I expressed my views with enthusiasm at
our final meeting, when the seven of us met to complete our plans.
Brokaw and the other five were to direct matters in the south; I
was to have full command of affairs in the north. A month later I
was at work. Over here"--he leaned over Gregson's shoulder and
placed a forefinger on the map--"I established our headquarters,
with MacDougall, a Scotch engineer, to help me. Within six months
we had a hundred and fifty men at Blind Indian Lake, fifty
canoemen bringing in supplies, and another gang putting in
stations over a stretch of more than a hundred miles of lake
country. Everything was working smoothly, better than I had
expected. At Blind Indian Lake we had a shipyard, two warehouses,
ice-houses, a company store, and a population of three hundred,
and had nearly completed a ten-mile roadbed for narrow-gauge
steel, which would connect us with the main line when it came up
to us. I was completely lost in my work. At times I almost forgot
Brokaw and the others. I was particularly careful of the funds
sent up to me, and had accomplished my work at a cost of a little
under a hundred thousand. At the end of the six months, when I was
about to make a visit into the south, one of our warehouses and
ten thousand dollars' worth of supplies went up in smoke.
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