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It paid him well for the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it. The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to every money-making affair in the community.
In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald Mountain.
From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires.
For this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of the hills against the U. & M. Railroad. Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the North.
It must strike first, and in a spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter charge. Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers.
A political agent of the railroad who drew a salary from Racquette County as a judge had just finished presenting to the committee the reasons why the people of that part of the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill should become a law. He had drawn a pathetic picture of the condition of the farmers, so long deprived of the benefits of a railroad.
Paddling through one of the Spectacle ponds, along the Racquette river, one early spring day, I came upon a combination of white pine, red pine, and paper-birch that was simply dazzling in effect. This birch has bark, as every one knows, of a shining creamy white.
In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that a man had been killed up the corner of the county.
Now, among his people again, and once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.
The speech of the Racquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers of the opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured, stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in general and this one in particular.
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