Flower of the North | Page 8

up any interest that wished to withdraw. The two M. P.'s and a professional promoter from Toronto immediately sold out at fifty thousand each. With their original hundred thousand these three retired with an aggregate steal of nearly half a million. Pretty good work for yours truly, eh, Greggy! Good Heaven, think of it! I started out to strike a blow, to launch a gigantic project for the people, and this was what I had hatched! Robbery, bribery, fraud-- "
He paused, his hands clenched until the blue veins stood out on them like whipcords.
"And--"
Gregson spoke, uneasily.
"And what?"
Philip's fingers relaxed their grip on the table.
"If that had been all, I wouldn't have called you up here," he continued. "I've taken a long time in coming down to the real hell of the affair, because I wanted you to understand the situation from the beginning. After I left Brokaw I came north again. I possessed all the funds necessary to make an honest working organization out of the Northern Fish and Development Company. I hired two hundred additional men, added twenty new fishing- stations, began a second road-bed to the main line, and started a huge dam at Blind Indian Lake. We had thirty horses, driven up through the wilderness from Le Pas, and twenty teams on the way. There didn't appear to be an important obstacle in the path of our success, and I had recovered most of my old enthusiasm when Brokaw sprung a new mine under my feet.
"He had written a long letter almost immediately after I left him, which had been delayed at several places. In it he told me that he had discovered a plot to wreck our enterprise, that some powerful force was about to be pitted against us in the very country we were holding. I could see that Brokaw was tremendously worked up when he wrote the letter, and that for once he felt himself outwitted by a rival faction, and realized to the full a danger which it took me some time to comprehend. He had discovered absolute evidence, he said, that the bunch of trust capitalists whom he had beaten were about to attack us in another way. Their forces were already moving into the north country. Their object was to stir up the country against us, to bring about that condition of unrest and antagonism between the people of the north and ourselves which would compel the government to take away our license. Remember, this license was only provisional. It was, in fact, left to the people of the north to decide whether we should remain among them or not. If they turned against us there would be only one thing for the government to do.
"At first Brokaw's letter caused me no very great uneasiness. I knew the people up here. I knew that the Indian, the Breed, the Frenchman, and the White of this God's country were as invulnerable to bribery as Brokaw himself is to the pangs of conscience. I loved them. I had faith in them. I knew them to possess an honor which is not known down there, where we have a church on every four corners, and where the Word of God is preached day and night on the open streets. I felt myself warming with indignation as I replied to Brokaw, resenting his insinuations as to the crimes which a 'half-savage' people might be induced to commit for a little whisky and a little money. And then--"
Whittemore wiped his face. The lines settled deeper about his mouth.
"Greggy, a week after I received this letter two warehouses were burned on the same night at Blind Indian Lake. They were three hundred yards apart. There is absolutely no doubt that it was incendiarism."
He waited in silence, but Gregson still sat watching him in silence.
"That was the beginning--three months ago. Since then some mysterious force has been fighting us at every step. A week after the warehouses burned, a dredge and boat-building yard, which we had constructed at considerable expense at the mouth of the Gray Beaver, was destroyed by fire. A little later a 'premature' explosion of dynamite cost us ten thousand dollars and two weeks' labor of fifty men. I organized a special guard service, composed of fifty of my best men, but it seemed to do no good. Since then we have lost three miles of road-bed, destroyed by a washout. A terrific charge of dynamite had been used to let down upon us the water of a lake which was situated at the top of a ridge near our right of way. Whoever our enemies are, they seem to know our most secret movements, and attack us whenever we leave a vulnerable point open. The most surprising part of the whole affair is this: