Chapter 21

“It's a good chance, all right,” admitted Orde; “but--why--that is, I thought perhaps we'd job our own freighting for awhile--it never occurred to me we'd build any more vessels until we'd recovered a little.”

“Recovered,” Newmark repeated coldly. “I don't see what 'recovered' has to do with it. If the mill burned down, we'd rebuild, wouldn't we? Even if we were embarrassed--which we're not--we'd hardly care to acknowledge publicly that we couldn't keep up our equipment. And as we're making twelve or fifteen thousand a year out of our freighting, it seems to me too good a business to let slip into other hands.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Orde, a trifle helplessly.

“Therefore I had to act without you,” Newmark finished. “I knew you'd agree. That's right: isn't it?” he insisted.

“Yes, that's right,” agreed Orde drearily.

“You'll find copies of the contract on your desk,” Newmark closed the matter. “And there's the tax lists. I wish you'd run them over.”

“Joe,” replied Orde, “I--I don't think I'll stay down town this morning. I--”

Newmark glanced up keenly.

“You don't look a bit well,” said he; “kind of pale around the gills. Bilious. Don't believe that camp grub quite agrees with you for a steady diet.”

“Yes, that must be it,” assented Orde.

He closed his desk and went out. Newmark turned back to his papers. His face was expressionless. From an inner pocket he produced a cigar which he thrust between his teeth. The corners of his mouth slowly curved in a grim smile.

Orde did not go home. Instead, he walked down Main Street to the docks where he jumped into a rowboat lying in a slip, and with a few rapid strokes shot out on the stream. In his younger days he had belonged to a boat club, and had rowed in the “four.” He still loved the oar, and though his racing days were past, he maintained a clean-lined, rather unstable little craft which it was his delight to propel rapidly with long spoon-oars whenever he needed exercise. To-day, however, he was content to drift.

The morning was still and golden. The crispness of late fall had infused a wine into the air. The sky was a soft, blue-gray; the sand-hills were a dazzling yellow. Orde did not try to think; he merely faced the situation, staring it in the face until it should shrink to its true significance.

One thing he felt distinctly; yet could not without a struggle bring himself to see. The California lands must be mortgaged. If he could raise a reasonable sum of money on them, he would still be perfectly able to meet his notes. He hated fiercely to raise that money.

It was entirely a matter of sentiment. Orde realised the fact clearly, and browbeat his other self with a savage contempt. Nevertheless his dream had been to keep the western timber free and unencumbered--for Bobby. Dreams are harder to give up than realities.

He fell into the deepest reflections which were broken only when the pounding of surf warned him he had drifted almost to the open lake. After all, there was no essential difference between owing money to a man in Michigan and to a man in California. That was the net result of his struggle.

“When the time comes, we'll just borrow that money on a long-time mortgage, like sensible people,” he said aloud, “and quit this everlasting scrabbling.”

Back to town he pulled with long vigorous strokes, skittering his feathered spoon-oars lightly over the tops of the wavelets. At the slip he made fast the boat, and a few minutes later re-entered the office, his step springy, his face glowing. Newmark glanced up.

“Hullo!” said he. “Back again? You look better.”

“Exercise,” said Orde, in his hearty manner. “Exercise, old boy! You ought to try it. Greatest thing in the world. Just took a row to the end of the piers and back, and I'm as fit as a fiddle!”

XXXVI

Orde immediately set into motion the machinery of banking to borrow on the California timber. Taylor took charge of this, as the only man in Monrovia who had Orde's confidence. At the end of a necessary delay Orde received notice that the West had been heard from. He stepped across the hall to the lawyer's office.

“Well, Frank,” said he, “glad we managed to push it through with so little trouble.”

Taylor arose, shut carefully the door into his outer office, walked to the window, looked contemplatively out upon the hotel backyard, and returned to his desk.

“But there is trouble,” said he curtly.

“What's the matter?” asked Orde.

“The banks refuse the loan.”

Orde stared at him in blank astonishment.

“Refuse!” he echoed.

“Absolutely.”

“What grounds can they possibly have for that?”

“I can't make out exactly from these advices. It's something about the title.”

“But I thought you went over the title.”

“I did,” stated Taylor emphatically; “and I'll stake my reputation as a lawyer that everything is straight and clear from the Land Office itself. I've wired for an explanation; and we ought surely to know something definite by tomorrow.”

With this uncertainty Orde was forced to be content. For the first time in his business career a real anxiety gnawed at his vitals. He had been in many tight places; but somehow heretofore success or failure had seemed to him about immaterial, like points gained or conceded in the game; a fresh start was always so easy, and what had been already won as yet unreal. Now the game itself was at issue. Property, reputation, and the family's future were at stake. When the three had lived in the tiny house by the church, it had seemed that no adversity could touch them. But now that long use had accustomed them to larger quarters, servants, luxuries, Orde could not conceive the possibility of Carroll's ever returning to that simplest existence. Carroll could have told him otherwise; but of course he did not as yet bring the possibility before her. She had economised closely, these last few years. Orde was proud of her. He was also fiercely resentful that his own foolishness, or untoward circumstances, or a combination of both should jeopardise her future. Therefore he awaited further news with the greatest impatience.

The message came the following day, as Taylor had predicted. Taylor handed it to him without comment.

“Land Office under investigation,” Orde read. “Fraudulent entries suspected. All titles clouded until decision is reached.”

“What do you suppose that means?” asked Orde, although he knew well enough.

Taylor glanced up at his dull eyes with commiseration.

“They simply won't lend good money on an uncertainty,” said he.

“Frank,” said Orde, rousing himself with an effort, “I've got to be here. I couldn't get away this winter if my life depended on it. And I won't even have time to pay much attention to it from here. I want you to go to California and look after those interests for me. Never mind your practice, man,” as Taylor tried to interrupt him. “Make what arrangements you please; but go. It'll be like a sort of vacation to you. You need one. And I'll make it worth your while. Take Clara with you. She'll like California. Now don't say no. It's important. Straighten it out as quick as you can: and the minute it IS straight borrow that money on it, and send it on p.d.q.”

Taylor thoughtfully tapped his palm with the edge of his eye-glasses.

“All right,” he said at last.

“Good!” cried Orde, rising and holding out his hand.

He descended the dark stairs to the street, where he turned down toward the river. There he sat on a pile for nearly an hour, quite oblivious to the keen wind of latter November which swept up over the scum ice from the Lake. At length he hopped down and made his way to the office of the Welton Lumber Co.

“Look here, Welton,” he demanded abruptly when he had reached that operator's private office, “how much of a cut are you going to make this year?”

“About twenty million,” replied Welton. “Why?”

“Just figuring on the drive,” said Orde, nodding a farewell.

He had the team harnessed, and, assuming his buffalo-fur coat, drove to the offices of all the men owning timber up and down the river. When he had collected his statistics, he returned to his desk, where he filled the backs of several envelopes with his characteristically minute figures. At the close of his calculations he nodded his head vigorously several times.

“Joe,” he called across to his partner, “I'm going to cut that whole forty million we have left.”

Newmark did not turn. After a moment his dry expressionless voice came back.

“I thought that we figured that as a two-years' job.”

“We did, but I'm going to clean up the whole thing this year.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

“Sure thing,” replied Orde. Then under his breath, and quite to himself, he added: “I've got to!”

XXXVII

The duel had now come to grapples. Orde was fighting for his very life. The notes given by Newmark and Orde would come due by the beginning of the following summer. Before that time Orde must be able to meet them personally, or, as by the agreement with Newmark, his stock in the Boom Company would be turned in to the firm. This would, of course, spell nearly a total loss of it, as far as Orde was concerned.

The chief anxiety under which the riverman laboured, however, was the imminent prospect of losing under the mortgage all the Northern Peninsula timber. He had thought that the firm would be able to step in for its redemption, even if he personally found himself unable to meet the obligation. Three hundred million feet would seem to be too important a matter to let go under so small a mortgage. Now as the time approached, he realised that if he could not pay the notes, the firm would certainly be unable to do so. What with the second mortgage, due two years later, and to be met by Newmark; with the outstanding obligations; with the new enterprise of the vessels ordered from Duncan McLeod, Newmark and Orde would be unable to raise anything like the necessary amount. To his personal anxieties Orde added a deep and bitter self-reproach at having involved his partner in what amounted to a total loss.

Spurred doubly by these considerations, then, he fell upon the woods work with unparalleled ferocity. A cut and sale of the forty million feet remaining of the firm's up-river holdings, together with the tolls to be collected for driving the river that spring would, if everything went right and no change in the situation took place, bring Orde through the venture almost literally by “the skin of his teeth.” To cut forty million feet, even in these latter days of improvements then unknown, would be a task to strain to the utmost every resource of energy, pluck, equipment and organisation. In 1880-81 the operators on the river laughed good-humouredly over an evident madness.

Nevertheless Orde accomplished the task. To be sure he was largely helped by a favourable winter. The cold weather came early and continued late. Freezing preceded the snow, which was deep enough for good travoying and to assure abundant freshet water in the spring, but not too deep to interfere with the work. Orde increased his woods force; and, contrary to his custom, he drove them mercilessly. He was that winter his own walking-boss, and lived constantly in the woods. The Rough Red had charge of the banking, where his aggressive, brutal personality kept the rollways free from congestion. For congestion there means delay in unloading the sleighs; and that in turn means a drag in the woods work near the skidways at the other end of the line. Tom North and Tim Nolan and Johnny Sims and Jim Denning were foremen back in the forest. Every one had an idea, more or less vague, that the Old Fellow had his back to the wall. Late into the night the rude torches, made quite simply from brown stone jugs full of oil and with wicks in their necks, cast their flickering glare over the ice of the haul-roads. And though generally in that part of Michigan the thaws begin by the first or second week in March, this year zero weather continued even to the eighth of April. When the drive started, far up toward headwaters, the cut was banked for miles along the stream, forty million feet of it to the last timber.

The strain over, Orde slept the clock around and awoke to the further but familiar task of driving the river. He was very tired; but his spirit was at peace. As always after the event, he looked back on his anxieties with a faint amusement over their futility.

From Taylor he had several communications. The lawyer confessed himself baffled as to the purpose and basis of the Land Office investigation. The whole affair appeared to be tangled in a maze of technicalities and a snarl of red-tape which it would take some time to unravel. In the meantime Taylor was enjoying himself; and was almost extravagant in his delight over the climate and attractions of Southern California.

Orde did not much care for this delay. He saw his way clear to meeting his obligations without the necessity of hypothecating the California timber; and was the better pleased for it. With the break-up of spring he started confidently with the largest drive in the history of the river, a matter of over two hundred million feet.

This tremendous mass of timber moved practically in three sections. The first, and smallest, comprised probably thirty millions. It started from the lowermost rollways on the river, drove rapidly through the more unobstructed reaches, and was early pocketed above Monrovia in the Company's distributing booms. The second and largest section of a hundred million came from the main river and its largest tributaries. It too made a safe drive; and was brought to rest in the main booms and in a series of temporary or emergency booms built along the right bank and upstream from the main works. The third section containing a remainder of about seventy million had by the twenty-sixth of June reached the slack water above the city of Redding.

XXXVIII

The morning of June twenty-sixth dawned clear. Orde was early on the road before the heat of the day. He drove his buckboard rapidly over the twelve miles that separated his home from the distributing booms, for he wanted at once to avoid the heat of the first sun and to arrive at the commencement of the day's work. After a glance at the river, he entered the tiny office and set about the examination of the tally sheets left by the foreman. While he was engaged in this checking, the foreman, Tom North, entered.

“The river's rising a little”? he remarked conversationally as he reached for the second set of tally boards.

“You're crazy,” muttered Orde, without looking up. “It's clear as a bell; and there have been no rains reported from anywhere.”

“It's rising a little, just the same,” insisted North, going out.

An hour later Orde, having finished his clerical work, walked out over the booms. The water certainly had risen; and considerably at that. A decided current sucked through the interstices in the piling. The penned logs moved uneasily.

“I should think it was rising!” said Orde to himself, as he watched the slowly moving water. “I wonder what's up. It can't be merely those rains three days ago.”

He called one of the younger boys to him, Jimmy Powers by name.

“Here, Jimmy,” said he, “mark one of these piles and keep track of how fast the water rises.”

For some time the river remained stationary, then resumed its slow increase. Orde shook his head.

“I don't like June floods,” he told Tom North. “A fellow can understand an ordinary spring freshet, and knows about how far it will go; but these summer floods are so confounded mysterious. I can't figure out what's struck the old stream, unless they're having almighty heavy rains up near headwaters.”

By three o'clock in the afternoon Jimmy Powers reported a rise since morning of six inches. The current had proportionately increased in power.

“Tom,” said Orde to the old riverman, “I'm going to send Marsh down for the pile-drivers and some cable. The barge company has some fifteen inch manilla.”

North laughed.

“What in blazes do you expect to do with that?” he inquired.

“We may need them,” Orde stated with conviction. “Everything's safe enough now; and probably will continue so; but I can't afford to take chances. If those logs ever break through they'll go on out to Lake Michigan and there they wouldn't be worth the salvage.”

Tom North stared at his principal in surprise.

“That's a mighty long chance,” he commented. “Never knew you to come so near croaking before, Jack.”

“If this drive goes out, it surely busts me,” replied Orde, “and I'm not taking even long chances.”

Captain Marsh, returning with the SPRITE, brought an evening paper and news from the telegraph offices. A cloudburst in the China Creek district followed by continued heavy rains was responsible for the increased water. The papers mentioned this only incidentally, and in explanation. Their columns were filled with an account of the big log jam that had formed above the iron railroad bridge. The planing mill's booms had given way under pressure and the contents had piled down stream against the buttresses. Before steps could be taken to clear the way, the head of the drive, hurried by the excess water, had piled in on top. Immediately a jam formed, increasing in weight each moment, until practically the entire third section had piled up back of the bridge.

The papers occupied themselves with the picturesque side of the affair. None expressed any anxiety as to the bridge. It was a new structure, each of whose bents weighed over a hundred tons. A fall of a few inches only would suffice to lock the jam solidly, thus relieving whatever pressure the mass exerted against the iron bridge. That the water would shortly go down was of course inevitable at this time of year. It would be a big jam for the rivermen to break, however.

“Do you think you'll go up there?” asked North.

Orde shook his head.

“They're in a nice pickle,” he acknowledged; “but Nolan's in charge and will do his best. I think we may have troubles of our own right here at home.”

He slept that night at the booms. The water, contrary to all expectation, rose steadily. By morning it had crept so far up the piles that there began to be danger that it would overflow their tops. In that case, of course, the logs in the booms would also run out.

“Guess it's time we did a little work,” remarked Orde.

He set a crew of men to raising the height of the piling by tying logs firmly to the bolted timbers atop. This would take care of an extra two feet of water; a two feet beyond all previous records. Another crew stretched the fifteen inch manilla cables across the field of logs in order to segregate them into several units of mass, and so prevent them from piling up at the down-stream end of the enclosure. The pile-driver began to drop its hammer at spots of weakness. In spite of the accelerated current and the increased volume of the river, everything was soon shipshape and safe.

“We're all right now,” said Orde. “The only thing I'm a little uneasy about is those confounded temporary booms upstream. Still they're all right unless they get to piling up. Then we'll have to see what we can do to hold them. I think as soon as the driver is through down at the sorting end, she'd better drive a few clumps of piles to strengthen the swing when it is shut. Then if the logs pile down on us from above, we can hold them there.”

About two hours later the pile-driver moved up. The swing was opened; and the men began to drive clumps of piles in such a position as to strengthen the swing when the latter should be shut. It was a slow job. Each pile had to be taken from the raft at the stern of the scow, erected in the “carrier,” and pounded into place by the heavy hammer raised and let drop in the derrick at the bow.

Long before the task was finished, the logs in the temporary booms had begun to slide atop one another, to cross and tangle, until at last the river bed inside the booms was filled with a jam of formidable dimensions. From beneath it the water boiled in eddies. Orde, looking at it, roused himself to sudden activity.

“Get a move on,” he advised Captain Aspinwall of the driver. “If that jam breaks on us, we want to be ready; and if it don't break before you get this swing strengthened, maybe we can hold her where she is. There's no earthly doubt that those boom piles will never stand up when they get the full pressure of the freshet.”

He departed up river on a tour of inspection from which he returned almost immediately.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” he cried. “She can't last much longer!”

Indeed even to the men on the pile-driver, evidences of the pressure sustained by the slender boom piles were not wanting. Above the steady gurgle of the water and the intermittent puffing and other noises of the work, they could hear a creaking and groaning of timbers full of portent to those who could read the signs.

The driver's crew laboured desperately, hoisting the piles into the carriage, tripping the heavy hammer, sending it aloft again, binding feverishly the clumps of piles together by means of cables. Each man worked with an eye over his shoulder, fearful of the power that menaced him.

Two of the clumps had been placed and bound; a third was nearly finished, when suddenly, with a crack and a roar the upper booms gave way, projecting their logs upon the opening and the driver.

The half dozen members of the crew, caught utterly unaware in spite of the half warning they had been receiving for an hour past, were scattered by the winds of a panic. Two or three flung themselves on their faces; several ran from one end of the scow to the other; one leaped into the river! Imminent destruction seemed upon them.

Tom North, at the winch that operated the arm of the swing, however, retained his presence of mind. At the first sag outward of the boom piles he set in operation the machinery that closed the gate. Clumsy and slow as was his mechanism, he nevertheless succeeded in getting the long arm started. The logs, rushing in back of it, hurried it shut. Immediately they jammed again, and heaped up in a formidable tangle behind the barrier. Tom North, his little black pipe between his teeth, stood calm, the lever of his winch in his hand. A short three feet from the spot on which he stood, the first saw log of the many that might have overwhelmed him thrust forward its ugly head. The wash of the water lifted the huge pile-driver bodily and deposited it with a crash half on the bank and half in the water.

Instantly after the first break Orde had commenced running out over the booms from the shore.

“Good boy, Tom!” he shot at North as he passed.

Across the breast of the jam he hurried, and to the other bank where the pile-driver lay. The crew had recovered from their panic, and were ashore gazing curiously underneath the scow. Captain Aspinwall examined the supports of the derrick on deck.

“That was lucky,” said Orde briefly to Aspinwall. “How's the damage? Stove you in?”

“I--I don't think so,” replied the captain, turning a rather perturbed face to Orde.

“That's good. I'll send over the tug to help get her afloat. We've got our work cut out for us now. As soon as you're afloat, blow your whistle and I'll come over to tell you what to do.”

“You don't expect me to work my driver under the face of that jam!” cried the captain.

“Certainly,” snapped Orde, wheeling.

“Not me!” said Aspinwall positively. “I know when I've got enough!”

“What's the matter?” asked Orde.

“It isn't safe,” replied the captain; “and I don't intend to risk my men or my driver.”

Orde stood for a moment stock-still; then with a snort of anger he leaped to the deck, seized the man by the neck and thrust him bodily over the side to the bank.

“Safe, you white-livered skunk!” he roared. “Safe! Go over in the middle of that ten-acre lot and lie down on your face and see if you feel safe there! Get out; the whole pack of you! I'm in charge here now.”