The Rules of the Game

by White, Stewart Edward

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  Title: The Rules of the Game

  Author: Stewart Edward White

  Release Date: August 16, 2004 [EBook #13194]

  Language: English

  *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RULES OF THE GAME ***

  Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Maria Khomenko and

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  * * *

  THE RULES OF THE GAME

  BY

  STEWART EDWARD WHITE

  1910

  Illustrated By Lejaren A. Hiller

  INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN, 1909, 1910, BY JAMES HORSBURGH, JR, 1910, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1910

  * * *

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  The geography in this novel may easily be recognized by one familiar with the country. For that reason it is necessary to state that the characters therein are in no manner to be confused with the people actually inhabiting and developing that locality. The Power Company promoted by Baker has absolutely nothing to do with any Power Company utilizing any streams: the delectable Plant never exercised his talents in Sierra North. The author must decline to acknowledge any identifications of the sort. Plant and Baker and all the rest are, however, only to a limited extent fictitious characters. What they did and what they stood for is absolutely true.

  * * *

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  He worked desperately. The heat of the flames began to scorch his face and hands.

  The men calmly withdrew the long ribbon of steel and stood to one side.

  "I beg pardon," said he. The girl turned.

  Bob found it two hours' journey down.

  * * *

  PART ONE

  * * *

  I

  Late one fall afternoon, in the year 1898, a train paused for a moment before crossing a bridge over a river. From it descended a heavy-set, elderly man. The train immediately proceeded on its way.

  The heavy-set man looked about him. The river and the bottom-land growths of willow and hardwood were hemmed in, as far as he could see, by low-wooded hills. Only the railroad bridge, the steep embankment of the right-of-way, and a small, painted, windowless structure next the water met his eye as the handiwork of man. The windowless structure was bleak, deserted and obviously locked by a strong padlock and hasp. Nevertheless, the man, throwing on his shoulder a canvas duffle-bag with handles, made his way down the steep railway embankment, across a plank over the ditch, and to the edge of the water. Here he dropped his bag heavily, and looked about him with an air of comical dismay.

  The man was probably close to sixty years of age, but florid and vigorous. His body was heavy and round; but so were his arms and legs. An otherwise absolutely unprepossessing face was rendered most attractive by a pair of twinkling, humorous blue eyes, set far apart. Iron-gray hair, with a tendency to curl upward at the ends, escaped from under his hat. His movements were slow and large and purposeful.

  He rattled the padlock on the boathouse, looked at his watch, and sat down on his duffle-bag. The wind blew strong up the river; the baring branches of the willows whipped loose their yellow leaves. A dull, leaden light stole up from the east as the afternoon sun lost its strength.

  By the end of ten minutes, however, the wind carried with it the creak of rowlocks. A moment later a light, flat duck-boat shot around the bend and drew up at the float.

  "Well, Orde, you confounded old scallywattamus," remarked the man on the duffle-bag, without moving, "is this your notion of meeting a train?"

  The oarsman moored his frail craft and stepped to the float. He was about ten years the other's junior, big of frame, tanned of skin, clear of eye, and also purposeful of movement.

  "This boathouse," he remarked incisively, "is the property of the Maple County Duck Club. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Get off this float."

  Then they clasped hands and looked at each other.

  "It's surely like old times to see you again, Welton," Orde broke the momentary silence. "It's been—let's see—fifteen years, hasn't it? How's Minnesota?"

  "Full of ducks," stated Welton emphatically, "and if you haven't anything but mud hens and hell divers here, I'm going to sue you for getting me here under false pretences. I want ducks."

  "Well, I'll get the keeper to shoot you some," replied Orde, soothingly, "or you can come out and see me kill 'em if you'll sit quiet and not rock the boat. Climb aboard. It's getting late."

  Welton threw aboard his duffle-bag, and, with a dexterity marvellous in one apparently so unwieldy, stepped in astern. Orde grinned.

  "Haven't forgotten how to ride a log, I reckon?" he commented.

  Welton exploded.

  "Look here, you little squirt!" he cried, "I'd have you know I'm riding logs yet. I don't suppose you'd know a log if you'd see one, you' soft-handed, degenerate, old riverhog, you! A golf ball's about your size!"

  "No," said Orde; "a fat old hippopotamus named Welton is about my size—as I'll show you when we land at the Marsh!"

  Welton grinned.

  "How's Mrs. Orde and the little boy?" he inquired.

  "Mrs. Orde is fine and dandy, and the 'little boy,' as you call him, graduated from college last June," Orde replied.

  "You don't say!" cried Welton, genuinely astounded. "Why, of course, he must have! Can he lick his dad?"

  "You bet he can—or could if his dad would give him a chance. Why, he's been captain of the football team for two years."

  "And football's the only game I'd come out of the woods to see," said Welton. "I must have seen him up at Minneapolis when his team licked the stuffing out of our boys; and I remember his name. But I never thought of him as little Bobby—because—well, because I always did remember him as little Bobby."

  "He's big Bobby, now, all right," said Orde, "and that's one reason I wanted to see you; why I asked you to run over from Chicago next time you came down. Of course, there are ducks, too."

  "There'd better be!" said Welton grimly.

  "I want Bob to go into the lumber business, same as his dad was. This congressman game is all right, and I don't see how I can very well get out of it, even if I wanted to. But, Welton, I'm a Riverman, and I always will be. It's in my bones. I want Bob to grow up in the smell of the woods—same as his dad. I've always had that ambition for him. It was the one thing that made me hesitate longest about going to Washington. I looked forward to Orde & Son."

  He was resting on his oars, and the duck-boat drifted silently by the swaying brown reeds.

  Welton nodded.

  "I want you to take him and break him in. I'd rather have you than any one I know. You're the only one of the outsiders who stayed by the Big Jam," Orde continued. "Don't try to favour him—that's no favour. If he doesn't make good, fire him. Don't tell any of your people that he's the son of a friend. Let him stand on his own feet. If he's any good we'll work him into the old game. Just give him a job, and keep an eye on him for me, to see how well he does."

  "Jack, the job's his," said Welton. "But it won't do him much good, because it won't last long. We're cleaned up in Minnesota; and have only an odd two years on some odds and ends we picked up in Wisconsin just to keep us busy."

  "What are you going to do then?" asked Orde, quietly dipping his oars again.

  "
I'm going to retire and enjoy life."

  Orde laughed quietly.

  "Yes, you are!" said he. "You'd have a high old time for a calendar month. Then you'd get uneasy. You'd build you a big house, which would keep you mad for six months more. Then you'd degenerate to buying subscription books, and wheezing around a club and going by the cocktail route. You'd look sweet retiring, now, wouldn't you?"

  Welton grinned back, a trifle ruefully.

  "You can no more retire than I can," Orde went on. "And as for enjoying life, I'll trade jobs with you in a minute, you ungrateful old idiot."

  "I know it, Jack," confessed Welton; "but what can I do? I can't pick up any more timber at any price. I tell you, the game is played out. We're old mossbacks; and our job is done."

  "I have five hundred million feet of sugar pine in California. What do you say to going in with me to manufacture?"

  "The hell you have!" cried Welton, his jaw dropping. "I didn't know that!"

  "Neither does anybody else. I bought it twenty years ago, under a corporation name. I was the whole corporation. Called myself the Wolverine Company."

  "You own the Wolverine property, do you?"

  "Yes; ever hear of it?"

  "I know where it is. I've been out there trying to get hold of something, but you have the heart of it."

  "Thought you were going to retire," Orde pointed out.

  "The property's all right, but I've some sort of notion the title is clouded."

  "Why?"

  "Can't seem to remember; but I must have come against some record somewhere. Didn't pay extra much attention, because I wasn't interested in that piece. Something to do with fraudulent homesteading, wasn't it?"

  Orde dropped his oars across his lap to fill and light a pipe.

  "That title was deliberately clouded by an enemy to prevent my raising money at the time of the Big Jam, when I was pinched," said he. "Frank Taylor straightened it out for me. You can see him. As a matter of fact, most of that land I bought outright from the original homesteaders, and the rest from a bank. I was very particular. There's one 160 I wouldn't take on that account."

  "Well, that's all right," said Welton, his jolly eyes twinkling. "Why the secrecy?"

  "I wanted a business for Bob when he should grow up," explained Orde; "but I didn't want any of this 'rich man's son' business. Nothing's worse for a boy than to feel that everything's cut and dried for him. He is to understand that he must go to work for somebody else, and stand strictly on his own feet, and make good on his own efforts. That's why I want you to break him in."

  "All right. And about this partnership?"

  "I want you to take charge. I can't leave Washington. We'll get down to details later. Bob can work for you there the same as here. By and by, we'll see whether to tell him or not."

  The twilight had fallen, and the shores of the river were lost in dusk. The surface of the water itself shone with an added luminosity, reflecting the sky. In the middle distance twinkled a light, beyond which in long stretches lay the sombre marshes.

  "That's the club," said Orde. "Now, if you disgrace me, you old duffer, I'll use you as a decoy!"

  A few moments later the two men, opening the door of the shooting-box, plunged into a murk of blue tobacco smoke. A half-dozen men greeted them boisterously. These were just about to draw lots for choice of blinds on the morrow. A savoury smell of roasting ducks came from the tiny kitchen where Weber—punter, keeper, duck-caller and cook—exercised the last-named function. Welton drew last choice, and was commiserated on his bad fortune. No one offered to give way to the guest, however. On this point the rules of the Club were inflexible.

  Luckily the weather changed. It turned cold; the wind blew a gale. Squalls of light snow swept the marshes. Men chattered and shivered, and blew on their wet fingers, but in from the great open lake came myriads of water-fowl, seeking shelter, and the sport was grand.

  "Well, old stick-in-the-mud," said Orde as, at the end of two days, the men thawed out in a smoking car, "ducks enough for you?"

  "Jack," said Welton solemnly, "there are no ducks in Minnesota. They've all come over here. I've had the time of my life. And about that other thing: as soon as our woods work is under way, I'll run out to California and look over the ground—see how easy it is to log that country. Then we can talk business. In the meantime, send Bob over to the Chicago office. I'll let Harvey break him in a little on the office work until I get back. When will he show up?"

  Orde grinned apologetically.

  "The kid has set his heart on coaching the team this fall, and he don't want to go to work until after the season," said he. "I'm just an old fool enough to tell him he could wait. I know he ought to be at it now—you and I were, long before his age; but----"

  "Oh, shut up!" interrupted Welton, his big body shaking all over with mirth. "You talk like a copy-book. I'm not a constituent, and you needn't run any bluffs on me. You're tickled to death with that boy, and you are hoping that team will lick the everlasting daylights out of Chicago, Thanksgiving; and you wouldn't miss the game or have Bob out of the coaching for the whole of California; and you know it. Send him along when you get ready."

  * * *

  II

  Bob Orde, armed with a card of introduction to Fox, Welton's office partner, left home directly after Thanksgiving. He had heard much of Welton & Fox in the past, both from his father and his father's associates. The firm name meant to him big things in the past history of Michigan's industries, and big things in the vague, large life of the Northwest. Therefore, he was considerably surprised, on finding the firm's Adams Street offices, to observe their comparative insignificance.

  He made his way into a narrow entry, containing merely a high desk, a safe, some letter files, and two bookkeepers. Then, without challenge, he walked directly into a large apartment, furnished as simply, with another safe, a typewriter, several chairs, and a large roll-top desk. At the latter a man sprawled, reading a newspaper. Bob looked about for a further door closed on an inner private office, where the weighty business must be transacted. There was none. The tall, broad, lean young man hesitated, looking about him with a puzzled expression in his earnest young eyes. Could this be the heart and centre of those vast and far-reaching activities he had heard so much about?

  After a moment the man in the revolving chair looked up shrewdly over his paper. Bob felt himself the object of an instant's searching scrutiny from a pair of elderly steel-gray eyes.

  "Well?" said the man, briefly.

  "I am looking for Mr. Fox," explained Bob.

  "I am Fox."

  The young man moved forward his great frame with the easy, loose-jointed grace of the trained athlete. Without comment he handed his card of introduction to the seated man. The latter glanced at it, then back to the young fellow before him.

  "Glad to see you, Mr. Orde," he unbent slightly. "I've been expecting you. If you're as good a man as your father, you'll succeed. If you're not as good a man as your father, you may get on—well enough. But you've got to be some good on your own account. We'll see." He raised his voice slightly. "Jim!" he called.

  One of the two bookkeepers appeared in the doorway.

  "This is young Mr. Orde," Fox told him. "You knew his father at Monrovia and Redding."

  The bookkeeper examined Bob dispassionately.

  "Harvey is our head man here," went on Fox. "He'll take charge of you."

  He swung his leg over the arm of his chair and resumed his newspaper. After a few moments he thrust the crumpled sheet into a huge waste basket and turned to his desk, where he speedily lost himself in a mass of letters and papers.

  Harvey disappeared. Bob stood for a moment, then took a seat by the window, where he could look out over the smoky city and catch a glimpse of the wintry lake beyond. As nothing further occurred for some time, he removed his overcoat, and gazed about him with interest on the framed photographs of logging scenes and camps that covered the walls. At the end of ten minutes Harvey retu
rned from the small outer office. Harvey was, perhaps, fifty-five years of age, exceeding methodical, very competent.

  "Can you run a typewriter?" he inquired.

  "A little," said Bob.

  "Well, copy this, with a carbon duplicate."

  Bob took the paper Harvey extended to him. He found it to be a list, including hundreds of items. The first few lines were like this:

  Sec. 4 T, 6 N.R., 26 W S.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4

  4 6 26 N.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4

  4 6 26 S.W. 1/4 of S.W. 1/4

  5 6 26 S.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4

  5 6 26 S.E. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4

  After an interminable sequence, another of the figures would change, or a single letter of the alphabet would shift. And so on, column after column. Bob had not the remotest notion of what it all meant, but he copied it and handed the result to Harvey. In a few moments Harvey returned.

  "Did you verify this?" he asked.

  "What?" Bob inquired.

  "Verify it, check it over, compare it," snapped Harvey, impatiently.

  Bob took the list, and with infinite pains which, nevertheless, could not prevent him from occasionally losing the place in the bewilderment of so many similar figures, he managed to discover that he had omitted three and miscopied two. He corrected these mistakes with ink and returned the list to Harvey. Harvey looked sourly at the ink marks, and gave the boy another list to copy.

  Bob found this task, which lasted until noon, fully as exhilarating as the other. When he returned his copies he ventured an inquiry.