dividend-promising facts? Upon the expected rise hung the fate of Ford's
cherished ambition--the building of the western extension. Without a
dividend-paying Chicago-Denver main line, there could be no bond issue,
no thirty millions for the forging of the third and most important link
in the great traffic chain.

Ford walked the floor of his office, called by courtesy, "private," for
an anxious hour, balancing the probabilities, and finally determined to
take the desperate chance. There was a vast mountain of preliminary work
to be leveled, huge purchasing expenses to be incurred, before the first
step could be taken in the actual building of the western extension; and
the summer was advancing day by day. He did not hope to get the
extension completed in a single season. But to get it over into the
promising mining field on the lower Pannikin before snow-flying meant
work of the keenest, without the loss of a single day. Could he afford
to play the safe game and wait until the building capital should be
cannily in Mr. Magnus' bank vaults?

He decided that he could not; and when he reached a decision, Ford was
not the man to hesitate before taking the plunge. On the morning of the
third day he called Truitt, sometime superintendent of the C. P. & D.,
and now acting manager of the Chicago Extension, and gave him his
instructions.

"You say there are three grain trains moving on the line now, Mr.
Truitt: there will be three more before night. Keep them coming, and
give them the right of way over everything but the United States mails.
Can you handle this without help from me?"

"We'll give it a pretty stiff try," was the prompt rejoinder. "But you
are not going to leave us, are you, Mr. Ford?"

"No; but for the next forty-eight hours I am going to lock my door, and
I don't want to be disturbed for anything less than a disaster or a wire
from New York. Please give orders accordingly, will you?"

The orders were given; and, left with his force of stenographers, Ford
began to walk the floor, dictating right and left. Letters and telegrams
to steel mills, to contractors, to bridge builders, to the owners of
grading outfits, and to labor agencies, clicked out of the typewriters
in a steady and unbroken stream, and the din was like that of a
main-line telegraph office on a hot piece of track.

All day long, and far into the night, the office force wrought
unceasingly, digging away at the mountain of preliminary correspo