“Getting these options, you mean?  That is very true; but it isn’t all of it, by long odds.  There are the thousand and one mechanical details to be worked out:  the coupling up of these three local lines at their connecting points, the securing of proper trackage or trackage rights at these junctions, the general ordering of things so that a through line may be opened immediately when the stock is secured.  If there were ten of you, you couldn’t get things licked into shape in time to get in on the grain carrying this season.”

Ford had relighted his cigar, which had gone out in the explanatory interval, and was blowing smoke-rings toward the ceiling.

“I may be the biggest ass this side of the jack trails, and the most conceited, Kenneth; but you’re over on my side of the ring when you talk about the mechanical obstacles.  What I’m worrying about now is the fact that I can’t do two things at once.  The options must be secured before we can make the fifth part of a move in the other field; and the Lord only knows how long that will take.  To hurry is to lose out.”

The lawyer nodded.  “And not to hurry is to lose out, too,” he qualified.  Then he smoked in thoughtful silence for five full minutes before he said, abruptly:  “Give me your list of stock-holders and turn the option business over to the legal department, where it properly belongs.  That will leave you foot-loose to go after the mechanical matter.  How does that suit you?”

Ford sprang to his feet.

“By Jove, Kenneth, you’re a man and a brother; I’m not forgetting that you are taking this entire fairy tale on my personal say-so; and I shan’t forget it, either.  It’s what I wanted to ask—­and was afraid to ask, after I got you safely jailed up here.”

The attorney’s smile was grim but friendly.

“I’m not forgetting how you took a sick man over into the Pannikin wilderness on a two-months hunting trip last fall and made a well man of him, Ford,” he said.  “Any man who can shoot as straight as you do wouldn’t be sitting here telling me lies about a trifling little matter involving the expenditure of a beggarly thirty-five millions.  But to come down to earth again:  you haven’t shifted any considerable part of the burden, you know.  I can do this bit of routine work; but the main thing is up to you, just as it was before I said yes.”

Ford rose, stretching himself like a man who has just been relieved of a burden whose true weight was appreciable only in its lifting.

“I know,” he said cheerfully.  “It has been up to me, all along.  In the morning we’ll go around to the Algonquin National, and I’ll put you into the financial saddle.  Then I’ll get out on the line, and by the time you have the stock corralled, we’ll be practically ready to pull through freight—­if not passengers—­from Denver to Chicago.  Oh, I know what I am talking about,” he added, when the general counsel smiled his incredulity.  “This is no affair of yesterday with me.  I have every mile of these three short roads mapped and cross-sectioned; I have copies of all their terminal and junction-point contracts.  I know exactly what we can do, and what we can’t do.”