MACBRIDE & COMPANY.

Bannon had nearly an hour to wait for the next train back to Ledyard, but it was not time wasted, for as he paced the smoky waiting room, he arrived at a fairly accurate estimate of the meaning of the general manager's message.

It was simply a confirmation of the cautious prediction he had made to Peterson the night before. Why should any one want to hinder the construction of an elevator in Chicago "these days" except to prevent its use for the formal delivery of grain which the buyer did not wish delivered? And why had Page & Company suddenly ordered a million bushel annex? Why had they suddenly become anxious that the elevator should be ready to receive grain before January first, unless they wished to deliver a vast amount of December wheat? Before Bannon's train came in he understood it all. A clique of speculators had decided to corner wheat, an enterprise nearly enough impossible in any case, but stark madness unless they had many millions at command. It was a long chance, of course, but after all not wonderful that some one in their number was a power in the reorganized G. & M.

Already the immense amount of wheat in Chicago was testing the capacity of the registered warehouses, and plainly, if the Calumet K should be delayed long enough, it might prevent Page & Company from carrying out their contract to deliver two million bushels of the grain, even though it were actually in the cars in Chicago.

Bannon knew much of Page & Company; that dotted all over the vast wheat tracts of Minnesota and Montana were their little receiving elevators where they bought grain of the farmers; that miles of wheat-laden freight cars were already lumbering eastward along the railroad lines of the North. He had a touch of imagination, and something of the enormous momentum of that Northern wheat took possession of him. It would come to Chicago, and he must be ready for it. It would be absurd to be balked by the refusal of a little single-track road up in Michigan to carry a pile of planks.

He paused before the grated window of the ticket and telegraph office and asked for a map. He studied it attentively for a while; then he sent a telegram:--

MACBRIDE & COMPANY, _Minneapolis_: G. & M. R. R. wants to tie us up. Will not furnish cars to carry our cribbing. Can't get it elsewhere inside of three weeks. Find out if Page will O. K. any bill of extras I send in for bringing it down. If so, can they have one or more steam barges at Manistogee within forty-eight hours?

Wire Ledyard Hotel. C. H. BANNON.

It was an hour's ride back to Ledyard. He went to the hotel and persuaded the head waiter to give him something to eat, although it was long after the dinner hour. As he left the dining room, the clerk handed him two telegrams. One read:--

Get cribbing down. Page pays the freight. BROWN.

The other:--

Steam barge Demosthenes leaves Milwaukee to-night for Manistogee.

PAGE & CO.

CHAPTER IV

As Bannon was paying for his dinner, he asked the clerk what sort of a place Manistogee was. The clerk replied that he had never been there, but that he understood it was quite a lively town.

"Good road over there?"

"Pretty fair."

"That means you can get through if you're lucky."

The clerk smiled. "It won't be so bad to-day. You see we've been getting a good deal of rain. That packs down the sand. You ought to get there all right. Were you thinking of driving over?"

"That's the only way to go, is it? Well, I'll see. Maybe a little later.

How far is it?"

"The farmers call it eighteen miles."

Bannon nodded his thanks and went back to Sloan's office.

"Well, it didn't take you long," said the magnate. "Find out what was the matter with 'em?"

He enjoyed his well-earned reputation for choler, and as Bannon told him what he had discovered that morning, the old man paced the room in a regular beat, pausing every time he came to a certain tempting bit of blank wall to deal it a thump with his big fist. When the whole situation was made clear to him, he stopped walking and cursed the whole G. & M. system, from the ties up. "I'll make 'em smart for that," he said. "They haul those planks whether they want to or not. You hear me say it. There's a law that covers a case like that. I'll prosecute 'em.

They'll see whether J. B. Sloan is a safe kind of man to monkey with.

Why, man," he added, turning sharply to Bannon, "why don't you get mad?

You don't seem to care--no more than the angel Gabriel."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE ... CURSED THE WHOLE G. & M. SYSTEM, FROM THE TIES UP]

"I don't care a d.a.m.n for the G. & M. I want the cribbing."

"Don't you worry. I'll have the law on those fellows----"

"And I'd get the stuff about five years from now, when I was likely enough dead."

"What's the best way to get it, according to your idea?"

"Take it over to Manistogee in wagons and then down by barges."

Sloan snorted. "You'd stand a chance to get some of it by Fourth of July that way."

"Do you want to bet on that proposition?"

Sloan made no reply. He had allowed his wrath to boil for a few minutes merely as a luxury. Now he was thinking seriously of the scheme. "It sounds like moonshine," he said at last, "but I don't know as it is. How are you going to get your barges?"

"I've got one already. It leaves Milwaukee to-night."

Sloan looked him over. "I wish you were out of a job," he said. Then abruptly he went on: "Where are your wagons coming from? You haven't got them all lined up in the yard now, have you? It'll take a lot of them."

"I know it. Well, we'll get all there are in Ledyard. There's a beginning. And the farmers round here ain't so very fond of the G. & M., are they? Don't they think the railroad discriminates against them--and ain't they right about it? I never saw a farmer yet that wouldn't grab a chance to get even with a railroad."

"That's about right, in this part of the country, anyway."

"You get up a regular circus poster saying what you think of the G. & M., and call on the farmers to hitch up and drive to your lumber yard.

We'll stick that up at every crossroads between here and Manistogee."

Sloan was scribbling on a memorandum pad before Bannon had finished speaking. He made a false start or two, but presently got something that seemed to please him. He rang for his office boy, and told him to take it to the _Eagle_ office.

"It's got to be done in an hour," said Bannon. "That's when the procession moves," he added; as Sloan looked at him questioningly.

The other nodded. "In an hour," he said to the office boy. "What are you going to do in an hour?" he asked, as the boy went out.

"Why, it'll be four o'clock then, and we ought to start for Manistogee as early as we can."

"We! Well, I should think not!" said Sloan.

"You're going to drive me over with that fast mare of yours, aren't you?"

Sloan laughed. "Look at it rain out there."

"Best thing in the world for a sand road," said Bannon. "And we'll wash, I guess. Both been wet before."