John Cardigan nodded. “I'd like to know the name of the owner,” he said presently. “I'd like mighty well to say thank you to him. It isn't usual for people nowadays to have as much respect for sentiment in an old duffer like me as the fellow has. He sort of makes me feel as if I hadn't sold at all.”
Buck Ogilvy came out of the Bon Gusto restaurant with Moira, just as Bryce, with George Sea Otter at the wheel of the Napier, drove up to the curb. They left Moira at her boarding-house, and rolled noiselessly away.
At nine o'clock they arrived at Cardigan's log-landing and found Jim Harding, the bull-donkey engineer, placidly smoking his pipe in the cab. Bryce hailed him.
“That you, Jim?”
“You bet.”
“Run up to Jabe Curtis's shanty, and tell him we're here. Have him gather his gang and bring two pairs of overalls and two jumpers—large size—with him when he comes.”
Harding vanished into the darkness, and Buck Ogilvy climbed up into the cab and glanced at the steam-gauge. “A hundred and forty,” he announced. “Good enough!”
Presently the woods-boss, accompanied by thirty of his best men, came down to the log-landing. At Bryce's order they clambered aboard the engine and tender, hanging on the steps, on the roof of the cab, on the cowcatcher—anywhere they could find a toe-hold. Harding cast aside the two old ties which the careful engine-crew had placed across the tracks in front of the drivers as additional precaution; Buck Ogilvy cut off the air, and the locomotive and tender began to glide slowly down the almost imperceptible grade. With a slight click it cleared the switch and slid out onto the Cardigan lateral, swiftly gathering speed. A quarter of a mile down the line Buck Ogilvy applied the brakes and eased her down to twenty miles per hour.
At the junction with the main line Buck backed briskly up into the Laguna Grande woods, and coupled to the two loaded flat-cars. The woods-gang scrambled aboard the flats, and the train pulled out for Sequoia. Forty minutes later they rumbled down Water Street and slid to a grinding halt at the intersection of B Street.
From the darkness of Cardigan's drying-yard, where they had been waiting, twenty picked men of the mill-crew now emerged, bearing lanterns and tools. Under Buck Ogilvy's direction the dirt promptly began to fly, while the woods-crew unloaded the rails and piled them close to the sidewalk.