Читать книгу The Rainy Day Railroad War - Holman Day - Страница 5

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Weeks passed before Rodney Parker got any more light on the matter in which he had blindly given his word.

He understood this silence better when the situation was set before him at last. There are some projects that captains of industry dilate upon with pride. But big men are cautious about letting the world know their whims. And whims that lead to exasperating complications that no business judgment has provided for, do not form pleasant topics for conversation or publicity.

Many railroad projects have been launched, some of them unique, but never before was enterprise conceived in just the spirit that gave the Poquette Carry Railway to the transportation world. There have been railroads that “began somewhere and ended in a sheep pasture.” The Poquette Carry Road, known to the legislature of its state as “The Rainy-Day Railroad,” is even more indifferently located, for it twists for six miles, from water to water, through as tangled and lonely a wilderness as ever owl hooted in.

Yet it has two of the country's railroad kings behind it and at its inception some very wrathful lumber kings were ahead of it, and the final and decisive battle that was fought was between the champions of the respective sides—an old man and a young one.

The old man had all the opinionated conservatism of one who despises new methods and modern progress as “hifalutin and new-fangled notions.” The young man, fresh from a school of technology and just completing an apprenticeship under the engineers of a big railroad system, had not an old-fashioned idea.

The old man came roaring from the deep woods, choleric, impatient of opposition, and flaming with the rage of a tyrant who is bearded in his own stronghold for the first time. The young man advanced from the city to meet him with the coolness of one who has been taught to restrain his emotions, and armed with determination to win the battle that would make or break him, so far as his employers were concerned.

Jerrard was the avant-courier of this novel railroad. Jerrard had been traffic-manager of the great P. K. & R. system for many years, and when he grew bilious and “blue” and very disagreeable, the doctor told him to go back into the woods so far that he would not think about tariff or rebates or competition for two months.

Jerrard chose Kennegamon Lake. A New England general passenger-agent whom he had met at a convention told him about that wilderness gem, and lauded it with a certain attractiveness of detail that made Jerrard anxious to test the veracity of New England railroad men, whose “fishin'-story” folders he had always doubted with professional scepticism.

The journey by rail was a long one, and it afforded leisure for so much cogitation that when Jerrard napped he dreamed that the ends of his nerves were nailed to his desk back in the P. K. & R. general offices, and that as he proceeded he was unreeling them as a spider spins its thread.

When he left the train at Sunkhaze station he was still worrying as to whether the assistant traffic-manager would be able to beat the O. & O. road on the grain contract. In thinking it over about a month later it occurred to him that he had dropped all outside affairs right there on that station platform.

In the first place the mosquitoes and black flies were waiting. He had never seen or felt black flies before. He would have scouted the idea that there were insects no bigger than pinheads that in five minutes would have his face streaming with blood.

“They do just love the taste of city sports,” said the guide. “We old sanups ain't much of a delicacy 'long side of such as you. Here, let me put this on.” He daubed the white face of the city man with an evil-smelling compound of tar and oil.

Jerrard's mind was rapidly freeing itself from transportation worries. Then came the long paddle across Spinnaker Lake, with only the unfamiliar insecurity of a canoe beneath him, and after that the six-mile Poquette carry.

By this time Jerrard had forgotten the P. K. & R. entirely.

The canoe and duffel went across the carry slung upon a set of wheels. Jerrard rode in the low-backed middle seat of a muddy buck-board.

The wheels ran against boulders, grated off with indignant “chuckering” of axle-boxes, hobbled over stumps and plowed through “honey-pots” of mud.

“For goodness' sake,” gasped Jerrard, holding desperately to the seat, “why don't you get into the road?”

The driver, a French-Canadian turned and displayed an appreciative grin.

“Eet ban de ro'd vat you saw de re,” he explained, pointing his whip to the thoroughfare they were pursuing.

“This a road?” demanded Jerrard, with indignation.

“Oui, eet ban a tote-road.”

“I never heard of this kind before,” ejaculated Jerrard, between bumps, “but the name 'road' ought not to be disgraced in any such fashion. How much of it is there?”

“Sax mal'.”

“Six miles! All like this?”

“Aw-w-w some pretty well, some as much bad.”

“Well, I don't know just what you mean,” muttered Jerrard, “but I fear I can imagine.” After what seemed a long interval, and when Jerrard, dizzied by the bumps and the curves, believed that the end must be near—for six miles are but an inconsiderable item to the traffic-manager of a thousand-mile system—he asked how far they had come. The driver looked at the trees. “Wan mal', mabbee, an' some leetle more.” The railroad man opened his mouth to make a discourteous retort reflecting on the driver's judgment of distances, but just then one of the rear wheels slipped off a rock. It came down kerchunk. Jerrard bit his cheek and his tongue. After that he sat and held to his seat with a hopeless idea that the end of the road was running away from them.

Half-way through the woods he bought two fat doughnuts and a piece of apple pie at a wayside log house. He munched his humble fare with a gusto he had not known for years. The jolting, the shaking, the tossing had started his sluggish blood and cleared his business-befogged brain. His food was spiced with the aroma of the hemlocks, and when they took to the road again he began to hum tunes.

Then he fell to chuckling. And when a smooth stretch suffered him to unclasp his cramped hold, he slapped his leg mirthfully. He was thinking what President Whittaker of the P. K. & R. would be saying in two weeks.

President Whittaker was a rotund, flabby man, whom long indulgence in rubber-tired broughams and double-springed private cars had softened until he reminded one of a fat down pillow.

“Jerrard,” he had said, at parting, “if you find good fishing I'll follow you in two weeks. I need a little outdoor relaxation myself.”

Jerrard sent an enthusiastic letter right back by the tote-road driver. He took the word of his guide about the fishing in prospect. In his new and ebullient spirits he felt that he could hardly wait two weeks for the spectacle—Whittaker in the middle seat of a buck-board, on that six-mile carry road. And when the day came, Jerrard, now bronzed, alert and agile walked out over the Poquette Carry, paddled down to Sunkhaze, and received his superior with open arms.

The unconsciousness of the corpulent Whittaker as he left the train, spick and span in tweed and polished shoes appealed to Jerrard's sense of the ludicrous so acutely that the president, following the baggage-laden guide down to the shore of the lake, stopped and looked at his friend with puzzled gaze.

“I say, Jerrard, you seem to be in a good humor.”

“Nothing like the ozone of the forest to make you sparkle,” chuckled the traffic-manager.

It is unnecessary to describe the incidents of the trip across the lake, the apprehensive flinching of the fat president whenever the canoe lurched, and his fear of breaking through the bottom of the frail shell.

But when they were well out on the carry road in the buckboard, Jerrard, gazing on the indescribable mixture of reproach, horror, pain and astonishment that the president's face presented laughed until Whittaker forgot dignity, cares and fears, and laughed, too.

Two days later, as they were eating their lunch beside the famous spring in the north cove of Kennemagon Whittaker stretched himself luxuriously on the gray moss, and 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 Whittaker, 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 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 and goes away. So that's all of it, and none of us knowed what it meant at all.”

The postmaster darted significant glances round the circle of faces at the stove, and the loungers returned the stare with interest.

“What did I tell ye?” he demanded.

“Just as any one might ha' told that lawyer,” said a man, clicking his knife-blade.