Bannon handed his message to the operator.
"Send it collect," he said. With that he strode away, over the hand rail,
this time, and down the stairs. The operator carried the message to the
superintendent.

"It seems to be for you," he said.

The superintendent read--

Div. Supt. G.&M., Blake City. Tell manager it takes better man than him to
tie us up.
MACBRIDE & COMPANY.

Bannon had nearly an hour to wait for the next train back to Ledyard, but
it was not time wasted, for as he paced the smoky waiting room, he arrived
at a fairly accurate estimate of the meaning of the general manager's
message.

It was simply a confirmaton of the cautious prediction he had made to
Peterson the night before. Why should any one want to hinder the
construction of an elevator in Chicago "these days" except to prevent its
use for the formal delivery of grain which the buyer did not wish
delivered? And why had Page & Company suddenly ordered a million bushel
annex? Why had they suddenly become anxious that the elevator should be
ready to receive grain before January first, unless they wished to deliver
a vast amount of December wheat? Before Bannon's train came in he
understood it all. A clique of speculators had decided to corner wheat, an
enterprise nearly enough impossible in any case, but stark madness unless
they had many millions at command. It was a long chance, of course, but
after all not wonderful that some one in their number was a power in the
reorganized G.&M.

Already the immense amount of wheat in Chicago was testing the capacity of
the registered warehouses, and plainly, if the Calumet K should be delayed
long enough, it might prevent Page & Company from carrying out their
contract to deliver two million bushels of the grain, even though it were
actually in the cars in Chicago.

Bannon knew much of Page & Company; that dotted all over the vast wheat
tracts of Minnesota and Montana were their little receiving elevators
where they bought grain of the farmers; that miles of wheat-laden freight
cars were already lumbering eastward along the railroad lines of the
North. He had a touch of imagination, and something of the enormous
momentum of that Northern wheat took possession of him. It would come to
Chicago, and he must be ready for it. It would be absurd to be balked by
the refusal of a little single-track road up in Michigan to carry a pile
of planks.

He paused before the grated window of the ticket and telegraph