office and
asked for a map. He studied it attentively for a while; then he sent a
telegram:--

MACBRIDE & COMPANY, Minneapolis: G.&M. R.R. wants to tie us up. Will not
furnish cars to carry our cribbing. Can't get it elsewhere inside of three
weeks. Find out if Page will O.K. any bill of extras I send in for
bringing it down. If so, can they have one or more steam barges at
Manistogee within forty-eight hours? Wire Ledyard Hotel. C. H. BANNON.

It was an hour's ride back to Ledyard. He went to the hotel and persuaded
the head waiter to give him something to eat, although it was long after
the dinner hour. As he left the dining room, the clerk handed him two
telegrams. One read:--

Get cribbing down. Page pays the freight.
BROWN.

The other:--

Steam barge Demosthenes leaves Milwaukee tonight for Manistogee.
PAGE & Co.

CHAPTER IV

As Bannon was paying for his dinner, he asked the clerk what sort of a
place Manistogee was. The clerk replied that he had never been there, but
that he understood it was quite a lively town.

"Good road over there?"

"Pretty fair."

"That means you can get through if you're lucky."

The clerk smiled. "It won't be so bad today. You see we've been getting a
good deal of rain. That packs down the sand. You ought to get there all
right. Were you thinking of driving over?"

"That's the only way to go, is it? Well, I'll see. Maybe a little later.
How far is it?"

"The farmers call it eighteen miles."

Bannon nodded his thanks and went back to Sloan's office.

"Well, it didn't take you long," said the magnate. "Find out what was the
matter with'em?"

Illustration [HE CURSED THE WHOLE G.&M. SYSTEM, FROM THE TIES UP]

He enjoyed his well-earned reputation for choler, and as Bannon told him
what he had discovered that morning, the old man paced the room in a
regular beat, pausing every time he came to a certain tempting bit of
blank wall to deal it a thump with his big fist. When the whole situation
was made clear to him, he stopped walking and cursed the whole G.&M.
system, from the ties up. "I'll make 'em smart for that," he said. "They
haul those planks whether they want to or not. You hear me say it. There's
a law that covers a case like that. I'll prosecute 'em. They'll see
whether J. B. Sloan is a safe kind of man to monkey with. Why, man," he
added, turning sharply to Bannon, "why don't you get mad? You don't seem
to care--no more than the angel Gabriel."

"I d