The Hallowell Partnership

CHAPTER VII

THE COAL AND THE COMMODORE

"Ready for breakfast, Miss Hallowell?" Mrs. Gates's pleasant voice summoned her.

"Just a minute." Marian loitered at the window, looking out at the transformed woods and fields. She could hardly believe her eyes. Two weeks ago only stark, leafless branches and muddy gray earth had stretched before her. But in these fourteen days, the magic of early April had wrought wonders. The trees stood clothed in shining new leaves, thick and luxuriant as a New England June. The fields were sheets of living green.

"It doesn't seem real," she sighed happily. "It isn't the same country that it was when I first came."

"No more are you the same girl." Mrs. Gates nodded approvingly behind the tall steaming coffee-pot. "My, you were that peaky and piney! But nowadays you're getting some real red in your cheeks, and you eat more like a human being and less like a canary-bird."

Marian twinkled.

"Your brother is gettin' to be the peaky one, nowadays," went on Mrs. Gates, with her placid frankness. "Seems to me I never saw a boy look as beat out as he does, ever since that big cave-in on the canal last week. I'm thankful for this good weather for him. Maybe he can make up for the time they lost digging out the cave-in if it stays clear and the creeks don't rise any higher. He's a real worker, isn't he? Seems like he'd slave the flesh off his bones before he'd let his job fall behind. But I don't like to see him look so gaunt and tired. It isn't natural in a boy like him."

Marian looked puzzled.

"Why, Rod is always strong and well."

"He's strong, yes. But even strong folks can tire out. Flesh and blood aren't steel and wire. You'd better watch him pretty sharp, now that hot weather is coming. He needs it."

Marian pushed back her plate with a frown. Her dainty breakfast had suddenly lost its savor.

"Watch over Rod! I should think it was Rod's place to watch over me, instead. And when I have been so ill, too!" she said to herself.

Yet a queer little thorn of anxiety pricked her. She called Mr. Finnegan and raced with him down through the wet green woods to the canal. Roderick stood on the dredge platform, talking to the head dredge-runner. He hailed Marian with a shout.

"You're just in time to see me off, Sis. I'm going to Saint Louis to hurry up our coal shipment."

"The coal shipment? I thought a barge-load of coal was due here yesterday."

"Due, yes. But it hasn't turned up, and we're on our last car-load this minute. That's serious. We'll have to shut down if I can't hurry a supply to camp within thirty-six hours."

Marian followed him aboard the engineers' house-boat and watched him pack his suit-case.

"Why are you taking all those time-books, Rod? Surely you will not have time to make up your week's reports during that three-hour trip on the train?"

"These aren't my weekly reports. These are tabulated operating expenses. President Sturdevant, the head of our company, has just announced that he wants us to furnish data for every working day. He's a bit of a martinet, you know. He wants everything figured up into shape for immediate reference. He says he proposes to follow the cost of this job, excavation, fill, everything, within thirty-six hours of the time when the actual work is done. He doesn't realize that that means hours of expert book-keeping, and that we haven't a book-keeper in the camp. So Burford and I have had to tackle it, in addition to our regular work. And it's no trifle." Roderick rolled up a formidable mass of notes. There was a worried tone in his steady voice.

"Why doesn't the company send you a book-keeper?"

"Burford and I are planning to ask for one when the president and Breckenridge come to camp on their tour of inspection."

"Could I do some of the work for you, Rod?"

"Thank you, Sis, but I'm afraid you'd find it a Chinese puzzle. I get tangled up in it myself half the time. We must set down every solitary item of cost, no matter how trifling; not only wages and supplies, but breakdowns, time losses, even those of a few minutes; then calculate our average, day by day; then plot a curve for each week's work, showing the cost of the contract for that week, and set it against our yardage record for that week. Then verify it, item by item, and send it in."

"All tied up in beautiful red-tape bow-knots, I suppose," added Marian, with a sniff. She poked gingerly into the mass of papers. "The idea of adding book-keeping to your twelve-hour shift as superintendent! And in this stuffy, noisy little box!" She looked impatiently around the close narrow state-room. The ceiling was not two feet above her head; the hot morning sunlight beat on the flat tin roof of the house-boat and dazzled through the windows. "How can you work here? – or sleep, either?"

Rod rubbed his hand uncertainly across his eyes.

"I don't sleep much, for a fact. Too hot. Sometimes I drop off early, but the men always wake me at midnight when the last shift goes off duty."

"But the laborers are all across on their own quarter-boat. They don't come aboard your house-boat?"

"No, but the quarter-boat is only fifty feet away. The cook has their hot supper ready at twelve, and they lark over it, and laugh and shout and cut up high-jinks, like a pack of school-boys. I wouldn't mind, only I can't get to sleep again. I lie there and mull over the contract, you see. I can't help it."

"Why don't you come up to the Gates farm-house and sleep there?"

"I couldn't think of that. It's too far away. I must stay right here and keep my eye on the work, every minute. You have no idea what a dangerously narrow margin of time we have left; 'specially for those north laterals, you know, Sis." His voice grew sharp and anxious. Marian looked at him keenly. For the first time she saw the dull circles under his eyes, the drawn, tired lines around his steady mouth.

Then she glanced up the ditch. High on its green stilts, Sally Lou's perky little martin-box caught her eye.

"I have it, Rod! Tell some of your laborers to build a cabin for you, like the Burfords'! Then I'll come down and keep house for you."

Roderick shrugged his shoulders.

"I can't spare a solitary laborer from the contract, Marian; not for a day. We're short-handed as it is. No, I'll stay where I am. I'm doing well enough. Steam up, Mulcahy? Good-by, Sis. Back to-morrow!"

Marian watched the launch till it disappeared in the green mist of the willows. Then she sat down to her brother's desk and began to sort the clutter of papers. But sorting them was not an easy matter. To her eyes they were only a bewildering tangle. Marian knew that she possessed an inborn knack at figures, and it piqued her to find that she could not master Roderick's accounts at the first glance. She worked on and on doggedly. The little state-room grew hot and close; the dull throb of the dredge machinery and the noisy voices from without disturbed her more and more.

At last she sprang up and swept the whole mass into her hand-bag. Then she ran up the hill to the martin-box.

Sally Lou, very fresh and cool in pink dimity, sat in her screened nest, with the babies playing on the scrubbed floor. She nodded in amused sympathy at Marian's portentous armful.

"Aren't those records a dismal task! Yes, I've found a way to sift them, though it took me a long time to learn. Start by adding up the time-book accounts; verify each laborer's hours, and see whether his pay checks correspond to his actual working time. Roderick has fifty men on his shift, so that is no small task. Then add up his memoranda of time made by the big dredge; and also the daily record of the two little dredges up at the laterals. Then run over the steward's accounts and see whether they check with his bills – "

Marian stared at Sally Lou, astonished.

"Well, but Sally Lou! Think how much time that will mean! Why, I would have to spend all afternoon on the time-books alone."

Sally Lou raised her yellow head and looked at Marian very steadily. A tiny spark glinted in her brown eyes.

"Well, what if it does take all afternoon? Have you anything better to do?"

There was a minute of silence. Then Marian's cheeks turned rather pink.

"I suppose not. But it is horridly tedious work, Sally Lou. On such a warm day, too."

"It certainly is." Sally Lou's voice was quite dry. She caught up Thomas Tucker, who was trying laboriously to feed Mr. Finnegan with a large ball of darning cotton. "You'd find it even more tedious if you were obliged to work at it evenings, as your brother does. Can't you stay to lunch, Marian? We'll love to have you; won't we, babies?"

"Thank you, no. Mrs. Gates will expect me at home."

Marian walked back through the woods, her head held high. The glint in Sally Lou's eyes had been a bit of a challenge. Again she felt her cheeks flush hot, with a queer puzzled vexation.

"I'll show her that I can straighten Rod's papers, no matter how muddled they are!" she said to herself, tartly. And all that warm spring afternoon she toiled with might and main.

Roderick, meanwhile, was spending a hard, discouraging day. Arriving at Saint Louis, he found the secretary of the coal-mining company at his office. Eager and insistent, he poured out his urgent need of the promised barge-load of coal. The consignment was now a week overdue. The dredges had only a few hundred bushels at hand; in less than forty-eight hours the engines must shut down, unless he could get the fuel to camp.

"You can't be any more disturbed by this crisis than I am, Mr. Hallowell," the secretary assured him. "Owing to a strike at the mines we have been forced to cancel all deliveries. I can't let you have a single ton."

Roderick gasped.

"But our dredges! We don't dare shut down. Our contract has a chilled-steel time-lock, sir, with a heavy forfeit. We must not run over our date limits. We've got to have that coal!"

"You may be able to pick up a few tons from small dealers," said the secretary, turning back to his desk. "You'll be buying black diamonds in good earnest, for the retail price has gone up thirty per cent since the news came of the mines strike. Wish you good luck, Mr. Hallowell. Sorry that is all that I can do for you."

Roderick lost no time. He bought a business directory and hailed a taxicab. For six hours he drove from one coal-dealer's office to another. At eight o'clock that night he reached his hotel, tired in every bone, but in royal high spirits. Driblet by driblet, and paying a price that fairly staggered him, he had managed to buy over four hundred tons.

"That will keep us going till the strike is settled," he told Burford over the long-distance.

"Bully for you!" returned Burford, jubilant. "But how will you bring it up to camp?"

"Oh, the railroad people have promised empties on to-morrow morning's early freight to Grafton. Then we can carry it to camp on our own barges. I shall come up on that freight myself. I shall not risk losing sight of that coal. Mind that."

At five the next morning Roderick went down to the freight yards. His coal wagons were already arriving. But not one of the promised "empties" could he find.

"There is a mistake somewhere," said the yard-master. "Can't promise you a solitary car for three days, anyway. Traffic is all behindhand. You'd better make a try at head-quarters."

"I have no time to waste at head-quarters," retorted Rod. He was white with anger and chagrin. This ill luck was a bolt from a clear sky. "I'll go down to the river front and hire a barge and a tow-boat. I'll get that coal up to camp to-morrow if I have to carry it in my suit-case."

His hunt for a barge proved a stern chase, but finally he secured a large flat-boat at a reasonable rental. But after searching the river front for miles, he found only one tow-boat that could be chartered. The tow's captain, noting Roderick's anxiety, and learning that he represented the great Breckenridge Company, promptly declared that he would not think of doing the two-days' towing for less than five hundred dollars.

"Five hundred dollars for two days' towing! And I have already paid three times the mine price for my coal!" Roderick groaned inwardly.

Suddenly his eye caught two trim red stacks and a broad familiar bow not fifty yards away. It was the little packet, the Lucy Lee. She was just lowering her gang-plank, making ready to take on freight for her trip up-stream.

"I'll hail the Lucy. Maybe the captain can tell me where to find another tow-boat. Ahoy, the Lucy! Is your captain aboard? Ask him to come on deck and talk to Hallowell, of the Breckenridge Company, will you?"

"The captain has not come down yet, sir. But our pilot, Commodore McCloskey, is here. Will you talk with him?"

"Will I talk to the commodore? I should hope so!" Rod's strained face broke into a joyful grin. He could have shouted with satisfaction when Commodore McCloskey, trim as a gimlet in starchy white duck, strolled down the gang-plank and gave him a friendly hand.

"Sure, I don't wonder ye're red-hot mad," he said, with twinkling sympathy. "Five hundred dollars for two days' tow! 'Tis no better than a pirate that tow-boat captain is, sure. But come with me. I have a friend at court that can give ye a hand, maybe. Hi, boy! Is Captain Lathrop, of the Queen, round about?"

"The Queen? Why, her captain is the very man who demanded the five hundred dollars!" blurted Rod.

At that moment the captain's head popped from the cabin door. He stared at Roderick. He stared at Commodore McCloskey. Then he had the grace to duck wildly back, with a face sheepish beyond words to describe.

"Well, Captain Lathrop!" Commodore McCloskey's voice rang merciless and clear. "Tell me the truth. Is it yourself that's turned highway robber? Five hundred dollars for twenty hours' tow! Sure, ye must be one of thim high fin-an-ciers we read about in the papers. Why not make it five hundred dollars per ton? Then ye could sell the Queen and buy yourself a Cunarder for a tow-boat instead."

Captain Lathrop squirmed.

"How should I know he was a friend of yours, commodore? I'll take his coal all the way to camp, and gladly, for three hundred, seein' as it's a favor to you."

"For three hundred, is it?" The commodore began a further flow of eloquence. But Rod caught his arm.

"Three hundred will be all right. And I'm more obliged to you, commodore, than I can say. Now I'm off. If ever I can do you a good turn, mind you give me the chance!"

It was late the next night when Roderick reached the camp landing with his precious black diamonds. He was desperately tired, muddy, and begrimed with smoke and coal-dust, hungry as a wolf, and hilarious with relief at his hard-earned success. Marian, Sally Lou, and Burford were all waiting for him at the little pier. Sally Lou dragged him up to the martin-box for a late supper. Afterward Marian, who was to spend the night with Sally Lou, walked back with him to his house-boat.

"Yes, yes, I'm all right, Sis. Don't fidget over me so." Roderick stepped into his state-room and dropped down into his desk chair. "Whew! I'm thankful to get back. I could go to sleep standing up, if it wasn't for making up the records for President Sturdevant. Run away now, that's a good girl, and let me straighten my accounts. Then I can go to bed."

Even as he spoke Rod's glance swept his desk. Instead of the heaped disorder of the day before, he saw now rows of neatly docketed papers. He gave a whistle of surprise.

"Who has been overhauling my desk? Burford? Why – why, did you do this for me, sister? Well, on my word, you are just the very best ever." His big fingers gripped Marian's arm and gave her a grateful little shake. "You've squared up every single account, haven't you! And your figuring is always accurate. This means two hours' extra sleep for me. Maybe you think I won't enjoy 'em!"

"I might have been keeping your accounts for you all these weeks," returned Marian. She was a little mortified by Roderick's astonished gratitude. "It is not hard work for me. I really enjoyed doing it."

"Maybe you think I don't enjoy having you do it!" Rod chuckled contentedly. "I've dreaded those accounts all day. Now I shall sleep the sleep of the loafer who has let his sister do his work for him. Good-night, old lady!"

Marian tucked herself comfortably into her corner of the martin-box, but not to sleep. Try her best, she could not banish Rod's tired face from her mind. Neither could she forget the look of his little state-room. True, she had made it daintily fresh and neat. But the tiny box was hot and stuffy at best. What could she do to make Rod's quarters more comfortable?

At last she sat up with a whispered exclamation.

"Good! I'll try that plan. Perhaps it won't do after all. But it cannot hurt to try. And if my scheme can make Rod the least bit more comfortable, then the trying will be well worth while!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE BURGOO

Very early the next morning, Marian set to work upon her brilliant plan for Roderick's comfort. The coast was clear for action. Both Roderick and Ned Burford had gone up the canal to oversee the excavation at the north laterals. Sally Lou had packed Mammy and the babies into the buckboard and had driven away to the nearest farm-house for eggs and butter. So Marian had a clear field. And she made eager use of every moment.

Perhaps two hundred yards from the canal bank, set well up on a little knoll where it could catch every passing breeze, stood a broad wooden platform. High posts, built to hold lanterns, were set at the four corners and half-way down each side.

"The young folks of the district built that platform for their picnic dances," Burford had told Marian. "But this year our dredges have torn up this whole section and have made the creek banks so miry and disagreeable that no picnic parties will come this way till the contract is finished and the turf has had time to grow again."

Marian measured the platform with a calculating eye.

"It is built of matched boards, as tight and sound as if they had put it up yesterday. It will make a splendid floor for Rod's house. But when it comes to building the house itself – that's the question."

The contract supplies, she knew, were kept in a store-room built astern of Roderick's house-boat. For a hot, tiresome hour she poked and pried through high-piled hogsheads and tiers of boxes, hoping that she might find a tent. But there was no such good fortune for her. She dragged out bale after bale of heavy new canvas. But every one of the scores of tents provided by the company was already pitched, to form the summer village occupied by the levee laborers. At last, quite vexed and impatient, she gave up her search.

"Although, if I had any knack at all, I could sew up a tent from these yards on yards of canvas," she reflected.

She carried one bolt of cloth on deck and unrolled it.

"This is splendid heavy canvas. It is just the solid, water-proof sort that the fishermen at the lake last summer used for walls and roof of their 'open-faced camp,' as they called it. Now, I wonder. Why can't I lash long strips of canvas to the four posts of the platform for walls; then fasten heavy wires from one post to another and lash a slanting canvas roof to that! I can canopy it with mosquito-bar – a double layer – for there are dozens of yards of netting here. It would be a ridiculously funny little coop, I know that. But it would be far cooler and quieter than the boat. I believe Rod would like it. Anyway, we'll see!"

Jacobs, the commissary man, came aboard a few minutes later with a basket of clean linen. He looked at Marian, already punching eyelet-holes in the heavy duck, with friendly concern.

"Best let me give you a lift at that job, miss," he urged, when Marian had told him her plans. "I have an hour off, and I shall be pleased to help, if you will permit me. I'm an old sailor and I have my needle and palm in my kit. That kind of fancy work is just pastime to me. Indeed, I'd enjoy doing anything, if it's for Mr. Hallowell. We've never had a better boss, that's certain. You lace those strips of duck, then I'll hang them for you. We'll curtain off just a half of the platform. That will leave the other half for a fine open porch. We'll have this house built in two jiffies. Then I'll put Mr. Hallowell's canvas cot and his desk and his chair into place, all ready; so when he comes home to-night he will find himself moved and settled."

It took longer than two jiffies to lash up the canvas shack, to hang mosquito bar, and to move Roderick's simple furniture. Returning from their drive, Sally Lou and Mammy Easter hurried to help; and, thanks to many willing hands, the tiny new abode was finished by afternoon; even to the brackets for Rod's lamp, which Jacobs screwed into a corner post, and the rack for his towels.

At six o'clock, Roderick, fagged out and spattered with mud, came down the canal. He would have gone directly aboard his house-boat if Marian had not called him ashore.

"March up here and see my out-door sitting-room," she commanded, with laughing eyes.

"Oh, you and Sally Lou have made a play-house of that platform? That's all very nice. But wait till I can scrub up and swallow a mouthful of supper, Sis. My skiff tipped over with me up the canal, and I'm soaking wet, and dead tired besides."

"Oh, no, Rod. Please come up right away. I can't wait, Slow-Coach. You really must see!"

Roderick was well used to Marian's imperious whims. Reluctantly he climbed the slippery bank. Obediently he poked his head past the flap which Marian held back for him.

There he saw his own cot spread white and fresh under its cool screen; his tidy desk; and even a "shower-bath," which clever Jacobs had contrived from a tiny force-pump and a small galvanized tank, borrowed from the company's store-room.

For a long minute he stared about him without one word. Then his tired face brightened to a glow of incredulous delight.

"Marian Hallowell! Did you rig up this whole contrivance, all for me? Well!" He sank down on the cot with a sigh of infinite satisfaction. "You certainly are the best sister I ever had, old lady. First you take my book-keeping off my hands. Next you build me a brand-new house, where I can sleep – whew! Won't I sleep like a log to-night, in all this quiet and coolness! On my word, I don't believe I could stand up to my work, Sis, if you didn't help me out as you do."

Marian grew radiant at his pleasure.

"Building it was no end of fun, Rod. I never enjoyed anything more."

"Only I hope you haven't tired yourself out," said her brother, suddenly anxious. "You haven't the strength to work like this."

"Nonsense! You don't realize how much stronger I am, Rod."

"You surely do look a hundred per cent better than you did a month ago." Roderick looked at her with keen satisfaction. "But you must not overtire yourself."

"Don't be so fussy, brother. It was just a trifle, anyway."

"It won't mean a trifle to me. Quiet and sleep will give me a chance to get my head above water and breathe. Hello, neighbors!" For Sally Lou and Ned were poking their unabashed heads through the fly. "Come in and see my new mansion. Guess I'll have to give a house-warming to celebrate. What do you say?"

"There's a celebration already on the way," laughed Burford. "Commodore McCloskey has just called me up on the long-distance. He says that he and Mrs. McCloskey will stop at the camp bright and early to-morrow morning to escort your sister and Sally Lou to the Barry County burgoo. I accepted the invitation for both you girls, for a 'burgoo,' whatever it means, sounds like a jolly lark; especially since the commodore is to be your host. But I'll admit that I'm puzzled. What do you suppose a burgoo may be?"