The first season of the Boom Company was most successful. Its prospects
for the future were bright. The drive had been delivered to its various
owners at a price below what it had cost them severally, and without the
necessary attendant bother. Therefore, the loggers were only too willing
to renew their contracts for another year. This did not satisfy Newmark,
however.
“What we want,” he told Orde, “is a charter giving us exclusive rights
on the river, and authorising us to ask toll. I'm going to try and get
one out of the legislature.”
He departed for Lansing as soon as the Assembly opened, and almost
immediately became lost in one of those fierce struggles of politics not
less bitter because concealed. Heinzman was already on the ground.
Newmark had the shadow of right on his side, for he applied for the
charter on the basis of the river improvements already put in by his
firm. Heinzman, however, possessed much political influence, a deep
knowledge of the subterranean workings of plot and counterplot, and a
“barrel.” Although armed with an apparently incontestable legal right,
Newmark soon found himself fighting on the defensive. Heinzman wanted
the improvements already existing condemned and sold as a public utility
to the highest bidder. He offered further guarantees as to future
improvements. In addition were other and more potent arguments proffered
behind closed doors. Many cases resolved themselves into a bald question
of cash. Others demanded diplomacy. Jobs, fat contracts, business
favours, influence were all flung out freely--bribes as absolute as
though stamped with the dollar mark. Newspapers all over the State were
pressed into service. These, bought up by Heinzman and his prospective
partners in a lucrative business, spoke virtuously of private piracy
of what are now called public utilities, the exploiting of the people's
natural wealths, and all the rest of a specious reasoning the more
convincing in that it was in many other cases only too true. The
independent journals, uninformed of the rights of the case, either
remained silent on the matter, or groped in a puzzled and undecided
manner on both sides.
Against this secret but effective organisation Newmark most unexpectedly
found himself pitted. He had anticipated being absent but a week; he
became involved in an affair of months.
With decision he applied himself to the problem. He took rooms at the
hotel, sent for Orde, and began at once to set in motion the machinery
of opposition. The refreshed resources of the company were strained to
the breaking point in order to raise money for this new campaign opening
before it. Orde, returning to Lansing after a trip devoted to the
carrying out of Newmark's directions as to finances, was dismayed at
the tangle of strategy and cross-strategy, innuendo, vague and formless
cobweb forces by which he was surrounded. He could make nothing of them.
They brushed his face, he felt their influence, yet he could place his
finger on no tangible and comprehensible solidity. Among these delicate
and complicated cross-currents Newmark moved silent, cold, secret. He
seemed to understand them, to play with them, to manipulate them as
elements of the game. Above them was the hollow shock of the ostensible
battle--the speeches, the loud talk in lobbies, the newspaper virtue,
indignation, accusations; but the real struggle was here in the furtive
ways, in whispered words delivered hastily aside, in hotel halls on the
way to and from the stairs, behind closed doors of rooms without open
transoms.
Orde in comic despair acknowledged that it was all “too deep for him.”
Nevertheless, it was soon borne in on him that the new company was
struggling for its very right to existence. It had been doing that
from the first; but now, to Orde the fight, the existence, had a new
importance. The company up to this point had been a scheme merely, an
experiment that might win or lose. Now, with the history of a drive
behind it, it had become a living entity. Orde would have fought against
its dissolution as he would have fought against a murder. Yet he had
practically to stand one side, watching Newmark's slender, gray-clad,
tense figure gliding here and there, more silent, more reserved, more
watchful every day.
The fight endured through most of the first half of the session. When
finally it became evident to Heinzman that Newmark would win, he made
the issue of toll rates the ditch of his last resistance, trying to
force legal charges so low as to eat up the profits. At the last,
however, the bill passed the board. The company had its charter.
At what price only Newmark could have told. He had fought with the tense
earnestness of the nervous temperament that fights to win without count
of the cost. The firm was established, but it was as heavily in debt as
its credit would stand. Newmark himself, though as calm and reserved and
precise as ever, seemed to have turned gray, and one of his eyelids had
acquired a slight nervous twitch which persisted for some months. He
took his seat at the desk, however, as calmly as ever. In three days
the scandalised howls of bribery and corruption had given place in the
newspapers to some other sensation.
“Joe,” said Orde to his partner, “how about all this talk? Is there
really anything in it? You haven't gone in for that business, have you?”
Newmark stretched his arms wearily.
“Press bought up,” he replied. “I know for a fact that old Stanford got
five hundred dollars from some of the Heinzman interests. I could have
swung him back for an extra hundred, but it wasn't worth while. They
howl bribery at us to distract attention from their own performances.”
With this evasive reply Orde contented himself. Whether it satisfied
him or whether he was loath to pursue the subject further it would be
impossible to say.
“It's cost us plenty, anyway,” he said, after a moment. “The
proposition's got a load on it. It will take us a long time to get
out of debt. The river driving won't pay quite so big as we thought it
would,” he concluded, with a rueful little laugh.
“It will pay plenty well enough,” replied Newmark decidedly, “and it
gives us a vantage point to work from. You don't suppose we are going to
quit at river driving, do you? We want to look around for some timber
of our own; there's where the big money is. And perhaps we can buy a
schooner or two and go into the carrying trade--the country's alive with
opportunity. Newmark and Orde means something to these fellows now. We
can have anything we want, if we just reach out for it.”
His thin figure, ordinarily slightly askew, had straightened; his
steel-gray, impersonal eyes had lit up behind the bowed glasses and were
seeing things beyond the wall at which they gazed. Orde looked up at him
with a sudden admiration.
“You're the brains of this concern,” said he.
“We'll get on,” replied Newmark, the fire dying from his eyes.