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.

"Hold your horses," said he at last. "I don't know anything about this
business, but I can see a few things. In the first place, close figuring
will probably add a few cents to that dollar. And then, of course, all
our improvements will be absolutely valueless to anybody after we've
got through using them. You said yesterday they'd probably stand us in
seventy-five thousand dollars. Even at a dollar profit, we'd have to
drive seventy-five million before we got a cent back. And, of
course, we've got to agree to drive for a little less than they could
themselves."

"That's so,"