When the expedition arrived at Sunkhaze at dusk, the postmaster brought the information that Colonel Ward had stormed away on the down-train with certain hints about getting some law on his own account. He had sworn over and over in most ferocious fashion that the Poquette Carry road should not be built so long as law and dynamite could be bought.
For two days Parker peacefully transported material, twenty tons a trip and two trips a day. On the evening of the third day Colonel Ward arrived from the city, accompanied by a sharp-looking lawyer. The two immediately hastened away across the lake toward Poquette.
Parker had twenty men garrisoned in a log camp at the carry, and had little fear that his supplies would be molested. It was hardly credible, either, that a man with as extensive property interests as Colonel Ward possessed would dare to destroy wantonly the goods of a railroad company in the strong position of the Poquette road. However, Parker resolved to make a survey at once, in order to put the swampers at work chopping trees and clearing the right of way.
When he left the cab of his engine the next forenoon at Poquette, he saw the furred figure of Colonel Ward in front of his carry camp a sort of half-way station for the timber operator's itinerant crews. The lawyer was at his elbow.
A half-hour later the young engineer had established his Spinnaker terminal point, and was running his lines. Still no word from the colonel, who was tramping up and down in front of the camp. Parker's whimsical fancy pictured those furs and coon tails as bristling and fluffing like the hair of an angry cat.
[Illustration: Appearance of an enraged Polar bear 078-100]
The young man wondered what card his antagonists were preparing to play. He found out promptly when he ordered his swampers to advance with their axes and begin chopping down the trees on the right of way. At the first "chock" ringing out on the crisp silence of the woods Ward came running down the snowy stretch of tote-road, presenting much the same appearance as would an up reared and enraged polar bear. The lawyer hurried after him, and several woodsmen followed more leisurely.
"Not another chip from those trees! Not another chip!" bawled the colonel. The men stopped chopping and looked at each other doubtfully.