Second Harvest - Page 126/146

Later, when Roy arrived at the McAllister's house, he asked for a pen, paper and envelopes. Over the course of several weeks, Roy wrote letters to multiple postmasters. Roy wrote to towns called Pine, Show Low, Heber, Payson, and many others inquiring if the local postmaster knew of any logging companies in their area.

Nearly a month following Roy's letters, he received a reply from the Porter Lumber Mill near Overgaard, Arizona. The writer indicated to Roy that they were logging Ponderosa pines. Roy immediately wrote them back asking if they would be interested in selling the timber to him to build a home. When he received their reply, they kindly explained they could mill the logs into lumber, or if Roy preferred, they would sell him the whole felled trees and ship his purchase choice by rail car. This was exciting news for Roy.

The following day Roy walked to the bank. They had just completed rebuilding their new establishment and Roy was astounded to see the structure was made of brick and the new vault was quite secure. The bank had used a product called concrete to encase the vault. Roy visited the bank in hopes of obtaining a loan to rebuild his house.

"Welcome Roy, please have a seat," said Grover. "You're looking very well. Fully recovered have you?"

Roy nodded. "Almost."

"Great, what can we do for you today?"

"Well, as you know I'm getting married soon to Sara Johansson."

"Yes, I heard-an excellent woman and two great sons-congratulations to you both Roy."

"Thank you, Grover. It seems I'll need to rebuild my cabin and I was thinking of making it bigger for my new family."

"That sounds excellent. And might I add, we cannot thank you enough for eliminating our town of those Dixon men. Very nasty business those men were. But, we now have a new bank thanks to them."

"Well, I need to talk about a loan Grover."

"A loan? But why?"

"Well, I get a pension from the Army and I know I have a small savings here in the bank, but I'm going to need some money to rebuild my cabin. I've written a logging company in the White Mountains and they're willing to sell me replacement logs and lumber and ship it by rail to our town."

"Roy, you don't know do you?"

"Know about what Grover?"

Grover Matting leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Why the reward, of course."

"What are you talking about Grover? What reward?"

"Well, actually there were two rewards. There was a total of eight thousand dollars in rewards from various sources for the capture of the Dixon gang. That would be you, who accomplished that feat. Then Wells Fargo had a five thousand dollar reward for the capture of the robbers plus a five thousand dollar reward for the return of the Fargo money."