"I should say I did. It takes a pretty lively man to crowd me off the end of a wire. He told the superintendent not to give us cars. That was all I wanted to know. So I told him how sorry I was that I couldn't stay to lunch, caught the next train back to Ledyard, and built a fire under Sloan."
Miss Vogel was looking out of the window.
"He said he could not give us cars?" she repeated.
Bannon smiled.
"But we didn't need them," he said. "I got a barge to come over from
Milwaukee, and we loaded her up and started her down."
"I don't understand, Mr. Bannon. Ledyard isn't on the lake—and you couldn't get cars."
"That wasn't very hard." He paused, for a step sounded outside the door and in a moment Peterson had come in.
"I guess you wanted to talk to me, didn't you, Charlie?"
"Yes, I'm writing to the office. It's about this C. & S. C. business. You said you'd had trouble with them before."
"Oh, no," said Peterson, sitting on the railing and removing his hat, with a side glance at Miss Vogel, "not to speak of. There wasn't nothing so bad as last night."