"
"Course not," said Scattergood, "but this valley's goin' to open up.
It's startin'. There's only one way to open a valley, and that's to run
a railroad up it.... Narrow-gauge 'u'd do here. Carry mostly lumber, but
passengers, too."
"Thinking of building one?" asked Crane, almost laughing in
Scattergood's face.
"Thinkin' don't cost nobody anythin'," said Scattergood. "Ever take a
look at that charter of mine?"
"No."
"I'll let you read it over a bit. Maybe you'll git a idea from it."
He extracted the parchment from his safe, and spread it before them.
"Kind of look careful along toward the end--in the tail feathers of it,
so to speak," he advised.
They did so, and Crane looked up at the fat hardware man with eyes that
were not quite so contemptuous. "By George!" he said, "this thing's a
charter for a railroad down the valley, too."
"Uh-huh!" said Scattergood. "Dunno's the boys quite see what it was all
about, but they calculated to please me, so they put it through jest as
it stood. Mighty nice fellers up to the legislature."
"Pretty far in the future," said Keith, "and mighty expensive."
"Maybe not so far," said Scattergood, "and I could make a darn good
start narrow-gaugin' it with a hunderd thousand.
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