“Indeed?  How so?”

“My route is the better.  By a rigid economy of expenditure, by a careful supervision of detail, I can effect a tremendous saving over their initial cost.  I hope to convince them of the fact, and thus induce them to withdraw from the field or take over my road at—­a reasonable figure.  Negotiations are under way.”

At this talk of economy from Curtis Gordon O’Neil refrained from smiling with difficulty.  He felt certain that the man’s entire operations were as unsound as his statement that he could bring the Trust to terms.  Yet Gordon seemed thoroughly in earnest.  Either he expected to fool his present hearer, or else he had become hypnotized by the spell of his own magnificent twaddle—­ O’Neil could not tell which.

“Who laid out your right-of-way?” he asked with some interest.

“A very able young engineer, Dan Appleton.  An excellent man, but —­unreliable in certain things.  I had to let him go, this very afternoon, in fact, for insubordination.  But I discharged him more for the sake of discipline than anything else.  He’ll be anxious to return in a few days.  Now tell me”—­Gordon fixed his visitor with a bland stare which failed to mask his gnawing curiosity—­“what brings you to King Phillip Sound?  Are we to be rivals in the railroad field?”

“No.  There are enough projects of that sort in the neighborhood for the present.”

“Five, all told, but only one destined to succeed.”

“I’m bound for the Kyak coal-fields to perfect and amend my surveys under the new ruling.”

“Ah!  I’ve heard about that ruling.”

“Heard about it?” exclaimed O’Neil.  “Good Lord!  Haven’t you complied with it?”

“Not yet.”

“You surely intend to do so?”

“Oh yes—­I suppose so.”

“If you don’t you’ll lose—­”

“I’m not sure we can ever win.”

“Nonsense!”

“I’m not sure that it’s wise to put more good money into those coal claims,” said Gordon.  “This ruling will doubtless be reversed as the others have been.  One never knows what the Land Office policy will be two days at a time.”

“You know your own business,” O’Neil remarked after a pause, “but unless you have inside information, or a bigger pull in Washington than the rest of us, I’d advise you to get busy.  I’ll be on my way to Kyak in the morning with a gang of men.”  Gordon’s attitude puzzled him, for he could not bring himself to believe that such indifference was genuine.

“We have been treated unfairly by the Government.”

“Granted!”

“We have been fooled, cheated, hounded as if we were a crowd of undesirable aliens, and I’m heartily sick of the injustice.  I prefer to work along lines of least resistance.  I feel tempted to let Uncle Sam have my coal claims, since he has lied to me and gone back on his promise, and devote myself to other enterprises which offer a certainty of greater profits.  But”—­Gordon smiled deprecatingly—­“I dare say I shall hold on, as you are doing, until that fossilized bureau at Washington imposes some new condition which will ruin us all.”