The Hallowell Partnership

"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.