In the course of the next eight years Newmark and Orde floated high on
that flood of apparent prosperity that attends a business well conceived
and passably well managed. The Boom and Driving Company made money,
of course, for with the margin of fifty per cent or thereabouts
necessitated by the temporary value of the improvements, good years
could hardly fail to bring good returns. This, it will be remembered,
was a stock company. With the profits from that business the two men
embarked on a separate copartnership. They made money at this, too, but
the burden of debt necessitated by new ventures, constantly weighted
by the heavy interest demanded at that time, kept affairs on the ragged
edge.
In addition, both Orde and Newmark were more inclined to extension of
interests than to “playing safe.” The assets gained in one venture
were promptly pledged to another. The ramifications of debt, property,
mortgages, and expectations overlapped each other in a cobweb of
interests.
Orde lived at ease in a new house of some size surrounded by grounds.
He kept two servants: a blooded team of horses drew the successor to the
original buckboard. Newmark owned a sail yacht of five or six tons, in
which, quite solitary, he took his only pleasure. Both were considered
men of substance and property, as indeed they were. Only, they
risked dollars to gain thousands. A succession of bad years, a
panic-contraction of money markets, any one of a dozen possible, though
not probable, contingencies would render it difficult to meet the
obligations which constantly came due, and which Newmark kept busy
devising ways and means of meeting. If things went well--and it may be
remarked that legitimately they should--Newmark and Orde would some day
be rated among the millionaire firms. If things went ill, bankruptcy
could not be avoided. There was no middle ground. Nor were Orde and
his partner unique in this; practically every firm then developing or
exploiting the natural resources of the country found itself in the same
case.
Immediately after the granting of the charter to drive the river the
partners had offered them an opportunity of acquiring about thirty
million feet of timber remaining from Morrison and Daly's original
holdings. That firm was very anxious to begin development on a large
scale of its Beeson Lake properties in the Saginaw waters. Daly proposed
to Orde that he take over the remnant, and having confidence in the
young man's abilities, agreed to let him have it on long-time notes.
After several consultations with Newmark, Orde finally completed the
purchase. Below the booms they erected a mill, the machinery for which
they had also bought of Daly, at Redding. The following winter Orde
spent in the woods. By spring he had banked, ready to drive, about six
million feet.
For some years these two sorts of activity gave the partners about all
they could attend to. As soon as the drive had passed Redding, Orde left
it in charge of one of his foremen while he divided his time between the
booms and the mill. Late in the year his woods trips began, the tours of
inspection, of surveying for new roads, the inevitable preparation for
the long winter campaigns in the forest. As soon as the spring thaws
began, once more the drive demanded his attention. And in marketing the
lumber, manipulating the firm's financial affairs, collecting its dues,
paying its bills, making its purchases, and keeping oiled the
intricate bearing points of its office machinery, Newmark was busy--and
invaluable.
At the end of the fifth year the opportunity came, through a combination
of a bad debt and a man's death, to get possession of two lake
schooners. Orde at once suggested the contract for a steam barge.
Towing was then in its infancy. The bulk of lake traffic was by means
of individual sailing ships--a method uncertain as to time. Orde thought
that a steam barge could be built powerful enough not only to carry its
own hold and deck loads, but to tow after it the two schooners. In this
manner the crews could be reduced, and an approximate date of delivery
could be guaranteed. Newmark agreed with him. Thus the firm, in
accordance with his prophecy, went into the carrying trade, for the
vessels more than sufficed for its own needs. The freighting of lumber
added much to the income, and the carrying of machinery and other heavy
freight on the return trip grew every year.
But by far the most important acquisition was that of the northern
peninsula timber. Most operators called the white pine along and back
from the river inexhaustible. Orde did not believe this. He saw the
time, not far distant, when the world would be compelled to look
elsewhere for its lumber supply, and he turned his eyes to the almost
unknown North. After a long investigation through agents, and a month's
land-looking on his own account, he located and purchased three hundred
million feet. This was to be paid for, as usual, mostly by the firm's
notes secured by its other property. It would become available only
in the future, but Orde believed, as indeed the event justified, this
future would prove to be not so distant as most people supposed.
As these interests widened, Orde became more and more immersed in them.
He was forced to be away all of every day, and more than the bulk of
every year. Nevertheless, his home life did not suffer for it.
To Carroll he was always the same big, hearty, whole-souled boy she
had first learned to love. She had all his confidence. If this did not
extend into business affairs, it was because Orde had always tried to
get away from them when at home. At first Carroll had attempted to keep
in the current of her husband's activities, but as the latter broadened
in scope and became more complex, she perceived that their explanation
wearied him. She grew out of the habit of asking him about them. Soon
their rapid advance had carried them quite beyond her horizon. To her,
also, as to most women, the word “business” connoted nothing but a
turmoil and a mystery.
In all other things they were to each other what they had been from the
first. No more children had come to them. Bobby, however; had turned out
a sturdy, honest little fellow, with more than a streak of his mother's
charm and intuition. His future was the subject of all Orde's plans.
“I want to give him all the chance there is,” he explained to Carroll.
“A boy ought to start where his father left off, and not have to do the
same thing all over again. But being a rich man's son isn't much of a
job.”
“Why don't you let him continue your business?” smiled Carroll, secretly
amused at the idea of the small person before them ever doing anything.
“By the time Bobby's grown up this business will all be closed out,”
replied Orde seriously.
He continued to look at his minute son with puckered brow, until Carroll
smoothed out the wrinkles with the tips of her fingers.
“Of course, having only a few minutes to decide,” she mocked, “perhaps
we'd better make up our minds right now to have him a street-car
driver.”
“Yes!” agreed Bobby unexpectedly, and with emphasis.
Three years after this conversation, which would have made Bobby just
eight, Orde came back before six of a summer evening, his face alight
with satisfaction.
“Hullo, bub!” he cried to Bobby, tossing him to his shoulder. “How's the
kid?”
They went out together, while awaiting dinner, to see the new setter
puppy in the woodshed.
“Named him yet?” asked Orde.
“Duke,” said Bobby.
Orde surveyed the animal gravely.
“Seems like a good name,” said he.
After dinner the two adjourned to the library, where they sat together
in the “big chair,” and Bobby, squirmed a little sidewise in order the
better to see, watched the smoke from his father's cigar as it eddied
and curled in the air.
“Tell a story,” he commanded finally.
“Well,” acquiesced Orde, “there was once a man who had a cow--”
“Once upon a time,” corrected Bobby.
He listened for a moment or so.
“I don't like that story,” he then announced. “Tell the story about the
bears.”
“But this is a new story,” protested Orde, “and you've heard about the
bears so many times.”
“Bears,” insisted Bobby.
“Well, once upon a time there were three bears--a big bear and a
middle-sized bear and a little bear--” began Orde obediently.
Bobby, with a sigh of rapture and content, curled up in a snug, warm
little ball. The twilight darkened.
“Blind-man's holiday!” warned Carroll behind them so suddenly that they
both jumped. “And the sand man's been at somebody, I know!”
She bore him away to bed. Orde sat smoking in the darkness, staring
straight ahead of him into the future. He believed he had found the
opportunity--twenty years distant--for which he had been looking so
long.