“I mean Avery Pendleton and the Pendleton system,” replied Elkins. “I mean that we’ve got to meet them on their own ground. Pendleton won’t declare war on the Halliday combination by building in here, but there is no reason why we can’t build to him, and that’s what I propose to do. We’ll take the L. & G. W., swing it over to the east from the Elk Fork up, make a junction with Pendleton’s Pacific Division, and, in one week after we get trains running, we’ll have the freight combine here shot so full of holes that it won’t hold corn-stalks! That’s what we’ll do: we’ll do a little rate-making ourselves; and we’ll make this danger the best thing that ever happened to us. Do you see?”
Cornish saw, sooner than any one else. As he spoke, Jim had unrolled a map, and pointed out the places as he referred to them, like a general, as he was, outlining the plan of a battle. He began this speech in that quiet, convincing way of his, only a little elevated above the sarcasm of a moment before. As he went on, his voice deepened, his eye gleamed, and in spite of his colloquialisms, which we could not notice, his words began to thrill us like potent oratory. We felt all that ecstasy of buoyant and auspicious rebellion which animated Hotspur the night he could have plucked bright honor from the pale-faced moon. At Jim’s final question, Cornish, forgetting his pique, sprang to the map, swept his finger along the line Elkins had described, followed the main ribs of Pendleton’s great gridiron, on which the fat of half a dozen states lay frying, on to terminals on lakes and rivers; and as he turned his black eyes upon us, we knew from the fire in them that he saw.
“By heavens!” he cried, “you’ve hit it, Elkins! And it can be done! From to-night, no more paper railroads for us; it must be grading-gangs and ties, and steel rails!”
So, also, there was good fighting when Cornish wired from New York for Elkins and me to come to his aid in placing our Lattimore & Great Western bonds. Of course, we never expected to build this railway with our own funds. For two reasons, at least: it is bad form to do eccentric things, and we lacked a million or two of having the money. The line with buildings and rolling stock would cost, say, twelve thousand dollars per mile. Before it could be built we must find some one who would agree to take its bonds for at least that sum. As no one would pay quite par for bonds of a new and independent road, we must add, say, three thousand dollars per mile for discount. Moreover, while the building of the line was undertaken from motives of self-preservation, there seemed to be no good reason why we should not organize a construction company to do the actual work of building, and that at a profit. That this profit might be assured, something like three thousand dollars per mile more must go in. Of course, whoever placed the bonds would be asked to guarantee the interest for two or three years; hence, with two thousand more for that and good measure, we made up our proposed issue of twenty thousand dollars per mile of first-mortgage bonds, to dispose of which “the former member of the firm of Lusch, Carskaddan & Mayer” was revisiting the glimpses of Wall Street, and testing the strength of that mighty influence which the Herald had attributed to him.
“You’ve just got to win,” said Giddings, who was admitted to the secret of Cornish’s embassy, “not only because Lattimore and all the citizens thereof will be squashed in the event of your slipping up; but, what is of much more importance, the Herald will be laid in a lie about your Wall Street pull. Remember that when foes surround thee!”
When we joined him, Cornish admitted that he was fairly well “surrounded.” He had failed to secure the aid of Barr-Smith’s friends, who said that, with the street-car system and the cement works, they had quite eggs enough in the Lattimore basket for their present purposes. In fact, he had felt out to blind ends nearly all the promising burrows supposedly leading to the strong boxes of the investing public, of which he had told us. He accounted for this lack of success on the very natural theory that the Halliday combination had found out about his mission, and was fighting him through its influence with the banks and trust companies. So he had done at last what Jim had advised him to do at first—secured an appointment with the mighty Mr. Pendleton; and, somewhat humbled by unsuccess, had telegraphed for us to come on and help in presenting the thing to that magnate.
Whom, being fenced off by all sorts of guards, messengers, clerks, and secretaries, we saw after a pilgrimage through a maze of offices. He had not the usual features which make up an imposing appearance; but command flowed from him, and authority covered him as with a mantle. We knew that he possessed and exerted the power to send prosperity in this channel, or inject adversity into that, as a gardener directs water through his trenches, and this knowledge impressed us. He was rather thin; but not so much so as his sharp, high nose, his deep-set eyes, and his bony chin at first sight seemed to indicate. Whenever he spoke, his nostrils dilated, and his gray eyes said more than his lips uttered. He was courteous, with a sort of condensed courtesy—the shorthand of ceremoniousness. He turned full upon us from his desk as we entered, rose and met us as his clerk introduced us.
“Mr. Barslow, I’m happy to meet you; and you also, Mr. Cornish. Mr. Wilson ’phoned about your enterprise just now. Mr. Elkins,” as he took Jim’s hand, “I have heard of you also. Be seated, gentlemen. I have given you a time appropriation of thirty minutes. I hope you will excuse me for mentioning that at the end of that period my time will be no longer my own. Kindly explain what it is you desire of me, and why you think that I can have any interest in your project.”
And, with a judgment trained in the valuing of men, he turned to Jim as our leader.
“If our enterprise doesn’t commend itself to your judgment in twenty minutes,” said Jim, with a little smile, and in much the same tone that he would have used in discussing a cigar, “there’ll be no need of wasting the other ten; for it’s perfectly plain. I’ll expedite matters by skipping what we desire, for the most part, and telling you why we think the Pendleton system ought to desire the same thing. Our plan, in a word, is to build a hundred and fifty miles of line, and from it deliver two full train-loads of through east-bound freight per day to your road, and take from you a like amount of west-bound tonnage, not one pound of which can be routed over your lines at present.”