," said Parker.

"I'd advise you to save yourself a fifty-mile ride up the tote-road,"
the agent counseled. "Even if Ward didn't catch you, you'd find that no
man would da'st to leave there. Furthermore, you've only got a little,
short job here, scarcely worth while."

The logic of the reply impressed Parker.

He could not spare the time anyway, to travel far up into the woods in
quest of horses. His material must be conveyed across Spinnaker Lake in
some other way.

"How far is it up the lake to Poquette?" he asked the agent.

"Sixteen miles."

An hour later Parker, after a tour of inspection, had settled his
problem of transportation in his own mind. His plan was ingenious.

There were half a dozen men available in Sunkhaze, and more were
arriving daily, straggling down from the woods or roaring in fresh from
the city, hurrying on the way up.

The postmaster owned a hardwood tract, and Parker set his little crew
at work chopping birch saplings and fashioning from them huge sleds,
strongly bolted. As for himself, he entered into a contract with
the local blacksmith, threw his coat off and went to work on some
contrivances, round which the settlement's loungers congregated from
dawn till dark the next day, watching the progress and wondering audibly
"what such a blamed contraption was goin' to turn out to be."

Parker kept his own counsel. At the end of two days, with the assistance
of the blacksmith, he had remodeled four ox-cart tires. Each tire was
spurred with bristling steel spikes, bolted firmly. In reply to his
telegram, "Rush loco, all equipments and coal," the little narrow-gage
engine arrived, at the tail of the procession of flat cars, loaded with
materials of construction.

By this time Parker's crew had been increased to a score of laborers,
and he had picked up three yokes of oxen and four horses from the few
pioneer farmers who lived near Sunkhaze. With tackle and derrick the
locomotive was swung upon a specially constructed sled, and the spurred
tires were set upon its drivers. Then the great idea locked in Parker's
head became apparent to the population of Sunkhaze.

[Illustration: Then the great idea Frontispiece]

"Gorry!" said the postmaster. "If that young feller hain't got a horse
there that'll beat anything that even Colonel Gid Ward himself ever sent
across Spinnaker Lake!"

Amid the utmost excitement of the spectators, the "engine on runners"
was "snubbed" down the steep hill and