e & Company from carrying out
their contract to deliver two million bushels of the grain, even though
it were actually in the cars in Chicago.

Bannon knew much of Page & Company; that dotted all over the vast wheat
tracts of Minnesota and Montana were their little receiving elevators
where they bought grain of the farmers; that miles of wheat-laden
freight cars were already lumbering eastward along the railroad lines of
the North. He had a touch of imagination, and something of the enormous
momentum of that Northern wheat took possession of him. It would come to
Chicago, and he must be ready for it. It would be absurd to be balked by
the refusal of a little single-track road up in Michigan to carry a pile
of planks.

He paused before the grated window of the ticket and telegraph office
and asked for a map. He studied it attentively for a while; then he sent
a telegram:--

MACBRIDE & COMPANY, _Minneapolis_: G. & M. R. R. wants to tie us
up. Will not furnish cars to carry our cribbing. Can't get it
elsewhere inside of three weeks. Find out if Page will O. K. any
bill of extras I send in for bringing it down. If so, can they have
one or more steam barges at Manistogee within forty-eight hours?
Wire Ledyard Hotel. C. H. BANNON.

It was an hour's ride back to Ledyard. He went to the hotel and
persuaded the head waiter to give him something to eat, although it was
long after the dinner hour. As he left the dining room, the clerk handed
him two telegrams. One read:--

Get cribbing down. Page pays the freight. BROWN.

The other:--

Steam barge Demosthenes leaves Milwaukee to-night for Manistogee.
PAGE & CO.

CHAPTER IV

As Bannon was paying for his dinner, he asked the clerk what sort of a
place Manistogee was. The clerk replied that he had never been there,
but that he understood it was quite a lively town.

"Good road over there?"

"Pretty fair."

"That means you can get through if you're lucky."

The clerk smiled. "It won't be so bad to-day. You see we've been getting
a good deal of rain. That packs down the sand. You ought to get there
all right. Were you thinking of driving over?"

"That's the only way to go, is it? Well, I'll see. Maybe a little later.
How far is it?"

"The farmers call it eighteen miles."

Bannon nodded his thanks and went back to Sloan's office.

"Well, it didn't take you long," said the magnate. "Find out what was
the matter