"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.
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