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 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.