McKettrick spluttered and stormed and pleaded, but Wangen was firm and gave but one answer.  There could be but one result:  McKettrick wrote a check for fifteen thousand dollars—­and still had one strip to buy—­a strip not at an edge of his mill site, but bisecting it.

This strip caused the worry when Scattergood needed attention distracted the most.  But Scattergood managed finally to secure it for McKettrick for seventy-five hundred dollars.  Thus it will be seen how Scattergood resorted to the law of necessity, and how McKettrick suffered from failure to build securely his commercial structure from its foundation.  Twenty-two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars were paid by McKettrick for land that had cost Scattergood exactly three thousand six hundred dollars.  Scattergood believed in always paying for services rendered, so Wangen and each of the four ostensible landowners were given a hundred dollars.  Net profit to Scattergood, eighteen thousand one hundred and fifty dollars.

“Which it wouldn’t ‘a’ cost him if he hadn’t looked sneerin’ at my stockin’ feet,” said Scattergood to Johnnie Bones.

Johnnie Bones prepared the papers for the incorporation of the new railroad, and the organization was perfected.  There were two thousand shares of one hundred dollars each.  McKettrick put in his right of way at five thousand, an excessive figure, as Scattergood knew well, and gave his check for the balance of his 49 per cent.  Scattergood deposited a check for his 51 per cent, or one hundred and two thousand dollars.  Work was begun grading the right of way immediately.

McKettrick vanished from the region and did not appear again except for flying visits to his rising plant at Tupper Falls.  He never inspected so much as a foot of the new railroad back into the Goodhue tract—­and this, Scattergood very correctly took to be suspicious.  The work was left utterly in Scattergood’s hands, with no check upon him and no inspection.  It was not like a man of McKettrick’s character—­unless there were an object.

Once or twice Scattergood encountered President Castle of the G. & B. while the road was building.

“Hear you’re putting in a logging road for McKettrick,” he said.

“For me,” said Scattergood.  “Stock stands in my name.  Calculate to operate it myself.”

“Oh!” said Castle, and drummed with his fingers on the window ledge.  Scattergood said nothing.

“Own the right of way?” asked Castle.

“’Tain’t precisely a right of way,” said Scattergood.  “It’s a easement, or property right, or whatever the lawyers would call it, to run tracks over any part of McKettrick’s property and operate a loggin’ railroad—­where McKettrick says he wants to get logs from.”

“No definite right of way?”

“Jest what I described.”

“Capitalized for two hundred thousand, I see.”

“Uh-huh!”

“Any stock for sale?”