"Don't you see? It's so plain to me that I can't understand how you failed to realize the value—the necessity of buying my road."
"Explain, please."
"Gladly. The North Pass & Yukon is paying a fabulous blackmail to the river-lines to escape a ruinous rate war."
"Right! It's blackmail, as you say."
"Under the present agreement you handle the Dawson freight and keep out of the lower river; they take the whole Tanana valley and lower Yukon."
"Correct."
"Didn't it occur to you that the S.R.& N., which starts four hundred miles west of the North Pass and taps the Tanana valley, can be used to put the river steamers of that section out of business?"
"Let's have a look at the map." Mr. Illis hurried into an adjoining room and returned with a huge chart which he unrolled upon the table. "To tell you the truth, I never looked at the proposition from that angle. Our people were afraid of those glaciers and the competition of the Copper Trust. They're disgusted, too, with our treatment."
"The Trust is eliminated. Kyak harbor is wiped off the map, and I'm alone in the field."
"How about this fellow Gordon?"