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Liberty if you could only put the old girl on wheels, and keep the ground solid!
Hunser next visited a St. Louis house-moving concern. Yes, for a nominal sum they would rent four solid iron-wheeled couples that could be mounted under heavy oak timbers. A week later, following a bitter cold spell that froze the ground solid, Hunser ordered the railroad to spot the cars, on successive days, on a siding near the farm-to market road; and to free the coaches of all wheels and underpinning as per contract.
THE contractor, crew now idle, felled saplings here and there and with caterpillar tractors and dynamite removed larger stumps and rock ledges along the old farm trail. The coaches were gently eased orf the rails by skidding them on greased planks. The huge jacks were lowered and the first Pullman coach, looking strangely like a gigantic roller skate, was ready to go.
People in Mokane still talk about the day when a Pullman coach appeared in the heart of town and slowly, ponderously, like a huge turtle, crept through the streets. Autoists drove hastily off the highway, cleaned windshields and promised to sign the pledge when they glimpsed what appeared to be a train, backing up along the right of way. When the second coach was launched even the rural school turned out.
A week later both private cars, now mounted on rock foundations, stood like sentinels on the little bluff overlooking the lake. In their wake was a well defined trail, which the
indomitable Hunser soon converted into a road, most of which was on railroad property covered by the lease. An easement through an adjacent farm cost twenty-five dollars and a promise to buy butter, eggs, milk from the farmer.
TOWARDS the end of May, when busy business men feel that urge to sneak away to streams and woodland glades, irrepressible Clyde Hunser again visited Judge Blair's office.
"Sorry, Clyde," grinned the Judge, "we are all outa junk today. Nothing to sell . . . unless of course we might dispose of an old locomotive or two ..."
"Oh yeah? Listen, Jack, do you realize that the fishing season opens Decoration Day!"
"Yes, I do," admitted the august member of the Missouri Bar. "As a matter of fact, Buck Pershal was in only yesterday and tried to pry me loose — Jim Newell is a damn nuisance. Every time we have a Board meeting he spins a fool yarn about a fisherman's paradise!"
"Maybe there is such a place," whispered Hunser softly. "I know of a spot which is a natural duck sanctuary. Squirrels and quail! — well, did you see Harry Mueller's picture in the Globe last fall with the bag he got? Listen — "
"How's the fishing? That's what I'm interested in!"
"This place hasn't been fished in since twenty years ago when it was stocked with small mouth bass and crappie. Here, lookee these snapshots' It's alive with fish!"