“Well,” replied Orde, “I got at it a little yesterday afternoon, and a little this noon. I have a rough idea.” He produced a bundle of scribbled papers from his coat-pocket. “Here you are. I take Daly as a sample, because I've been with his outfit. It costs him to run and deliver his logs one hundred miles about two dollars a thousand feet. He's the only big manufacturer up here; the rest are all at Monrovia, where they can get shipping by water. I suppose it costs the other nine firms doing business on the river from two to two and a half a thousand.”
Newmark produced a note-book and began to jot down figures.
“Do these men all conduct separate drives?” he inquired.
“All but Proctor and old Heinzman. They pool in together.”
“Now,” went on Newmark, “if we were to drive the whole river, how could we improve on that?”
“Well, I haven't got it down very fine, of course,” Orde told him, “but in the first place we wouldn't need so many men. I could run the river on three hundred easy enough. That saves wages and grub on two hundred right there. And, of course, a few improvements on the river would save time, which in our case would mean money. We would not need so many separate cook outfits and all that. Of course, that part of it we'd have to get right down and figure on, and it will take time. Then, too, if we agreed to sort and deliver, we'd have to build sorting booms down at Monrovia.”
“Suppose we had all that. What, for example, do you reckon you could bring Daly's logs down for?”
Orde fell into deep thought, from which he emerged occasionally to scribble on the back of his memoranda.
“I suppose somewhere about a dollar,” he announced at last. He looked up a trifle startled. “Why,” he cried, “that looks like big money! A hundred per cent!”
Newmark watched him for a moment, a quizzical smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.