time planning
to merge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand.
For over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards
his goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting.

Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the
agents of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts
to get control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking
resources of the junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets
would be established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then
these two towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the
swivel to the organization of trade of a continent.

Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried to
get what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the
game according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and
associates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the
table. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew
that he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war of
business was war and not "gollyfoxing," as he said. Selfish, stubborn
and self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and
sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat
prairie was never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality.
The Sagalac, even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was
full of logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the
money by interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging
smell of the pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for
which he had secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled
wood, hummed and buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile
it always wore when he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose
idiosyncrasies were like a meal to him; as he described it once to some
of the big men from the East who had been behind his schemes, yet who
cavilled at his ways. He was never diverted from his course by such men,
and while he was loyal to those who had backed him, he vowed that he
would be independent of these wooden souls in the end. They and the
great bankers behind them were for monopoly; he was for organization and
for economic prudence. So far they were necessary to all he did; but it
was his intention to shake himself free of all monopoly in good time.