OH, SHOOT! 



property. It was hours before breakfast time 

 when we arrived, but "M. J." himself was at 

 the dock, for a purser on one of his freight 

 steamers had apparently mislaid a locomotive 

 or a steam shovel or some such article which 

 Mr. Heney wished to use that morning, and 

 he had come down to find it. He was not 

 annoyed it takes something more than a lost, 

 strayed, or stolen locomotive to annoy a man 

 who builds railroads for fun rather than for 

 money and chooses a new country in which to 

 do it because it offers unusual obstacles. 



He welcomed us, drippingly, with a smile of 

 Irish descent which no humidity nor stress of 

 fortune could affect. 



"I'm sorry you didn't arrive yesterday," he 

 said, "for it looks as if the fall rains had set 

 in." It was the 2ist of May and this was no 

 joke, for Cordova is known as the wettest 

 place in the world. 



"Bear?" said Mr. Heney. "Yes, indeed. 

 We'll see that you get all you want." And 

 from that moment until we left Alaska with 

 our legal limit of pelts he made us feel that 

 the labors of his fifteen hundred men, the 

 building of his railroad, and the disbursement 

 of millions of dollars were, as compared with 



44 



