The Rainy Day Railroad War | Page 8

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 principal 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 wangun 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 wangun camp and then he comes a-pushing 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