"Miss Vogel, have you come across any letters or papers about an agreement with the C. & S. C?"
"No," she replied, "there is nothing here about the railroad."
Bannon drummed on the table; then he went to the door and called to a laborer who was leaving the tool house:—
"Find Mr. Peterson and ask him if he will please come to the office for a moment."
He came slowly back and sat on the corner of the table, watching Miss
Vogel as her pencil moved rapidly up column after column.
"Had quite a time up there in Michigan," he said. "Those G.&M. people were after us in earnest. If they'd had their way, we'd never have got the cribbing."
She looked up.
"You see, they had told Sloan—he's the man that owns the lumber company and the city of Ledyard and pretty much all of the Lower Peninsula—that they hadn't any cars; and he'd just swallowed it down and folded up his napkin. I hadn't got to Ledyard before I saw a string of empties on a siding that weren't doing a thing but waiting for our cribbing, so I caught a train to Blake City and gave the Division Superintendent some points on running railroads. He was a nice, friendly man."—Bannon clasped his hands about one knee and smiled reminiscently—"I had him pretty busy there for a while thinking up lies. He was wondering how he could get ready for the next caller, when I came at him and made him wire the General Manager of the line. The operator was sitting right outside the door, and when the answer came I just took it in—it gave the whole snap away, clear as you want."
Miss Vogel turned on her stool.
"You took his message?"