokes of the long steering oars. The air swirled with the multitude and vigour of Charlie's commands. As many of the driving crew as were within distance gathered to watch. It was a supreme moment. As Newmark looked at the smooth rim of the water sucking into the chute, he began to wonder why he had come.

However, the noble ship was pointed right at last, and caught the faster water head-on. Even Charlie managed to look cheerful for an instant, and to grin at his passenger as he wiped his forehead with a very old, red handkerchief.

“All right now,” he shouted.

Zeke and his mate took in the oars. The wanigan shot forward below the gate—

WHACK! BUMP! BANG! and the scow stopped so suddenly that its four men plunged forward in a miscellaneous heap, while Zeke narrowly escaped going overboard. Almost immediately the water, backed up behind the stern, began to overflow into the boat. Newmark, clearing his vision as well as he could for lack of his glasses, saw that the scow had evidently run her bow on an obstruction, and had been brought to a standstill square beneath the sluice-gate. Men seemed to be running toward them. The water was beginning to flow the entire length of the boat. Various lighter articles shot past him and disappeared over the side. Charlie had gone crazy and was grabbing at these, quite uselessly, for as fast as he had caught one thing he let it go in favour of another. The cookees, retaining some small degree of coolness, were pushing uselessly with pike-poles.

Newmark had an inspiration. The more important matters, such as the men's clothes-bags, the rolls of bedding, and the heavier supplies of provisions, had not yet cut loose from their moorings, although the rapid backing of the water threatened soon to convert the wanigan into a chute for nearly the full volume of the current. He seized one of the long oars, thrust the blade under the edge of a thwart astern laid the shaft of the oar across the cargo, and by resting his weight on the handle attempted to bring it down to bind the contents of the wanigan to their places. The cookees saw what he was about, and came to his assistance. Together they succeeded in bending the long hickory sweep far enough to catch its handle-end under another, forward, thwart. The second oar was quickly locked alongside the first, and not a moment too soon. A rush of water forced them all to cling for their lives. The poor old wanigan was almost buried by the river.

But now help was at hand. Two or three rivermen appeared at the edge of the chute. A moment later old man Reed ran up, carrying a rope. This, after some difficulty, was made fast to the bow of the wanigan. A dozen men ran with the end of it to a position of vantage from which they might be able to pull the bow away from the sunken obstruction, but Orde, appearing above, called a halt. After consultation with Reed, another rope was brought and the end of it tossed down to the shipwrecked crew. Orde pointed to the stern of the boat, revolving his hands in pantomime to show that the wanigan would be apt to upset if allowed to get side-on when freed. A short rope led to the top of the dam allowed the bow to be lifted free of the obstruction; a cable astern prevented the current from throwing her broadside to the rush of waters; another cable from the bow led her in the way she should go. Ten minutes later she was pulled ashore out of the eddy below, very much water-logged, and manned by a drenched and disgruntled crew.

But Orde allowed them little chance for lamentation.

“Hard luck!” he said briefly. “Hope you haven't lost much. Now get a move on you and bail out. You've got to get over the shallows while this head is on.”

“That's all the thanks you get,” grumbled Charlie to himself and the other three as Orde moved away. “Work, slave, get up in the night, drownd yourself—”

He happily discovered that the pails under the forward thwart had not been carried away, and all started in to bail. It was a back-breaking job, and consumed the greater part of two hours. Even at the end of that time the wanigan, though dry of loose water, floated but sluggishly.

“'Bout two ton of water in them bed-rolls and turkeys,” grumbled Charlie. “Well, get at it!”

Newmark soon discovered that the progress of the wanigan was looked upon in the light of a side-show by the rivermen. Its appearance was signal for shouts of delighted and ironic encouragement; its tribulations—which at first, in the white-water, were many—the occasion for unsympathetic and unholy joy. Charlie looked on all spectators as enemies. Part of the time he merely glowered. Part of the time he tried to reply in kind. To his intense disgust, he was taken seriously in neither case.

In a couple of hours' run the wanigan had overtaken and left far behind the rear of the drive. All about floated the logs, caroming gently one against the other, shifting and changing the pattern of their brown against the blue of the water. The current flowed strongly and smoothly, but without obstruction. Everything went well. The banks slipped by silently and mysteriously, like the unrolling of a panorama—little strips of marshland, stretches of woodland where the great trees leaned out over the river, thickets of overflowed swampland with the water rising and draining among roots in a strange regularity of its own. The sun shone warm. There was no wind. Newmark wrung out his outer garments, and basked below the gunwale. Zeke and his companion pulled spasmodically on the sweeps. Charlie, having regained his equanimity together with his old brown derby, which he came upon floating sodden in an eddy, marched up and down the broad gunwale with his pike-pole, thrusting away such logs as threatened interference.

“Well,” said he at last, “we better make camp. We'll be down in the jam pretty soon.”

The cookees abandoned the sweeps in favour of more pike-poles. By pushing and pulling on the logs floating about them, they managed to work the wanigan in close to the bank.

Charlie, a coil of rope in his hand, surveyed the prospects.

“We'll stop right down there by that little knoll,” he announced.

He leaped ashore, made a turn around a tree, and braced himself to snub the boat, but unfortunately he had not taken into consideration the “two ton” of water soaked up by the cargo. The weight of the craft relentlessly dragged him forward. In vain he braced and struggled. The end of the rope came to the tree; he clung for a moment, then let go, and ran around the tree to catch it before it should slip into the water.

By this time the wanigan had caught the stronger current at the bend and was gathering momentum. Charlie tried to snub at a sapling, and broke the sapling; on a stub, and uprooted the stub. Down the banks and through the brush he tore at the end of his rope, clinging desperately, trying at every solid tree to stop the career of his runaway, but in every instance being forced by the danger of jamming his hands to let go. Again he lost his derby. The landscape was a blur. Dimly he made out the howls of laughter as the outfit passed a group of rivermen. Then abruptly a ravine yawned before him, and he let go just in time to save himself a fall. The wanigan, trailing her rope, drifted away.

Nor did she stop until she had overtaken the jam. There, her momentum reduced by the closer crowding of the logs, she slowed down enough so that Newmark and the cookees managed to work her to the bank and make her fast.

That evening, after the wanigan's crew had accomplished a hard afternoon's work pitching camp and drying blankets, the first of the rear drifted in very late after a vain search for camp farther up stream.

“For God's sake, Charlie,” growled one, “it's a wonder you wouldn't run through to Redding and be done with it.”

Whereupon Charlie, who had been preternaturally calm all the afternoon, uttered a shriek of rage, and with a carving-knife chased that man out into the brush. Nor would he be appeased to the point of getting supper until Orde himself had intervened.

“Well,” said Orde to Newmark later, around the campfire, “how does river-driving strike you?”

“It is extremely interesting,” replied Newmark.

“Like to join the wanigan crew permanently?”

“No, thanks,” returned Newmark drily.

“Well, stay with us as long as you're having a good time,” invited Orde heartily, but turning away from his rather uncommunicative visitor.

“Thank you,” Newmark acknowledged this, “I believe I will.”

“Well, Tommy,” called Orde across the fire to North, “I reckon we've got to rustle some more supplies. That shipwreck of ours to-day mighty near cleaned us out of some things. Lucky Charlie held his head and locked in the bedding with those sweeps, or we'd have been strapped.”

“I didn't do it,” grumbled Charlie. “It was him.”

“Oh!” Orde congratulated Newmark. “Good work! I'm tickled to death you belonged to that crew.”

“That old mossback Reed was right on deck with his rope,” remarked Johnny Simms. “That was pretty decent of him.”

“Old skunk!” growled North. “He lost us two days with his damn nonsense. You let him off too easy, Jack.”

“Oh, he's a poor old devil,” replied Orde easily. “He means well enough. That's the way the Lord made him. He can't help how he's made.”

VI

During the thirty-three days of the drive, Newmark, to the surprise of everybody, stayed with the work. Some of these days were very disagreeable. April rains are cold and persistent—the proverbs as to showers were made for another latitude. Drenched garments are bad enough when a man is moving about and has daylight; but when night falls, and the work is over, he likes a dry place and a change with which to comfort himself. Dry places there were none. Even the interior of the tents became sodden by continual exits and entrances of dripping men, while dry garments speedily dampened in the shiftings of camp which, in the broader reaches of the lower river, took place nearly every day. Men worked in soaked garments, slept in damp blankets. Charlie cooked only by virtue of persistence. The rivermen ate standing up, as close to the sputtering, roaring fires as they could get. Always the work went forward.

But there were other times when a golden sun rose each morning a little earlier on a green and joyous world. The river ran blue. Migratory birds fled busily northward—robins, flute-voiced blue-birds, warblers of many species, sparrows of different kinds, shore birds and ducks, the sweet-songed thrushes. Little tepid breezes wandered up and down, warm in contrast to the faint snow-chill that even yet lingered in the shadows. Sounds carried clearly, so that the shouts and banter of the rivermen were plainly audible up the reaches of the river. Ashore moist and aggressive green things were pushing up through the watery earth from which, in shade, the last frost had not yet departed. At camp the fires roared invitingly. Charlie's grub was hot and grateful. The fir beds gave dreamless sleep.

Newmark followed the work of the log-drive with great interest. All day long he tramped back and forth—on jam one day, on rear the next. He never said much, but watched keenly, and listened to the men's banter both on the work and about the evening's fire as though he enjoyed it. Gradually the men got used to him, and ceased to treat him as an outsider. His thin, eager face, his steel-blue, inquiring eyes behind the glasses, his gray felt hat, his lank, tense figure in its gray, became a familiar feature. They threw remarks to him, to which he replied briefly and drily. When anything interesting was going on, somebody told him about it. Then he hurried to the spot, no matter how distant it might be. He used always the river trail; he never attempted to ride the logs.

He seemed to depend most on observation, for he rarely asked any questions. What few queries he had to proffer, he made to Orde himself, waiting sometimes until evening to interview that busy and good-natured individual. Then his questions were direct and to the point. They related generally to the advisability of something he had seen done; only rarely did they ask for explanation of the work itself. That Newmark seemed capable of puzzling out for himself.

The drive, as has been said, went down as far as Redding in thirty-three days. It had its share of tribulation. The men worked fourteen and sixteen hours at times. Several bad jams relieved the monotony. Three dams had to be sluiced through. Problems of mechanics arose to be solved on the spot; problems that an older civilisation would have attacked deliberately and with due respect for the seriousness of the situation and the dignity of engineering. Orde solved them by a rough-and-ready but very effective rule of thumb. He built and abandoned structures which would have furnished opportunity for a winter's discussion to some committees; just as, earlier in the work, the loggers had built through a rough country some hundreds of miles of road better than railroad grade, solid in foundation, and smooth as a turnpike, the quarter of which would have occupied the average county board of supervisors for five years. And while he was at it, Orde kept his men busy and satisfied. Your white-water birler is not an easy citizen to handle. Yet never once did the boss appear hurried or flustered. Always he wandered about, his hands in his pockets, chewing a twig, his round, wind-reddened face puckered humorously, his blue eyes twinkling, his square, burly form lazily relaxed. He seemed to meet his men almost solely on the plane of good-natured chaffing. Yet the work was done, and done efficiently, and Orde was the man responsible.

The drive of which Orde had charge was to be delivered at the booms of Morrison and Daly, a mile or so above the city of Redding. Redding was a thriving place of about thirty thousand inhabitants, situated on a long rapids some forty miles from Lake Michigan. The water-power developed from the rapids explained Redding's existence. Most of the logs floated down the river were carried through to the village at the lake coast, where, strung up the river for eight or ten miles, stood a dozen or so big saw-mills, with concomitant booms, yards, and wharves. Morrison and Daly, however, had built a saw and planing mill at Redding, where they supplied most of the local trade and that of the surrounding country-side.

The drive, then, was due to break up as soon as the logs should be safely impounded.

The last camp was made some six or eight miles above the mill. From that point a good proportion of the rivermen, eager for a taste of the town, tramped away down the road, to return early in the morning, more or less drunk, but faithful to their job. One or two did not return.

Among the revellers was the cook, Charlie, commonly called The Doctor. The rivermen early worked off the effects of their rather wild spree, and turned up at noon chipper as larks. Not so the cook. He moped about disconsolately all day; and in the evening, after his work had been finished, he looked so much like a chicken with the pip that Orde's attention was attracted.

“Got that dark-brown taste, Charlie?” he inquired with mock solicitude.

The cook mournfully shook his head.

“Large head? Let's feel your pulse. Stick out your tongue, sonny.”

“I ain't been drinking, I tell you!” growled Charlie.

“Drinking!” expostulated Orde, horrified. “Of course not! I hope none of MY boys ever take a drink! But that lemon-pop didn't agree with your stomach—now did it, Charlie?”

“I tell you I only had two glasses of beer!” cried Charlie, goaded, “and I can prove it by Johnny Challan.”

Orde turned to survey the pink-cheeked, embarrassed young boy thus designated.

“How many glasses did Johnny Challan have?” he inquired.

“He didn't drink none to speak of,” spoke up the boy.

“Then why this joyless demeanour?” begged Orde.

Charlie grumbled, fiercely inarticulate; but Johnny Challan interposed with a chuckle of enjoyment.

“He got 'bunked.'”

“Tell us!” cried Orde delightedly.

“It was down at McNeill's place,” explained Johnny Challan; encouraged by the interest of his audience. “They was a couple of sports there who throwed out three cards on the table and bet you couldn't pick the jack. They showed you where the jack was before they throwed, and it surely looked like a picnic, but it wasn't.”

“Three-card monte,” said Newmark.

“How much?” asked Simms.

“About fifty dollars,” replied the boy.

Orde turned on the disgruntled cook.

“And you had fifty in your turkey, camping with this outfit of hard citizens!” he cried. “You ought to lose it.”

Johnny Challan was explaining to his companions exactly how the game was played.

“It's a case of keep your eye on the card, I should think,” said big Tim Nolan. “If you got a quick enough eye to see him flip the card around, you ought to be able to pick her.”

“That's what this sport said,” agreed Challan. “'Your eye agin my hand,' says he.”

“Well, I'd like to take a try at her,” mused Tim.

But at this point Newmark broke into the discussion. “Have you a pack of cards?” he asked in his dry, incisive manner.

Somebody rummaged in a turkey and produced the remains of an old deck.

“I don't believe this is a full deck,” said he, “and I think they's part of two decks in it.”

“I only want three,” assured Newmark, reaching his hand for the pack.

The men crowded around close, those in front squatting, those behind looking over their shoulders.

Newmark cleared a cracker-box of drying socks and drew it to him.

“These three are the cards,” he said, speaking rapidly. “There is the jack of hearts. I pass my hands—so. Pick the jack, one of you,” he challenged, leaning back from the cracker-box on which lay the three cards, back up. “Any of you,” he urged. “You, North.”

Thus directly singled out, the foreman leaned forward and rather hesitatingly laid a blunt forefinger on one of the bits of pasteboard.

Without a word, Newmark turned it over. It was the ten of spades.

“Let me try,” interposed Tim Nolan, pressing his big shoulders forward. “I bet I know which it was that time; and I bet I can pick her next time.”

“Oh, yes, you BET!” shrugged Newmark. “And that's where the card-sharps get you fellows every time. Well, pick it,” said he, again deftly flipping the cards.

Nolan, who had watched keenly, indicated one without hesitation. Again it proved to be the ten of spades.

“Anybody else ambitious?” inquired Newmark. Everybody was ambitious; and the young man, with inexhaustible patience, threw out the cards, the corners of his mouth twitching sardonically at each wrong guess.

At length he called a halt.

“By this time I'd have had all your money,” he pointed out. “Now, I'll pick the jack.”

For the last time he made his swift passes and distributed the cards. Then quite calmly, without disturbing the three on the cracker-box, he held before their eyes the jack of hearts.

An exclamation broke from the interested group. Tim Nolan, who was the nearest, leaned forward and turned over the three on the board. They were the eight of diamonds and two tens of spades.

“That's how the thing is worked nine times out of ten,” announced Newmark. “Once in a while you'll run against a straight game, but not often.”

“But you showed us the jack every time before you throwed them!” puzzled Johnny Simms.

“Sleight of hand,” explained Newmark. “The simplest kind of palming.”

“Well, Charlie,” said big Tim, “looks to me as if you had just about as much chance as a snowball in hell.”

“Where'd you get onto doing all that, Newmark?” inquired North. “You ain't a tin horn yourself?”

Newmark laughed briefly. “Not I,” said he. “I learned a lot of those tricks from a travelling magician in college.”

During this demonstration Orde had sat well in the background, his chin propped on his hand, watching intently all that was going on. After the comment and exclamations following the exposure of the method had subsided, he spoke.

“Boys,” said he, “how game are you to get Charlie's money back—and then some?”

“Try us,” returned big Tim.

“This game's at McNeill's, and McNeill's is a tough hole,” warned Orde. “Maybe everything will go peaceful, and maybe not. And you boys that go with me have got to keep sober. There isn't going to be any row unless I say so, and I'm not taking any contract to handle a lot of drunken river-hogs as well as go against a game.”

“All right,” agreed Nolan, “I'm with you.”

The thirty or so men of the rear crew then in camp signified their intention to stay by the procession.

“You can't make those sharps disgorge,” counselled Newmark. “At the first look of trouble they will light out. They have it all fixed. Force won't do you much good—and may get some of you shot.”

“I'm not going to use force,” denied Orde. “I'm just going to play their game. But I bet I can make it go. Only I sort of want the moral support of the boys.”

“I tell you, you CAN'T win!” cried Newmark disgustedly. “It's a brace game pure and simple.”

“I don't know about it's being pure,” replied Orde drolly, “but it's simple enough, if you know how to make the wheels go 'round. How is it, boys—will you back my play?”

And such was their confidence that, in face of Newmark's demonstration, they said they would.

VII

After the men had been paid off, perhaps a dozen of them hung around the yards awaiting evening and the rendezvous named by Orde. The rest drifted away full of good intentions, but did not show up again. Orde himself was busy up to the last moment, but finally stamped out of the office just as the boarding-house bell rang for supper. He surveyed what remained of his old crew and grinned.

“Well, boys, ready for trouble?” he greeted them. “Come on.”

They set out up the long reach of Water Street, their steel caulks biting deep into the pitted board-walks.

For nearly a mile the street was flanked solely by lumber-yards, small mills, and factories. Then came a strip of unimproved land, followed immediately by the wooden, ramshackle structures of Hell's Half-Mile.

In the old days every town of any size had its Hell's Half-Mile, or the equivalent. Saginaw boasted of its Catacombs; Muskegon, Alpena, Port Huron, Ludington, had their “Pens,” “White Rows,” “River Streets,” “Kilyubbin,” and so forth. They supported row upon row of saloons, alike stuffy and squalid; gambling hells of all sorts; refreshment “parlours,” where drinks were served by dozens of “pretty waiter-girls,” and huge dance-halls.

The proprietors of these places were a bold and unscrupulous lot. In their everyday business they had to deal with the most dangerous rough-and-tumble fighters this country has ever known; with men bubbling over with the joy of life, ready for quarrel if quarrel also spelled fun, drinking deep, and heavy-handed and fearless in their cups. But each of these rivermen had two or three hundred dollars to “blow” as soon as possible. The pickings were good. Men got rich very quickly at this business. And there existed this great advantage in favour of the dive-keeper: nobody cared what happened to a riverman. You could pound him over the head with a lead pipe, or drug his drink, or choke him to insensibility, or rob him and throw him out into the street, or even drop him tidily through a trap-door into the river flowing conveniently beneath. Nobody bothered—unless, of course, the affair was so bungled as to become public. The police knew enough to stay away when the drive hit town. They would have been annihilated if they had not. The only fly in the divekeeper's ointment was that the riverman would fight back.

And fight back he did, until from one end of his street to the other he had left the battered evidences of his skill as a warrior. His constant heavy lifting made him as hard as nails and as strong as a horse; the continual demand on his agility in riding the logs kept him active and prevented him from becoming muscle-bound; in his wild heart was not the least trace of fear of anything that walked, crawled, or flew. And he was as tireless as machinery, and apparently as indifferent to punishment as a man cast in iron.

Add to this a happy and complete disregard of consequences—to himself or others—of anything he did, and, in his own words, he was a “hard man to nick.”

As yet the season was too early for much joy along Hell's Half-Mile. Orde's little crew, and the forty or fifty men of the drive that had preceded him, constituted the rank and file at that moment in town. A little later, when all the drives on the river should be in, and those of its tributaries, and the men still lingering at the woods camps, at least five hundred woods-weary men would be turned loose. Then Hell's Half-Mile would awaken in earnest from its hibernation. The lights would blaze from day to day. From its opened windows would blare the music, the cries of men and women, the shuffle of feet, the noise of fighting, the shrieks of wild laughter, curses deep and frank and unashamed, songs broken and interrupted. Crews of men, arms locked, would surge up and down the narrow sidewalks, their little felt hats cocked one side, their heads back, their fearless eyes challenging the devil and all his works—and getting the challenge accepted. Girls would flit across the lit windows like shadows before flames, or stand in the doorways hailing the men jovially by name. And every few moments, above the roar of this wild inferno, would sound the sudden crash and the dull blows of combat. Only, never was heard the bark of the pistol. The fighting was fierce, and it included kicking with the sharp steel boot-caulks, biting and gouging; but it barred knives and firearms. And when Hell's Half-Mile was thus in full eruption, the citizens of Redding stayed away from Water Street after dark. “Drive's in,” said they, and had business elsewhere. And the next group of rivermen, hurrying toward the fun, broke into an eager dog-trot. “Taking the old town apart to-night,” they told each other. “Let's get in the game.”

To-night, however, the street was comparatively quiet. The saloons were of modified illumination. In many of them men stood drinking, but in a sociable rather than a hilarious mood. Old friends of the two drives were getting together for a friendly glass. The barkeepers were listlessly wiping the bars. The “pretty waiter-girls” gossiped with each other and yawned behind their hands. From several doorways Orde's little compact group was accosted by the burly saloonkeepers.

“Hullo, boys!” said they invariably, “glad to see you back. Come in and have a drink on me.”

Well these men knew that one free drink would mean a dozen paid for. But the rivermen merely shook their heads.

“Huh!” sneered one of the girls. “Them's no river-jacks! Them's just off the hay trail, I bet!”

But even this time-honoured and generally effective taunt was ignored.

In the middle of the third block Orde wheeled sharp to the left down a dark and dangerous-looking alley. Another turn to the right brought him into a very narrow street. Facing this street stood a three-story wooden structure, into which led a high-arched entrance up a broad half-flight of wooden steps. This was McNeill's.

As Orde and his men turned into the narrow street, a figure detached itself from the shadow and approached. Orde uttered an exclamation.

“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, 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 interlocutor, 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, who 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 to 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 more 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.

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 at 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?” he 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.”

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 be 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 satisfactory. 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 any 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 time 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 inscrutable eyes and the hair with the soft shadows. With a sigh he fell 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 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; and 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 hills 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 accurately, 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.

The process seemed to amuse her. She turned her head sidewise to watch with interest the hurrying, tumbling little cascades that slid from her every step. From time to time she would raise her skirts daintily with the tips of her fingers, and lean far over in order to observe with interest how her feet sank to the ankles, and how the sand rushed from either side to fill in the depressions. The wind carried up to Orde low, joyous chuckles of delight, like those of a happy child.

As though directed by some unseen guide, her course veered more and more until it led directly to the spot where Orde stood. When she was within ten feet of him she at last raised her head so the young man could see something besides the top of her hat. Orde looked plump into her eyes.

“Hullo!” she said cheerfully and unsurprised, and sank down cross-legged at his feet.

Orde stood quite motionless, overcome by astonishment. Her face, its long oval framed in the bands of the gray veil and the down-turned brim of the hat, looked up smiling into his. The fresh air had deepened the colour beneath her skin and had blown loose stray locks of the fine shadow-filled hair. Her red lips, with the quaintly up-turned corners, smiled at him with a new frankness, and the black eyes—the eyes so black as to resemble spots—had lost their half-indolent reserve and brimmed over quite frankly with the joy of life. She scooped up a handful of the dry, clean sand from either side of her, raised it aloft, and let it trickle slowly between her fingers. The wind 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 length appeared a tiny black insect, struggling against the rolling, overwhelming sands. With great care the girl scooped this newcomer out and set him on the level ground. She looked up happily at Orde, thrusting the loose hair from in front of her eyes.

“I was convinced we ought to dig a hole,” said she gravely. “Now, let's go somewhere else.”

She arose to her feet, shaking the sand free from her skirts.

“I think, through these woods,” she decided. “Can we get back to town this way?”

Receiving Orde's assurance, she turned at once down the slope through the fringe of scrub spruces and junipers into the tall woods. Here the air fell still. She remarked on how warm it seemed, and began to untie from over her ears the narrow band of veil that held close her hat.

“Yes,” replied Orde. “The lumber-jacks say that the woods are the poor man's overcoat.”

She paused to savour this, her head on one side, her arms upraised to the knot.

“Oh, I like that!” said she, continuing her task. In a moment or so the veil hung free. She removed it and the hat, and swung them both from one finger, and threw back her head.

“Hear all the birds!” she said.

Softly she began to utter a cheeping noise between her lips and teeth, low and plaintive. At once the volume of bird-sounds about increased; the half-seen flashes became more frequent. A second later the twigs were alive with tiny warblers and creepers, flirting from branch to branch, with larger, more circumspect chewinks, catbirds, and finches hopping down from above, very silent, very grave. In the depths of the thickets the shyer hermit and olive thrushes and the oven birds revealed themselves ghost-like, or as sea-growths lift into a half visibility through translucent shadows the colour of themselves. All were very intent, very earnest, very interested, each after his own manner, in the comradeship of the featherhood he imagined to be uttering distressful cries. A few, like the chickadees, quivered their wings, opened their little mouths, fluttered down tiny but aggressive against the disaster. Others hopped here and there restlessly, uttering plaintive, low-toned cheeps. The shyest contented themselves by a discreet, silent, and distant sympathy. Three or four freebooting Jays, attracted not so much by the supposed calls for help as by curiosity, fluttered among the tops of the trees, uttering their harsh notes.

Finally, the girl ended her performance in a musical laugh.

“Run away, Brighteyes,” she called. “It's all right; nobody's damaged.”

She waved her hand. As though at a signal, the host she had evoked melted back into the shadows of the forest. Only the chickadee, impudent as ever, retreated scolding rather ostentatiously, and the jays, splendid in their ornate blue, screamed opinions at each other from the tops of trees.

“How would you like to be a bird?” she inquired.

“Hadn't thought,” replied Orde.

“Don't you ever indulge in vain and idle speculations?” she inquired. “Never mind, don't answer. It's too much to expect of a man.”

She set herself in idle motion down the slope, swinging the hat at the end of its veil, pausing to look or listen, humming a little melody between her closed lips, throwing her head back to breathe deep the warm air, revelling in the woods sounds and woods odours and woods life with entire self-abandonment. Orde followed her in silence. She seemed to be quite without responsibility in regard to him; and yet an occasional random remark thrown in his direction proved that he was not forgotten. Finally they emerged from the beach woods.

They faced an open rolling country. As far as the eye could reach were the old stumps of pine trees. Sometimes they stood in place, burned and scarred, but attesting mutely the abiding place of a spirit long since passed away. Sometimes they had been uprooted and dragged to mark the boundaries of fields, where they raised an abatis of twisted roots to the sky.

The girl stopped short as she came face to face with this open country. The inner uplift, that had lent to her aspect the wide-eyed, careless joy of a child, faded. In its place came a new and serious gravity. She turned on him troubled eyes.

“You do this,” she accused him quite simply.

For answer he motioned to the left where below them lay a wide and cultivated countryside—farmhouses surrounded by elms; compact wood lots of hardwood; crops and orchards, all fair and pleasant across the bosom of a fertile nature.

“And this,” said he. “That valley was once nothing but a pine forest—and so was all the southern part of the State, the peach belt and the farms. And for that matter Indiana, too, and all the other forest States right out to the prairies. Where would we be now, if we HADN'T done that?” he pointed across at the stump-covered hills.

Mischief had driven out the gravity from the girl's eyes. She had lowered her head slightly sidewise as though to conceal their expression from him.

“I was beginning to be afraid you'd say 'yes-indeed,'” said she.

Orde looked bewildered, then remembered the Incubus, and laughed.

“I haven't been very conversational,” he acknowledged.

“Certainly NOT!” she said severely. “That would have been very disappointing. There has been nothing to say.” She turned and waved her hat at the beech woods falling sombre against the lowering sun.

“Good-bye,” she said gravely, “and pleasant dreams to you. I hope those very saucy little birds won't keep you awake.” She looked up at Orde. “He was rather nice to us this afternoon,” she explained, “and it's always well to be polite to them anyway.” She gazed steadily at Orde for signs of amusement. He resolutely held his face sympathetic.

“Now I think we'll go home,” said she.

They made their way between the stumps to the edge of the sand-hill overlooking the village. With one accord they stopped. The low-slanting sun cast across the vista a sleepy light of evening.

“How would you like to live in a place like that all your life?” asked Orde.

“I don't know.” She weighed her words carefully. “It would depend. The place isn't of so much importance, it seems to me. It's the life one is called to. It's whether one finds her soul's realm or not that a place is liveable or not. I can imagine entering my kingdom at a railway water-tank,” she said quaintly, “or missing it entirely in a big city.”

Orde looked out over the raw little village with a new interest.

“Of course I can see how a man's work can lie in a small place,” said he; “but a woman is different.”

“Why is a woman different?” she challenged. “What is her 'work,' as you call it; and why shouldn't it, as well as a man's, lie in a small place? What is work—outside of drudgery—unless it is correspondence of one's abilities to one's task?”

“But the compensations—” began Orde vaguely.

“Compensations?” she cried. “What do you mean? Here are the woods and fields, the river, the lake, the birds, and the breezes. We'll check them off against the theatre and balls. Books can be had here as well as anywhere. As to people: in a large city you meet a great many, and they're all busy, and unless you make an especial and particular effort—which you're not likely to—you'll see them only casually and once in a great while. In a small place you know fewer people; but you know them intimately.” She broke off with a half-laugh. “I'm from New York,” she stated humorously, “and you've magicked me into an eloquent defense of Podunk!” She laughed up at Orde quite frankly. “Giant Strides!” she challenged suddenly. She turned off the edge of the sand-hill, and began to plunge down its slope, leaning far back, her arms extended, increasing as much as possible the length of each step. Orde followed at full speed. When the bottom was reached, he steadied her to a halt. She shook herself, straightened her hat, and wound the veil around it. Her whole aspect seemed to have changed with the descent into the conventionality of the village street. The old, gentle though capable and self-contained reserve had returned. She moved beside Orde with dignity.

“I came down with Jane and Mrs. Hubbard to see Mr. Hubbard off on the boat for Milwaukee last night,” she told him. “Of course we had to wait over Sunday. Mrs. Hubbard and Jane had to see some relative or other; but I preferred to take a walk.”

“Where are you staying?” asked Orde.

“At the Bennetts'. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes,” replied Orde.

They said little more until the Bennetts' gate was reached. Orde declined to come in.

“Good-night,” she said. “I want to thank you. You did not once act as though you thought I was silly or crazy. And you didn't try, as all the rest of them would, to act silly too. You couldn't have done it; and you didn't try. Oh, you may have felt it—I know!” She smiled one of her quaint and quizzical smiles. “But men aren't built for foolishness. They have to leave that to us. You've been very nice this afternoon; and it's helped a lot. I'm good for quite a long stretch now. Good-night.”

She nodded to him and left him tongue-tied by the gate.

Orde, however, walked back to the hotel in a black rage with himself over what he termed his imbecility. As he remembered it, he had made just one consecutive speech that afternoon.

“Joe,” said he to Newmark, at the hotel office, “what's the plural form of Incubus? I dimly remember it isn't 'busses.'”

“Incubi,” answered Newmark.

“Thanks,” said Orde gloomily.

XIII

“I have Heinzman's contract all drawn,” said Newmark the next morning, “and I think I'll go around with you to the office.”

At the appointed time they found the little German awaiting them, a rotund smile of false good-nature illuminating his rosy face. Orde introduced his partner. Newmark immediately took charge of the interview.

“I have executed here the contract, and the bonds secured by Mr. Orde's and my shares of stock in the new company,” he explained. “It is only necessary that you affix your signature and summon the required witnesses.”

Heinzman reached his hands for the papers, beaming over his glasses at the two young men.

As he read, however, his smile vanished, and he looked up sharply.

“Vat is this?” he inquired, a new crispness in his voice. “You tolt me,” he accused Orde, “dot you were not brepared to break out the rollways. You tolt me you would egspect me to do that for myself.”

“Certainly,” agreed Orde.

“Vell, why do you put in this?” demanded Heinzman, reading from the paper in his hand. “'In case said rollways belonging to said parties of the second part are not broken out by the time the drive has reached them, and in case on demand said parties of the second part do refuse or do not exercise due diligence in breaking out said rollways, the said parties of the first part shall themselves break out said rollways, and the said parties of the second part do hereby agree to reimburse said parties of the first part at the rate of a dollar per thousand board feet.'”

“That is merely to protect ourselves,” struck in Newmark.

“But,” exploded Heinzman, his face purpling, “a dollar a tousand is absurd!”

“Of course it is,” agreed Newmark. “We expect it to be. But also we expect you to break out your own rollways in time. It is intended as a penalty in case you don't.”

“I vill not stand for such foolishness,” pounded Heinzman on the arm of his chair.

“Very well,” said Newmark crisply, reaching for the contract.

But Heinzman clung to it.

“It is absurd,” he repeated in a milder tone. “See, I vill strike it out.” He did so with a few dashes of the pen.

“We have no intention,” stated Newmark with decision, “of giving you the chance to hang up our drive.”

Heinzman caught his breath like a child about to cry out.

“So that is what you think!” he shouted at them. “That's the sort of men you think we are! I'll show you you cannot come into honest men's offices to insoolt them by such insinuations!” He tore the contract in pieces and threw it in the waste basket. “Get oudt of here!” he cried.

Newmark arose as dry and precise as ever. Orde was going red and white by turns, and his hands twitched.

“Then I understand you to refuse our offer?” asked Newmark coolly.

“Refuse! Yes! You and your whole kapoodle!” yelled Heinzman.

He hopped down and followed them to the grill door, repeating over and over that he had been insulted. The clerks stared in amazement.

Once at the foot of the dark stairs and in the open street, Orde looked up at the sky with a deep breath of relief.

“Whew!” said he, “that was a terror! We've gone off the wrong foot that time.”

Newmark looked at him with some amusement.

“You don't mean to say that fooled you!” he marvelled.

“What?” asked Orde.

“All that talk about insults, and the rest of the rubbish. He saw we had spotted his little scheme; and he had to retreat somehow. It was as plain as the nose on your face.”

“You think so?” doubted Orde.

“I know so. If he was mad at all, it was only at being found out.”

“Maybe,” said Orde.

“We've got an enemy on our hands in any case,” concluded Newmark, “and one we'll have to look out for, I don't know how he'll do it; but he'll try to make trouble on the river. Perhaps he'll try to block the stream by not breaking his rollways.”

“One of the first things we'll do will be to boom through a channel where Mr. Man's rollways will be,” said Orde.

A faint gleam of approval lit Newmark's eyes.

“I guess you'll be equal to the occasion,” said he drily.

Before the afternoon train, there remained four hours. The partners at once hunted out the little one-story frame building near the river in which Johnson conducted his business.

Johnson received them with an evident reserve of suspicion.

“I see no use in it,” said he, passing his hand over his hair “slicked” down in the lumber-jack fashion. “I can run me own widout help from any man.”

“Which seems to settle that!” said Newmark to Orde after they had left.

“Oh, well, his drive is small; and he's behind us,” Orde pointed out.

“True,” said Newmark thoughtfully.

“Now,” said Newmark, as they trudged back to their hotel to get lunch and their hand-bags. “I'll get to work at my part of it. This proposition of Heinzman's has given me an idea. I'm not going to try to sell this stock outside, but to the men who own timber along the river. Then they won't be objecting to the tolls; for if the company makes any profits, part will go to them.”

“Good idea!” cried Orde.

“I'll take these contracts, to show we can do the business.”

“All correct.”

“And I'll see about incorporation. Also I'll look about and get a proper office and equipments, and get hold of a book-keeper. Of course we'll have to make this our headquarters.”

“I suppose so,” said Orde a little blankly. After an instant he laughed. “Do you know, I hadn't thought of that? We'll have to live here, won't we?”

“Also,” went on Newmark calmly, “I'll buy the supplies to the best advantage I can, and see that they get here in good shape. I have our preliminary lists, and as fast as you think you need anything, send a requisition in to me, and I'll see to it.”

“And I?” inquired Orde.

“You'll get right at the construction. Get the booms built and improve the river where it needs it. Begin to get your crew—I'm not going to tell you how; you know better than I do. Only get everything in shape for next spring's drive. You can start right off. We have my money to begin on.”

Orde laughed and stretched his arms over his head.

“My! She's a nice big job, isn't she?” he cried joyously.

XIV

Orde, in spite of his activities, managed to see Carroll Bishop twice during the ensuing week.

On his return home late Monday afternoon, Grandma Orde informed him with a shrewd twinkle that she wanted him surely at home the following evening.

“I've asked in three or four of the young people for a candy pull,” said she.

“Who, mother?” asked Orde.

“Your crowd. The Smiths, Collinses, Jane Hubbard, and Her,” said Grandma Orde, which probably went to show that she had in the meantime been making inquiries, and was satisfied with them.

“Do you suppose they'll care for candy pulling?” hazarded Orde a little doubtfully.

“You mean, will she?” countered Grandma. “Well, I hope for both your sakes she is not beyond a little old-fashioned fun.”

So it proved. The young people straggled in at an early hour after supper—every one had supper in those days. Carroll Bishop and Jane arrived nearly the last. Orde stepped into the hall to help them with their wraps. He was surprised as he approached Miss Bishop to lift her cloak from her shoulders, to find that the top of her daintily poised head, with its soft, fine hair, came well below the level of his eyes. Somehow her poise, her slender grace of movement and of attitude, had lent her the impression of a stature she did not possess. To-night her eyes, while fathomless as ever, shone quietly in anticipation.

“Do you know,” she told Orde delightedly, “I have never been to a real candy pull in my life. It was so good of your mother to ask me. What a dear she looks to-night. And is that your father? I'm going to speak to him.”

She turned through the narrow door into the lighted, low-ceilinged parlour where the company were chatting busily. Orde mechanically followed her. He was arrested by the sound of Jane Hubbard's slow good-humoured voice behind him.

“Now, Jack,” she drawled, “I agree with you perfectly; but that is NO reason why I should be neglected entirely. Come and hang up my coat.”

Full of remorse, Orde turned. Jane Hubbard stood accusingly in the middle of the hall, her plain, shrewd, good-humoured face smiling faintly. Orde met her frank wide eyes with some embarrassment.

“Here it is,” said Jane, holding out the coat. “I don't much care whether you hang it up or not. I just wanted to call you back to wish you luck.” Her slow smile widened, and her gray eyes met his still more knowingly.

Orde seized the coat and her hand at the same time.

“Jane, you're a trump,” said he. “No wonder you're the most popular girl in town.”

“Of course I am, Jack,” she agreed indolently. She entered the parlour.

The candy pulling was a success. Of course everybody got burned a little and spattered a good deal; but that was to be expected. After the product had been broken and been piled on dishes, all trooped to the informal “back sitting-room,” where an open fire invited to stories and games of the quieter sort. Some of the girls sat in chairs, though most joined the men on the hearth.

Carroll Bishop, however, seemed possessed of a spirit of restlessness. The place seemed to interest her. She wandered here and there in the room, looking now at the walnut-framed photograph of Uncle Jim Orde, now at the great pink conch shells either side the door, now at the marble-topped table with its square paper-weight of polished agate and its glass “bell,” beneath which stood a very life-like robin. This “back sitting-room” contained little in the way of ornament. It was filled, on the contrary, with old comfortable chairs, and worn calf-backed books. The girl peered at the titles of these; but the gas-jets had been turned low in favour of the firelight, and she had to give over the effort to identify the volumes. Once she wandered close to Grandma Orde's cushioned wooden rocker, and passed her hand lightly over the old lady's shoulder.

“Do you mind if I look at things?” she asked. “It's so dear and sweet and old and different from our New York homes.”

“Look all you want to, dearie,” said Grandma Orde.

After a moment she passed into the dining-room. Here Orde found her, her hands linked in front of her.

“Oh, it is so quaint and delightful,” she exhaled slowly. “This dear, dear old house with its low ceilings and its queer haphazard lines, and its deep windows, and its old pictures, and queer unexpected things that take your breath away.”

“It is one of the oldest houses in town,” said Orde, “and I suppose it is picturesque. But, you see, I was brought up here, so I'm used to it.”

“Wait until you leave it,” said she prophetically, “and live away from it. Then all these things will come back to you to make your heart ache for them.”

They rambled about together, Orde's enthusiasm gradually kindling at the flame of her own. He showed her the marvellous and painstaking pencil sketch of Napoleon looking out over a maltese-cross sunset done by Aunt Martha at the age of ten. It hung framed in the upper hall.

“It has always been there, ever since I can remember,” said Orde, “and it has seemed to belong there. I've never thought of it as good or bad, just as belonging.”

“I know,” she nodded.

In this spirit also they viewed the plaster statue of Washington in the lower hall, and the Roger's group in the parlour. The glass cabinet of “curiosities” interested her greatly—the carved ivory chessmen, the dried sea-weeds, the stone from Sugar Loaf Rock, the bit from the wreck of the NORTH STAR, the gold and silver shells, the glittering geodes and pyrites, the sandal-wood fan, and all the hundred and one knick-knacks it was then the custom to collect under glass. They even ventured part way up the creaky attic stairs, but it was too dark to enter that mysterious region.

“I hear the drip of water,” she whispered, her finger on her lips.

“It's the tank,” said Orde.

“And has it a Dark Place behind it?” she begged.

“That's just what it has,” said he.

“And—tell me—are there real hair trunks with brass knobs on 'em?”

“Yes, mother has two or three.”

“O-o-h!” she breathed softly. “Don't tell me what's in them. I want to believe in brocades and sashes. Do you know,” she looked at him soberly, “I never had any dark places behind the tank, nor mysterious trunks, when I was a child.”

“You might begin now,” suggested Orde.

“Do you mean to insinuate I haven't grown up?” she mocked. “Thank you! Look OUT!” she cried suddenly, “the Boojum will catch us,” and picking up her skirts she fairly flew down the narrow stairs. Orde could hear the light swish of her draperies down the hall, and then the pat of her feet on the stair carpet of the lower flight.

He followed rather dreamily. A glance into the sitting-room showed the group gathered close around the fire listening to Lem Collin's attempt at a ghost story. She was not there. He found her, then, in the parlour. She was kneeling on the floor before the glass cabinet of curiosities, and she had quite flattened her little nose against the pane. At his exclamation she looked up with a laugh.

“This is the proper altitude from which to view a cabinet of curiosities,” said she, “and something tells me you ought to flatten your nose, too.” She held out both hands to be helped up. “Oh, WHAT a house for a child!” she cried.

After the company had gone, Orde stood long by the front gate looking up into the infinite spaces. Somehow, and vaguely, he felt the night to be akin to her elusive spirit. Farther and farther his soul penetrated into its depths; and yet other depths lay beyond, other mysteries, other unguessed realms. And yet its beauty was the simplicity of space and dark and the stars.

The next time he saw her was at her own house—or rather the house of the friend she visited. Orde went to call on Friday evening and was lucky enough to find the girls home and alone. After a decent interval Jane made an excuse and went out. They talked on a great variety of subjects, and with a considerable approach toward intimacy. Not until nearly time to go did Orde stumble upon the vital point of the evening. He had said something about a plan for the week following.

“But you forget that by that time I shall be gone,” said she.

“Gone!” he echoed blankly. “Where?”

“Home,” said she. “Don't you remember I am to go Sunday morning?”

“I thought you were going to stay a month.”

“I was, but I—certain things came up that made it necessary for me to leave sooner.”

“I—I'm sorry you're going,” stammered Orde.

“So am I,” said she. “I've had a very nice time here.”

“Then I won't see you again,” said Orde, still groping for realisation. “I must go to Monrovia to-morrow. But I'll be down to see you off.”

“Do come,” said she.

“It's not to be for good?” he expostulated. “You'll be coming back.”

She threw her hands palm out, with a pretty gesture of ignorance.

“That is in the lap of the gods,” said she.

“Will you write me occasionally?” he begged.

“As to that—” she began—“I'm a very poor correspondent.”

“But won't you write?” he insisted.

“I do not make it a custom to write to young men.”

“Oh!” he cried, believing himself enlightened. “Will you answer if I write you?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether there is a reply to make.”

“But may I write you?”

“I suppose I couldn't very well prevent you, if you were sure to put on a three-cent stamp.”

“Do you want me to?” persisted Orde.

She began gently to laugh, quite to herself, as though enjoying a joke entirely within her own personal privilege.

“You are so direct and persistent and boy-like,” said she presently. “Now if you'll be very good, and not whisper to the other little pupils, I'll tell you how they do such things usually.” She sat up straight from the depths of her chair, her white, delicately tapering forearms resting lightly on her knees. “Young men desiring to communicate with young ladies do not ask them bluntly. They make some excuse, like sending a book, a magazine, a marked newspaper, or even a bit of desired information. At the same time, they send notes informing the girl of the fact. The girl is naturally expected to acknowledge the politeness. If she wishes the correspondence to continue, she asks a question, or in some other way leaves an opening. Do you see?”

“Yes, I see,” said Orde, slightly crestfallen. “But that's a long time to wait. I like to feel settled about a thing. I wanted to know.”

She dropped back against the cushioned slant of her easy chair, and laughed again.

“And so you just up and asked!” she teased.

“I beg your pardon if I was rude,” he said humbly.

The laughter died slowly from her eyes.

“Don't,” she said. “It would be asking pardon for being yourself. You wanted to know: so you asked. And I'm going to answer. I shall be very glad to correspond with you and tell you about my sort of things, if you happen to be interested in them. I warn you: they are not very exciting.”

“They are yours,” said he.

She half rose to bow in mock graciousness, caught herself, and sank back.

“No, I won't,” she said, more than half to herself. She sat brooding for a moment; then suddenly her mood changed. She sprang up, shook her skirts free, and seated herself at the piano. To Orde, who had also arisen, she made a quaint grimace over her shoulder.

“Admire your handiwork!” she told him. “You are rapidly bringing me to 'tell the truth and shame the devil.' Oh, he must be dying of mortification this evening!” She struck a great crashing chord, holding the keys while the strings reverberated and echoed down slowly into silence again. “It isn't fair,” she went on, “for you big simple men to disarm us. I don't care! I have my private opinion of such brute strength. JE ME MOQUE!”

She wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. Then ruthlessly she drowned his reply in a torrent of music. Like mad she played, rocking her slender body back and forth along the key-board; holding rigid her fingers, her hands, and the muscles of her arms. The bass notes roared like the rumbling of thunder; the treble flashed like the dart of lightnings. Abruptly she muted the instrument. Silence fell as something that had been pent and suddenly released. She arose from the piano stool quite naturally, both hands at her hair.

“Aren't Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard dear old people?” said she.

“What is your address in New York?” demanded Orde. She sank into a chair nearby with a pretty uplifted gesture of despair.

“I surrender!” she cried, and then she laughed until the tears started from her eyes and she had to brush them away with what seemed to Orde an absurd affair to call a handkerchief. “Oh, you are delicious!” she said at last. “Well, listen. I live at 12 West Ninth Street. Can you remember that?” Orde nodded. “And now any other questions the prisoner can reply to without incriminating herself, she is willing to answer.” She folded her hands demurely in her lap.

Two days later Orde saw the train carry her away. He watched the rear car disappear between the downward slopes of two hills, and then finally the last smoke from the locomotive dissipate in the clear blue.

Declining Jane's kindly meant offer of a lift, he walked back to town.

XV

The new firm plunged busily into its more pressing activities. Orde especially had an infinitude of details on his hands. The fat note-book in his side pocket filled rapidly with rough sketches, lists, and estimates. Constantly he interviewed men of all kinds—rivermen, mill men, contractors, boat builders, hardware dealers, pile-driver captains, builders, wholesale grocery men, cooks, axe-men, chore boys—all a little world in itself.

The signs of progress soon manifested themselves. Below Big Bend the pile-drivers were at work, the square masses of their hammers rising rapidly to the tops of the derricks, there to pause a moment before dropping swiftly to a dull THUMP! They were placing a long, compact row, which should be the outer bulwarks separating the sorting-booms from the channel of the river. Ashore the carpenters were knocking together a long, low structure for the cook-house and a larger building, destined to serve as bunk-house for the regular boom-crew. There would also be a blacksmith's forge, a storehouse, a tool and supply-house, a barn, and small separate shanties for the married men. Below more labourers with picks, shovels, axes, and scrapers were cutting out and levelling a road which would, when finished, meet the county road to town. The numerous bayous of great marsh were crossed by “float-bridges,” lying flat on the surface of the water, which spurted up in rhythmical little jets under the impact of hoofs. Down stream eight miles, below the mills, and just beyond where the drawbridge crossed over to Monrovia, Duncan McLeod's shipyards clipped and sawed, and steamed and bent and bolted away at two tugboats, the machinery for which was already being stowed in the hold of a vessel lying at wharf in Chicago. In the storerooms of hardware firms porters carried and clerks checked off chains, strap iron, bolts, spikes, staples, band iron, bar iron, peavies, cant-hooks, pike-poles, sledge-hammers, blocks, ropes, and cables.

These things took time and attention to details; also a careful supervision. The spring increased, burst into leaf and bloom, and settled into summer. Orde was constantly on the move. As soon as low water came with midsummer, however, he arranged matters to run themselves as far as possible, left with Newmark minute instructions as to personal supervision, and himself departed to Redding. Here he joined a crew which Tom North had already collected, and betook himself to the head of the river.

He knew exactly what he intended to do. Far back on the head-waters he built a dam. The construction of it was crude, consisting merely of log cribs filled with stone and debris placed at intervals across the bed of the stream, against which slanted logs made a face. The gate operated simply, and could be raised to let loose an entire flood. And indeed this was the whole purpose of the dam. It created a reservoir from which could be freed new supplies of water to eke out the dropping spring freshets.

Having accomplished this formidable labour—for the trees had to be cut and hauled, the stone carted, and the earth shovelled—the crew next moved down a good ten miles to where the river dropped over a rapids rough and full of boulders. Here were built and placed a row of stone-filled log cribs in a double row down stream to define the channel and to hold the drive in it and away from the shallows near either bank. The profile of these cribs was that of a right-angled triangle, the slanting side up stream. Booms chained between them helped deflect the drive from the shoals. Their more important office, however, was to give footing to the drivers.

For twenty-five miles then nothing of importance was undertaken. Two or three particularly bad boulders were split out by the explosion of powder charges; a number of snags and old trees were cut away and disposed of; the channel was carefully examined for obstructions of any kind whatever. Then the party came to the falls.

Here Orde purposed his most elaborate bit of rough engineering. The falls were only about fifteen feet high, but they fell straight down to a bed of sheer rock. This had been eaten by the eddies into pot-holes and crannies until a jagged irregular scoop-hollow had formed immediately underneath the fall. Naturally this implied a ledge below.

In flood time the water boiled and roared through this obstruction in a torrent. The saw logs, caught in the rush, plunged end on into the scoop-hollow, hit with a crash, and were spewed out below more or less battered, barked, and stripped. Sometimes, however, when the chance of the drive brought down a hundred logs together, they failed to shoot over the barrier of the ledge. Then followed a jam, a bad jam, difficult and dangerous to break. The falls had taken her usurious share of the lives the river annually demands as her toll.

This condition of affairs Orde had determined, if possible, to obviate. From the thirty-five or forty miles of river that lay above, and from its tributaries would come the bulk of the white and Norway pine for years to follow. At least two thirds of each drive Orde figured would come from above the fall.

“If,” said he to North, “we could carry an apron on a slant from just under the crest and over the pot-holes, it would shoot both the water and the logs off a better angle.”

“Sure,” agreed North, “but you'll have fun placing your apron with all that water running through. Why, it would drown us!”

“I've got a notion on that,” said Orde. “First thing is to get the material together.”

A hardwood forest topped the slope. Into this went the axe-men. The straightest trees they felled, trimmed, and dragged, down travoy trails they constructed, on sleds they built for the purpose, to the banks of the river. Here they bored the two holes through either end to receive the bolts when later they should be locked together side by side in their places. As fast as they were prepared, men with cant-hooks rolled them down the slope to a flat below the falls. They did these things swiftly and well, because they were part of the practised day's work, but they shook their heads at the falls.

After the trees had been cut in sufficient number—there were seventy-five of them, each twenty-six feet long—Orde led the way back up stream a half mile to a shallows, where he commanded the construction of a number of exaggerated sawhorses with very widespread slanting legs. In the meantime the cook-wagon and the bed-wagon had evidently been making many trips to Sand Creek, fifteen miles away, as was attested by a large pile of heavy planks. When the sawhorses were completed, Orde directed the picks and shovels to be brought up.

At this point the river, as has been hinted, widened over shoals. The banks at either hand, too, were flat and comparatively low. As is often the case in bends of rivers subject to annual floods, the banks sloped back for some distance into a lower black-ash swamp territory.

Orde set his men to digging a channel through this bank. It was no slight job, from one point of view, as the slope down into the swamp began only at a point forty or fifty feet inland; but on the other hand the earth was soft and free from rocks. When completed the channel gave passage to a rather feeble streamlet from the outer fringe of the river. The men were puzzled, but Orde, by the strange freak of his otherwise frank and open nature, as usual told nothing of his plans, even to Tom North.

“He can't expect to turn that river,” said Tim Nolan, who was once more with the crew. “He'd have to dig a long ways below that level to catch the main current—and then some.”

“Let him alone,” advised North, puffing at his short pipe. “He's wiser than a tree full of owls.”

Next Orde assigned two men to each of the queer-shaped sawhorses, and instructed them to place the horses in a row across the shallowest part of the river, and broadside to the stream. This was done. The men, half-way to their knees in the swift water, bore down heavily to keep their charges in place. Other men immediately began to lay the heavy planks side by side, perpendicular to and on the up-stream side of the horses. The weight of the water clamped them in place; big rocks and gravel shovelled on in quantity prevented the lower ends from rising; the wide slant of the legs directed the pressure so far downward that the horses were prevented from floating away. And slowly the bulk of the water, thus raised a good three feet above its former level, turned aside into the new channel and poured out to inundate the black-ash swamp beyond.

A good volume still poured over the top of the temporary dam and down to the fall; but it was by this expedient so far reduced that work became possible.

“Now, boys!” cried Orde. “Lively, while we've got the chance!”

By means of blocks and tackles and the team horses the twenty-six-foot logs were placed side by side, slanting from a point two feet below the rim of the fall to the ledge below. They were bolted together top and bottom through the four holes bored for that purpose. This was a confusing and wet business. Sufficient water still flowed in the natural channel of the river to dash in spray over the entire work. Men toiled, wet to the skin, their garments clinging to them, their eyes full of water, barely able to breathe, yet groping doggedly at it, and arriving at last. The weather was warm with the midsummer. They made a joke of the difficulty, and found inexhaustible humour in the fact that one of their number was an Immersion Baptist. When the task was finished, they pried the flash-boards from the improvised dam; piled them neatly beyond reach of high water; rescued the sawhorses and piled them also for a possible future use; blocked the temporary channel with a tree or so—and earth. The river, restored to its immemorial channel by these men who had so nonchalantly turned it aside, roared on, singing again the song it had until now sung uninterruptedly for centuries. Orde and his crew tramped back to the falls, and gazed on their handiwork with satisfaction. Instead of plunging over an edge into a turmoil of foam and eddies, now the water flowed smoothly, almost without a break, over an incline of thirty degrees.

“Logs'll slip over that slick as a gun barrel,” said Tom North. “How long do you think she'll last?”

“Haven't an idea,” replied Orde. “We may have to do it again next summer, but I don't think it. There's nothing but the smooth of the water to wear those logs until they begin to rot.”

Quite cheerfully they took up their long, painstaking journey back down the river.

Travel down the river was at times very pleasant, and at times very disagreeable. The ground had now hardened so that a wanigan boat was unnecessary. Instead, the camp outfit was transported in waggons, which often had to journey far inland, to make extraordinary detours, but which always arrived somehow at the various camping places. Orde and his men, of course, took the river trail.

The river trail ran almost unbroken for over a hundred miles of meandering way. It climbed up the high banks at the points, it crossed the bluffs along their sheer edges, it descended to the thickets in the flats, it crossed the swamps on pole-trails, it skirted the great, solemn woods. Sometimes, in the lower reaches, its continuity was broken by a town, but always after it recovered from its confusion it led on with purpose unvarying. Never did it desert for long the river. The cool, green still reaches, or the tumbling of the white-water, were always within its sight, sometimes beneath its very tread. When occasionally it cut in across a very long bend, it always sent from itself a little tributary trail which traced all the curves, and returned at last to its parent, undoubtedly with a full report of its task. And the trail was beaten hard by the feet of countless men, who, like Orde and his crew, had taken grave, interested charge of the river from her birth to her final rest in the great expanses of the Lake. It is there to-day, although the life that brought it into being has been gone from it these many years.

In midsummer Orde found the river trail most unfamiliar in appearance. Hardly did he recognise it in some places. It possessed a wide, leisurely expansiveness, an indolent luxury, a lazy invitation born of broad green leaves, deep and mysterious shadows, the growth of ferns, docks, and the like cool in the shade of the forest, the shimmer of aspens and poplars through the heat, the green of tangling vines, the drone of insects, the low-voiced call of birds, the opulent splashing of sun-gold through the woods, quite lacking to the hard, tight season in which his river work was usually performed. What, in the early year, had been merely a whip of brush, now had become a screen through whose waving, shifting interstices he caught glimpses of the river flowing green and cool. What had been bare timber amongst whose twigs and branches the full daylight had shone unobstructed, now had clothed itself in foliage and leaned over to make black and mysterious the water that flowed beneath. Countless insects hovered over the polished surface of that water. Dragon-flies cruised about. Little birds swooped silently down and fluttered back, intent on their tiny prey. Water-bugs skated hither and thither in apparently purposeless diagonals. Once in a great while the black depths were stirred. A bass rolled lazily over, carrying with him his captured insect, leaving on the surface of the water concentric rings which widened and died away.

The trail led the crew through many minor labours, all of which consumed time. At Reed's Mill Orde entered into diplomatic negotiations with Old Man Reed, whom he found singularly amenable. The skirmish in the spring seemed to have taken all the fight out of him; or perhaps, more simply, Orde's attitude toward him at that time had won him over to the young man's side. At any rate, as soon as he understood that Orde was now in business for himself, he readily came to an agreement. Thereupon Orde's crew built a new sluiceway and gate far enough down to assure a good head in the pond above. Other dam owners farther down the stream also signed agreements having to do with supplying water over and above what the law required of them. Above one particularly shallow rapid Orde built a dam of his own.

All this took time, and the summer months slipped away. Orde had fallen into the wild life as into a habit. He lived on the river or the trail. His face took on a ruddier hue than ever; his clothes faded to a nondescript neutral colour of their own; his hair below his narrow felt hat bleached three shades. He did his work, and figured on his schemes, and smoked his pipe, and occasionally took little trips to the nearest town, where he spent the day at the hotel desks reading and answering his letters. The weather was generally very warm. Thunder-storms were not infrequent. Until the latter part of August, mosquitoes and black flies were bad.

About the middle of September the crew had worked down as far as Redding, leaving behind them a river tamed, groomed, and harnessed for their uses. Remained still the forty miles between Redding and the Lake to be improved. As, however, navigation for light draught vessels extended as far as that city, Orde here paid off his men. A few days' work with a pile driver would fence the principal shoals from the channel.

He stayed over night with his parents, and at once took the train for Monrovia. There he made his way immediately to the little office the new firm had rented. Newmark had just come down.

“Hullo, Joe,” greeted Orde, his teeth flashing in contrast to the tan of his face. “I'm done. Anything new since you wrote last?”

Newmark had acquired his articles of incorporation and sold his stock. How many excursions, demonstrations, representations, and arguments that implied, only one who has undertaken the floating of a new and untried scheme can imagine. Perhaps his task had in it as much of difficulty as Orde's taming of the river. Certainly he carried it to as successful a conclusion. The bulk of the stock he sold to the log-owners themselves; the rest he scattered here and there and everywhere in small lots, as he was able. Some five hundred and thousand dollar blocks even went to Chicago. His own little fortune of twenty thousand he paid in for the shares that represented his half of the majority retained by himself and Orde. The latter gave a note at ten per cent for his proportion of the stock. Newmark then borrowed fifteen thousand more, giving as security a mortgage on the company's newly acquired property—the tugs, booms, buildings, and real estate. Thus was the financing determined. It left the company with obligations of fifteen hundred dollars a year in interest, expenses which would run heavily into the thousands, and an obligation to make good outside stock worth at par exactly forty-nine thousand dollars. In addition, Orde had charged against his account a burden of two thousand dollars a year interest on his personal debt. To offset these liabilities—outside the river improvements and equipments, which would hold little or no value in case of failure—the firm held contracts to deliver about one hundred million feet of logs. After some discussion the partners decided to allow themselves twenty-five hundred dollars apiece by way of salary.

“If we don't make any dividends at first,” Orde pointed out, “I've got to keep even on my interest.”

“You can't live on five hundred,” objected Newmark.

“I'll be on the river and at the booms six months of the year,” replied Orde, “and I can't spend much there.”

“I'm satisfied,” said Newmark thoughtfully, “I'm getting a little better than good interest on my own investment from the start. And in a few years after we've paid up, there'll be mighty big money in it.”

He removed his glasses and tapped his palm with their edge.

“The only point that is at all risky to me,” said he, “is that we have only one-season contracts. If for any reason we hang up the drive, or fail to deliver promptly, we're going to get left the year following. And then it's B-U-S-T, bust.”

“Well, we'll just try not to hang her,” replied Orde.

XVI

Orde's bank account, in spite of his laughing assertion to Newmark, contained some eleven hundred dollars. After a brief but comprehensive tour of inspection over all the works then forward, he drew a hundred of this and announced to Newmark that business would take him away for about two weeks.

“I have some private affairs to attend to before settling down to business for keeps,” he told Newmark vaguely.

At Redding, whither he went to pack his little sole-leather trunk, he told Grandma Orde the same thing. She said nothing at the time, but later, when Grandpa Orde's slender figure had departed, very courteous, very erect, very dignified, with its old linen duster flapping around it, she came and stood by the man leaning over the trunk.

“Speak to her, Jack,” said she quietly. “She cares for you.”

Orde looked up in astonishment, but he did not pretend to deny the implied accusation as to his destination.

“Why, mother!” he cried. “She's only seen me three or four times! It's absurd—yet.”

“I know,” nodded Grandma Orde, wisely. “I know. But you mark my words; she cares for you.”

She said nothing more, but stood looking while Orde folded and laid away, his head bent low in thought. Then she placed her hand for an instant on his shoulder and went away. The Ordes were not a demonstrative people.

The journey to New York was at that time very long and disagreeable, but Orde bore it with his accustomed stoicism. He had visited the metropolis before, so it was not unfamiliar to him. He was very glad, however, to get away from the dust and monotony of the railroad train. The September twilight was just falling. Through its dusk the street lamps were popping into illumination as the lamp-lighter made his rapid way. Orde boarded a horse-car and jingled away down Fourth Avenue. He was pleased at having arrived, and stretched his legs and filled his lungs twice with so evident an enjoyment that several people smiled.

His comfort was soon disturbed, however, by an influx of people boarding the car at Twenty-third Street. The seats were immediately filled, and late comers found themselves obliged to stand in the aisle. Among these were several women. The men nearest buried themselves in the papers after the almost universal metropolitan custom. Two or three arose to offer their seats, among them Orde. When, however, the latter had turned to indicate to one of the women the vacated seat, he discovered it occupied by a chubby and flashily dressed youth of the sort common enough in the vicinity of Fourteenth Street; impudent of eye, cynical of demeanour, and slightly contemptuous of everything unaccustomed. He had slipped in back of Orde when that young man arose, whether under the impression that Orde was about to get off the car or from sheer impudence, it would be impossible to say.

Orde stared at him, a little astonished.

“I intended that seat for this lady,” said Orde, touching him on the shoulder.

The youth looked up coolly.

“You don't come that!” said he.

Orde wasted no time in discussion, which no doubt saved the necessity of a more serious disturbance. He reached over suddenly, seized the youth by the collar, braced his knee against the seat, and heaved the interloper so rapidly to his feet that he all but plunged forward among the passengers sitting opposite.

“Your seat, madam,” said Orde.

The woman, frightened, unwilling to become the participant of a scene of any sort, stood looking here and there. Orde, comprehending her embarrassment, twisted his antagonist about, and, before he could recover his equilibrium sufficiently to offer resistance, propelled him rapidly to the open door, the passengers hastily making way for them.

“Now, my friend,” said Orde, releasing his hold on the other's collar, “don't do such things any more. They aren't nice.”

Trivial as the incident was, it served to draw Orde to the particular notice of an elderly man leaning against the rear rail. He was a very well-groomed man, dressed in garments whose fit was evidently the product of the highest art, well buttoned up, well brushed, well cared for in every way. In his buttonhole he wore a pink carnation, and in his gloved hand he carried a straight, gold-headed cane. A silk hat covered his head, from beneath which showed a slightly empurpled countenance, with bushy white eyebrows, a white moustache, and a pair of rather bloodshot, but kindly, blue eyes. In spite of his somewhat pudgy rotundity, he carried himself quite erect, in a manner that bespoke the retired military man.

“You have courage, sir,” said this gentleman, inclining his bead gravely to Orde.

The young man laughed in his good-humoured fashion.

“Not much courage required to root out that kind of a skunk,” said he cheerfully.

“I refer to the courage of your convictions. The young men of this generation seem to prefer to avoid public disturbances. That breed is quite capable of making a row, calling the police, raising the deuce, and all that.”

“What of it?” said Orde.

The elderly gentleman puffed out his cheeks.

“You are from the West, are you not?” he stated, rather than asked.

“We call it the East out there,” said Orde. “It's Michigan.”

“I should call that pretty far west,” said the old gentleman.

Nothing more was said. After a block or two Orde descended on his way to a small hotel just off Broadway. The old gentleman saluted. Orde nodded good-humouredly. In his private soul he was a little amused at the old boy. To his view a man and clothes carried to their last refinement were contradictory terms.

Orde ate, dressed, and set out afoot in search of Miss Bishop's address. He arrived in front of the house a little past eight o'clock, and, after a moment's hesitation, mounted the steps and rang the bell.

The door swung silently back to frame an impassive man-servant dressed in livery. To Orde's inquiry he stated that Miss Bishop had gone out to the theatre. The young man left his name and a message of regret. At this the footman, with an irony so subtle as to be quite lost on Orde, demanded a card. Orde scribbled a line in his note-book, tore it out, folded it, and left it. In it he stated his regret, his short residence in the city, and desired an early opportunity to call. Then he departed down the brownstone steps, totally unconscious of the contempt he had inspired in the heart of the liveried man behind him.

He retired early and arose early, as had become his habit. When he descended to the office the night clerk, who had not yet been relieved, handed him a note delivered the night before. Orde ripped it open eagerly.

“MY DEAR MR. ORDE:

“I was so sorry to miss you that evening because of a stupid play. Come around as early as you can to-morrow morning. I shall expect you.

“Sincerely yours,

“CARROLL BISHOP.”

Orde glanced at the clock, which pointed to seven. He breakfasted, read the morning paper, finally started leisurely in the direction of West Ninth Street. He walked slowly, so as to consume more time, then at University Place was seized with a panic, and hurried rapidly to his destination. The door was answered by the same man who had opened the night before, but now, in some indefinable way, his calm, while flawless externally, seemed to have lifted to a mere surface, as though he might hastily have assumed his coat. To Orde's inquiry he stated with great brevity that Miss Bishop was not yet visible, and prepared to close the door.

“You are mistaken,” said Orde, with equal brevity, and stepped inside. “I have an engagement with Miss Bishop. Tell her Mr. Orde is here.”

The man departed in some doubt, leaving Orde standing in the gloomy hall. That young man, however, quite cheerfully parted the heavy curtains leading into a parlour, and sat down in a spindle-legged chair. At his entrance, a maid disappeared out another door, carrying with her the implements of dusting and brushing.

Orde looked around the room with some curiosity. It was long, narrow, and very high. Tall windows admitted light at one end. The illumination was, however, modified greatly by hangings of lace covering all the windows, supplemented by heavy draperies drawn back to either side. The embrasure was occupied by a small table, over which seemed to flutter a beautiful marble Psyche. A rubber plant, then as now the mark of the city and suburban dweller, sent aloft its spare, shiny leaves alongside a closed square piano. The lack of ornaments atop the latter bespoke the musician. Through the filtered gloom of the demi-light Orde surveyed with interest the excellent reproductions of the Old World masterpieces framed on the walls—“Madonnas” by Raphael, Murillo, and Perugino, the “Mona Lisa,” and Botticelli's “Spring”—the three oil portraits occupying the large spaces; the spindle-legged chairs and tables, the tea service in the corner, the tall bronze lamp by the piano, the neat little grate-hearth, with its mantel of marble; the ormolu clock, all the decorous and decorated gentility which marked the irreproachable correctness of whoever had furnished the apartment. Dark and heavy hangings depended in front of a double door leading into another room beyond. Equally dark and heavy hangings had closed behind Orde as he entered. An absolute and shrouded stillness seemed to settle down upon him. The ormolu clock ticked steadily. Muffled sounds came at long intervals from behind the portieres. Orde began to feel oppressed and subdued.

For quite three quarters of an hour he waited without hearing any other indications of life than the muffled sounds just remarked upon. Occasionally he shifted his position, but cautiously, as though he feared to awaken some one. The three oil portraits stared at him with all the reserved aloofness of their painted eyes. He began to doubt whether the man had announced him at all.

Then, breaking the stillness with almost startling abruptness, he heard a clear, high voice saying something at the top of the stairs outside. A rhythmical SWISH of skirts, punctuated by the light PAT-PAT of a girl tripping downstairs, brought him to his feet. A moment later the curtains parted and she entered, holding out her hand.

“Oh, I did keep you waiting such a long time!” she cried.

He stood holding her hand, suddenly unable to say a word, looking at her hungrily. A flood of emotion, of which he had had no prevision, swelled up within him to fill his throat. An almost irresistible impulse all but controlled him to crush her to him, to kiss her lips and her throat, to lose his fingers in the soft, shadowy fineness of her hair. The crest of the wave passed almost immediately, but it left him shaken. A faint colour deepened under the transparence of her skin; her fathomless black eyes widened ever so little; she released her hand.

“It was good of you to come so promptly,” said she. “I'm so anxious to hear all about the dear people at Redding.”

She settled gracefully in one of the little chairs. Orde sat down, once more master of himself, but still inclined to devour her with his gaze. She was dressed in a morning gown, all laces and ribbons and long, flowing lines. Her hair was done low on the back of her head and on the nape of her neck. The blood ebbed and flowed beneath her clear skin. A faint fragrance of cleanliness diffused itself about her—the cool, sweet fragrance of daintiness. They entered busily into conversation. Her attitudes were no longer relaxed and languidly graceful as in the easy chairs under the lamplight. She sat forward, her hands crossed on her lap, a fire smouldering deep beneath the cool surface lights of her eyes.

The sounds in the next room increased in volume, as though several people must have entered that apartment. In a moment or so the curtains to the hall parted to frame the servant.

“Mrs. Bishop wishes to know, miss,” said that functionary, “if you're not coming to breakfast.”

Orde sprang to his feet.

“Haven't you had your breakfast yet?” he cried, conscience stricken.

“Didn't you gather the fact that I'm just up?” she mocked him. “I assure you it doesn't matter. The family has just come down.”

“But,” cried Orde, “I wasn't here until nine o'clock. I thought, of course, you'd be around. I'm mighty sorry—”

“Oh, la la!” she cried, cutting him short. “What a bother about nothing. Don't you see—I'm ahead a whole hour of good talk.”

“You see, you told me in your note to come early,” said Orde.

“I forgot you were one of those dreadful outdoor men. You didn't see any worms, did you? Next time I'll tell you to come the day after.”

Orde was for taking his leave, but this she would not have.

“You must meet my family,” she negatived. “For if you're here for so short a time we want to see something of you. Come right out now.”

Orde thereupon followed her down a narrow, dark hall, squeezed between the stairs and the wall, to a door that opened slantwise into a dining-room the exact counterpart in shape to the parlour at the other side of the house. Only in this case the morning sun and more diaphanous curtains lent an air of brightness, further enhanced by a wire stand of flowers in the bow-windows.

The centre of the room was occupied by a round table, about which were grouped several people of different ages. With her back to the bow-window sat a woman well beyond middle age, but with evidently some pretensions to youth. She was tall, desiccated, quick in movement. Dark rings below her eyes attested either a nervous disease, an hysterical temperament, or both. Immediately at her left sat a boy of about fourteen years of age, his face a curious contradiction between a naturally frank and open expression and a growing sullenness. Next him stood a vacant chair, evidently for Miss Bishop. Opposite lolled a young man, holding a newspaper in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. He was very handsome, with a drooping black moustache, dark eyes, under lashes almost too luxuriant, and a long, oval face, dark in complexion, and a trifle sardonic in expression. In the VIS-A-VIS to Mrs. Bishop, Orde was surprised to find his ex-military friend of the street car. Miss Bishop performed the necessary introductions, which each acknowledged after his fashion, but with an apparent indifference that dashed Orde, accustomed to a more Western cordiality. Mrs. Bishop held out a languidly graceful hand, the boy mumbled a greeting, the young man nodded lazily over his newspaper. Only General Bishop, recognising him, arose and grasped his hand, with a real, though rather fussy, warmth.

“My dear sir,” he cried, “I am honoured to see you again. This, my dear,” he addressed his wife, “is the young man I was telling you about—in the street car,” he explained.

“How very interesting,” said Mrs. Bishop, with evidently no comprehension and less interest.

Gerald Bishop cast an ironically amused glance across at Orde. The boy looked up at him quickly, the sullenness for a moment gone from his face.

Carroll Bishop appeared quite unconscious of an atmosphere which seemed to Orde strained, but sank into her place at the table and unfolded her napkin. The silent butler drew forward a chair for Orde, and stood looking impassively in Mrs. Bishop's direction.

“You will have some breakfast with us?” she inquired. “No? A cup of coffee, at least?”

She began to manipulate the coffee pot, without paying the slightest attention to Orde's disclaimer. The general puffed out his cheeks, and coughed a bit in embarrassment.

“A good cup of coffee is never amiss to an old campaigner,” he said to Orde. “It's as good as a full meal in a pinch. I remember when I was a major in the Eleventh, down near the City of Mexico, in '48, the time Hardy's command was so nearly wiped out by that viaduct—” He half turned toward Orde, his face lighting up, his fingers reaching for the fork with which, after the custom of old soldiers, to trace the chart of his reminiscences.

Mrs. Bishop rattled her cup and saucer with an uncontrollably nervous jerk of her slender body. For some moments she had awaited a chance to get the general's attention. “Spare us, father,” she said brusquely. “Will you have another cup of coffee?”

The old gentleman, arrested in mid-career, swallowed, looked a trifle bewildered, but subsided meekly.

“No, thank you, my dear,” said he, and went furiously at his breakfast.

Orde, overwhelmed by embarrassment, discovered that none of the others had paid the incident the slightest attention. Only on the lips of Gerald Bishop he surprised a fine, detached smile.

At this moment the butler entered bearing the mail. Mrs. Bishop tore hers open rapidly, dropping the mangled envelopes at her side. The contents of one seemed to vex her.

“Oh!” she cried aloud. “That miserable Marie! She promised me to have it done to-day, and now she puts it off until Monday. It's too provoking!” She turned to Orde for sympathy. “Do you know ANYTHING more aggravating than to work and slave to the limit of endurance, and then have everything upset by the stupidity of some one else?”

Orde murmured an appropriate reply, to which Mrs. Bishop paid no attention whatever. She started suddenly up from the table.

“I must see about it!” she cried. “I plainly see I shall have to do it myself. I WILL do it myself. I promised it for Sunday.”

“You mustn't do another stitch, mother,” put in Carroll Bishop decidedly. “You know what the doctor told you. You'll have yourself down sick.”

“Well, see for yourself!” cried Mrs. Bishop. “That's what comes of leaving things to others! If I'd done it myself, it would have saved me all this bother and fuss, and it would have been done. And now I've got to do it anyway.”

“My dear,” put in the general, “perhaps Carroll can see Marie about it. In any case, there's nothing to work yourself up into such an excitement about.”

“It's very easy for you to talk, isn't it?” cried Mrs. Bishop, turning on him. “I like the way you all sit around like lumps and do nothing, and then tell me how I ought to have done it. John, have the carriage around at once.” She turned tensely to Orde. “I hope you'll excuse me,” she said very briefly; “I have something very important to attend to.”

Carroll had also risen. Orde held out his hand.

“I must be going,” said he.

“Well,” she conceded, “I suppose I'd better see if I can't help mother out. But you'll come in again. Come and dine with us this evening. Mother will be delighted.”

As Mrs. Bishop had departed from the room, Orde had to take for granted the expression of this delight. He bowed to the other occupants of the table. The general was eating nervously. Gerald's eyes were fixed amusedly on Orde.

To Orde's surprise, he was almost immediately joined on the street by young Mr. Bishop, most correctly appointed.

“Going anywhere in particular?” he inquired. “Let's go up the avenue, then. Everybody will be out.”

They turned up the great promenade, a tour of which was then, even more than now, considered obligatory on the gracefully idle. Neither said anything—Orde because he was too absorbed in the emotions this sudden revelation of Carroll's environment had aroused in him; Gerald, apparently, because he was too indifferent. Nevertheless it was the young exquisite who finally broke the silence.

“It was an altar cloth,” said he suddenly.

“What?” asked Orde, rather bewildered.

“Mother is probably the most devout woman in New York,” went on Gerald's even voice. “She is one of the hardest workers in the church. She keeps all the fast days, and attends all the services. Although she has no strength to speak of, she has just completed an elaborate embroidered altar cloth. The work she accomplished while on her knees. Often she spent five or six hours a day in that position. It was very devout, but against the doctor's orders, and she is at present much pulled down. Finally she gave way to persuasion to the extent of sending the embroidery out to be bound and corded. As a result, the altar cloth will not be done for next Sunday.”

He delivered this statement in a voice absolutely colourless, without the faintest trace discernible of either approval or disapproval, without the slightest irony, yet Orde felt vaguely uncomfortable.

“It must have been annoying to her,” he said gravely, “and I hope she will get it done in time. Perhaps Miss Bishop will be able to do it.”

“That,” said Gerald, “is Madison Square—or perhaps you know New York? My sister would, of course, be only too glad to finish the work, but I fear that my mother's peculiarly ardent temperament will now insist on her own accomplishment of the task. But perhaps you do not understand temperaments?”

“Very little, I'm afraid,” confessed Orde.

They walked on for some distance farther.

“Your father was in the Mexican War?” said Orde, to change the trend of his own thoughts.

“He was a most distinguished officer. I believe he received the Medal of Honour for a part in the affair of the Molina del Rey.”

“What command had he in the Civil War?” asked Orde. “I fooled around the outskirts of that a little myself.”

“My father resigned from the army in '54,” replied Gerald, with his cool, impersonal courtesy.

“That was too bad; just before the chance for more service,” said Orde.

“Army life was incompatible with my mother's temperament,” stated Gerald.

Orde said nothing more. It was Gerald's turn to end the pause.

“You are from Redding, of course,” said he. “My sister is very enthusiastic about the place. You are in business there?”

Orde replied briefly, but, forced by the direct, cold, and polite cross-questioning of his companion, he gave the latter a succinct idea of the sort of operations in which he was interested.

“And you,” he said at last; “I suppose you're either a broker or lawyer; most men are down here.”

“I am neither one nor the other,” stated Gerald. “I am possessed of a sufficient income from a legacy to make business unnecessary.”

“I don't believe I'd care to—be idle,” said Orde vaguely.

“There is plenty to occupy one's time,” replied Gerald. “I have my clubs, my gymnasium, my horse, and my friends.”

“Isn't there anything that particularly attracts you?” asked Orde.

The young man's languid eyes grew thoughtful, and he puffed more strongly on his cigarette.

“I should like,” said he slowly, at last, “to enter the navy.”

“Why don't you?” asked Orde bluntly.

“Certain family reasons make it inexpedient at present,” said Gerald. “My mother is in a very nervous state; she depends on us, and any hint of our leaving her is sufficient to render her condition serious.”

By this time the two young men were well uptown. On Gerald's initiative, they turned down a side street, and shortly came to a stop.

“That is my gymnasium,” said Gerald, pointing to a building across the way. “Won't you come in with me? I am due now for my practice.”

XVII

Orde's evening was a disappointment to him. Mrs. Bishop had, by Carroll's report, worked feverishly at the altar cloth all the afternoon. As a consequence, she had gone to bed with a bad headache. This state of affairs seemed to throw the entire family into a state of indecision. It was divided in mind as to what to do, the absolute inutility of any effort balancing strongly against a sense of what the invalid expected.

“I wonder if mother wouldn't like just a taste of this beef,” speculated the general, moving fussily in his chair. “I believe somebody ought to take some up. She MIGHT want it.”

The man departed with the plate, but returned a few moments later, impassive—but still with the plate.

“Has she got her hot-water bag?” asked the boy unexpectedly.

“Yes, Master Kendrick,” replied the butler.

After a preoccupied silence the general again broke out:

“Seems to me somebody ought to be up there with her.”

“You know, father, that she can't stand any one in the room,” said Carroll equably.

Toward the close of the meal, however, a distant bell tinkled faintly. Every one jumped as though guilty. Carroll said a hasty excuse and ran out. After ringing the bell, the invalid had evidently anticipated its answer by emerging from her room to the head of the stairs, for Orde caught the sharp tones of complaint, and overheard something about “take all night to eat a simple meal, when I'm lying here suffering.”

At the end of an interval a maid appeared in the doorway to say that Miss Carroll sent word she would not be down again for a time, and did not care for any more dinner. This seemed to relieve the general's mind of responsibility. He assumed his little fussy air of cheerfulness, told several stories of the war, and finally, after Kendrick had left, brought out some whisky and water. He winked slyly at Orde.

“Can't do this before the youngsters, you know,” he chirruped craftily.

Throughout the meal Gerald had sat back silent, a faint amusement in his eye. After dinner he arose, yawned, consulted his watch, and departed, pleading an engagement. Orde lingered some time, listening to the general, in the hope that Carroll would reappear. She did not, so finally he took his leave.

He trudged back to his hotel gloomily. The day had passed in a most unsatisfactory manner, according to his way of looking at it. Yet he had come more clearly to an understanding of the girl; her cheerfulness, her unselfishness, and, above all, the sweet, beautiful philosophy of life that must lie back, to render her so uncomplainingly the slave of the self-willed woman, yet without the indifferent cynicism of Gerald, the sullen, yet real, partisanship of Kendrick, or the general's week-kneed acquiescence.

The next morning he succeeded in making an arrangement by letter for an excursion to the newly projected Central Park. Promptly at two o'clock he was at the Bishops' house. To his inquiry the butler said that Mrs. Bishop had recovered from her indisposition, and that Miss Bishop would be down immediately. Orde had not long to wait for her. The SWISH, PAT-PAT of her joyous descent of the stairs brought him to his feet. She swept aside the portieres, and stood between their folds, bidding him welcome.

“I'm so sorry about last night,” said she, “but poor mother does depend on me so at such times. Isn't it a gorgeous day to walk? It won't be much like OUR woods, will it? But it will be something. OH, I'm so glad to get out!”

She was in one of her elfish moods, the languid grace of her sleepy-eyed moments forgotten. With a little cry of rapture she ran to the piano, and dashed into a gay, tinkling air with brilliancy and abandon. Her head, surmounted by a perky, high-peaked, narrow-brimmed hat, with a flaming red bird in front, glorified by the braid and “waterfall” of that day, bent forward and turned to flash an appeal for sympathy toward Orde.

“There, I feel more able to stay on earth!” she cried, springing to her feet. “Now I'll get on my gloves and we'll start.”

She turned slowly before the mirror, examining quite frankly the hang of her skirt, the fit of her close-cut waist, the turn of the adorable round, low-cut collars that were then the mode.

“It pays to be particular; we are in New York,” she answered, or parried, Orde's glance of admiration.

The gloves finally drawn on and buttoned, Orde held aside the portieres, and she passed fairly under his uplifted hand. He wanted to drop his arm about her, this slender girl with her quaint dignity, her bird-like ways, her gentle, graceful, mysterious, feminine soul. The flame-red bird lent its colour to her cheeks; her eyes, black and fathomless, the pupils wide in this dim light, shone with two stars of delight.

But, as they moved toward the massive front doors, Mrs. Bishop came down the stairs behind them. She, too, was dressed for the street. She received Orde's greeting and congratulation over her improved health in rather an absent manner. Indeed, as soon as she could hurry this preliminary over, she plunged into what evidently she considered a more important matter.

“You aren't thinking of going out, are you?” she asked Carroll.

“I told you, mother; don't you remember? Mr. Orde and I are going to get a little air in the park.”

“I'm sorry,” said Mrs. Bishop, with great brevity and decision, “but I'm going to the rectory to help Mr. Merritt, and I shall want you to go too, to see about the silver.”

“But, mother,” expostulated Carroll, “wouldn't Marie do just as well?”

“You know very well she can't be trusted without direction.”

“I DO so want to go to the park,” said Carroll wistfully. Mrs. Bishop's thin, nervous figure jerked spasmodically. “There is very little asked of you from morning until night,” she said, with some asperity, “and I should think you'd have some slight consideration for the fact that I'm just up from a sick bed to spare me all you could. Besides which, you do very little for the church. I won't insist. Do exactly as you think best.”

Carroll threw a pathetic glance at Orde.

“How soon are you going?” she asked her mother.

“In about ten minutes,” replied Mrs. Bishop; “as soon as I've seen Honorine about the dinner.” She seemed abruptly to realise that the amenities demanded something of her. “I'm sorry we must go so soon,” she said briefly to Orde, “but of course church business—We shall hope to see you often.”

Once more Orde held aside the curtains. The flame-bird drooped from the twilight of the hall into the dimness of the parlour. All the brightness seemed to have drained from the day, and all the joy of life seemed to have faded from the girl's soul. She sank into a chair, and tried pathetically to smile across at Orde.

“I'm such a baby about disappointments,” said she.

“I know,” he replied, very gently.

“And it's such a blue and gold day.”

“I know,” he repeated.

She twisted her glove in her lap, a bright spot of colour burning in each cheek.

“Mother is not well, and she has a great deal to try her. Poor mother!” she said softly, her head cast down.

“I know,” said Orde in his gentle tones.

After a moment he arose to go. She remained seated, her head down.

“I'm sorry about this afternoon,” said he cheerfully, “b