Mr. Orde glanced down at his son. The boy looked very little and very childish, with his freckled, dull red cheeks, his dot of a nose, and his wide gray eyes. The man was about to make some stop-gap reply. He checked himself.
"It's this way Bobby," he explained carefully. "The logs are cut 'way up the river—ever so far—and then they float down the river. Now, everybody has logs in the river—Mr. Proctor and Mr. Heinzman and Mr. Welton and lots of people, and they're all mixed up together. When they get down to the mills where they are to be sawed up into boards, the logs belonging to the different owners have to be sorted out. Papa's company is paid by all the others to do the floating down stream and the sorting out. The sorting out is done in the booms; and we put the booms up stream from the mills because it is easier to float the logs, after they have been sorted, down the stream than to haul them back up the stream."
"What do you have them so far up the stream for?" asked Bobby.
"Because there's more room—the river widens out there."
Bobby said nothing for some time, and Mr. Orde confessed within himself a strong doubt as to whether or not the explanation had been understood.
"Papa," demanded Bobby, "I don't see how you tell your logs from Mr. Proctor's or Mr. Heinzman's or any of the rest of them."
Mr. Orde turned, extending his hand heartily to his astonished son.
"You're all right, Bobby!" said he. "Why, you see, each log is stamped on the end with a mark. Mr. Proctor's mark is one thing; and Mr. Heinzman's is another; and all the rest have different ones."
"I see," said Bobby.
The road now led them through a small grove of willows. Emerging thence they found themselves in full sight of the booms.