“You will find the reason in the correspondence files of your general office,” was the curt reply of the Ocoee organizer. “I asked for a rate from Hesterville to Coalville on the material and was told that the shortage of cars would make it impossible for your road to handle the freight save as it might be transported a little at a time by the daily way-train. I don’t propose to be held up by a railroad company, the policy of which seems to be dictated by the C. C. & I., Mr. Barnby.” Barnby was a fleshy young man with an easy smile, and he gave the smile its blandishing opportunity. “You will have to ship your product out over our road when you get in operation, won’t you?” he asked mildly. “Not necessarily. We have all the capital we need, and if you don’t give us an equal show with the C. C. & I. we shall build a ten-mile industrial track, for which we have already secured a right of way, to a connection with the South Central at Midvale. It’s up to your people. Talk it over with them when you go back to headquarters. Glad to have met you. Drop in again when you are going over the line. Good morning.” Touching this intimation that the coal trust had already begun a new series of impeding activities, speculation was rife. Some said that the C. C. & I. would buy the new mine, lock, stock, and barrel, and close it; others hinted that the trust would put the price of coke so low that the new company would be bankrupted in short order; still others suggested that Consolidated Coal would conspire with the railroad and call Tregarvon’s bluff to build the industrial cut-off. Wilmerding or Duncan, or both of them, brought these rumors to Tregarvon, and were amazed to find that he refused to be either disturbed or greatly interested. In many ways the superintendent and the old Scotch engineer were discovering daily that they had to do with a man who had developed suddenly into a master of himself and others. The light-hearted young fellow who had thrown himself so joyously into the fray at the beginning had given place to a modern captain of industry, alert, strong-willed, a bit dictatorial, perhaps, but entirely capable. “Never mind what the C. C. & I. is doing, or will try to do,” he told his oddly assorted lieutenants. “Our job is to get the mine open and the ovens fired. Consolidated Coal will neither buy us nor break us, nor force us to build a railroad to Midvale. I’ll take care of all those details at the proper time.” It was on the day when the first tram loads of Ocoee coal were coming down the mountain to be dumped into the oven-filling hoppers that another caller discovered the new Tregarvon. Late in the afternoon a neat, rubber-tired buggy, drawn by a black Hambletonian, stopped in front of the Ocoee office-building, and a round-bodied little man descended and hitched the horse.