“All the other railroads already have the tracks laid and their routes formed. They make enough money they don’t need to hold us up. It’s different with Garrison. He’s tryin’ to do all this on his own. It’s costin’ him a ton of money and trust me, he’s goin’ to be wantin’ to get it all back from us. He’ll hold us up for as much as he can get from us.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that,” Warren said. “It could be you are right.”
“You say we have to stop him?” Phillips asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, my question is, how do you plan to do that?”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Ike said. “He is going to have to have cattle to ship, in order to make a profit. All we have to do is deny him cattle to ship. If we don’t ship any of our cattle—if we don’t use the railroad for freight, he’ll be done for. A railroad can’t make it on just passengers.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Warren said.
“Mr. Clinton, I have to ask this. Suppose he goes ahead and builds the railroad,” a man named Lassiter said. “How far are you willin’ to go to stop it?”
“If he finds out that we are all determined not to use it, he won’t build it. He’s not going to just throw his money away.”
“But what if he does start buildin’ it, how far are we goin’ to go to stop it?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when it happens,” Ike said.
Wade Garrison was a former general in the Army of the Confederacy. Before the war, he had been a major in the United States Army, a graduate of West Point with a degree in engineering. He had built railroads for the army; now he was planning to build a railroad for himself.
“These are damn good doughnuts, General,” Simon Durant said. Durant was a banker from Denver, one of four bankers who were gathered in Garrison’s Higbee office.
“You’ll have to thank my daughter for that,” Garrison replied. “She made them.”
“All right, General, you got us all here,” one of the other bankers said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“This,” Garrison said, pointing to a large map that was tacked up on the wall of his office. The map covered Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, and it was crisscrossed with blue lines, and one red line.
“Gentlemen, on this map, you see the railroads that serve our fair state, and in fact, connect our state with both coasts. Those railroads are represented by the blue lines. I propose to add to that network by building the CNM&T from La Junta, Colorado, to Big Spring, Texas,” Garrison said. “On the map, the CNM&T is represented by this red line.”
“The CNM&T?” one of the bankers asked.
“The Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas,” Garrison said. He stepped up to the map. “As you can see, that will open up all of Southeast Colorado, Northeast New Mexico, and Northwest Texas. That would provide service to several thousand miles of country not now served by rail. And the connections at either end, with existing railroads, will mean that we can ship our cattle from here to Chicago, we can import fruit from Florida, or we can buy a ticket to San Francisco or New York and be there within a matter of a few days.”
“If I might ask a dumb question,” one of the bankers said.
“Greg, as I used to tell my junior officers, there are no dumb questions,” Garrison replied. He paused for a second, then added, “Just the dumb-assed people who ask them.”
For a second, the four bankers looked surprised. Then, realizing that it was a joke, they laughed appreciatively.
“Go ahead, ask,” Garrison said.
“If you look at that map, you will see that there are very few towns or even settlements along the proposed route. Where will the business come from?”
“Ah, the railroad will generate its own business,” Garrison said. He pointed to the state of Nebraska. “Gentlemen, when Nebraska was admitted to the Union in 1867, it had a population of just over one hundred thousand people. Today, it boasts over one million. That is a tenfold increase in two decades’ time, and that increase is due to the railroad.” Again, Garrison pointed to the route of the CNM&T Railroad. “Our railroad is covering twice the area of the Nebraska railroads, which should mean at least twice as many people.”
“You are painting a rosy picture, General,” one of the bankers said. “But let’s get right down to it, shall we? You are going to need financing.”
“Yes.”
“How much do you need?”
“I’ve worked it out very carefully,” Garrison said, “taking into account right-of-way that must be purchased, as well as right of way that will be provided by grants from the federal and state governments. I have also considered the cost of supplies and labor.”
“How much?” the banker asked again.
“Twenty thousand dollars per mile, which means ten million dollars,” Garrison said without blinking an eye.
“Ten million dollars?” one of the bankers replied, blanching at the prospect. “That’s a lot of money.”
“Yes, it is,” Garrison said. He smiled. “That’s why I have brought four of you here. I’m not asking you to compete for the loan, I’m asking you to share it. This way, you would only have to come up with two and a half million dollars each.”
