“I think we can,” asserted Newmark.
Orde fell into a brown study, occasionally throwing a twig or a particle of earth at the offending lump in the turf. Overhead the migratory warblers balanced right-side up or up-side down, searching busily among the new leaves, uttering their simple calls. The air was warm and soft and still, the sky bright. Fat hens clucked among the grasses. A feel of Sunday was in the air.
“I must have something to live on,” said he thoughtfully at last.
“So must I,” said Newmark. “We'll have to pay ourselves salaries, of course, but the smaller the better at first. You'll have to take charge of the men and the work and all the rest of it—I don't know anything about that. I'll attend to the incorporating and the routine, and I'll try to place the stock. You'll have to see, first of all, whether you can get contracts from the logging firms to drive the logs.”
“How can I tell what to charge them?”
“We'll have to figure that very closely. You know where these different drives would start from, and how long each of them would take?”
“Oh, yes; I know the river pretty well.”
“Well, then we'll figure how many days' driving there is for each, and how many men there are, and what it costs for wages, grub, tools—we'll just have to figure as near as we can to the actual cost, and then add a margin for profit and for interest on our investment.”
“It might work out all right,” admitted Orde.
“I'm confident it would,” asserted Newmark. “And there'd be no harm figuring it all out, would there?”