questions. What few queries he had to proffer, he made to Orde
himself, waiting sometimes until evening to interview that busy and
good-natured individual. Then his questions were direct and to the
point. They related generally to the advisability of something he
had seen done; only rarely did they ask for explanation of the work
itself. That Newmark seemed capable of puzzling out for himself.

The drive, as has been said, went down as far as Redding in thirty-
three days. It had its share of tribulation. The men worked
fourteen and sixteen hours at times. Several bad jams relieved the
monotony. Three dams had to be sluiced through. Problems of
mechanics arose to be solved on the spot; problems that an older
civilisation would have attacked deliberately and with due respect
for the seriousness of the situation and the dignity of engineering.
Orde solved them by a rough-and-ready but very effective rule of
thumb. He built and abandoned structures which would have furnished
opportunity for a winter's discussion to some committees; just as,
earlier in the work, the loggers had built through a rough country
some hundreds of miles of road better than railroad grade, solid in
foundation, and smooth as a turnpike, the quarter of which would
have occupied the average county board of supervisors for five
years. And while he was at it, Orde kept his men busy and
satisfied. Your white-water birler is not an easy citizen to
handle. Yet never once did the boss appear hurried or flustered.
Always he wandered about, his hands in his pockets, chewing a twig,
his round, wind-reddened face puckered humorously, his blue eyes
twinkling, his square, burly form lazily relaxed. He seemed to meet
his men almost solely on the plane of good-natured chaffing. Yet
the work was done, and done efficiently, and Orde was the man
responsible.