n addition, both Orde and Newmark were more inclined to extension of
interests than to "playing safe." The assets gained in one venture
were promptly pledged to another. The ramifications of debt, property,
mortgages, and expectations overlapped each other in a cobweb of
interests.

Orde lived at ease in a new house of some size surrounded by grounds.
He kept two servants: a blooded team of horses drew the successor to the
original buckboard. Newmark owned a sail yacht of five or six tons, in
which, quite solitary, he took his only pleasure. Both were considered
men of substance and property, as indeed they were. Only, they
risked dollars to gain thousands. A succession of bad years, a
panic-contraction of money markets, any one of a dozen possible, though
not probable, contingencies would render it difficult to meet the
obligations which constantly came due, and which Newmark kept busy
devising ways and means of meeting. If things went well--and it may be
remarked that legitimately they should--Newmark and Orde would some day
be rated among the millionaire firms. If things went ill, bankruptcy
could not be avoided. There was no middle ground. Nor were Orde and
his partner unique in this; practically every firm then developing or
exploiting the natural resources of the country found itself in the same
case.

Immediately after the granting of the charter to drive the river the
partners had offered them an opportunity of acquiring about thirty
million feet of timber remaining from Morrison and Daly's original
holdings. That firm was very anxious to begin development on a large
scale of its Beeson Lake properties in the Saginaw waters. Daly proposed
to Orde that he take over the remnant, and having confidence in the
young man's abilities, agreed to let him have it on long-time notes.
After several consultations with Newmark, Orde finally completed the
purchase. Below the booms they erected a mill, the machinery for which
they had also bought of Daly, at Redding. The following winter Orde
spent in the woods. By spring he had banked, ready to drive, about six
million feet.

For some years these two sorts of activity gave the partners about all
they could attend to. As soon as the drive had passed Redding, Orde left
it in charge of one of his foremen while he divided his time between the
booms and the mill. Late in the year his woods trips began, the tours of
inspection, of surveying for new roads, the inevitable preparati