The Rainy Day Railroad War Part 3

"We'll establish a colony here on Kennemagon," suggested Jerrard, half in jest, "and start a land boom."

"Seriously," went on Whittaker "the more I talk about that little road the more I am convinced it would pay a very good dividend. You and I can swing it. We can use some P. K. & R. rails, fix up one of those narrow-gage s.h.i.+fters they used on the grain spur, and have a railroad while you wait. If we only clear enough to pay our own pa.s.sage twice a year we'll be doing fairly well. And I'll be willing to pa.s.s dividends for the sake of riding from Spinnaker to the West Branch on a car-seat instead of a buckboard. Say, Rowe," he went on, jocosely, "I suppose they'll have a ma.s.s-meeting and pa.s.s votes of thanks to Jerrard and myself if we put that project through, won't they?"

Rowe squinted his eye along the sliver he was whittling. "I don't know of any one specially that's hankering for railroad-lines round here,"

said he.

"You don't mean to tell me that abomination of stones and muck-holes suits the public, do you?"

"I know the folks I work for don't want to have it a mite smoother than it is. They're the public that's running this part of the world."

"Here's a brand-new thing in transportation ideas, Jerrard!" cried the president of the P. K. &R.

"Nothing strange about our side of it," said the prospector. "The people I work for own more than a million acres of timber land for feeding their pulp-mills, and the more city sports there are hanging round on the tracts and building fires, the more danger of a big blaze catching somewhere. And railroads bring sports. You don't hear of any lumbermen grumbling about the Poquette carry."

"I should say, then, this section should have a little enterprise shaken into it," said Whittaker, tartly. This promised opposition promptly fired his modern spirit of progress.

After he and his manager had returned to their duties in the city, the surprising word began to go about the district that next year there would be a railroad across Poquette carry. When the rumor was traced to Rowe, he found himself in for a good deal of rough badinage for allowing two city sportsmen to "guy" him.

The postmaster at Sunkhaze was a subscriber to a daily paper, every word of which he read. One day, among the inconspicuous notices of "New Corporations," he found this paragraph:

"Poquette Carry Railway Company, organized for the purpose of constructing and operating a line of railroad between Spinnaker Lake and West Branch River. President, G. Howard Whittaker; vice-president and general manager, George P. Jerrard; secretary and treasurer, A. L.

Bevan. Capital stock $100,000; $5,000 paid in."

After the postmaster had read that twice, he strode out of his little pen. Men in larrigans and leggings were huddled round the stove, for the autumn crispness comes early in the mountains. The postmaster's eye singled out Seth Bowers, the guide.

"Say, Seth," he inquired, "wa'n't your sports last summer named Whittaker and Jerrard--the men ye had in on the Kennemagon waters?"

"Yes."

"Well, you boys listen to this," and the postmaster read the item with unction.

"Looks 's if they were going ahead, and as if there wasn't so much wind to it, after all," observed one of the party.

"That Poquette Carry road hasn't been touched by shovel or pick for more than three years, and I don't believe that Col. Gid Ward and his crowd ever intend to hire another day's work on it. Colonel Gid says every operator and sport from Clew to Erie goes across there, and if there's any ro'd-repairin' all hands ought to turn to an' help on the expense."

"This new railroad idea ought to hit him all right, then," remarked Seth, the guide.

"Well," remarked the postmaster, "I'd just like to be round--far enough off so's the chips and splinters wouldn't hit me--when some one steps up and tells Col. Gid Ward that a concern of city men is going to put a railroad in across his land--that's all!"

"Gid Ward has always backed everybody off the trail into the bushes round here" said Seth. "But he's up against a different crowd now."

"Do ye think, in the first place, that Colonel Gid is going to sell 'em any right o' way across Poquette?" asked the postmaster. "He owns the whole tract there."

"Oh, there's ways of getting it," replied Seth. "Let lawyers alone for that when they're paid. If Gid don't sell, they can condemn and take."

In a week a portion of Seth's prediction concerning lawyers was verified.

Mr. Bevan, tall and thin and sallow, stepped off the train at Sunkhaze.

He was a prominent attorney in one of the princ.i.p.al cities of the state, and served as clerk of this new corporation.

When he heard that Col. Gideon Ward was fifty miles up the West Branch, looking after a timber operation on Number 8, Range 23, he borrowed leggings, shoe-pacs and an overcoat and hastened on by means of a tote-team.

A week later, silent and grim and pinched with cold, he unrolled himself from buffalo-robes and took the train at Sunkhaze. The postmaster and station-agent gave him several opportunities to relate the outcome of his negotiations, but the attorney was taciturn.

The first news came down two week later by Miles McCormick, a swamper on Ward's Number 8 operation. The man had a gash on his cheek and a big purple swelling under one eye. When a man of Ward's crew came down from the woods marked in that manner, it was not necessary for him to say that he had been discharged by the choleric tyrant who ruled the forest forces from Chamberlain to Seguntiway. The only inquiry was as to method and provocation.

"He comes along to me as I was choppin'," related Miles to the Sunkhaze postmaster, "and he yowls, 'Git to goin' there, man, git to goin'!'

'An',' says I, 'sure, an' I'll not yank the ax back till it's done cuttin'.' An' then he" Miles put his finger carefully against the puffiness under his eye, "he hit me."

"Was there a tall stranger come up on the tote-team two weeks or so ago?" asked the postmaster.

"There were," Miles replied, listlessly, and intent on his own troubles.

"Hear anything special about his business?"

"No. The old man took the stranger into the w.a.n.gun camp, where it was private, and they talked. None of us heard 'em."

"And then the stranger went away, hey?" "Oh, well, at last we heard the old man howlin' and yowlin' in the w.a.n.gun camp and then he comes a-pus.h.i.+ng the tall stranger out with such awful language as you know he can. An' he says to the stranger, 'Talk about charters and condemning land till ye're black in the face, I say ye can't do it; and every rail ye lay I'll tie it into a bow-knot. An' I'll eat your charter, seals and all. An' I'll throw your engine into the lake. An' how do ye like the smell of those?' When he said it he cracked his old fists under the stranger's nose. An' the stranger gets into the team and goes away. So that's all of it, and none of us knowed what it meant at all."

The postmaster darted significant glances round the circle of faces at the stove, and the loungers returned the stare with interest.

"What did I tell ye?" he demanded.

"Just as any one might ha' told that lawyer," said a man, clicking his knife-blade.

CHAPTER THREE--ENGINEER PARKER GETS FINAL ORDERS FOR "THE LAND OF THE GIDEONITES."

The long autumn pa.s.sed and winter set in. Snow fell on the carry and the big sleds jangled across. Men went up past Sunkhaze settlement into the great region of snow and silence, and men came down--bearded men, with hands calloused by the ax and the cross-cut saw.

But Col. Gideon Ward's well known figure was not among the pa.s.sengers on the tote-road. The upgoing men were bound for his camps, and were inquiring as to his whereabouts; the downgoing men stated that he was roaring from one log-landing to another, driving men and horses to make a record-breaking season, and so busy that he would not stop long enough to eat.

Hearing the discussion of the traits and deeds of this woods ogre, the stranger might readily believe him as terrifying as the celebrated "Injun devil"--and as much a creature of fiction.

But each of the messengers that Ward sent down to the outer world bore unmistakable sign that this ruler of the wilderness was in full possession of his autocracy. This talisman was one of the most picturesque features of Ward's reign over the "Gideonites," as his men were called all through the great north country.

He never intrusted money to woodsmen, for he deemed them irresponsible; he found that writings and orders were too easily mislaid. Therefore, whenever he sent a messenger to town or a man down the line with a tote-team for goods, he scrawled on his back with a piece of chalk the peculiar hieroglyph of crosses and circles that made up the Gideon Ward "log-mark." This mark was good for lodging and meals at any tavern, was authority for the transfer of goods, and procured transportation for the man whose back was thus inscribed.

When Colonel Ward sent a crew of men into the woods he marked the back of each one in this fas.h.i.+on, as if the employees were freight parcels.

The exhibition of that chalk-mark and the words "Charge to Ward" were enough. And such was the fear of all men that the chalk-mark was never abused.

Furthermore, on each grand spring settling day most of the dollars that circulated in the region came through the hands of Col. Ward. This fact naturally increased the deference paid him.

"A railroad?" sneered one man, just down from Number 4 camp. "A railroad across Poquette? Across Gid Ward's land, spouting sparks and settin'

fires and hustlin' in sports? Well, you don't see any railroad-buildin'

goin' on, do you?"