the public a hundred-mile trip that for scenic grandeur could be
equaled nowhere in this country. Are you going to stand in the way,
Mr. Ross, of an enterprise such as that?"

Yep, he was. He puffs away just as mulish as ever.

"Of course," goes on Percey, "it's nothing to you; but the one ambition
of my life has been to build this road. I want to do for this district
what some of our great railroad builders did for the big West. I'm not
a city-bred theorist, nor a Wall Street stock manipulator. I was born
in a one-story log house on a Minnesota farm, and when I was a boy we
hauled our corn and potatoes thirty miles to a river steamboat. Then
the railroad came through. Now my brothers sack their crops almost
within sight of a grain elevator. They live in comfortable houses,
send their children to good schools. So do their neighbors. The
railroad has turned a wilderness into a civilized community. On a
smaller scale here is a like opportunity. If you will let us have that
fifty-foot strip----"

"Na, Mon, not an inch!" breaks in Ross.

How he could stick to it against that smooth line of talk I couldn't
see. Why, say, it was the most convincin', heart-throbby stuff I'd
ever listened to, and if it had been me I'd made Percey J. a present of
the whole shootin' match.

"But see here, Mr. Ross," goes on Sturgis, "I would like to show you
just what we----"

"Daddy! Daddy!" comes a pipin' hail from somewhere inside, and out