She looked up.

“You see, they had told Sloan—­he’s the man that owns the lumber company and the city of Ledyard and pretty much all of the Lower Peninsula—­that they hadn’t any cars; and he’d just swallowed it down and folded up his napkin.  I hadn’t got to Ledyard before I saw a string of empties on a siding that weren’t doing a thing but waiting for our cribbing, so I caught a train to Blake City and gave the Division Superintendent some points on running railroads.  He was a nice, friendly man.”—­Bannon clasped his hands about one knee and smiled reminiscently—­“I had him pretty busy there for a while thinking up lies.  He was wondering how he could get ready for the next caller, when I came at him and made him wire the General Manager of the line.  The operator was sitting right outside the door, and when the answer came I just took it in—­it gave the whole snap away, clear as you want.”

Miss Vogel turned on her stool.

“You took his message?”

“I should say I did.  It takes a pretty lively man to crowd me off the end of a wire.  He told the superintendent not to give us cars.  That was all I wanted to know.  So I told him how sorry I was that I couldn’t stay to lunch, caught the next train back to Ledyard, and built a fire under Sloan.”

Miss Vogel was looking out of the window.

“He said he could not give us cars?” she repeated.

Bannon smiled.

“But we didn’t need them,” he said.  “I got a barge to come over from Milwaukee, and we loaded her up and started her down.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Bannon.  Ledyard isn’t on the lake—­and you couldn’t get cars.”

“That wasn’t very hard.”  He paused, for a step sounded outside the door and in a moment Peterson had come in.

“I guess you wanted to talk to me, didn’t you, Charlie?”

“Yes, I’m writing to the office.  It’s about this C. & S. C. business.  You said you’d had trouble with them before.”

“Oh, no,” said Peterson, sitting on the railing and removing his hat, with a side glance at Miss Vogel, “not to speak of.  There wasn’t nothing so bad as last night.”

“What was it?”

“Why, just a little talk when we opened the fence first time.  That section boss was around, but I told him how things was, and he didn’t seem to have no kick coming as long as we was careful.”

Bannon had taken up his letter to Brown, and was slowly unfolding it and looking it over.  When Peterson got to his feet, he laid it on the table.

“Anything else, Charlie?  I’m just getting things to going on the annex.  We’re going to make her jump, I tell you.  I ain’t allowing any loafing there.”

“No,” Bannon replied, “I guess not.”  He followed the foreman out of doors.  “Do you remember having any letters, Pete, about our agreement with the C. & S. C. to build over the tracks—­from the office or anybody?”

Peterson brought his brows together and tried to remember.  After a moment he slowly shook his head.