The Rainy Day Railroad War | Page 7

said;
"Jerrard, it's an earthly paradise! I never had such fishing, never saw such scenery. I want to come here every summer. I'd like to buy a tract here. But that six-mile drive--O dear me! It makes me shiver when I think I've got to bump back over it in two weeks."
That evening one Rowe, a timber-land exploring prospector, whose employment was locating tracts for the cutting of pulp stuff, stopped at the camp and accepted hospitality for the night. After supper the three lay in their bunks and chatted, while the guide pottered about the household tasks.
"Much travel over the Poquette Carry?" asked Whittaker.
"Good deal," said Rowe. "It's the thoroughfare between the West Branch and Spinnaker, you know. All the men for the woods leave the train at Sunkhaze, boat it across Spinnaker, and walk the carry at Poquette. All the supplies for the camp come that way, too. They bateau goods up the river from the West Branch end of the carry."
"Why doesn't some one fix that road?" asked the president. "Looks to me as if they had brought rocks and thrown them into the trail just to make it worse."
"It's all wild lands hereabouts," explained the prospector. "The county commissioners lay out the roads and the landowners are supposed to build them, but they don't. Timber-land owners don't like roads through their woods, anyway."
"I see they don't," replied Whittaker dryly. "What did you pay, Jerrard, for having your canoe and truck carried across?"
"Fifteen dollars for the duffel, and four dollars each for the guide, myself and you."
"How's that for a tariff?" laughed the president. Then he took out his pencil and book and put a series of interrogations to Rowe. At the close he pondered a while, and said to Jerrard:
"According to our friend here, at least five thousand men cross that carry each year, making ten thousand through fares one way. Supplies--pressed hay, grain, foodstuffs and all that sort of freight--from ten to fifteen thousand tons. Then there's the sportsman traffic, which could be built up indefinitely if there were suitable transportation conveniences here. Say, Jerrard, do you know there's a fine place for a six-mile narrow-gage railroad right there on Poquette Carry? You and I didn't come down here looking up railroad possibilities, but really this thing strikes me favorably. Slow time and not very expensive equipment, but think what a convenience! It will also give you and me an excuse to come down here summers, eh?" he added, humorously.
"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 shifters they used on the grain spur, and have a railroad while you wait. If we only clear enough to pay our own passage twice a year we'll be 'doing fairly well. And I'll be willing to pass 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 mass-meeting and pass 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 Whit-taker, 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