“Guarantee it!” his father shouted.  “Guarantee it!  Well, I should snicker!  We’ll just show J. P. M. and his crowd that they made no mistake when they picked you as their Sequoia legal representative.  I’ll call a special meeting of that little old city council of mine and jam that temporary franchise through while you’d be saying ’Jack Robinson!’”

“I’ll tell you what let’s do,” Henry suggested.  “I’ll draw up the temporary franchise to-night, and we’ll put it through to-morrow at, say, ten o’clock without saying a word to Mr. Ogilvy about it.  Then when the city clerk has signed and attested it and put the seal of the city on it, I’ll just casually take it over to Mr. Ogilvy.  Of course he’ll be surprised and ask me how I came to get it, and—­”

“And you look surprised,” his father cautioned. “—­sort of as if you failed to comprehend what he’s driving at.  Make him repeat.  Then you say:  ’Oh, that!  Why, that’s nothing, Mr. Ogilvy.  I found the telegram in those papers you left with me, read it, and concluded you’d left it there to give me the dope so I could go ahead and get the franchise for you.  Up here, whenever anybody wants a franchise from the city, they always hire an attorney to get it for them, so I didn’t think anything about this but just naturally went and got it for you.  If it ain’t right, why, say so and I’ll have it made right.’” Old Poundstone nudged his son in the short ribs and winked drolly.  “Let him get the idea you’re a fly bird and on to your job.”

“Leave it to yours truly,” said Henry.

His father carefully made a copy of the telegram.

“H’m!” he grunted.  “Wants to cross Water Street at B and build out Front Street.  Well, I dare say nobody will kick over the traces at that.  Nothing but warehouses and lumber-drying yards along there, anyhow.  Still, come to think of it, Pennington will probably raise a howl about sparks from the engines of the N. C. O. setting his lumber piles afire.  And he won’t relish the idea of that crossing, because that means a watchman and safety-gates, and he’ll have to stand half the cost of that.”

“He’ll be dead against it,” Henry declared.  “I know, because at the Wednesday meeting of the Lumber Manufacturers’ Association the subject of the N. C. O. came up, and Pennington made a talk against it.  He said the N. C. O. ought to be discouraged, if it was a legitimate enterprise, which he doubted, because the most feasible and natural route for a road would be from Willits, Mendocino County, north to Sequoia.  He said the N. C. O. didn’t tap the main body of the redwood-belt and that his own road could be extended to act as a feeder to a line that would build in from the south.  I tell you he’s dead set against it.”

“Then we won’t tell him anything about it, Henry.  We’ll just pull off this special session of the council and forget to invite the reporters; after the job has been put over, Pennington can come around and howl all he wants.  We’re not letting a chance like this slip by us without grabbing a handful of the tail-feathers, Henry.  No, sir—­not if we know it.”