"Press bought up," he replied. "I know for a fact that old Stanford
got five hundred dollars from some of the Heinzman interests. I
could have swung him back for an extra hundred, but it wasn't worth
while. They howl bribery at us to distract attention from their own
performances."
With this evasive reply Orde contented himself. Whether it
satisfied him or whether he was loath to pursue the subject further
it would be impossible to say.
"It's cost us plenty, anyway," he said, after a moment. "The
proposition's got a load on it. It will take us a long time to get
out of debt. The river driving won't pay quite so big as we thought
it would," he concluded, with a rueful little laugh.
"It will pay plenty well enough," replied Newmark decidedly, "and it
gives us a vantage point to work from. You don't suppose we are
going to quit at river driving, do you? We want to look around for
some timber of our own; there's where the big money is. And perhaps
we can buy a schooner or two and go into the carrying trade--the
country's alive with opportunity. Newmark and Orde means something
to these fellows now. We can have anything we want, if we just
reach out for it."
His thin figure, ordinarily slightly askew, had straightened; his
steel-gray, impersonal eyes had lit up behind the bowed glasses and
were seeing things beyond the wall at which they gazed.
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