The Rules of the Game Read online

  II

  Bob Orde, armed with a card of introduction to Fox, Welton's officepartner, left home directly after Thanksgiving. He had heard much ofWelton & Fox in the past, both from his father and his father'sassociates. The firm name meant to him big things in the past history ofMichigan's industries, and big things in the vague, large life of theNorthwest. Therefore, he was considerably surprised, on finding thefirm's Adams Street offices, to observe their comparativeinsignificance.

  He made his way into a narrow entry, containing merely a high desk, asafe, some letter files, and two bookkeepers. Then, without challenge,he walked directly into a large apartment, furnished as simply, withanother safe, a typewriter, several chairs, and a large roll-top desk.At the latter a man sprawled, reading a newspaper. Bob looked about fora further door closed on an inner private office, where the weightybusiness must be transacted. There was none. The tall, broad, lean youngman hesitated, looking about him with a puzzled expression in hisearnest young eyes. Could this be the heart and centre of those vast andfar-reaching activities he had heard so much about?

  After a moment the man in the revolving chair looked up shrewdly overhis paper. Bob felt himself the object of an instant's searchingscrutiny from a pair of elderly steel-gray eyes.

  "Well?" said the man, briefly.

  "I am looking for Mr. Fox," explained Bob.

  "I am Fox."

  The young man moved forward his great frame with the easy,loose-jointed grace of the trained athlete. Without comment he handedhis card of introduction to the seated man. The latter glanced at it,then back to the young fellow before him.

  "Glad to see you, Mr. Orde," he unbent slightly. "I've been expectingyou. If you're as good a man as your father, you'll succeed. If you'renot as good a man as your father, you may get on--well enough. Butyou've got to be some good on your own account. We'll see." He raisedhis voice slightly. "Jim!" he called.

  One of the two bookkeepers appeared in the doorway.

  "This is young Mr. Orde," Fox told him. "You knew his father at Monroviaand Redding."

  The bookkeeper examined Bob dispassionately.

  "Harvey is our head man here," went on Fox. "He'll take charge of you."

  He swung his leg over the arm of his chair and resumed his newspaper.After a few moments he thrust the crumpled sheet into a huge wastebasket and turned to his desk, where he speedily lost himself in a massof letters and papers.

  Harvey disappeared. Bob stood for a moment, then took a seat by thewindow, where he could look out over the smoky city and catch a glimpseof the wintry lake beyond. As nothing further occurred for some time, heremoved his overcoat, and gazed about him with interest on the framedphotographs of logging scenes and camps that covered the walls. At theend of ten minutes Harvey returned from the small outer office. Harveywas, perhaps, fifty-five years of age, exceeding methodical, verycompetent.

  "Can you run a typewriter?" he inquired.

  "A little," said Bob.

  "Well, copy this, with a carbon duplicate."

  Bob took the paper Harvey extended to him. He found it to be a list,including hundreds of items. The first few lines were like this:

  Sec. 4 T, 6 N.R., 26 W S.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4 4 6 26 N.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4 4 6 26 S.W. 1/4 of S.W. 1/4 5 6 26 S.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4 5 6 26 S.E. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4

  After an interminable sequence, another of the figures would change, ora single letter of the alphabet would shift. And so on, column aftercolumn. Bob had not the remotest notion of what it all meant, but hecopied it and handed the result to Harvey. In a few moments Harveyreturned.

  "Did you verify this?" he asked.

  "What?" Bob inquired.

  "Verify it, check it over, compare it," snapped Harvey, impatiently.

  Bob took the list, and with infinite pains which, nevertheless, couldnot prevent him from occasionally losing the place in the bewildermentof so many similar figures, he managed to discover that he had omittedthree and miscopied two. He corrected these mistakes with ink andreturned the list to Harvey. Harvey looked sourly at the ink marks, andgave the boy another list to copy.

  Bob found this task, which lasted until noon, fully as exhilarating asthe other. When he returned his copies he ventured an inquiry.

  "What are these?" he asked.

  "Descriptions," snapped Harvey.

  In time he managed to reason out the fact that they were descriptions ofland; that each item of the many hundreds meant a separate tract. Thusthe first line of his first copy, translated, would have read asfollows:

  "The southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section number four,township number six, north, range number twenty-six, west."

  --And that it represented forty acres of timber land. The stupendousnature of such holdings made him gasp, and he gasped again when herealized that each of his mistakes meant the misplacement on the map ofenough for a good-sized farm. Nevertheless, as day succeeded day, andthe lists had no end, the mistakes became more difficult to avoid. TheS, W, E, and N keys on the typewriter bothered him, hypnotized him,forced him to strike fantastic combinations of their own. Once Harveyentered to point out to him an impossible N.S.

  Over his lists Harvey, the second bookkeeper, and Fox held longconsultations. Then Bob leaned back in his office chair to examine forthe hundredth time the framed photographs of logging crews, winterscenes in the forest, record loads of logs; and to speculate again onthe maps, deer heads, and hunting trophies. At first they had appealedto his imagination. Now they had become too familiar. Out the windowwere the palls of smoke, gigantic buildings, crevasse-like streets, andswirling winds of Chicago.

  Occasionally men would drift in, inquiring for the heads of the firm.Then Fox would hang one leg over the arm of his swinging chair, light acigar, and enter into desultory conversation. To Bob a great deal oftime seemed thus to be wasted. He did not know that big deals weredecided in apparently casual references to business.

  Other lists varied the monotony. After he had finished the tax lists hehad to copy over every description a second time, with additionalstatistics opposite each, like this:

  S.W. 1/4 of N.W. 1/4, T. 4 N.R., 17, W. Sec. 32, W.P. 68, N. 16, H. 5.

  The last characters translated into: "White pine, 68,000 feet; Norwaypine, 16,000 feet; hemlock, 5,000 feet," and that inventoried thestanding timber on the special forty acres.

  And occasionally he tabulated for reference long statistics on how Camp14 fed its men for 32 cents a day apiece, while Camp 32 got it down to27 cents.

  That was all, absolutely all, except that occasionally they sent himout to do an errand, or let him copy a wordy contract with a great many_whereases_ and _wherefores_.

  Bob little realized that nine-tenths of this timber--all that wherein SP (sugar pine) took the place of W P--was in California, belonged to hisown father, and would one day be his. For just at this time theprincipal labour of the office was in checking over the estimates on theWestern tract.

  Bob did his best because he was a true sportsman, and he had entered thegame, but he did not like it, and the slow, sleepy monotony of theoffice, with its trivial tasks which he did not understand, filled himwith an immense and cloying languor. The firm seemed to be dying of thesleeping sickness. Nothing ever happened. They filed their interminablestatistics, and consulted their interminable books, and marked squaresoff their interminable maps, and droned along their monotonous,unimportant life in the same manner day after day. Bob was used toout-of-doors, used to exercise, used to the animation of free humanintercourse. He watched the clock in spite of himself. He made mistakesout of sheer weariness of spirit, and in the footing of the long columnsof figures he could not summon to his assistance the slow, painstakingenthusiasm for accuracy which is the sole salvation of those who wouldget the answer. He was not that sort of chap.

  But he was not a quitter, either. This was life. He triedconscientiously to do his best in it.
Other men did; so could he.

  The winter moved on somnolently. He knew he was not making a success.Harvey was inscrutable, taciturn, not to be approached. Fox seemed tohave forgotten his official existence, although he was hearty enough inhis morning greetings to the young man. The young bookkeeper, Archie,was more friendly, but even he was a being apart, alien, one of thestrangely accurate machines for the putting down and docketing of theseinnumerable and unimportant figures. He would have liked to know andunderstand Bob, just as the latter would have liked to know andunderstand him, but they were separated by a wide gulf in which whirledthe nothingnesses of training and temperament. However, Archie oftenpointed out mistakes to Bob before the sardonic Harvey discovered them.Harvey never said anything. He merely made a blue pencil mark in themargin, and handed the document back. But the weariness of his smile!

  One day Bob was sent to the bank. His business there was that of anerrand boy. Discovering it to be sleeting, he returned for his overcoat.Harvey was standing rigid in the door of the inner office, talking toFox.

  "He has an ingrained inaccuracy. He will never do for business," Bobcaught.

  Archie looked at him pityingly.