couldn't get hold of
anything that was worth seizing. They all laughed at me when I said I
meant to get that money out of 'em.

"The railroad had one train; there was an engine and three box cars and a
couple of flats and a combination--that's baggage and passenger. It made
the round trip from Bemis every day, fifty-two miles over all, and
considering the roadbed and the engine, that was a good day's work.

"Well, that train was worth four hundred and thirty dollars all right
enough, if they could have got their hands on it, but the engineer was
such a peppery chap that nobody ever wanted to bother him. But I just
bided my time, and one hot day after watering up the engine him and the
conductor went off to get a drink. I had a few lengths of log chain handy,
and some laborers with picks and shovels, and we made a neat, clean little
job of it. Then I climbed up into the cab. When the engineer came back and
wanted to know what I was doing there, I told him we'd attached his train.
'Don't you try to serve no papers on me,' he sung out, 'or I'll split your
head.' 'There's no papers about this job,' said I. 'We've attached it to
the track.' At that he dropped the fire shovel and pulled open the
throttle. The drivers spun around all right, but the train never moved an
inch.

"He calmed right down after that and said he hadn't four hundred and
thirty dollars with him, but if I'd let the train go, he'd pay me in a
week. I couldn't quite do that, so him and the conductor had to walk 'way
to Bemis, where the general offices was. They was pretty mad. We had that
train chained up there for 'most a month, and at last they paid the
claim."

"Was that the railroad that offered to make you general manager?" Hilda
asked.

"Yes, provided I'd let the train go. I'm glad I didn't take it up, though.
You see, the farmers along the road who held the stock in it made up their
minds that the train had quit running for good, so they took up the rails
where it ran across their farms, and used the ties for firewood. That's
all they ever got out of their investment."

A few moments later Max came back and Bannon straightened up to go. "I
wish you'd tell Pete when you see him tomorrow," he said to the boy, "that
I won't be on the job till noon."

"Going to take a holiday?"

"Yes. Tell him I'm taking the rest cure up at a sanitarium."

At half-past eight next morning Bannon entered the outer office of R. S.
Carver, president of the Centra