The Rules of the Game

by Stewart Edward White

  Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Maria Khomenko andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

  He worked desperately. The heat of the flames began toscorch his face and hands]

  THE RULES OF THE GAME

  BY

  STEWART EDWARD WHITE

  1910

  ILLUSTRATED BY LEJAREN A. HILLER

  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 familiarwith the country. For that reason it is necessary to state that thecharacters therein are in no manner to be confused with the peopleactually inhabiting and developing that locality. The Power Companypromoted by Baker has absolutely nothing to do with any Power Companyutilizing any streams: the delectable Plant never exercised his talentsin Sierra North. The author must decline to acknowledge anyidentifications of the sort. Plant and Baker and all the rest are,however, only to a limited extent fictitious characters. What they didand what they stood for is absolutely true._

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  He worked desperately. The heat of the flames began to scorch his faceand 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 momentbefore 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-landgrowths of willow and hardwood were hemmed in, as far as he could see,by low-wooded hills. Only the railroad bridge, the steep embankment ofthe right-of-way, and a small, painted, windowless structure next thewater met his eye as the handiwork of man. The windowless structure wasbleak, deserted and obviously locked by a strong padlock and hasp.Nevertheless, the man, throwing on his shoulder a canvas duffle-bag withhandles, made his way down the steep railway embankment, across a plankover the ditch, and to the edge of the water. Here he dropped his bagheavily, and looked about him with an air of comical dismay.

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

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

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

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

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

  "This boathouse," he remarked incisively, "is the property of the MapleCounty 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 themomentary 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'tanything but mud hens and hell divers here, I'm going to sue you forgetting 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 notrock the boat. Climb aboard. It's getting late."

  Welton threw aboard his duffle-bag, and, with a dexterity marvellous inone 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 ridinglogs 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 yoursize!"

  "No," said Orde; "a fat old hippopotamus named Welton is about mysize--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, hemust have! Can he lick his dad?"

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

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

  "He's big Bobby, now, all right," said Orde, "and that's one reason Iwanted to see you; why I asked you to run over from Chicago next timeyou 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. Thiscongressman game is all right, and I don't see how I can very well getout of it, even if I wanted to. But, Welton, I'm a Riverman, and Ialways will be. It's in my bones. I want Bob to grow up in the smell ofthe woods--same as his dad. I've always had that ambition for him. Itwas the one thing that made me hesitate longest about going toWashington. I looked forward to _Orde & Son_."

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

  Welton nodded.

  "I want you to take him and break him in. I'd rather have you than anyone I know. You're the only one of the outsiders who stayed by the BigJam," Orde continued. "Don't try to favour him--that's no favour. If hedoesn't make good, fire him. Don't tell any of your people that he's theson of a friend. Let him stand on his own feet. If he's any good we'llwork him into the old game. Just give him a job, and keep an eye on himfor 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 onlyan odd two years on some odds and ends we picked up in Wisconsin just tokeep us busy."

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

  "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 calendarmonth. Then you'd get uneasy. You'd build you a big house, which wouldkeep you mad for six months more. Then you'd degenerate to buyingsubscription books, and wheezing around a club and going by the cocktailroute. 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 enjoyinglife, 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 upany more timber at any price. I tell you, the game is played out. We'reold mossbacks; and our job is done."

  "I have five hundred mil
lion feet of sugar pine in California. What doyou say to going in with me to manufacture?"

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

  "Neither does anybody else. I bought it twenty years ago, under acorporation name. I was the whole corporation. Called myself theWolverine 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 ofsomething, 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 isclouded."

  "Why?"

  "Can't seem to remember; but I must have come against some recordsomewhere. Didn't pay extra much attention, because I wasn't interestedin 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 raisingmoney at the time of the Big Jam, when I was pinched," said he. "FrankTaylor 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, andthe rest from a bank. I was very particular. There's one 160 I wouldn'ttake on that account."

  "Well, that's all right," said Welton, his jolly eyes twinkling. "Whythe 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'sworse for a boy than to feel that everything's cut and dried for him. Heis to understand that he must go to work for somebody else, and standstrictly on his own feet, and make good on his own efforts. That's why Iwant 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 todetails 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, beyondwhich 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 themboisterously. These were just about to draw lots for choice of blinds onthe morrow. A savoury smell of roasting ducks came from the tiny kitchenwhere Weber--punter, keeper, duck-caller and cook--exercised thelast-named function. Welton drew last choice, and was commiserated onhis bad fortune. No one offered to give way to the guest, however. Onthis 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, andblew on their wet fingers, but in from the great open lake came myriadsof water-fowl, seeking shelter, and the sport was grand.

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

  "Jack," said Welton solemnly, "there are no ducks in Minnesota. They'veall come over here. I've had the time of my life. And about that otherthing: as soon as our woods work is under way, I'll run out toCalifornia and look over the ground--see how easy it is to log thatcountry. Then we can talk business. In the meantime, send Bob over tothe Chicago office. I'll let Harvey break him in a little on the officework 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'twant to go to work until after the season," said he. "I'm just an oldfool enough to tell him he could wait. I know he ought to be at itnow--you and I were, long before his age; but----"

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