"
"I wonder why the blamed fools ever bought in there, Bryce."
"When they bought, it looked like a good buy. You will remember that
some ten years ago a company was incorporated with the idea of
building a railroad from Grant's Pass, Oregon, on the line of the
Southern Pacific, down the Oregon and California coast to tap the
redwood belt."
"I remember. There was a big whoop and hurrah and then the
proposition died abornin'. The engineers found that the cost of
construction through that mountainous country was prohibitive."
"Well, before the project died, Gregory and his associates believed
that it was going to survive. They decided to climb in on the ground
floor--had some advance, inside information that the road was to be
built; go they quietly gathered together thirty thousand acres of
good stuff and then sat down to wait for the railroad, And they are
still waiting. Gregory, by the way, is the president of the Trinidad
Redwood Timber Company. He's an Edinburgh man, and the fly American
promoters got him to put up the price of the timber and then
mortgaged their interests to him as security for the advance. He
foreclosed on their notes five years ago."
"And there he is with his useless timber!" John Cardigan murmured
thoughtfully. "The poor Scotch sucker!"
"He isn't poor.
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