When one understood all that had gone before, the moment was an electric one for the future of the Poquette region.

In this apparently trivial offer the railroad king had formally offered the olive branch. He gazed at the lumber barons eagerly yet shrewdly.

It was evident that they had silently fixed on Shayne to reply.

After a moment Shayne began his answer, and as he had glanced from one to another of his companions, he evidently understood from their eyes that he had permission to speak for all. “Mr. Whittaker,” he said, with hearty frankness, “on behalf of myself and my associates I am going to make an earnest apology to you for the obstacles we threw in your way at the outset of this enterprise. But you must take into account the isolation of our lumbering interests and the jealousy we felt at the intrusion of outside men and capital. We feared what it might lead to. We have been doing business as our fathers did it, and we probably needed this awakening that the new railroad has given us. For now that it is built, we, as business men, see that the advantages it will afford us are desirable in every way. I speak for my friends here when I say that we are heartily glad you have beaten us.”

His tone was jocose yet sincere.

The men of business—railroad officials and lumber kings—broke out into a hearty laugh, the laugh of amity and comradeship. Shayne went on, more at his ease after that:

“Now we are going to afford you a proof that we mean what we say. We—this party right here—control fifty miles or more of timber country, reaching from here up to the West Branch on both sides, and extending as far inland. The river is broken by rapids and falls along this stretch. Our drives from up-country are sometimes held up a whole season when a bad jam forms in dry times. Every year in dynamiting these jams thousands of feet of logs are shattered. More are split on the ledges. We have agreed that we need a railroad. Considering our losses, we can afford to pay well for having our logs hauled to the smooth water. If you and your friends will finance and build such a road, we'll give you free right of way, turn over to you annually twenty million feet of timber for your log trains, and give you the haul of all our crews and camp supplies. Further than that, with spur tracks to lots now inaccessible by water, you can quadruple the value of our holdings and your own business at the same time. And this will be only the first link of a railroad system that we need all through the region. The thing has come to us in its right light at last, and we're ready to meet you half-way in everything.” He smiled. “We want the right sort of men behind the scheme, and you have plainly showed us that you are the right sort of men.”

President Whittaker thought a little.

“Gentlemen,” he said, at last, “I cannot give you a conclusive answer to-day, of course, but I can guarantee that no such offer as that is going to be refused by my associates and myself. Bring forward your proposition in writing. We'll come half-way, too, and be glad of the chance. If men and money can accomplish it, a standard gage road will be ready for your season's haul next year.”

He turned and touched Parker's shoulder.

“This young man,” he said, “will be our representative, with full powers to treat with you. Parker, are you ready for two years more in the wilderness? It's a big project, and your financial encouragement will be correspondingly big. I haven't said yet how thoroughly I appreciate your energy and loyalty and self-reliance in the matter of this little plaything of the past winter. I do not need to say anything, do I, except to urge you to take this new responsibility, and to add that your acceptance will encourage me to go ahead at once?”

Parker reached out his brown hand to meet the one extended to him.

“We also want to say to Mr. Parker,” went on Shayne, “that on our part we'll do more to assist him than we'd do for any other man you could place here. We have a little explanation to make to him and—”

“No explanations for me—if it's along the lines I apprehend, Mr. Shayne!” cried the young man, jokingly yet meaningly. He bent a significant look on the lumber king as he went forward to take his hand.

“Hush!” he murmured. “I keep my own counsels in business matters when I can do so without betraying the interests of my employers, and when they don't want to be bothered by my personal affairs.”

Shayne gave the engineer a long stare of honest admiration.

“Parker,” he gasped, “you never said a word? You're a—— Here, give me you hand again!”

A half hour later the lumbermen went across the Poquette Carry in a train made up of the engine and the coach—“the first real special train over the road,” Parker said.

Before the young engineer left for his summer vacation, he made a long canoe journey up into the Moxie section, ostensibly on a fishing expedition. He was gone ten days, a longer period than he had predicted to his assistant manager.

When he came down the West Branch one afternoon he helped Joshua Ward to lift a crippled man out of their canoe, and he carefully directed the helpers who carried the unfortunate person to the coach.

“I'm afraid the trip across the carry in a buckboard after the old manner would have been too rough for you, Colonel Ward,” remarked Parker, as the train clanked along under the big trees. “I think I was never more glad to offer modern conveniences to any traveller across this carry. You understand how deep my sincerity is in this, I am positive.”

“I understand everything better than I did, Parker,” returned Colonel Ward, feelingly, turning away wet eyes.

The astonishment in Sunkhaze settlement when the doughty ex-tyrant was borne through to the “down-country” train, accompanied by Parker and Joshua, was so intense that only the postmaster recovered himself in season to put a few leading questions. After the train had gone he announced the results of his findings to the crowd that clustered about him on the station platform.

“Near's I can find out,” he said, “that young Parker has been way up into the Moxie region an' found old Gid, and spent a week gettin' round him and coaxin' him to go 'long with him and Josh to the city, and be fitted to new hands and feet, that, so they tell me, is so ingenious a fellow can walk round and cut his own victuals and all that. Well, that will help old Gid a little. If the blamed old sanup could only be fitted out with a new disposition at the same time, we folks round here would be more pleased to see him, come back.”

“Postmaster,” cried Dan Connick, who had been one of those who bore the colonel from the landing in a chair, “don't you ever worry any more about a new disposition for Gid Ward. Those things come from the hand of God, and Colonel Gid has already been fitted out with the heart and soul of a man!”

“Then,” declared Dodge, gazing to where the smoke wreaths from the departing locomotive hung above the distant treetops, “I reckon we've just seen in bodily shape the passin' of the old in this section as well as the comin' of the new.”

THE END