The Short Line War | Page 4

were rallied in the cemetery on the other side of the town
that he pitched forward and lay quite still.
Everybody knows how the Eleventh Corps held the cemetery through
the two bloody days that followed. But Jim was unconscious of it all,

for he lay on a cot in the Sanitary Commission tent, raving in delirium.
And the surgeons and nurses looked at him gravely and wondered with
every hour why he did not die.
But, as one of his comrades had said, "it took a lot of pounding to lick
Jim Weeks," and in a surprisingly short time he was strong enough to
be taken home.
When he first saw his grandfather he was dimly conscious of a change
in him, and as he grew stronger and better able to observe closely he
became surer of it. Jonathan had been a young old man when Jim went
away; now he looked every one of his seventy-three years, and instead
of the tireless energy of former times Jim noted a listlessness hard to
understand.
One night after both had gone to bed Jim heard his grandfather groping
his way down the stairs and out upon the veranda. He listened intently
until he heard the creak of the rocking chair, which told him that the
old man was visiting again with old friends and old fancies. The slow
rhythm lulled Jim into a doze, and then into sleep. He awakened with a
start; his pioneer blood made him a light sleeper, and he knew that the
old man could not have got upstairs and past his door without waking
him. "He must have gone to sleep down there," thought Jim, and rising
he went down to the veranda. Jonathan had gone to sleep, but the black
cob pipe was clenched between rigid jaws; his sightless eyes were open
and seemed to be looking at the stars.
At first Jim felt that sails, helm, and compass had been swept clean
away, but he was strong enough to recover his bearings quickly. His
grandfather's death marked an end and a beginning, and just as a needle
when a magnet is taken away swings unerringly into the line of force of
the original magnet, the earth, so Jim's life swung to a new direction.
There was no one whose life could direct or influence his, and alone he
started on what business men of the next generation knew as his career.
The war had lessened but not destroyed Jonathan's fortune, and it went
without reservation to Jim. The times offered golden opportunities to a
man with ready money and good business training, and his success was

almost inevitable. His life from this time was the logical working out of
what he had in him.
He turned naturally to the railroad business, and those who know the
history of Western railroads from '65 to '90 will understand what a field
it was for a man who was at once fearless and level-headed. The craze
for construction and then the equally mad competition did not confuse
him, they simply gave him opportunities. When the reaction against the
railroads set in, and the Granger movement wrecked nearly all the
Western roads, Jim bowed to the inevitable, but he saved himself--no
one knew just how--and when the State legislators were over their
midsummer madness he was again in the field, and again succeeding.
With the details of these struggles we are not concerned. The "inside"
history of many of them will never be known; in almost every case it
differs materially from the story which appeared in the papers. Jim
became famous and was libelled and flattered, respected and abused, by
turns; but always he was feared. He was supposed to be dishonest, and
it is true he did not scruple to use his enemies' weapons; but at
directors' meetings it was the interest of the stockholders that he fought
for.
Men wondered at his success, and over their cigars gravely discussed
the reasons for it. Some said it was sheer good luck that turned what he
touched to gold, some laid it to his start, and others to his cool,
dispassionate strategy. To some extent it was all of these things; but
more than anything else he had won as a bulldog does, by hanging on.
Often he had beaten better strategists simply by keeping up the fight
when by all the rules he was beaten. For as the comrade of long ago
had said, "it took a lot of pounding to lick Jim Weeks."
CHAPTER II
MR. McNALLY GOES TO TILLMAN CITY
It was Monday morning, September 23d. The telephone bell on the big
mahogany desk rang twice before Jim Weeks laid down the sheet of
paper he was scrutinizing and picked up the receiver.

"Hello! Oh, that