I'm going to hold up the drive in the main river until we
have things bunched, then I'm going to throw a big crew down here by
the swing. Heinzman anticipates, of course, that I'll run the
entire drive into the booms and do all my sorting there. Naturally,
if I turn his logs loose into the river as fast as I run across
them, he will be able to pick them up one at a time, for he'll only
get them occasionally. If I keep them until everything else is
sorted, only Heinzman's logs will remain; and as we have no right to
hold logs, we'll have to turn them loose through the lower sorting
booms, where he can be ready to raft them. In that way he gets them
all right without paying us a cent. See?"
"Yes, I see," said Newmark.
"Well," said Orde, with a laugh, "here is where I fool him. I'm
going to rush the drive into the booms all at once, but I'm going to
sort out Heinzman's logs at these openings near the entrance and
turn them into the main channel."
"What good will that do?" asked Newmark sceptically. "He gets them
sorted just the same, doesn't he?"
"The current's fairly strong," Orde pointed out, "and the river's
almighty wide. When you spring seven or eight million feet on a
man, all at once and unexpected, and he with no crew to handle them,
he's going to keep almighty busy.
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