When Bryce Cardigan walked down the gang-plank at the steamship-dock in
San Francisco, the first face he saw among the waiting crowd was Buck
Ogilvy's. Mr. Ogilvy wore his over-coat and a joyous smile, proving that
in so far as he was concerned all was well with the world; he pressed
forward and thrust forth a great speckled paw for Bryce to shake. Bryce
ignored it.
“Why, don't you remember me?” Ogilvy demanded. “I'm Buck Ogilvy.”
Bryce looked him fairly in the eye and favoured him with a lightning
wink. “I have never heard of you, Mr. Ogilvy. You are mistaking me for
someone else.”
“Sorry,” Ogilvy murmured. “My mistake! Thought you were Bill Kerrick,
who used to be a partner of mine. I'm expecting him on this boat, and
he's the speaking image of you.”
Bryce nodded and passed on, hailed a taxicab, and was driven to the San
Francisco office of his company. Five minutes later the door opened and
Buck Ogilvy entered.
“I was a bit puzzled at the dock, Bryce,” he explained as they shook
hands, “but decided to play safe and then follow you to your office.
What's up? Have you killed somebody, and are the detectives on your
trail? If so, 'fess up and I'll assume the responsibility for your
crime, just to show you how grateful I am for that hundred.”
“No, I wasn't being shadowed, Buck, but my principal enemy was coming
down the gangplank right behind me, and--”
“So was my principal enemy,” Ogilvy interrupted. “What does our enemy
look like?”
“Like ready money. And if he had seen me shaking hands with you, he'd
have suspected a connection between us later on. Buck, you have a good
job--about five hundred a month.”
“Thanks, old man. I'd work for you for nothing. What are we going to
do?”
“Build twelve miles of logging railroad and parallel the line of the old
wolf I spoke of a moment ago.”
“Good news! We'll do it. How soon do you want it done?”
“As soon as possible. You're the vice-president and general manager.”
“I accept the nomination. What do I do first?”
“Listen carefully to my story, analyze my plan for possible weak spots,
and then get busy, because after I have provided the funds and given the
word 'Go!' the rest is up to you. I must not be known in the transaction
at all, because that would be fatal. And I miss my guess if, once we
start building or advertising the building of the road, you and I and
everybody connected with the enterprise will not be shadowed day and
night by an army of Pinkertons.”
“I listen,” said Buck Ogilvy, and he inclined a large speckled ear in
Bryce's direction, the while his large speckled hand drew a scratch-pad
toward him.
Three hours later Ogilvy was in possession of the most minute details of
the situation in Sequoia, had tabulated, indexed, and cross-indexed
them in his ingenious brain and was ready for business--and so announced
himself. “And inasmuch as that hundred you sent me has been pretty well
shattered,” he concluded, “suppose you call in your cold-hearted manager
who refused me alms on your credit, and give him orders to honour my
sight-drafts. If I'm to light in Sequoia looking like ready money, I've
got to have some high-class, tailor-made clothes, and a shine and a
shave and a shampoo and a trunk and a private secretary. If there was a
railroad running into Sequoia, I'd insist on a private car.”
This final detail having been attended to, Mr. Ogilvy promptly proceeded
to forget business and launched forth into a recital of his manifold
adventures since leaving Princeton; and when at length all of their
classmates had been accounted for and listed as dead, married,
prosperous, or pauperized, the amiable and highly entertaining Buck took
his departure with the announcement that he would look around a little
and try to buy some good second-hand grading equipment and a locomotive,
in addition to casting an eye over the labour situation and sending a
few wires East for the purpose of sounding the market on steel rails.
Always an enthusiast in all things, in his mind's eye Mr. Ogilvy could
already see a long trainload of logs coming down the Northern California
& Oregon Railroad, as he and Bryce had decided to christen the venture.
“N. C. & O.,” Mr. Ogilvy murmured. “Sounds brisk and snappy. I like it.
Hope that old hunks Pennington likes it, too. He'll probably feel that
N. C. & O. stands for Northern California Outrage.”
When Bryce Cardigan returned to Sequoia, his labours, insofar as the
building of the road were concerned, had been completed. His agreement
with Gregory of the Trinidad Redwood Timber Company had been signed,
sealed, and delivered; the money to build the road had been deposited
in bank; and Buck Ogilvy was already spending it like a drunken sailor.
From now on, Bryce could only watch, wait, and pray.
On the next steamer a surveying party with complete camping-equipment
arrived in Sequoia, purchased a wagon and two horses, piled their
dunnage into the wagon, and disappeared up-country. Hard on their
heels came Mr. Buck Ogilvy, and occupied the bridal suite in the Hotel
Sequoia, arrangements for which had previously been made by wire. In
the sitting room of the suite Mr. Ogilvy installed a new desk, a
filing-cabinet, and a brisk young male secretary.
He had been in town less than an hour when the editor of the Sequoia
Sentinel sent up his card. The announcement of the incorporation of the
Northern California Outrage (for so had Mr. Ogilvy, in huge enjoyment of
the misery he was about to create, dubbed the road) had previously been
flashed to the Sentinel by the United Press Association, as a local
feature story, and already speculation was rife in Sequoia as to the
identity of the harebrained individuals who dared to back an enterprise
as nebulous as the millennium. Mr. Ogilvy was expecting the visit--in
fact, impatiently awaiting it; and since the easiest thing he did was to
speak for publication, naturally the editor of the Sentinel got a
story which, to that individual's simple soul, seemed to warrant a
seven-column head--which it received. Having boned up on the literature
of the Redwood Manufacturers' Association, what Buck Ogilvy didn't know
about redwood timber, redwood lumber, the remaining redwood acreage and
market conditions, past and present, might have been secreted in the
editorial eye without seriously hampering the editorial sight. He stated
that the capital behind the project was foreign, that he believed in the
success of the project and that his entire fortune was dependent upon
the completion of it. In glowing terms he spoke of the billions of tons
of timber-products to be hauled out of this wonderfully fertile and
little-known country, and confidently predicted for the county a future
commercial supremacy that would be simply staggering to contemplate.
When Colonel Seth Pennington read this outburst he smiled. “That's a
bright scheme on the part of that Trinidad Redwood Timber Company gang
to start a railroad excitement and unload their white elephant,” he
declared. “A scheme like that stuck them with their timber, and I
suppose they figure there's a sucker born every minute and that the
same old gag might work again. Chances are they have a prospect in tow
already.”
When Bryce Cardigan read it, he laughed. The interview was so like Buck
Ogilvy! In the morning the latter's automobile was brought up from the
steamship-dock, and accompanied by his secretary, Mr. Ogilvy disappeared
into the north following the bright new stakes of his surveying-gang,
and for three weeks was seen no more. As for Bryce Cardigan, that young
man buckled down to business, and whenever questioned about the new
railroad was careful to hoot at the idea.
On a day when Bryce's mind happened to be occupied with thoughts of
Shirley Sumner, he bumped into her on the main street of Sequoia, and to
her great relief but profound surprise, he paused in his tracks, lifted
his hat, smiled, and opened his mouth to say something--thought better
of it, changed his mind, and continued on about his business. As Shirley
passed him, she looked him squarely in the face, and in her glance there
was neither coldness nor malice.
Bryce felt himself afire from heels to hair one instant, and cold and
clammy the next, for Shirley spoke to him.
“Good morning, Mr. Cardigan.”
He paused, turned, and approached her. “Good morning, Shirley,” he
replied. “How have you been?”
“I might have been dead, for all the interest you took in me,” she
replied sharply. “As matters stand, I'm exceedingly well--thank you. By
the way, are you still belligerent?”
He nodded. “I have to be.”
“Still peeved at my uncle?”
Again he nodded.
“I think you're a great big grouch, Bryce Cardigan,” she flared at him
suddenly. “You make me unutterably weary.”
“I'm sorry,” he answered, “but just at present I am forced to subject
you to the strain. Say a year from now, when things are different with
me, I'll strive not to offend.”
“I'll not be here a year from now,” she warned him. He bowed. “Then
I'll go wherever you are--and bring you back.” And with a mocking little
grin, he lifted his hat and passed on.