“I stuck it there.  Looked to me like a rig sich as your’n needed a good whip to set it off.  I jest put it there to see how it looked.”

Jim glanced at his girl, scratched the back of his suntanned neck, and felt in his pocket.

“Calc’late I did need a whip,” he said.  “How much is sich whips fetchin’?”

“I kin give you that one a might lower ’n usual.  It’ll be two dollars to you, seem’s you got sich a purty girl in the buggy.”

The girl giggled, Jim flushed, and fished out two one-dollar bills, which he passed over to Scattergood.  Then, whip in hand, he drove off with a flourish.  Scattergood pocketed the money serenely.  It was by methods such as this that he did, in his hardware store, double the business such a store in such a locality normally accounted for.  Scattergood’s most outstanding quality was that he never let a business opportunity slip—­large or small—­and that he manufactured for himself fully half of his business opportunities.  He had lifted retail salesmanship to the rank of an art.

Again he got up and went inside, where he wrote a letter to a certain wholesale house with whom his account was large.  The letter said he had pressing need for half a dozen railroad rails of certain size and weight, and didn’t know where to get them, and would the recipient find them and ship them at once.

Presently Tim Plant, teamster, drove by, and Scattergood hailed him.

“Tim,” he said, “you owe me a leetle bill.  This hain’t a dun, but I got a mite of work to be done, and seein’ things wasn’t brisk with you, I figgered you might want to work it out—­jest to keep busy.”

“Sure,” said Tim.

Whereupon Scattergood elevated himself to the seat beside Tim, and was driven to the spot he had selected for the Coldriver terminal of his railroad.

“I want about a hunderd feet graded along here,” he said, “to lay rails on.”

“Rails!...  Gosh!  Scattergood, you hain’t thinkin’ of buildin’ a railroad, be you?”

“Shucks!” said Scattergood.  “I jest got a half dozen rails comin’, and I figgered I’d like to see how they’d look all laid down on the spot.  Give folks an idee how a railroad ’u’d look if there was one.”

In which manner Scattergood collected a doubtful bill, obtained a quantity of labor at what might be called wholesale rates—­and actually started work on his railroad.  Actual, patent for the world to see.  The railroad was begun.  Not Crane & Keith, not President Castle, not a court in the world could deny that actual construction had begun.  Scattergood was insuring himself against possible steps by the enemy to nullify his charter.

“What’s this here eminent domain?” Scattergood asked Johnnie Bones.

“It’s a legal thing that allows railroads to take land necessary to its operation—­paying for it, of course.”

“Anybody’s land?”

“Yes.”