“Well, if Bill Henderson financed himself on that plan, why didn't we think of using the same time-honoured plan for financing a road to parallel Pennington's?”
John Cardigan sat up with a jerk. “By thunder!” he murmured. That was as close as he ever came to uttering an oath. “By thunder!” he repeated. “I never thought of that! But then,” he added, “I'm not so young as I used to be, and there are any number of ideas which would have occurred to me twenty years ago but do not occur to me now.”
“All right, John Cardigan. I forgive you. Now, then, continue to listen: to the north of that great block of timber held by you and Pennington lie the redwood holdings of the Trinidad Redwood Timber Company.”
“Never heard of them before.”
“Well, timber away in there in back of beyond has never been well advertised, because it is regarded as practically inaccessible. By extending his logging-road and adding to his rolling-stock, Pennington could make it accessible, but he will not. He figures on buying all that back timber rather cheap when he gets around to it, for the reason that the Trinidad Redwood Timber Company cannot possibly mill its timber until a railroad connects its holdings with the outside world. They can hold it until their corporation franchise expires, and it will not increase sufficiently in value to pay taxes.”
“I wonder why the blamed fools ever bought in there, Bryce.”
“When they bought, it looked like a good buy. You will remember that some ten years ago a company was incorporated with the idea of building a railroad from Grant's Pass, Oregon, on the line of the Southern Pacific, down the Oregon and California coast to tap the redwood belt.”
“I remember. There was a big whoop and hurrah and then the proposition died abornin'. The engineers found that the cost of construction through that mountainous country was prohibitive.”
“Well, before the project died, Gregory and his associates believed that it was going to survive. They decided to climb in on the ground floor—had some advance, inside information that the road was to be built; go they quietly gathered together thirty thousand acres of good stuff and then sat down to wait for the railroad, And they are still waiting. Gregory, by the way, is the president of the Trinidad Redwood Timber Company. He's an Edinburgh man, and the fly American promoters got him to put up the price of the timber and then mortgaged their interests to him as security for the advance. He foreclosed on their notes five years ago.”
“And there he is with his useless timber!” John Cardigan murmured thoughtfully. “The poor Scotch sucker!”