“Yes,” said Zaanan, with a chuckle; “go ’long and tend to your own business. Git your own neck out of the noose ’fore you reach out to help me over a fence. G’-by, Jim.”
When Jim got to the mill he found Grierson ready with his weekly report. The old bookkeeper had put in a happy Sunday preparing it. From morning till night he had scratched and crackled in figures and computations—a regular debauch.
“She’s coming. She’s coming now,” Grierson said, his face wrinkling dryly as if the skin were ledger paper. “Shows sixty-five boxes to the machine.”
“But shipments are less than ever,” Jim said as he glanced over the sheet.
“Cars,” said Grierson, shortly. “Goods are in the warehouse, but the railroad won’t set in cars to ship them out.”
Moran’s railroad would not set in cars. This was not altogether unexpected. The railroad could hamper him, delay him—and escape under the plea of a car shortage. Crops were moving. The excuse would hold good. Jim knew he was powerless against this new aggression.
Then came a telegram from New York, driving temporarily from Jim’s mind the matter of freight-cars. It was a long telegram:
German steamer Dessau sunk 50,000 boxes pins aboard, bound Bremen to Argentine. Agents Argentine firms offer 70 cents on dock here. Have order 15,000 boxes if can ship ten days. Money on dock. Welliver fill order you cannot.
Seventy cents for pins with the New York market at forty-four cents or thereabouts! A clean killing of nearly fifty-five hundred dollars!
Jim snatched up Grierson’s report. It showed seven thousand boxes packed in the warehouse, and estimated twelve thousand boxes unpacked in the bins. He did not wait to weigh consequences or to offset difficulties.