Part 22

“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?”