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+Project Gutenberg's The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush, by Francis Lynde
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush
+
+Author: Francis Lynde
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2005 [EBook #16573]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HONORABLE SENATOR SAGE-BRUSH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stacy Brown Thellend and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HONORABLE SENATOR SAGE-BRUSH
+
+
+[Illustration: "He's taken our retainer!" snapped the vice-president]
+
+
+THE HONORABLE
+SENATOR SAGE-BRUSH
+
+BY
+
+FRANCIS LYNDE
+
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+NEW YORK : : : : : 1913
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Published September, 1913
+
+[Illustration]
+
+TO MR. GEORGE ADY
+
+     My Regius Professor in the School of Western Railroading, and
+     himself a keen observer, _in situ_, of the conditions which I have
+     herein sought to portray, this book is most affectionately
+     inscribed.
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+I. BECAUSE PATRICIA SAID "NO"                3
+
+II. THE BOSS                                26
+
+III. A FALSE GALLOP OF MEMORIES             40
+
+IV. THE HIGHBINDERS                         56
+
+V. AT WARTRACE HALL                         69
+
+VI. ON THE WING OF OCCASIONS                86
+
+VII. A BATTLE ROYAL                         96
+
+VIII. THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT                   110
+
+IX. THE RANK AND FILE                      121
+
+X. IN THE HERBARIUM                        138
+
+XI. THE GREAT GAME                         148
+
+XII. A WELL-SPRING IN THE DESERT           165
+
+XIII. THE LIEGEMAN                         178
+
+XIV. BARRIERS INVISIBLE                    193
+
+XV. SWORD-PLAY                             203
+
+XVI. THE SAFE-BLOWER                       213
+
+XVII. ON THE KNEES OF THE HIGH GODS        230
+
+XVIII. THE CHASM                           241
+
+XIX. A COG IN THE WHEEL                    256
+
+XX. A STONE FOR BREAD                      264
+
+XXI. THE UNDER-DOG                         280
+
+XXII. THE ICONOCLAST                       293
+
+XXIII. A CRY IN THE NIGHT                  302
+
+XXIV. FIELD HEADQUARTERS                   320
+
+XXV. BLOOD AND IRON                        327
+
+XXVI. APPLES OF GOLD                       343
+
+XXVII. IN WHICH PATRICIA DRIVES            356
+
+XXVIII. THE GOSSIPING WIRES                367
+
+XXIX. AT SHONOHO INN                       379
+
+XXX. THE RECKONING                         390
+
+XXXI. _À LA BONNE HEURE_                   407
+
+
+
+
+THE HONORABLE SENATOR SAGE-BRUSH
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+BECAUSE PATRICIA SAID "NO"
+
+
+Some one was giving a dinner dance at the country club, and Blount, who
+was a week-end guest of the Beverleys, was ill-natured enough to be
+resentful. What right had a gay and frivolous world to come and thrust
+its light-hearted happiness upon him when Patricia had said "No"? It was
+like bullying a cripple, he told himself morosely, and when he had read
+the single telegram which had come while he was at dinner he begged Mrs.
+Beverley's indulgence and went out to find a chair in a corner of the
+veranda where the frivolities had not as yet intruded.
+
+It was a North Shore night like that in which Shakespeare has mingled
+moon-shadows with the gossamer fantasies of the immortal "Dream." Though
+the dance was in-doors, the trees on the lawn and the road-fronting
+verandas of the club-house were hung with festoons of Chinese lanterns.
+At the carriage-entrance smart automobiles were coming and going, and
+one of them, with the dust of the Boston parkways on its running-gear,
+brought the guests of honor--three daughters of a Western senator lately
+home from their summer abroad.
+
+Blount knew neither the honorers nor the honored ones, and had
+resolutely refused the chance offered him by Mrs. Beverley to amend his
+ignorance. For Patricia's "No" was not yet twenty-four hours old, and
+since it had changed the stars in their courses for Patricia's lover,
+the cataclysm was much too recent to postulate anything like a return of
+the heavenly bodies to their normal orbits.
+
+Not that Blount put it that way, either to Mrs. Beverley or to himself.
+He was a level-eyed, square-shouldered young man of an up-to-date world,
+and the stock from which he sprang was prosaic and practical rather than
+poetic or sentimental. But the fact remained, and when he sat back in
+his corner absently folding the lately received telegram into a narrow
+spill and scowling moodily down upon the coming and going procession of
+motor-cars he was unconsciously giving a very life-like imitation of the
+disappointed lover the world over.
+
+It was thus, and apparently by the merest chance, that Gantry found him;
+a chance because the Winnebasset club-house is spacious and the dinner
+dance minimized the hazards of a meeting between two unattached men who
+were merely transient guests. But the railroad man at least was
+unfeignedly glad.
+
+"Doesn't it beat the dickens what a little world this is?" he exclaimed,
+with a true bromidian disregard for the outworn and the axiomatic. "Of
+course, I knew you were in or around Boston somewhere, but to run slap
+up against you here, when there seemed to be nothing in it for me but to
+be bored stiff--" He stopped short, finding it difficult to be shiftily
+insincere with as old a friend as Evan Blount. But in the nature of
+things it was baldly impossible to tell Blount that the meeting was not
+accidental.
+
+"Pull up a chair and sit down," said Blount, not too ungraciously,
+considering his just cause to be more ungracious. "I was thinking of you
+a little while ago, Dick. I saw your name in the list of
+Transcontinental representatives to the traffic meeting in Boston,
+and--well, at the present moment I'm not sure but you are the one man in
+the world I wanted most to meet."
+
+"Say! that sounds pretty good to me," laughed Gantry, settling himself
+comfortably in a lazy-chair and feeling in his pockets for a cigar.
+"I've been in Boston the full week, skating around over the chilly crust
+of things and never able to get so much as one tenuous little social
+claw-hold. Say, Evan, how many ice-plants does that impenetrable old
+town keep going ever count 'em?"
+
+"Boston is all right when you know it--or, rather, when it comes to know
+you," returned Blount, remembering that Boston or Cambridge--which is
+Boston in the process of elucidation--was the birth and dwelling place
+of Patricia.
+
+Gantry grinned broadly and lighted his cigar.
+
+"The 'effete East' has psychically and psychologically corralled you,
+hasn't it, Evan?--to put it in choice Bostonese. I thought maybe it
+would when I heard you were taking the post-graduate frills in the
+Harvard Law School. By the way, how much longer are you in for?"
+
+"I am out of the Law School, if that is what you mean--out and admitted
+to the bar," said Blount. "If you get into trouble with the Boston
+police let me know, and I'll ask for a change of venue to the greasewood
+hills and Judge Lynch's court."
+
+"The good old greasewood hills!" chanted Gantry, who was of those who
+curse their homeland to its face and praise it consistently and
+pugnaciously elsewhere. "Are you ever coming back to them, Blount? I
+believe you told me once, in the old college days, that you were
+Western-born."
+
+"I told you the truth; and until to-night I have never thought much
+about going back," was Blount's rather enigmatic reply.
+
+"But now you are thinking of it?" inquired the railroad man, waking up.
+"That's good; the old Sage-brush State is needing a few bright young
+lawyers mighty bad. Is that why I'm the particular fellow you wanted to
+meet?"
+
+Blount passed the telegram which had come while he was at dinner across
+the interval between the two chairs. "Read that," he said.
+
+Gantry smoothed the square of yellow paper carefully and held it up to
+the softened glow of the electric ceiling-globe. Its date-line carried
+the name of his own city in the "greasewood country"--the capital of
+the State--and the time-markings sufficiently indicated its recent
+arrival. Below the date-line he read:
+
+TO EVAN SHELBY BLOUNT,
+Standish Apartments, Boston.
+
+     You have had everything that money could buy, and you owe me
+     nothing but an occasional sight of your face. If you are not tied
+     to some woman's apron-string, why can't you come West and grow up
+     with your native State?
+
+DAVID BLOUNT.
+
+It was characteristic of Richard Gantry, light-handed juggler of
+friendly phrases, but none the less a careful and methodical official of
+a great railway company, that he folded the telegram in the original
+creases before he passed it back.
+
+"Well?" said Blount, when the pause had grown over-abundantly long.
+
+"I was just thinking," was the reflective rejoinder. "We used to be
+fairly chummy in the old Ann Arbor days, Evan, and yet I never, until a
+few days ago, knew or guessed that Senator Blount was your father."
+
+"He was and is," was the quiet reply. "I supposed everybody knew it."
+
+"_I_ didn't," Gantry denied, adding: "You may not realize it, but what
+you don't tell people about yourself would make a pretty big book if it
+were printed."
+
+Blount's smile was altogether friendly.
+
+"What's the use, Richard?" he asked. "The world has plenty of
+banalities and commonplaces without the adding of any man's personal
+contribution. Why should I bore you or anybody?"
+
+"Oh, of course, if you put it on that ground," said the railroad traffic
+manager. "Just the same, there's another side to it. In an unguarded
+moment, back in the college days, as I have said, you admitted to me
+that you were Western-born. I always supposed afterward that you
+regretted either the fact or the mention of it, since you never told me
+any more."
+
+"Perhaps I didn't tell more because there was so little to tell. I had a
+boyhood like other boys--or, no, possibly it wasn't quite the usual. I
+was born on the 'Circle-Bar,' when the ranch was--as it still is, I
+believe--a hard day's drive for a bunch of prime steers distant from the
+nearest shipping-corral on the railroad. At twelve I could 'ride line,'
+'cut out,' and 'rope down' like any other healthy ranch-bred youngster,
+and since the capital was at that time only in process of getting itself
+surveyed and boomed into existence I had never seen a town bigger than
+Painted Hat."
+
+"And what happened when you were twelve?" queried Gantry. He was not
+abnormally curious, but Blount's communicative mood was unusual enough
+to warrant a quickening of interest.
+
+"The greatest possible misfortune that can ever come to a half-grown
+boy, Dick--my mother died."
+
+Gantry's own boyhood was not so deeply buried in the past as to make
+him forgetful of its joys and sorrows. "That was hard--mighty hard," he
+assented. Then: "And pretty soon your father married again?"
+
+"Not for some years," Blount qualified. "But for me the heavens were
+fallen. I was sent away to school, to college, to Europe; then I came
+here to the Law School. In all that time I've never seen the
+'Circle-Bar' or my native State--in fact, I have never been west of
+Chicago."
+
+Gantry was astonished and he admitted it in exclamatory phrase. As a
+railroad man, continent-crossing travel was to him the merest matter of
+course. Though he might Sunday-over at the Winnebasset Country Club on
+the North Shore, it was well within the possibilities that the following
+week-end might find him sweltering in New Orleans or buttoning his
+overcoat against the raw evening fogs of San Francisco.
+
+"Never been west of Chicago?" he echoed. "Never been--" He stopped
+short, beginning to realize vaguely that there must be strong reasons;
+reasons which might lie beyond the pale of a college friendship, and the
+confidences begotten thereby, in the rendering of them.
+
+"No," said Blount.
+
+"Then the senator's--that is--er--your father's political life has never
+touched you."
+
+The friendly smile rippled again at the corners of Blount's steady gray
+eyes, but this time it was shot through with a faint suggestion of the
+Blount grimness.
+
+"It has touched me on the sympathetic side, Dick. I saw a large-hearted,
+open-handed old cattle-king wading good-naturedly into the muddy stream
+of politics to gratify an ambition that wasn't at all his own--a woman's
+ambition. In order that the woman might mix and mingle in Washington
+society for a brief minute or two, he got himself elected to fill out an
+unexpired term of two months in the United States Senate--bought the
+election, some said. That was three years ago, wasn't it?--a long time,
+as political incidents or accidents go. But Washington hasn't forgotten.
+When I was down there last winter the five-o'clock-tea people were still
+recalling Mrs. Blount's gowns and the wild-Western naïveté of 'The
+Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.'"
+
+Gantry was chuckling softly when the half-bitter admission had got
+itself fully made.
+
+"Land of love, Evan!" he said, "you may be an educated post-graduate all
+right, with the proper Boston degree of culture laid on and rubbed down
+to a hard-glaze finish, but you've got a lot to learn yet--about the
+senator and his politics, I mean. Why, Great Snipes, man! he isn't in it
+a little bit for the social frills and furbelows; he never was. Let me
+intimate a few things: Politically speaking, David Blount is by long
+odds the biggest man in his State to-day. He can have anything he wants,
+from the head of the ticket down. You spoke rather contemptuously just
+now of his two months in the Senate; you probably didn't know that he
+might have gone back if he had wanted to; that he actually did a much
+more difficult thing--named his successor."
+
+David Blount's son stood up and put his shoulders against one of the
+veranda pillars. From the new view-point he could look through the
+reading-room windows and on into the assembly-room where the dancers
+were keeping time to the measures of a two-step. But he was not thinking
+of the dancers when he said:
+
+"It's a sheer miracle, Dick, your dropping down here to-night like the
+_deus ex machina_ of the old Greek plays. You've read this
+telegram"--holding up the folded message--"it is just possible that you
+can tell me what lies behind it. Why has my father sent it at this
+particular time and in those words? He knows perfectly well that my
+plans for settling here in Boston were definitely made more than a year
+ago."
+
+"I can tell you the situation out in the greasewood country, if that's
+what you want to know," said Gantry after a thoughtful pause.
+
+"Make it simple," was Blount's condition, adding: "What I don't know
+about the business or the political situation in the West would fill a
+much larger book than the one you were speaking of a few minutes ago."
+
+"'Business or political,' you say; they are Siamese twins nowadays,"
+returned the railroad man, with a short laugh. Then: "The outlook for
+us out yonder in the greasewood hills is precisely what it is in a dozen
+other States this year--east, west, north and south--everything
+promising a renewal of the unreasoning, bull-headed legislative fight
+against the railroads. I suppose our own case is typical. As everybody
+knows, the Transcontinental Railway has practically created two-thirds
+of the States through which it passes--made them out of whole cloth.
+Where you left sage-brush and bare hills and unfenced cattle ranges a
+dozen years ago you will now find irrigation, tilled farms, orchards,
+rich mines--development everywhere, with a rapidly growing population to
+help it along. To make all this possible, the railroad took a chance; it
+was a mighty long chance, and somebody has to pay the bills."
+
+"I know," smiled Blount; "the bill-paying is summed up in some railroad
+man's clever phrase, 'all the tariff the traffic will stand.' I can
+remember one year when my father rose up in his wrath and drove his beef
+cattle one hundred and fifty miles across the Transcontinental tracks to
+the Overland Central."
+
+"That was in the old days," protested Gantry, who was loyal to his salt.
+"As the State has filled up, we've tried to meet the situation half-way,
+as a straight business proposition. Fares and tariffs have been lowered
+from time to time, and--"
+
+"You are not making it simple enough by half," warned Blount
+quizzically. "You are getting further away from my telegram every
+minute."
+
+Gantry paused to relight his cigar.
+
+"I don't know how your telegram figures in it specially, but I do know
+this: the legislature to be elected this fall in our State will be
+chosen entirely without regard to the old party lines. There is only one
+issue before the people and that is the Transcontinental Railway. The
+'Paramounters,' as they call themselves, taking the name from the
+assumption that it is the paramount duty of the voter to pinch any
+business interest bigger than his own, would like to legislate us out of
+existence; as against that we shall beat the tomtom and do our level
+best to stay on top of earth."
+
+"Naturally," Blount agreed, then half-absently, and with his eyes still
+resting upon the merrymakers twirling like paired automatons in the
+distant assembly-room: "And my father--how does he stand?"
+
+"The idea of your having to ask me how the senator stands in his own
+State!" exclaimed Gantry. "But really, Evan, I'd give a good bit of hard
+cash to be able to tell you in so many words just where he does stand.
+There are a good many people in our neck of woods who would like mighty
+well to know. It will make all the difference in the world when it comes
+to a show-down."
+
+"Why will it?"
+
+"Because, apart from the railroad and the anti-railroad factions, there
+is a very complete and smoothly running machine organization."
+
+"And my father is identified with the machine?"
+
+Again Gantry choked over the singular lack of information discovering
+itself in Blount's question.
+
+"Land of glory!" he ejaculated. "Where have you been burying yourself,
+Evan? Didn't I just tell you that he is the biggest man in the State?
+Oh, no"--with heavy irony--"he isn't identified with the machine--not at
+all; he merely owns it and runs it. We may think we can swing a safe
+majority in the legislature, and the 'antis' may be just as firmly
+convinced that they can. But before either side can turn a wheel it will
+have to walk up to the captain's office and get its orders."
+
+"Ah," said Blount, and a little later: "Thank you, Dick, I am pretty
+badly out of touch with the Western political situation, as you've
+discovered." Then he changed the subject abruptly. "How long will your
+traffic meeting last?"
+
+"We practically finished to-day. An hour or two on Monday will wind it
+up."
+
+"After which you'll go West?"
+
+"After which I shall go West by the Monday noon train if I can make it.
+You couldn't hire me to stay in Boston an hour longer than I have to."
+
+Silence for a time until Blount broke in upon Gantry's tapping of the
+dance-music rhythm with: "If I can close up a few unfinished business
+matters and get ready I may go with you, Dick. Would you mind?"
+
+"Yes; I should mind so much that I'd willingly miss a train or so and
+worry out a few more of the chilly Boston hours rather than lose the
+chance of having you along."
+
+"That is good of you, I'm sure. I should bore myself to death if I had
+to travel alone."
+
+Blount's rejoinder might have passed for a mere friendly commonplace if
+it had not been for the rather curiously worded telegram. But it was a
+goodly portion of Gantry's business in life to put two and two together,
+and that phrase in the senator's message about a woman's apron-string
+interested him. Moreover, it was subtly suggestive.
+
+"Ever meet your father's--er--the present Mrs. Blount, Evan?" he asked.
+
+"No." Blount may have been Western-born, but the chilling discouragement
+he could crowd into the two-letter negation spoke eloquently of his
+Eastern training.
+
+Gantry was rebuffed but not disheartened.
+
+"She is a mighty fine woman," he ventured.
+
+"So I have been given to understand." This time Blount's reply was icy.
+But now Gantry's eyes were twinkling and he pressed his advantage.
+
+"You'll have to reckon pretty definitely with her if you go out to the
+greasewood country, Evan. Next to your father, she is the court of last
+resort; indeed, there are a good many people who insist that she _is_
+the court--the power behind the throne, you know."
+
+There is one ditch out of which the most persistent and gladsome mocker
+may not drive his victim, and that is the ditch of silence. Blount said
+nothing. Nevertheless, Gantry tried once more.
+
+"Not interested, Evan?"
+
+Blount turned and looked his companion coldly in the eyes.
+
+"Not in the slightest degree, Dick. Will you take that for your answer
+now, and remember it hereafter?"
+
+"Sure," laughed the railroad man. And then, to round out the forbidden
+topic by adding worse to bad: "I didn't know it was a sore spot with
+you. How should I know? But, as I say, you'll have to reckon with her
+sooner or later, and--"
+
+"Let's talk of something else," snapped Blount.
+
+Gantry found a match and relighted his cigar. When he began again he was
+still thinking of the "apron-string" clause in the senator's telegram.
+
+"I can't understand how any man with Western blood in his veins could
+ever be content to marry and settle down in this over-civilized neck of
+woods," he remarked, looking down upon the parked automobiles and around
+at the country-club evidences of the civilization.
+
+"Can't you?" smiled Blount, with large lenience. One of the things the
+civilization had done for him was to make him good-naturedly tolerant of
+the crudeness of the outlander.
+
+"No, I can't," asserted the Westerner. Then he added: "Of course, I
+don't know the Eastern young woman even by sight. She may be all that is
+lovely, desirable, and enticing--if a man could hope to live long
+enough to get really well acquainted with her."
+
+"She is," declared Blount, with the air of one who had lived quite long
+enough to know.
+
+Once more Gantry was putting two and two together. Blount's
+determination to go West and grow up with the country--his father's
+country--was apparently a very sudden one. Had the decision turned
+entirely upon the senator's telegram? Gantry, wise in his generation,
+thought not.
+
+"You say that as if you'd been taking a few lessons," he laughed. Then,
+with the friendly impudence which only a college comradeship could
+excuse: "Is she here to-night?"
+
+"No," said Blount, unguardedly making the response which admitted so
+much more than it said.
+
+"Tell me about her," Gantry begged. "I don't often read a love story,
+but I like to hear 'em."
+
+If it had been any one but Gantry, Blount would probably have had a
+sharp attack of reticence, with outward symptoms unmistakable to the
+dullest. But the time, the surroundings, and the exceeding newness of
+Patricia's "No" combined to break down the barriers of reserve.
+
+"There isn't much to tell, Dick," he began half humorously, half in
+ill-concealed self-pity. "I've known her for a year, and I've loved her
+from the first day. That is Chapter One; and Chapter Two ends the story
+with one small word. She says 'No.'"
+
+"The dickens she does!" said Gantry, in hearty sympathy. Then: "But
+that's a good sign, isn't it? Haven't I heard somewhere that they always
+say 'No' at first?"
+
+Blount laughed in spite of himself. Gantry, the Dick Gantry of the
+college period, had always been a man's man, gay, light-hearted, and
+care-free to the outward eye, but in reality one who was carrying
+burdens of poverty and distress which might well have crushed an older
+and a stronger man. There had been no time for sentiment then, and
+Blount wondered if there had been in any later period.
+
+"I am afraid I can't get any comfort out of that suggestion," he
+returned. "When Miss Patricia Anners says 'No,' I am quite sure she
+means it."
+
+"Think so?" said Gantry, still sympathetic. "Well, I suppose you are the
+best judge. Tough, isn't it, old man? What's the obstacle?--if you can
+tell it without tearing the bandages off and saying 'Ouch!'"
+
+"It is Miss Anners's career."
+
+"H'm," was the doubtful comment; "I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate
+that a little for me. I'm not up in the 'career' classification."
+
+"She has been studying at home and abroad in preparation for
+social-settlement work in the large cities. Of course, I knew about it;
+but I thought--I hoped--"
+
+"You hoped it was only a young woman's fad--which it probably is,"
+Gantry cut in.
+
+"Y-yes; I'm afraid that was just what I did hope, Dick. But I couldn't
+talk against it. Confound it all, you can't go about smashing ideals
+for the people you love best!"
+
+"Rich?" queried Gantry.
+
+"Oh, no. Her father has the chair of paleontology, and never gets within
+speaking distance of the present century. The mother has been dead many
+years."
+
+"And you say the girl has the Hull House ambition?"
+
+"The social-betterment ambition. It's an ideal, and I can't smash it.
+You wouldn't smash it, either, Dick."
+
+"No; I guess that's so. If I were in your fix I should probably do what
+you are doing--say 'Good-by, fond heart,' and hie me away to the
+forgetful edge of things. And it's simply astonishing how quickly the
+good old sage-brush hills will help a man to forget everything that ever
+happened to him before he ducked."
+
+Blount winced a little at that. It was no part of his programme to
+forget Patricia. Indeed, for twenty-four hours, or the waking moiety of
+that period, he had been assuring himself of the utter impossibility of
+anything remotely approaching forgetfulness. This thought made him
+instantly self-reproachful; regretful for having shown a sort of
+disloyalty by opening the door of the precious and sacred things, even
+to so good a friend as Dick Gantry; and from regretting to amending was
+never more than a step for Evan Blount. There were plenty of
+reminiscences to be threshed over, and Blount brought them forward so
+tactfully that Gantry hardly knew it when he was shouldered away from
+the open door of the acuter personalities.
+
+It was quite late, and the talk had again drifted around to a one-sided
+discussion of practical politics in the Western definition of the term,
+when Gantry, pleading weariness on the score of his hard week's work at
+the railroad meeting, went to bed. The summer night was at its perfect
+best, and Blount was still wakeful enough to refill his pipe and
+well-balanced enough to be thankful for a little solitude in which to
+set in order his plans for the newly struck-out future. In the later
+talk with Gantry he had learned many things about the political
+situation in his native State, things which were enlightening if not
+particularly encouraging. Trained in the ethics of a theoretical school,
+he knew only enough about practical politics to be very certain in his
+own mind that they were all wrong. And if Gantry's account could be
+trusted, there were none but practical politics in the State where his
+father was reputed to be the dictator.
+
+Hitherto his ambition had been to build up a modest business practice in
+some Eastern city, and, like other aspiring young lawyers, he had been
+filling out the perspective of the picture with the look ahead to a
+possible time when some great corporation should need his services in
+permanence. He was of the new generation, and he knew that the lawyer of
+the courts was slowly but surely giving place to the lawyer of business.
+Without attempting to carry the modern business situation bodily over
+into the domain of pure ethics, he was still young enough and
+enthusiastic enough to lay down the general principle that a great
+corporation, being itself a creation of the law, must necessarily be
+law-abiding, and, if not entirely ethical in its dealings with the
+public, at least equitably just. Therefore his ideal in his own
+profession was the man who could successfully safeguard large interests,
+promote the beneficent outreachings of corporate capital, and be the
+adviser of the man or men to whom the greater America owes its place at
+the head of the civilized nations.
+
+Oddly enough, though Gantry's attitude had been uncompromisingly
+partisan, Blount had failed to recognize in the railroad official a
+skilful pleader for the special interests--the interests of the few
+against those of the many. Hence he was preparing to go to the new field
+with a rather strong prepossession in favor of the defendant
+corporation. In their later conversation Gantry had intimated pretty
+broadly that there was room for an assistant corporation counsel for the
+railroad, with headquarters in the capital of the Sage-brush State.
+Blount assumed that the requirements, in the present crisis at least,
+would be political rather than legal, and in his mind's eye he saw
+himself in the prefigured perspective, standing firmly as the defender
+of legitimate business rights in a region where popular prejudice was
+capable of rising to anarchistic heights of denunciation and attack.
+
+The picture pleased him; he would scarcely have been a true descendant
+of the fighting Blounts of Tennessee if the prospect of a conflict had
+been other than inspiring. If there were to be no Patricia in his
+future, ambition must be made to fill all the horizons; and since work
+is the best surcease for any sorrow, he found himself already looking
+forward in eager anticipation to the moment when he could begin the
+grapple, man-wise and vigorously, in the new environment.
+
+It was after the ashes had been knocked from the bedtime pipe that
+Blount left his chair and the secluded corner of the veranda to go down
+among the parked automobiles on the lawn. His one recreation--and it was
+the only one in which he found the precious fillip of enthusiasm--was
+motoring. There was a choice collection of fine cars in the grouping on
+the lawn, and Blount had just awakened a sleepy chauffeur to ask him to
+uncover and exhibit the engine of a freshly imported Italian machine,
+when a stir at the veranda entrance told him that at least a few of the
+dancing guests were leaving early.
+
+Being more curious at the moment about the mechanism of the Italian
+motor than he was about people, he did not realize that he was an
+intruder until the chauffeur hastily replaced the engine bonnet and
+began to get his car ready for the road. Blount stepped back when the
+little group on the veranda came down the steps preceded by a club
+footman who was calling the number of the car. And it was not until he
+was turning away that he found himself face to face with a very
+beautiful and very clear-eyed young woman who was buttoning an
+automobile dust-coat up under her chin.
+
+"Patricia!" he burst out. And then: "For Heaven's sake! you don't mean
+to tell me that you have been here all evening?"
+
+Her slow smile gave the impression, not quite of frigidity perhaps, but
+of that quality of serene self-possession which strangers sometimes
+mistook for coldness.
+
+"Why shouldn't I be here?" she asked. "Didn't you know that the
+Cranfords--the people who are entertaining--are old friends of ours?"
+
+Blount shook his head. "No, I didn't know it; and because I didn't, I
+have lost an entire evening."
+
+"Oh, no; you shouldn't say that," she protested. "The evening was yours
+to use as you chose. Mrs. Beverley told me you were here, and she added
+that you had particularly requested not to be introduced to the
+Cranfords or their guests. Besides, you know you don't care anything
+about dancing."
+
+The chauffeur had placed his other passengers in the tonneau, and was
+trying to crank the motor. Blount was thankful that the new Italian
+engine was refusing to take the spark. The delay was giving him an added
+moment or two.
+
+"No, I don't care much for dancing; and you know very well why I
+couldn't, or wouldn't, be anybody's good company to-night," he said.
+Then: "It was cruel of you to deny me this last evening by not letting
+me know that you were here."
+
+"'This last evening'?" she echoed. "Why 'last'?"
+
+"Because I am leaving Boston and New England to-morrow--or rather,
+Monday. It is the only thing to do."
+
+"I am sorry you are taking it this way, Evan," she deprecated, in the
+sisterly tone that always made him hotly resentful. "It hurts my sense
+of proportion."
+
+"Sometimes I think you haven't any sense of proportion, Patricia," he
+retorted half-morosely. "If you have, I am sure it is frightfully
+distorted."
+
+The recalcitrant motor had given a few preliminary explosions, and a
+white-haired old gentleman in the tonneau was calling impatiently to
+Patricia to come and take her place so that he might close the door.
+
+"It is you who have the distorted perspective, Evan," she countered.
+"But I refused to quarrel with you last night, and I am refusing to
+quarrel with you now. It pleases you to believe that a woman's place in
+this twentieth-century world is inevitably at the fireside--her own
+fireside. I don't agree with you; I am afraid I shall never agree with
+you. Where are you going?"
+
+"I am going West, Monday."
+
+"How odd!" she commented. "We are going West, too--father and I--though
+not quite so soon as Monday."
+
+"You are?" he queried. "Whereabout in the West?"
+
+She did not tell him where. The car motor was whirring smoothly now,
+the chauffeur was sliding into his seat behind the pilot-wheel, and the
+old gentleman in the tonneau was growing quite violently impatient.
+
+"If we are both going in the same direction we needn't say good-by," she
+said hastily, giving him her hand at parting. "Let it be _auf
+wiedersehen_." Then the clang of the closing tonneau door and the
+outgoing rush of the big car coincided so accurately that Blount had to
+spring nimbly aside to save himself from being run down.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BOSS
+
+
+It is a far cry from Boston to the land of broken mountain ranges, lone
+buttes, and irrigated mesas, and a still farther one from the veranda of
+an exclusive North Shore club to a private dining-room in the
+Inter-Mountain Hotel, whose entrance portico faces the Capitol grounds
+in the chief city of the Sage-brush State, whose eastern windows command
+a magnificent view of the Lost River Range, and from whose roof, on a
+clear day, one may see the snowy peaks of the Sierras notching the
+distant western horizon.
+
+Allowing for the difference between Eastern and Mountain time, the
+dinner for two in the private dining-room of the Inter-Mountain
+synchronized very fairly with the threshing out of college reminiscences
+by the two young men whose apparently fortuitous meeting on the veranda
+of the far-away North Shore club-house one of them, at least, was
+ascribing to the good offices of the god of chance.
+
+On the guest-book of the Inter-Mountain one of the men at the table in
+the private dining-room had registered from Chicago. The name was
+illegible to the cursory eye, but since it was the signature of a
+notable empire-builder, it was sufficiently well known in all the vast
+region served by the Transcontinental Railway System. The owner of the
+name had finished his ice, and was sitting back to clip the end from a
+very long and very black cigar. He was a man past middle-age,
+large-framed and heavy, with the square, resolute face of a born master
+of circumstances. Like the younger generation, he was clean shaven;
+hence there was no mask for the deeply graven lines of determination
+about the mouth and along the angle of the strong, leonine jaw. In the
+region traversed by the great railway system the virile face with the
+massive jaw was as familiar as the illegible signature on the
+Inter-Mountain's guest-book. Though he figured only as the first
+vice-president of the Transcontinental Company, Hardwick McVickar was
+really the active head of its affairs and the dictator of its policies.
+
+Across the small round table sat the railway magnate's dinner-guest, a
+man who was more than McVickar's match in big-boned, square-shouldered
+physique, and whose half-century was written only in the thick, grizzled
+hair and heavy, graying mustaches. Like McVickar, he had the lion-like
+face of mastership, but the fine wrinkles at the corners of the wide-set
+eyes postulated a sense of humor which was lacking in his table
+companion. His mouth, half hidden by the drooping mustaches, needed the
+relieving wrinkles at the corners of the eyes; it was a grim,
+straight-lined inheritance from his pioneer ancestors--the mouth of a
+man who may yield to persuasion but not easily to opposition.
+
+"I wish I could convince you that it isn't worth while to hold me at
+arm's-length, Senator," McVickar was saying, as he clipped the end from
+his cigar. "You know as well as I do that under the present law in this
+State we are practically bankrupt. We are not making enough to pay the
+fixed charges. We do a losing business from the moment we cross your
+State line."
+
+"Yes; it seems to me I have heard something that sounded a good deal
+like that before," was the noncommittal rejoinder.
+
+"You have heard the simple truth, then. And it is a bald injustice, not
+only to the railroad company, but to the people it serves. We can't give
+adequate service when the cost exceeds the earnings. That is the
+simplest possible proposition in any business undertaking."
+
+"And you can't make out to convince the members of the State Railroad
+Commission of the simpleness?" asked the man whom the vice-president
+addressed as "Senator."
+
+"You know well enough that we can't hope to convince a rabidly
+anti-railroad commission," was the half-angry retort.
+
+"Yet you are still running your railroad," suggested the other. "We
+don't hear anything about your shutting down and tearing up the track."
+
+"No; luckily, the Transcontinental System does not lie wholly within
+your State boundaries. If it did, we might as well surrender our
+charter and go out of business--shut down and tear up the track, as you
+put it."
+
+"All of which has come to be a pretty old and well-worn story with us,
+McVickar," said the listener quietly. "I'm sure you didn't make me motor
+thirty miles to hear you tell it all over again. What do you want?"
+
+"We want a square deal," was the curt reply.
+
+"So do the people of this State," asserted the man across the table.
+"You bled us, Hardwick--bled us to the queen's taste--while you had the
+chance; and the chance lasted a blamed long time. You are equitably, if
+not legally, in debt to every man in this State who had ever shipped a
+car-load of freight or paid a passenger fare over your line before the
+present rate law went into effect. You can shuffle and side-step all you
+want to, but that is the plain fact of the matter."
+
+The vice-president sat up and braced his arms on the edge of the table.
+
+"You are too much for me, Blount--you hold out too many cards; and I'm
+no apprentice at the game, either. In all these years we've been
+dickering together you've always been a hard-bitted and consistent
+fighter for your own hand. What's happened to you lately? Have you
+acquired a new set of convictions? Or have you been figuring out a
+different way of whipping the devil around the stump?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," returned the guest, with large good-nature. "We are
+all growing older--and wiser, perhaps. You don't deny the debt you owe
+us, do you?"
+
+"Do we owe you anything, Blount?" asked the magnate pointedly, and with
+a definite emphasis upon the personal pronoun. "If we do, we are willing
+to pay it in spot cash, on demand."
+
+The big man on the other side of the table was leaning back in his chair
+with his hands in his pockets, and the smile wrinkling at the corners of
+his eyes was half-genial, half-satirical.
+
+"It's lucky we're alone, McVickar," he remarked. "A third fellow
+standing around and hearing you talk might imagine that you are trying
+to bribe me."
+
+"That's all right, Blount; this is between us two, and we understand
+each other. Nothing for nothing is the accepted rule the world over, and
+we both recognize it. You are figuring on something; I know you are.
+Name it. If it is anything less than a mortgage on the earth and one or
+two of the planets I'll get it for you."
+
+"I'm afraid we are a good deal more than a mile or two apart yet,
+McVickar," said the man who was not smoking, after a long minute. "Let's
+ride back to the beginning and get us a fresh start. I said that Gordon
+is going to be the next governor of the State."
+
+"I know you did; and I said--and I say it again--he isn't going to
+be--not if we can help it," declared the railway magnate, with emphatic
+determination.
+
+"The methods you will take to defeat him will insure his election,
+McVickar. You fellows are mighty slow to learn your lesson; mighty slow
+and obstinate, Hardwick. You don't know anything but wire-pulling and
+crookedness and bribery. The times have changed, and you haven't had the
+common-sense or the courage or the business shrewdness to change with
+them. I say Gordon will be the next governor."
+
+Again there was a strained silence like that which follows the
+hand-shake in the prize-ring when the two antagonists have drawn apart
+and are warily watching each for his opening. After the pause the
+vice-president said:
+
+"If we had the safest kind of a majority in both houses of the
+legislature, we couldn't be sure of accomplishing anything worth while
+with Gordon in the governor's office; you know that, Blount. If Gordon
+runs and is elected, his platform will be flatly anti-railroad."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," was the calm rejoinder. "Gordon is a mighty square
+fellow; an honest man and a fair one. If you could stay out of the fight
+and go to him with clean hands--but you couldn't do that, McVickar;
+you're too badly out of practice."
+
+"We needn't go into that phase of it. We are so savagely handicapped in
+this State that we can't afford to take a divided chance; can't afford
+to pass our case up to a man who has been elected by an unfriendly
+opposition. If we should wash our hands of the fight, as you suggest,
+we might just as well throw up our franchises and quit, so far as any
+prospect of earning a reasonable return upon our investment here is
+concerned."
+
+"I know; that is what you always say, and you have said it so often--you
+and your fellow railroad string-pullers--that you have lost the
+straightforward combination completely. If you ever knew how to make a
+clean fight you've forgotten the moves, and it's your own fault."
+
+Once more the man with the fierce eyes and the dominating jaw took time
+to consider. Like others of his class, he was partisan only in the sense
+of one fighting hardily for the side upon which he had happened to be
+drawn in the great world battle. If he had not long ago parted with his
+convictions, the heat and smoke of the battle had obscured them, and he
+chose his weapons now with little regard for anything beyond their
+possible efficacy.
+
+"You are sparring with me, Blount," he said finally. "You are talking to
+me as you might talk to a committee of the Good Government League--and
+possibly for the same reason. Let's get together. You control the
+political situation in your State, and we frankly recognize that fact.
+It's a matter of business, and we can settle it on a business basis. I
+have been outspoken and above-board with you and have told you what we
+want. Meet me halfway and tell me what you want."
+
+"I want a square deal all around, Hardwick; that's all. You've got to
+take the same ground and make a clean fight if you want me with you. I
+can't make it any plainer than that, can I?"
+
+"I don't know yet what you are driving at," frowned the vice-president,
+"nor just why you have taken this particular occasion to read me a
+kindergarten lecture on political methods. In times past I suppose we
+have both done some things that we would like to have decently buried
+and forgotten, but--"
+
+"But right there we break apart, McVickar," cut in the other, setting
+his jaw with a peculiar hardening of the facial muscles that gave him
+the appearance of a fierce old viking attacking at the head of his
+squadrons. "I'm telling you over again that a new day has dawned in
+American politics; I and my kind recognize it, and you and your kind
+don't seem to be big enough to recognize it. That is the difference
+between us. In the present instance it comes down to this: you are going
+to fight for a railroad majority in the legislature, and you want
+Reynolds for the head of the ticket because you know that you can depend
+upon his veto if you don't get your majority in the House and Senate.
+You are not going to get Reynolds, or the majority either, without the
+help of the party organization."
+
+"We can put it much more elementally than that," supplemented the
+railroad man. "We get nothing without your say-so as the head of the
+party organization. That is precisely why I have come a couple of
+thousand miles to ask you to eat dinner with me here to-night."
+
+"I reckon I ought to feel right much set up and biggitty over that,
+Hardwick," smiled the veteran spoilsman, relapsing, as he did now and
+then, into the speech of his Southern boyhood. And then
+half-quizzically: "Are you tolerably well satisfied that you've got
+around to the place where you are willing to tote fair with me? You
+recollect, I gave you a straight pointer two years ago; you wouldn't
+take it, and we did you up. Are you right certain you are ready now to
+holler 'enough'?"
+
+Once again the vice-president refused to be hurried into making a
+capitulative admission. When he spoke, the militant second thought of
+the fighting corporation commander chose the words.
+
+"There is a limit to all things, Senator, and you are pushing us pretty
+well up to it. I suppose you can crack the whip and swing the vote on
+the legislature, and you can take it and be damned. But, by God, we'll
+have our governor and our attorney-general!"
+
+"You are betting confidently on that, are you?" said the veteran mildly.
+"Is that your declaration of war?"
+
+"Call it anything you like. We are not going to be legislated off the
+map if we can help it. Strong as your machine is, you can't swing Gordon
+in against Reynolds if we concede your bare majority in the legislature
+and put up the right kind of a fight. And when it comes to Rankin, our
+candidate for attorney-general, you simply haven't another man in the
+party to put up against him. You'd have to run in a dummy, and even you
+are not big enough to do that, Blount, and put it over."
+
+"You've settled this definitely in your own mind, have you, Hardwick?"
+was the placable rejoinder. "I'm sorry--right sorry. I've been hoping
+that you had learned your lesson--you and your tribe. I came to town
+this evening prepared to show you a decent way out of your troubles, so
+far as this State is concerned; but since you have posted your 'de-fi,'
+as we cow-punchers say, I reckon it isn't worth while to wade any deeper
+into the creek."
+
+Again the railroad magnate rested his arms on the table-edge. "What was
+your 'decent way,' Senator?" he asked, fixing his gaze upon the shrewd
+old eyes of the other, which, for the first time in the conference,
+seemed to be losing a little of their grimly good-natured
+aggressiveness.
+
+"I don't mind telling you, though you will likely call it an old man's
+foolishness. I have a grown son, McVickar. Did you know that?"
+
+The vice-president nodded, and the big man opposite went on
+half-reminiscently:
+
+"He is a lawyer, and a mighty bright one, so they tell me. As I happen
+to know, he is pretty well up on the corporation side of the argument,
+and the one thing I've been afraid of is that he would marry and settle
+down somewhere in the East, where the big corporations have their home
+ranches. I'm getting old, Hardwick, and I'd like mighty well to have the
+boy with me. Out of that notion grew another. I said to myself this:
+Now, here's McVickar; if he could have a good, clean-cut young man in
+this State representing his railroad--a man who not only knew his way
+around in a court-room, but who might also know how to plead his
+client's case before the public--if McVickar could have such a young
+fellow as that for his corporation counsel, and would agree to make his
+railroad company live somewhere within shouting distance of such a young
+fellow's ideals, we might all be persuaded to bury the hatchet and live
+together in peace and amity."
+
+A slow smile was spreading itself over the strong face of the railway
+magnate as he listened.
+
+"Say, David," he retorted mildly, "it isn't much like you to go forty
+miles around when there is a short way across. Why didn't you tell me
+plainly in the beginning that you wanted a place for your boy?"
+
+"Hold on; don't let's get too far along before we get started; I'm not
+saying it now," was the sober protest. "You forget that you've just been
+telling me that you don't intend to comply with the one hard-and-fast
+condition to such an arrangement as the one I've been pipe-dreaming
+about."
+
+"What condition?"
+
+"That you turn over a brand-new leaf and meet the people of this State
+half-way on a proposition of fair play for everybody."
+
+"There isn't any half-way point in a fight for life, David. You know
+that as well, or better, than I do. But let that go. We'll give your son
+the place you want him to have, and do it gladly."
+
+The man who had once been his own foreman of round-ups straightened
+himself in his chair and smote the table with his fist.
+
+"No, by God, you won't--not in a thousand years, McVickar! Maybe you
+could buy me--maybe you _have_ bought me in times past--but you can't
+buy that boy! Listen, and I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I
+telegraphed the boy this afternoon, telling him to throw up his job in
+Boston and come out here. If he comes within a reasonable time he will
+be legally a citizen of the State before election. You said we didn't
+have anybody but Rankin to run for attorney-general. By Heavens,
+Hardwick, I'll show you if we haven't!"
+
+Mr. Hardwick McVickar was not of those who fight as one beating the air.
+While the deft waiter was clearing the table and serving the small
+coffees he kept silence. But when the time was fully ripe he said what
+there was to be said.
+
+"You've got us by the nape of the neck, as usual, Blount. Name your
+terms."
+
+"I have named them. Get in line with the new public opinion and we'll do
+what we can for you."
+
+During the long pause following this curt ultimatum the masterful
+dictator of railroad policies deliberated thoughtfully upon many things.
+With the ex-senator as the all-powerful head of the machine in this
+State of many costly battle-fields, it would have been a weakness
+inexcusable on the part of so astute a commander as McVickar if David
+Blount's history, political and personal, had not been known to him in
+all its details. As a contingency to be met sooner or later, the
+vice-president had anticipated the thing which had now come to pass.
+That Blount should wish to push the fortunes of his son was perfectly
+natural; and it was no less natural that he should push them by making
+the railroad company's pay-roll furnish the motive-power. The magnate
+smiled inwardly when he remembered that he had given Gantry, the
+division traffic manager of the Transcontinental, a quiet hint to look
+up one Evan Blount, a young lawyer, on his next visit to Boston. By all
+odds it would be better to wait for Gantry's report before taking any
+irrevocable steps in the bargaining with Evan Blount's father; but
+unhappily the crisis had arrived, and in all probability it could not be
+postponed. None the less, the vice-president tried craftily for the
+postponement.
+
+"You're asking a good deal, Blount, and you don't seem to realize it.
+You are practically demanding that we lay down our arms and put a
+possible enemy in the saddle on the eve of a battle. If we should agree
+to meet the people of this State half-way, as you suggest, what
+guarantee have we that we won't be compelled to go all the way?"
+
+The fine-lined wrinkles were appearing again at the corners of the
+hereditary Blount eyes.
+
+"You can't quite rise to the occasion, can you, Hardwick?" smiled the
+boss. "You'd like to behave yourself and be good, of course; but you
+want to be cocksure beforehand that it isn't going to cost too much."
+
+"Well, anyway, I'm going to ask for a little time in which to consider
+it," was the vice-president's final word.
+
+"Sure! You have all the time there is between now and the election. Go
+on and do your considering. I've told you what I'm going to do."
+
+"You know very well that we can't allow you to do what you propose. With
+an unfriendly attorney-general we might as well throw up our hands first
+as last."
+
+"All right; it's right pointedly up to you," was the calm reply.
+
+The vice-president rose and dusted the cigar-ash from his coat-sleeve
+with the table-napkin. When he looked up, the heavy frown was again
+furrowing itself between his eyes.
+
+"Let me know when your son is coming and I'll try to make it possible to
+meet him here," he said rather gratingly.
+
+And thus, at the precise moment when Richard Gantry, some three thousand
+miles away to the eastward, was declaring his weariness and his
+intention of going to bed, the two-man conference in the Inter-Mountain
+private dining-room was closed.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A FALSE GALLOP OF MEMORIES
+
+
+As a churlish fate decreed, it turned out that Evan Blount was not to
+have Gantry for a travelling companion beyond Chicago. On the second day
+of westward faring the railroad traffic manager, whose business followed
+him like an implacable Nemesis wherever he went, had wire instructions
+to stop and confer with his vice-president in the Illinois metropolis.
+Hence, on the morning of the following day, Blount continued his journey
+alone.
+
+Twenty-odd hours later the returning expatriate had crossed his Rubicon;
+in other words, his train had rolled through the majestic steel bridge
+spanning the clay-colored flood of the Missouri River at Omaha, and he
+was entering upon scenes which ought to have been familiar--which should
+have been and were not, so many and striking were the changes which had
+been wrought during his fourteen years of absence.
+
+Though he was far enough from realizing it, his education and the
+Eastern environment had given him a touch of Old-World insularity. The
+through sleeper in which he had his allotment of space was well filled,
+and there were the usual opportunities for the making of passing
+acquaintanceships in the smoking-compartment. But it was not until the
+second day, after the dining-car luncheon and its aftermath of a
+well-chosen cigar had broken down some of the barriers of the acquired
+reserve, that he fell into talk with the prosperous-looking gentleman
+who had seized upon the only chair in the smoking-compartment--a man
+whose thin, hawk-like face, narrowly set eyes, and uneasy manner were
+singularly out of keeping with the fashionable cut of his clothes, with
+his liberal tips, and with the display of jewelry on his watch-fob.
+
+At first the conversation was baldly desultory, as it was bound to be,
+with an escaped lover, whose disappointment was still rasping him like a
+newly devised Nessus shirt, to sustain an undivided half of it. The
+hawk-faced one, who had boarded the train at Omaha and whose section was
+directly opposite Blount's, defined himself as a mine-owner whose
+property, vaguely located as somewhere "in the mountains," was involved
+in litigation.
+
+It was the reference to the litigation which first drew Blount beyond
+the boundaries of the commonplaces. Oddly enough, considering the fact
+that his planned-for Eastern career would have given him little occasion
+to dip into the mining codes, he had specialized somewhat in mining law.
+Hence, when the hawk-faced man had told his story, Blount found himself
+thawing out sufficiently to be suggestively helpful to the man who had
+apparently purchased more trouble than profits in his mining ventures.
+
+Into the cleft thus opened by the axe of human sympathy the man in the
+wicker chair presently inserted a wedge of cautious inquiry touching
+another matter. In addition to his mining ventures he had been making
+investments in timber-lands, or, rather, in certain lumber companies
+operating "in the mountains"--bad investments, he feared, since the
+Government had lately taken such a decided stand against the cutting of
+timber in the mountain-land reserves and water-sheds. Was it likely, he
+asked, that the talk would materialize in restraining action? If so, he
+was in the hole again--worse off than he should be if his mining
+lawsuits should go against him.
+
+Again Blount, good-naturedly charitable and not a little amused by the
+nervous anxiety of the gentleman of many troubles, gave an opinion.
+
+"Conservation, in timber as well as in other remaining resources of the
+country, has come to be a word which is in everybody's mouth," was the
+form the opinion took. "The plain citizen who isn't familiar with the
+methods of the timber sharks would do well to keep his money out of
+their hands if he doesn't wish to be held as _particeps criminis_ with
+them in the day of reckoning."
+
+"Say!" ejaculated the thin man, wriggling nervously in his chair. "If
+you were a Government agent yourself you could hardly put the case
+stronger for the conservation crowd!"
+
+Now, in ordinary circumstances, nothing was ever farther from Blount's
+normal attitude toward his fellow-men than a disposition to yield to the
+sudden joking impulse. But the hawk-faced man's perturbation was so
+real, or so faultlessly simulated, that he could not resist the
+temptation.
+
+"How do you know that I am not a Government agent?" he demanded, with a
+decent show of gravity.
+
+"Because you are not travelling on Government transportation," was the
+shrewd retort.
+
+At another time Blount might have wondered why a casual fellow-traveller
+should have taken the trouble to make the discovery. But at the moment
+he was intent only upon keeping the small misunderstanding alive.
+
+"I suppose you have seen my ticket, but you can't tell anything by
+that," he countered, laughing. "A good many civilian employees of the
+Government travel nowadays on regular tickets, like other people."
+
+"I know damned well they do," admitted the anxious one; and then, with a
+swift eye-shot which Blount missed: "Especially if they happen to be
+travelling on the quiet to catch some poor devil napping on the job."
+
+"You needn't be alarmed; you haven't told me anything that the
+department could make use of," returned Blount, carrying the jest the
+one necessary move farther along.
+
+It was precisely at this point, as Blount remembered afterward, that the
+timber-thieving subject was dropped. Later on, after the talk had
+drifted back to mining, and from mining to politics, the nervous
+gentleman pleaded weariness and declared his intention of going to his
+section to take a nap, and presently disappeared to carry it out.
+
+Blount was not sorry to be left alone. In response to a vague stirring
+of something within him--a thing which might have been the primitive
+underman yawning and stretching to its awakening--he had been trying in
+the window-facing intervals to reconstruct the passing panorama of
+mountain and plain upon the recollections of his boyhood. As yet there
+was little familiarity save in the broader outlines. Where he remembered
+only the fallow-dun prairie, dotted with dog-mounds, there were now vast
+ranches planted to sod corn; and upon the hills the cattle ranges were
+no longer open. The towns, too, at which the train made its momentary
+stops, were changed. The straggling shack hamlets of the cattle-shipping
+period, with the shed-roofed railroad station, the whitewashed
+loading-corral, and the towering water-tank--all backgrounded by a thin
+line of saloons and dance-halls--had disappeared completely, and the
+window-watcher found himself looking in vain for the flap-hatted,
+cigarette-smoking horsemen with which the West of his boyhood had been
+chiefly peopled.
+
+Farther along toward evening the great range, which had been visible for
+hours in the westward vista, began to define itself in peaks and high,
+bald shoulderings of wind-swept mesas. Here was something definite and
+tangible for the stirring underman to lay hold upon. Blount, the
+sober-minded, the self-contained, found a curious transformation working
+itself out in quickened pulses and exhilarating nerve-tinglings. Boston,
+the Law School, the East of the narrow walk-ways and the still narrower
+rut of custom and convention, were fading into a past which already
+seemed age-old and half forgotten. He threw open the window at his elbow
+and drank in deep inspirations of the hill-sweeping blast. It was sweet
+in his nostrils, and the keen crispness of it was as fine wine in his
+blood. After all, he had been but a sojourner in the other world, and
+this was his homeland.
+
+At the dining-car dinner, which was served while the higher peaks of the
+main range were as vast islands floating in a sea of crimson and gold,
+Blount missed the man of many troubles. The dining-car was well filled,
+and, though the faces of the diners were all unfamiliar, the hum of
+talk, the hurrying of the waiters, and the subdued clamor drowning
+itself in the under-drone of the drumming wheels answered well enough
+for companionship. There are times when even the voice of a friend is an
+intrusion, and the returning exile had happed upon one of them.
+Largeness, the inspiring breadth of the immensities, was what he craved
+most; and when he had cut the many-coursed dinner short, he hurried back
+to his Pullman window, hoping that he might have the smoking-compartment
+to himself again.
+
+The unspoken wish was granted. When he entered the smoking-room he
+found it empty; and, filling his cutty pipe, he drew the cushioned
+wicker chair out to face the open window. Fresh glimpses of the
+northward landscape shortly brought a renewal of the heart-stirrings;
+and when he finally had the longed-for sight of a bunch of grazing
+cattle, with the solitary night-herd hanging by one leg in the saddle to
+watch the passing of the train, the call of the homeland was trumpeting
+in his ears, and he would have given anything in reason to be able to
+changes places, temporarily at least, with the care-free horseman whose
+wiry, muscular figure was struck out so artistically against the
+dun-colored hillside.
+
+"Would I really do such a thing as that?" he asked himself half
+incredulously, when the night-herd and his grazing drove had become only
+a picturesque memory; and out of the heart-stirrings and
+pulse-quickenings came the answer: "I more than half believe that I
+would--that I'd jump at the chance." Then he added regretfully: "But
+there isn't going to be any chance."
+
+"Any chance to do what?" rumbled a mellow voice at his elbow, and Blount
+turned quickly to find that a big, bearded man, smoking an abnormally
+corpulent cigar, had come in to take his seat on the divan.
+
+At another time Blount, the conventional Blount, would have been
+self-conscious and embarrassed, as any human being is when he is caught
+talking to himself. But with the transformation had come a battering
+down of doors in the house of the broader fellowship, and he laughed
+good-naturedly.
+
+"You caught me fairly," he acknowledged. "I thought I still had the
+place to myself."
+
+"But the chance?" persisted the big man, looking him over appraisively.
+"You don't look like a man who has had to hang round on the aidges
+hankerin' after things he couldn't get."
+
+"I guess I haven't had to do that very often," was the reflective
+rejoinder. "But a mile or so back we passed a bunch of cattle, with the
+night man riding watch; I was just saying to myself that I'd like to
+change places with that night-herd--only there wasn't going to be any
+chance."
+
+The bearded man's laugh was a deep-chested rumbling suggestive of rocks
+rolling down a declivity.
+
+"Lordy gracious!" he chuckled. "If you was to get a leg over a bronc',
+and the bronc' should find it out--Say, I've got a li'l' blue horse out
+on my place in the Antelopes that'd plumb give his ears to have you try
+it; he shore would. You take my advice, and don't you go huntin' a job
+night-ridin' in the greasewood hills. Don't you do it!"
+
+"I assure you I hadn't thought of doing it for a permanency. But just
+for a bit of adventure, if the chance should offer while I'm in the
+notion. I believe I'd take it. I haven't ridden a cow-pony for fourteen
+years, but I don't believe I've lost the knack of it."
+
+"Ho!" said the big man. "Then you ain't as much of a tenderfoot as you
+look to be. Shake!" and he held out a hand as huge as a bear's paw.
+Following the hand-grip he grew confidential. "'Long in the afternoon I
+stuck my head in at the door and saw you chewin' the rag with a
+thin-faced old nester that couldn't set still in his chair while he
+talked. Know him?"
+
+"Not at all," said Blount promptly. "He has the section opposite mine,
+and he got on at Omaha."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't want to know him if I was you," was the bearded man's
+comment. Then: "Tryin' to get you to invest in some o' his properties?"
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Well, he will, if he gets a chance. He'd go furder'n that; he'd nail
+you up to the cross and skin you alive if there was any money in it for
+him. His name's Simon Peter, and it ort to be Judas. I know him down to
+the ground!"
+
+"Simon Peter?" said Blount inquiringly.
+
+"Ya-as; Simon Peter Hathaway. And my name's Griggs; Griggs, of the
+Antelopes, back o' Carnadine--if anybody should ask you who give you
+your pointer on Simon Peter Judas. I don't blacklist no man in the dark,
+and I've said a heap more to that old ratter's face than I've ever said
+behind his back. Ump! him a-wrigglin' in that chair you're settin' in
+and tryin' to fix up some way to skin you! Don't tell me! I know blame'
+well what he was tryin' to do."
+
+Blount listened and was interested, not so much in the bit of gossip as
+in the big, red-faced ranchman, who so evidently had a grudge to pay
+off.
+
+"I am not likely to have any dealings with Mr. Hathaway," he rejoined.
+"And I must do him the bare justice of saying that he wasn't trying to
+sell me anything. The shoe was on the other foot. He seemed to be afraid
+he was in danger of losing out, and he was asking my advice."
+
+"S.P. Hathaway lose out? Not on your life, my young friend! You say he
+was askin' for advice? You've done stirred up my curiosity a whole heap,
+and I reckon you'll have to tell me who you are before it'll ca'm down
+again."
+
+Blount laughed. "Mr. Hathaway thinks I am a special agent for the
+Government, travelling on business for the Forest Service."
+
+"The hell he does!" exploded the big man. Then he reached over and laid
+a swollen finger on Blount's knee. "Say, boy, before you or him ever
+gets off this train--Sufferin' Moses! what was that?"
+
+The break came upon a thunderous crash transmitting itself from car to
+car, and the long, heavy train came to a juggling stop. The ranchman
+sprang to his feet with an alacrity surprising in so huge a body and
+ducked to look out of the open window.
+
+"Twin Buttes!" he gurgled. "And, say, it's a wreck! We've hit something
+right slap in the middle of the yard! Let's make a break for the scene
+of the confliggration till we see who's killed!"
+
+Blount followed the ranchman's lead, but shortly lost sight of the
+burly figure in the crowd of curious passengers pouring from the hastily
+opened vestibules. Seen at closer range, the accident appeared to be
+disastrous only in a material sense. The heavy "Pacific-type" locomotive
+had stumbled over the tongue of a split switch, leaving the rails and
+making a blockading barrier of itself across the tracks. Nobody was
+hurt; but there would be a delay of some hours before the track could be
+cleared.
+
+Finding little to hold him in the spectacle of the derailed locomotive,
+Blount strolled on through the railroad yard to the station and the
+town. He remembered the place chiefly by its name. In his boyhood it had
+been the nearest railroad forwarding-point for the mines at Lewiston,
+thirty miles beyond the Lost Hills. Now, as it appeared, it had become a
+lumber-shipping station. To the left of the railroad there were numerous
+sawmills, each with its mountain of waste dominated by a black chimney,
+screen-capped. For the supply of logs an enormous flume led down from
+the slopes of the forested range on the south, a trough-like water-chute
+out of which, though the working-day was ended, the great logs were
+still tumbling in an intermittent stream.
+
+North of the town the valley broke away into a region of bare mesas
+dotted with rounded, butte-like hills, with the buttressing ranges on
+either side to lift the eastern and western horizons. The northern
+prospect enabled Blount to place himself accurately, and the tide of
+remembrance swept strongly in upon him. Some forty-odd miles away to the
+northeast, just beyond the horizon-lifting lesser range, lay the
+"short-grass" region in which he had spent the happy boyhood. An hour's
+gallop through the hills to the westward the level rays of the setting
+sun would be playing upon the little station of Painted Hat, the
+one-time shipping-point for the home ranch. And half-way between Painted
+Hat and the "Circle-Bar," nestling in the hollowed hands of the
+mountains, were the horse-corrals of one Debbleby, a true hermit of the
+hills, and the boy Evan's earliest school-master in the great book of
+Nature.
+
+Blount's one meliorating softness during the years of exile had
+manifested itself in an effort to keep track of Debbleby. He knew that
+the old horse-breeder was still alive, and that he was still herding his
+brood mares at the ranch on the Pigskin. The young man, fresh from the
+well-calculated East, threw up his head and sniffed the keen, cool
+breeze sweeping down from the northern hills. He was not given to
+impulsive plan-changing. On the contrary, he was slow to resolve and
+proportionately tenacious of the determination once made. But the
+stirring of boyish memories accounted for something; and in the sanest
+brain there are sleeping cells of irresponsibility ready to spring alive
+at the touch of suggestion. What if he should--
+
+He sat down upon the edge of the station platform and thought it out
+deliberately. Since it would be hours before the tracks could be cleared
+and the rail journey resumed, what was to prevent him from taking an
+immediate and delightful plunge into the region of the heart-stirring
+recollections? Doubtless old Jason Debbleby was at this moment sitting
+on the door-step of his lonely ranch-house in the Pigskin foot-hills,
+smoking his corn-cob pipe and, quite possibly, wondering what had become
+of the boy whom he had taught to "rope down" and saddle and ride. Blount
+estimated the distance as he remembered it. With a hired horse he might
+reach Debbleby's by late bedtime; and after a night spent with the old
+ranchman he could ride on across the big mesa to the capital.
+
+Another ineffectual attempt to find out how soon the relief train from
+the capital might be expected decided Blount. Arranging with the Pullman
+conductor to have his hand-luggage left in Gantry's office at the
+capital, the man in search of his boyhood crossed quickly to a
+livery-stable opposite the station, bargained for a saddle-horse,
+borrowed a poncho and a pair of leggings, and prepared to break
+violently, for the moment at least, with all the civilized traditions.
+He would go and see Debbleby--drop in upon the old horse-breeder without
+warning, and thus get his first revivified impression of the homeland
+unmixed with any of the disappointing changes which were doubtless
+awaiting him at the real journey's end.
+
+Now it chanced that the livery-stable was an adjunct to the single hotel
+in the small sawmill town, and as Blount was mounting to ride he saw the
+thin-faced man, whom the ranchman, Griggs, had named for him, standing
+on the porch of the hotel in earnest talk with three others who, from
+their appearance, might have figured either as "timber jacks" or
+cowboys. Blount was on the point of recognizing his companion of the
+Pullman smoking-compartment as he rode past the hotel to take the trail
+to the northward, but a curious conviction that the gentleman with the
+bird-of-prey eyes was making him the subject of the earnest talk with
+the three men of doubtful occupation restrained him. A moment later,
+when he looked back from the crossing of the railroad track, he saw that
+all four of the men on the porch were watching him. This he saw; and if
+the backward glance had been prolonged for a single instant he might
+also have seen a big, barrel-bodied man with a red face stumbling out of
+the side door of the shack hotel to make vigorous and commanding signals
+to stop him. But this he missed.
+
+There was an excuse for the oversight as well as for the speedy blotting
+out of the picture of the four men watching him from the porch of the
+hotel. With a fairly good horse under him, with the squeak of the
+saddle-leather in his ears and the smell of it in his nostrils, and with
+the wide world of the immensities into which to ride unhampered and
+free, the lost boyhood was found. Not for the most soul-satisfying
+professional triumph the fettered East could offer him would he have
+curtailed the free-reined flight into the silent wilderness by a single
+mile.
+
+For the first half-hour of the invigorating gallop the fugitive from
+civilization had the sunset glow to help him find the trail. After that
+the moon rose, and the landmarks, which had seemed more or less familiar
+in daylight, lost their remembered featurings. During the first few
+miles the trail had led broadly across the table-land, with the eastern
+mountains withdrawing and the Lost River Range looming larger as its
+lofty sky-line was struck out sharply against the sunset horizon.
+Farther on, in the transition darkness between sunset and moon-rise, the
+trail disappeared entirely; but so long as he was sure of the general
+direction, Blount held on and gave the tireless little bronco a loose
+rein. The Debbleby ranch lay among the farther foot-hills of the western
+range, with the broad gulch of the Pigskin cutting a plain highway
+through the mountains. If he could find one of the head-water streams of
+the Pigskin, all of which took their rise in the gulches of the mesa,
+there could be no danger of losing the way.
+
+It was some little time after he had left the shoulderings of the
+eastern range behind that a singular thing happened. Far away on his
+right he heard the sound of galloping hoofs. Though the moon was nearly
+full and the treeless landscape was bare of any kind of cover, he could
+not make out the horseman who was evidently passing him and going in the
+same direction. At first he thought it was some one who was making a
+_détour_ to avoid him. Then he smiled at the absurdity of the guess and
+concluded that he himself was off the trail. This conclusion was
+confirmed a little later when two other travellers, announcing
+themselves to the ear as the first one had, and also, like the first,
+invisible to the sharpest eye-sweep of the moonlit plain, passed him at
+speed.
+
+After that Blount had the solitudes and vastnesses to himself, and it
+was not until after the mesa-land had been crossed without a sign of a
+water-leading gulch to guide him to the Pigskin, and the bronco was
+patiently picking its way through the hogback of the western range, that
+the boyish thing he had been led to do took shape as an adventure which
+might have discomforting consequences.
+
+For, after the hired bronco had wandered aimlessly through many gulches
+and had climbed a good half-score of the hogback hills, the young man
+from the East admitted that the boyhood memories were hopelessly and
+altogether at fault in the deceptive moonlight. Blount gave the horse a
+breathing halt on one of the hogbacks and tried to reconstruct the
+puzzling hills into some featuring that he could remember. The effort
+was fruitless. He was very thoroughly and painstakingly lost.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE HIGHBINDERS
+
+
+When the three men who had pulled him from his horse and tied him hand
+and foot had withdrawn to the farther side of the tiny camp-fire to
+wrangle morosely over what should be done with him, Evan Blount found it
+simply impossible to realize that they were actually discussing, as one
+of the expedients, the propriety of knocking him on the head and
+flinging his body into the near-by canyon.
+
+The difficulty of comprehension lay in the crude grotesqueness of the
+thing that had happened. Five minutes earlier he had been riding
+peacefully up the trail in the moonlight, wondering how thoroughly he
+was lost and how much farther it was to Debbleby's. Then, at a sudden
+sharp turn in the canyon bridle-path, he had stumbled upon the
+camp-fire, had heard an explosive "Hands up!" and had found himself
+confronted by three men, with one of the three covering him with a
+sawed-off Winchester. From that to the unhorsing and the binding had
+been merely a rough-and-tumble half-minute, inasmuch as he was unarmed
+and the surprise had been complete; but the grotesquery remained.
+
+Since his captors had as yet made no attempt to rob him, he could only
+surmise that some incredibly foolish mistake had been made. But when he
+remembered the three invisible horsemen who had passed him on the broad
+mesa he was not so certain about the mistake. Most naturally, his
+thoughts went back to the little episode on the hotel porch. The passing
+glance he had given to the three men with whom the fourth man, Hathaway,
+had been talking did not enable him to identify them with the three who
+were sourly discussing his fate at the near-by fire; none the less, the
+conclusion was fairly obvious. Thus far he had been either too busy or
+too bewildered to break in; but when the more murderous of the
+expedients was apparently about to be adopted, he decided that it was
+high time to try to find out why he was to be effaced. Whereupon he
+called across to the group at the fire.
+
+"Without wishing to interfere with any arrangements you gentlemen are
+making, I shall be obliged if you will tell me why you think you have
+found it necessary to murder me."
+
+"You know mighty good and well why there's one too many of you on Lost
+River, jest at this stage o' the game," growled the hard-faced spokesman
+who had held the Winchester while his two accomplices were doing the
+unhorsing and the binding.
+
+"But I don't," insisted Blount good-naturedly. "So far as I know, there
+is only one of me--on Lost River or anywhere else."
+
+"That'll do for you; it ain't your put-in, nohow," was the gruff
+decision of the court; but Blount was too good a lawyer to be silenced
+thus easily.
+
+"Perhaps you might not especially regret killing the wrong man, but in
+the present case I am very sure I should," he went on. And then: "Are
+you quite sure you've got the right man?"
+
+"The boss knows who you are--that's enough for us."
+
+"The boss?" questioned Blount.
+
+"Yas, I said the boss; now hold your jaw!"
+
+Blount caught at the word. In a flash the talk with Gantry on the
+veranda of the Winnebasset Club flicked into his mind.
+
+"There is only one boss in this State," he countered coolly. "And I am
+very sure he hasn't given you orders to kill me."
+
+"What's that?" demanded the spokesman.
+
+Blount repeated his assertion, adding jocularly: "Perhaps you'd better
+call up headquarters and ask your boss if he wants you to kill the son
+of his boss."
+
+At this the gun-holder came around the fire to stand before his
+prisoner.
+
+"Say, pal--this ain't my night for kiddin', and it hadn't ort to be
+your'n," he remarked grimly. "The boss didn't say you was to be rubbed
+out--they never do. But I reckon it would save a heap o' trouble if you
+_was_ rubbed out."
+
+"On the contrary, I'm inclined to think it would make a heap of
+trouble--for you and your friends, and quite probably for the man or
+men who sent you to waylay me. But, apart from all that, you've got hold
+of the wrong man, as I told you a moment ago."
+
+"No, by grapples! I hain't. I saw you in daylight. If there's been any
+fumblin' done, I hain't done it. So you see it ain't any o' my funeral."
+
+"Think not?" said Blount.
+
+"I know it ain't. Orders is orders, and you don't git over into them
+woods on Upper Lost Creek with no papers to serve on nobody: see?"
+
+It was just here that the light of complete understanding dawned upon
+Blount; and with it came the disconcerting chill of a conviction
+overthrown. As a theorist he had always scoffed at the idea that a
+corporation, which is a creature of the law, could afford to be an open
+law-breaker. But here was a very striking refutation of the charitable
+assumption. His smoking-room companion of the Pullman car was doubtless
+one of the timber-pillagers who had been cutting on the public domain.
+To such a man an agent of the National Forest Service was an enemy to be
+hoodwinked, if possible, or, in the last resort, to be disposed of as
+expeditiously as might be, and Blount saw that he had only himself to
+blame for his present predicament, since he had allowed the man to
+believe that he was a Government emissary. Having this clew to the
+mystery, his course was a little easier to steer.
+
+"I have no papers of the kind you think I have, as you can readily
+determine by searching me," he said. "My name is Blount, and I am the
+son of ex-Senator David Blount, of this State. Now what are you going to
+do with me?"
+
+"What's that you say?" grated the outlaw.
+
+"You heard what I said. Go ahead and heave me into the canyon if you are
+willing to stand for it afterward."
+
+The hard-faced man turned without replying and went back to the other
+two at the fire. Blount caught only a word now and again of the
+low-toned, wrangling argument that followed. But from the overheard word
+or two he gathered that there were still some leanings toward the sound
+old maxim which declares that "dead men tell no tales." When the
+decision was finally reached, he was left to guess its purport. Without
+any explanation the thongs were taken from his wrists and ankles, and he
+was helped upon his horse. After his captors were mounted, the new
+status was defined by the spokesman in curt phrase.
+
+"You go along quiet with us, and you don't make no bad breaks, see? I
+more'n half believe you been lyin' to me, but I'm goin' to give you a
+chance to prove up. If you don't prove up, you pass out--that's all. Now
+git in line and hike out; and if you're countin' on makin' a break, jest
+ricollect that a chunk o' lead out of a Winchester kin travel a heap
+faster thern your cayuse."
+
+If Blount had not already lost all sense of familiarity with his
+surroundings, the devious mountain trail taken by his captors would soon
+have convinced him that the boyhood memories were no longer to be
+trusted. Up and down, the trail zigzagged and climbed, always
+penetrating deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountains. At times
+Blount lost even the sense of direction; lost it so completely that the
+high-riding moon seemed to be in the wrong quarter of the heavens.
+
+For the first few miles the trail was so difficult that speed was out of
+the question; but later, in crossing a high-lying valley, the horses
+were pushed. Beyond the valley there were more mountains, and half-way
+through this second range the trail plunged into a deep, cleft-like
+canyon with a brawling torrent for its pathfinder. Once more Blount lost
+the sense of direction, and when the canyon trail came out upon broad
+uplands and became a country road with bordering ranches watered by
+irrigation canals, into which the mountain torrent was diverted, there
+were no recognizable landmarks to tell him whither his captors were
+leading him.
+
+As he was able to determine by holding his watch, face up, to the
+moonlight, it was nearly midnight when the silent cavalcade of four
+turned aside from the main road into an avenue of spreading cottonwood
+trees. At its head the avenue became a circular driveway; and fronting
+the driveway a stately house, with a massive Georgian facade and
+colonnaded portico, flung its shadow across the white gravel of the
+carriage approach.
+
+There were lights in one wing of the house, and another appeared behind
+the fan-light in the entrance-hall when the leader of the three
+highbinders had tramped up the steps and touched the bell-push. Blount
+had a fleeting glimpse of a black head with a fringe of snowy wool when
+the door was opened, but he did not hear what was said. After the negro
+serving-man disappeared there was a little wait. At the end of the
+interval the door was opened wide, and Blount had a gruff order to
+dismount.
+
+What he saw when he stood on the door-mat beside his captor merely added
+mystery to mystery. Just within the luxuriously furnished hall, where
+the light of the softly shaded hall lantern served to heighten the
+artistic effect of her red house-gown, stood a woman--a lady, and
+evidently the mistress of the Georgian mansion. She was small and dark,
+with brown eyes that were almost childlike in their winsomeness; a woman
+who might be twenty, or thirty, or any age between. Beautiful she was
+not, Blount decided, comparing her instantly, as he did all women, with
+Patricia Anners; but--He was not given time to add the qualifying phrase
+or to prepare himself for what was coming.
+
+"What is it, Barto?" the little lady asked, turning to the man with the
+gun.
+
+The reply was direct and straight to the purpose.
+
+"Excuse _me_; but I jest wanted to ask if you know this here young
+feller. He's been allowin' to me th't he is--"
+
+"Of course," she said quickly, and stepping forward she gave her hand
+and a welcome to the dazed one. "Please come in; we have been expecting
+you." Then again to the man with the Winchester: "Thank you so much,
+Barto, for showing the gentleman the way to Wartrace Hall."
+
+It was all done so quietly that Blount was still unconsciously holding
+the hand of welcoming while his late captors were riding away down the
+cottonwood-shaded avenue. When he realized what he was doing he was as
+nearly embarrassed as a self-contained young lawyer could well be. But
+his impromptu hostess quickly set him at ease.
+
+"You needn't make any explanations," she hastened to say, smiling up at
+him and gently disengaging the hand which he was only now remembering
+that he had forgotten to relinquish. "Naturally, I inferred that you
+were in trouble, and that your safety depended in some sense upon my
+answer. Were you in trouble?"
+
+Blount perceived immediately how utterly impossible it would be to make
+her, or any one else, understand the boyish impulse which had prompted
+him to leave his train, or the curious difficulty into which the impulse
+had precipitated him. So his explanation scarcely explained.
+
+"I was on my way to a ranch--that is, to the capital--when these men
+held me up," he stammered. "They--they mistook me for some one else, I
+think, and for reasons best known to themselves they brought me here. If
+you could direct me to some place where I can get a night's lodging--"
+
+"There is nothing like a tavern within twenty miles of here," she broke
+in; "nor is there any house within that radius which would refuse you a
+night's shelter, Mr.--"
+
+Blount made a quick dive for his card-case, found it, and hastened to
+introduce himself by name. She took the bit of pasteboard, and, since
+she scarcely glanced at the engraved line on it, he found himself wholly
+unable to interpret her smile.
+
+"The card is hardly necessary," she said; and then, to his complete
+bewilderment: "You are very much like your father, Mr. Blount."
+
+"You know my father?" he exclaimed.
+
+She laughed softly. "Every one knows the senator," she returned, "and I
+can assure you that his son is heartily welcome under this roof. Uncle
+Barnabas"--to the ancient serving-man who was still hovering in the
+background--"have Mr. Blount's horse put up and the blue room made
+ready."
+
+Blount followed his still unnamed hostess obediently when she led the
+way to the lighted library in the wing of the great house.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas will come for you in a little while," she told him,
+playing the part of the gracious lady to the line and letter. "In the
+meantime you must let me make you a cup of tea. I am sure you must be
+needing it after having ridden so far. Take the easy-chair, and we can
+talk comfortably while the kettle is boiling. Are you new to the West,
+Mr. Blount, or is this only a return to your own? The senator is always
+talking about you, you know; but he is so inordinately proud of you that
+he forgets to tell us all the really interesting things that we want to
+know."
+
+The serving-man took his own time about coming back; so long a time that
+Blount forgot that it was past midnight, that he was a guest in a
+strange house, and that he still had not learned the name of his
+entertainer. For all this forgetfulness the little lady with the
+dark-brown eyes was directly responsible. Almost before he realized it,
+Blount found himself chatting with her as if he had always known her,
+making rapid strides on the way to confidence and finding her alertly
+responsive in whatever field the talk happened to fall. Apparently she
+knew the world--his world--better than he knew it himself: she had
+summered on the North Shore and wintered in Washington. She knew Paris,
+and when the conversation touched upon the Italian art-galleries he was
+led to wonder if he had gone through Italy with his eyes shut. At the
+next turn of the talk he was forced to admit that not even Patricia
+herself could speak more intelligently of the English social problem;
+and when it came to the vital questions of the American moment he gasped
+again and wondered if he were awake--if it could be possible that this
+out-of-place Georgian mansion and its charming mistress could be part
+and parcel of the West which had so far outgrown the boyhood memories.
+
+Since all things mundane must have an end, the old butler with the
+white-fringed head came at last to show him the way to his luxurious
+lodgings on the second floor of the mansion. With a touch of hospitality
+which carried Blount back to his one winter in the South, the hostess
+went with him as far as the stair-foot, and her "Good-night" was still
+ringing musically in his ears when the old negro lighted the candles in
+the guest-room, put another stick of wood on the small fire that was
+crackling and snapping cheerfully on the hearth, and bobbed and bowed
+his way to the door. Blount saw his last chance for better information
+vanishing for the night, and once more broke with the traditions.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas, before you go, suppose you tell me where I am," he
+suggested. "Whose house is this?"
+
+The old man stopped on the threshold, chuckling gleefully. "A-ain't you
+know dat, sah?--a-ain't de mistis done tell you dat? You's at Wa'trace
+Hall--Mahsteh Majah's new country-house; yes, sah; dat's whah you
+is--kee-hee!"
+
+"And who is 'Master Major'?" pressed Blount, whose bewilderment grew
+with every fresh attempt to dispel it.
+
+"A-ain't she tell you dat?--kee-hee! Ev'body knows Mahsteh Majah; yes,
+sah. If de mistis ain't tell you, ol' Barnabas ain't gwine to--no, sah.
+Ah'll bring yo'-all's coffee in de mawnin'; yes, sah--good-night,
+sah--kee-hee!" And the door closed silently upon the wrinkled old face
+and the bobbing head.
+
+Having nothing else to do, Blount went to bed, but sleep came
+reluctantly. Life is said to be full of paper walls thinly dividing the
+commonplace from the amazing; and he decided that he had surely burst
+through one of them when he had given place to the vagrant impulse
+prompting him to go horseback-riding when he should have gone
+comfortably to bed in his sleeper to wait for the track-clearing.
+
+Whither had a curiously bizarre fate led him? Where was "Wartrace Hall,"
+and who was "Mahsteh Majah"? Who was the winsome little lady who looked
+as if she might be twenty, and had all the wit and wisdom of the ages at
+her tongue's end--who had held him so nearly spellbound over the teacups
+that he had entirely lost sight of everything but his hospitable
+welcome?
+
+These and kindred speculations kept him awake for a long time after the
+door had closed behind the ancient negro; and he was just dropping off
+into his first loss of consciousness when the familiar purring of a
+motor-car aroused him. There was a window at his bed's head, and he
+reached over and drew the curtain. The view gave upon the avenue of
+cottonwoods and the circular carriage approach. A touring-car, with its
+powerful head-lights paling the white radiance of the moon, was drawn up
+at the steps, and he had a glimpse of a big man, swathed from head to
+heel in a dust-coat, descending from the tonneau.
+
+"I suppose that will be 'Mahsteh Majah,'" he mused sleepily. "That's
+why the little lady was sitting up so late--she was waiting for him."
+Then to the thronging queries threatening to return and keep him awake:
+"Scat!--go away! call it a pipe-dream and let me go to sleep!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AT WARTRACE HALL
+
+
+In his most imaginative moments, Evan Blount had never prefigured a
+home-coming to coincide in any detail of it with the reality.
+
+When he opened his eyes on the morning following the night of singular
+adventures, the sun was shining brightly in at the bed's-head window, a
+cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, and his father, a little
+heavier, a little grayer, but with the same ruggedly strong face and
+kindly eyes, was standing at his bedside.
+
+"Father!"--and "Evan, boy!" were the simple words of greeting; but the
+mighty hand-grip which went with them was for the younger man a
+confirmation of the filial hope and a heart-warming promise for the
+future. Following instantly, there came a rush of mingled emotions: of
+astoundment that he had recognized no familiar landmark in the midnight
+faring through the hills or on the approach to the home of his
+childhood; of something akin to keen regret that the old had given place
+so thoroughly and completely to the new; of a feeling bordering on
+chagrin that he had been surprised into accepting the hospitable
+advances of a woman whom he had been intending to avoid, and for whom he
+had hitherto cherished--and meant to cherish--a settled aversion.
+
+But at the hand-gripping moment there was no time for a nice weighing of
+emotions. He was in his father's house; the home-coming, some phases of
+which he had vaguely dreaded, was a fact accomplished, and the new
+life--the life which must be lived without Patricia--was fairly begun.
+Also, there were many arrears to be brought up.
+
+"Intuition, on the manward side of it at least, doesn't go," he was
+saying with half-boyish candor. "I was awake last night when you drove
+home in the motor, and I looked out of the window and saw you as you
+came up the steps. According to the psychics, there ought to have been
+some inward stirrings of recognition, but there weren't--not a single
+thrill. Did the little--er--did Mrs. Blount tell you that I was here?"
+
+"She did so; but she couldn't tell me much more. Say, son, how on top of
+earth did you happen to blow in at midnight, with Jack Barto for your
+herd leader?"
+
+"It's a fairy tale, and you won't believe it--of a Blount," was the
+laughing reply. "I left Boston Monday, and should have reached the
+capital last night. But my train was laid out by a yard wreck at Twin
+Buttes just before dark, and I left it and took to the hills--horseback.
+Don't ask me why I did such a thing as that; I can only say that the
+smell of the sage-brush got into my blood and I simply had to do it."
+
+The old cattle-king was standing with his feet planted wide apart and
+his hands deep in his pockets. "You hired a horse!" he chuckled, with
+the humorous wrinkles coming and going at the corners of the kindly
+eyes. "Did you have the nerve to think you were going to climb down from
+a three-legged stool in a Boston law office one day and ride the fifty
+miles from Twin Buttes to the capital the next?"
+
+"Oh, no; I wasn't altogether daft. But knowing where I was, I did think
+I could ride out to Debbleby's. So I hired the bronco and set out--and
+that reminds me: the horse will have to be sent back to the liveryman in
+Twin Buttes, some way."
+
+"Never mind the cayuse. Shackford would have made you a present of it
+outright if you had told him who you were. Go on with your story. It
+listens like a novel."
+
+"I took the general direction all right on leaving Twin Buttes, and kept
+it until I got among the Lost River hogbacks. But after that I was
+pretty successfully lost. I'm ashamed to tell it, but about half of the
+time the moon didn't seem to be in the right place."
+
+"Lost, were you? And Jack Barto found you?" queried the father.
+
+"Barto hadn't lost me to any appreciable extent," was the half-humorous
+emendation. And then: "Who is this ubiquitous Barto who goes around
+playing the hold-up one minute and the good angel the next?"
+
+"He is a sort of general utility man for Hathaway, the head pusher of
+the Twin Buttes Lumber Company. He is supposed to be a timber-cruiser
+and log-sealer, but I reckon he doesn't work very hard at his trade.
+Down in the lower wards of New York they'd call him a boss heeler,
+maybe. But you say 'hold-up'; you don't mean to tell me that Jack Barto
+robbed you, son!"
+
+"Oh, no; he held me up with a gun while his helpers pulled me off the
+bronco and hog-tied me, and then fell to discussing with the other two
+the advisability of knocking me on the head and dropping me into Lost
+River Canyon--that's all. Of course, I knew they had stumbled upon the
+wrong man; and after a while I succeeded in making Barto accept that
+hypothesis; at least, he accepted it sufficiently to bring me here for
+identification. Since he wouldn't talk, and I didn't recognize the trail
+or the place, I hadn't the slightest notion of my whereabouts--not the
+least in the world; didn't know where he was taking me or where I had
+landed when we stopped here."
+
+The big man was leaning against the foot-rail of the bed and frowning
+thoughtfully. "Talked about dropping you into Lost River, did they? H'm.
+I reckon we'll have to look into that a little. Who set them on, son?
+Got any idea of that?"
+
+"I have a very clear idea: it was this man Hathaway you speak of--a big
+ranchman named Griggs told me his name. He came across in the Pullman
+with me from Omaha; middle-aged, tall, and slim, with a hatchet face and
+owlish eyes. Before I learned his name we had talked a bit--killing time
+in the smoking-room. He said he was interested in mines and timber.
+Along toward the last he got the notion into his head that I was a
+special agent of some kind, on a mission for the Bureau of Forestry, and
+I was foolish enough to let him escape with the impression uncorrected."
+
+"That was Pete Hathaway, all right," was the senator's comment. "His
+company has been cutting timber in the Lost River watershed reserves,
+and he probably thought you were aiming to get him. You say he sent
+Barto after you?"
+
+"I'm only guessing at that part of it. When I rode away from Twin Buttes
+he was standing on the porch of the tavern, talking to Barto and two
+others; and I'm pretty sure he pointed me out to them. An hour or so
+later, three horsemen passed me on the mesa, one after another. I
+couldn't see them, but I heard them. It might have been another hour or
+more past that when they potted me."
+
+"You gave them your name?"
+
+"Yes; and that seemed to tangle them a little. Barto said he believed I
+was lying, but, anyway, he'd give me a chance to 'prove up.' Then they
+brought me here, and your--er--Mrs. Blount kindly stepped into the
+breach for me."
+
+"You didn't know Honoria when you saw her?" queried the father.
+
+"No; I wasn't in the least expecting--that is, I--you may remember that
+I had never met her," stammered the young man, who had risen on his
+elbow among the pillows.
+
+The older man walked to the window and stood looking out upon the
+distant mountains for a full minute before he faced about to say: "We
+might as well run the boundary lines on this thing one time as another,
+son. You don't like Honoria; you've made up your mind you're not going
+to let yourself like her. I don't mean to make it hard for either of you
+if I can dodge it. This is her home; but it is also yours, my boy. Do
+you reckon you could--"
+
+Evan Blount made affectionate haste to stop the half-pathetic appeal.
+
+"Don't let that trouble you for a minute," he interposed. "I--Mrs.
+Blount is a very different person from the woman I have been picturing
+her to be; and if she were not, I should still try to believe that we
+are both sufficiently civilized not to quarrel." Then: "Have you
+breakfasted yet--you and Mrs. Blount? But of course you have, long ago."
+
+"Breakfasted?--without you? Not much, son! And that reminds me: I was to
+come up here and see if you were awake, and if you were, I was to send
+Barnabas up with your coffee."
+
+"You may tell Uncle Barnabas that I haven't acquired the coffee-in-bed
+habit yet," laughed the lazy one, sitting up. "Also, you may make my
+apologies to Mrs. Blount and tell her I'll be down _pronto_. There;
+doesn't that sound as if I were getting back to the good old sage-brush
+idiom? Great land! I haven't heard anybody say _pronto_ since I was
+knee-high to a hop-toad!"
+
+Farther on, when he was no longer in the first lilting flush of the new
+impressions, Evan Blount was able to look back upon that first day at
+Wartrace Hall with keen regret; the regret that, in the nature of
+things, it could never be lived over again. In all his forecastings he
+had never pictured a homecoming remotely resembling the fact. In each
+succeeding hour of the long summer day the edges of the chasm of the
+years drew closer together; and when, in the afternoon, his father put
+him on a horse and rode with him to a corner of the vast home domain, a
+corner fenced off by sentinel cottonwoods and watered by the single
+small irrigation ditch of his childish recollections; rode with him
+through the screening cottonwoods and showed him, lying beyond them, the
+old ranch buildings of the "Circle-Bar," untouched and undisturbed; his
+heart was full and a sudden mist came before his eyes to dim the
+picture.
+
+"I've kept it all just as it used to be, Evan," the father said gently.
+"I thought maybe you'd come back some day and be sure-enough
+disappointed if it were gone."
+
+The younger man slipped from his saddle and went to look in at the open
+door of the old ranch-house. Everything was precisely as he remembered
+it: the simple, old-fashioned furniture, the crossed quirts over the
+high wooden mantel, his mother's rocking-chair ... that was the final
+touch; he sat down on the worn door-log and put his face in his hands.
+For now the gaping chasm of the years was quite closed and he was a boy
+again.
+
+Still later in this same first day there were ambling gallops along the
+country roads, and the father explained how the transformation from
+cattle-raising to agriculture and fruit-growing had come about; how the
+great irrigation project in Quaretaro Canyon had put a thousand square
+miles of the fertile mesa under cultivation; how with the inpouring of
+the new population had come new blood, new methods, good roads, the
+telephone, the rural mail route, and other civilizing agencies.
+
+The young man groaned. "I know," he mourned. "I've lost my birth-land;
+it's as extinct as the prehistoric lizards whose bones we used to find
+sticking in the old gully banks on Table Mesa. By the way, that reminds
+me: are there any of those giant fossils left? I was telling Professor
+Anners about them the other day, and he was immensely interested."
+
+"We're all fossils--we older folks of the cattle-raising times," laughed
+the man whom Richard Gantry had called the "biggest man in the State."
+"But there are some of the petrified bones left, too, I reckon. If the
+professor is a friend of yours, we'll get him a State permit to dig all
+he wants to."
+
+"Yes; Professor Anners is a friend of mine," was the younger Blount's
+half-absent rejoinder. But after the admission was made he qualified it.
+"Perhaps I ought to say that he is as much a friend as his daughter will
+permit him to be."
+
+The qualifying clause was not thrown away upon the senator.
+
+"What-all has the daughter got against you, son?" he asked mildly.
+
+"Nothing very serious," said Patricia's lover, with a laugh which was
+little better than a grimace. "It's merely that she is jealous of any
+one who tries to share her father with her. Next to her career--"
+
+"That's Boston, isn't it?" interrupted the ex-king of the cattle ranges.
+Then he added: "I'm right glad it hasn't come in your way to tie
+yourself up to one of those 'careers,' Evan, boy."
+
+Now all the influences of this red-letter day had been humanizing, and
+when Evan Blount remembered the preservation of the old "Circle-Bar"
+ranch-house, and the motive which had prompted it, he told his brief
+love-tale, hiding nothing--not even the hope that in the years to come
+Patricia might possibly find her career sufficiently unsatisfying to
+admit the thin edge of some wedge of reconsideration. He felt better
+after he had told his father. It was highly necessary that he should
+tell some one; and who better?
+
+David Blount listened with the far-away look in his eyes which the son
+had more than once marked as the greatest of the changes chargeable to
+the aging years.
+
+"Think a heap of her, do you, son?" he said, when the ambling
+saddle-animals had covered another half-mile of the homeward journey.
+
+"So much that it went near to spoiling me when she finally made me
+realize that I couldn't hold my own against the 'career,'" was the young
+man's answer. Then he added: "I want work, father--that is what I am out
+here for; the hardest kind of work, and plenty of it; something that I
+can put my heart into. Can you find it for me?"
+
+There was the wisdom of the centuries in the gentle smile provoked by
+this unashamed disappointed lover's appeal.
+
+"I wouldn't take it too hard--the career business--if I were you, son,"
+said the wise man. "And as for the work, I reckon we can satisfy you, if
+your appetite isn't too whaling big. How would a State office of some
+kind suit you?"
+
+"Politics?" queried Blount, bringing his horse down to the walk for
+which his father had set the example. "I've thought a good bit about
+that, though I haven't had any special training that way. The schools of
+to-day are turning out business lawyers--men who know the commercial and
+industrial codes and are trained particularly in their application to
+the great business undertakings. That has been my ambition: to be a
+business adviser, and, perhaps, after a while to climb to the top of the
+ladder and be somebody's corporation counsel."
+
+"But now you have changed your notion?"
+
+"I don't know; sometimes I wonder if I haven't. There is another field
+that is exceedingly attractive to me, and you have just named it. No man
+can study the politics of America to-day without seeing the crying need
+for good men: men who will not let the big income they could command in
+private undertakings weigh against pure patriotism and a plain duty to
+their country and their fellow-men; strong men who would administer the
+affairs of the State or the nation absolutely without fear or favor; men
+who will hew to the line under any and all conditions. There's an awful
+dearth of that kind of material in our Government."
+
+A quaint smile was playing under the drooping mustaches of that veteran
+politician the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.
+
+"I reckon we do need a few men like that, Evan; need 'em mighty bad.
+Think you could fill the bill as one of them if you had a right good
+chance?"
+
+The potential hewer of political chips which should lie as they might
+fall smiled at what seemed to be merely an expression of parental
+favoritism.
+
+"I'm not likely to get the chance very soon," he returned. "Just at
+present, you know, I am still a legal resident of the good old
+Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a member of its bar--eligible to
+office there, and nowhere else."
+
+"You'd be a citizen of this State by the time you could get elected to
+an office in it," suggested the senator gravely.
+
+"I know; the required term of residence here is ridiculously short. But
+you are forgetting that I am as completely unknown in the sage-brush
+hills as you are well known. I couldn't get a nomination for the office
+of pound-keeper."
+
+David Blount was chuckling softly as he threw up the brim of the big
+sombrero he was wearing.
+
+"Sounds right funny to hear you talking that way, son," he commented.
+"Mighty near everybody this side of the Bad Lands will tell you that the
+slate hangs up behind the door at Wartrace Hall; and I don't know but
+what some people would say that old Sage-Brush Dave himself does most of
+the writing on it. Anyhow, there is one place on it that is still
+needing a name, and I reckon your name would fit it as well as
+anybody's."
+
+The young man who was so lately out of the well-balanced East was
+astounded.
+
+"Heavens!" he ejaculated. "You're not considering me as a possibility on
+the State ticket before I've been twenty-four hours inside of the State
+lines, are you?"
+
+"No; not exactly as a possibility, son; that isn't quite the word. We'll
+call it a sure thing, if you want it. It's this way: we're needing a
+sort of political house-cleaning right bad this year. We have good
+enough laws, but they're winked at any day in the week when somebody
+comes along with a fistful of yellow-backs. The fight is on between the
+people of this State and the corporations; it was begun two years ago,
+and the people got the laws all right, but they forgot to elect men who
+would carry them out. This time it looks as if the voters had got their
+knives sharpened. We've been a little slow catching step maybe, but the
+marching orders have gone out. We're aiming to clean house, and do it
+right, this fall."
+
+"Not if the slate hangs behind your door--or any man's, father," was the
+theorist's sober reminder. "Reform doesn't come in by that road."
+
+"Hold on, boy; steady-go-easy's the word. Reform comes in by any old
+trail it can find, mostly, and thanks its lucky stars if it doesn't run
+up against any bridges washed out or any mud-holes too deep to ford.
+We've got a good man for governor right now; not any too broad maybe,
+but good--church good. Nobody has ever said he'd take a bribe; but he
+isn't heavy enough to sit on the lid and hold it down. Alec Gordon, the
+man who is going to succeed him next fall, is all the different kinds of
+things that the present governor isn't, so that is fixed."
+
+"How 'fixed'?" queried the younger man, who, though he was not from
+Missouri, was beginning to fear that he would constantly have to be
+shown.
+
+"In the same way that everything has to be fixed if we are going to get
+results," was the calm reply. "After the governor, the man upon whom the
+most depends is the attorney-general. The fellow who is in now,
+Dortscher, is one of the candidates, but we've crossed his name off. The
+next man we considered was Jim Rankin. In some ways he's fit; he's a
+hard fighter, and the man doesn't live who can bluff him. But Jim's
+poor, and he wants mighty bad to be rich, so I reckon that lets him
+out."
+
+All of this was directly subversive of Evan Blount's ideas touching the
+manner in which the political affairs of a free country should be
+conducted, but he was willing to hear more.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+"What we want this time is one of your hew-to-the-line fellows, son.
+Reckon you'd like to try it?"
+
+The young man who was less than a week away from the atmosphere of the
+idealistic school and its theories was frankly aghast. That his father
+should be coolly proposing him for a high office in the State in which,
+notwithstanding the birthright, he was as new as the newest immigrant,
+seemed blankly incredible. But when the incredibility began to subside,
+the despotism of the machine methods which could propose and carry out
+such unheard-of things loomed maleficent.
+
+"I'm afraid we are a good many miles apart in this matter of politics,"
+he said, when the proposal had been given time to sink in. "America is
+supposed to be a free country, with a representative government elected
+by the suffrages of the people; do you mean to say that you and a few of
+your friends ignore the basic principles of democracy to such an extent
+that you nominate and elect anybody you please to any office in the
+State?"
+
+The far-seeing eyes of the veteran were twinkling again.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about our being so far apart," was the deprecatory
+protest. "You're just a little bit long on theory, that's all, son. When
+it comes down to the real thing--practical politics, as some folks call
+it--somebody has to head the stampede and turn it. And if we don't do it
+this coming fall, the other bunch will."
+
+"What other bunch?"
+
+"In this case it's the corporations: the timber people, the irrigation
+companies, and, most of all, the railroad."
+
+"Gantry seems to think that the railroads--or his railroad, at
+least--are persecuted."
+
+The senator pulled his horse down to a still slower walk. "Where did you
+see Dick Gantry?" he demanded.
+
+Evan told of the meeting on the veranda of the Winnebasset Club, adding
+the further fact of the college friendship.
+
+"Just happened so, did it?" queried the older man, "that getting
+together last Saturday night?"
+
+"Why--yes, I suppose so. Dick knew I was in Boston, and he said he had
+meant to look me up."
+
+"I reckon he did," was the quiet comment; "yes, I reckon he did. And he
+filled you up plumb full of Hardwick McVickar's notions, _of_ course. I
+reckon that's about what he was told to do. But we won't fall apart on
+that, son. To-morrow we'll run down to the city, and you can look the
+ground over for yourself. I want you to draw your own conclusions, and
+then come and tell me what you'd like to do. Shall we leave it that
+way?"
+
+Evan Blount acquiesced, quite without prejudice, to a firm conviction
+that his opinion, when formed, was going to be based on the larger
+merits of the case, upon a fair and judicial summing-up of the pros and
+cons--all of them. He felt that it would be a blow struck at the very
+root of the tree of good government if he should consent to be the
+candidate of the machine. But, on the other hand, he saw instantly what
+a power a fearless public prosecutor could be in a misguided
+commonwealth where the lack was not of good laws, but of men strong
+enough and courageous enough to administer them. He would see: if the
+good to be accomplished were great enough to over-balance the evil ...
+it was a temptation to compromise--a sharp temptation; and he found
+himself longing for Patricia, for her clear-sighted comment which, he
+felt sure, would go straight to the heart of the tangle.
+
+It was that thought of Patricia, and his need for her, that made him
+absent-minded at the Wartrace Hall dinner-table that evening; and the
+father, looking on, suspected that Evan's taciturnity was an expression
+of his prejudice against the woman who had taken his mother's place.
+After dinner, when the son, pleading weariness, retreated early to his
+room, the senator's suspicion became a belief.
+
+"You'll have to be right patient with the boy, little woman," he said to
+the small person whom Gantry had described as the court of last resort;
+this when Evan had disappeared and the long-stemmed pipe was alight. "I
+shouldn't wonder if Boston had put some mighty queer notions into his
+head."
+
+The little lady looked up from her embroidery frame and a quaint smile
+was twitching at the corners of the pretty mouth. "He is a dear boy, and
+he is trying awfully hard to hate me," she said. "But I sha'n't let him,
+David."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+ON THE WING OF OCCASIONS
+
+
+From the time when it was heralded in the mammoth New Year's edition of
+_The Plainsman_ as "the newest, the finest, and the most luxurious
+hostelry west of the Missouri River," the Inter-Mountain Hotel, in the
+Sage-brush capital, had been the acceptable gathering-place of the
+clans, industrial, promoting, or political.
+
+Anticipating this patronage, Clarkson, its bonanza-king builder and
+owner, had amended the architect's plans to make them include a
+convention-hall, committee-rooms, and a complete floor of suites with
+private dining-rooms. Past this, the amended plans doubled the floor
+space of the lobby--debating-ground dear to the heart of the country
+delegate--and particular pains had been taken to make this semi-public
+forum, where the burning question of the moment could be caucussed and
+the shaky partisan resworn to fealty, attractive and home-like; the
+plainly tiled floor, leather-covered lounging-chairs, and numerous and
+convenient cuspidors lending an air of democratic comfort which was
+somehow missing in the resplendent, bemirrored, onyx-plated bar,
+blazing with its cut glass and polished mahogany.
+
+After the solid costliness of Wartrace Hall and the thirty-mile spin in
+a high-powered gentleman's roadster, which was only one of the three
+high-priced motor-carriages in the Wartrace garage, Evan Blount was not
+surprised to learn that his father was registered in permanence for one
+of the private dining-room suites at the Inter-Mountain. It was amply
+evident that the simple life which had been the rule of the "Circle-Bar"
+ranch household had become a thing of the past; and though he charged
+the new order of things to the ambition of his father's wife, he could
+hardly cavil at it, since he was himself a sharer in the comforts and
+luxuries.
+
+For the first few days after the father and son had gone into bachelor
+quarters at the Inter-Mountain, the returned exile was left almost
+wholly to his own devices. Beyond giving him a good many introductions,
+as the opportunities for them offered in the stirring life of the hotel,
+his father made few demands upon him, and they were together only at
+luncheon and dinner, the midday meal being usually served in their
+suite, while for the dinner they met by appointment in the hotel _café_.
+
+Notwithstanding this hospitable neglect on the part of his father, Evan
+Blount suffered no lack of the social opportunities. Gantry was back,
+and, in addition to a most ready availability as a social sponsor, the
+traffic manager was both able and willing. Almost before he had time to
+realize it, Blount had been put in touch with the busy, breezy life of
+the Western city, was exchanging nods or hand-shakings with more people
+than he had ever known in Cambridge or Boston, and was receiving more
+invitations than he could possibly accept.
+
+"Pretty good old town, isn't it?" laughed Gantry one day, when he had
+tolled Blount away from the Inter-Mountain luncheon to share a table
+with him in the Railway Club. "Getting so you feel a little more at home
+with us?"
+
+"If I'm not, it isn't your fault, Dick, or the fault of your friends.
+Naturally, I expected some sort of a welcome as ex-Senator David
+Blount's son; but that doesn't seem to cut any figure at all."
+
+Gantry's smile was inscrutable.
+
+"The people with whom it cuts the largest figure will never let you know
+anything about it. Just the same, your sonship is cutting a good bit of
+ice, if you care to know it. I've met a number of men in the past few
+days who have discovered that you are just about the brainiest thing
+that ever escaped from the effete East and the law schools."
+
+"Tommy-rot!" derided the brainy one.
+
+"It's a fact. And they are prophesying all sorts of a roseate and
+iridescent future for you. One might almost imagine that the prophets
+are inspired by that kind of gratitude which is a lively sense of favors
+to come."
+
+"Oh, piffle! You know that is all nonsense!"
+
+"Is it?" queried the railroad man, stressing the first word meaningly.
+Then, shifting the point of attack: "You're mighty innocent, aren't
+you, old man? But I think you might have told me. Goodness knows, I'm as
+safe as a brick wall."
+
+"Might have told you what?"
+
+"That you are going to run for attorney-general against Dortscher."
+
+"I couldn't very well tell you what I didn't know myself, Dick," was the
+sober reply. "Who has been romancing to you?"
+
+"It's all over town. Everybody's talking about it--talking a lot and
+guessing a good deal more. You've got 'em running around in circles and
+uttering loud and plaintive cries, especially Jim Rankin, who had--or
+thought he had--a lead-pipe cinch on the job. Dortscher is tickled half
+to death. He knew he wasn't going to be allowed to succeed himself, and
+he hates Rankin worse than poison."
+
+Blount was balancing the spoon on the edge of his coffee-cup and
+scowling abstractedly. It was the first little discord in the filial
+harmony--this evidence that the powers were at work; almost a breach of
+confidence. There was no avoiding the distasteful conclusion. Without
+consulting his wishes, without waiting for his decision, his father had
+publicly committed him--taken "snap judgment" upon him was the way he
+phrased it.
+
+"Dick, will you believe me if I say that I haven't authorized any such
+talk as this you've been hearing?" he asked, looking up quickly.
+
+This time Gantry's smile was a grin of complete intelligence.
+
+"Oh, that's the way of it, eh? The Honorable Senator took it out of
+your hands, did he? You'll understand that I'm not casting any
+aspersions when I say that it's exactly like him. If he has slated you,
+you are booked to run; and if he runs you, you'll be elected. Those are
+two of the things that practically speak right out and say themselves
+here in the old Sage-brush State."
+
+Blount was indignant--justly indignant, he persuaded himself.
+
+"If that is the case, Gantry, it is high time that some one should have
+nerve enough to break the charm. I haven't said that I would accept the
+nomination if it were tendered me, and I am not at all sure that I am
+going to say it. And if I don't say it, by all that's good and great,
+that settles it!"
+
+Gantry was plainly shocked. "You're not trying to make me believe that
+you've got nerve enough to buck the old m--your father, I mean? Why,
+great cats, Evan! you don't know what that stands for in the greasewood
+hills!"
+
+"And I don't care, Dick. Up to this present moment I am a free moral
+agent; I haven't surrendered any right of decision to my father, or to
+any one else, so far as I am aware."
+
+Gantry's eyes dropped to his plate, and his rejoinder was not wholly
+free from guile.
+
+"Will you authorize me to contradict the talk as I can?" he asked,
+without looking up.
+
+Blount was still warm enough to be peremptory.
+
+"Yes, you may contradict it. You may say that it is entirely
+unauthorized--that I have told you so myself." Then he remembered the
+claims of friendship. "I'll be frank with you, Dick; this thing has been
+mentioned to me once, but nothing was decided--absolutely nothing. I
+didn't even promise to take it under advisement."
+
+Among those who knew him only externally, Mr. Richard Gantry had the
+reputation of owning a loose tongue. But none recognized more justly
+than the real Richard Gantry the precise instant at which to bridle the
+loose tongue or when to make it wag away from the subject which has
+reached its nicely calculated climax. While the flush of irritation was
+still making him ashamed that he had shown so much warmth, Blount found
+himself gossiping with his table companion over a social function two
+days old; and subsequently, when the waiter brought the cigars, Gantry
+was congratulating himself that the danger-point, if any there were, was
+safely past.
+
+It was after the club luncheon, and while the two young men were on
+their way to the smoking-room, that some one on business bent stopped
+Gantry in the corridor. Blount strolled on by himself, and, finding the
+smoking-room unoccupied, went to lounge in a lazy-chair standing in a
+little alcove lined with bookcases and half screened by the racks of the
+newspaper files. Notwithstanding the successful topic changing at table,
+he was still brooding over the false position in which his father's
+plans had placed him; wherefore he craved solitude and a chance to think
+things over fairly and without heat.
+
+Shortly afterward Gantry looked in, and, apparently missing the
+half-concealed easy-chair and its occupant in the bookcase alcove, went
+his way. He had scarcely had time to get out of the building, one would
+say, before two men entered the smoking-room, coming down the corridor
+from the grill. Blount saw them, and he made sure that they saw him. But
+when they had taken chairs on the other side of the sheltering newspaper
+files he was suddenly assured that they had not seen him. They were
+talking quite freely of him and of his father.
+
+"Well, the Honorable Dave has got McVickar dead to rights this time,"
+remarked the older of the two, a hard-featured, round-bodied real-estate
+promoter to whom Blount had been introduced on his first day in the
+capital, but whose name he could not now recall. "This scheme of the
+senator's for shoving his son into the race for the attorney-generalship
+is just about the foxiest thing he has ever put across. You can bet the
+air was blue in the Transcontinental Chicago offices when the news got
+there."
+
+"What do you suppose McVickar will do?" asked the other.
+
+"He will do anything the senator wants him to--he's got to. Blount is
+land hungry, and I guess he'll take a few more sections of the railroad
+mesa-land under the Clearwater ditch. That was what he did two years ago
+when McVickar wanted the right of way for the branch through Carnadine
+County."
+
+"Don't you believe he's going to take any little Christmas gift this
+time!" was the rasping reply. "He'll sell the railroad something, and
+take good hard money for it. It's a cinch. The railroad can't afford to
+have the courts against it, and McVickar will be made to sweat blood
+this heat. You watch the wheels go round when McVickar comes out here."
+
+Evan Blount found himself growing strangely sick and faint. Could it be
+his father whom they were thus calmly accusing of graft and trickery and
+blackmailing methods too despicable to be imagined? His first impulse
+was to confront the two; to demand proofs; to do and say what a loyal
+son should. But the crushing conviction that they were discussing only
+well-known and well-assured facts unnerved him; and after that he was
+anxious for only one thing--that they might finish their cigars and go
+away without discovering him.
+
+Fate was kind to him thus far. After a little further talk, in which the
+accepted point of view of the on looker at the great game was made still
+more painfully evident for the unwilling listener, the men went away.
+For a long time after they had gone, Blount sat crumpled in the depths
+of the big chair, chewing his extinct cigar and staring absently at the
+row of books on a level with his eyes in the opposite case.
+
+One clear thought, and one only, came out of the sorrowful confusion:
+not for any inducement that could now be offered would he lend himself
+to the furtherance of his father's plans. Beyond this he did not reason
+in the miserable hour wrought out in the quiet of the club smoking-room.
+But when he got up to go, another prompting was forcing its way to the
+surface--a prompting to throw himself boldly into the scale against
+graft and chicanery; to redeem at any cost, and by whatsoever means
+might offer, the good old name which had been so shamefully dragged in
+the mire.
+
+He did not know just how it was to be done, but he told himself that he
+would find a way. That the path would be full of thorns he could not
+doubt, since every step in it would widen the breach which must be
+opened between his father and himself. Possibly it might lead him to the
+bar of justice as that father's accuser, but even in that hard case he
+must not falter. He said to himself, in a fresh access of passionate
+determination, that though he might have to blush for his father,
+Patricia should not be made ashamed for her lover.
+
+Upon leaving the club, he paused long enough to remember that he was in
+no fit frame of mind to risk an immediate meeting with his father. To
+make even a chance meeting impossible, he crossed the street, and,
+passing through the Capitol grounds, strolled aimlessly out one of the
+residence avenues until he came to the open country beyond the suburbs.
+
+It was quite late in the afternoon when he re-entered the city by
+another street and boarded a trolley car for the down-town centre. The
+long afternoon tramp, and the conclusions it had bred, made it
+imperative for him to see Gantry before the traffic manager should
+leave his office for the day. His business with the railroad man was
+purely personal. He meant to ask Gantry a few pointed questions
+requiring such answers as friendship may demand. If Gantry's replies
+were such as he feared they would be, he would seek his father and come
+at once to a plain understanding with him.
+
+The trolley car dropped him within a square of the railway station, on
+the second floor of which Gantry had his business office. The shortest
+way to the Sierra Avenue end of the station building was through the
+great train-shed. Half-way up the platform Blount met the west-bound
+Overland steaming in from the eastern yards. At the Sierra Avenue
+crossing the yard crew was cutting off a private car. Blount saw the
+number on the medallion, "008," and noted half absently the rich
+window-hangings and the polished brass platform railings. A car
+inspector in greasy overalls and jumper was tapping the wheels with his
+long-handled hammer.
+
+"Whose car is this?" asked Blount.
+
+"'Tis Misther McVickar's, sorr--the vice-prisidint av the coompany,"
+said the man.
+
+Blount turned away, saying something which the hammer-man mistook for a
+word of thanks. So the vice-president had come, hastening upon the wing
+of occasions, it seemed. And in the light of the overheard conversation
+in the club smoking-room, it was only too easy to guess his errand in
+the Sage-brush capital. He had come to make such terms as he could with
+the man who was going to hold him up.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A BATTLE ROYAL
+
+
+Having already convinced himself that the time was ripe for a
+straightforward declaration of principles, Evan Blount saw in the
+arrival of the Overland, with the vice-president's private car attached,
+only an added argument for haste.
+
+During the better part of the long tramp in the outskirts of the city he
+had been halting between two opinions. The fighting blood of the
+Tennessee pioneer strain had clamored for its hearing, prompting him to
+enter the lists, to set up the standard of honesty and fair-dealing in
+the Blount name, to plunge into the approaching political campaign with
+a single purpose--the purpose of overthrowing the power of the machine
+in his native State. On the other hand, filial affection had pleaded
+eloquently. The battle for political honesty would inevitably involve
+his father; would, if successful, defeat and disgrace him. As often as
+he thought he had closed decisively with the idealistic determination,
+the other side of the argument sprang up again, keen-edged and biting.
+Up to the present moment he had owed his father everything--was still
+owing him day by day. Would it not be the part of a son to drop out
+quietly, leaving the political house-cleaning for some one who would not
+be obliged to pay such a costly price?
+
+It was the idealistic decision which had been in the saddle when he
+dropped from the trolley car at the western portal of the railway
+station, and which was sending him to seek the scale-turning interview
+with Gantry. But, after all, it was chance and the swift current of
+events which seized upon him and swept him along, smashing all the
+arguments and fine-spun theories. Before he had gone ten steps in the
+direction of Gantry's office, some one in the throng of debarking
+Overland travellers called his name. Turning quickly, he found himself
+face to face with a white-haired little gentleman who had plucked
+impatiently at his sleeve.
+
+"Why, bless my soul! Of all the lucky miracles!" gasped the young man
+who, but an instant earlier, had been deaf and blind to all external
+things. And then: "Where is Patricia?"
+
+"She's here, somewhere," snapped the little gentleman irascibly. "I've
+lost her in this confounded mob. Find her for me. I've got my
+reading-glasses on, and I can't see anything. Why don't they have this
+barn of a place lighted up?"
+
+"Stand still right where you are," Blount directed, and a moment later
+he had found Patricia guarding a pair of suit-cases which were too heavy
+for her to carry.
+
+"You poor lost child!" was his burbled greeting.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that _this_ is the West to which you said
+you were coming?"
+
+"I'm not lost; I'm here. It's father who is lost," she laughed. Then she
+answered his question; "Yes, this is the West I meant, and if you
+haven't been telling the truth about it--"
+
+Blount had snatched up the two hand-bags and had effected a reunion of
+the scattered pair. The little gentleman, standing immovable, as he had
+been told to do, was blinking impatiently through his reading-glasses at
+the surging throng. When Blount came up, the professor stabbed him with
+a sharp forefinger.
+
+"Well, we're here, young man," he barked. "If you've been telling me
+fibs about those Megalosauridæ which you said could be dug out of your
+sage-brush hills, you'll pay our fare back home again--just make up your
+mind to that. Now show us the best hotel in this mushroom city of yours,
+and do it quickly."
+
+Having a hospitable thing to do, Blount shoved his problem into a still
+more remote background and bestirred himself generously. Though the
+Inter-Mountain was only three squares distant, he chartered the
+best-looking auto he could find in the rank of waiting vehicles, put his
+charges into it, and went with them to do the honors at the hotel. By
+this postponement of the visit to Gantry he missed a meeting which would
+have done something toward solving a part of his problem. But for the
+hospitable turning aside he might have reached the railroad office in
+time to see a round-bodied man halting at the open door of Gantry's
+private room for a parting word with the traffic manager.
+
+"Oh, yes; he fell for it, all right," was the form the parting word
+took. "If you had seen his face when Lackner and I came away, you'd have
+said there was battle, murder, and sudden death in it for somebody."
+
+"But, see here, Bradbury," Gantry held his visitor to say, "it wasn't in
+the game that you were to fill him up with a lot of lies. I won't stand
+for that, you know. He is too good a fellow, and too good a friend of
+mine."
+
+It was at this conjuncture that Blount, if he had been present and
+invisible, would have seen a sour smile wrinkling upon the face of the
+club gossip.
+
+"I owe the senator one or two on my own account, Gantry. But it wasn't
+necessary to go out of the beaten path. If young Blount or his daddy
+would like to sue us for libel, we could prove every word that was
+said--or prove that it was common report; too common to be doubted. And
+it got the young fellow; got him right in the solar plexus. If you don't
+see some fireworks within the next few days, I miss my guess and lose my
+ante."
+
+This is what Evan Blount, carrying out his intention of going to Gantry,
+might have seen and heard. On the other hand, if he had lingered a few
+minutes longer on the station platform he could scarcely have failed to
+mark the side-tracking of private car "008," and he might have seen the
+herculean figure of the vice-president crossing to the carriage-stand
+to climb heavily into a waiting automobile.
+
+Mr. McVickar's order to the chauffeur was curtly brief, and a little
+later the vice-president entered the lobby of the Inter-Mountain and
+shot a brisk question at the room-clerk.
+
+"Is Senator Blount in his rooms?"
+
+"I think not. He was here a few minutes ago. I'll send a boy to hunt him
+up for you. You want your usual suite, I suppose, Mr. McVickar?"
+
+"No; I'm not stopping overnight. Is young Blount here in the hotel?"
+
+"He has just gone up to the fifth floor with some friends of his--Mr.
+Anners and his daughter, from Boston. Shall I hold him for you when he
+comes down?"
+
+"No; I want to see the senator. Hustle out another boy or two. I can't
+wait all night."
+
+It was at this moment that Evan Blount, bearing luggage-checks and going
+in search of the house baggageman, missed another incident which might
+have drawn him back suddenly to his problem and its unsettled condition.
+The incident was the meeting between his father and the railroad
+vice-president at the room-clerk's counter. It was neither hostile nor
+friendly; on McVickar's part it was gruffly business-like.
+
+"Well, Senator, I'm here," was the follow-up of the perfunctory
+hand-shake. "Let's find a place where we can flail it out," and together
+the two entered an elevator.
+
+Reaching the floor of the private dining-room suites, the
+ex-cattle-king led the way in silence to his own apartments; rather let
+us say he pointed the way, since in the march down the long corridor the
+two field commanders tramped evenly abreast as if neither would give the
+other the advantage of an inch of precedence. In the sitting-room of the
+private suite the senator snapped the latch on the door, and pressed the
+wall-button for the electric lights. McVickar dragged a chair over to
+one of the windows commanding a view of the busy street, and dropping
+solidly into it, like a man bracing himself for a fight, began abruptly:
+
+"I suppose we may as well cut out the preliminaries and come to the
+point at once, Blount. Ackerton wired me that you had definitely
+announced your son as a candidate for the attorney-generalship. Have
+you?"
+
+The senator had found an unopened box of cigars in a cabinet and he was
+inserting the blade of his pocket-knife under the lid when he said, with
+good-natured irony: "The primaries do the nominating in this State,
+Hardwick. Didn't you know that?"
+
+"See here, Blount; I've come half-way across the continent to thresh
+this thing out with you, face to face, and I'm not in the humor to spar
+for an opening. Do you mean to run your son or not? That is a plain
+question, and I'd like to have an equally plain answer."
+
+"I told you two weeks ago what you might expect if you insisted on
+sticking your crow-bar in among the wheels this fall, McVickar, but you
+wouldn't believe me. I'll say it again if you want to hear it."
+
+"And I told you two weeks ago that we couldn't stand for any such
+programme as the one you had mapped out. And I added that you might name
+your own price for an alternative which wouldn't confiscate us and drive
+us off the face of the earth."
+
+"Yes; and I named the price, if you happen to remember."
+
+"I know; you said you wanted us to turn everything over to the
+Paramounters and take our chances on a clean administration. Naturally,
+we're not going to do any such Utopian thing as that. What I want to
+know now is what it is going to cost us to do the practical and possible
+thing."
+
+"Want to buy me outright this time, do you, Hardwick?" said the boss,
+still smiling.
+
+"We"--McVickar was going to say--"We have bought you before," but he
+changed the retort to a less offensive phrasing--"We have had no
+difficulty heretofore in arriving at some practical and sensible _modus
+vivendi_, and we shouldn't have now. But as a condition binding upon any
+sort of an arrangement, I am here to say that we can't let you nominate
+and elect your son as attorney-general; that's out of the question. If
+it's going to prove a personal disappointment to you, we'll be
+reasonable and try to make it up to you in some other way."
+
+Again the grimly humorous smile was twinkling in the gray eyes of the
+old cattleman. "What is the market quotation on disappointments, right
+now, Hardwick?" he inquired.
+
+With another man McVickar might have been too diplomatic to show signs
+of a shortening temper. But David Blount was an open-eyed enemy of long
+standing.
+
+"I don't know anybody west of the Missouri River who has a better idea
+of market values than you have," the vice-president countered smartly.
+Then, dropping a heavy hand upon the arm of his chair: "This thing has
+got to be settled here and now, Blount. If you put your son in as public
+prosecutor, you can have but one object in view--you mean to squeeze us
+till the blood runs. We are willing to discount that object before the
+fact!"
+
+"So you have said before, a number of times and in a whole heap of
+different ways. It's getting sort of monotonous, don't you think?"
+
+"I sha'n't say it many more times, David; you are pushing me too far and
+too hard."
+
+"All right; what will you say, then?"
+
+"Just this: if you won't meet me half-way--if you insist upon a
+fight--I'll fight you with any weapons I can get hold of!"
+
+Once more the quiet smile played about the outer angles of the
+hereditary Blount eyes.
+
+"You've said that in other campaigns, Hardwick; in the end you've always
+been like the 'possum that offered to come down out of the tree if the
+man wouldn't shoot."
+
+"I'll hand you another proverb to go with that one," snapped the man in
+the arm-chair: "The pitcher that goes once too often to the well is sure
+to be broken. You've got a joint in your armor now, Blount. You've
+always been able to snap your fingers at public opinion before this; can
+you afford to do it now?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know; I reckon I'll have to grin and bear it if you want to
+buy up a few newspapers and set them to blacklisting me, as you usually
+do," was the half-quizzical reply. Then: "I'm pretty well used to it by
+this time. You and your folks can't paint me much blacker than you have
+always painted me, Hardwick."
+
+"Maybe not. But this time we're going to give you a chance to start a
+few libel suits--if you think you can afford to appear in the courts.
+We've got plenty of evidence, and by heavens we'll produce it! You put
+your son in as public prosecutor and we might be tempted to make your
+own State too hot to hold you. Had you thought of that?"
+
+"Go ahead and try it," was the laconic response.
+
+"But that isn't all," the railroad dictator went on remorselessly. "Your
+fellow citizens here know you for exactly what you are, Blount. You rule
+them with a rod of iron, but that rule can be broken. When it is broken,
+you'll be hounded as a criminal. In our last talk together you had
+something to say to me about our not keeping up with the change in
+public sentiment; public sentiment _has_ changed; changed so far that it
+is coming to demand the punishment of the great offenders as well as the
+jailing of the little ones. If we want to push this fight hard enough,
+it is not impossible that you might find yourself in a hard row of
+stumps at the end of it, David."
+
+"I'm taking all those chances," was the even-toned rejoinder of the man
+who was to be shown up.
+
+"But there is one chance I'm sure you haven't considered," McVickar went
+on aggressively. "This son of yours; I know as much about him as you
+do--more, perhaps, for I have taken more pains to keep tab on him for
+the past few years than you have. He is clean and straight, Blount; a
+son for any father to be proud of. If that is the real reason why we
+don't want to have him instructing the grand juries of this State, it is
+also your best reason for wanting to keep the past decently under cover.
+What will you say to him when the newspapers open up on you? And what
+will he say to you? And suppose you get him in, and we should show you
+up so that you'd be dragged into court with your own son for the
+prosecutor? How does that strike you?"
+
+For the first time since the opening of the one-sided conference the
+senator laid his cigar aside and sat thoughtfully tugging at the
+drooping mustaches.
+
+"You'd set the house afire over my head, would you, Hardwick?" he
+queried, with the gray eyes lighting up as with a glow of smouldering
+embers. "The last time we talked you'll remember that you posted your
+'de-fi'; now I'll post mine. You go ahead and do your damnedest! The boy
+and I will try to see to it that you don't have all the fun. I won't
+say that you mightn't turn him if you went at it right; but you won't go
+at it right, and as matters stand now--well, blood is thicker than
+water, Hardwick, and if you hit me you hit him. I reckon, between us,
+we'll make out to give you as good as you send. That's all"--he rose to
+lean heavily upon the table--"all but one thing: you fight fair,
+Hardwick; say anything you like about me and I'll stand for it; but if
+that boy has anything in his past that I don't know about--any little
+fool trick that he wouldn't want to see published--you let it alone and
+keep your damned newspaper hounds off of it!"
+
+The vice-president, being of those who regain equanimity in exact
+proportion as an opponent loses it, chuckled grimly; was still chuckling
+when an interrupting tap came at the locked door. Blount got up and
+turned the latch to admit an office-boy wearing the uniform of the
+railroad headquarters. "Note for Mr. McVickar," said the messenger; and
+at a gesture from the senator he crossed the room to deliver it.
+
+For a full half-minute after the boy had gone, the vice-president sat
+poring over the pencilled scrawl, which was all that the sealed envelope
+yielded. The note was lacking both date-line and signature, though the
+clerks in Richard Gantry's office were familiar enough with the
+hieroglyph that appeared at the bottom of the sheet. In his own good
+time the vice-president folded the bit of paper and thrust it into his
+pocket. Then he resumed the talk at the precise point at which it had
+been broken off.
+
+"You needn't let the boy's record trouble you," he averred. "As I said a
+few minutes ago, it's as clean as a hound's tooth. That is one of the
+things I'm banking on, David. If you don't look out, I'm going to have
+that young fellow fighting on our side before we're through."
+
+At this the light in the gray eyes flamed fiercely, and the
+ex-cattle-king took the two strides needful to place him before
+McVickar.
+
+"Don't you try that, McVickar; I give you fair warning!" he grated, his
+deep-toned voice rumbling like the burr of grinding wheels. "There's
+only one way you could do it, and--"
+
+The vice-president stood up and reached for his hat.
+
+"And you'll take precious good care that I don't get a chance to try
+that way, you were going to say. All right, David; you tell me to do my
+damnedest, and I'll hand _that_ back to you, too. You do the same, and
+we'll see who comes out ahead."
+
+The vice-president caught an elevator at the end of his leisurely
+progress down the corridor, and had himself lowered to the lobby. The
+electric lights were glowing, and the great gathering-place was
+beginning to take on its evening stir. Mr. Hardwick McVickar pushed his
+way to the desk, and a row of lately arrived guests waited while he
+asked his question.
+
+"Where shall I be most likely to find Mr. Evan Blount at this time of
+day?" he demanded; and the obliging clerk made the guest-line wait still
+longer while he summoned a bell-boy and sent him scurrying over to one
+of the writing-tables.
+
+"This is Mr. Evan Blount," said the clerk, indicating the young man who
+came up with the returning bell-boy. "Mr. Blount, this is Mr. Hardwick
+McVickar, first vice-president of the Transcontinental Railway Company."
+
+There was no trace of the recent battle in Mr. McVickar's voice or
+manner when he shook hands cordially with the son of the man who had so
+lately defied him.
+
+"Your father and I were just now holding a little conference over your
+future prospects, Mr. Blount," he said, going straight to his point.
+"Suppose you come down to the car with me for a private talk on legal
+matters. I'm inclined to think that we shall wish to retain you in a
+cause which is coming up in September. Gantry tells me that you are
+pretty well up in corporation law. Can you spare me a half-hour or so?"
+
+Evan Blount glanced at the big clock over the clerk's head. Patricia had
+told him that she and her father would dine in the _café_ at seven, and
+that there would be a place at their table for him--and another for his
+father, if the ex-senator would so far honor a poor college professor.
+There was an hour to spare; and if the vice-president of the
+Transcontinental was not the king, he was at least a great man, and one
+whose invitation was in some sense a royal command.
+
+"Certainly, I'll be glad to go with you," was Blount's acquiescent
+rejoinder. So much the registry-clerk heard; and he saw, between jabs
+with his pen, the straight path to the revolving doors of the portal
+ploughed by the big man with young Blount at his elbow.
+
+One minute after the spinning doors had engulfed the pair the
+registry-clerk was called on the house telephone. A sad-faced tourist
+who was waiting patiently for his room assignment heard only the answer
+to the question which came over the wire from one of the upper floors:
+"No, Senator, Mr. Evan is not here; he has just this moment gone
+out--with Mr. McVickar. Could I overtake him? I'll try; but I don't know
+where they were going. Yes; all right. I'll send a boy right away."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT
+
+
+When the news went forth to the dwellers in the sage-brush hills that
+Boss David's son had been appointed to fill an important office as a
+member of the railroad company's legal staff, the first wave of
+astoundment was swiftly followed by many speculations as to what young
+Blount's _début_ as a railroad placeman really meant.
+
+_The Plainsman_, the capital city's principal daily, and the outspoken
+organ of the people's party, was quick to discover an ulterior motive in
+Evan Blount's appointment and its acceptance. Blenkinsop, the
+leader-writer on _The Plainsman_, took a half-column in which to point
+out in emphatic and vigorous Western phrase the dangers that threatened
+the commonwealth in this very evident coalition of the railroad octopus
+and the machine.
+
+The _Lost River Miner_, on the contrary, was unwilling to believe that
+the younger Blount was acting in the interest of machine politics in
+taking an employee's place on the railroad pay-roll. In this editor's
+comment there were veiled hints of a disagreement between father and
+son; of differences of opinion which might, later on, lead to a pitched
+battle. The _Capital Daily_, however--the stock in which was said to be
+owned or controlled by local railroad officials--took a different
+ground, covertly insinuating that nothing for nothing was the accepted
+rule in politics; that if the railroad company had made a place for the
+son, it was only a justifiable deduction that the father was not as
+fiercely inimical to the railroad interests as the opposition press was
+willing to have a too credulous public believe.
+
+Elsewhere in the State press comment was divided, as the moulders of
+public opinion happened to read party loss or gain in the appointment of
+the new legal department head. Some were fair enough to say that young
+Blount had merely shown good sense in taking the first job that was
+offered him, following the commendation with the very obvious conclusion
+that the railroad company's pay check would buy just as much bread in
+the open market as anybody's else. On the whole, the senator's son was
+given the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove up.
+
+Of the interview between the father and the son, in which Evan announced
+his intention of accepting a place under McVickar, nothing was said in
+the newspapers, for the very good reason that no reporter was present.
+If the young man who had so summarily taken his future into his own
+hands was anticipating a storm of disapproval and opposition, he was
+disappointed. He had seen Mr. McVickar's private car coupled to the
+east-bound Fast Mail, and had dined with Patricia and her father, the
+fourth seat at the table of reunion being vacant because the senator was
+dining elsewhere. Later in the evening he faced the music in the
+sitting-room of the private suite, waylaying his father on the Honorable
+David's return to the hotel.
+
+Planning it out beforehand, Blount had meant to give the ethical reasons
+which had constrained him to put a conclusive end to the
+attorney-generalship scheme. But when the crux came, the carefully
+planned argument side-stepped and he was reduced to the necessity of
+declaring his purpose baldly. The railroad people had offered him a
+place, and he had accepted it.
+
+"So McVickar talked you over to his side, did he?" was the boss's gentle
+comment. "It's all right, son; you're a man grown, and I reckon you know
+best what you want to do. If it puts us on opposite sides of the
+political creek, we won't let that roil the water any more than it has
+to, will we?"
+
+To such a mild-mannered surrender, or apparent surrender, the stirring
+filial emotions could do no less than to respond heartily.
+
+"We mustn't let it," was the quick reply; but after this the younger man
+added: "I feel that I ought to make some explanations--they're due to
+you. I've been knocking about here in the city with my eyes and ears
+open, and I must confess that the political field has been made to
+appear decidedly unattractive to me. From all I can learn, the political
+situation in the State is handled as a purely business proposition; it
+is a matter of bargain and sale. I couldn't go into anything like that
+and keep my self-respect."
+
+"No, of course you couldn't, son. So you just took a job where you could
+earn good, clean money in your profession. I don't blame you a
+particle."
+
+Blount was vaguely perturbed, and he showed it by absently laying aside
+the cigar which he had lately lighted and taking a fresh one from the
+open box on the table. He could not help the feeling that he ought to be
+reading between the lines in the paternal surrender.
+
+"You think there will be more or less political work in my job with the
+railroad?" he suggested, determined to get at the submerged facts, if
+there were any.
+
+"Oh, I don't know; you say McVickar has hired you to do a lawyer's work,
+and I reckon that is what he will expect you to do, isn't it?"
+
+Blount laid the second cigar aside and crossed the room to readjust a
+half-opened ventilating transom. Mr. McVickar had not defined the duties
+of the new counselship very clearly, but there had been a strong
+inference running through the private-car conference to the effect that
+the headship of the local legal department would carry with it some
+political responsibilities. At the moment the newly appointed placeman
+had been rather glad that such was the case. The vice-president had
+convinced him of the justice of the railroad company's
+contention--namely, that the present laws of the State, if rigidly
+administered, amounted to a practical confiscation of the company's
+property. While Mr. McVickar was talking, Blount had hoped that the new
+office which the vice-president was apparently creating for him would
+give him a free hand to place the company's point of view fairly before
+the people of the State, and to do this he knew he would have to enter
+the campaign in some sort as a political worker. Surely, his father must
+know this; and he went boldly upon the assumption that his father did
+know it.
+
+"As I have said, I am to be chief of the legal department on this
+division, and as such it will be necessary for me to defend my client
+both in court and out of court," he said finally. "Since I am fairly
+committed, I shall try to stay on the job."
+
+"Of course you will. You've got to be honest with yourself--and with
+McVickar. I don't mind telling you, son, that I'm flat-footed on the
+other side this time, and I had hoped you were going to be. But if
+you're not, why, that's the end of it. We won't quarrel about it."
+
+Now this was not at all the paternal attitude as the young man had been
+prefiguring it. He had looked for opposition; finding it, he would have
+found it possible to say some of the things which were crying to be said
+and which still remained unsaid. But there was absolutely no loophole
+through which he could force the attack. If his late decision had been
+of no more importance than the breaking of a dinner engagement, his
+father could scarcely have dismissed it with less apparent concern.
+Balked and practically talked to a standstill in the business matter,
+Blount switched to other things.
+
+"I missed you to-night at dinner," he said, beginning on the new tack.
+"Two of my Cambridge friends are here, and I wanted you to meet them."
+
+The Honorable David looked up quickly.
+
+"The fossil-digging professor and his daughter?" he queried shrewdly.
+
+"Yes; how did you know? They came in on the Overland, and I find that
+the professor has made the long journey on the strength of what I once
+told him about the megatheriums and things. I guess it's up to me to
+make good in some way."
+
+"Don't you worry a minute about that, Evan, boy," was the instant
+rejoinder. "Honoria's coming in from Wartrace to-morrow, and if you'll
+put us next, we'll take care of your friends--mighty good care of 'em."
+Then, almost wistfully Blount thought: "You won't mind letting Honoria
+do that much for you, will you, son?"
+
+"I'd be a cad if I did. And you've taken a load off of my shoulders, I
+can assure you. If you can persuade Mrs. Blount into it, I'll arrange
+for a little dinner of five to-morrow evening in the _café_ where we can
+all get together. You'll like the professor, I know; and I hope you're
+going to like Patricia. She's New England, and at first you may think
+she's a bit chilly. But really she isn't anything of the kind."
+
+The Honorable Senator got up and strolled to the window.
+
+"You'd better go to bed, son," he advised. "It's getting to be mighty
+late, and you'll want to be surging around some with these friends of
+yours to-morrow. And, before I forget it, the big car is in
+Heffelfinger's garage. Order it out after breakfast and show the
+Cambridge folks a good time."
+
+It was late the following evening, several hours after the informal
+little dinner for five in the Inter-Mountain _café_, when the senator
+had himself lifted from the lobby to the private-suite floor and made
+his way to the door of his own apartments. As was her custom when they
+were together, his wife was waiting up for him.
+
+"Did you find out anything more?" she asked, without looking up from the
+tiny embroidery frame which was her leisure-filling companion at home or
+elsewhere.
+
+"Not enough to hurt anything. McVickar has fixed things to suit himself.
+The boy's law-office job is to be pretty largely nominal; a sort of
+go-as-you-please and do-as-you-like proposition on the side, with
+Ackerton to do all the sure-enough court work and legal drudgery. Since
+Ackerton is a pretty clean fellow, and Evan stands up so straight that
+he leans over backward, this lay-out means that the bribing isn't going
+to be done by the legal department in the coming campaign."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All but one little thing. Evan's job is to be more or less associated
+with the traffic department, and the word has been passed to Gantry and
+his crowd to see to it that the boy doesn't get to know too much."
+
+"But they can't keep him from finding out about the underground work!"
+protested the small one.
+
+"If it's an order from headquarters, they're going to try mighty hard.
+Evan wants to believe that everything is on the high moral plane, and
+when a man wants to believe a thing it isn't so awfully hard to fool
+him. It'll be a winning card for them if they can send the boy out to
+talk convincingly about the cleanness of the company's campaign. That
+sort of talk, handed out as Evan can hand it, if he is convinced of the
+truth of what he is saying, will capture the honest voter every time. I
+tell you, little woman, there's a thing we politicians are constantly
+losing sight of: that down at the bedrock bottom the American
+voter--'the man in the street,' as the newspapers call him--is a fair
+man and an honest man. Speaking broadly, you couldn't buy him with a
+clear title to a quarter-section in Paradise."
+
+This little eulogy upon the American voter appeared to be wasted upon
+the small person in the wicker rocking-chair. "We must get him back,"
+she remarked, referring, not to the American voter, but to the senator's
+son. "Have you thought of any plan?"
+
+"No."
+
+She smiled up at him sweetly. "You are like the good doctor who cannot
+prescribe for the members of his own family. If he were anybody else's
+son, you would know exactly what to do."
+
+"Perhaps I should."
+
+"I have a plan," she went on quietly, bending again over her embroidery.
+"He may have to take a regular course of treatment, and it may make him
+very ill; would you mind that?"
+
+David Blount leaned back in his chair and regarded her through
+half-closed eyelids. "You're a wonder, little woman," he said; and then:
+"I don't want to see the boy suffer any more than he has to."
+
+"Neither do I," was the swift agreement. Then, with no apparent
+relevance: "What do you think of Miss Anners?"
+
+The senator sat up at the question, with the slow smile wrinkling
+humorously at the corners of his eyes.
+
+"I haven't thought much about her yet. She's the kind that won't let you
+get near enough in a single sitting to think much about her, isn't she?"
+
+"She is a young woman with an exceedingly bright mind and a very high
+purpose," was the little lady's summing-up of Patricia. "But she isn't
+altogether a Boston iceberg. She thinks she is irrevocably in love with
+her chosen career; but, really, I believe she is very much in love with
+Evan. If we could manage to win her over to our side as an active
+ally--"
+
+This time the senator's smile broadened into a laugh.
+
+"You are away yonder out of my depth now," he chuckled. "Does your
+course of treatment for the boy include large doses of the young woman,
+administered frequently?"
+
+"Oh, no," was the instant reply. "I was only wondering if it wouldn't be
+well to enroll her--enlist her sympathies, you know."
+
+"Why not?--if you think best? You're the fine-haired little wire-puller,
+and it's all in your hands."
+
+"Will you give me _carte-blanche_ to do as I please?" asked the small
+plotter.
+
+"Sure!" said the Honorable David heartily, adding: "You can always
+outfigure me, two to one, when it comes to the real thing. You've made a
+fine art of it, Honoria, and I'll turn the steering-wheel over to you
+any day in the week."
+
+When she looked up she was smiling in the way which had made Evan Blount
+wonder, in that midnight meeting at Wartrace Hall, how she could look so
+young and yet be so wise.
+
+"You deal with people in the mass, David, and no one living can do it
+better. I am like most women, I think: I deal with the individual. That
+is all the difference. When do the Annerses go out to the fossil-beds?"
+
+"I don't know; any time when you will invite them to make Wartrace their
+headquarters, I reckon."
+
+"Then I think it will be to-morrow," decided the confident mistress of
+policies. "It won't do to let Evan see too much of Patricia until after
+his course of treatment is well under way. Shall we make it to-morrow?
+And will you telephone Dawkins to bring down the biggest car? I have a
+notion wandering around in my head somewhere that Miss Patricia Anners
+will stand a little judicious impressing. She is exceedingly democratic,
+you know--in theory."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE RANK AND FILE
+
+
+Considerably to his surprise, and no less to his satisfaction, the newly
+appointed "division counsel," as his title ran, was not required to take
+over the old legal department offices in the second story of the station
+building, where all the other offices of the company were located.
+Instead, he was directed to fit up a suite of rooms in Temple Court, the
+capital's most pretentious up-town sky-scraper, and there was something
+more than a hint that the item of first cost would not be too closely
+scrutinized.
+
+It was the vice-president himself, writing from Chicago, who authorized
+the new departure and loosened the purse strings. "Don't be afraid of
+spending a little money," wrote the great man. "Make your up-town
+headquarters as attractive as may be, and arrange matters with Ackerton
+so that your office will not be burdened with too much of the routine
+legal work. A successful legal representative will be a good mixer--as I
+am sure you are--and will extend the circle of his acquaintance as
+rapidly and as far as possible. Your appointment will be fully justified
+when you have made your up-town office a place where the good citizens
+of the capital and the State can drop in for a cordial word with the
+company's spokesman."
+
+Acting upon this suggestion, Blount opened the Temple Court headquarters
+at once and threw himself energetically into the indicated field.
+Ackerton, a technical expert with a needle-like mind and the State code
+at his fingers'-ends, was left in charge of the working offices in the
+railroad building, with instructions to apply to his chief only when he
+needed specific advice.
+
+At the up-town headquarters, Blount gave himself wholly to the pleasant
+task of making friends. With a good store of introductions upon which to
+make a beginning, and with the open-handed, whole-souled _camaraderie_
+of the West to help, the list of acquaintances grew with amazing
+rapidity. For the three or four weeks after Mrs. Blount had whisked the
+Annerses away to Wartrace Hall and the habitat of the Megalosauridæ, the
+newly appointed "social secretary" for the railroad, as Honoria had
+dubbed him, met all comers joyously and accepted all invitations, never
+inquiring whether they were extended to his father's son, to the
+railroad company's legal chief, or to Evan Blount in his proper person.
+
+During this social interval he saw little of his father, though he was
+still occupying his share of the private dining-room suite at the
+Inter-Mountain. Part of the time, as he knew, the Honorable Senator was
+at Wartrace Hall, looking after his mammoth ranch, and helping to
+entertain the visitors from Massachusetts. But now and again the father
+came and went; and occasionally there was a dinner _à deux_ in the hotel
+_café_, with a little good-natured raillery from the senator's side of
+the table.
+
+"Got you chasing your feet right lively in the social merry-go-round
+these days, haven't they, son? Like it, as far as you've gone?" said the
+ex-cattle-king one evening when Evan had come down in evening clothes,
+ready to go to madam the governor's wife's strictly formal "informal" a
+little later on.
+
+"It's all in the day's work," laughed the younger man. "I shall need all
+the 'pull' I can get a little later on, sha'n't I?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if you did, son; I shouldn't wonder if you did. And
+I reckon you're doing pretty good work, too, mixing and mingling the way
+you do. Was it McVickar's idea, or your own--this sudden splash into the
+social water-hole?"
+
+"I don't mind telling you that it is a part of the new policy," returned
+the social splasher, still smiling. "We are out to make friends this
+time; good, solid, open-eyed friends who will know just what we are
+doing and why we are doing it."
+
+"H'm," mused the senator, "so publicity's the new word, is it?"
+
+"Yes; publicity is the word. The Gordon people say they are going to
+show us up; there won't be anything to show up when the time comes. We
+are going to beat them to the billboards."
+
+The grizzled veteran of a goodly number of political battles put down
+his coffee-cup; he was still old-fashioned enough to drink his coffee in
+generous measure with the meat courses.
+
+"You can't do the circus act--ride two horses at once and do the same
+stunt on both, son," he remarked gravely. "If you're really going to put
+the saddle and bridle on the publicity nag, you've got to turn the other
+one out of the corral and let it go back to the short-grass."
+
+"It is already turned out," asserted the young man, not affecting to
+misunderstand. "We neither buy votes nor spend illegitimate money in
+this campaign."
+
+The stout assertion was good as far as it went; the new division counsel
+made it and believed it. But on his way to the governor's mansion, a
+little later, he could not help wondering if he had been altogether
+candid in making it. The offices in the up-town sky-scraper were not
+exclusively a railroad social centre where the disinterested voter could
+come and have the facts ladled out to him without fear or favor on the
+part of the ladler. They had come to be also a rallying-point for a
+heterogeneous crowd of ward-workers, wire-pullers, and small
+politicians, most of whom were anxious to be employed or retained as
+henchmen. Some of these "stretcher men," as Blount contemptuously called
+them, had been employed in past campaigns; others were still the
+beneficiaries of the railroad, holding pay-roll places which Blount
+acutely suspected were chiefly sinecures.
+
+Latterly, this contingent of strikers and heelers had been greatly
+augmented, and it was beginning to make its demands more emphatic. A
+dozen times a day Blount had the worn phrase, "nothing for nothing,"
+dinned into his ears, and he was beginning to harbor a suspicion that
+his office had been made a dumping-ground for all the other departments.
+
+Seeing Gantry at madam the governor's lady's reception, Blount took an
+early opportunity of cornering the traffic manager in one of the
+otherwise deserted smoking-dens, and when he had made sure there were no
+eavesdroppers plunged at once into the middle of things.
+
+"See here, Dick," he began, "you fellows downtown are making my office a
+cesspool, and I won't stand for it. Garrigan, that saloon-keeper in the
+second ward, came up to-day to ask for a free ticket to Worthington and
+return; and when I pinned him down he admitted that you'd sent him to
+me."
+
+"I did," said Gantry, grinning. "Why otherwise have we got a
+post-graduate, double-certificated political manager, I'd like to know?"
+
+Blount dropped into a chair and felt in his pockets for his cigar-case.
+
+"I guess we may as well fight this thing to a finish right here and now,
+Dick," he said coolly. "I'm not chief vote buyer for the
+Transcontinental Company--I'm not any kind of a vote buyer."
+
+"Who said you were?" retorted the traffic manager.
+
+"It says itself, if I am supposed to cut the pie and hand out pieces of
+it to these grub-stakers that you and Carson and Bentley and Kittredge
+are continually sending to me."
+
+This time Gantry's grin was playful, but behind it there was a shrewd
+flash of the Irish-blue eyes that Blount did not see.
+
+"I guess the company would be plenty willing to furnish a few small pies
+for really hungry people, if you think you need them to go along with
+your Temple Court office fittings," he returned.
+
+"Ah?" said Blount calmly, giving the exclamation the true Boston
+inflection. "You are either too shrewd or not quite shrewd enough, Dick.
+You covered that up with a laugh, so that I might take it as a joke if I
+happened to be too thin-skinned to take it in disreputable earnest. Let
+us understand each other; we are fighting squarely in the open in this
+campaign; publicity is the word--I have Mr. McVickar for my authority.
+Anybody who wants to know anything about the railroad company's business
+in this State can learn it for the asking, and at first-hand. Secrecy
+and all the various brands of political claptrap that have been admitted
+in the past are to be shown the door. This is the intimation that was
+made to me: wasn't it made to you?"
+
+Gantry did not reply directly to the direct demand. On the other hand,
+he very carefully refrained from answering it in any degree whatsoever.
+
+"You have your job to hold down and I have mine," he rejoined. "What
+you say goes as it lies, of course; but just the same, I shouldn't be
+too righteously hard on the little brothers, if I were you."
+
+"If by the 'little brothers' you mean the pie-eaters, I'm going to fire
+them out, neck and crop, Richard. They make me excessively weary."
+
+Gantry's playful mood fell away from him like a cast-off garment.
+
+"I don't quite believe I'd do that, if I were you, Evan. There are
+pie-eaters on both sides in every political contest, and while they
+can't do any cause any great amount of good, they can often do a good
+bit of harm. I wouldn't be too hard on them, if I were you."
+
+"What would you do?--or, rather, what did you do when you were managing
+the State campaign two years ago?" inquired Blount pointedly.
+
+"I cut the pie," said the traffic manager simply.
+
+"In other words, you let this riffraff blackmail you and, incidentally,
+put a big black mark against the company's good name."
+
+"Oh, no; I wouldn't put it quite that strong. Not many of these little
+fellows ask for money, or expect it. A free ride now and then in the
+varnished cars is about all they look for."
+
+"But you can't give them passes under the interstate law," protested the
+purist.
+
+"Not outside of the State, of course. But inside of the State boundaries
+it's our own business."
+
+"You mean it _was_ our own business, previous to the passage of the
+State rate law two years ago," corrected Blount.
+
+"It is our own business to this good day--in effect. That part of the
+law has been a complete dead-letter from the day the governor signed it.
+Why, bless your innocent heart, Evan, the very men who argued the
+loudest and voted the most spitefully for it came to me for their return
+tickets home at the end of the session. Of course, we kept the letter of
+the law. It says that no 'free passes' shall be given. We didn't issue
+passes; we merely gave them tickets out of the case and charged them up
+to 'expense.'"
+
+"Faugh!" said Blount, "you make me sick! Gantry, it's that same childish
+whipping of the devil around the stump by the corporations--an expedient
+that wouldn't deceive the most ignorant voter that ever cast a
+ballot--it's that very thing that has stirred the whole nation up to
+this unreasonable fight against corporate capital. Don't you see it?"
+
+Gantry shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I guess I take the line of the least resistance--like the majority of
+them," was the colorless reply. "When it comes down to practical
+politics--"
+
+"Don't say 'practical politics' to me, Dick!" rasped the reformer.
+"We've got the strongest argument in the world in the fact that the
+present law is an unfair one, needing modification or repeal. We mustn't
+spoil that argument by becoming law-breakers ourselves and descending to
+the methods of the grafters and the machine politicians the country
+over. If you have been sending these pie-eaters to me, stop it--don't do
+it any more. I have no earthly use for them; and they won't have any use
+for me after I open up on them and tell them a few things they don't
+seem to know, or to care to know."
+
+"I don't believe I'd do anything brash," Gantry suggested mildly, and he
+was still saying the same thing in diversified forms when Blount led the
+way back to the crowded drawing-rooms.
+
+Dating from this little heart-to-heart talk with the traffic manager,
+Blount began to carry out the new policy--the starvation policy, as it
+soon came to be known among the would-be henchmen. The result was not
+altogether reassuring. The first few rebuffs he administered left him
+with the feeling that he was winning Pyrrhic victories; it was as if he
+were trying to handle a complicated mechanism with the working details
+of which he was only theoretically familiar. There were wheels within
+wheels, and the application of the brakes to the smallest of them led to
+discordant janglings throughout the whole.
+
+Many of the small grafters were on the pay-rolls of the railroad
+company, and Blount was soon definitely assured of what he had before
+only suspected--that they were merely nominal employees given a pay-roll
+standing so that there might be an excuse for giving them free
+transportation, and a retainer in the form of wages, if needful.
+
+In many cases the ramifications of the petty graft were exasperatingly
+intricate. For example: one Thomas Gryson, who was on the pay-rolls as a
+machinist's helper in the repair shops, demanded free transportation
+across the State for eight members of his "family." Questioned closely,
+he admitted that the "family" was his only by a figure of speech; that
+the relationship was entirely political. Blount promptly refused to
+recommend the issuing of employees' passes for the eight, and the result
+was an immediate call from Bentley, the division master mechanic.
+
+"About that fellow Gryson," Bentley began; "can't you manage some way to
+get him transportation for his Jonesboro crowd? He is going to make
+trouble for us if you don't."
+
+Blount was justly indignant. "Gryson is on your pay-roll," he retorted.
+"Why don't you recommend the passes yourself, on account of the
+motive-power department, if he is entitled to them?"
+
+"I can't," admitted the master mechanic. "I am held down to the issuing
+of passes to employees travelling on company business only. We can
+stretch it a little sometimes, of course, but we can't make it cover the
+whole earth."
+
+"Neither can I!" Blount exploded. "Let it be understood, once for all,
+Mr. Bentley, that I am not the scape-goat for all the other departments!
+I have cut it off short; I am not recommending passes for anybody."
+
+"But, suffering Scott, Mr. Blount, we've simply _got_ to take care of
+Tom Gryson! He's the boss of his ward, and he has influence enough to
+turn even our own employees against us!"
+
+"Influence?" scoffed the young man from the East. "How does he acquire
+his influence? It is merely another illustration of the vicious circle;
+you put into his hands the club with which he proceeds to knock you
+down. Let me tell you what I'm telling everybody; if we want a square
+deal, we've got to set the example by being square. And, by Heavens, Mr.
+Bentley, we're going to set the example!"
+
+The master mechanic went away silenced, but by no means convinced; and a
+week later Gryson, who in appearance was a typical tough, and who in
+reality was a post-graduate of the hard school of violence and
+ruffianage obtaining in the lawless mining-camps of the Carnadine Hills,
+sauntered into Blount's office with his cigar at the belligerent angle
+and an insolent taunt in his mouth.
+
+"Well, pardner, we got them dickie-birds o' mine over to Jonesboro,
+after so long a time, and no thanks to you, neither. I just blew in to
+tell you that I'm goin' to hit you ag'in about day after to-morrow, and
+if you don't come across there's goin' to be somethin' doin'; see?"
+
+Blount sprang from his chair and forgot to be politic.
+
+"You needn't come to me the day after to-morrow, or any other time," he
+raged. "I'm through with you and your tribe. Get out!"
+
+After Gryson, muttering threats, had gone, the young campaign manager
+had an attack of moral nausea. It seemed such a prodigious waste of time
+and energy to traffic and chaffer with these petty scoundrels. Thus far,
+every phase of the actual political problem seemed to be meanly
+degrading, and he was beginning to long keenly for an opportunity to do
+some really worthy thing.
+
+Notwithstanding, his ideals were still unshaken. He still clung to the
+belief that the corporation, which was created by the law and could
+exist only under the protection of the law, must, of necessity, be a
+law-abiding entity. It was manifestly unfair to hold it responsible for
+the disreputable political methods of those whom it could never
+completely control--methods, too, which had been forced upon it by the
+necessity, or the fancied necessity, of meeting conditions as they were
+found.
+
+As if in answer to the wish that he might find the worthier task, it was
+on this day of Gryson's visit that Blount was given his first
+opportunity of entering the wider field. A letter from a local party
+chairman in a distant mining town brought an invitation of the kind for
+which he had been waiting and hoping. He was asked to participate in a
+joint debate at the campaign opening in the town in question, and he was
+so glad of the chance that he instantly wired his acceptance.
+
+That evening, at the Inter-Mountain _café_ dinner hour, he found his
+father dining alone and joined him. In a burst of confidence he told of
+the invitation.
+
+"That's good; that's the real thing this time, isn't it?" was the
+senator's even-toned comment. "Gives you a right nice little chance to
+shine the way you can shine best." Then: "That was one of the things
+McVickar wanted you for, wasn't it?--speech-making and the like?"
+
+"Why, yes; he intimated that there might be some public speaking,"
+admitted the younger man.
+
+"Well, what-all are you going to tell these Ophir fellows when you get
+over there, son?" asked the veteran quizzically. "Going to offer 'em all
+free passes anywhere they want to go if they'll promise to vote for the
+railroad candidates?"
+
+"Not this year," was the laughing reply. "As I told you a while back,
+we've stopped all that."
+
+"You have, eh? I reckon that will be mighty sorry news for a good many
+people in the old Sage-brush State--mighty sorry news. You really reckon
+you _have_ stopped it, do you, son?"
+
+"I not only believe it; I am in a position to assert it definitely."
+
+"McVickar has told you it was stopped?"
+
+The newly fledged political manager tried to be strictly truthful.
+
+"I have had but the one interview with Mr. McVickar, but in that talk he
+gave me to understand that my recommendations would be given due
+consideration. And I have said my say pretty emphatically."
+
+The senator's smile was not derisive; it was merely lenient.
+
+"Sat on 'em good and hard, did you? That's right, son; don't you ever
+be afraid to say what you mean, and to say it straight from the
+shoulder. That's the Blount way, and I reckon we've got to keep the
+family ball rolling--you and I. Don't forget that, when you're making
+your appeal to those horny-handed sons of toil over yonder at Ophir.
+Give 'em straight facts, and back up the facts with figures--if you
+happen to have the figures. When do you pull out for the mining-camp?"
+
+"To-night, at nine-thirty. I can't get there in time if I wait for the
+morning train." Then, dismissing the political topic abruptly: "What do
+you hear from Professor Anners?"
+
+"Oh, he's having the time of his life. I got him a State permit, and
+scraped him up a bunch of pick-and-shovel men, and he is digging out
+those fossil skeletons by the wagon-load."
+
+"And Miss Anners?" pursued Patricia's lover.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if she was having the time of her life, too. I've
+given her the little four-seated car to call her own while she is out
+here, and she and Honoria go careering around the country--breaking the
+speed limit every minute in the day, I reckon."
+
+"I'm glad you are giving her a good time," said Evan, and he looked
+glad. Then he added regretfully: "I wish I could get a chance to chase
+around a little with them. I have seen almost nothing of them since they
+came West. I should think Mrs. Blount might bring Patricia down to the
+city once in a while."
+
+"Well, now! perhaps the young woman doesn't want to come," laughed the
+senator. "You told me you hadn't got her tag, son, and I'm beginning to
+believe it's the sure-enough truth. What has she got against you,
+anyway?"
+
+"Nothing; nothing in the wide world, save that I don't fit into her
+scheme for her life-work."
+
+The senator was eating calmly through his dessert. "If you hadn't made
+up your mind so pointedly to dislike Honoria, you might be getting a few
+tips on that 'career' business along about now, son," he remarked, and
+Evan was silent--had to be silent. For, you see, he had been charging
+Patricia's continued absence from the capital to nothing less than
+spiteful design on the part of his father's wife.
+
+It was at the cigar smoking in the lobby, after the young man had made
+his preparations for the journey and was waiting for the train-caller's
+announcement, that the senator said quite casually: "It's too bad you're
+going out of town to-night, son. Honoria 'phoned me a little spell ago
+that she and Patricia would be driving down after their dinner to take
+in the Weatherford reception. You'll have to miss 'em, won't you?"
+
+The announcer was chanting the call for the night train west, and the
+joint-debater got up and thrust his hand-bag savagely into the hand of
+the nearest porter.
+
+"Isn't that just my infernal luck!" he lamented. Then: "Give them my
+love, and tell them I hope they will stay until I get back."
+
+The senator rose and shook hands with the departing debater. "Shall I
+say that to both of 'em?" he asked, with the quizzical smile which Evan
+was learning to expect.
+
+"Yes; to both of them, if you like--only I suppose Mrs. Blount will hold
+it against me. Good-night and good-by. I'll be back day after to-morrow,
+if the Ophir miners don't mob me."
+
+It was only a few minutes after Evan Blount's train had steamed
+Ophir-ward out of the Sierra Avenue station that a dust-covered
+touring-car drew up at the curb in front of the Inter-Mountain, and the
+same porter who had put Blount's hand-bag into the taxicab opened the
+tonneau door for two ladies in muffling motor-coats and heavy veils.
+
+The senator met the two late travellers in the vestibule, and while the
+three were waiting for an elevator a rapid fire of low-toned question
+and answer passed between husband and wife.
+
+"You got Evan out of the way?" whispered the wife.
+
+The husband nodded. "That was easy. I passed the word to Steuchfield,
+and he helped out on that--invited Evan to come to Ophir to speak in a
+joint debate. He left on the night train."
+
+"And Hathaway? Will he be here?"
+
+"He is here. Gantry has turned him down, according to instructions, and
+he is clawing about in the air, trying to get a fresh hold. I bluffed
+him; told him he'd have to make his peace with you for something, I
+didn't know what, before I could talk to him."
+
+Miss Anners was watching the elevator signal glow as the car descended,
+and the wife's voice sank to a still lower whisper.
+
+"He will be at the Weatherfords'?" she inquired eagerly.
+
+"He is right sure to be; I told him you would be there."
+
+The small plotter nodded approval.
+
+"Give us half an hour to dress, and have the car ready," she directed;
+and then the senator put the two into the elevator and turned away to
+finish his cigar.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+IN THE HERBARIUM
+
+
+The Weatherfords, multimillionaire mine-people, and so newly rich that
+the crisp bank-notes fairly crackled when Mrs. Weatherford spent them,
+kept their lackeyed and liveried state in a castle-like mansion in Mesa
+Circle, the most expensive, if not the most aristocratic,
+no-thoroughfare of the capital city. Weatherford, the father, egged on
+by Mrs. Weatherford, had political aspirations pointing toward a United
+States senatorship, the election to which would fall within the province
+of the next legislature. The mine-owner himself, a pudgy little man with
+a bald spot on top of his head and a corner-grocery point of view
+carefully tucked away inside of it--an outlook upon life which was a
+survival from his hard-working past--would willingly have dodged, but
+Mrs. Weatherford was inexorable. There were two grown daughters and a
+growing son, and it was for these that she was socially ambitious.
+
+The reception for which the senator's wife and her guest had driven
+thirty miles through the dust of the sage-brush hills was one of the
+many moves in Mrs. Weatherford's private campaign. For the opening-gun
+occasion the great house in Mesa Circle was lighted from basement to
+turret--to all of the numerous turrets; an awning fringed with electric
+bulbs sheltered the carpeted walk from the street to the grand entrance,
+an army of lackeys paraded in the vestibule, and the wives and daughters
+of the bravest and best in the capital city's political contingent stood
+with Mrs. Weatherford in the long receiving-line.
+
+From room to room in the vast house a curiously assorted throng of the
+bidden ones worked its way as the jam and crush permitted. A firm
+believer in the maxim that in numbers there is strength, the hostess had
+made her invitation-list long and catholic. For the gossips there were
+the crowded drawing-rooms, for the hungry there were Lucullian tables,
+and for the sentimentalists there was the conservatory.
+
+It was a mark of the unashamed newness of the Weatherford riches that
+the conservatory, a glass-and-iron greenhouse, built out as an extension
+of one of the drawing-rooms, was called "the herbarium." It was a
+reproduction, on a generous scale, of a tropical garden. Half-grown
+palms and banana-trees made a well-ordered jungle of the softly lighted
+interior; and if, in the gathering of her floral treasures, Mrs.
+Weatherford had omitted any precious bit of greenery whose cost would
+have shed additional lustre upon the Weatherford resources, it was
+because no one had remembered to mention the name of it to her.
+
+Ex-Senator Blount's party of three was fashionably late at the function
+in Mesa Circle, but in the crush filling the spacious drawing-rooms the
+hostess and her long line of receiving assistants were still on duty.
+Having successfully passed the line with her husband and Patricia,
+little Mrs. Blount looked about her, saw Mr. Richard Gantry, signalled
+to him with her eyes, and, with the traffic manager for her centre-rush
+to wedge a way through the crowded rooms, was presently lost to
+sight--at least from Miss Anners's point of view.
+
+Whether she knew it or not, from the moment of her appearance at the
+hostess's end of the long receiving-line, the senator's wife had been
+marked and followed in her slow progress through the rooms by a
+thin-faced man who seemed to be nervously trying to hunch himself into
+better relations with his ill-fitting dress-coat, an eager gentleman
+whose hawk-like eyes never lost sight of the little lady with her hand
+on Gantry's arm. Only the senator saw and remarked this bit of by-play,
+and he looked as if he were enjoying it, the shrewd gray eyes lighting
+humorously as he bent to hear what Patricia was saying.
+
+When his quarry stopped, as she did frequently to chat with one or
+another of the guests, the man with the hawk-like profile and the
+nervous hunch circled warily, and once or twice seemed about to make the
+opportunity which was so slow in making itself. But it was not until the
+little lady in the claret-colored party-gown had drifted, still with a
+hand on Gantry's arm, in among the palm and banana trees of the
+herbarium that the bird-of-prey person made his swoop. A moment later
+Gantry, taking a low-toned command from his companion, was disappearing
+in the direction of the refreshment-tables, and the lady looked up to
+say: "Dear me, Mr. Hathaway, you almost startled me!"
+
+"Did I?" said the lumber-king, rather grimly, if he meant the query to
+be apologetic. "I am sorry. I didn't mean to; but Mrs. Gordon said I
+would find you here, and so I took the liberty of following you. I'm
+needing a little straightening out, you know, and--ah--would you mind
+letting me talk business with you for a minute or two, Mrs. Blount?"
+
+She drew her gown aside, and made room for him on the carved rustic
+settee, which was exceedingly uncomfortable to sit in, but which was in
+perfect harmony with the background of gigantic palmettos. He nodded
+gratefully and took the place, and the manner of his sitting down was
+that of a man who wears evening-clothes only under compulsion.
+
+"Business?" she was saying. "Certainly not; if you can talk business in
+such a place as this"--giving him the coveted permission.
+
+"Perhaps it ain't what you'd call business--maybe it's only politics,"
+he resumed; then, with the abruptness of one whose dealings have been
+with men oftener than with women: "In the first place, I wish you'd tell
+me what I've been doing to get myself into your bad books."
+
+She laughed easily. "Who said you had been doing anything, Mr.
+Hathaway?" she asked.
+
+"The senator," he answered shortly, adding: "He told me I'd have to make
+my peace with you."
+
+She had developed a sudden interest in the quaint Japanese figures on
+the ivory sticks of her fan. "You want something, Mr. Hathaway; what is
+it?" she inquired.
+
+"I want to be put next in this pigs-in-clover railroad puzzle," was the
+blunt statement of the need. "Our freight contract with the
+Transcontinental is about to expire, and I'd like to get it renewed on
+the same terms as before."
+
+"Well," she said ingenuously, "why don't you do it?"
+
+"I can't," he blustered. "Everybody has suddenly grown mysterious or
+gone crazy--I don't know which. Kittredge, the general superintendent,
+don't seem to remember that we ever had any contract, and Gantry is just
+as bad. And when I go to the senator he tells me I must make my peace
+with you. I'm left out in the cold; I can't begin to _sabe_ what the
+senator and these railroad brass-collar men are driving at. I've got
+something to sell; something that the railroad company needs. Where the
+d---- I mean, where's the hitch?"
+
+The small person in the fetching party-gown reached up and pinched a
+leaf from a fragrant shrub fronting the settee.
+
+"Mr. Gantry has gone to fetch me an ice, and he will be back in a very
+few minutes," she suggested mildly. "Consider your peace made, Mr.
+Hathaway, and tell me what I can do for you."
+
+"You can put me next," said the lumber lord, going back to the only
+phrase that seemed to fit the exigencies of the case. "Why the--why
+can't we get our contract renewed?"
+
+The little lady was opening and shutting her fan slowly. "What was your
+contract?" she inquired innocently.
+
+"If I thought you didn't know, I'd go a long time without telling you,"
+he said bluntly. "But you do know. It's the rebate lumber rate from our
+mills at Twin Buttes and elsewhere, and it was given us two years ago, a
+few days before election."
+
+"And the consideration?" she asked, looking up quickly.
+
+"You know that, too, Mrs. Blount. It was the swinging of the solid
+employees' vote of the Twin Buttes Lumber Company over to the railroad
+ticket."
+
+"And you wish to make the same arrangement again?"
+
+"Exactly. We've got to have that preferential rate or go out of
+business."
+
+"With whom did you make the contract two years ago?"
+
+"With Mr. McVickar, verbally. Of course, there wasn't anything put down
+in black and white, but the railroad folks did their part and we did
+ours."
+
+"I see--a gentleman's agreement," she murmured; and then: "You have
+tried Mr. McVickar again?"
+
+"Yes, and he referred me to Gantry."
+
+"And what did Mr. Gantry say?"
+
+"I couldn't get him to say anything with any sense in it," said the
+lumber magnate grittingly. "The most I could get out of him was that I
+would have to see the boss."
+
+"And instead of doing that you went to see the senator?" she asked.
+
+"Of course I did. Who else would Gantry mean by 'the boss'?" demanded
+the befogged one.
+
+"Possibly he meant the senator's son," she ventured, tapping a pretty
+cheek with the folded fan. "Have you been leaving Evan Blount out in all
+of this?"
+
+"I didn't know where to put him in. That's what brings me here to-night.
+The senator, or McVickar, or both of them together, have set the whole
+State to running around in circles with this appointment of young
+Blount. Some say it's a deal between the senator and McVickar, and some
+say it's a fight. Half of the professional spellbinders are walking in
+their sleep over it right now. I thought maybe you could tell me, Mrs.
+Blount."
+
+"I can't tell you anything that would help the people who are walking in
+their sleep," she returned, "but I might offer a suggestion in your
+personal affair. Mr. Evan Blount is your man."
+
+Hathaway pursed his thin lips and frowned. "I'm in bad there--right at
+the jump," he objected.
+
+"I know," she shot back quickly. "For some reason best known to
+yourself, you saw fit to have Mr. Evan waylaid and man-handled on the
+first night of his return to his native State. But you needn't worry
+about that. He won't hold it against you. I'm sure you'll find him
+entirely amenable to reason."
+
+The tyrant of "timber-jacks" frowned again. "H'm--reason, eh? How big a
+block of Twin Buttes stock shall I offer him?"
+
+Her laugh was a silvery peal of derision.
+
+"You always figure in dollars and cents, don't you, Mr. Simon Peter
+Hathaway?" she mocked.
+
+"I have always found it the cheapest in the end."
+
+"Listen," she said, with the folded fan held up like a monitory finger.
+"Mr. Gantry may be back any minute, and I can give you only the tiniest
+hint. You must go to Mr. Evan Blount and appeal to him frankly, as one
+business man to another."
+
+"But I have heard--they say he's all kinds of a crank."
+
+"Never mind what you have heard. Tell him all the facts and ask him to
+help you, and for mercy's sake don't offer him a block of your stock.
+Put it where it will do the most good. Put it in the name of Professor
+William J. Anners, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and show Mr. Blount how
+dreadfully disastrous the loss of the preferential freight rate would be
+to all the poor people in your list of stock-holders--including
+Professor Anners."
+
+Hathaway drew down his cuff and made a pencil memorandum of the name and
+address of the new beneficiary.
+
+"You'll notice that I'm not asking any foolish questions about who this
+Professor Anners is, or why I should be making him a present of a block
+of stock. If I don't, it's because what you say goes as it lies.
+Anything else?"
+
+"Yes; don't fail to be perfectly frank with Mr. Blount, and don't let
+him put you off. He may pretend to be very angry at first, but you won't
+mind that."
+
+"I won't mind anything if I can bring this business down to the
+every-day commonplace earth once more. You and the senator and Gantry
+and McVickar are playing some sort of a game, and you ain't showing me
+anything more than the back of the cards. That's all right. I guess I'm
+fly enough to play my hand blindfolded, if I've got to. I don't care,
+just so I win the odd trick."
+
+Gantry was coming down the avenue of banana-trees with the ice he had
+taken so much time to procure, and the lumber magnate rose reluctantly.
+There was time for only one more question, and he put it hastily.
+
+"When and where can I find Evan Blount?" he asked.
+
+"The day after to-morrow, at his office in Temple Court. He is out of
+the city now, but--" Here Gantry's coming put an end to the private
+conference, and the president of the Twin Buttes company went his way.
+
+Not until they had served out their full sentence at Mrs. Weatherford's
+crush, and were back in the private dining-room suite at the
+Inter-Mountain, with Miss Anners safely behind the closed door of her
+own apartment, did the small conspirator pass the word of good hope on
+to her husband.
+
+"It is working beautifully," she exulted. "He will go to see Evan day
+after to-morrow--and after that, the deluge."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE GREAT GAME
+
+
+If Evan Blount, as the representative of the unpopular railroad, had
+been anticipating an unfriendly reception at the great gold-camp in the
+Carnadine Hills, he was agreeably disappointed. A committee of citizens,
+headed by Jasper Steuchfield, the "Paramounter" chairman for Carnadine
+County, met him at the train, escorted him to the hotel, and, during the
+afternoon which was at his disposal, gave him joyously and hilariously
+the freedom of the camp.
+
+The political meeting, called for an early hour in the evening, was held
+in the Carnadine Mining Company's ore-shed, electric-lighted for the
+occasion. When the hour came the big shed was packed with an
+enthusiastic audience, and there were prolonged cheers and
+hand-clappings when the railroad advocate took his seat on the
+improvised platform as the guest of the local committee.
+
+Later, when Judge Crowley, candidate prospective on the popular ticket
+for the State Senate, opened the joint debate with a shrewd arraignment
+of the methods of the railroad company, not only in its dealings with
+the public as a common carrier, but also in the pertinacity with which
+it invaded the political field, there was tumultuous applause; but it
+was no heartier than that which greeted Blount when he rose to present
+the railroad side of the argument.
+
+During the journey from the capital, which had consumed the night and
+the greater portion of the forenoon, he had prepared his speech. His
+argument--the one unanswerable argument, as it appeared to him--was the
+absurdity and injustice of a law which presumed to limit the earning
+power of a corporation by fixing the maximum rates it might charge,
+without at the same time making a corresponding regulation fixing the
+price which the company should pay for its labor and material.
+
+Upon this foundation he was able to build a fair structure of oratory.
+The judge, his opponent, was a rather turgid man whose speech had
+abounded in flights of denunciation and whose appeal had been made
+frankly to prejudice and party rancor. Blount took his cue shrewdly.
+Touching lightly upon the public grievances, some of which he
+characterized as just and entirely defensible, he rang the changes
+calmly and logically upon the square deal, no less for the corporations
+than for the individual. "Take it to yourselves, you merchants," he
+urged. "Imagine a law on the statute-books fixing the prices at which
+you shall sell your goods, and that same law leaving you at the mercy of
+those from whom you must buy! Take it to yourselves, you miners. Suppose
+the legislature had enacted a law fixing the maximum price at which you
+shall sell your skill and your labor, and at the same time leaving it
+optional with every man from whom you buy, the butcher, the baker, the
+grocer, to charge you what he pleases or what he can get! That, my good
+friends, is the situation of the railroad company in this State
+to-day"--and he went on to analyze the hard situation, filling his hour
+very creditably and, if the frequent bursts of applause could be taken
+to mean anything, to the complete satisfaction of his hearers. Indeed,
+at the end of his argument he was given what the local paper of the
+following day was pleased to call "a spontaneous and pandemonious
+ovation."
+
+After the cheering and hand-shaking, Steuchfield and his
+fellow-committeemen went to the train with the visiting speaker, and no
+one in the throng of congratulators was more enthusiastic than the
+opposition chairman.
+
+"That was a cracking good speech--a great speech, Mr. Blount!" he said,
+as the branch train rattled in from the north. "If you can go all over
+the State making as good talks as the one we've just heard, you'll tie
+the whole shooting-match up in a hard knot for us fellows. But McVickar
+won't let you do it--not by a long shot!"
+
+The potential tier of hard knots laughed genially. "I don't blame you
+for wanting to be shown, Mr. Steuchfield. But I can assure you that the
+new policy has come to stay. I have the management behind me in this
+thing, and any day you'll come down to the capital I'll put my time
+against yours and try to show you that we are out for open publicity
+and a square deal for every man--including the railroad man."
+
+"All right," was the cordial reply. "I'll be down along some of these
+days, and if you can convince me that McVickar isn't going into politics
+any further than you've gone here to-night, I'll promise you to come
+back to Carnadine and tell the boys the jig's up."
+
+A few minutes later the branch train pulled out, and the chairman and
+his fellow-committeemen gave the departing joint-debater three cheers
+and another. After the red tail-lights of the train had disappeared
+around the first curve, Steuchfield turned to the others with a broad
+grin.
+
+"Well, boys," he said, "there goes a mighty nice young fellow, and I
+guess we did it up all right for him and accordin' to orders. I don't
+know any more'n a sheep what sort of a game Dave Sage-brush is playin'
+this time, but whatever he says goes as she lays, and I figure it that
+we gave the young chip o' the old block a right jubilant little whirl.
+Anyhow, he seemed to think so."
+
+Blount did not reach his office in the capital until the afternoon of
+the next day. There was an appalling accumulation of letters and
+telegrams waiting to be worked over, but he let the desk litter go
+untouched and called up the hotel, only to have a small disappointment
+sent in over the wire. His father, Mrs. Blount, and their guest had left
+for Wartrace Hall some time during the forenoon, and there had been
+nothing said in the clerk's hearing about their return to the city.
+Blount hung up the receiver, called it one more opportunity missed, and
+sat down to attack the desk litter.
+
+Almost the first thing his eye lighted upon was a stenographer's note
+stating that Mr. Hathaway, president of the Twin Buttes Lumber Company,
+had been in several times, and was very anxious to obtain an interview.
+Blount pressed the desk button, and the stenographer came in promptly.
+
+"This man Hathaway; what did he want?" was the brusque question shot at
+the clerk.
+
+"I don't know. He said he was stopping at the Inter-Mountain, and he
+asked me to let him know when you got back."
+
+"Phone him and tell him I'm here," said Blount; and in due time the
+lumber magnate made his appearance.
+
+It was not at all in keeping with Mr. Simon Peter Hathaway's gifts and
+adroitness that he should begin by attempting a clumsy bit of acting.
+
+"Well, I'll be shot!" he exclaimed. "So you're the senator's son, are
+you? If I'd known that, that day on the train when you were trying to
+make me believe you were one of Uncle Sam's men--"
+
+Blount's smile was neither forgiving nor hostile.
+
+"In a way, I had earned what was handed out to me afterward, Mr.
+Hathaway, and I'm not bearing malice," he said briefly. "I had no
+business to let you get away with the wrong impression, but you were so
+exceedingly anxious to identify me with the Forest Service that it
+seemed a pity to disappoint you. Since your scoundrels didn't kill me,
+we'll set one incident against the other and forget both. What can I do
+for you to-day?"
+
+By this time the lumber lord was apparently recovering his breath and
+some measure of composure, though he had lost neither.
+
+"Great Jehu!" he lamented. "If you had given me half a hint that you
+were Dave Blount's son--but you didn't, you know, and now I'm
+handicapped just when I oughtn't to be. I've come to talk business with
+you to-day, Mr. Blount, and here you've got me on the run the first
+crack out of the box!"
+
+This time Blount's smile was entirely conciliatory.
+
+"Don't let that little misfire in the Lost Mountain foot-hills embarrass
+you, Mr. Hathaway. I assure you I'm not at all vindictive."
+
+"All right," said the visitor, only too willing to dismiss the Jack
+Barto incident and the forced awkwardness of the pretended surprise.
+"That being the case, I'll jump in on the other matter. But first I'd
+like to ask a sort of personal question: I've been given to understand
+that you are handling the political business for the railroad company in
+this campaign. Is that right?"
+
+"It is and it isn't," was the prompt reply. "The railroad company isn't
+in politics in this campaign--as a political factor, I mean. What we are
+trying to do--and all we are trying to do--is to lay the entire matter
+plainly and fairly before the people of this State, with a frank appeal
+for the relief to which we are entitled."
+
+"Ha--h'm--I guess I get you, Mr. Blount. That's the way to talk it; in
+public, anyway. But, just between us two--I guess we needn't beat the
+bushes in a little personal talk like this--we both know there are
+certain things that have to be done in every campaign; things you
+wouldn't want to publish in the newspapers."
+
+Blount sat back in his chair and the conciliatory smile disappeared.
+
+"What kind of things?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Oh, of course, I don't know all of 'em. But there was one little
+arrangement that was made two years ago with us, and it helped out both
+ways. I thought I'd come around and see if it couldn't be worked again."
+
+"State the facts," said Blount shortly.
+
+"It was like this. As you know, we've got a number of plants scattered
+around at different places in the State, and, one way and another, we
+employ a good many men. These men are residents of the State, but you
+couldn't call 'em citizens in the sense that they take any active
+interest in what's going on. They're here this year, and they may be up
+among the Oregon redwoods next year, and somewhere else the year after.
+When they vote at all they naturally ask us how we'd like to have 'em
+vote; and that's the way it was two years ago at election time."
+
+"I see. But how does this concern the railroad company?"
+
+"I'm coming to that, right now. Two years ago we found that our
+employees' vote was big enough to turn the scale in four of the
+legislative districts and to cut a pretty good-sized figure in a fifth.
+This vote was worth something to your people, and the fact was properly
+recognized. I don't know but what I'm telling you a lot of stale news,
+but--"
+
+"Go on, Mr. Hathaway; if I wasn't greatly interested in the beginning, I
+am now. How was the fact recognized by the Transcontinental Railway
+Company?"
+
+"It was just as easy as twice two. The Twin Buttes Lumber Company is
+practically the only heavy lumber-shipper in this inter-mountain
+territory, and it was given a preferential rate on its products; you
+might say that the amount of business we do entitles us to some special
+consideration, anyway. There wasn't any bargain and sale about it, you
+understand. It was just a sort of friendly recognition of our help in
+the election."
+
+"This rate is lower than the rate made to other lumber-shippers?"
+
+"Well, yes; but, after all, it isn't any big thing. If you were up on
+lumber rates, Mr. Blount--as I don't suppose you are--you'd know that
+the special tariff we get is all that enables us to live and do
+business."
+
+Blount had opened his penknife and was absently sharpening a pencil.
+
+"This special rate you refer to, Mr. Hathaway," he said, speaking
+slowly and quite distinctly--"am I right in inferring that it is not
+confined strictly to points within the State boundaries?"
+
+At this the lumberman repeated a phrase which he had used in the anxious
+conference in the Weatherford herbarium.
+
+"If I thought you didn't know, I'd go a long time without telling you,
+Mr. Blount. But of course you do know. If you wasn't on the inside of
+all the insides you wouldn't be sitting here pulling the strings for
+McVickar. The rate is a blanket; it covers all shipments."
+
+Blount nodded and his apparent coolness was no just measure of the
+inward fires the crooked lumber-king was kindling.
+
+"You interest me greatly, Mr. Hathaway. I am a little new to these
+things--as you intimated a few moments ago. How is this matter
+handled--by rebates, I suppose?"
+
+"N-not exactly," was the hesitating denial. "That would be too risky for
+both of us. But the Transcontinental Company is a heavy buyer--lumber
+and cross-ties and bridge timber, you know--and the biggest part of the
+difference between our special and the regular rate is taken up in our
+bills for material furnished to the railroad."
+
+"Let me be quite clear upon that point," said Blount; and if Hathaway
+had had eyes to see, he would have observed that the young lawyer's
+attitude was becoming more judicial with every fresh questioning. "Let
+me be quite sure that I understand. You mean that you are allowed to
+charge the railroad company more than the market price on the material
+it buys?"
+
+Hathaway nodded. "Yes, that's the way of it."
+
+"And this preferential rate is still in force?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"You're sure you have had no notice of its withdrawal--say within the
+past few weeks?"
+
+It was at this point that the lumber lord began to fear that some one
+had slipped a cog in sending him to first one and then another, and
+finally to young Blount.
+
+"Of course, it hasn't been withdrawn!" he retorted. And then: "You seem
+to think there is something off color in the deal, Mr. Blount, and I
+don't know whether you're stringing me or whether you're too new in the
+railroad game to have the dope. If you're going into this political
+knock-down-and-drag-out, you ought to have the dope. There isn't a big
+interest in this State--ore-shippers, power people, irrigation
+companies, or any of 'em--that ain't getting a rake-off. I guess you
+_are_ stringing me; I guess you know all this a good deal better than I
+do. If you don't, I can tell you that it's a fact; not a 'has-been', but
+an 'is'! Ask Gantry; he'll tell you, if he tells the truth. We ain't
+asking or getting anything that other people ain't getting!"
+
+"I see," said Blount soberly. "What do you expect me to do, Mr.
+Hathaway?"
+
+"I want you to set the wheels in motion so that we can have our rate
+made good for another two years--on the same terms as before. You're
+going to need every vote you can get this year, and you can't afford to
+turn us down." Then the lumber-king shifted again to his own
+necessities. "It's the only way we can live and do business nowadays.
+Like every other large corporation, we've got an army of little
+investors to look out for: widows, orphans, charitable institutions, and
+trustees' accounts. I've got a list of our stockholders right here, and
+I'd like to have you look it over."
+
+Blount took the paper mechanically, and quite as mechanically ran his
+eye down the list of names. At the bottom of it, written in with a pen,
+was the name of Patricia's father, with his residence and occupation.
+While he was staring at the pen-written name, Hathaway went on,
+eloquently emphasizing the disastrous results which would fall upon the
+people for whom he was, in the larger sense, a guardian and a
+trustee--the disaster hinging upon the withdrawal of the preferential
+rate.
+
+Blount broke him abruptly in the midst of the special plea. "I see you
+have recently added one new name to this list: the name of Professor
+Anners. How--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted the Twin Buttes diplomatist hastily, fearing that
+this legal-minded young man would presently be asking questions too hard
+to be answered; "now there's a case in point: Mr. Anners is a good
+example of our smaller stockholders. Men like Anners, college
+professors, preachers, and so on, buy stocks, when they buy 'em at all,
+for an investment--for the income--and they pay for 'em out of their
+hard-earned savings."
+
+"I know," said Blount, and, since he was the last man in the world to be
+diverted from his purpose by any conversational dust-throwing, he
+pressed the question cut off by the hasty interruption. "What I was
+going to ask was how you happen to have added Professor Anners's name to
+your list--recently, it seems?"
+
+The lumberman was reduced to the necessity of inventing a ready lie. He
+had obeyed his instructions blindly, on the supposition that young
+Blount would know and understand.
+
+"Anners? Oh, he knows a good thing when he sees it; and I guess maybe
+your father put him on. He's a friend of the family, ain't he? Maybe the
+senator found a little chunk of 'Twin Buttes' that he didn't want
+himself, and passed it along."
+
+Blount's blood ran cold at the sight of the cracking walls and crumbling
+foundations on every hand. The proof that the railroad company's lawless
+attitude was still unchanged was too strong to be doubted; and now there
+was an added blow from the hand of his father. He wheeled short upon the
+lumber-king.
+
+"Who sent you to me, Mr. Hathaway?" he demanded.
+
+The hawk-faced man laughed. "I guess you know just as well or better
+than I do. But just to show you that I can keep my mouth shut, I ain't
+going to tell you. It's all right and straight--and you might say it's
+all in the family, counting the professor in on the side, as it were."
+
+"I see," Blount said, and this time he was only too sure that he did
+see. Then: "What is it you want me to do for you, Mr. Hathaway? You have
+told me once, but I'm afraid I didn't grasp it fully."
+
+"Fix it with Gantry, or somebody, so that we can put the company vote
+where it's most needed and get our rate continued. It's simple enough."
+
+"The simplicity is beyond question." Blount returned the list of
+stockholders and fell back upon the pencil-sharpening. "It is quite
+elementary, as you say; but there is another phase of the transaction
+which seems to have escaped you. Are you aware that the present
+arrangement which you have so accurately described, and the continuance
+of it which you are proposing, are crimes for which both parties
+involved may be called into court and punished?"
+
+Hathaway started as if the comfortable chair in which he was lounging
+had been suddenly electrified.
+
+"Say, Blount, are you working for the railroad, or not?" he demanded.
+"If you are, what in the name of Heaven are you driving at? I know the
+line of talk you've been handing out since McVickar gave you your job
+and set you up in business here, but that's for the dear public. You
+don't have to wear your halo when a man comes in to talk hard facts from
+the inside. It comes to just this: you do something for me, and I do
+something for you. You make it possible for us to live and sell lumber,
+and we do what we can to make it easy for your railroad to get its
+'square deal' from a pie-cutting legislature. That's the whole thing
+in a nutshell."
+
+"One more question," snapped Blount, striving to fix the roving gaze of
+the hawk-like eyes. "With whom did you make this arrangement two years
+ago?"
+
+"With your boss, if you want to know; with Mr. McVickar himself!"
+
+"And you think you can do it again?"
+
+"I know damned well I can; only I don't care to go over your head unless
+I have to. They tell me you're handling this end of it for the railroad
+company, and I'm not going around hunting a chance to make enemies.
+That's all I've got to say"--and he rose to go--"all but this: you've
+got a lot to learn about this something-for-something business, and the
+quicker you get at it, Mr. Blount, the sooner you'll arrive somewhere.
+About this little matter of ours, there's no special hurry. Take your
+own time to think it over; take it up with McVickar, if you want to.
+Then, when you get things fixed, wire me one word to Twin Buttes. Just
+say 'Yes,' and sign your name to it. That'll be enough."
+
+For a long half-hour after the president of the Twin Buttes Lumber
+Company and its allied corporations had closed the door of the private
+office behind him, Blount sat rocking gently in his pivot-chair. In the
+fulness of time the bitter thoughts wrought their way into words.
+
+"So this is what I was hired for!" he mused, "a fence; a wretched mask
+put up to hide the trickery and chicanery and criminality--the
+crookedness which has never been put aside; which nobody ever meant to
+put aside! My God! they've let me stultify myself in a thousand ways;
+let me sit here day after day with a lie in my mouth, saying things that
+nobody in this God-forsaken homeland of mine has believed for a single
+minute! After it's all over, every man who has listened to me will say
+that I _knew_--that all this talk about openness and fair dealing was
+simply that much dust-throwing to hide the workings of a corrupt and
+criminal machine grinding away in the background!"
+
+He turned to his desk and sat with his head propped in his hands,
+staring at the little photograph of Wartrace Hall which he had had
+mounted in a plate-glass paper-weight. The sight gave an added twist to
+the torture screw and he broke out again.
+
+"I've been nothing more than a bit of potter's clay, and the master
+potter--God help me!--is my own father! It's all plain enough now. He
+saw that I wasn't going to fall in with the attorney-general scheme; or
+perhaps he saw that I might be a stumbling-block if I should; so he
+planned this thing with McVickar--planned it deliberately! There is no
+fight, after all; it's merely one of the moves in the game that the
+'boss' and the railroad should seem to be fighting each other. Good God!
+I can't believe it, and yet I've got to believe it. That man Hathaway
+is a self-confessed criminal, but he was telling the truth about the
+law-breaking trickery that is going on; he wouldn't be idiotic enough to
+lie and then give me a chance to prove the lie. And he didn't come to me
+of his own volition; he was sent--sent to break me down, and sent by....
+Oh, dad, dad! how could you do it!"
+
+With his face hidden in the crook of his arm, he was groping in vain
+outreachings for something to lay hold of, for some clear-minded,
+clean-hearted adviser who could tell him what to do; how he should
+clamber out of this pit of humiliation into which nothing more culpable
+than an honest zeal for civic righteousness had precipitated him. In his
+despair he told himself that there was no one, and then suddenly he
+remembered--Patricia would know, and she would understand better than
+any one else in a populous world how to point the way out of the
+labyrinth. He must go to her and tell her. In the meantime....
+
+He got up and shut his desk with a slam. In the meantime there should be
+no more lies told--no more turns taken in the crooked path. Collins, the
+stenographer, heard the noise of the desk closing and came to the door
+of the private room, note-book and pencil in hand. "Anything to give me
+before you go out?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Blount almost savagely. "Take a message to Mr. McVickar. Are
+you ready?"
+
+The stenographer nodded.
+
+Blount dictated curtly: "'Pending another interview with you in person,
+I shall close my offices in Temple Court and confine myself strictly to
+the routine legal business of the company. Meanwhile, my resignation is
+in your hands if you wish to appoint a new division counsel.' Have you
+got that, Collins? Very well; write it out and send it at once. I shall
+be at the Inter-Mountain for a little while, if you want to reach me
+between now and closing time."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+A WELL-SPRING IN THE DESERT
+
+
+Going to the hotel, Blount shut himself into a telephone booth and
+tried, ineffectually, to get a long-distance connection with Wartrace
+Hall. When he finally grew exasperated at the central operator's
+oft-repeated "line's busy," he called up Gantry to ask if the traffic
+manager knew anything about the purposes and movements of his father.
+Gantry did not know, but he knew something else--a thing which proved
+the leakiness of the railroad telegraph department.
+
+"Come down here and tell me what you mean by sending incendiary
+telegrams to the vice-president," he commanded, with jesting severity.
+And with a hard word for the department which had gossiped, Blount went
+down to the general offices in the station building.
+
+Gantry was busy with the stenographer, but the business was immediately
+postponed and the clerk dismissed when Blount entered.
+
+"'Tell it out among the heathen,'" the traffic manager quoted jocosely,
+when the door closed behind the shorthand man.
+
+"There is nothing to tell--more than you seem to know already," snapped
+Blount morosely. "I have wired my resignation, that's all."
+
+"But why?" persisted Gantry.
+
+"Because I'm not going to be an accessory, either before or after the
+fact--not if I know it," was the curt rejoinder.
+
+"An accessory to what?"
+
+"To the criminal disregard for the laws of this State and the nation
+which seems to be the underlying motive actuating every move in this
+corrupt game of politics. Gantry, if you and some others had your just
+deserts, you would be breaking stone in the penitentiary this blessed
+minute!"
+
+"Suffering Moses!" gasped the traffic manager. "Somebody must have been
+hitting you pretty hard. Who was it; some more of the 'little
+brothers'?"
+
+At another time Blount might have been less angry, and, by consequence,
+more discreet.
+
+"No, it wasn't any of the 'little brothers'; it was Mr. Simon P.
+Hathaway, president of the Twin Buttes Lumber Company."
+
+Gantry drew a long breath which ended in a low whistle.
+
+"So that's what you were let in for, was it?" he exclaimed, and then he
+checked himself abruptly and went back to the original contention. "But
+you're not going to throw down your tools and walk out, Evan. You can't
+afford to do that."
+
+"Why can't I?"
+
+"Because you have committed yourself right and left. No man can afford
+to drop out of the ranks on the eve of a battle. You are not stopping to
+consider the construction which will be put upon any such hasty action
+on your part."
+
+"I am not stopping to consider anything, Dick, save the fact that I was
+evidently expected to connive at a cynical and criminal disregard for
+the law of the land, the law which, as a member of the bar, I have sworn
+to uphold and defend. That is enough for me. I don't have to be knocked
+down and run over before I can realize that it's time to get out of the
+way."
+
+"You say it's enough for you; it won't be enough for Mr. McVickar,"
+Gantry interposed. "If you could afford to drop out--and I'm not
+admitting that you can--he couldn't afford to let you." Then, with
+sudden gravity: "Hadn't you better let me hold up that telegram of yours
+for a few hours, Evan, until you've had time to cool down and think it
+over?"
+
+Blount sprang from his chair in a white heat.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you are already holding it up?" he
+demanded.
+
+"I took the liberty of holding it up--temporarily," confessed the
+traffic man coolly. "There is no harm done. Mr. McVickar is on his way
+West now, and he will be here in a day or two. Why not kill the message
+and have it out with him in person when he comes?"
+
+Blount was not to be so easily appeased.
+
+"I won't have my communications tampered with!" he exploded. "If you
+have given an order to have that telegram held out, you can give another
+to have it sent immediately!"
+
+"All right," said Gantry; "just as you say." And he made no effort to
+detain the enraged one who was turning his back and striding away. But
+after the self-discharged political manager was gone, the traffic man
+chuckled quietly and turned up a square of paper which had been lying on
+his desk during the short and belligerent interview.
+
+"It's a nice lay-out," he mused, reading the type-written lines over
+again, "but the little lady was too fly for you this time, Evan, my boy.
+She was just prophetess enough to guess where and how you would go off
+the handle, clever enough to pass me the word to watch the wires after a
+certain train should get in from Ophir to-day. Great little woman, that.
+I believe she figures out more than half of the fine moves in the
+Honorable Senator's game, though this particularly fine move of sending
+Hathaway to touch a match to Evan's little powder-keg is one that I
+don't begin to understand." And he folded the telegram and carefully put
+it away in his pocket-book.
+
+Evan Blount walked three squares beyond the Inter-Mountain Hotel before
+he had cooled down sufficiently to determine what to do next. As it
+chanced, the cooling-down process had led him to the door of the public
+garage patronized by his father. That thought of flying to Patricia for
+counsel and comfort was still with him, but it was over-shadowed by a
+more militant desire to fight somebody; to go to his father and tell him
+how completely and successfully he had plotted with the vice-president
+to humiliate a son whose only offence was a decent regard for honor and
+uprightness.
+
+Acting upon the impulse of the moment, he went in and asked if any of
+Senator Blount's cars were in the city. There was one--the big roadster;
+and Blount's decision was taken instantly. On that first day at Wartrace
+Hall his father had tried to give him one of the three motor-cars
+outright, and when he had refused to take it as a gift, a compromise had
+been made by which he was under promise to use any one of the machines
+he could get hold of when the need arose. Accordingly, a few minutes
+later he was behind the steering-wheel of the fast roadster, picking his
+way through the traffic-burdened city streets and pointing straight for
+the country road leading north to the sage-brush hills.
+
+Now, among its many attractions, motoring numbers--from the driver's
+point of view--this: that it effectually sweeps the brain of all other
+cares and distractions, sundry and several, since one may not drive a
+high-powered car at speed and successfully think of anything but the
+driving. Blount reached the entrance to the cottonwood-shaded avenue at
+Wartrace Hall just before the dinner hour; and he was so far recovered
+from the attack of righteous indignation that he was able to meet his
+father and the others with a fair degree of equanimity. In the back part
+of his mind, however, he held the fighting ultimatum in suspense. In
+the course of the evening he would make his opportunity and have it out,
+once for all, with the master plotter. So much he determined while he
+was dressing for dinner. But the course of events is sometimes a most
+unmalleable thing, as he was presently to learn.
+
+At the dinner-table it was the professor who monopolized the
+conversation, holding forth learnedly and dictatorially upon matters
+pertaining solely to the Pliocene age, and never once suffering the talk
+to approach nearer than several million years to the twentieth century.
+And at the dispersal--only there was no dispersal--the senator took his
+turn, leading the way to the great wainscoted living-room and persuading
+Patricia to go to the piano.
+
+The young man with the fighting determination in the back part of his
+brain bided his time. He was willing enough to listen to Grieg and
+Brahms as they were interpreted by Patricia, but the greater matter was
+still outweighing the lesser. Further along, when Miss Anners had played
+herself out, Blount tried to break the obstructing combination. But, in
+spite of his efforts, the talk drifted back to the dinosaurs and the
+pterodactyls, and when he finally went away to smoke, he did it alone.
+
+The Wartrace Hall den was an annex to the living-room, and through the
+bamboo _portières_ he could hear the animated hum of the prehistoric
+discussion, in which Patricia had now joined as a loyal daughter should.
+Hoping against hope that the professor would some time go to bed, and
+that his father would come to the den for his bedtime whiff at the
+long-stemmed pipe, Blount smoked and waited. But when his patience was
+finally rewarded, it was not the Honorable Senator who drew the bamboo
+_portières_ aside and entered the cosey smoking-room. It was Patricia,
+and she was alone.
+
+"I thought perhaps I should find you here," she said, taking the easy
+chair at the opposite corner of the fireplace where a tiny wood fire was
+blazing in deference to the chill of the approaching autumn. "Did we
+bore you to death with the Pliocenes?"
+
+"Not quite," he admitted grudgingly. "But since I hadn't remembered to
+have myself born six or seven million years ago, I can't somehow seem to
+galvanize a very active interest in the dead-and-gone periods."
+
+"Nor I," she confessed frankly, "though for daddy's sake I do try to.
+But for us who are living to-day there are so many problems of
+critically vital importance--problems that the pterodactyls never knew
+anything about."
+
+"I know," returned the young man, half-absently. "I am up against one of
+them, right now, and I don't know how to solve it."
+
+"Will it bear telling?" she asked, and he hoped that the sympathy in her
+tone was personal rather than conventional.
+
+"It will not only bear telling; it demands to be told to some one whose
+sense of right and wrong has not been drawn and quartered and flayed
+alive until it has no longer life or breath left with which to
+protest," and thereupon he told her circumstantially all that had
+befallen him since the eventful evening on which he had forsaken the
+wrecked train at Twin Buttes, concluding with the story of the lumber
+magnate's attempt at corruption, of which he suppressed nothing but the
+fact that her father's name appeared in Mr. Hathaway's list of
+share-holders. When he had made an end, her eyes were shining, though
+whether with quickened sympathy or indignation he could not determine.
+
+"What did you do?" she asked, referring to the incident of the
+afternoon.
+
+"I didn't do half enough!" he fumed. "I'm afraid I let Hathaway escape
+without being told plainly enough what a hopelessly irreclaimable
+scoundrel he is. When he edged out of the door, he was still telling me
+to take my time to think it over, and was indicating the way in which I
+might communicate my consent without committing anybody. I made a
+mistake in not firing him bodily!"
+
+Miss Anners was tapping one daintily shod foot on the tiled hearth.
+
+"You made your greatest mistake in the very beginning, Evan," she said
+decisively. "You should have made a confidant of your father."
+
+"I did try to," he protested. "Everything was all right until this
+political business came up between us. But that opened the rift. I
+couldn't do as he wanted me to, and my sympathies were with the
+corporations which I thought he was fighting unjustly. So when Mr.
+McVickar made me an offer, I accepted in good faith, believing that I
+could really do something toward bringing about a better understanding."
+
+"And now you believe you can't?--that it is impossible?"
+
+"Not wholly impossible, I suppose. But the 'great game' seems to be
+everything in this benighted commonwealth, and everybody plays it--my
+father, his wife, the railroad officials, and the politicians. Surely
+you wouldn't say that I should have let father put me on the State
+ticket as a candidate, knowing--as I could not help knowing--that I
+would be expected to carry out the designs of the machine regardless of
+right and wrong?"
+
+"Certainly not," was the quick reply, "not if you were convinced that
+the motive--your father's motive--was unworthy. But if you have been
+telling me the truth, and all the truth, I should say that you didn't
+stop to inquire what his motive was."
+
+"What was the use of inquiring?" he demanded moodily. "He is the boss,
+and he would have used the machine to put me into office as
+attorney-general. In other words, I should have owed my election, not to
+the will and selection of the people, but to the will of one man, and
+that man my nearest kinsman; a man who is, beyond all question of doubt,
+working hand in glove with all the trickery and double-dealing practised
+by the corporations. Under such conditions, would it have been possible
+for me to accept and to administer the office without fear or favor?"
+
+"I don't know why not," she returned. "Notwithstanding your
+charge--which merely shows how angry you are--your 'nearest kinsman,' as
+you call him, would have been the last man in the world to interfere.
+Wasn't that the very reason he gave you for wanting to put you on the
+ticket?"
+
+"I know," said Blount, whose mind was beginning to cloud again. "But
+there are so many other mysteries. We'll say that my father honestly
+wanted me to stand for the candidacy. But right in the midst of things
+he conspires with Mr. McVickar to put me into my present unspeakable
+dilemma."
+
+Her smile was gently reproachful.
+
+"It is my poor opinion, Evan, that you don't half appreciate your
+father. Worse than that, you don't know him. But that is beside the
+present mark. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I have already done it. I have wired my resignation to Mr. McVickar,
+and he will doubtless accept it."
+
+She was looking him fairly in the eyes. "That is the second unwise thing
+you have done," she remarked. And then: "Evan, there are times when you
+are sadly in need of a balance-wheel. Don't you know that?"
+
+"I knew it a good while ago. I applied for one once, and it was refused
+when you said 'No'."
+
+For one who was supposed to be far above and beyond such emotional
+signallings, she blushed very prettily. Which merely proves that one may
+be a diplomaed sociologist with a burning zeal for alleviating the
+miseries of a sodden world, without having parted with the primitive sex
+impulse.
+
+"I am willing to try to help you now," she said, half hesitating; "if
+only you won't try to drag me over into the field of sentiment. It was
+just a bit of boyish rage--fine enough in its way, but foolish--your
+sending that telegram to Mr. McVickar. Can't you recall it?"
+
+"No; not now."
+
+"Then you must do the next best thing: tell him you have reconsidered."
+
+"But I haven't reconsidered; I can't and won't stand in with the
+corruption and bribery that is going on all around me!" he objected
+indignantly.
+
+"Of course you can't; and you mustn't. But the true reformer doesn't
+drop things and run away. You must stay in and fight--fight harder than
+you ever have before, Evan. If you can't do it for the sake of the
+larger right, then you must do it for your own sake. Can't you see the
+open door before you?"
+
+"I can see and hear and feel when the door is slammed in my face," was
+the qualifying rejoinder. "How can I go on preaching the gospel of
+cleanness and fair dealing, when I know that all this crooked work is
+going on behind my back? What will the people of this State say to me
+and about me when the crookedness comes to light?"
+
+"Ah!" she said; "that is just where you begin to grow one-sided. You
+must go on preaching the gospel, but that is only half of the battle.
+The other half is to be big enough and strong enough and insistent
+enough to make the thing itself agree with the gospel. I fully believe
+you lost your best helper when you refused to join hands with your
+father. You don't believe that, so we'll let it go. You have gone your
+own way, choosing what seemed to you to be the better opportunity. Evan,
+you can't turn back; you've simply _got_ to go on and wring success out
+of apparent failure!"
+
+Blount drew a deep breath and sat up in his chair. There was no
+mistaking the light in Patricia's eyes now; the pure flame of which it
+was the visible radiance is the torch which has kindled the beacon fires
+on all the heights since the world began.
+
+"If I had only my own people--the railroad people--to knock down and
+drag out," he was beginning, but she broke in warmly:
+
+"You think you have your father against you, too; I don't believe it,
+but you do. Very well; then you must compel him, as well as the others.
+Be a big man, Evan; be the biggest man in the State until you have
+proved that one man with a righteous cause is better than ten thousand
+without it."
+
+Blount got up and stood with his back to the dying embers of the tiny
+fire, and if he put his hands behind him it was because the passionate
+impulse to break down all the barriers was twitching in every fibre of
+him.
+
+"Patricia, girl, I wonder if you know what you have done to me? I drove
+out here this evening utterly discouraged and disheartened; bitter and
+angry, and ready to throw the whole thing up and go away. You've
+changed all that--you, you know; just you. Oh, girl, girl! if I could
+only have you beside me to give me my battle-word!"
+
+She had her slender fingers locked over one knee and her eyes were
+downcast.
+
+"Now you are tempting me," she said slowly; "and--and it isn't fair. You
+know my weakness and passion to help. You _mustn't_ tempt me, Evan."
+
+What he would have said, with what eager pleadings he would have pressed
+the advantage gained by his appeal for the larger help, is not to be
+here set down. For at that moment the bamboo door curtains parted to
+admit the small house-mistress.
+
+"You two!" she scolded with light-hearted austerity. And then to Evan:
+"Don't you know that we are keeping country hours here at Wartrace now?
+The professor will be up and calling for the car at six o'clock, and
+it's past midnight. Shame on you! Run away and get your beauty
+sleep--both of you!"
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE LIEGEMAN
+
+
+Evan Blount drove himself back to the capital in the swift roadster the
+following morning, and there was no opportunity for further confidential
+speech with Patricia before he left. But with the new day had arisen,
+full-grown, the determination born in the moment of midnight
+heart-warming and inspiration. To the best of his ability he would live
+up to the high standard set for him by the woman he loved, not only
+preaching the gospel of fair dealing, but doing his utmost to make it
+effective.
+
+With this high purpose singing its song of exaltation in his veins, he
+drove on past the garage and made an early call at the office of the
+traffic manager. Gantry was in the midst of his morning mail-opening,
+but he pushed the desk-load of papers aside when the door swung inward
+to admit the early visitor.
+
+"Hello, old man! Come back to jar me some more about that telegram?" was
+his greeting.
+
+Blount shook his head. "No; if you've sent it, well and good. If you
+haven't, you may pitch it into the waste-basket. I came to talk about
+something else."
+
+"Good, sound, sensible second thought!" Gantry commented, laughing. Then
+he took out his pocket-book and passed the suppressed telegram across to
+Blount. "Here it is; you can do the waste-basket act yourself. I
+couldn't let you commit _hara-kiri_ without at least trying to get the
+cutting tool out of your hands. What is the other thing you've got on
+your mind this early in the morning? It must be a nightmare of some
+sort, by the look in your eyes."
+
+"It may figure as a nightmare to you, Dick, before we're through with
+it. I'll make it short. You know what I have been doing--what I supposed
+I was hired to do--assuring everybody right and left that we were going
+into this campaign with clean hands?"
+
+"I know," admitted the traffic manager, developing a sudden interest in
+the figures of the rug at his feet.
+
+"I have been doing this in a business way at my office up-town, in
+season and out of season, and night before last, at Ophir, I did it
+publicly. As the campaign progresses, I shall doubtless put myself on
+record many times to the same effect."
+
+"Good man!" applauded Gantry, striving to drag the talk down to some
+less portentous altitude. "I'm sure we need all the whitewashing anybody
+can give us."
+
+"That is just the point I have come to make," Blount went on gravely.
+"It mustn't be merely a coat of whitewash, Dick; it has got to be the
+real thing, this time. I began by firing the 'little brothers,' as you
+called them, but I sha'n't stop at that; I mean to go higher up if I am
+compelled to. I am here this morning to ask you to give me your word as
+a gentleman and my friend that you will not, directly or indirectly, do
+or cause to be done anything that will make me stand forth as a
+self-convicted liar before the people of this State. I want you to
+promise me that you will cut out all the deals, all the briberies, all
+the bargainings, all the--"
+
+"Oh, say; see here!" protested the man under fire; "you've got the wrong
+pig by the ear, Evan. I'm not the Transcontinental Railway Company!"
+
+"I know you are not. But, to a greater degree than any other official in
+the local management, you have Mr. McVickar's confidence. If you don't
+feel competent to handle the thing on your own responsibility, of course
+it's your privilege to pass it up to those who have the authority. In
+that case, I wish to make one point clear: you're the man I'm going to
+hold up to the rack. I can't afford to spread myself over the entire
+management, and I don't mean to try. I'm going to look to you, Dick, for
+the backing of the clean sheet, and I warn you in all soberness that
+there must be no blots on it; no compromises; no whipping of the devil
+around the stump."
+
+"Great Scott!" murmured Gantry. "And you're on the pay-rolls, the same
+as the rest of us! But candidly, as man to man, Evan, the thing can't be
+done, you know. We've got to play the game; they'll eat us alive if we
+don't. You needn't figure in it at all; it was a mistake letting Sim
+Hathaway get to you, and I said so at the time. But your--er--the powers
+that be said it had to be that way, and I had to let him go and ball you
+all up. It sha'n't happen again; I can promise you that much, anyway."
+
+Blount caught quickly at the hesitant pause.
+
+"Who were 'the powers that be' in Hathaway's case, Dick?" he inquired.
+
+"I can't tell you that; honestly, I can't, Evan," was the anxious
+refusal. "Don't ask me."
+
+"All right; then I shall assume that Mr. McVickar was responsible," said
+Blount calmly, thus proving that he had not taken his degree in the law
+school for nothing.
+
+"Oh, hold on! You mustn't do that, either!" protested the man who was
+figuring most unwillingly as the occupant of the witness stand.
+
+"Thank you," returned the postgraduate, with the true Blount smile. "Now
+I know that it was my father. No; you needn't deny it; I suppose it was
+for some good reason that this man was sent to teach me how to play the
+game--as reasons go in practical politics. But we are side-stepping the
+real issue. I've asked you for a promise: will you give it?"
+
+"I--I can't give it, Evan, and hold my job; that's God's own truth!"
+
+"No; it isn't God's truth--it's the other kind. But that was about what
+I expected you to say. Now hear my side of it: if you don't clean
+house--you and the other officials of the company--I shall not only
+resign; I shall take the field on the other side and tell what I know
+and why I've thrown up my job. I've been telling everybody that this is
+to be a campaign of publicity, and by all that is good and great, I
+shall keep my word, Dick!"
+
+"Oh, for heaven's sake, you wouldn't do that!" ejaculated the traffic
+man, now thoroughly alarmed. "Land of glory, Evan! you know too much--a
+great deal too much!"
+
+The young man who knew too much got up and relighted his cigar with a
+match taken from Gantry's desk box.
+
+"It's up to you," he said, with his hand on the door-knob. "Get into
+communication with whatever 'powers that be' there are that can give the
+necessary orders; see to it that the orders are given, and that they are
+put in the way of being carried out. As God hears me, Dick, I mean what
+I say: it's a clean sheet, or an exposure that will make a lot of you
+wish you had never been born. If I have to put the screws on--as I hope
+and pray I sha'n't--you can bet they'll be put on lawyer-fashion; with
+evidence that will send a bunch of you to the penitentiary."
+
+"Hold on--one question before you go, Evan!" pleaded Gantry. "I haven't
+known half the time where I'm at in this latest muddle. Is this another
+little blind lead of the Honorable Sen--of your father's?"
+
+Blount's smile was as grim as any that Gantry had ever seen on the face
+of the Honorable David.
+
+"It's against nature for you to play the game straight, isn't it, Dick?"
+he said in mild reproach. "If you don't know that my father is still the
+head of the machine, and that the machine has always been for you in the
+past, I imagine you're the only man in the Sage-Brush State who needs
+enlightening. No, Gantry; you've got only one man to fight; but you
+mustn't forget that his name, also, is Blount. Go to it and send me
+word, and let the first word be that you have scotched the head of this
+lumber-company snake. That's all for to-day. Good-by."
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that his day's work was still ahead of him, the
+traffic manager did not attack it when he was left alone. An able man in
+his calling, and one who had fought his way rapidly by sheer merit and
+hard work from a clerkship to an official desk, Richard Gantry was still
+lacking, in a character admirable and most lovable in many ways, the
+iron that refuses to bend, and--though perhaps in lesser measure--the
+courage of his ultimate convictions. In addition to these basic
+weaknesses he owned another--the weakness of the cog which is
+constrained to turn with the great wheel of which it is a part.
+
+In his heart of hearts Richard Gantry knew that Blount was right; knew
+that the forlorn-hope fight into which his friend and college classmate
+had plunged was a struggle to call out all that was best and finest in
+friendly loyalty. But when he sprang from his chair and began to walk
+the floor of his private office with his head down and his hands deeply
+buried in his pockets, he was once more the true corporation liegeman,
+loyal to his salt, and anxious only to contrive means to an end.
+
+"Confound his picture!" he muttered, "why the devil can't he see that
+he's got everything to lose and nothing to gain? It's a thousand pities
+that such a royal good fellow has to turn himself into a wild-eyed,
+impossible crank! The Lord knows, I'd do anything in reason for him; but
+I can't let him turn anarchist and blow us all to kingdom come. He's got
+to be muzzled in some way, and I'll be hanged if I know how it's going
+to be done."
+
+The pacing monologue paused when the traffic manager stopped at the
+window and stood looking with unseeing eyes upon the morning bustle of
+Sierra Avenue. Then he broke out again.
+
+"It's a beautiful tangle--damn' beautiful! Evan says I know that we've
+got the machine with us; I wish to heaven I did know it, and could be
+sure of it. That would simplify matters a whole lot. But the
+vice-president won't say, and he's the one who has been doing all the
+dickering with the Honorable David. They quarrelled at first; I'd bet
+every dollar I've got on that. But I more than half-believe they've
+patched it up now, and I believe it was Mr. McVickar's quick swiping of
+Evan--jerking him out from under his father's thumb the way he did--that
+brought on the peace negotiations."
+
+He turned away from the window and resumed the floor-pacing, still
+wrestling with the deductions.
+
+"By George! I believe I've got hold of the end of the thread at last!
+The senator _is_ with us, working in the dark, as he always does. And
+that Hathaway business: that was one of his smooth little
+side-moves--his or Mrs. Honoria's. He didn't want Evan to get in too
+deep in the righteousness puddle, and he took that way of letting him
+get a peek at the real thing. It was overdone, though; horribly
+overdone. Confound it all! I wish Mr. McVickar would loosen up a little
+more with me! If he'd tell me a few of the things I ought to know--"
+
+The interruption was the entrance of the boy from the train-despatcher's
+office with a verbal message. The vice-president, moving westward, had
+changed his plans and cut out some of his stop-overs. Car "008" would be
+in on the noon train and would proceed westward, running special, at one
+o'clock. The despatcher had thought that Mr. Gantry might want to know.
+
+The traffic manager did want to know, and when the boy had ducked out,
+the knowledge was promptly utilized. A touch of a desk-button brought
+the stenographer, and Gantry dictated a message. "'Important that I
+should have conference with you on arrival. Will meet you at train at
+twelve-three.' Send that to Mr. McVickar over the despatcher's wire, and
+ask Gilkey to rush it," he directed, and the shorthand man went to do
+it.
+
+"Now, Mr. Evan Anarchist Blount!" said Gantry, apostrophizing the late
+disturber of his peace, "now we'll find out just where we're at and how
+big a rope it's going to take to snub you down," and thereupon the desk
+buzzer rattled again, and Mr. Richard Gantry squared himself for his
+forenoon's work.
+
+At the moment of his apostrophizing Blount was opening his mail in the
+Temple Court office, and lamenting, as a loyal friend might, the
+necessity for the recent clubbing into line of so fine a fellow as Dick
+Gantry. But the mail-opening plunged him once more into the political
+actualities. There were letters from all over the State, and among them
+three invitations from widely separated cities, all based upon the
+newspaper reports of his Ophir speech. It seemed to be plainly evident
+that the "campaign-of-education" idea was striking a popular chord, and
+the proponent of the idea saw what a miraculous opportunity was offering
+for the railroad if only the "powers" that Gantry had refused to name
+were broad enough and high-minded enough to seize it.
+
+After a day and an evening well filled with detail, Blount went to the
+station to take the nine-thirty west-bound, since the first of the three
+speaking engagements--all of which had been promptly accepted by
+wire--lay in that direction. On the platform, whither he went to
+consult the bulletin-board, he found Gantry.
+
+"Your train is half an hour late," said the traffic man, with a glance
+for the travelling-bag in Blount's hand. "Didn't they know enough at the
+hotel to tell you about it?"
+
+"They told me it was on time," said the putative traveller, and he was
+far enough from suspecting that Gantry himself had arranged to have the
+inaccurate information given across the counter at the Inter-Mountain,
+so that he might be sure of an uninterrupted half-hour with Blount
+before he should leave the city.
+
+"Ump!" said the traffic manager, "I've got to wait for it, too. One of
+my men is coming in on it. Let's go up to the office. It's pleasanter
+there."
+
+Together they climbed the stair to the second floor of the station
+building, and Gantry unlocked the door of his private room and turned on
+the lights.
+
+"Feeling any more humane than you did this morning?" he inquired
+genially, after he had opened his desk and found a box of cigars.
+
+"I haven't been feeling otherwise since--well, let's say since midnight
+last night," countered Blount laughing.
+
+"Why midnight?"
+
+"That was about the time when I made up my mind definitely to stay in
+the fight."
+
+"Then you are still meaning to go ahead on the lines you laid down this
+morning?"
+
+"If I wasn't, I shouldn't be here to take the train for the rally at
+Angora to-morrow night."
+
+Gantry smoked in silence for a little time. Then he said: "You can't do
+it, Evan. It's fine and glorious and heart-breaking, and all that; but
+you can't do it."
+
+"I can, and I will!"
+
+"I say you can't. I know a good bit more now than I knew this morning!"
+
+"Catalogue it," said Blount tersely.
+
+"Mr. McVickar came in on the noon train to-day, and I had an interview
+with him."
+
+"That doesn't tell me anything."
+
+Again the traffic manager took time to smoke and to reflect.
+
+"You made some pretty savage threats this morning, Evan; about shoving
+this thing to the point where the grand juries, Federal and State, could
+take hold of it. As a lawyer, you know even better than I do what that
+would mean."
+
+"I told you what it would mean. In the present state of public sentiment
+it would mean prison sentences for every man of you caught with the
+goods."
+
+"Yes, for every man of us," said Gantry slowly; "for the railroad man
+who has given, and for the other man who has taken. Evan, the jails of
+this State wouldn't be big enough to hold us all."
+
+"I can readily believe you. That is the full weight of the stick with
+which I am going to club you fellows into decency."
+
+"And you'll let the club fall wherever it may?"
+
+"I've got to do that, Dick; I can't do any less."
+
+For the third time Gantry paused. The train-waiting interval was half
+gone, and he had been feeling purposefully for the climaxing moment
+without finding it. But now he decided that it had come.
+
+"In the talk this morning there was some reference made to your father
+and his attitude in this fight, Evan. Do you remember what was said?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Well, suppose I should tell you that I know now--what I didn't know
+certainly then--that when you hit out at us you hit him?"
+
+"You mean that he is with you in this scheme to hoodwink the people?"
+
+"Ask yourself," was the low-toned reply.
+
+"I have asked myself a hundred times, Dick; I've been hoping against
+hope. I'll be utterly frank with you, as man to man. We've kept pretty
+obstinately out of the political field, both of us, father and I, since
+the first day when I told him my views on machine-made government. But
+from a few little things he has said, I've gathered that he isn't with
+you; that there has been a quarrel of some kind between him and Mr.
+McVickar--"
+
+"There was a set-to--a battle royal," Gantry put in. "The last act of it
+was played to a finish that evening when Mr. McVickar took you down to
+his car and hired you. But there has been a meeting since. Ask yourself
+again, Evan. Haven't you had good and sufficient reasons for believing
+that you are bucking, not only the railroad company, but your own flesh
+and blood?"
+
+This time it was Blount who took time for reflection. The shot had gone
+home. He told himself that there were only too many reasons for
+believing that Gantry was stating the simple fact. None the less, he
+made a final effort to break down the conclusion that Gantry was
+relentlessly thrusting upon him.
+
+"In all our talks, Dick--there haven't been very many of them--my father
+has taken, or seemed to take, a different line. I don't recall anything
+specific just now, but he has given me the impression that he hasn't
+much in common with Mr. McVickar and his methods. To hear him talk--"
+
+Gantry smiled. "You know your father very superficially, Evan, if you'll
+permit me to say so. What the Honorable David Blount says in talk with
+you or me or anybody outside of the inner circle is a mighty poor
+foundation upon which to build any idea of what's going on in the back
+of his head. No--hold on; don't get mad. What I'm trying to tell you is
+what everybody in the sage-brush hills--save and excepting
+yourself--knows like a book, and that is that the big boss's moves are
+all made strictly in the dark. He doesn't let his own right hand know
+what the left is doing. That's the secret of his absolutely Czarish
+power, I think."
+
+The shriek of a distant locomotive whistle floated in through the open
+window at Blount's back and he got up stiffly.
+
+"That's my train coming," he said. And then: "Tell me plainly, Dick:
+you brought me up here to throw a final brick--a bigger one than you
+have yet thrown--and I know it. What did Mr. McVickar tell you to-day
+that will make my job harder than I am already finding it?"
+
+Gantry turned his head, refusing to meet the straightforward gaze of the
+questioner.
+
+"You intimated this morning that you would go at it lawyer-fashion,
+Evan," he said; "which means, I suppose, that you would get the evidence
+on us. You can do it; the Lord knows, there's plenty of it to be had.
+But when you pull out one set of props the whole thing will come down.
+We haven't any of us been careful enough about what we put in
+writing--_not even your father_."
+
+Blount staggered as if the words had been a blow.
+
+"You're trying to tell me that my father would be involved in the
+disclosures you fellows might drive me to make?" he demanded, and his
+voice was husky.
+
+Gantry was still looking away. "There always has to be an
+intermediary--you know that. We can't do business direct with
+these--with the people who have something to sell. You can draw your own
+inferences, Evan. I didn't send Hathaway to you; I sent him to your
+father."
+
+The train was thundering into the station and Blount picked up his
+hand-bag and went out, stumbling blindly in the unlighted passage at the
+stair-head. And in the private office behind him the traffic manager
+was crushing his dead cigar in his clenched hand and staring fixedly at
+the square of darkness framed by the open window.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+BARRIERS INVISIBLE
+
+
+During the three weeks following the night journey to Angora, a journey
+on which he once more fought the hard battle to a still sharper
+conclusion, Evan Blount scarcely saw his office in Temple Court for more
+than a brief hour or two at a time. One speaking appointment followed
+another in such rapid succession that he was constantly going or
+returning; and since there was everywhere a repetition of the welcome
+accorded him by the miners of the Carnadine district, there was no
+reason save physical weariness to make him wish to limit his
+opportunity.
+
+It was not until he was deep into the fourth week of the hurryings to
+and fro that he began to admit a suspicion which grew like a juggler's
+rose once he had given it place. Could it be possible that these
+numerous invitations, coming now from all parts of the State, were
+purely spontaneous? If not, if they were so many subtle moves in the
+great game, he could see no possible end to be subserved by them save
+one: they were effectually keeping him away from the capital, which was
+naturally the nucleus and centre of the campaign activities. Was there
+something going on at headquarters that "the powers" did not wish him
+to find out? Of one thing he was well assured. Gantry was dodging him,
+was apparently keeping an accurate record of his movements; for whenever
+the hurryings permitted a flying return to the capital the traffic
+manager was always out of town.
+
+These were small matters, but vital in their way. Failing to keep in
+touch with Gantry, Blount could never be sure that the policy of the
+railroad company had been reformed or changed in any respect. Moreover,
+his journeyings, which brought him in direct contact with the voters
+themselves, seemed to have the effect of isolating him curiously in the
+actual battle-field. That a hot political campaign was raging throughout
+the length and breadth of the State was not to be doubted; the
+newspapers were full of it, and in many districts the fight had become
+acrimonious and bitter. But although he was supposed to be in the thick
+of the fight, he knew that he was not; that some mysterious influence
+was shutting him out and holding him at arm's length.
+
+Everywhere he went the cordial reception, the attentive and hospitable
+committeemen, the packed house, and the generous applause were always
+awaiting him. It was as if his progress had been carefully prearranged,
+like a sort of triumphal procession. None the less, the invisible
+barrier--the barrier which was excluding him from a hand-to-hand grapple
+with the inner workings of the campaign--was always there, and he could
+neither surmount it nor push it aside.
+
+Notwithstanding the hard work and hard travelling, he did not allow the
+missionary effort and its curious isolation to obscure in any sense the
+sturdier purpose. By every means he could devise he was holding his
+principals up to the mirror of a vigilant watchfulness. Arguing that the
+opposition newspapers would be quick to seize upon any charge of
+corruption involving the railroad company, he read them faithfully. As
+yet there had been only innuendoes and a raking over of past misdeeds,
+though by this time many of the editors were openly claiming that the
+old alliance between the railroad and the machine had never been broken,
+and warning their readers accordingly.
+
+Blount winced when he read such editorials as these. Though he was going
+about, striving to do his part manfully, and even with enthusiasm, the
+burden of the cruel responsibility he had voluntarily shouldered was
+never less than crushing. His only hope lay in success. If he could make
+Gantry and his superiors come clean-handed to the election, there need
+be no exposure, no cataclysm involving both the railroad officials and
+his father.
+
+So ran the saving hope; and not content with mere watchfulness, Blount
+tried to get his finger upon the pulse of occasions whenever he could.
+On his brief stop-overs in the capital he kept his eyes and ears open
+for the earliest hint of any charge of chicanery, and though he was
+unable to get hold of Gantry personally, he kept up a steady fire of
+letters and telegrams, all pointing to the same end--absolute and utter
+good faith, and the upholding of his hands in the public plea for a
+square deal. To these the traffic manager always replied guardedly and
+optimistically. Everybody was delighted with the good work done, and
+doing, by the railroad company's field manager; public opinion was
+slowly but surely changing; let the good work go on--and much more to
+the same effect.
+
+Blount did let the good work go on; but as the critical pre-election
+weeks approached, he began to arm himself, reluctantly but resolutely. A
+little quiet investigation, which was made to dovetail cleverly with his
+speech-making journeys, revealed--as Gantry had confessed it
+would--convincing evidence of past corruption and present law-breaking.
+Hathaway had told the truth when he had asserted that his own
+involvement was only one of many similar bargains. Blount called upon
+the president of the Irrigation Alliance at Romero, in the heart of the
+agricultural district, upon the managers of several of the
+electric-power companies, and upon a number of influential mining
+men--all shippers, and all large employers of labor. It was the same
+story everywhere. Preferential freight rates had been given in return
+for votes controlled, and the rates were still in effect.
+
+The investigator turned sick at heart when these men talked quite freely
+to him, thus showing conclusively that they were cynically discounting
+his public utterances. McDarragh, owner and manager of the "Wire-Gold"
+properties in the Moscow district, winked slyly when Blount cautiously
+inserted the probe.
+
+"You're on, Mr. Blount. I sat up there in the Op'ry-house last night
+listening to your game, and says I to myself, 'Thim railroad
+shift-bosses know their trade.' 'Twas a gr-reat talk you gave us, and
+it'll make the swinging of the har-rd-rock vote as easy as twice two. Of
+course, we have a thin paring on the ore rate; you'll be knowing that as
+well as annybody in the game, I'm thinking. 'Tis well that we fellows at
+the top know how to make one hand wash the other. Come again, Mr.
+Blount, and give my regards to the sinator when ye see him. And ye might
+whisper in his ear that it's a waste of good wor-rk for him to be
+sinding his gum-shoe wire-pullers to be laboring with our min. We're
+safe as the clock up here in the Moscow."
+
+This was not the first hint that Blount had been given pointing to the
+underground work of the machine. That this work was being directed
+toward the subversion of the popular will, he made no doubt; and there
+were times when he was strongly tempted to carry the war boldly into the
+wider field of graft and bossism. That he postponed the bigger battle
+was due quite as much to the singleness of purpose which was his best
+gift as to the desire to spare his father. Telling himself resolutely
+that the reformation of the railroad company's political methods was his
+chief object, and the only one which warranted him in retaining his
+place on the Company's payrolls, he held aloof when his father's name
+was mentioned and bent himself to the task of providing the means for
+the subjugation of Gantry--and of Gantry's and his own superiors, if
+need be.
+
+The securing of evidence of the kind which would really give him the
+whip-hand promised to be a delicate undertaking. Men like McDarragh
+talked openly enough about the illegal special freight rates, but talk
+was not evidence. Curiously enough, while he was trying to devise some
+way of obtaining the tangible proof without using his semiofficial
+position in the company's service as a lever, the thing itself was
+thrown at him. From some mysterious source a rumor went out that the
+special rates were in jeopardy; and the very men with whom he had talked
+began to write him importunate letters begging him to deny the rumor.
+With a sheaf of these letters in his pocket, each one inculpating both
+parties to the illegal "deals," Blount grew gayly exultant. The natural
+inference was that Gantry and "the powers" had been finally forced to
+yield--that he had won his victory. But if he had not yet won it,
+chance, or something better, had placed in his hands the weapon with
+which he could compel a return to fair dealing and honesty.
+
+It was on a second speech-making visit to Ophir that Blount had his
+first face-to-face chance at Gantry. A meeting of the Mine-Owners'
+Association, moving for a readjustment of the classification on copper
+matte and bullion at a time when the railroad company might be supposed
+to be on the giving hand, brought Gantry to the gold camp in the
+Carnadine Hills, and the first man he met at the hotel was the stubborn
+dictator of new policies for the Transcontinental Company.
+
+"Hello, Dick! made a mistake, didn't you--coming while I was here?" said
+the reformer, with a very lifelike replica of his father's grim smile.
+"I suppose you have an immediate engagement to go somewhere else, or to
+do something that will give you a chance to dodge?"
+
+"No; I wish to the Lord I had!" was the hearty admission. "You're a
+fright, Evan; you are getting to be a perfect nightmare, with your
+letters and telegrams. You've got me so I'm afraid to open my desk."
+
+Blount nodded gravely. "I'm glad the letters and telegrams have had
+their effect at last," he rejoined.
+
+"Had their effect? Yes, they've had the effect of turning my hair gray,
+if that's what you mean."
+
+"I think you know what I mean, Dick."
+
+"I'll be hanged if I do. What are you driving at?"
+
+"At the fact that you have finally concluded to cancel the crooked deals
+with--wait, and I'll give you the names of the co-respondents"--and he
+drew a packet of neatly docketed letters from his pocket.
+
+"Hold on a minute," protested the traffic manager; "you're getting in
+rather too deep for me. Will you let me see those letters?"
+
+Blount put the letters back into his pocket and mechanically buttoned
+his light top-coat over them for additional safety.
+
+"Do you mean to say that you haven't passed the word to Hathaway and
+McDarragh and a dozen others I could name?" he asked.
+
+"Of course I haven't. You call yourself a lawyer, and yet you ask us to
+set aside promises that are, or ought to be, as binding as so many
+written contracts with penalties attached. You're crazy, Evan; it can't
+be done, and that's all there is to it."
+
+Blount was frowning thoughtfully. "'Can't' goes out of the window when
+'must' comes in at the door, Dick. You remember what I told you--that
+I'd get evidence, lawyer-fashion. I've got it; evidence of the sort that
+would turn the people of this State into a howling mob to tear up your
+tracks if I should publish it."
+
+"But I tell you we _can't_ withdraw the specials, you wild-eyed
+fanatic!"
+
+"All right; then level down the public's rates to fit them. And do it
+quickly, old man. The time is growing fearfully short, and my patience
+isn't what it used to be."
+
+"My Lord! anybody would think you owned the Transcontinental Company,
+lock, stock, and barrel! Where under heaven did you get your nerve,
+Evan? Blest if I don't believe you could out-bluff the old--er--your
+father, himself, if you once got the fool notion into your head that it
+was your duty to try!"
+
+"You are side-stepping again, Dick, and that won't go any longer. You've
+got to fish or cut bait, and do one or the other pretty soon."
+
+"I'd cut the bait all right, if I were Mr. McVickar, Evan. I'd fire you
+so blamed far that you wouldn't be able to find your way back in a month
+of Sundays."
+
+Blount tapped his pocket. "As long as I have these documents, Mr.
+McVickar doesn't dare to fire me. And if you and he don't come down
+within the next few days--yes, it's a matter of days, now--I'll fire
+myself and go over every foot of the ground again, telling what I know."
+
+Gantry's eyes darkened. He had graduated with honors from the particular
+department in railroading in which patience is more than a virtue. Yet
+there are limits.
+
+"You seem to have entirely forgotten that little talk we had in my
+office the night you were going to Angora," he said.
+
+"No; I haven't forgotten it--not for a single waking minute."
+
+"What I said to you then goes as it lies," was the threatening reminder.
+"If you pull the props out, there'll be more than one death in the
+family."
+
+"You mean that you, or Mr. McVickar, will make it a point to include my
+father; I've wrestled that out, too, Dick. I'm going to try to pull him
+out of it, but whether I succeed or fail, the consequences will be the
+same for you fellows. Come and hear me speak to-night, Dick--if you're
+stopping over that long. Then you'll know how much in earnest--how
+deadly in earnest--I am. You spoke of my father just now; I want to
+remind you again that I, too, bear the Blount name--a name that I have
+heard bandied about as a synonym for all that is worst in our political
+life. Don't you see that I've got to make good?"
+
+"Oh, great cats!--you and your high-strung notions of what you've got to
+do!" snorted the traffic manager, and he went away to his classification
+meeting.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+SWORD-PLAY
+
+
+It was during this hard-travelling period that Blount saw, with keen
+regret, the gradual widening of the breach between his father and
+himself. In their infrequent meetings there was never anything remotely
+approaching an open rupture; but in a thousand ways the younger man
+fancied he could see and feel the steady growth of the rift.
+
+That the long arm of the machine of which his father was the
+acknowledged head was reaching out into all corners of the State, was a
+fact no longer to be doubted, and that the influences thus set in motion
+were sinister, he took for granted. Therefore, when it came in his way,
+he scored the machine frankly, charging it with much of the mischief
+which had been wrought in the way of arousing public sentiment against
+the corporations. "The worst in politics joined with the worst elements
+in capitalized industry," was his platform characterization of the
+alliances of the past, and he usually added that he was fighting it as
+every honest man was in duty bound to fight it. But it is hard to fight
+in the dark. After all was said, he could not help admiring the
+subtlety of the master brain which was able to control and direct such a
+complicated piece of human mechanism; direct it so skilfully and
+cleverly that, though the name of the thing was in everybody's mouth,
+its workings were so carefully concealed that it was only by the merest
+chance that he stumbled upon them now and then.
+
+In more than one of the short stop-overs in the capital he had found his
+father still occupying the private suite at the Inter-Mountain, and now
+and again there was a meal shared in the more or less crowded _café_. On
+such occasions the son leaned heavily upon the public character of the
+place and carefully steered the table-talk--or thought he did--into
+innocuous channels. But on a day shortly after the meeting with Gantry
+in Ophir this desultory programme was broken. Reaching the hotel in the
+evening after an all-day train journey from Lewiston, Blount found his
+father waiting for him in the lobby, and when he proposed a _café_
+dinner the senator shook his head.
+
+"No, son; not this evening," he said. "I've been feeling sort of set up
+and aristocratic to-day, and I've just ordered a dinner sent upstairs. I
+reckon you'll join me?"
+
+The young man was willing enough; more than willing, since he was now
+ready to say a thing which must be said before he could be prepared to
+set a time limit upon Gantry--a limit beyond which lay the firing of the
+fuse and the blowing up of all things mundane.
+
+"Certainly," he agreed. "Give me a few minutes to change my clothes--"
+
+"You look good enough to me just as you are, boy," said the
+dinner-giver, and he took his son by the arm and walked him to the
+elevator.
+
+In the private dining-room Blount found the table laid for two, much as
+if his coming had been pre-figured. He let that go, and for the time the
+talk was of the doings at Wartrace Hall: of the professor's enthusiastic
+digging for fossils, of Patricia's keen enjoyment of the life in the
+open, and--this put with gentle hesitation on the part of the
+news-bringer--of Mrs. Honoria's growing affection for the young woman
+whose ambitions reached out toward a sociological career.
+
+"You say Patricia is learning to drive a car?" queried Patricia's lover.
+
+"Best woman driver I ever saw," was the senator's praiseful rejoinder.
+"Nothing feazes that little girl, and I'm telling you that she can turn
+the wheels just about as fast as you want to ride."
+
+This was a new aspect of Miss Anners, even to one who knew her as well
+as Blount thought he knew her, and, lover-like, he found a grain of
+encouragement in it. Patricia had never cared for the out-of-door things
+save as they bore upon the hygienic condition of the poor in the great
+cities. If she had changed in one respect, she might change in another.
+
+"I'm glad to know that," he commented. "She was needing an outlet on
+that side. There is a good bit of the Puritan in her--all work and no
+play, you know."
+
+The senator looked out from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "Speaking of
+work; they're working you pretty hard these days, aren't they, son? If
+you belonged to my generation instead of your own, you wouldn't be
+cold-shouldering that young woman out yonder at Wartrace the way you do;
+not for all the politics that were ever hatched."
+
+"I have my work to do, and Patricia Anners would be the last person in
+the world to put obstacles in the way of it," returned the son gravely.
+Then he added: "I wish I could say as much for other people."
+
+The boss shot another keen glance across the table. "Somebody been
+trying to block you, Evan, boy?" he asked.
+
+Blount met the gaze of the shrewd gray eyes without flinching.
+
+"I don't know of any good reason why we shouldn't be entirely frank with
+each other, dad," he said, using for the first time since his return to
+the homeland the old boyhood father-name. "You know, better than any one
+else, I think, what the stumbling-blocks are, and who is putting them in
+my way."
+
+"Maybe so; maybe I do," was the even-toned answer. "It happens so, once
+in a while, that I know a heap of things I can't tell, son." Then: "Has
+McVickar been calling you down?"
+
+"No one has called me down. But some one, or something, is keeping me
+out of the real fight. I don't mean that I'm not doing what I set out to
+do: I've got my own particular abomination by the neck, and I'm about to
+choke the life out of it. But that is, as you might say, a side issue.
+The real struggle is going on all around me, but I'm not in it or of it.
+Everywhere I go there is the same cut-and-dried welcome, the same
+predetermined enthusiasm. Sometimes it seems as if all the people I meet
+have been instructed to make things pleasant and easy for me."
+
+The senator's chuckle was barely audible.
+
+"Seems as if I wouldn't find fault with that, if I were you, son," he
+suggested. "You are like the boy who has found a good piece of skating
+over a sheet of fine, smooth ice, and takes to complaining because it
+won't break and let him down into the cold water. You'll get enough of
+the real thing by and by."
+
+Evan Blount felt his anger rising. He was in precisely the right mood to
+construe the gentle jest into an admission that his father, failing to
+make him a cog in one of the wheels of the machine, had gone about in
+some mysterious way to insulate him--to make it impossible for him to
+get into the real tide of affairs. But he kept his temper, in a measure,
+at least.
+
+"I guess it's no use for us to try to get together," he said with a tang
+of abruptness in his tone. "We are diametrically opposed to each other
+at every point, you and I, dad. I stand for democracy, the will of the
+people and its fullest and freest expression. You stand for--"
+
+"Well, son, what do I stand for?" queried the father, and the question
+was put with a quizzical smile that brought the hot blood boyishly to
+Blount's cheeks.
+
+"If I should say what all men say--what some of them are frank enough to
+say even to me--" he stopped short, and then went on with better
+self-control: "Let's keep the peace if we can, dad."
+
+"Oh, I reckon we can do that," was the good-natured rejoinder. "Being on
+the railroad side, yourself, you can't help feeling sort of hostile at
+the rest of us, I reckon."
+
+Blount put his knife and fork down and straightened himself in his
+chair.
+
+"There it is again, you see. We can't get together even on a question of
+admitted fact! Do you suppose for a single minute, dad, that I've been
+going up and down, and around and about, all these weeks without finding
+out that the old alliance of the machine with the very element in the
+railroad policy that I am fighting is still in existence?"
+
+The senator was nodding soberly. "So you've found that out, too, have
+you?" he commented.
+
+"I have, and I wish that were the worst of it, but it isn't, dad.
+There's a thing behind the alliance that cuts deeper than anything else
+I've had to face."
+
+Once more the deep-set eyes looked out from their bushy penthouses.
+"Reckon you could give it a name, son?"
+
+"Yes; when you found that I wasn't going to let you run me for the
+attorney-generalship, you arranged with Mr. McVickar to have me put on
+the railroad pay-roll. Isn't that the fact?"
+
+"Not exactly," said the senator, and a grim smile went with the
+qualified denial. "It was sort of the other way round. I reckon McVickar
+thought he was putting one across on me when he offered you the railroad
+job and got you to take it."
+
+"I know; that was at first. You and he couldn't come to terms because
+you--because the machine wanted more than he was willing to give. But
+afterward there was another meeting and you got together. That part of
+it was all right, if you see it that way. What broke my heart was the
+fact that you and he agreed to put me up as a fence behind which all the
+crookedness and rascality of a corrupt campaign could be screened."
+
+In the pause which followed, a deft waiter slipped in to change the
+courses. When the man was gone, Blount went on.
+
+"It came mighty near smashing me when I found it out, dad. It wasn't so
+much the thing itself as it was the thought that you'd do it--the
+thought that you had forgotten that I was a Blount, and your son."
+
+Again the older man nodded gravely. "How come you to find out, Evan,
+boy?" he asked.
+
+"It was when Hathaway had been given his chance at me. He opened the
+cesspool for me, as you meant he should when you sent him to me. From
+your point of view, I suppose it was necessary that I should be shown.
+You knew what I was saying and doing; how I was taking it for granted
+that the railroad was going in clean-handed, and the one ray of comfort
+in the whole miserable business is the fact that you cared enough to
+want to give me a glimpse of the real thing that was hiding behind all
+my brave talk. But I don't think you counted fully upon the effect it
+would have upon me."
+
+"What was the effect, son?"
+
+"At first, it made me want to throw up the fight and run away to the
+ends of the earth. It seemed as if I didn't have anybody to turn to. You
+were in it, and Gantry was in it--and Gantry's superiors and mine. That
+evening I borrowed one of your cars and drove out to Wartrace. I meant
+to have it out with you, and then to throw up my hands and quit."
+
+"But you didn't do either one," said the father tentatively.
+
+"No. Nothing went right that day, until just at the last. When I was
+about to give up and go to bed, Patricia came into the smoking-room. I
+had to talk to somebody, so I talked to her; told her where I had
+landed."
+
+"And she advised you to throw up your hands?"
+
+"You don't know Patricia. She put a heart into my body and blood into my
+veins. What she said to me that night is what has kept me going,
+dad--what has made me drive this fight for a clean election on the part
+of the railroad company home to the hilt. I have driven it home. There
+will be no crooked deals on the part of the railroad company this time."
+
+The senator looked up quickly. "That's a mighty good stout thing to
+say," he remarked, adding: "I reckon you're not saying it without having
+the right and proper club hid out somewhere where you can lay hands on
+it?"
+
+Blount tapped his coat-pocket. "I have the club right here--documentary
+evidence that will rip this State wide open and send a lot of people to
+the penitentiary. I've told Gantry to pass the word: a clean sheet, or I
+go over to the other side and tell what I know. And that brings me to
+the thing that I've got to say to you, dad--the thing that made me hope
+I'd find you here to-night. After I'd got my battle-word from Patricia,
+I had a jolt that was worse than the other. When I pulled the gun on
+Gantry, he told me that I couldn't shoot without killing you; that you
+were just as deeply involved as any one of the railroad officials. Is
+that the truth?"
+
+The senator had pushed his chair back and was burying his hands in his
+pockets.
+
+"You've come to try to haul me out of the fire?" he inquired, ignoring
+the direct question.
+
+"I've come to ask you, first, if it is possible for you to stand from
+under. Can you?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I reckon I could dodge, if I had to."
+
+"Then do it, and do it quickly, dad! As there is a God above us, I'm
+going to push this thing through to the bitter end. To-morrow morning I
+shall give Gantry his time limit. If the time goes by, leaving the
+house-cleaning still undone, I shall keep my promise to the letter. You
+know, and I know, what will happen after that."
+
+"Yes; I reckon I know," was the half-absent reply.
+
+Blount threw his napkin aside and glanced at his watch.
+
+"I've got to go back to the office and work a while," he said. And then:
+"I feel better for having had this talk with you, dad. I'm sorry you are
+finding it necessary to fight me, and a thousand times sorrier that I've
+got to fight you. But I can't give ground now, and still be a man and
+your son. Think it over and dodge. It'll break my heart a second time if
+I have to pull the other fellow's house down and bury you in the wreck."
+
+For some little time after his son had left the table and the private
+dining-room, the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush sat absently toying with
+his dessert-spoon. When he rose to go out, the battle light in the gray
+eyes was the signal which not even his most faithful henchmen could
+always interpret; but it was a signal which all of them knew by sight,
+and one which many of them feared.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE SAFE-BLOWER
+
+
+About the time that Evan Blount was finishing the fourth week of the
+campaign of education, the senator's wife began to detect signs of
+country weariness in the eyes of Miss Patricia Anners.
+
+"When you are tired of the out-door bignesses, you have only to say the
+word," she told the professor's daughter one morning after they had
+driven to Lost River Canyon and back in the small car. "As you have
+doubtless discovered, the senator and I live either here or at the
+capital indifferently during the season, and we shall be only too glad
+to entertain you in town whenever you feel like going."
+
+To similar proposals made earlier Miss Anners had always returned prompt
+refusals. But for a week or more some impulse which she had not taken
+the trouble to analyze seemed to be drawing her toward the city. The
+mesa roads were just as inviting, and the free pleasures of motoring, in
+a country where speed restrictions were conspicuous only by their
+absence, were just as keen. But now Patricia confessed to a restless
+longing for the sight of city streets and the brabble of city noises.
+
+"Only you mustn't consider us, or me, so much as you do, Mrs. Blount,"
+she protested. "I have a dreadful suspicion that we have already
+interfered shamefully with your autumn plans. You are simply too kind
+and too hospitable to admit it."
+
+"You have interfered with nothing," was the ready assurance. "We were
+not going anywhere, or thinking of going anywhere. No inducement that
+was ever invented would take the senator away from his own State in a
+political year, and your coming has been a blessing. But for the good
+excuse to bring your father out here to the fossil-beds, we should have
+been mewed up in the Inter-Mountain Hotel from the firing of the opening
+gun to the day after election. But that isn't what I meant to say. You
+are tired of so much country; I can read the call of the city in your
+eyes--and they are very pretty eyes, my dear. Shall I telephone the
+senator that we are coming in this afternoon to stay a while?"
+
+"I shall be delighted," said Patricia, and the eyes, which were not only
+pretty but exceedingly apt to tell tales, confirmed the eager assent.
+Then she added: "Now that daddy has his box of books from the university
+library, I doubt if he will know that we are gone."
+
+On their first day in the capital Evan was away, but he returned the
+following morning and Mrs. Blount promptly captured him for a theatre
+box-party which she was inviting for the same evening. In Mrs. Honoria's
+orderly scheme Blount was predestined to go, though he was allowed to
+believe that his acceptance was of free will. Notwithstanding the lapse
+of time and Mrs. Honoria's uniform kindness, he was still unreasonably
+prejudiced, and with the prejudice he was now admitting a feeling akin
+to jealousy. It was evident that Patricia's admiration for his father
+extended over to his father's wife; and meaning consistently to dislike
+Mrs. Honoria, he was irrational enough to want Patricia to dislike her,
+too.
+
+The box-party proved to be a more formal affair than he had anticipated,
+since it was large enough to fill two of the open dress-circle boxes.
+Gantry was included, and so were the Weatherfords--father, mother,
+daughters, and son. These, with the Gordons and a Denver man whose name
+of Critchett Blount was not quite sure that he caught in the
+introduction, filled Mrs. Honoria's list. In the seating Blount meant to
+make sure of having a measurably undisturbed evening with Patricia. But
+fate, or a designing hostess, intervened, and he found himself cornered
+between Mrs. Weatherford and her younger daughter, with the
+square-shouldered "Paramounter" candidate for governor strengthening the
+barrier which separated him from Miss Anners.
+
+Blount had met Gordon socially a number of times, and in the intervals
+allowed him by Mrs. Weatherford he was silently studying the face of the
+big man who, singularly enough, as the student thought, was thus
+identifying himself publicly as a friend of the boss. True, Blount did
+not forget his father's warm commendation of Gordon in that earliest
+political talk on the Quaretaro Canyon road, but that was before the
+lines had been drawn and the gage of battle thrown down by the allied
+forces of the machine and the railroad. Now, with the battle drawing to
+its close, Blount thought that nothing could be more certain than the
+fact that his father and his father's organization were joining hands
+with the railroad oligarchy to slaughter Gordon at the polls.
+
+Putting aside the wonder that Gordon should be accepting Mrs. Honoria's
+hospitality, Blount fell to contrasting the strong, large-featured face
+of the Mission Hills ranchman with that of Reynolds, the opposition
+candidate. Though he was himself on the corporation campaigning staff,
+Blount could not help admitting that the comparison was not favorable to
+Reynolds. His first impression of the round-faced, portly gentleman who
+was standing firmly upon what he was pleased to call a platform of law
+and order--a man who was Gordon's opposite in every feature and
+characteristic--had been unfavorable. He had been saying to himself,
+since, that Reynolds's face, in spite of its heavy jaw and prominent
+eyes, was the face of a time-server.
+
+Another point of difference between the two men counted for much.
+Reynolds wanted the office, and was spending money liberally to get it,
+while Gordon had accepted the nomination reluctantly. Throughout the hot
+campaign he had refused to stump the State for himself or his party, and
+was said to be holding steadfastly aloof in the bargaining and
+dickering. Weighing the two men one against the other--Reynolds was
+sitting in an adjacent box with Kittredge and Bentley and two other
+railroad officials--Blount admitted a twinge of regret that chance, or
+his convictions, had made him a partisan of the weaker.
+
+Having been lost in the shuffle, as he expressed it, Blount made the
+most of these reflective excursions during the period of the box-party
+captivity. From the rising of the curtain to the going down thereof the
+Weatherfords, mother and daughter, kept him from exchanging so much as a
+word with Patricia, whom Gantry was shamelessly monopolizing. But on the
+short return walk to the hotel, Blount asserted his rights and gave
+Patricia his arm.
+
+"I think you owe me an abject apology," was the way she began on him,
+when they had gained such privacy as the crowded sidewalk conferred.
+
+"Consider it made, and then tell me what for," he rejoined, striving,
+man-fashion, to catch step with her mood.
+
+"For making us leave that dear, delightful, out-of-date, and
+out-of-place Georgian mansion in the hills and come to town when we want
+to get a sight of your face."
+
+"If anybody else should say a thing like that, I'd blush and call it a
+compliment," he retorted. Her near presence seemed to lift the burden he
+was carrying, and it was good to be light-hearted again, if only for the
+passing moment.
+
+"It wasn't meant for a compliment," she returned, with the
+straightforward sincerity which Blount had always been fond of likening
+to a cup of cold water on a thirsty day. "Consider a moment. You come to
+me with a really harrowing story of your new experiences, and just as I
+am beginning to get interested we are interrupted. In the morning, at
+some perfectly impossible hour, off you go, and we hear no more of you
+for weeks and weeks. What have you been doing?"
+
+"I have been doing precisely what you told me to do; preaching the
+gospel of honesty and fair dealing, and trying my level best to make
+other people practise it."
+
+"You have been successful?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Reasonably so in the preaching, since that depended solely upon me. As
+to the other, I don't know. Sometimes I'm credulous enough to believe
+that the house-cleaners are honestly at work, as they say they are, and
+at other times I'm afraid they are only putting up a bluff to mislead
+me. Some day, perhaps, I may tell you how far I have had to go into the
+'practical-politics' armory to get my weapons."
+
+There was still a half-square of the sidewalk privacy available, and she
+made what seemed to be the most necessary use of it.
+
+"And your father, Evan; are you coming to understand him any better?"
+
+He shook his head despondently. "No; or rather yes. I might say that I
+am coming to understand him--or his methods--only too well. The only
+way we can keep from quarrelling now is to banish politics when we are
+together."
+
+"I am sorry," she said, and the sorrow was emphatic in her tone. "As I
+have said before, you don't understand him. You are judging him by
+standards which, however just and true they may be, are peculiarly your
+own standards. I know you can be broad for others when you try. Can't
+you be broad for him?"
+
+It was good to hear her defend his father. It was what he would have
+wished his wife to do. Suddenly there arose within him a huge reluctance
+to lessen or to weaken in any way her trust in David Blount.
+
+"Let us say that the fault is mine," he interposed hastily. "God forbid
+that I should be the means of making you think less of him in any
+respect."
+
+"You couldn't do that, Evan. He is simply a grand old man--the first I
+have ever known for whom the hackneyed phrase seemed to have been made,"
+she asserted warmly. "If he has faults, I am sure they are nothing more
+than gigantic virtues--the faults of a man who is too strong and too
+magnanimous to be little in any respect."
+
+The final half-square lay behind them, and Mrs. Honoria and the senator,
+Gantry, Gordon and his wife, and the two Weatherfords, with one of the
+marriageable daughters, were at the _café_ door waiting for the
+laggards. Being in no proper frame of mind to enjoy a theatre supper
+with another Weatherford attack as the possible penalty, Blount
+reluctantly surrendered Patricia to Gantry, made his excuses, and went
+to smoke a bedtime pipe in the homelike and democratic lobby.
+
+With Patricia in town the "silver-tongued spellbinder of Quaretaro
+Mesa," as _The Daily Capital_ called the railroad company's campaign
+field-officer, would have been glad to evade some of the speaking
+appointments; but since his engagements had been made some days in
+advance, he was obliged to go.
+
+On his return to the capital he was delighted to find the party of three
+still occupying the private dining-room suite at the Inter-Mountain.
+Arriving on a morning train, he was permitted to make the party of three
+a party of four at the breakfast-table; and with Patricia sitting
+opposite he was able to forget the strenuosities for a restful
+half-hour.
+
+Later, when he went to his offices in the Temple Court Building, the
+strenuosities reasserted themselves with emphasis. Though he found his
+desk closed, and was reasonably certain that he had in his pocket the
+only key that would unlock it, he found his papers scattered in
+confusion under the roll-top. A touch upon the electric button brought
+the stenographer from the anteroom.
+
+"Who's been into my desk, Collins?" he demanded, pointing to the
+confusion and scrutinizing the face of the young man sharply for signs
+of guilt.
+
+"Goodness gracious! How could anybody get into it when you've got the
+only key, Mr. Blount?" stammered the clerk. Then he went on,
+parrot-like: "I've been putting the letters and telegrams through the
+letter-slit, as you told me to, and I've kept the private office
+locked."
+
+"Nevertheless it is very evident that somebody has been here," said
+Blount. Then he had a sudden shock and wheeled shortly upon the
+stenographer. "Collins, what did you do with that packet of papers I
+gave you last Monday--the one I told you to put away in the safe?"
+
+"I did just what you told me to; put it in the inner cash-box, and put
+the key of the cash-box on your desk. Didn't you get it?"
+
+Blount felt in his pockets and found the key, which he handed to
+Collins. "Go and get that packet and bring it to me," he directed. The
+shock was beginning to subside a little by now, and he sat down to bring
+something like order out of the confusion on the desk. At first, he had
+thought that the sheaf of evidence letters which gave him the
+strangle-hold upon Gantry and the lawbreakers had been left in a
+pigeonhole of the desk. Then he remembered having given it to Collins to
+put away.
+
+A minute or two later it occurred to him that the stenographer was
+taking a long time for a short errand. Rising silently, he crossed the
+room and reached for the knob of the door of communication. In the act
+he saw that the door was ajar, and through the crack he saw Collins
+standing before the opened safe. The clerk was running his tongue along
+the flap of a large envelope, preparatory to sealing it. Blount's first
+impulse was to break in with a sharp command. Then he reconsidered and
+went back to his desk; was still busy at it when Collins came in and
+laid the freshly sealed envelope before him.
+
+"That isn't the packet I gave you," said Blount curtly.
+
+The clerk looked away. "You meant those letters, didn't you?" he
+queried. "The rubber band broke and I put them in an envelope."
+
+"When?" snapped Blount.
+
+The young man faced around again and the innocence in his look disarmed
+the questioner.
+
+"When? Just now. That's what made me so long--I couldn't find an
+envelope big enough."
+
+Blount took up the letter opener and slipped the blade under the flap of
+the envelope. If he had looked up at the stenographer then he would have
+seen the mask of innocence slip aside to discover a face ashen with
+terror. But whatever the shorthand man had to fear from the opening of
+the lately sealed envelope was postponed by the incoming of Ackerton,
+the working head of the legal department, with a damage suit to discuss
+with his chief. Blount thrust the big envelope into his pocket unopened,
+and later in the day, when he went around to his bank to put the
+evidence letters into his safe-deposit box, the incident of the morning
+had lost its significance so completely, or had been so deeply buried
+under other and more important matters, that he deposited the packet
+without examining it.
+
+The evening of this same day there was a dance given by the Gordons in
+the ranchman candidate's big house opposite the Weatherfords' in Mesa
+Circle, and Blount went, hoping that Patricia would be there. She was
+there; and in the heart of the evening, when Blount had persuaded her to
+sit out a dance with him in a corner of the homelike reception-hall, he
+began to pry at a little stone of stumbling which was threatening to
+grow too large to be easily rolled aside.
+
+"I'm hunting a conscience to-night," he said, without preface. "Have you
+got one that you could lend me?"
+
+She laughed lightly.
+
+"You told me once that I had the New England conscience--which was the
+same as saying that I had enough for my own needs and a surplus to pass
+around among my friends. What bad thing have you been doing now?"
+
+He made a wry face. "It's the 'practical politics' again. Suppose I say
+that I have obtained positive evidence of a crime against the laws of
+the State and the nation. How far am I justified in suppressing, for a
+perfectly right and proper end, this evidence which would send a lot of
+people to jail?"
+
+"Mercy!" she exclaimed; "how you can bring a thunderbolt crashing down
+out of a perfectly clear sky! Is it ever justifiable to shield criminals
+and criminality?"
+
+"That is just what I'm trying to find out," he persisted. "At the
+present moment I am shielding a good handful of open lawbreakers. Some
+of them know what I'm doing, and some of them don't. Those who know
+have been told that they must be good or I'll publish the evidence, and
+they've promised to be good if I won't publish it. At the time I didn't
+question my right to make such a bargain, but--"
+
+"But now you are questioning it? What would happen if you should tell
+what you know?"
+
+"Chaos," he replied briefly.
+
+"May I ask who is implicated?"
+
+"A good half of the corporation officials in the State, and some few
+outside of it."
+
+"Mercy!" she said again. And then: "It's too big for me, Evan. I can
+only go back to first principles and ask if it is ever justifiable to do
+evil that good may come."
+
+"If you put it that way, I've made myself _particeps criminis_," he said
+gravely. "I have given my word to keep still if the lawbreaking deals
+are broken off at once and in good faith. Beyond that, I can't help
+knowing that the exposure which I have threatened to make, and could
+make, would practically turn the people of this State into a mob."
+
+She was shaking her head determinedly. "I can't help you this time,
+Evan; truly I can't." Then, in sudden appeal: "Why won't you go to your
+father? He could tell you what to do and how to do it, and his judgment
+would be too big and just to stumble over the tangling little
+moralities."
+
+Blount smiled.
+
+"What if I should tell you that my father is more or less involved,
+Patricia? I don't know precisely how much or how little, but I am
+assured, by those who claim to know, that he, too, would go down in the
+general wreck."
+
+"I can't believe it!" she protested, in generous loyalty. "These people,
+whoever they are, are deceiving you to shelter themselves. Have you ever
+spoken to your father about this?"
+
+"Yes, once; one evening when we were dining together I told him what I
+had, and what use I should make of it if all other means should fail.
+Also, I advised him to dodge."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"That is the discouraging part of it. I was hoping against hope that he
+would tell me to go ahead; that he would say that he wasn't involved.
+But, as a matter of fact, he didn't say much of anything. I'm horribly
+afraid that his silence meant all that I've been trying to believe it
+didn't mean."
+
+She was slowly opening and closing her fan, as if she were trying to
+gain time.
+
+"I can only tell you again what I told you at first," she said at
+length. "You must be bigger than all these hampering circumstances;
+bigger than the little moralities, if need be. You can be, Evan; you've
+given splendid proof of it thus far, and I'm proud--just as proud as I
+can be--"
+
+Blount felt as if he could, joyously and entirely without scruple, have
+brained young Gordon, to whom the next dance belonged, and who came just
+at this climaxing moment to claim Patricia. But there was no help for
+it, short of a cold-blooded and rather embarrassing deed of violence,
+and the hard-won confidence ended pretty much where it had begun.
+
+When he left the Gordon house, which was far out in the northeastern
+residence suburb, Blount meant to go directly to the hotel and to bed.
+He had been losing much sleep in the activities of the campaign, and the
+loss was beginning to tell upon him. But as the trolley-car was passing
+the Temple Court Building he made sure that he saw a dim light
+illuminating the windows of his upper-floor office. With all his
+suspicions of the morning reawakened, he dropped from the car, dashed
+into the building, and took the all-night elevator for his office floor.
+
+The sleepy elevator-man had to be shaken awake, and when he had set the
+car in motion he let it run past the designated floor. Blount swore
+impatiently, and instead of waiting to be carried back, darted out and
+ran to the stairway. When he reached the lower corridor and was hurrying
+toward his suite in the corner of the building, there was a dull crash,
+as of a muffled explosion, and two or three of the glass doors in the
+street-fronting suite were shattered. Blount quickened his pace to a
+run, let himself in by means of his latch-key, and, cautiously opening
+his desk, groped in an inner drawer for the revolver which Gantry had
+persuaded him to buy as a part of the office furnishings.
+
+With the weapon in hand, he pushed through the unlatched door into
+Collins's room. There was an acrid odor of dynamite fumes in the air,
+and when he pressed on to the third room of the suite the gases were
+stifling. His first act was to feel for the switch and cut in the
+electric lights. The third room, which had doors of communication with
+his own office and Collins's, was a wreck. Desks were broken open, and
+the safe-door had been blown from its hinges.
+
+Blount saw the figure of a small man with his cap pulled down over his
+ears bending over the wrecked cash-box. At the upblazing of the ceiling
+lights, the man sprang to his feet and fled, going out through the door
+by which Blount had just entered, and snapping the light-switch as he
+passed to leave the rooms in darkness.
+
+Blount was cursing his own lack of presence of mind when he turned to
+follow the escaping burglar. In the darkness he fell over a chair, and
+by the time he had disentangled himself and had reached the corridor the
+safe-blower was gone. Racing to the elevator, Blount rang the bell until
+the sleepy car-tender set the machinery in motion and lifted himself to
+the floor of happenings. Here the incident ended abruptly, so far as any
+helpful discoveries were concerned. The elevator-man had carried no one
+down, and he confessed shamefacedly that he had again been asleep, and
+could not say whether or not anybody had descended the stair which
+circled the elevator-shaft.
+
+Blount went back to his office, turned in a police alarm, and waited
+until a policeman came from the nearest station. Then he went to report
+the safe-blowing in person to the night captain on duty in the basement
+of the City Hall. A drowsy clerk took notes of the story, and the night
+captain contented himself with asking a single question.
+
+"Do you know how much you lost, Mr. Blount?"
+
+"Nothing of any great consequence, I imagine," said Blount, remembering,
+with an inward thrill of thankfulness, the morning impulse which had
+prompted him to transfer the one thing of inestimable consequence to the
+security of the bank safe-deposit box. Then he added: "There was a
+little money in the box, and some papers of no especial value to
+anybody. Just the same, captain, I want that man caught."
+
+"We'll catch him, come morning," was the assurance, and then Blount went
+away and carried out his original intention of going to the
+Inter-Mountain and to bed.
+
+To bed; but, for a long hour after the post-midnight quiet had settled
+down upon the great hostelry, not to sleep. If he had asked himself why
+he could not close his eyes and take the needed rest, the exciting
+incident in which he had lately been an actor would have offered a
+sufficient answer. But in reality the sharpened spur of wakefulness
+penetrated much more deeply. Beyond all doubt or shadow of doubt, it was
+the sinister, many-armed machine which had reached out to seize and
+destroy the evidence against its allies and fellow conspirators, the
+lawbreaking railroad company and the vote-selling corporations.
+
+And, again beyond doubt, he made sure, it was his own boast made to his
+father which had been passed on to tell the sham burglar where to look
+and what to look for.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+ON THE KNEES OF THE HIGH GODS
+
+
+In the evening of the day following the safe-blowing in Blount's office,
+a one-car train, running as second section of the Overland, slipped
+unostentatiously into the capital railroad yard. With as little stir as
+it had made in its arrival, the single-car train took a siding below the
+freight station, where it would be concealed from the prying eyes of any
+chance prowler from the newspaper offices.
+
+Coincident with the side-tracking O'Brien, the vice-president's
+stenographer, dropped from the step of the car and went in search of a
+telephone. When O'Brien was safely out of the way, a small man,
+clean-shaven and alert in his movements, whipped out of the shadows of
+the nearest string of box-cars, pushed brusquely past the guarding
+porter, and presented himself at the desk in the roomy office
+compartment of the private car.
+
+The vice-president looked up and nodded. "How are you, Gibbert?" he
+said, and then: "You may condense your report. I have seen the
+newspapers. In passing I may say that it isn't much to your credit that
+you had to fall back upon the methods of the yeggmen."
+
+"There wasn't any other way," protested the small man. "The papers were
+locked up in the cash-box of the safe, and young Blount carried the only
+key."
+
+"It was crude; not at all worthy of a man of your ability, Gibbert. And
+if the newspapers tell it straight, you came near being caught. How did
+that happen?"
+
+"Blount went to a ball, and I shadowed him. His girl was there, and it
+looked like a safe bet that he'd stay to see the lights put out. But he
+didn't."
+
+"Well, never mind; you got the papers, I suppose?"
+
+The company detective drew a thick envelope from his pocket and laid it
+upon the desk. The vice-president tore it open and read rapidly through
+the file of letters it had enclosed, tearing them one by one from the
+hold of the brass fastener at the upper left-hand corner as he glanced
+them over. "The chuckle-headed fools!" he gritted, apostrophizing the
+writers of the letters. And then: "Gibbert, I'd like to go into this a
+little deeper, if we had time; I'd like to know why in hell every man in
+this State with whom we've had a private business arrangement found it
+necessary to spread the details out on paper and send them to young
+Blount! Here; burn these things as I hand them to you."
+
+The small man struck a match and, using the wide-mouthed metal cuspidor
+for an ash-pan, lighted the letters one at a time as they were given to
+him. When the cinder skeleton of the final sheet had been crushed into
+ashes, he rose from his knees and reached for his hat.
+
+"Any other orders?" he asked.
+
+"No; nothing more. You are reasonably sure that you haven't been
+recognized here by any of our local people?"
+
+"I've kept the 'make-up' on most of the time. I've been in Mr. Gantry's
+office a couple of times, and in Mr. Kittredge's once, and neither of
+them caught on to me."
+
+"That's good. You'd better go now. O'Brien has gone after Gantry and
+Kittredge, and I don't care to have them find you here. Better take the
+first train back to Chicago. These mutton-headed police here might
+possibly get on your track, and we don't want to have to explain
+anything to them."
+
+Five minutes after the small man had dropped from the step of the "008,"
+to disappear in the box-car shadows, Gantry and Kittredge came down the
+yard and entered the private car. Again the vice-president said, "How
+are you?" and nodded toward the nearest chairs. "Sit down; I'll be
+through in a minute," and he went on reading the file of papers taken up
+at the departure of the detective. At the end of the minute he shot a
+question at the two who were waiting.
+
+"You got my message?"
+
+Gantry answered for himself and the superintendent. "Yes. Your orders
+have been carried out. The yards are posted, and nobody, outside of a
+few of our own men, knows that your car is here."
+
+The vice-president took one of the long black cigars from the open box
+on the flat-topped desk, and passed the box to his two lieutenants.
+
+"Light up," he said tersely. "I'm due in Twin Canyons City to-morrow
+morning, and we've got to thresh this thing out in a hurry. Any change
+in the situation since your last report?"
+
+Gantry shook his head. "Nothing very important. Blount's up-town office
+was broken into last night and his safe ripped open with dynamite, as I
+suppose you have read in the papers. Who did it, or why it was done,
+nobody seems to know."
+
+"Well, what came of it?"
+
+"Nothing, so far as I can find out," returned the traffic manager.
+"Blount had been to the Gordon dance, and he saw the light in his office
+as he was coming down-town. When he went up to find out what was going
+on, he caught the safe-blower fairly in the act, but the fellow got
+away."
+
+"Did Blount lose anything?"
+
+"That's the queer part of it. Blount won't say much about it; and this
+morning he went around to police headquarters and told the chief to drop
+the matter, giving as his reason that he was too busy to prosecute the
+fellow even if he was caught."
+
+To a disinterested observer it might have seemed a little singular that
+the vice-president made no further comment upon the burglary. As a
+matter of fact, his next question completely ignored it.
+
+"What has Blount been doing this week?" he asked.
+
+"He has spoken twice; once at Arequipa and once at Hellersville. I
+understand he has engagements enough to keep him out of town right up to
+election day."
+
+"That is good," was the nodded approval. "He would only be in the way
+here at the capital." And then pointedly to Gantry: "Any more of that
+nonsense about putting a barrel of powder under us and blowing us all up
+if we don't build the freight tariffs over to suit his notion?"
+
+"A good bit more of it," Gantry admitted reluctantly. "The other day he
+went so far as to set a time limit; gave me three days of grace in which
+to file the public notice of the change in rates."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"I filed the notice--taking care that the only copy should be the one I
+sent to Blount's office."
+
+The vice-president looked coldly at his division traffic manager.
+
+"There are times, Gantry, when you seem to be losing your grip. Dave
+Blount's son isn't a school-boy, to be fooled by such a transparent
+trick as that! Don't you suppose he knows, as well as you do, that the
+public notice has to be filed in every station on the road?"
+
+"I had to take a chance--I've had to take a good many chances,"
+protested the traffic manager in his own defence; and Kittredge, a
+bearded giant who was fully the vice-president's match in heroic
+physique, removed his cigar to say: "That young fellow has been a
+frost. If he isn't a wild-eyed fanatic, as Gantry insists he is, he is
+deeper than the deep blue sea! I'd just about as soon have a box of
+dynamite kicking around underfoot as to have him messing in this
+campaign fight. I've been keeping cases on him, as you ordered, and he
+has worn out three of my best office men on the job."
+
+"You are prejudiced, Kittredge," was the vice-president's comment. "It
+was the best move in the entire campaign--putting him in the field.
+Apart from the public sentiment he has been turning our way, we mustn't
+lose sight of the fact that we got hold of him at a time when the
+Honorable Senator was getting ready to turn us down."
+
+"Speaking of the sentiment," Gantry put in, "I don't know whether it's
+all sentiment or not. There's a sort of mystery mixed up in this
+speech-making business of Blount's. At first I thought maybe his sudden
+popularity was due to some word sent out from your Chicago office; but
+when you told me it wasn't, I began to do a little speculating on my own
+account. I can't make up my mind yet whether it is pure popularity, or
+whether it's the assisted kind."
+
+"Assisted?" said the vice-president, with a lifting of the heavy
+eyebrows.
+
+"Yes. It has been too unanimous. I have a trustworthy man in Blount's
+up-town office, and he says the invitations have fluttered in like
+autumn leaves; more than Blount could accept if he travelled
+continuously. Kittredge's men report that the speech-making has been a
+triumphant progress all over the State; bands, receptions, committees,
+and banquets wherever Blount goes."
+
+Mr. McVickar grunted. "The speeches have been all that anybody could
+ask. I've been reading them."
+
+Kittredge shook his head.
+
+"Gantry says they are, but I say no," he contended. "There is such a
+thing as putting too much sugar in the coffee. Blount's overdoing it;
+he's putting the whitewash on so thick that any little handful of mud
+that happens to be thrown will stick and look bad."
+
+"Of course, we have to take chances on that," was the vice-president's
+qualifying clause. "Nevertheless, young Blount's talk has undoubtedly
+had its effect upon public sentiment. We must be careful not to let the
+opposition newspapers get hold of anything that would tend to nullify
+it."
+
+"They are moving heaven and earth to do it," said the superintendent.
+"The Honorable David is lying low, as he usually does, but I more than
+half believe he's getting ready to give us the double-cross. That is the
+explanation of this safe-blowing scrape, as I put it up."
+
+Again the vice-president failed to comment further on the burglary.
+"What I am most afraid of, now, is that our young man may be, as you
+say, Kittredge, a trifle over-zealous," he said musingly. "We have
+discovered that he is something of a fanatic."
+
+"He's more than that," Kittredge cut in quickly. "One of the men I've
+had following him--Farnsworth--is as good as any Pinkerton that ever
+walked. He says Blount isn't half so innocent as he looks and acts. The
+speech-making has taken him into every corner of the State, and
+Farnsworth says he has been doing a lot of quiet prying around and
+investigating on the side."
+
+"I've been thinking," Gantry added, "what a beautiful mix-up we should
+have if the senator and his son should both conclude to pull out and get
+together at the last moment."
+
+The master plotter shook his head. "You have no sense of perspective,
+Gantry. Young Blount is with us solely because he is too straightforward
+to countenance his father's political methods. On the other hand, if the
+Honorable Dave should turn upon us now, he would be obliged to do it at
+the expense of his son's reputation. Anything he could say against us
+would simply have the effect of holding his son up to public
+exprobration as a common campaign liar. I know David Blount pretty well;
+he won't do anything like that."
+
+Gantry bit his lip and a slow smile of respectful admiration crept up to
+the Irish eyes.
+
+"When it comes to the real fine-haired work, you have us all feeling for
+hand-holds, Mr. McVickar," he said. "Now I know why you made a place for
+Evan Blount, and why you have been giving him a free hand on the
+whitewashing. It's the biggest thing that has ever been pulled off in
+Western politics!"
+
+"It hasn't been pulled off yet," was the quick reply. "We are holding
+old David in a noose that may turn into a rope of sand at any minute;
+don't forget that. During the few days intervening before the election
+we must preserve the present status at any cost. Young Blount is the
+only man who may possibly disturb it. Keep him out of the way. If he
+doesn't have speaking invitations enough to busy him, see to it that he
+gets them. As long as you can keep him talking he won't have any time
+for side issues. Now about this Gryson business: you want to handle that
+yourselves, and I don't want any more telegrams like the one you sent me
+last night, Gantry. What's the condition?"
+
+Gantry outlined the Gryson "condition" briefly. The man Gryson, who had
+developed into a heeler of sorts, had been growing restive, wanting more
+money.
+
+"What can he swing?" was the curt question.
+
+"Six out of seven pretty close counties. I don't pretend to know how he
+has done it, but he has got the goods; I've taken the trouble to check
+up on him. With his pull, we can swing the vote of the capital itself."
+
+The vice-president frowned thoughtfully. "The old game of stuffing the
+registration lists, I suppose," he said. And then: "Young Blount hasn't
+got wind of this, has he?"
+
+Gantry laughed. "You may be sure he hasn't. He has it in for Gryson on
+general principles--made us take him off the shop pay-rolls. If he
+thought we were dickering with him now, he'd be down on us like a
+thousand of brick."
+
+"Well, why don't you fix Gryson, once for all, and have it over with?
+You oughtn't to expect me to come here and tell you what to do!"
+
+It was at this point that Kittredge broke in.
+
+"Gryson isn't safe. I have it straight that he is getting ready to sell
+us out. That's why he wants his pay in advance."
+
+The vice-president's heavy brows met in a frown, and the muscles of his
+square jaw hardened.
+
+"Put Gryson on the rack and show him what you've got on him in that
+Montana bank robbery. That will bring him to book. It will be time
+enough to talk about terms when he delivers the goods. Now another
+thing--that Shonoho Inn matter that I wired about--what has been done?"
+
+"It is all arranged," said the big superintendent. "The house was closed
+for the season last month, and we have taken a short lease. One of our
+dining-car managers will take charge of the service."
+
+"And the wires?"
+
+"We have made a cut-in from the old Shoshone Mine wire, which wasn't
+taken down when the mine was abandoned. That let us out very neatly, and
+no one outside of our own line-men know anything about the job. We have
+four instruments in the hotel writing-room; two on the commercial and
+two on the railroad wires. Will that be enough?"
+
+Mr. McVickar nodded and reached over to press the bell-push which
+signalled to his train conductor.
+
+"That is about all I have to say," he said, in dismissal of the two
+local officials. "Just nail Gryson up to the cross, where he belongs,
+and keep young Blount busy and out of town; I leave the details to you.
+Get orders for me as you go up to your office, Kittredge, and have the
+despatcher let me out as soon as possible. I ought to be half-way to
+Alkali by this time."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE CHASM
+
+
+It was young Ranlett, a reporter for _The Plainsman_, who told Evan
+Blount of the arrival of the vice-president's car, running as second
+section of the Overland, and the scene of the telling was the lobby of
+the Inter-Mountain Hotel, where Blount was smoking a pipe of
+disappointment filled and lighted upon hearing that his father, Mrs.
+Honoria, and Patricia had gone out to dinner somewhere--place unknown to
+the obliging room clerk.
+
+Ranlett had tried ineffectually to get to the private car, having for
+his object the interviewing of the vice-president, but there had been
+curious obstructions. The lower yard was apparently carefully guarded,
+since the reporter had been turned back at three or four different
+points when he had attempted to cross the tracks. Blount thought it a
+little singular that the vice-president should come to the capital
+secretly, but he did not stop to speculate upon this.
+
+Having something more than a suspicion that Gantry had not properly
+passed the threat of exposure up to McVickar, he determined at once to
+seek an interview with the vice-president. Walking rapidly down to the
+Sierra Avenue station, he saw a light in Gantry's office, and meaning to
+be fair first and severe afterward, if needful, he ran up the stair and
+tried the door of the traffic manager's office. It opened under his
+hand, and he found Gantry sitting at his desk.
+
+"Ranlett tells me that Mr. McVickar is in town," he began abruptly.
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Ranlett is mistaken--about twenty minutes mistaken," was Gantry's
+reply. "Mr. McVickar passed through here a few minutes ago on his way to
+Twin Canyons City. His special has been gone some little time."
+
+"When is he coming back?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Did you see him?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Did you take up with him the matter of issuing new tariffs to do away
+with the preferentials, or to level the public rates down to them?"
+
+Gantry shifted uneasily in his chair, and tried to evade. "There was
+very little time," he said. "Mr. McVickar was in a great hurry, and his
+special was held only a few minutes."
+
+Blount crossed the room and sat down.
+
+"Dick, we've come to the last round-up," he said gravely. "In the nature
+of things, I can't give you any more time. You've been playing with me
+all along, and your last move in the game was a very childish
+one--sending me what purported to be a copy of a new freight tariff
+notice to the public. Did you suppose for a moment that I wouldn't have
+sense enough to see that the thing wasn't official, that it had no
+signatures and lacked even the name of the railroad company? I'm here
+now to tell you that you've got to do some real thing, and do it
+quickly. Let's go up and see the editor of _The Capital_."
+
+"What for?" demanded Gantry.
+
+"It is the railroad paper, and I want you to give Brinkley, the editor,
+an interview to the effect that a revision of the freight rates is in
+process, and that shippers having grievances should present them at
+once. That will at least start the ball to rolling in the right
+direction."
+
+"I should think it would!" scoffed the traffic manager. "What you don't
+know about the making of freight tariffs would sink a ship, Evan. These
+things can't be done while you wait!"
+
+"But they must be, in this instance," Blount insisted. "If you won't
+withdraw the preferentials given to the corporations, you must do the
+other thing. Post your legal notice of a reduction of the rates on the
+commodities upon which you are now allowing rebates, and I'll fight
+straight through on the line I've been taking all along."
+
+"And if we don't?" queried Gantry.
+
+"What is the use of making me say it for the hundredth time, Dick? If
+you don't do one or the other, there will be an explosion, just as I've
+told you. Of course, you know that my safe was broken open last
+night--wrecked with dynamite?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, unluckily for you, the packet of papers which might otherwise
+have been taken or destroyed, didn't happen to be in the safe. The
+documents are still where they can be used at an hour's notice. And, by
+heaven, Dick, I'll use them if you don't play fair!"
+
+Gantry, long-suffering and patient to a fault in a business affair, was
+not altogether superhuman.
+
+"Evan, you are a frost--a black frost! You harp on one string until you
+wear it to frazzles! Don't you know that the Transcontinental is big
+enough and strong enough to chivvy you from one end of this country to
+the other, if you turn traitor? I love a fighting man, but by God, I
+haven't any use for a fool!"
+
+Blount laughed.
+
+"If I have succeeded in making you angry, perhaps there is a chance that
+you will do something. You may curse me out all you want to, but the
+fact remains. I'm going to explode the bomb, and it will be touched off
+long enough before election to do the work, if you keep on refusing to
+make my word good to the people. That is all--_all_ the all. Now, will
+you go up to _The Capital_ office with me, and dictate that bit of
+information that I mentioned?"
+
+"Not in a thousand years!" raged Gantry. "Not in ten thousand years!"
+Nevertheless he rose, closed his desk, and prepared to accompany the
+importunate political manager. Half-way up the first square he said:
+"There is no use in our going to _The Capital_ office at this time of
+night. Brinkley doesn't get around to his desk much before eleven. Let's
+go up to the club."
+
+At the Railway Club the traffic manager developed a keen desire to kill
+the intervening time in a game of billiards. Blount indulged him, beat
+him three games in succession, and consistently refused to drink with
+him. At the end of the third game, Gantry gave a terse definition,
+abusively worded, of a man who would force his friend to go and drink
+alone, and went to the buffet. Ten minutes later, when Blount went after
+him, he had disappeared, and the visit to the newspaper office was
+postponed, perforce.
+
+On the following morning, Blount found a telegram on his desk. It bore
+the vice-president's name, and the date-line was Twin Canyons City. It
+directed him to go to a remote portion of the State beyond the Lost
+River Mountains to examine the papers in a right-of-way case which was
+coming up for trial at the next term of court. This was in Kittredge's
+department, and Blount called the superintendent on the phone. Kittredge
+was in his office, and he evidently knew about the vice-president's
+telegram. Also, he seemed anxious to have the division counsel go to
+Lewiston at once; so anxious that he offered his own service-car to be
+run as a special train.
+
+Blount saw no way to evade a positive order from the vice-president, but
+he was more than suspicious that Gantry or Kittredge, or possibly both
+of them, had misrepresented the right-of-way case to Mr. McVickar, in an
+attempt to get him away from the city and so to postpone a reiteration
+of the demand for a new freight tariff. What he did not suspect was that
+Mr. McVickar's telegram might possibly have originated in Kittredge's
+office.
+
+Asking the superintendent to have the service-car made ready
+immediately, he packed his handbag, left a note for Patricia, who was
+not yet visible, and another for Gantry, who was not in his office, and
+began the roundabout journey.
+
+In all his travelling up and down the State he had never found anything
+to equal the slowness of the special train. The noon meal, served by
+Kittredge's cook in the open compartment, found the special less than
+fifty miles on its way, and comfortably waiting at that hour on a
+side-track among the sage-brush hills for the coming of a delayed train
+in the opposite direction. Four mortal hours were lost on the lonely
+siding. There was no station, and Blount could not telegraph. So far as
+he knew, the service-car might stay there for a day or a week. It was
+all to no purpose that he quarrelled with his conductor. The train crew
+had orders to wait for the west-bound time freight, and there was
+nothing to do but to keep on waiting.
+
+Late in the afternoon the time freight, or some other train, came along,
+and the special was once more set in motion eastward, but at dinner-time
+it was again side-tracked, eighty-odd miles from its destination, and
+once more at a desert siding where there was no telegraph office. The
+car was still standing on the siding when Blount went to bed. But in the
+morning it was in motion again, jogging now on its leisurely way up the
+branch line.
+
+At Lewiston, the town at the end of the branch where the right-of-way
+trouble had originated, Blount found more delay, carefully planned for,
+as he had now come firmly to believe. The plaintiffs in the right-of-way
+case were out of town, and their lawyers had gone to the capital. Blount
+saw that he might wait a week without accomplishing anything, hence he
+immediately instructed his conductor to get orders for the return.
+
+After having been gone a half-hour or more, the conductor came back to
+the service-car to say that the single telegraph-wire connecting
+Lewiston with the outer world was down, and that the orders for the
+return journey could not be obtained until the telegraph connection was
+restored. At that point Blount took matters into his own hands.
+
+There was a mining company having its headquarters in the isolated town,
+and Blount had met the manager once in the capital--met him in a social
+way, and had been able to show him some little attention. Hiring a
+buckboard at the one livery stable in the place, he drove out to the
+"Little Mary," and found Blatchford, the friendly manager, smoking a
+black clay cutty pipe in his shack office. It did not take Blount over a
+minute to renew the pleasant acquaintance, and to state his dilemma.
+
+"I'm hung up here with my special train, the wires are down and I can't
+get out," was his statement of the crude fact. "Didn't you tell me that
+you owned a motor-car?"
+
+"I did," was the prompt reply. "Want to borrow it?"
+
+"You beat me to it," said Blount, laughing. "That was precisely what I
+was going to beg for--the loan of your car. I believe you told me that
+you had driven it from here to the capital."
+
+"Oh, yes; several times, and the road is fairly good by way of Arequipa
+and Lost River Canyon. It's only about half as far across country as it
+is around by the railroad. You ought to make it in six hours and a half,
+or seven at the longest. Drive me down to the burg, and I'll put you in
+possession."
+
+Blount began to be audibly thankful, but the mine manager good-naturedly
+cut him short.
+
+"It's all in the day's work, Mr. Blount, and I'm glad to be of
+service--not because you are the Transcontinental's lawyer, nor
+altogether because you are the Honorable David's son. I haven't
+forgotten your kindness to me when I was in town three weeks ago. Let's
+go and get out the chug-wagon."
+
+A little later Blount found himself handling the wheel of a very
+serviceable knockabout car equipped for hard work on country roads. When
+he was ready to go, he drove down to the railroad yard and hunted up his
+conductor.
+
+"After you have had your vacation, you may get orders from Mr.
+Kittredge and take his car back to the capital," he told the man. "When
+you do, you may give him my compliments, and tell him I preferred to run
+my own special train."
+
+The conductor grinned and made no reply, and he was still grinning when
+he sauntered into the railroad telegraph office and spoke to the
+operator.
+
+"I dunno what's up," he said, "but whatever it was, the string's broke.
+Old Dave Sage-Brush's son has borrowed him an automobile, and gone back
+to town on his own hook. Guess you'd better call up the division
+despatcher and tell him the broken-wire gag didn't work. Get a move on.
+We hain't got nothin' to stay here for now."
+
+Blount had a very pleasant drive across country, with no mishap worse
+than a blown-out tire and a little carbureter trouble. Being a motorist
+of parts, neither the accident nor the needed readjustment detained him
+very long, and by the middle of the afternoon he was racing down the
+smooth northern road, with the spires and tall buildings of the capital
+fairly in sight.
+
+Not to let gratitude lag too far behind the service rendered, he drove
+Blatchford's car to the garage nearest the freight station, left
+instructions to have it shipped back to Lewiston by the first train, and
+promptly went in search of Gantry. The traffic manager was not in his
+office, but Blount found him at the Railway Club.
+
+"Just a word, Dick," he began, when he had overtaken his man pointing
+for the buffet. "Kittredge put up a job on me, and I think you helped
+him. I had to borrow an automobile to come back in from Lewiston. It's
+down at the Central Garage, and I have given Bankston, the garage man,
+orders to ship it back to Mr. Blatchford, of the 'Little Mary.' I wish
+you'd phone your freight agent to see that it is properly taken care of,
+and that the freight bill is sent to me."
+
+Gantry made no reply, but he went obediently to the house telephone and
+gave the necessary instructions. The thing done, he turned shortly upon
+Blount, scowling morosely.
+
+"Come on in and let's have a drink," he said.
+
+Blount marked the brittleness of tone and the half-quarrelsome light in
+the eyes which were a little bloodshot.
+
+"No, Dick; you've had one too many already," he objected firmly.
+
+Gantry put his back against the wall of the corridor.
+
+"No," he rasped; "I'm not drunk, but I'm ready to fight you to a finish,
+and for once in a way I'm going to get in the first lick. You've been
+bluffing me from the start, and you're going to try it again. It won't
+go this time; you've got to show me!"
+
+If Blount hesitated it was only because he was trying to determine
+whether or not the traffic manager was business-fit. Gantry comprehended
+perfectly, and his laugh was derisive and a trifle bitter.
+
+"You're sizing me up and asking yourself if I'm too far gone to be worth
+while," he jeered. "If I couldn't stand any more liquid grief than you
+can, I would have been down and out years ago. Show your hand, Evan--if
+you have any to show."
+
+Blount hesitated no longer. Taking Gantry's arm, he led him out of the
+club and around the block to the Sierra National Bank. It was after
+banking hours, but the side door giving access to the safe-deposit
+department was still open. With the traffic manager at his elbow, Blount
+asked the custodian for his private box, got it, and led the way to one
+of the cell-like retiring rooms. Gantry proved his capacity for
+transacting business by turning on the lights, locking the door, and
+squaring himself in a chair at one side of the tiny writing-table.
+
+Blount opened the japanned safety box, took out a bulky envelope and
+tossed it across to the traffic manager.
+
+"You can see for yourself whether I've been bluffing or not," he said
+quietly; and then he turned his back and interested himself in the
+lithograph of the latest Atlantic liner framed and hanging upon the
+mahogany end wall of the small room.
+
+For a little time there was a dead silence, broken only by the faint
+rustling of the papers as Gantry withdrew and unfolded them. When he had
+glanced at the last folded letter sheet, he snapped the rubber band upon
+the sheaf and sat back in his chair. Blount turned at the snap and found
+the traffic manager smiling curiously up at him.
+
+"Sit down, Evan," was the friendly invitation. And when Blount had
+dropped into the opposite chair: "We used to be pretty good friends in
+the old days, Ebee," Gantry went on, falling easily into the use of the
+college nickname. "I haven't forgotten the time when I would have had to
+break and go home if you hadn't stood by me like a brother and lent me
+money. For that reason, and for some others, I hate to see you bucking a
+dead wall out here in the greasewood hills."
+
+"It is you and your kind who are bucking the dead wall, Dick."
+
+"No, listen; I'm giving it to you straight, now. A few minutes ago you
+thought I was drunk--possibly too far gone to serve your purpose. I
+wasn't; I was merely sick and disgusted at the spectacle afforded by a
+crafty, crooked, double-dealing old world--the world we're living in.
+Once in a blue moon an honest man turns up, and when that happens he's
+got to be broken on the wheel--as you're going to be broken. Oh, yes; I
+came out with ideals, too, but they've been knocked out of me. We all
+have to keep the lock-step in business, and business is hell, Evan. I'm
+honest to my salt--which is to say that as yet I'm not using my job to
+line my own pockets, but that's the one decent thing that can be said of
+me. Don't let me bore you."
+
+"Go on," said Blount soberly. "I don't see the pointing of it yet,
+but--"
+
+"You will when I tell you that I've been lying to you; faking first one
+thing and then another. Do you get that?"
+
+"I hear you say it; yes."
+
+"It's so. I faked that story about your father's having made an
+underground deal with us. It was a lie out of whole cloth, because I
+didn't believe at that time that he had. There had been a falling out
+between him and Mr. McVickar; that was common talk on the division. But
+until yesterday I didn't know for certain that the trouble had been
+patched up; in fact, I had my own reasons for believing that it hadn't
+been patched up."
+
+"And you told me there was an alliance in order that I might believe
+that my father would be involved in an exposure of the railroad's
+double-dealing with the public?"
+
+"Just that. Self-preservation is the primal law--after you've dropped
+the ideals--and I thought I had invented a way to hold you down. I might
+have saved myself the trouble--and the lie. It comes down to this, Evan:
+you are one man against a crooked world, and you haven't had a ghost of
+a show from the first minute."
+
+"You'll have to make it plainer," was the even-toned rejoinder. "As
+matters stand now, I am pretty well assured that I can do what I set out
+to do. I'm going to be able to make my own employers come through with
+clean hands."
+
+Gantry was shaking his head slowly, and again the curious smile flitted
+across his keen, fine-featured face, lingering for an instant at the
+corners of the eyes.
+
+"You say I'll have to make it plainer, and I will. A little while ago
+you intimated that Kittredge and I were responsible for the telegram
+which sent you to Lewiston yesterday. It was a fake, but it didn't
+originate with Kittredge or with me."
+
+"With whom, then?"
+
+"I hate to tell you, Evan--it'll hit you hard. The frame-up was your
+father's. He got hold of Kittredge the night before, some time after we
+had left my office together to go up-town. He told Kittredge it was for
+the good of 'the cause,' and suggested that a wire purporting to come
+from Mr. McVickar would probably turn the trick. He didn't give his
+reason for wanting to get you out of the way at this time, and Kittredge
+didn't ask it."
+
+Blount was pinning the traffic manager down with an eyehold which was
+like a gripping hand, and the close air of the little mahogany bank cell
+became suddenly charged with the subtle effluence of antagonism. Blount
+was the first to break the painful silence.
+
+"You have told me nothing new, Dick, or at least nothing that I have not
+been taking for granted almost from the beginning. But let it be
+understood between us, once for all, that I discuss my father, his
+motives, or his acts, with no man living. We'll drop that phase of it;
+it's a side issue, and has no bearing upon the business that brought us
+here. You asked for the proof of my ability to compel your employers and
+mine to turn over the clean leaf. You have it there under your hand."
+
+For answer, Gantry pushed the rubber-banded file across the table to his
+companion. "Take another look, Evan, and see how helpless you are in
+the grip of a crooked world," he said, very gently.
+
+Blount caught up the file and ran it through. It was made up wholly of
+pieces of blank paper, cut to letter-size, and clipped at the corner
+with a brass fastener, as the originals had been.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+A COG IN THE WHEEL
+
+
+While Blount was staring abstractedly at the file of blank sheets which
+had been substituted for the incriminating letters of the vote-selling
+corporation managers, with Gantry sitting back, alert and watchful, to
+mark the first signs of the coming storm, there came a tap on the locked
+door of the little room, and a deprecatory voice said: "It's our closing
+time, gentlemen: if you are about through--"
+
+"In a minute," returned Gantry quickly, and then he took the blank dummy
+out of Blount's hands, pocketed it, shut the japanned safety box, and
+touched his companion's shoulder.
+
+"Let's get out of this, Evan," he said, still speaking as one speaks to
+a hurt child. "Conroy wants to close up."
+
+Blount suffered himself to be led away, and in the vault room he went
+mechanically through the motions of locking up the empty box. In the
+street Gantry once more took the lead, walking his silent charge around
+the block and into the Temple Court elevator. A little later, when the
+door of the private room in the up-town legal office had opened to admit
+them, and Blount had dropped heavily into his own desk chair, Gantry
+plunged promptly into the breach.
+
+"We've been friendly enemies in this thing right from the start, Evan,"
+he began, "and that's as it had to be. But blood--even the blood of a
+college brotherhood--is thicker than water. I know now what you're in
+for, and I'm going to stand by you, if it costs me my job. First, let's
+clear the way a bit. If I say that I haven't had anything to do, even by
+implication, with this jolt you've just been given, will you believe
+me?"
+
+Blount lifted a pair of heavy-lidded eyes and let them rest for an
+instant upon the face of the traffic manager. "If you say so, Dick, I'll
+believe it," he returned.
+
+"Good. Now we can dive into the thick of it. I won't insult you by
+doubting the premising fact. You had the evidence once?"
+
+"I did--enough of it to keep a grand jury busy for a month. It came to
+me in the shape of unsolicited letters from the men who are benefiting
+by the railroad company's evasion of the law, and who are, of course,
+equally criminal with the railroad officials. Why these letters were
+written to me I don't know, Gantry. I merely know that they were wholly
+unsolicited."
+
+"They were written to you because you are supposed to be the doctor in
+the present crisis."
+
+"But good God, Dick! Haven't I been shouting from every platform in the
+State that we were out for a clean campaign?"
+
+Gantry shook his head and his smile was commiserative. "I know; and
+every man who has had his fingers in the pitch-barrel has chuckled to
+himself, and when two of them would get together they'd pound each other
+on the back and swear that you were the smoothest spellbinder that Mr.
+McVickar has ever turned loose on this side of the big mountains. It
+grinds, Evan, but it's the fact. Not one of the men you are after has
+ever taken your speeches seriously."
+
+Blount's head sank lower.
+
+"I'm smashed, Dick!" he groaned; "utterly and irretrievably disgraced
+and discredited in my native State! There isn't a man in the sage-brush
+hills who would believe me under oath, after this."
+
+"It's hard, Evan--damned hard!" said the traffic manager, driven to
+repetition. "But grilling over it doesn't get us anywhere. What are you
+going to do"?
+
+"With the election only five days away, there is nothing that can be
+done. I had you down, Dick; I could have forced my point with the weapon
+I had. Isn't that so?"
+
+Gantry wagged his head dubiously. "I'm not the big boss, but I can tell
+you right now that, if you could have shown me what I was fully
+expecting to see, the wires between here and wherever Mr. McVickar's
+private car happens to be would have been kept pretty hot for a while."
+Then, upon second thought: "Yes; I guess you could have pulled it off.
+We couldn't stand for any such bill-boarding as you were threatening to
+give us."
+
+Blount turned to his desk, opened it, and began to arrange his papers.
+
+"You've been a good friend, after all, Dick," he said, talking as he
+worked. "I'm going to ask you to go one step farther and take charge of
+the funeral, if you will. Find Mr. McVickar and wire him that I've
+dropped out. I'll write him a resignation from somewhere, when I have
+time."
+
+Gantry left his chair and came to stand beside the quitter.
+
+"Honestly, Evan," he said slowly, "I thought you were a grown man.
+You'll forgive the mistake, won't you?"
+
+Blount turned upon his tormentor and swore pathetically. "What's the
+use--what in the devil is the use?" he rasped, when the outburst began
+to grow measurably articulate. "You know as well as I do what's been
+done to me, and who has done it. Can I lift my hand to strike back, even
+if I had a weapon to strike with?"
+
+"Perhaps you can't. But you owe it to yourself, and to a certain
+bright-minded young woman that I know of, not to fly off the handle
+without at least trying to see if you can't stay on. Wait a minute." The
+railroad man took a turn up and down the floor, head down and hands
+behind him. When he came back to the desk end he began again. "Evan,
+who's got those original papers?"
+
+"The man who blew up my safe, of course. You've said you didn't hire
+him, and that leaves only one alternative."
+
+Gantry took the dummy packet from his pocket and held one of the blank
+sheets up to the light of the window. It was growing dusk, and when he
+failed to discern what he was looking for, he turned on the electric
+lights and tried again. At this the script "T-C" water-mark was plainly
+visible, and he showed it to Blount.
+
+"That proves conclusively that the substitution was made here in your
+own office. Whom do you suspect?"
+
+In a flash Blount remembered: how he had sent Collins to get the packet
+out of the safe, the stenographer's delay, the hasty sealing of the
+envelope, and the suspicion which had been cut short by the incoming of
+Ackerton.
+
+"I know now who did it, and when it was done," he said. "The day before
+the office was broken into I told Collins to bring me the papers from
+the safe. What he brought me was that dummy--in a freshly sealed
+envelope. I was going to open the envelope, but just then Ackerton
+came in."
+
+"All clear so far," said Gantry; and then: "Where is Collins now?"
+
+"I don't know; he comes and goes pretty much as he pleases when I'm not
+in town."
+
+"Do you know anything about him personally?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I do. His father was a bank cashier, and he became a defaulter--of the
+easy-mark kind; the kind that is too good-natured to look too curiously
+at a friend's collateral. He would have gone over the road if your
+father hadn't pulled him out by main strength."
+
+"I see," said Blount cynically. "And the son has paid his father's debt
+to my father. But why the safe-blowing?"
+
+"Collins's face had to be saved in some way. He couldn't know that you
+meant to lock the dummy up in the safety vault," returned Gantry, and
+then, after a pause: "That's our one little ray of hope, Evan."
+
+"I don't see it."
+
+"Don't you? Then I'll make it a bit plainer. If some railroad burglar
+had cracked your safe, you could confidently assume that the original
+letters have been carefully cremated by this time, couldn't you?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"But if your father has them ... Evan, I don't know any more than the
+man in the moon what he wants them for, but the man in the street would
+grin and tell you that your father was merely getting ready to hold the
+railroad company up for something it didn't want to part with."
+
+"I'm letting you say it of my own flesh and blood, Dick; and it shows
+you how badly broken I am. After all, it doesn't lead anywhere."
+
+"Yes, it does. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that your
+father doesn't know how much those letters mean to you--I know it's a
+pretty hard thing to imagine, but we'll do it by main strength and
+awkwardness. Let us suppose again, that being the case, that you go to
+him frankly and show him in a few well-chosen words just where he has
+landed you; tell him you've got to have those letters--simply _got_ to
+have them--to save your face. I know your father, Evan, a good bit
+better than you do; he'd give you the earth with a fence around it if
+you should ask him for it."
+
+Evan Blount got slowly out of his chair, stood up, and put his hands
+upon the smaller man's shoulders.
+
+"Dick, do you realize what you are doing for yourself when you show me a
+possible way of getting my weapon back?" he demanded.
+
+Gantry's lips became a fine straight line and he nodded.
+
+"That's what made me walk the floor a few minutes ago; I was trying to
+find out if I were big enough. It's all right, Ebee; you go to it, and
+I'll throw up my job and run a foot-race with the sheriff, if I have to.
+Damn the job, anyway!" he finished petulantly. "I'm tired of being a
+robber for somebody else's pocket all the time!"
+
+Blount sat down again and put his face in his hands. After a time he
+looked up to say: "I can't let you outbid me in the open market, Dick.
+You can't set the friendship peg any higher than I can."
+
+Gantry crossed the room and recovered his top-coat and hat from the
+chair where he had thrown them.
+
+"Don't you be a fool," he advised curtly. "There's a railroad down in
+Peru that is going bankrupt for the lack of a wide-awake, up-to-date
+traffic man. I've had the offer on my desk for a month, and I'm going
+to cable to-night. That lets you out, whether you do or don't. But if
+you've got the sense of a wooden Indian, you'll do as I've said--and do
+it _pronto_. Your time's mighty short, anyway. So long."
+
+And before Blount could stop him he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+A STONE FOR BREAD
+
+
+Though he had eaten nothing since the early breakfast in the service-car
+on the way to Lewiston, Evan Blount let the dinner hour go by unnoted.
+For a long time after Gantry had left him he sat motionless, a prey to
+thoughts too bitter to find expression in words; the dismaying thoughts
+of the hard-pressed champion who has discovered that his foes are of his
+own household.
+
+Apart from the one great boyhood sorrow, a sorrow which had been allowed
+unduly to magnify itself with the passing years, he had never been
+brought face to face with any of the hardnesses which alone can make the
+soldier of life entirely intrepid in the shock of battle. In the
+backward glance he saw that his homeless youth had been, none the less,
+a sheltered youth; that his father's love and care had built and
+maintained invisible ramparts which had hitherto shielded him. It was
+most humiliating to find that the crumbling of the ramparts was leaving
+him naked and shivering; to find that he was so far out of touch with
+his pioneer lineage as to be unable to stand alone.
+
+But there are better things in the blood of the pioneers than a
+latter-day descendant of the continent-conquering fathers may be able to
+discern in the moment of defeat and disaster. Slowly, so slowly that he
+did not recognize the precise moment at which the tide of depression and
+wretchedness reached its lowest ebb and turned to sweep him back to a
+firmer footing, Blount found himself emerging from the bitter waters.
+Gantry, the Gantry whom he had been calling hard names, setting him down
+as at best a lovable but wholly unprincipled time-server, had pointed a
+possible way to retrieval, heroically effacing himself that the way
+might be unobstructed. With the warm blood leaping again, Blount
+straightened himself in his chair. He would go to his father, not as a
+son begging a boon, but as a man demanding his rights. The machine had
+seen fit to throw down the challenge by burglarizing his office and
+robbing him. Very good; there were five days remaining in which to
+strike back. He would lift the challenge, and if his reasonable demand
+should be refused, he would drop the railroad crusade and break into the
+wider field of bossism and machine-made majorities, ploughing and
+turning it up to the light as he could.
+
+The fiery resolution had scarcely been taken when he heard the door of
+Collins's outer room open and close, and a moment later the good-looking
+young stenographer came in, bringing a breath of the crisp autumn
+evening with him.
+
+"I didn't know you were back, Mr. Blount!" he exclaimed. "I saw the
+office lights from the street, and thought somebody had left them
+turned on. Is there anything I can do?"
+
+"Yes; sit down," said Blount crisply, and then: "Collins, what do you do
+with yourself when I am out of town?"
+
+"I stay here most of the time. I went out early this afternoon, but I
+don't often do it."
+
+"Were you here all day yesterday?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was there anything unusual going on?"
+
+The young man looked away as if he expected to find his answer in the
+farther corner of the room.
+
+"I don't know as you'd call it unusual," he replied half-hesitantly.
+"There were a good many callers. Shall I bring you the list?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The stenographer went out to his desk and brought back a slip of paper
+with the names.
+
+"This man Gryson," said Blount, running his eye over the memorandum, "I
+see you've got him down four or five times. What did he want?"
+
+"He wouldn't tell me. But he was all kinds of anxious to see you. That
+was why I telegraphed you; I couldn't get rid of him any other way."
+
+"Let me see the copy of the message."
+
+Again Collins made a journey to his desk, returning with the
+telegraph-impression book open at the proper page. Blount glanced at the
+copy of the brief message: "Thomas Gryson wants to know when he can be
+sure of finding you here," and handed the book back.
+
+"How did you send that?" he asked.
+
+"I sent it down to the despatcher's office by Barney."
+
+Blount nodded. The message had not reached him; and its suppression was
+doubtless another move in the subtle game.
+
+"You say you couldn't find out what Gryson wanted?" he pressed.
+
+"He--he seemed to be all torn up about something; couldn't say three
+words without putting a cuss word in with them. The most I could get out
+of him was that somebody was trying to double-cross him."
+
+Blount took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. He was faint for
+lack of food, but he absently mistook the hunger for the tobacco
+craving.
+
+"Collins," he said evenly, "you appear to forget at times that you are
+working for a man who has had some little experience with unwilling
+witnesses in the courts. You are not telling me the truth; or, at least,
+you're not telling me all of it. Let's have the part that you are
+keeping back."
+
+"The--the last time he was in, he--he did talk a little," faltered the
+young man. "He's got something to sell, and he's f-fighting mad at Mr.
+Kittredge. He said he was going to throw the gaff into somebody damn'
+quick if Mr. Kittredge didn't wipe off the slate and c-come across with
+the price."
+
+"That is better," was the brief comment. "Now, then, why did you lie to
+me in the first place?"
+
+The stenographer shut his eyes and shrunk lower in his chair, but he
+made no reply.
+
+"I'll tell you why you lied," Blount went on, less harshly. "It was
+because you were told to. Isn't that so?"
+
+Collins nodded.
+
+Reaching out quickly, Blount laid a hand on the young man's knee. "Fred,
+what do you think of a soldier who takes his pay from one side and
+fights on the other? That is what you've been doing, you know; it is
+what you did when you put a dozen sheets of blank paper into an envelope
+the other day--the day I sent you to get a file of letters marked
+'private' from the safe."
+
+The culprit drew away from the touch of the hand on his knee, and there
+was fear, and behind the fear the courage of desperation, in his eyes
+when he lifted them.
+
+"You can give me the third degree if you want to, Mr. Blount, but as
+long as I've got the breath to say no, I'll never tell you the next
+thing you're going to ask me!"
+
+Blount sprang up and went to stand at the window. There was a street
+arc-lamp swinging in its high sling some distance below the window
+level, its scintillant spark changing weirdly to blue and green and back
+to blinding orange, and he stared so steadily at it that his eyes were
+full of tears when he turned to look down upon the waiting culprit.
+
+"No, Collins; I'm not going to ask you the name of the other master for
+whom you have thrown me down," he said gravely; and then: "That's
+all--you may go now."
+
+The young man got up and groped for the hat which had fallen from his
+hands to the floor and rolled away out of reach.
+
+"You mean that I'm to get my time-check?" he asked.
+
+"No," he grated--the harshness returning suddenly. "You are disloyal,
+and I know it; your successor would probably be the same, and I
+shouldn't know it."
+
+Nerved to the strident pitch now by the new resolution, Blount hurriedly
+set his desk in order, slammed it shut, and followed the stenographer to
+the street level. In the avenue he hesitated for a moment, the thoughts
+shuttling swiftly. In a flash the inferences fell into place. Gantry had
+said that his father was responsible for the time-killing journey to
+Lewiston. Why had it been necessary? Was it to keep him out of Gryson's
+way? What did the ward-organizer have to communicate that made him so
+anxious to secure an interview? Was that anxiety the breach through
+which the wider field of corruption might be reached?
+
+Again swift decision came to its own and Blount faced to the right,
+walking rapidly until he turned in at the foot of the worn double flight
+of stairs leading to the editorial rooms of _The Plainsman_. Blenkinsop,
+the editor, a lean, haggard man with a sallow face, coarse black hair
+worn always a little longer than the prevailing cut, and deep-set,
+gloomy eyes, was at his desk.
+
+"Can you give me a few minutes of your time, Blenkinsop?" the caller
+asked shortly.
+
+"I can sell 'em to you, maybe," said the editor, and the lift of the
+gloomy eyes merely served to turn the jest into a bit of morbid sarcasm.
+Then he gave the sarcasm a half-bitter twist: "You railroad gentlemen
+are always willing to buy what you can't reach out and take."
+
+"I know that is what you believe," said Blount, drawing up a broken
+chair and planting himself carefully in it; "we are on opposite sides of
+the fence in this fight, if you are fighting the railroad merely because
+it is a railroad; otherwise, perhaps, we are not so far apart as we
+might be. I don't know whether or not you have listened to any of my
+speeches, but you've printed a good many of them."
+
+The editor nodded. "I've read 'em, and I'm willing to be the hundredth
+man and say that I believe you are individually honest. I hope you're
+not going to ask me to go any further than that."
+
+"I'm not; I came for quite another purpose. First, let me ask a frank
+question: Is _The Plainsman_ out for a square deal all around,
+regardless of who may be hit?"
+
+Blenkinsop took time to consider the question and his answer, chewing
+thoughtfully upon his extinct cigar while he reflected.
+
+"This is straight goods?" he asked finally. "You're not trying to pull
+me into an admission that can be used against us a little later on?"
+
+"At the present moment you are talking to Evan Blount, the man, and not
+to the Transcontinental company's lawyer, Blenkinsop."
+
+"All right; then I'll tell you flat that we are out for blood. We hold
+no brief for any living man. There are no strings tied to us, and we
+wear nobody's brass collar."
+
+"Then you are fighting the machine as well as the railroad?" Blount put
+in quickly.
+
+The editor sat back in his chair, and the two furrows which deepened
+upon either side of his hard-bitted mouth answered for a smile.
+
+"When you find a machine that hasn't got 'T-C.R.' lettered on it
+somewhere, you let us know about it," was his rather cryptic reply.
+
+"That is not the point," said Blount dryly. "Here is the question I
+wanted to ask: There are only five days intervening before the election.
+How wide a swath could you cut if the evidence of wholesale corruption
+could be placed in your hands within twenty-four hours?"
+
+Again the editor took time to consider. When he spoke it was to say: "I
+can't quite believe that you are going to be disloyal to your salt at
+this late stage of the game, Blount. Do you mean that you are going to
+show your own company up for what it really is?"
+
+"Never mind about that. I asked a question, and you haven't answered
+it."
+
+"It was a question of time, wasn't it? There's time enough to tip the
+skillet over and spill all the grease into the fire, if that's what you
+mean; always time enough, up to the last issue before the polls open."
+
+"And you'd do it--no matter who might happen to get in the way of the
+burning grease?"
+
+"We print the news, and we try to get all the news there is. But it
+would have to be straight goods, Blount; no 'ifs' and 'ands' about it.
+I'm not saying that you couldn't produce the goods, you know. If you
+could break into Gantry's and Kittredge's private files, the trick would
+be turned. But I know well enough you're not going to do that."
+
+Blount got up out of the broken chair and buttoned his coat.
+
+"I needn't take any more of your time just now," he said. "I merely
+wanted to know how far you'd go if somebody should happen along at the
+last moment and give you a plain map of the road."
+
+"We'll go as far, and drive as hard, as any newspaper this side of the
+Missouri River. But we've got to have the facts--don't forget that."
+
+Blount was turning to go, but he faced around again sharply.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, Blenkinsop, that you don't know, as well as you
+know you're alive, that this campaign is honeycombed with deals and
+trades and dishonesty and trickery in every legislative district?" he
+demanded.
+
+Again the ghastly smile which was only a deepening of the natural
+furrows flitted across the editor's face.
+
+"Of course, I know it," he returned. "But you'll excuse me if I say
+that I scarcely expected to have the railroad company's field-manager
+come and tell me about it."
+
+Blount's grim smile was a match for the editorial face-wrinkling. "You
+are like a good many others, Blenkinsop; you see red when you hear the
+noise of a railroad train. Perhaps, a little later, I may be able to
+persuade you to see another color--yellow, for example. Let it go at
+that. Good-night."
+
+Once more in the avenue, Blount turned his steps toward the
+Inter-Mountain. Since the campaign was now in its final week, the clans
+were gathering in the capital, and the lobby of the great hotel was
+filled with groups of caucussing politicians. Blount was halted half a
+dozen times before he could make his way to the room-clerk's desk, and
+the pumping process to which he was subjected at each fresh stoppage
+would have amused him if the fiery resolution which was driving him on
+had not temporarily killed his sense of humor. It was evident that, in
+spite of all he had been saying and doing, a considerable majority of
+the caucussers were still regarding him as his father's lieutenant. He
+did not try very hard to remove the impression. It mattered little, in
+the present crisis, what the various party henchmen thought or believed.
+
+It was a sharp disappointment when the room-clerk told him that his
+father and Mrs. Honoria and their guest had gone to the theatre. He was
+keyed to the fighting-pitch, and he wanted to have the deciding word
+spoken while his blood was up and there was still time to act. A glance
+at the clock showed him that he had a full half-hour to wait; and, as
+much to escape the buzzing lobbyists as to satisfy his hunger, he went
+to the _café_ and ordered a belated dinner, choosing a table from which
+he could look out through the open doors and command the main entrance
+through which the theatre-goers would return.
+
+He was through with the dinner, and was slowly sipping his black coffee,
+when he saw them come in. Since it was no part of his plan to dull the
+edge of opportunity by holding it first upon the social grindstone, he
+let the party of three go on to the elevators, and a little later sent a
+card up-stairs asking his father to meet him in the lounge on the
+mezzanine floor.
+
+Having the advantage of time, he was first at the appointed
+meeting-place. He had drawn a chair to the balustrade, and was glooming
+thoughtfully down at the lobby gathering, upon which even the lateness
+of the hour appeared to have no dispersing effect, when a mellow voice
+behind him said: "Well, son, taking a quiet little squint at the
+menagerie?"
+
+Blount got up and gave the speaker his chair, dragging up another for
+himself. The senator sat down and stretched his great frame like a man
+wearied. "Ah, Lord!" he said. "The old man isn't as young as he used to
+be, Evan, boy. There was a time once when eleven o'clock didn't seem any
+later to me than it does now to you; but it's gone by, son, and I don't
+reckon it'll ever come back again."
+
+Blount drew his chair nearer. "I have a hard thing to say to you
+to-night, dad," he began, "and you mustn't make it harder by speaking of
+your--of the things that get near to me. I am a man grown, and a Blount,
+like yourself; I want you to give me back those papers which your
+dynamiter or somebody else in your pay took from my office safe three
+nights ago."
+
+The senator's eyes lighted with the gentle smile, and the tips of the
+great mustaches twitched slightly.
+
+"So McVickar's been telling tales out of school, has he?" he inquired
+half-jocularly.
+
+"I have had no communication with Mr. McVickar. It wasn't necessary, nor
+is it needful for us to go aside out of the straight road. I want those
+papers. They are mine, and they were stolen."
+
+The elder man smiled again. "What if I should say that I haven't got
+'em, son--what then?" he asked mildly.
+
+"I don't want you to say that. I want to believe that, however bitter
+this fight may grow, we shall still speak the truth to each other."
+
+There was silence for a little time, and then the father broke it to
+say: "Reckon I could ask you what papers you mean, without roiling the
+water any more than it's already been roiled, son?"
+
+"You may ask and I'll answer, if you'll let me say that it is hardly
+worth while for you to spar with me to gain time. I had certain
+documents--letters--which would have enabled me to come through clean
+with my own people--with the railroad management. You knew I had them;
+I was imprudent enough to boast of it one evening when we were dining
+together in your rooms. I know what I'm talking about, dad, when I make
+this demand of you. One of my clerks has been tampered with. Three days
+ago, when I asked him to bring me the letters from the safe, he brought
+me, instead, a packet of blank paper which he allowed me to go and lock
+up in my safety-box in the Sierra National. I don't know why you had the
+safe blown up, unless it was to save Collins's face."
+
+Again a silence intervened, and in the midst of it the senator sat up
+and began to feel half-absently in his pockets for a cigar. Blount
+offered his own pocket-case, following it with the tender of a lighted
+match. With the cigar going, the Honorable David settled back in the
+deep chair, chuckling thoughtfully.
+
+"They wrote me from back yonder on the Eastern edge of things that you
+had the makings of a mighty fine lawyer in you, boy, and I'll be
+switched if I don't believe they had it about right. The way you've
+trailed this thing out doesn't leave the old man a hole as big as a
+dog-burrow to crawl out of, does it, now? Reckon you've sure-enough got
+to have those papers back before you can go on, do you?"
+
+"You know I must. You know what I've been preaching and talking: I have
+meant every word of it in good faith, and when I began to doubt the good
+faith of those behind me, I was forced to cast about for a weapon. It
+was handed to me almost miraculously, and as long as I held it my good
+name before the people of the State was safe. As the matter stands now,
+I'm a broken man, dad. After the election I shall be billeted from one
+end of the State to the other as the most shameless liar that ever
+breathed!"
+
+The senator was rocking his great head slowly upon the chair-pillow.
+"That's bad; that's mighty bad, son. I reckon we'll have to fix some way
+to trail you out of that bog-hole, sure enough!"
+
+"I'm not asking for help; I'm asking for bare justice. Give me those
+papers and I'll fight myself clear."
+
+"And if I say I can't give 'em to you, Evan, boy, what then?"
+
+"Then, hard and unfilial as it may seem to you, I shall fight you and
+your machine to a finish. You think I can't do it? I'll show you. I've
+got five days, and they are all my own. This campaign has been rotten to
+the core from the very beginning. You have tried to keep me from finding
+it out, and you have partly succeeded. But I know a little, and inside
+of the next twenty-four hours I shall know more. That's my last word,
+dad, and it breaks my heart to have to say it. But, by the God who made
+us both, if you drive me to it, I shall stir up such a revolution in
+this State that the people will forget to curse me for the lies I have
+been allowed to tell them!"
+
+Blount was upon his feet when he finished, and the senator was rising
+stiffly from the depths of the big chair.
+
+"That's good, man-sized talk, son," he commented gently, "and I reckon I
+haven't a word to say against it. All I'm going to beg for is this:
+we're kin, boy--mighty close kin. Belt away as hard as you like in the
+big scrap; it does me good to see that all these little Eastern frills
+haven't made you any less a two-fisted, hard-hitting Blount; but don't
+let it make you turn your back when your old daddy comes into the room.
+That's all I ask. Now you'd better go to bed and sleep up some. There's
+another day coming, and if there isn't, none of these little things
+we've been haggling over is going to count for much to any of us."
+
+Three minutes later the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush was letting himself
+into the sitting-room of his suite on the private dining-room floor by
+means of his night-key. The small person whom Gantry and a few others
+were still calling the court of last resort was sitting up, and the tiny
+embroidery-frame on the table had evidently just been laid aside.
+
+"Well?" she said inquiringly.
+
+The senator shook his head in patient tolerance.
+
+"Whatever you've been doing, it's knocked the bottom clean out for the
+boy, Honoria. For a little spell he had me going, and I thought I'd just
+naturally have to turn loose and spill all the fat into the fire."
+
+"You mustn't do that," she returned quickly. "There are five days yet,
+and I need at least three of them. He was very angry?"
+
+"Fighting mad."
+
+"Of course," said the small one thoughtfully. "But we can't allow that
+to get in the way of the bigger things. It won't make any family break,
+will it? For Patricia's sake I shall be sorry if he is desperate enough
+to make the quarrel a personal one."
+
+"I did the best I could on that, little woman, and I reckon he's big
+enough to keep on telling us 'Howdy.' What comes next on the programme?"
+
+"To-morrow I'm going to try to get him to take Patricia driving. Beyond
+that I haven't planned, and anyway it doesn't matter, now that you have
+Gryson out of the way." Then she offered a bit of news. "Richard Gantry
+telephoned me a few minutes ago. He has sent in his resignation, and is
+going to Peru."
+
+The senator was opening the door to the adjoining bedroom and turning on
+the lights.
+
+"Oh, no, I reckon not," he rejoined, with a mellow laugh rumbling deep
+in his great body. "Dick only thinks he is going to Peru. We all think
+such things now and then."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE UNDER-DOG
+
+
+Blount's first move on the morning following the militant interview with
+his father was telegraphic; he wired the campaign chairmen in the three
+towns remaining on his list, cancelling his speaking-engagements. Beyond
+that he went forth to institute a painstaking search in the purlieus of
+the city, a quest having for its object the unearthing of the man Thomas
+Gryson. More and more he was coming to believe that this man was the key
+to a larger situation in the field of political corruption than any
+which had as yet developed. Wherefore he made the search thorough.
+
+Oddly enough, considering the man and his habits, the quest proved
+fruitless. Blount was too clean a man to be on familiar terms with the
+saloon men and dive-keepers of the capital-city underworld, or with the
+crooks and turnings of the underworld itself; but he found his way
+around easily enough in daylight, and had his labor for his pains. For
+when he went back to the hotel at the luncheon-hour he brought little
+with him save a stench in his nostrils and a slightly increased fund of
+mystification. Gryson had disappeared as completely as if the earth had
+opened and swallowed him. And Blount knew the disappearance was real,
+because the ward-heeler's own henchmen were searching for him.
+
+Daunted but not beaten, Blount meant to continue the quest in the
+afternoon. But man proposes, and a small _dea ex machina_ may dispose.
+At the _café_ family luncheon, at which Blount was careful to make his
+appearance, not only because Patricia was there, but also for the sake
+of keeping the kinsman peace his father had begged for, it transpired
+that Patricia had been promised an auto drive to Fort Parker, the
+military reservation sixteen miles to the westward, and that there were
+difficulties. The senator's wife took his arm and explained her dilemma
+at the table dispersal.
+
+"It is parade day at the Fort, you know, and Patricia has set her heart
+on going. I don't know how I came to be so absurdly thoughtless, but I
+promised her before I remembered that this is the Kismet Club election
+afternoon, and if I don't go, they'll make me president again in spite
+of everything," she said in low tones as they were leaving the _café_.
+"I simply _can't_ serve another year; and at the same time, I do so
+dislike to disappoint Patricia. She is such a dear girl!" Mrs. Honoria
+was strictly within the bounds of truth in claiming to have forgotten
+the date of the Kismet election of officers; but it was equally true
+that the club would re-elect her, present or absent, since she was its
+founder and chief patroness.
+
+Blount saw the pointing of all this with perfect clarity, and he had no
+need to assure himself that it had every ear-mark of another expedient
+to get him out of the way. But while he was with Mrs. Honoria and
+listening to her persuasive little appeals it was much harder to
+maintain the antagonistic attitude than it was when she figured--at a
+distance--merely as his father's second wife and his mother's
+supplanter. Foolish? Oh, yes; but at times when the star of impulse is
+in the ascendant every man hath a fool in his sleeve.
+
+"It _is_ too bad to disappoint her," he found himself saying, matching
+the little lady's low tone. "If I wasn't so terribly busy--"
+
+"I know; and just now, with the election so near, you must be busier
+than ever. I suppose I shall have to explain to Patricia, and it hurts
+me, when she is going home so soon."
+
+"Going home?" echoed the victim.
+
+"Yes; in a few days now. The professor has already overstayed his leave
+of absence, so he says."
+
+Blount clenched a figurative fist and shook it savagely at an unkind
+fate. Nevertheless, he fell.
+
+"If you can shift your responsibility to my shoulders, Mrs. Blount--" he
+began, but she would not let him finish.
+
+"Oh! that is _so_ good of you, Evan. Take the little car, and be sure to
+ask the garage man to put in new batteries. The magneto isn't working
+very well. And be here by half past one if you can. The parade is at
+half past two, you know."
+
+Under other conditions the railroad company's "social secretary," as
+the society editors of the capital were still calling him, might have
+had a joyous half-holiday. The autumn afternoon was picture-fine, the
+little car ran well, and Patricia's mood was tempered with the gayety
+which strives to extract the final thrill of enjoyment out of the
+closing days of a delightful vacation. Blount was grateful for the
+light-hearted mood. He felt that it would be next to impossible to tell
+Patricia how wretchedly he had failed in the single-handed crusade, and,
+as to the desperate alternative, there could be no confidences with one
+whose every reference to his father was shot through with loving and
+loyal admiration.
+
+At the military reservation there were fewer opportunities for the
+confidences, or rather fewer temptations to indulge in them. It was a
+gala day at the post, and there were a number of auto parties out from
+the city. Blount knew most of the officers and their wives, and Patricia
+was welcomed not less for her own sake than for the reason that she had
+figured in former visits as the _protégée_ of an ex-senator's wife.
+After the parade there was an impromptu game of baseball, with the broad
+verandas of the officers' quarters serving for the grandstand. Beyond
+the game there was tea, and the sunset gun had been fired before the
+young lieutenant, who had attached himself to Miss Anners at the
+earliest possible moment in the afternoon, reluctantly surrendered his
+prize and handed Patricia into the waiting runabout for the return to
+the capital.
+
+"We shall be late for dinner, if we don't hurry," was the young woman's
+comment when Blount steered the little car clear of the post settlement
+and took the road well in the wake of the Weatherford touring machine.
+Then she added: "We mustn't be; we are dining out this evening--at the
+Gordons."
+
+Blount was entirely willing to hurry. Half of one of the precious days
+of challenge had been wasted in the futile search for Gryson, and here
+was the other half worse than wasted, since the handsome young
+lieutenant had so brazenly monopolized Patricia.
+
+"I'll get you home in time for dinner, never fear," he returned, but
+apparently the little car was no party to the promise. A short mile from
+the reservation the motor began to miss, and a few minutes farther along
+it stopped altogether. Blount got out and began to investigate. There
+was plenty of gasolene, but the spark appeared to be dead.
+
+"I ought to have a leather medal!" he confided to Patricia, in great
+disgust. "Mrs. Blount told me that the batteries needed to be changed,
+and I had them changed, but neglected to have them tested. Sit still and
+let me spin it on the magneto a while."
+
+She let him do it until the perspiration was standing in fine little
+beads on his forehead and he was hot and desperate. Then she said
+sweetly: "I don't believe I'd wear myself out that way, if I were you,
+Evan. Something happened to the magneto two or three weeks ago, and it
+has never been fixed."
+
+Blount pushed his driving-cap back, mopped his face, and came around to
+dive once more into the wiring in the battery box. Dusk was coming on,
+and he had to light one of the side-lamps to serve as a lantern. By
+changing the wiring he was finally able to evoke a desultory response
+from the spark-coil, and a little later to start the motor after some
+limping fashion.
+
+"Oh, my poor dinner!" said Miss Anners, who was still in the
+light-hearted mood; this after Blount's careful nursing had resulted in
+a creeping resumption of the cityward progress. And then: "I hope you
+didn't have any engagement for this evening?"
+
+"I have but one ambition in life," he rejoined grimly, "and that is to
+get you back to the hotel in time for your engagement. Surely Mrs.
+Blount will wait for you."
+
+At the rate they were going the waiting promised to be long. But after
+another half-hour had been killed, the headlights of a westward-driven
+car appeared in the road ahead. Blount pulled quickly into the ditch and
+jumped out to flag the oncoming machine; did flag it, and was able to
+borrow a set of batteries. With the new equipment the remainder of the
+drive was accomplished swiftly, but not swiftly enough. At the
+Inter-Mountain they found that the senator and Mrs. Honoria had gone to
+keep their dinner engagement, and a note in the little lady's
+copperplate handwriting informed Blount that the invitation had been
+made to include him, and that he was to hurry and bring Patricia.
+
+Fully alive now to the time-killing purpose of the clever little
+machinator in arranging to have spent batteries given him, Blount,
+nevertheless, did his duty like a man, and the pair made a late descent
+upon the Gordon dinner-table. Though the dinner was informal, there were
+other guests besides the senator's party, and among them the traffic
+manager. Blount, sitting next to Patricia, made their tardiness an
+excuse and devoted himself to her, thus escaping the toils of the
+general table-talk, which was frankly political. But at the adjournment
+to the drawing-room he cornered Gantry.
+
+"I meant to hunt you up this afternoon," he began, "but I was otherwise
+spoken for. What have you done?"
+
+"I've cabled a conditional acceptance of the offer I was telling you
+about."
+
+"But you haven't resigned?"
+
+"No. Mr. McVickar will probably be here within a day or two, and I'll
+make it verbal."
+
+Yielding to the urgings of the younger Gordon, Patricia was going to the
+piano, and Blount snatched at his opportunity.
+
+"Give me a few minutes in the smoking-room," he said to the traffic
+manager, and when the privacy was secured: "You needn't resign, Dick.
+There isn't going to be any earthquake--of the kind you were fearing."
+
+"You don't mean that the Honorable Senator has turned you down, Evan?"
+
+"Just that."
+
+"I'm sorry," said the friend in need, feeling his way cautiously. Then
+he added: "You needn't tell me anything more than you want to, you
+know."
+
+"There isn't much to tell. I asked for bare justice, and it was
+refused."
+
+"Your father has the papers?"
+
+"He neither admitted nor denied."
+
+"But you didn't quarrel?"
+
+Blount's smile was mirthless. "We are here together, as you see. After
+all is said, we are still father and son."
+
+"Of course; that's as it should be, Evan. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know: go on fighting until I'm wiped out, I suppose. And that
+reminds me: have you seen that fellow Gryson within the last day or
+two?"
+
+Gantry dropped into the depths of a lounging-chair and lighted a
+cigarette. "So you're after Thomas Matthew, too, are you? Kittredge has
+been ransacking the town for him all day, and up to a couple of hours
+ago he hadn't found him. What's in the wind?"
+
+"I don't know, but I mean to find out. What can you tell me about
+Gryson--more than you have already told me?"
+
+"Not very much, I guess. He's a scalawag, of course, but unhappily for
+all of us he is a scalawag with a pull. Kittredge has been dickering
+with him--I don't mind telling you that now."
+
+"What is the nature of the pull?"
+
+"Votes," said Gantry succinctly.
+
+"Straight or crooked?"
+
+"You may search me. But knowing Tom Gryson a little, I should put my
+money on the marked card."
+
+"Naturally," said Blount dryly. "Still, I am needing to be shown. I've
+had two or three chances to size Gryson up, and he didn't impress me as
+a man with any ability beyond the requirements of a bully and the lowest
+type of a political heeler."
+
+"Tom is bigger than that; I don't know how much bigger, but some. He has
+votes to sell, and Kittredge, at least, seems to believe that he can
+deliver the goods. I don't know the inside of the deal. I'll tell you
+frankly that I tried to shove it over to you, neck and heels, at first.
+When that little notion failed, I pushed it along to Kittredge."
+
+Blount's eyebrows, which promised in time to be as portentous as the
+Honorable Senator's, met in a frown. "I'm going to find Gryson, dead or
+alive," he said.
+
+Gantry looked up quickly.
+
+"Which means that you know what has become of him?"
+
+"He has been put out of the way for a purpose, and the purpose is to
+keep me from finding out something that Gryson wants to tell me. That
+was the animus of the scheme to send me on a fool's errand to Lewiston.
+After you left me last night I found out that Gryson had been worrying
+Collins the day before; had been in the office a number of times and was
+sweatingly anxious about something."
+
+Gantry flung his cigarette away and lighted another. After a deep
+inhalation or two he said: "Let it alone, Evan. I have a hunch that
+you'll be happier if you don't try to drag the cover off of that
+particular cesspool."
+
+"Listen," said Blount shortly. "When my father turned me down last night
+I told him that I still had five days in which to--"
+
+"I know," Gantry nodded. "Just the same, you're not going to do it."
+
+"If I don't, it will be because I can't; because the time is too short."
+Then, with a sudden and impulsive gesture of appeal: "Dick, for Heaven's
+sake help me to find that man Gryson, if you know where he is! I shall
+blow up if I can't do something!"
+
+Gantry rose and tossed the second cigarette among the coals in the
+grate.
+
+"I've been afraid all along that they'd corner you and beat you to death
+with feather-dusters," he lamented. "And the only thing I can say will
+make matters worse instead of better. I have it pretty straight that
+Gryson has been fired--shooed out of town, and probably out of the
+State."
+
+"Who did it, Gantry?"
+
+"There is only one man in this bailiwick who can take the whip to a
+fellow like Tom Gryson. I guess I don't need to name him for you, Evan."
+
+Blount got out of his chair and stood with his back to the fire, and his
+face was white.
+
+"Good God! the rottenness of it, Dick!" he groaned. And then: "I've got
+to get out of this and begin all over again in some corner of the world
+where at least one man in ten hasn't forgotten the meaning of common
+honesty and decency and fair dealing. Heaven knows I'm no saint, but if
+I stay here this cursed crookedness will get into my blood and I'll be
+just as degraded as the worst of them. No, I'm not raving; there have
+been times when I've felt myself slipping--times when I've been tempted
+to get down and fight with the weapons that everybody fights with in
+this God-forsaken, law-breaking, graft-ridden commonwealth!"
+
+Gantry had risen and he was slowly shaking his head.
+
+"You're hot now--and with good enough cause, I guess. But that sort of a
+temperature makes a man near-sighted and color-blind. Human nature is
+pretty much the same the world over, Evan, and if you could see beyond
+the crookedness you'd find a lot of good people out here, averaging
+about the same as the decent majority anywhere. It's an inarticulate
+majority generally; it doesn't stand up on its hind legs and rear around
+and call attention to itself--couldn't if it should try. But it's here
+and there and everywhere in America, just the same. A railroad car with
+one drunken fool in it gives you the idea. You focus on him and say,
+'What a beastly shame!' and you entirely overlook the other fifty-odd
+people in the car who are quietly minding their own business."
+
+Blount's smile was for the man rather than for the theory.
+
+"You are an implacable optimist, Dick, and you always have been," he
+returned. "Your theory is good humanitarianism, and I wish I could
+accept it as applying to this abandoned community out here in my native
+hills; but I can't. Let's go back to the others. We've established a
+sort of family _modus vivendi_, my father and I, and I don't want him to
+think that I'm breaking it by plotting with you."
+
+It was while the evening was still measurably young that Blount made his
+excuses to his hostess and got away, fondly believing that he was
+escaping without attracting the attention of the small lady who was deep
+in a political discussion with candidate Gordon at the critical moment.
+He was mistaken, but the escape was not interrupted. At the curb the
+Blount touring-car was waiting, with two others, and for an instant
+Blount hesitated, half inclined to ask his father's chauffeur, to drive
+him down-town. On such inconsequent pivots fate, or accident, twirls the
+most momentous affairs of life. If Blount had taken the car he would
+have been driven directly to the hotel. As it was, he walked, and in
+passing the Temple Court Building he remembered that he had not seen his
+mail since early morning.
+
+Rousing the sleepy boy in charge of the all-night elevator, he had
+himself lifted to his office floor. The upper corridor was dimly
+lighted, and on leaving the car he went directly to the door of his
+private room, walking swiftly and neither seeing nor hearing a man who,
+materializing mysteriously out of the corridor shadows, followed him
+step by step.
+
+In the office Blount snapped the lights on and turned to unlock his
+desk. As the key clicked in the lock the sixth sense, which is perhaps
+only a mingling of the subtler essences of the other five, warned him
+sharply, and he wheeled to face the door which had been left on the
+latch. As he looked, the door opened silently and the materializing
+shadow, haggard of face and with bloodshot eyes mirroring blind rage and
+the terror of a cornered rat, slipped into the room and stood warily
+aside out of the direct light from the electric chandelier. Blount
+looked again and swore softly. The dodging intruder was the man Thomas
+Gryson.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE ICONOCLAST
+
+
+It is a threadbare saying that the environment moulds the man. Yet, much
+more than the philosophers have contended, there are chameleon
+tendencies in the strongest character, and one finely determining to
+coerce his surroundings is quite likely to end by realizing that the
+surroundings have appealed to unsuspected color-changings in himself.
+Thus it may chance that the fairest fighter, finding himself
+sufficiently kicked and cuffed in the rough-and-tumble, will discover
+how facilely easy it is to descend to the level of his antagonists, and
+from this discovery to the awakening of the remorseless passion for
+success at any price is but a step, long or short according to the
+exigencies of the struggle.
+
+Checked in his luggage, if not precisely pinned openly upon his sleeve,
+Blount had brought with him from the scholastic banks of the Charles a
+choice assortment of ideals, which are things precious only as they can
+be preserved inviolate. But for weeks, endless weeks as they seemed to
+him in the retrospect, he had been rubbing shoulders with a crude world
+which appeared to care little for ideals and less for the man who upheld
+them. Inevitably, as he had admitted to Gantry, the change was wrought,
+or working; the exclamation springing to his lips when he recognized
+Gryson evinced it, and when he beckoned the shifty intruder to the chair
+at the desk end the ruthless _zeitgeist_ had taken full possession of
+him, and the thought uppermost had grown suddenly indifferent to the
+means if by their employment the end might be gained.
+
+"Come over here and sit down," he commanded; then, seeing that Gryson
+hesitated and flung a glance over his shoulder at the door: "What are
+you afraid of?"
+
+"They've got my number," said the ward-heeler, in a convict whisper
+which was little more than a facial contortion. "There's a couple o'
+bulls waitin' f'r me down on the sidewalk."
+
+Blount crossed the room, shut the door and locked it. Then he went back
+to the self-confessed fugitive.
+
+"You're safe for the time being," he told the man. "Now talk fast and
+talk straight. What do you want this time?"
+
+Gryson hammered the arm of his chair with his fist and babbled
+profanity. When he became coherent he told his story, or rather Blount
+got it out of him piecemeal, of how he had been employed by the
+"organization" to falsify the registration lists in certain districts;
+of how, when the work was done, he had been denied the price and driven
+out with cursings. In the accusation, which was shot through with
+tremulous imprecations, the "organization" and the railroad company
+were implicated as if they were one. In one breath the fugitive charged
+the "double-crossing" to Kittredge, and in the next he accused the "big
+boss" himself, of having passed the sentence of deportation.
+
+"You say you were driven out? How could they drive you if you didn't
+want to go?" queried the cross-examiner.
+
+"That's on me: it was a job I pulled off two years ago in another
+place--up north of this--and the night-watchman got in the way when I
+was leavin'. They jerked that on me and showed me th' rope. They had me
+by th' neck, with th' word passed to Chief Robertson. I'm back here now
+wit' my life in my hand, but I'd chance it twice over to get square wit'
+them welshers that have bawled me out!"
+
+"Why have you come to me?" asked Blount briefly.
+
+"Gawd knows; I took a chance again. I've heard your speeches, and says
+I, 'There's your wan chance, cully,' and I'm here to grab f'r it. If
+you've been meanin' the half of what you've been sayin', Mr. Blount--"
+There was more of it, half pleadings and half mere rageful babblings of
+a vengeful soul hampered by the tongue of inadequacy.
+
+Blount left his chair and began to pace the floor, with Gryson watching
+him furtively. At any time earlier in the struggle the thought of using
+this wretched time-server as a means to any end, however desirable and
+just, would have been nauseating. True, if there could be any such thing
+as honor among thieves, the man had earned the price of his crooked
+work among the registration clerks; but for another man to profit by the
+broken bargain, and by the confessed criminal's rage and lust for
+vengeance, was a thing to make even a hard-pressed loser in an unequal
+battle hesitate.
+
+The hesitation was only momentary. With a gesture which was more
+expressive than many words, Blount turned short upon the furtive watcher
+in the chair at the desk end.
+
+"What do you want me to do?" he demanded.
+
+"You're on before I could stall it f'r you. You've been swearin' you'd
+back th' square deal to th' limit; it ain't square; it's crooked as
+hell. Grab f'r this knife I'm handin' you and cut the heart out o' these
+welshin' bosses that are givin' you th' double-cross the same as they're
+givin' it to me. You're the on'y man that can do it; the on'y man on
+Gawd's green earth they're afraid of. I know it damn' well. That's why
+they handed my number to th' chief and passed th' word to have me
+pinched. They was afraid I'd come here and squeal to you!"
+
+Blount stopped him with an impatient gesture. "Let that part of it rest
+and get down to business. What you have been telling me may be true, but
+I can't do anything on your bare word--the word of a man who is dodging
+the police. You've got to bring me proofs in black and white; lists of
+the faked names, and a straight-out give-away of how they are to be
+used; names and dates, and a written story of your bargainings with the
+men higher up. This is Thursday; to be of any use, these documents
+would have to be in my hands by Saturday noon, at the latest. You know
+best whether the thing can be done in time--or done at all. What do you
+say?"
+
+For a little time Gryson said nothing. When he spoke it was evident that
+the lust for vengeance and a guilty conscience were fighting an
+even-handed battle.
+
+"I could get the affidavits--maybe," he said. "There's a dozen 'r more
+of the cullies down-along got their notice to fade away when I got mine,
+and they'd jump at th' chance to get back at the bosses. But f'r Gawd's
+sake, look at what it means to me! Anny minute I'm on the job I'd be
+lookin' to see some bull with a star on 'im holdin' a gun on me; and
+after that, it's this f'r mine"--with a jerk of the head and a
+pantomimic gesture simulating the hangman's knot under his ear.
+
+"That is your risk," said Blount coldly, making this small concession to
+the expiring sense of uprightness. "You know how badly you want to 'get
+square,' as you put it, and I am interested only in the results. If you
+get caught, I sha'n't turn my hand over to help you--you can take that
+straight. But if you show up here with the proofs, proofs that I can
+use, any time before Saturday night, I'll undertake to see that you get
+safely out of the State."
+
+It was in the little pause which followed that some one in the corridor
+rapped smartly on the locked door. At the sound, Gryson collapsed and
+his face became an ashen mask of fear. Blount, the law-abiding, might
+have hesitated, but this newer Blount had slain his scruples. Snatching
+Gryson out of his chair, he thrust him silently through the half-open
+door of the work-room, and a moment later he was answering the rap at
+the corridor entrance, opening the door and calmly facing the two
+policemen on the threshold.
+
+"Well?" he said brusquely.
+
+One of the men touched his helmet.
+
+"We're looking for a felly that ducked in below a couple of hours ago,
+Mr. Blount. He's in the building, somewheres, and your office being
+lighted, we thought maybe you'd--"
+
+Blount threw the door wide.
+
+"You can see for yourselves," he said. "Would you like to come in and
+look around?"
+
+"Sure not; your word's as good as the search, Mr. Blount. 'Twas only on
+the chance that he might have faked an excuse and ducked in on you to be
+out of reach."
+
+Blount left the door open and went to get his coat and hat.
+
+"Who is the man?" he asked, while the officers lingered.
+
+"A felly named Gryson. He's been working in the railroad shops what
+times he wasn't pullin' off something crooked in the p'litical line."
+
+"What is he wanted for?" Blount was closing his desk and preparing to
+leave the office.
+
+"Croaking a bank watchman up in Montana afther he'd souped the vault
+door for a kick-shot."
+
+"In that case, perhaps I'm lucky that he didn't drop in and croak me,"
+laughed Blount, turning off the lights and joining the two men in the
+corridor. And then: "There is a back stair to the engine-room in the
+basement in the other wing of the building: have you been watching
+that?"
+
+The bigger of the two policemen prodded the other in the ribs with his
+night-stick. "That's on us, Jakey. He'll have been gone hours ago. Let's
+be drilling. 'Tis a fine mind ye have, Mr. Blount, to be thinking of
+thim back stairs right off the bat." And the pair went down in the
+elevator with Blount, chuckling to themselves at their own discomfiture.
+
+Having set his hand to the plough, Blount did nothing carelessly.
+Sauntering slowly, and even pausing to light a cigar, he trailed the two
+policemen until they were safely in another street. Then he turned back
+to the great office building and once more had himself lifted to the
+upper floor. In the office corridor he waited until the car had dropped
+out of sight; waited still longer to give the drowsy night-boy time to
+settle himself on his stool and go to sleep. Then he went swiftly to the
+door of the private room and unlocked it.
+
+Gryson was ready, and even in the dim light of the corridor Blount could
+see that he was white-faced and trembling. In the silent faring to the
+stair which wound down in a spiral around the freight elevator Blount
+gripped the arm of trembling.
+
+"You've got to get your nerve," he gritted savagely, "or you'll be
+nipped before you've gone a block!" And then: "Here's the stair: follow
+it down until you get to the basement. There's a coal entrance from the
+alley, and the engineer will be with his boilers in the other wing--and
+probably asleep. You've got it straight, have you? You're to bring the
+papers to my office on or before Saturday night. I'll be looking out for
+you, and if you bring me the evidence, you'll be taken care of. That's
+all. Down with you, now, and go quietly. If you're caught, I drop you
+like a hot nail; remember that."
+
+Still puffing at the cigar which glowed redly in the darkness of the
+wing corridor, Blount waited until his man had been given time to reach
+the basement. Then he walked slowly back to the main corridor and
+descended by the public stair without awakening the elevator boy, who
+was sleeping soundly in his car on the ground level.
+
+On the short walk to the hotel the full significance of the thing he had
+done had its innings. Cynical criticism to the contrary notwithstanding,
+there is now and then an honest lawyer who regards his oath of admission
+to the bar--the oath which binds him to uphold the cause of justice and
+fair dealing--as something more than a mere form of words. Beyond all
+question, an honest man who has sworn to uphold the law may neither
+connive at crime nor shield a criminal. Blount tried the shift of every
+man who has ever stepped aside out of the plain path of rectitude; he
+told himself morosely that he had nothing to do with Gryson's past; that
+he had taken no retainer from the Montana authorities; that the criminal
+was merely a cog in a wheel which was grinding toward a righteous end,
+and as such should be permitted to serve his turn.
+
+The well-worn argument is always specious to the beginner, and Blount
+thought he had sufficiently justified himself by the time he was pushing
+through the revolving doors into the Inter-Mountain lobby. But when he
+saw his father quietly smoking his bed-time cigar in one of the big
+leather-covered lounging-chairs, he realized that the first step had
+been taken in an exceedingly thorny path; that whatever else might be
+the outcome of the bargain with Thomas Gryson, a son was coldly plotting
+to bring disgrace and humiliation upon a father.
+
+For this reason, and because, when all is said, blood is much thicker
+than water, Blount made as if he did not see the beckoning hand-wave
+from the depths of the big chair in the smokers' alcove; ignored it, and
+with set lips and burning eyes made for the nearest elevator to take
+refuge in his room.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+A CRY IN THE NIGHT.
+
+
+With the critical election, a struggle which was to decide for another
+two-year period whether or not the people of the Sage-Brush State were
+to be the masters or the servants of chartered monopoly, only four days
+distant, the capital city took on the aspect of a stirring camp--two
+rival camps, in fact, since the State headquarters of the two chief
+parties were in the Inter-Mountain Hotel--and each incoming train
+brought fresh relays of henchmen and district spellbinders to swell the
+sidewalk throngs and to crowd the lobbies.
+
+On the Friday morning Blount awoke with the feeling that he had
+definitely cut himself off from all the commonplace activities of the
+campaign. There were two days of suspense to be outworn, and if he could
+have compassed it he would have been glad to efface himself completely.
+Since that was impossible, and since it seemed equally impossible that
+he should go on keeping up the farce of the _modus vivendi_ after he had
+taken the step which would presently blazon his name to the world as
+that of his father's accuser, he bought the morning papers hurriedly at
+the hotel news-stand and went down the avenue to get his breakfast at
+the railroad restaurant, where he would be measurably sure of isolation.
+
+After giving his order he ran hastily through the local news in the
+papers. There was no mention of the arrest of one Thomas Gryson in any
+of the police notes, and he breathed freer. But in _The Plainsman_ there
+was an editorial which was vaguely disturbing. Blenkinsop, who wrote his
+own leaders, hinted pointedly at coming disclosures which would change
+the political map of the State for all time. Blount, trying to determine
+how much or how little the editorial was based upon his talk with the
+editor on the Wednesday night, found his omelet tasteless. Ready enough,
+as he was persuaded, to fire the disrupting mine with his own hand, he
+was not ready to surrender the match to any one else. Manifestly he must
+see Blenkinsop and caution him.
+
+Breakfast over, he walked, by the longest way around, to his office in
+the Temple Court, hoping to find work which would help him through the
+forenoon. It was an idle hope. From a State-wide shower of political
+correspondence the daily mail had dropped suddenly to an inconsequential
+drizzle, and there were no callers. Here, again, he saw, or thought he
+saw, the all-powerful hand of the machine. He had been used for a
+purpose, the purpose of hoodwinking and deceiving the voters. That
+purpose having been served, he was to be dropped--was already dropped,
+as it seemed. By noon the sheer time-killing effort became blankly
+unbearable, and in desperation he broke with another of the ideals--the
+one labelled sincerity--and going boldly to the Inter-Mountain he waited
+in the lobby for the family party of three to come down to the
+one-o'clock luncheon in the public _café_.
+
+Joining the party when it came down, he found it difficult only in the
+inner sanctuaries to maintain the _status quo ante_ Gryson. There was no
+shadow of suspicion or coolness in his father's kindly smile and genial
+greeting, and Mrs. Honoria rallied him playfully upon the narrow margin
+by which he had held his own and Patricia's places at the Gordon
+dinner-table the night before. Only in Patricia's eyes he read a curious
+questioning, a hint that they were finding something in his eyes which
+was new and not wholly understandable. He knew well enough what it was
+that she saw; and though she was sitting opposite him at the table for
+four, he looked at her as seldom as possible, devoting himself, for once
+in a way, resolutely to his father's wife.
+
+After luncheon he again fell back upon the dogged boldness. Unable to
+contemplate a second plunge into the solitude of the Temple Court
+offices, he asked and was accorded permission to take Patricia for a
+country drive in the little car. When the city was left behind, and the
+small machine was purring steadily northwestward over a road which led
+to nowhere in particular, Blount put his finger accurately upon the
+thing which had been building little barriers of silence between them
+all the way out from town.
+
+"You knew me well enough yesterday to be reasonably certain of what I
+would do in given circumstances, didn't you, Patricia?" he began
+abruptly. "To-day you are not so sure about it. Why?"
+
+She laughed lightly, but there was a serious undernote in her voice when
+she said: "There are moments when you make me wonder if you haven't been
+dabbling in necromancy, Evan. I was at that very instant telling myself
+that it wasn't so."
+
+"But you know it is so," he persisted. "Why am I different?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Yet you recognize the fact?"
+
+"Is it a fact?" she queried.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In what way are you different?"
+
+"I am not altogether certain that I know, myself. But I do know this:
+between yesterday and to-day there is a gulf so wide that it seems
+measureless. The scientists claim there are no cataclysms; no sudden and
+sweeping changes taking place either in the physical or the metaphysical
+field. If that be true, the changes must go on subconsciously for a long
+time before they are recognized. There is no other way of accounting for
+the gulfs."
+
+"You are talking miles over my head," she protested; and, though the
+assertion was not strictly true, it served its purpose.
+
+"I can make it a little plainer," he went on, slowing the motor until
+the small car was merely ambling. "You remember that night at Wartrace
+Hall, and what you told me? I went out from that talk resolved to do
+what you had shown me I ought to do, stubbornly refusing to consider the
+possibility of failure. None the less, I have failed."
+
+"Oh, no!" she exclaimed; "not that!"
+
+"Yes, just that. But the failure is not the worst thing that has
+befallen me. I have lost or gained something that pushes the yesterdays
+into a past which can never be recovered. Let me tell you, girl: I have
+been fighting in the open, against treachery and deceit fighting always
+under cover. I have been fighting bare-handed where others were armed.
+Day by day I have been finding out the baseness and the trickery; how my
+own side has used me as a screen behind which the old dishonorable
+expedients could be safely planned and carried out. I never knew until
+within the past two days what all this chicanery and double-dealing
+might be doing to me, but now I do know."
+
+"Will it bear telling?" she asked quietly.
+
+"I think not--to you," he returned, matching her low tone. "Let it be
+enough to say that I am no longer the man I was when I came out here.
+Patricia, I'm not fighting bare-handed any more; I'm smashing in with
+any weapon I can get hold of. There will be no such reform as the one
+you urged me to champion--as the era of fair-dealing and sincerity which
+I have been trying honestly and earnestly to inaugurate. Nevertheless,
+if my hand doesn't tremble too much at the critical moment, there will
+be, on the morning of next Tuesday, such a revolution as this
+commonwealth has never seen. Though they have robbed me and made a
+puppet of me, I can still bring it about."
+
+He had gone farther than he meant to, and he thought she would protest.
+He knew that her convictions of what should be and what should not be
+were clear-cut and definite. But a man, even though he be a lover, may
+know a woman's mind without knowing very much about the woman herself.
+There was no protest forthcoming. Quite the contrary, she answered him
+with a little shudder that was almost a caress, saying: "I think you
+have grown--bigger and stronger than I ever thought you could grow,
+Evan; and I'm sure your hand won't tremble. Is that what you want me to
+say?"
+
+Since there is no more contradictory being in a sentient world than a
+man in love, Blount was not quite sure that it was what he wanted her to
+say. By times, to any lover worthy of the name, the chosen woman figures
+as a goddess, a tutelary divinity postulating for a mere earthly man all
+that is high and holy and inerrant; an impeccable standard by which he
+can measure his own baser desires and ambitions and be shrived of them.
+At other times the straitly human has its innings, and the longing is
+for a comrade, a companion, a second self buried, lost, submerged in the
+loyalty which never questions. Having come slowly to maturity as a
+lover, Blount had been leaning toward the divinity definition of
+Patricia Anners. But now the iconoclastic change was breaking many
+images.
+
+"You are willing to believe that I haven't gone altogether backward?" he
+queried, after the little car had measured an additional stretch of the
+mesa road.
+
+"You are bigger and stronger," she repeated.
+
+"How do you know I am?"
+
+"I can tell; any woman could tell."
+
+"Is the acquirement of size and strength so great a thing that--"
+
+"I think it is--in a woman's eyes," she admitted fearlessly. "We are all
+more or less primitive and--and, well, 'Stone-Agey,' let us say, in the
+last analysis; at least, women are." And then: "You don't know women
+very well, Evan."
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"No, you don't. You judge us by standards which have no existence
+outside of your own purely masculine deductions. For example: I suppose
+you wouldn't admit for a moment that a good woman might properly do
+things which would be entirely discreditable in a man?"
+
+He shook his head slowly and said: "Yesterday, or the day before, I
+might have said 'no,' with all the cocksureness of a boy of twenty.
+To-day I can only say: 'Who am I, that I should judge any man--or any
+woman?'" Then suddenly: "You are making excuses for my father's wife.
+You needn't, you know. She has fought me from the beginning, and I know
+it. Sometimes I think that she is solely responsible for my failure to
+accomplish the thing I had set my heart upon. Let it go; I don't bear
+malice. Just now I'm more interested in what you were saying about the
+sex differences and the woman's point of view. Have you been calling me
+a weak man, Patricia?"
+
+"No; only--a little--conventional," she returned half reluctantly.
+
+"But you are the quintessence of conventionality yourself!" he burst
+out.
+
+"Am I? Perhaps that was a passing phase, too. Quite probably the little
+things will remain--the dressing for dinner and the paying of party
+calls and all that. But one really big man has made many things seem
+petty and trifling--things that I used to think were of the greatest
+possible importance."
+
+"My father, you mean?"
+
+"Yes. If I should ever marry, Evan, I should be deliriously happy if I
+could find a man who promised to grow to the stature of your father."
+
+There was manifestly no rejoinder to be made to this by David Blount's
+son, though it pointed to another and still more painful involvement.
+What would Patricia say when the _débâcle_ came? Would she lose faith in
+his father, and in all masculinity, in the crash? Or would she borrow
+yet again from the primitive woman she had been half-acknowledging and
+still be loyal? In either case Blount saw his own finish, and he was
+rather relieved when she left the sex argument indeterminate and began
+to talk of other things: of her father's decision to go home at the end
+of the following week, of the good times she had been having, and of the
+regret with which she would turn her back upon the wide horizons and the
+freedom of it all.
+
+"I brought my shell with me when I came," she confessed, laughing, "but
+I think it is broken into little pieces by now. You will know how small
+the pieces are when I tell you that 'Tennessee Jim,' your father's horse
+wrangler, calls me 'Miz' Pat,' and it always makes me want to shake
+hands with him."
+
+Blount made the afternoon last as he could, sending the little car over
+many miles of the mesa roads and encouraging the small confidences which
+were enabling him to postpone his own evil hour. When the sun was
+dipping toward the Carnadine Hills they returned over a trail which came
+into the main Quaretaro road at a point where the northern highway
+begins its descent to the lower mesa level. Half-way down the descending
+gulch they came to the mouth of a small lateral canyon breaking into the
+larger gorge from the eastward; a canyon dry for the greater part of the
+year, but in the rainy season affording an outlet for the flood-waters
+of the Little Shonoho.
+
+"That is a road I have always wanted to explore," said Patricia,
+pointing to the fine driveway leading up the small canyon. "That is one
+of my weaknesses when I am driving; I am never able to pass a branch
+road without wanting to turn aside and explore it."
+
+"Then we'll explore this one, right now," said Blount, cutting the car
+to the left. He was more than willing to delay, even by littles, the
+moment when he should be obliged to resume the sorry business of waiting
+and dissembling.
+
+Miss Anners glanced at the tiny watch pinned upon her shoulder.
+
+"Shall we have time? It's getting late."
+
+"Plenty of time for all we shall be able to do or see up here," Blount
+returned. "The road ends at the canyon head, a mile above. There is a
+very small and very exclusive summer-resort hotel, called the Shonoho
+Inn, on the upper level. It has a six-weeks' season--like the Florida
+resorts--they tell me, and it is closed now."
+
+It was within the next five hundred yards that the prediction that there
+would be nothing to see anticipated its fulfilment. At a sudden turn in
+the narrow defile they came to a brush-built barricade posted with a
+sign:
+
+ROAD WASHED OUT ABOVE
+NO PASSING FOR VEHICLES!
+
+"That settles it," said Blount shortly, and he turned the car and let it
+roll back down the grade to the main gulch.
+
+When they were once more speeding toward town Blount stole a glance at
+his companion, wondering if it were the small disappointment which made
+her silent.
+
+"Are you tired?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Oh, no," she rejoined, brightening again. "I have enjoyed every minute
+of it. I was just thinking of what I said a little while ago; of how it
+is going to break my heart to leave it all."
+
+It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that she needn't leave it.
+But he remembered and caught himself sharply. When the dreadful Tuesday
+should have come and gone, she might be only too willing to go away;
+and, in any event, he would have to go. There would be no place in his
+own and his father's State for him after Gryson returned, and the match
+had been touched to the hidden mine of high explosives. This was what
+was in his mind when he said rather tamely: "I suppose you will have to
+go. There isn't any chance for social-settlement work out here yet."
+
+"No," she responded half-absently; and thereupon he gave the little car
+still more spark and throttle and sent it flying over the final stretch
+of the fine road to the city.
+
+The electric lights were showing like faint yellow stars against the
+sunset sky when Blount skilfully placed the small car at the
+Inter-Mountain curb and lifted his companion to the sidewalk.
+
+"Are you going anywhere to-night?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know," was the reply. "There is a 'crush' on at the
+Weatherfords', but I don't know whether Mrs. Blount has accepted for us
+or not."
+
+"Don't go," he pleaded quickly. "Back out of it some way, and give me
+just this one evening to myself. Won't you do that, Patricia?"
+
+"I'll try," she agreed. "But if Mrs. Blount has accepted--"
+
+"Confound Mrs. Blount!" he growled. And then the newly aroused underman
+in him added: "You tell her that I want you to give me the evening, and
+let that settle it."
+
+As it turned out a little later, Miss Anners found it unnecessary to be
+rude to her hostess. For some reason best known to herself, Mrs. Honoria
+had declined the invitation--engraved in the correctest shaded Old
+English and made to include the senator and Miss Anners--and was
+planning a free evening for herself and her guest.
+
+After the _café_ dinner--a dinner at which Evan Blount, once more
+calling himself all the hard names in the hypocrite's vocabulary, made
+the fourth--Mrs. Honoria proposed an adjournment to the hotel parlors,
+which were in the mezzanine lounge. Later, she found herself alone on
+the divan which had been drawn up to command a view of the spirited
+scene in the lobby below. The senator had gone down to mingle with the
+politicians, and she could see him--big, masterful, and smiling--moving
+about from group to group. On the opposite side of the mezzanine
+gallery, Evan and Patricia were "doing time," as the little lady
+musingly phrased it: walking up and down and talking quietly; a handsome
+couple, as the approving glances of more than one passing guest
+testified.
+
+To Mrs. Honoria, thus isolated, came at the appointed time the
+sober-eyed young traffic manager for the railroad company. Gantry had
+been under orders from the little lady for the better part of the
+afternoon, but the business of the day had given him no chance to report
+earlier.
+
+"You got my note?" he asked, taking the place she made for him on the
+tête-à-tête divan.
+
+"Yes; a little while before dinner. It came just in time to let me send
+frightfully late 'regrets' to Mrs. Weatherford."
+
+"I couldn't come sooner. I've had the Hathaway crowd on my hands all
+afternoon. There is something in the wind, and those fellows are scared
+stiff. They say that Evan's speech-making has stirred up the working men
+and the rank and file like a declaration of war with Mexico, and nobody
+can tell what is going to happen next Tuesday."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"No, not quite all. There is a mild panic on in at least three of the
+city wards over the disappearance of a fellow named Gryson, a sort
+of--er--wire-puller and all-around general-utility man. Some say he has
+been doing crooked work and had to disappear; others say that he has
+taken his pay for whatever job he was doing and has skipped out, leaving
+his journeymen strikers to hold the bag."
+
+"Gryson," said the little lady, her eyes narrowing; "Gryson--the name is
+curiously familiar. He is what you call a ward-worker, isn't he?"
+
+Gantry nodded. "Something of the sort, yes. Evan calls him one of the
+'pie-eaters,' and away along early in the game they had a set-to in
+Evan's office and Evan fired him; told him if he ever came back he'd
+throw him out."
+
+Again Mrs. Honoria's fine eyes became reflective.
+
+"Richard," she said softly, "I'd give anything in the world if I could
+know that Evan still feels that way about Thomas Gryson."
+
+"Then you know the plug-ugly, do you?" said Gantry.
+
+"I know of him. He is a criminal and a dangerous man."
+
+"Well, he is out of it, I guess; he must be, if his own running-mates
+can't find him."
+
+"Isn't Mr. Kittredge trying to find him, too?"
+
+"Yes. And I think Kittredge played it rather low down on the poor
+beggar. They had a deal of some sort, and when Gryson put his price on
+the job--"
+
+"I know," she interrupted. "Mr. Kittredge ought to have paid him and let
+him go."
+
+Gantry's smile was a tribute to superior genius.
+
+"You've got me going," he said; "you always have me going. With the
+election only three days off, I can't tell yet what you and the senator
+are trying to do."
+
+"The senator, at least, has never made any secret of his object," she
+smiled back at him. "He has told everybody that he is out for a clean
+sweep."
+
+"Exactly," said Gantry; "but no man living knows what he means by a
+'clean sweep.' I'll bet there are a hundred men down there in the lobby
+right now who would give the best year out of their lives to know. And
+they can't guess--they can't begin to guess!"
+
+"Let us leave them to their guesses, while we go back to the
+certainties," she suggested. "Did you find out what I asked you to?"
+
+"Yes; and I don't know whether I ought to tell you or not. I'm still
+drawing my salary from the railroad, you know."
+
+"And you are not sure that I am drawing mine?" she laughed. "Don't you
+remember when Mr. McVickar gave me this?" touching the little
+jewel-incrusted watch on her shoulder.
+
+"Yes, I remember; also I remember that this is the first time I have
+ever seen you wearing it." And then: "I'd never try to bribe you in the
+wide, wide world, Mrs. Blount."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"For two reasons: you are too much in love with your husband; and, if
+you took a notion to fly the track, a king's ransom wouldn't be big
+enough to make you stay bribed."
+
+"I am flattered, I'm sure; but I'm still in the dark about the thing you
+have come here to tell me," she reminded him.
+
+"I presume you may as well know it, though I can tell you that it has
+been kept the darkest kind of a secret. Mr. McVickar came west to-day
+from Bald Butte in a new gasolene unit-car which is supposed to be
+making a trial trip over the road. The car is supposed to have a bunch
+of the Chicago officials on board, though not half a dozen men on this
+division know that the vice-president is the only official, and that
+the others are clerks and telegraphers."
+
+"Go on," said the small person quickly.
+
+"That gasolene special is lost. No station west of Bald Butte has yet
+reported it. Strictly between us two, it left the main line at the old
+disused track leading out to the abandoned Shoshone mine workings. There
+were autos to meet it at the mine, and by this time Mr. McVickar is
+probably toasting his feet before an open wood-fire in the Shonoho Inn."
+
+Mrs. Honoria leaned her two round arms on the mezzanine rail, and looked
+long and earnestly down upon the caucussing lobby throng. When she
+looked up it was to say: "There are wires?"
+
+"A full set of cut-ins. You can trust the big boss for that. He is in
+touch with every corner of the State, just the same as he would be if he
+were here in his usual election headquarters in the hotel."
+
+The small plotter became silent again, and when she spoke she was
+smiling brightly.
+
+"You are a good boy, Richard, and you shall have your reward. And it is
+going to be something that will make you happy, this time. Run away,
+now, and let me have a little solitude. I want to think."
+
+It was a full hour after Gantry's disappearance that the senator came
+up-stairs, and Mrs. Honoria beckoned to the pair on the opposite side of
+the gallery.
+
+"It's bedtime," she said, when they came around to her divan. And then,
+with a malicious little grimace for Evan: "I've been counting, and I've
+seen Patricia stifle three distinct and separate yawns in the last five
+minutes. She has been up every night since we came to town, and--"
+
+Left to himself, Blount sat watching the crowd for a time, and then went
+to his room to read himself to sleep. One of the two crucial days of
+suspense was outworn, but there was another coming; and after he had
+read for an hour he went to bed, resolutely determined to get the rest
+necessary to carry him through the dreaded Saturday. Sleep came quickly
+when he had turned off the lights, but it was merely a transition to a
+troubled dreamland in which Patricia, Mrs. Honoria, Gryson, and Gantry
+were weirdly confused. In the thick of it he seemed to see the
+ward-heeler standing at his bedside and beating furiously upon a huge
+Chinese gong. When he sprang up and began to rub his eyes, the room was
+lighted by a red glare, and the dream-noise was translated into the
+rattling of wheels and the clanging of alarm-gongs and cries of "Fire!"
+in the avenue below.
+
+As a city dweller, Blount should have felt the wall of the room, and,
+finding it still cool, should have turned over and gone to sleep again.
+Instead, he slipped out of bed and went to the window. One glance showed
+him that the fire was in the business district, either in or near the
+Temple Court Building. That was enough to make him dress hurriedly and
+hasten to the street, where he found a handful of policemen trying
+ineffectually to keep a clear pavement for the racing fire-trucks.
+Watching his chance, Blount darted out to make the crossing. He was
+half-way to the opposite curb when an unwieldy hook-and-ladder truck,
+drawn by a pair of magnificent grays, came lurching and plunging down
+the side street upon which the hotel cornered.
+
+In front of the horses, and leaping and barking at their heads in a
+frenzy of excitement, was a spotted coach-dog--the truck squad's mascot.
+Blount was within a few feet of the farther sidewalk, and was well out
+of danger when the long truck slewed into the avenue. But at the passing
+instant the mascot dog, leaping and whirling like a four-footed dervish,
+sprang backward. Blount felt the catapulting shock of a yielding body
+between his shoulders, heard a yell from the truck-driver on his high
+seat, and went plunging headlong to the curb. After which he felt and
+heard no more.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+FIELD HEADQUARTERS
+
+
+In the great world-battles of yesterday, or the day before, the
+commanding general rode, with a few chosen officers of his staff, to
+some near-by hill-top, shell-swept and perilous, and with the help of a
+pair of field-glasses and a corps of hard-riding aides kept in touch as
+he could with the shifting fortunes of his divisions and brigades. It
+would be small credit to an up-to-date day of progress and
+invention if this were not all changed. The present-moment
+commander-in-chief--warring, industrial, or political--may sit, thanks
+to the Morses and the Edisons, comfortably in office-coat and slippers,
+far removed from the battle turmoil, directing his forces with the
+pressure of a finger upon the appropriate electric button, or in a few
+words dictated to the human ear of a clicking telegraph-instrument.
+
+By all these adventitious aids Vice-President McVickar was profiting on
+the Saturday morning following the mysterious disappearance on the
+Friday of the gasolene unit-car somewhere between Bald Butte and the
+capital. The small resort hotel at the head of Shonoho Canyon had been
+transformed into a field headquarters. The hotel manager's desk,
+wheeled out in front of a crackling wood-fire in the ornate little
+lobby, was studded with its row of electric call-buttons; a railroad
+dining-car crew had taken possession of the kitchen; and the spacious
+writing-and lounging-room, sacred, in the season, to the guests of the
+exclusive hotel, housed a ranking of glass-topped telegraph-tables and
+impromptu desks--a work-room manned by a dozen picked young men, with
+O'Brien, the vice-president's private secretary, acting as the chief.
+
+Though the momentous Tuesday was still three days in the future, Mr.
+McVickar was actively at work on the Saturday morning, gathering in the
+loose ends and strengthening the railroad company's defences. With his
+arm-chair drawn up to the borrowed desk he was running rapidly through
+the telegrams filtering in a steady shower from the crackling sounders
+in the writing-room. When the situation had begun to outline itself with
+something like coherence, he pressed a call-button for O'Brien.
+
+"How about that wire to Detwiler at Ophir--any reply yet?" was the
+rasping demand shot at the secretary.
+
+"Nothing yet; no, sir."
+
+"Go after him again! There's a screw loose among those miners! How about
+Hathaway? Did you phone Twin Buttes?"
+
+"Yes; and Grogan, the mill time-keeper, answered. He says Mr. Hathaway
+is in the capital and something has gone wrong--he doesn't know what."
+
+"Keep the wires hot until you can get hold of Hathaway himself, and
+when you nail him, switch him over to my phone. Any word from the
+irrigation people at Natcho?"
+
+"Yes. They say that the farmers under the High Line have been getting
+restive and forming associations. Daniels was the man who talked to me,
+and he says it's a Gordon movement, though the ranchmen are trying to
+keep it quiet."
+
+"Take a message to Daniels!" snapped the vice-president; and then,
+dictating: "'How would it do to let it be known quietly that Gordon's
+election means raise in price of water to High Line users?' Send that,
+and sign it 'Committee of Safety.' Now how about Kittredge? Did you get
+him?"
+
+"I did; he's driving out in his car, and he ought to be here in a few
+minutes."
+
+As if to make O'Brien's word good, the roar of an automobile came from
+the driveway, dominating for the moment the chattering of the
+telegraph-instruments, and a little later Kittredge came in, lifting his
+goggles and wiping the road dust from his closely clipped black beard.
+
+"That car of yours isn't what it might be, Kittredge," was the
+vice-president's crusty greeting. "You'd better get a faster one. Sit
+down, and let's have it. How are things shaping up in the city?"
+
+The big superintendent sat down and found a cigar in an inner pocket of
+his driving-coat.
+
+"We are holding our own, as far as anybody can see," he returned.
+
+"That 'as far as anybody can see' is just your weakness, Kittredge,"
+said the chief testily. "What we want--what we've got to have first,
+last, and all the time--is the _fact_. Now see if you can answer a few
+straight questions. What is the senator doing?"
+
+"His wife has a young girl visiting her, and if the Honorable Dave is
+doing anything more than to show the two women a good time, I can't find
+it out."
+
+"There you go again! You say 'if.' It's your business to know."
+
+Kittredge held his peace. Being designed by nature for a heavy-weight
+ring-fighter, there were times when he felt like taking off his coat to
+the vice-president.
+
+"Well?" prompted McVickar, when Kittredge remained obstinately silent.
+
+"If I knew what sort of a deal you have made with the senator--"
+
+"That cuts no figure. But let it go. What's young Blount doing?"
+
+"He's out of it, good and plenty. He started to go to the Sampson Block
+fire last night and was knocked down by a hook-and-ladder truck. It's a
+cracked skull, and Doc Dillon says he's safe to stay in bed for a week
+or so."
+
+"H'm," said the chief reflectively. "That is almost what you might call
+opportune, Kittredge. The young fellow has done his work well, but there
+was always the danger that he might overdo it. In fact, there was a
+time, a week or two ago, when I thought he would have to be called down
+and given a lesson. Now then, how about that Gryson business?"
+
+"It was just as you said: I had to take Tom by the neck and get rid of
+him."
+
+"He did his work all right?"
+
+"Yes, and came swaggering around for his pay. I sized it up one side and
+down the other. He had a pretty bad case of swelled head and tried to
+hold me up for a bonus, hinting around about what he could do if he
+wanted to throw the gaff into us. As I say, I sized it up, and took snap
+judgment on him--pulled the Montana racket and gave him twenty-four
+hours' start of the police."
+
+The vice-president frowned and shook his head. "You took a chance--a
+long chance, Kittredge! Twenty-four hours gave him all the time he
+needed to fall afoul of young Blount."
+
+The big superintendent grinned amiably.
+
+"The senator helped out on that," he explained.
+
+"The senator? How was that?"
+
+"It's the first time he has shown any part of his hand to me in the
+entire campaign. About an hour after I had shot Tom Gryson to pieces a
+note came down from the Inter-Mountain, asking me to come up. I didn't
+get to see the senator himself, but Mrs. Blount gave me the dope. As a
+result, young Blount got a hurry telegram from you, directing him to go
+to Lewiston at once in that right-of-way matter of Brodhead's. I gave
+him my car, and the trip cost him the better part of two whole days."
+
+Again the vice-president shook his head.
+
+"Your methods are always pretty crude, Kittredge," he commented. "You
+took another long chance when you forged my name to a telegram for as
+shrewd a young lawyer as Evan Blount. But go on. You got Blount out of
+the way--then what?"
+
+"Then I went after Gryson again. The little woman's hint hit the
+bull's-eye as true as a rifle bullet. Tom meant to give us away to
+Blount. He haunted Blount's up-town office the better part of the day;
+and finally, in sheer self-defence, I had to tip him off to the police,
+as I had threatened to. Another little mystery bobbed up there. Chief
+Robertson winked one eye at me and said: 'You're too late, Mr.
+Kittredge; your man has already been piped off and he's gone.'"
+
+"Who did it?" snapped McVickar.
+
+"I don't know, and Robertson wouldn't tell me. But I got him to promise
+to put out the reward quietly. If Gryson comes back he'll be nipped
+before he can talk."
+
+"With young Blount laid up, it won't make much difference," was the
+summing-up rejoinder. And then: "I think that is all--for this morning.
+Go around to the telephone-exchange when you get back to town and tell
+the manager that I want a special operator--a man, if he's got one--put
+on this long-distance wire. Have you sent your linemen out to guard the
+wires on the Shoshone mine track?"
+
+"Yes; all the way from the switch to the hills."
+
+"All right; that's all. Keep your finger on the pulse of things in town
+to-day, and arrange with your despatcher to give my operators here a
+clear wire in any direction whenever it's called for. Above all, keep me
+posted, Kittredge; don't let anything get by you, no matter how trivial
+it may seem."
+
+As the superintendent was climbing into his car, the railroad
+electrician who was in charge of the men guarding the telegraph-wires
+came up.
+
+"One minute, Mr. Kittredge. I've put the box in, according to orders--"
+
+"What box, and whose orders?"
+
+"The recording microphone in Mr. McVickar's office, in there; and by his
+orders, I guess--at least they came from one of his men. We're needing a
+couple more batteries, and I was just wondering if it'd be all right to
+take 'em from that gasolene unit-car. We could put 'em back afterwards."
+
+"Yes; take 'em wherever you can find 'em," said the superintendent, who
+was thinking pointedly of other things just then; and the permission
+given, he started his motor and drove away.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+BLOOD AND IRON
+
+
+Ten o'clock in the Saturday forenoon marked the time of Superintendent
+Kittredge's flying visit to his chief's headquarters-on-the-field at the
+head of Shonoho Canyon; and at that hour Evan Blount, blinking dizzily,
+and with his head bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of
+all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was
+letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that
+the drum-beating clamor might be minimized to some bearable degree.
+
+"You are feeling better now?" suggested the volunteer nurse, going to
+adjust the window-curtains for the better comfort of the blinking and
+aching eyes.
+
+The victim of the hook-and-ladder squad's mascot answered qualitatively.
+
+"I feel as if I had been having an argument with a battering-ram and had
+come off second-best. I've been out of my head, haven't I?"
+
+"A little, yes; but that was to be expected. You were pretty badly
+hurt."
+
+"Have I been talking?"
+
+"Not very much--nothing intelligible." The little lady had drawn her
+chair to the window and was busying herself with the never-finished
+embroidery.
+
+"What hit me--was it the truck?"
+
+"No; some of the people in the street said it was a dog; a coach-dog
+running and jumping at the heads of the fire-horses. In falling you
+struck your head against the iron grating of a sewer inlet."
+
+"Umph!" said Blount, and the face-wrinkling which was meant to be a
+sardonic smile turned itself into a painful grin. "Shot to death by a
+dog! Blenkinsop or some of the others ought to have run that for a
+head-line." Then, with a twist of the hot eyeballs: "This isn't my room.
+Where am I?"
+
+"You are in the spare room of our suite. Your father had you brought
+here so that we could take care of you properly. But you mustn't talk
+too much; it's the doctor's orders."
+
+Blount lay for a long time watching her as she passed the needle in and
+out through the bit of snowy linen stretched upon the tiny
+embroidery-ring. She had fine eyes, he admitted; eyes with the little
+downward curve in brow and lid at the outer corners--the curve of
+allurement, he had heard it called. Also, her hands were shapely and
+pretty. He recalled the saying that a woman may keep her age out of her
+face, but her hands will betray her. Mrs. Honoria's hands were still
+young; they looked almost as young as Patricia's, he decided. At the
+comparison he broke over the rule of silence.
+
+"Does Patricia know?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly. She has been here nearly all morning. She wouldn't let
+anybody else hold your head while the doctor was sewing it up."
+
+"I know," he returned; "that is a part of her--of her special training:
+first aid to the injured, and all that. They teach it in the German
+sociological schools she attended last year."
+
+"Oh, yes; I see"--with a malicious little smile to accentuate the
+curving downdroop of the pretty eyelids. "You mean that she was just
+getting a bit of practice. I wondered why she was so willing; most young
+women are so silly about the sight of a little blood. Don't you think
+you'd better try to sleep for a while? Doctor Dillon said it would be
+good for you if you could."
+
+"Heavens and earth!" he chanted impatiently; "I'm not sick!" And then,
+with a sharp fear stabbing him: "What day is this, please?"
+
+She looked up with a smile. "Are you wondering if you have lost a day?
+You haven't. The fire was at three o'clock this morning, and this is
+Saturday."
+
+As if the naming of the day had been a spell to strike him dumb, Blount
+shut his eyes and groped helplessly for some hand-hold upon the suddenly
+rehabilitated responsibilities. Saturday--the day when Gryson would
+return with the proofs which, if they were to serve any good end, must
+be given the widest possible publicity in the two days remaining before
+the election. Blount recalled his carefully laid plans: he had intended
+giving Collins and the two record clerks a half-holiday, so that Gryson
+might come and go unnoticed. Also, he had meant to make a definite
+appointment with Blenkinsop and the representative of the United Press,
+to the end that there might be no delay in the firing of the mine.
+Lastly, Gryson must be shielded and gotten out of the city in safety; so
+much the traitor had a right to demand if he should risk his liberty and
+his life by returning with the evidence.
+
+It was a hideous tangle to owe itself to the joyous gambollings of the
+firemen's mascot dog. And there was more to it than the hopeless
+smashing of the Saturday's plans. Into the midst of the mordant
+reflections, and adding a sting which was all its own, came the thought
+of this newest obligation laid upon him by his father and his father's
+wife. They had taken him in and were loading him down with kinsman gifts
+of care and loving-kindness, while his purpose had been--must still
+be--to strike back like a merciless enemy. He remembered the old fable
+of the adder warmed to life in a man's bosom, and it left him sick and
+nerveless.
+
+None the less, the obsession of the indomitable purpose persisted,
+gripping him like the compelling hand of a giant in whose grasp he was
+powerless. For a time he sought to escape, not realizing that the
+obsession was the call of the blood passed on from the men of his race
+who, with axe and rifle, had hewn and fought their way in the primeval
+wilderness, and would not be denied. Neither did he suspect that the
+dominating passion driving him on was his best gift from the man
+against whom he was pitting his strength. What he did presently realize
+was that the giant grip of purpose was not to be broken; and thereupon a
+vast cunning came to possess him. He must have time and a chance to plan
+again: if he should feign sleep, perhaps the woman whose presence and
+personality were shackling the inventive thought would go away and leave
+him free to think.
+
+She did go after a while, though so noiselessly that when he opened his
+eyes it was with the fear that he should see her still bending over the
+little embroidery frame at the window. Finding himself alone, he sat up
+in bed and gave the broken head an opportunity to blot him out if it
+could. For a little space the walls of the room became as the interior
+of a hollow peg-top, spinning furiously with a noise like the rushing of
+many waters. After the surroundings had resumed their normal figurings
+he rose to his knees. There was another grapple with the whirling
+peg-top, and again he mastered the dizzying confusion. Made bold by
+success, he got his feet on the floor and stood up, clinging to the
+brass foot-rail of the bed until the unstable encompassments had once
+more come to rest.
+
+By this time he was able to conquer all save the throbbing headache.
+Shuffling first to one door and then to the other, he shot the bolts
+against intrusion. Then he staggered across to the dressing-case and
+took a look at himself in the glass. The bandaged head, with its
+haggard, pain-distorted face grimacing back at him, extorted a grunt of
+sardonic disapproval, but the mirror answered the query which had sent
+him stumbling across to it. The bandage was comparatively small and
+tightly drawn; a soft hat could be worn over it--the hat would cover and
+decently hide it.
+
+Next he found his clothes, those he had been wearing at the time of the
+accident. Somebody had been thoughtful enough to have them cleaned and
+pressed; from which he argued that the plunging fall on the wet asphalt
+had been demoralizing in more ways than one. Continuing the experimental
+venture, he walked back and forth and up and down until he could do it
+without clutching at the bed-rails to save himself from falling. Then he
+reshot the door-bolts and went back to bed to await developments.
+
+The first of these came when Patricia brought his luncheon. He had been
+wondering if she would be the one to come; wondering and hoping. With
+the unfilial purpose driving him on, there were added twinges at the
+thought of his father's wife going on piling the mountain of obligation
+higher and still higher by waiting upon him, and thus reminding him at
+every turn of the adder fable. With Patricia it was different.
+
+"Good morning," he grimaced, when Patricia came in with the daintily
+appointed server. "Getting a bit more of the first-aid practice, are
+you?"
+
+"I am obeying orders," she flashed back, when she had shaken up the
+pillows and placed the appetizing meal within his reach. "Mrs. Blount
+said I'd probably have a less disturbing influence upon you than she
+would. Shall I feed you?"
+
+"Good heavens, no! I'm not that near dead, I hope! If you don't believe
+it, you may sit down and watch me eat--if you're not missing your own
+luncheon."
+
+"Nurses have no regular meal-times," she retorted. And then: "You are
+feeling a great deal better, aren't you?"
+
+"Much better--since you came. Did they tell you it was a dog?"
+
+She nodded, and he went on.
+
+"It was my unlucky night, I guess. Did the fire burn up my office? I
+forgot to ask Mrs. Blount about that."
+
+"No; it was a building across the street from the Temple Court."
+
+"'Small favors thankfully received,'" he quoted, resolutely pushing a
+fresh recurrence of the tomtom beatings into the background; "small
+favors and larger ones in proportion--this broth, for example. It's
+simply delicious. I hadn't realized how hungry I was."
+
+"The broth ought to be good; I made it myself, you know."
+
+"You did? Where, for pity's sake?"
+
+"In the hotel kitchen. The _chef_ was furious at first. He twirled his
+Napoleon-III mustaches and sputtered and swelled up like an angry old
+turkey. But when I talked nice to him in his own beloved Bordelaise he
+let me do anything I pleased."
+
+Blount looked up quickly, and the movement brought the head-throbbings
+back with disconcerting celerity.
+
+"You are cruelly kind to me, Patricia; everybody is kind to me. And I'm
+not needing kindness just now," he ended.
+
+"Aren't you? I don't agree with you, and I'm sure your father and Mrs.
+Blount wouldn't." Then she went on to tell him how they had all been up,
+watching the progress of the fire from their windows, when the word came
+that he had been hurt in the street. Also, she told how his father had
+impatiently smashed the telephone because, the wires having been cut and
+tangled in the fire, he could get no response, and how, thereupon, he
+had turned the entire night force of the hotel out to go in search of a
+doctor. "But with all that, he couldn't stand it to look on while the
+doctor was taking the stitches," she added. "He turned his back and
+tramped over here to the window; and I could hear him gritting his teeth
+and--and swearing."
+
+If Evan Blount ate faster than a sick man should, it was because there
+are limits to the finest fortitude. Patricia ran on cheerfully,
+minimizing her own part in the first-aid incidents, and magnifying the
+anxious and affectionate concern of the senator and his wife. He
+listened because he could not help it; but when he had finished, and she
+was inquiring if there was anything else she could do for him, he
+dissembled, saying that he would try to sleep, and asking her to shut
+out more of the daylight and to deny him to everybody until evening.
+
+She promised; but naturally enough, with the dreadful responsibility
+drawing nearer with every hour-striking of the tiny leather-cased
+travelling-clock on the dresser, sleep was out of the question for him.
+Hot-eyed and restless, he wore out the long afternoon in feverish
+impatience, slipping now and then into the shadow land of delirium when
+the pain was severest, but clinging always to the obsessing idea. At
+whatever cost, the crisis must find him resolute to do his part. Gryson
+must be met, the evidence of fraud must be secured, and the fraud itself
+must be defeated.
+
+The bright autumn day was fading to its twilight, and the shadows were
+gathering around his bed, when Patricia tiptoed in to ask, first, if he
+were awake, and, next, what he would like to have for his supper.
+Exhausted by the waiting battle, he answered briefly: he was not hungry;
+if he could be left alone again, with the assurance that no one would
+come to disturb him, it was all he would ask. He tried to say it
+crustily, with the irritable impatience of the convalescent--dissembling
+again. But the young woman with a self-sacrificial career in view had
+lost none of her womanly gift of sympathetic intuition.
+
+"You are not so well this evening," she said softly, laying a cool palm
+on his forehead. "I think I'd better telephone Doctor Dillon."
+
+Now the thing for Patricia's lover to do was obvious. With pity thus
+trembling on the very crumbling brink of love, the opportunity which
+months of patient wooing had not evoked lay ready to his hand. It was a
+fair measure of the mastery an obsession may obtain--the lover's ability
+to thrust the gentler emotion into the background, to feign restless
+irritation under the passion-stirring touch, and to say: "No; I don't
+want Dillon or anybody; I want to be left alone. Please latch the door
+when you go out, and tell father and his--and Mrs. Blount that I don't
+want to be disturbed."
+
+She took the curt dismissal in silence, and after she was gone Blount
+sat up in bed and cursed himself fervently and painstakingly for the
+little brutality. But the remorseful cursings took nothing from the grim
+determination which had prompted the brutality. The dusk was thickening,
+and the street electrics were turning the avenue into a broad highway of
+radiance. Blount got up, and with a disheartening renewal of the
+splitting headache, began to dress, but there were many pauses in which
+he had to sit on the edge of the bed to wait for the throbbing pain to
+subside.
+
+The next step was to reach his own room, two floors above, and he let
+himself cautiously into the corridor and locked the door from the
+outside. Making a long round to avoid the elevators, he dragged himself
+up two flights of stairs and so came to his goal.
+
+Enveloped in a rain-coat, and with a soft hat drawn well over his eyes,
+he compassed the escape from the upper floor by means of the remote
+stair he had used in ascending, and so reached the ground-floor.
+Fortunately, the lobby was crowded; and turning up the collar of the
+rain-coat to hide the bandage, Blount worked his way toward the
+revolving doors. More than once in the dodging progress he rubbed
+shoulders with men whom he knew, and who knew him; but the shielding
+hat-brim and the muffling rain-coat saved him.
+
+Reaching the street, he did not attempt to walk to the Temple Court.
+Instead, he crept around to a garage near the hotel and hired a
+two-seated road-car. Quite naturally, the garage-keeper wanted to send
+his own driver, and Blount counted it as an unavoidable misfortune that
+he was obliged to give his name, and to hear the motor-liveryman say:
+"Oh, sure! I didn't recognize you, Mr. Blount. I reckon Senator Dave's
+son can have anything o' mine that he wants."
+
+Blount drove the road-car all the way around the Capitol grounds to come
+into his office street inconspicuously. Across from the Temple Court the
+fire ruins were still smouldering, and there was an acrid odor of stale
+smoke in the air. For a full third of the block the street was littered
+with débris. Blount stopped his machine at the nearest corner and got
+out to reconnoitre the office-building entrance. In the vestibule he
+glanced up at the face of the illuminated wall-clock, making a hasty
+calculation based upon the leaving time of the east-bound Overland.
+There were fifty minutes to spare, and when he reached his office, and
+had turned on the desk-light and dropped heavily into his chair, he
+called up the railroad station to inquire about the train. The Overland
+was reported ten minutes late. If Gryson should show up in time, this
+earliest outgoing train must be made to serve as the means for his
+flight.
+
+Blount had scarcely formulated the condition when the office-door winged
+noiselessly, and the man himself, hollow-eyed and haggard, stumbled in.
+As once before, Blount got up and went to shut the door and lock it.
+When he came back, Gryson had taken his seat in a chair at the desk-end,
+where the light from the shaded working-lamp fell upon his sinister
+face.
+
+"Well, I've been all th' way t' hell and back ag'in," he announced in a
+grating whisper. "They've put th' reward out, and three times since last
+night some of me own pals 've tried to snitch on me." Then he drew a
+carefully wrapped package from its hiding-place under his coat and laid
+it on the desk. "It's all there," he went on in the same rasping
+undertone. "Some of 'em give up to get square wit' th' bosses, and some
+of 'em had to have a gun shoved in their faces. No matter; they've come
+across--the last damn' wan of 'em; and th' affidavits are there,
+too--when I c'd get next to a dub of a not'ry that'd make 'em."
+
+Blount did not untie the package, nor did he cross-examine the traitor.
+His head was throbbing again almost unbearably, and he was beginning to
+fear that he might not last to carry out the plan of safe-conduct for
+the informer. Slipping the precious package into an inner pocket of the
+enveloping coat, he took a compact roll of bank-bills from a drawer in
+the desk and gave it to Gryson, saying tersely: "That isn't a bribe, you
+understand; it's merely to help you make your getaway. Can you manage to
+ride on Transcontinental trains without being recognized offhand?"
+
+Gryson pulled a false beard from his pocket and showed it. "Wit' that,
+and me old hat, I've been keepin' most o' th' boys from tippin' me off,"
+he said.
+
+"All right; here's the lay-out. You have earned immunity, so far as this
+latest raid on you is concerned, by turning State's evidence. But you've
+got to move on, and keep moving. Do you get that?"
+
+The fugitive nodded, and Blount got up to stagger across to the office
+wardrobe, from which he took the extra rain-coat kept there for
+emergencies.
+
+"Here, get into this and go down-stairs. At the corner above, you'll
+find a two-seated motor-car backed against the curb. Do you know enough
+about machinery to start an auto-engine?"
+
+Gryson nodded again. "I'd ought to, seein' that I've been a gang boss in
+a shop that made 'em."
+
+"Good enough; crank the motor, climb in, and wait. I'll do the rest."
+
+Five minutes later, Blount had stumbled out of the elevator at the
+ground-floor and was groping his way along the sidewalk toward the
+corner--groping because the pain had become blinding again and the
+street-lights were taking on many-colored and fantastic brilliancies.
+
+When he finally found the car, it was mainly by the sense of hearing;
+the motor was drumming softly under the hood, and there was a blur in
+the mechanician's seat which answered for the crouching figure of the
+ward-worker. By a supreme effort of will Blount swung himself up behind
+the steering-wheel and let the clutch in. Luckily, the street was clear
+of vehicles and he made the turn in safety; but fully realizing his
+handicap, he steered straight away from the business district, and
+making a wide circuit through the residence quarter, brought the car out
+in the eastern suburb at the beginning of a road paralleling the
+Transcontinental tracks.
+
+With the lights of the city dropping away to the rear, and the drumming
+motor quickened to racing speed, he told the fugitive from justice what
+was to be done and the manner of its doing. Twenty-two miles out they
+would reach the coal-mine station of Wardlaw, a few minutes ahead of the
+Overland. Since all east-bound trains stopped at the coal-mines to coal
+the engines, the way of escape would be open.
+
+Something more than a wordless, space-devouring half-hour beyond this,
+Blount applied the brakes and dropped his passenger at the rear of the
+small iron-roofed building which served as the railroad station for the
+coal-mines. Far to the rear on the twenty-two-mile tangent the headlight
+of the coming train showed like a blazing star low on the western
+horizon.
+
+"Go and blacken your face and hands at one of the slack dumps and pass
+yourself for a miner quitting his job," was Blount's parting suggestion;
+but the hollow-eyed fugitive had a last word to say, too, and he said
+it.
+
+"I've been t' hell and back, as I told you, and 'twas f'r on'y th' wan
+thing: give me your word, Evan Blount, that you'll chop th' damn' tree
+down and let it lie where it falls! That's all I'm askin', this trip."
+
+"You needn't lose any sleep worrying about that," was the curt reply;
+and without waiting for the train arrival, Blount turned the car and
+sent it racing on the way back to the city.
+
+By all the tests he knew how to apply, he was little better than a dead
+man when he returned the hired auto to the side-street garage and made
+his halting way around to the hotel. He had long since given up the idea
+of trying to see Blenkinsop. He knew that the editor would not be in his
+office much before ten o'clock, and the two-hour wait was not to be
+endured.
+
+Clinging desperately to the single purpose of getting back to the
+deserted room before his absence should be discovered, and weighed down
+by a crushing sense of the immorality of the step he had just taken in
+bargaining with a hunted criminal and in conniving at his escape, he
+pressed on, pushing through the revolving doors and slipping once more
+into the Saturday evening lobby throng. Edging around to the stair, he
+took all the cautious steps in reverse; ascending first to his own room
+to leave the rain-coat and the hat, and afterward feeling his way down
+the servants' stair and through the lower corridor to the locked door in
+his father's private suite.
+
+Past this he had a hazy notion that part of him--the observing
+part--stood aside and looked on while the other part slowly and
+painfully struggled out of its clothes and into its pajamas. Also he saw
+the other part, after it had carefully secreted the wrapped package of
+papers under the mattress, beat the pillows feebly and bury its head in
+them. After that there was a great blank.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+APPLES OF GOLD
+
+
+Notwithstanding the pillow-muffled plunge which was almost a lapse into
+the coma of utter exhaustion, Evan Blount awoke early on the Sunday
+morning, refreshed and measurably free from pain. Since the sun was just
+beginning to gild the lofty finial on the dome of the Capitol opposite,
+there was no one stirring as yet in the adjoining rooms of the suite,
+and the streets were silent save for the chanting cries of the newsboys.
+
+Slipping out of bed, Blount crossed to the window and threw it open. It
+was good to be able to stand and walk without wincing; and a breath of
+the sunrise breeze sweeping down from the eastern hills was like a
+draught of invigorating wine. As he leaned out for an instant to make
+sure that not even the height would bring a return of the vertigo, the
+wail of the nearest newsboy became shrilly articulate: _"Here's yer
+Morning Plainsman! All erbout the great election frauds!"_
+
+Hardly crediting his ears, Blount listened again, and when the cry was
+repeated he closed the window softly and sat down to grapple with this
+newest development of his problem. Did the newsboy's selling-cry mean
+that Blenkinsop had found out for himself, and independently, about the
+falsified registration lists? If so, there would be no public
+vindication for one Evan Blount; but also--thank God!--no need for a son
+to blazon himself to the world as his father's accuser. A great wave of
+thankfulness rolled over Blount's head, submerging him and turning the
+exclamation which sprang to his lips into a pæan of rejoicing. Instantly
+he saw himself throwing up his railroad connection and taking his
+rightful place as his father's counsel and defender. Here, at last, was
+a cause into which he could fling himself body and soul. True, people
+would say that he had been in league with the corporations, the boss,
+and the machine, from the first, but what did that matter?
+
+But would his father need a defender? No shadow of doubt as to this was
+admissible in the face of the accumulating evidence, he told himself.
+From the opening day of the campaign the machine and the corporations
+had been working hand in hand; Gryson and his fellow-crooks were the
+sufficient proof; and besides.... Blount reached under the mattress and
+drew out the wrapped package, untying the string with fingers that
+trembled. A cursory examination of the affidavits sufficed. In Gryson's
+sworn statement, and in two others, the "Big Boss" was inculpated
+definitely and by name.
+
+Blount glanced at the little clock on the dressing-case. The early
+Sunday morning silence still prevailed in the great hotel, and his
+resolve was quickly taken. Dressing hurriedly, he went up to his own
+room, and after a shave, a bath, and a freshening change which included
+the removal of the disfiguring bandage, he put on a close-fitting silk
+travelling-cap under the soft hat and went down to the lobby.
+
+There were but few guests stirring at that hour, and Blount had the
+writing-room to himself when he bought a copy of _The Plainsman_ and
+turned anxiously to the editorial page. After the first thrilling of
+relief born of the newsboy's cry, an unnerving fear had crept in to
+whisper that possibly the facts might not bear out the thankful
+assumption. A rapid reading of Blenkinsop's editorial confirmed the
+fear, and the reader's lips grew dry and his breath came quickly when he
+realized that the submerging wave of thankfulness had risen only to be
+driven back. Blenkinsop had no facts, no evidence; he was merely hitting
+out blindly with a general accusation of fraud which he made no effort
+to substantiate or prove!
+
+Evan Blount saw the thorny path stretching away before him again, and he
+rose up to walk in it like a man. As once before, he went down to the
+railroad restaurant for his breakfast, seeking solitude, and the meal
+had been half-absently eaten before he had readjusted himself,
+sorrowfully but firmly, to the unchanged situation. His duty was as
+clearly defined now as it had been the day previous, or at any time in
+the past. There was nothing changed, nothing different, save that a new
+complication had arisen in the crucial shortness of the interval for
+action. Knowing human nature a little, he knew how difficult it is to
+arouse an effective public sentiment on the eve of an election, no
+matter how important the issues involved. In a hard school of experience
+the voter has learned to discount the final-moment cry of fraud. Would
+an exposure, however convincing, appearing only in the Monday and
+Tuesday morning newspapers have the desired effect?
+
+Blount walked by devious ways from the railroad station to the Temple
+Court, and secluded himself behind the locked door of his office to have
+a chance to think the problem out to some effective conclusion. What
+should he do? Should he find Blenkinsop and get him and the United Press
+representative together at once, laying before them the damning evidence
+and telling them to use it as they could? Or was there some surer way of
+firing the mine of protest and exposure?
+
+There was one other way, at least, but the mere thought of it made him
+sick and shaken. As an upright citizen and a member of the bar, was it
+not his duty to lay the evidence, not before the public in the
+newspapers, but before a competent court of justice? And in that event,
+was there in this land of graft and corruption a judge sufficiently
+fearless and incorruptible to act with the needful vigor and promptness?
+
+When Blount asked himself this question, the answer came quickly. Though
+it was the common accusation, well or ill founded, that the lower courts
+of the State were the creatures of the corporations, the judges on the
+supreme bench still commanded the respect of the people. Hemingway, the
+chief justice, was peculiarly a man for a crisis; strong, honest, and
+entirely fearless; a man who would not stop to haggle over nice
+questions of precedent and jurisdiction where the public welfare
+demanded prompt and effective action.
+
+For a long half-hour Blount sat staring absently at the desk litter,
+trying to decide between the two courses open to him. He knew that his
+father and Judge Hemingway had been lifelong friends, and this added
+another drop of bitterness to a cup which was already overflowing. None
+the less, he was confident that the judge would do his duty as he saw
+it. It was a merciless thing to do--to make this just judge the slayer
+of the friend of his youth; but at the end Blount reached for the
+telephone-book and began to search for the chief justice's residence
+number. Before he could find it the phone bell rang.
+
+"Well?" he answered shortly, putting the receiver to his ear.
+
+It was Miss Anners who was at the other end of the wire, and he was
+instantly aware of the note of anxiety in her voice.
+
+"_Evan!_" she exclaimed; "you don't know what a fright you have given
+us! What are you doing at your office when you ought to be here and in
+bed?"
+
+Blount drew the desk instrument closer and tried to put her off lightly.
+
+"I'm all right again. I turned out early this morning to make up for
+lost time. You wouldn't expect me to stay in bed for more than a day to
+oblige a common, ordinary coach-dog, would you?"
+
+"Yes, but see here--listen: Doctor Dillon has been here, and he is
+perfectly shocked. He says there may be complications, and the very
+least you can do is to be careful. Your father has had the hotel boys
+looking everywhere for you. When are you coming back?"
+
+Here was the direct question which Blount had been dreading. Now, if
+never before, the wretched involvement had reached a point beyond which
+it was impossible to follow his father's plea for a continuance of the
+kinsman amenities.
+
+"I think you had better leave me out of any plans you are making for the
+day," he answered evasively. "I shall be pretty busy."
+
+"No--listen," she insisted. "It's wrong to work on Sunday, but if you
+will be obstinate, you must stop at luncheon-time. We are going to drive
+out to Wartrace Hall this afternoon; Doctor Dillon says we positively
+_must_ take you away from town and keep you quiet for a few days."
+
+"I can't go with you," he answered brusquely, adding: "And I'm not sure
+that I can join you at luncheon. There is so much to be done that I
+shall probably drop around to the club for a bite at one o'clock. Don't
+wait for me, and don't worry. Above all, please don't tell anybody where
+I am--not even Dick Gantry."
+
+He was considerably relieved when she said "Good-by" rather abruptly,
+and rang off. None the less, he thought it a little strange that his
+father should be planning to leave the capital on the very eve of the
+great struggle. Was he so sure that nothing could happen within the next
+twenty-four hours? Leaving the query answerless, he returned to the
+interrupted duty. Deliberately, with the open telephone-book before him,
+he sought and found Judge Hemingway's number; and a few seconds later he
+had the judge's house in Mesa Circle, with the judge himself answering
+his call. The wire conversation was brief and to the point. Cautiously,
+and in well-guarded phrase, Blount stated his case. By a series of
+correlated incidents which could be explained later, documentary
+evidence of a great conspiracy had fallen into his hands; would the
+judge step aside so far as to accord him a Sunday interview, taking his
+word for it that the emergency was most urgent, and that the time was
+too short to admit of the ordinary methods of procedure?
+
+The judge's answer was satisfactory, though Blount fancied it was rather
+reluctantly given. A family engagement--an accepted luncheon
+invitation--would intervene; but between four and five o'clock in the
+afternoon the chief justice would be in his chambers in the Capitol
+building, and would be glad to have the son of his old friend the
+senator come at that hour.
+
+With time on his hands, Blount squared himself at his desk and began to
+set his railroad house in order. Now that the dreadful step was
+practically taken, he was free to wind up the business of his office,
+leaving things in order for his successor. Once he had thought that he
+could not stay in the capital or in the West after the cataclysm. But
+now the manlier thought prevailed. A hard fate was making him his
+father's betrayer; but beyond the betrayal, with the bare duty done, he
+would take his place as his father's son, proving his love and loyalty
+by going down with him to any depth of infamy into which the cataclysm
+might drag him.
+
+Since there was much to be done in the winding-up task, the forenoon
+fled quickly, and the hands of the small paper-weight clock on the desk
+were pointing to a quarter of two when Blount snapped the rubber band
+upon the final file of referred papers. There were other odds and ends
+to be set in order, but he determined to let them wait until he had
+eaten. A scant half-hour in the club grill-room was all he allowed
+himself, and at a quarter past two he was back at his desk, preparing to
+make the cleaning-up task complete. Between four and five, Judge
+Hemingway had said; and Blount began on one of the odds and ends, which
+was the writing of his letter of resignation from the railroad service.
+
+He was enclosing the letter when there came a light tap at the
+office-door, and then the door itself opened to admit Patricia--a
+Patricia bright-eyed and determined, alluringly charming in her tightly
+veiled driving-hat, muffling motor-coat, and dainty gauntlets.
+
+"You?" said Blount not too hospitably. "I thought you said something
+about going to Wartrace?"
+
+"So I did, and so I am," she asserted, coming to sit in the chair last
+occupied by one Thomas Gryson.
+
+"And the others?" he queried.
+
+"They have just left; gone on ahead in the touring-car. I was deputed to
+bring you."
+
+"But I told you this morning that I couldn't go, and I can't!" he
+protested.
+
+She looked him squarely in the eye. "Evan, you don't dare tell me why
+you can't!"
+
+"Business," he pleaded.
+
+"That may be half of the truth, but it isn't any more than half." Then
+she made the direct appeal: "I wish you'd tell me, Evan. I know a
+little--just the little that Mrs. Blount has seen fit to tell me--and no
+more. There is trouble threatening; some dreadful trouble. I saw it
+yesterday when you were so miserable; I can see it in your eyes this
+minute."
+
+Blount got up and began to pace the floor so that she might not see his
+eyes. He was no more proof against such an appeal than any lover gladly
+ready to bare his soul to the woman chosen out of a world of women for
+his confidant and second self would be.
+
+"I want to tell you," he affirmed, wheeling abruptly to face her; "I
+wanted to tell you yesterday, only it was too horrible. You will know it
+all when I say that by this time to-morrow the whole State will be
+ringing with the story of David Blount's degradation and ruin; and
+I--his only son, Patricia--I shall be the one who will have betrayed him
+and brought it to pass!"
+
+She blanched a little at that, and there was a great horror in her
+eyes. But he noted at the moment, and remembered it afterward, that she
+did not push him into the harrowing details, as another woman might have
+done.
+
+"You are very sure, I suppose?" she said gently.
+
+He drew the packet of affidavits from his pocket.
+
+"This is the evidence: sworn statements incriminating my father and many
+others."
+
+"You had those papers yesterday?"
+
+"No. I got up last night to keep my appointment with the man who brought
+them. But you see now why I can't go to Wartrace with you."
+
+"I see that you are going to do something for which you will never,
+never be able to forgive yourself," she said gravely. "You are going to
+make use of those papers?"
+
+He sat down and stared gloomily at her. "Patricia, I have taken a solemn
+oath. The law which I have sworn to uphold is greater than--" He was
+going to say, "greater than any man's claim for immunity," but she
+finished the sentence otherwise for him.
+
+"Is greater than your love for your father. I suppose I ought to be able
+to understand that, but I am not. Evan, you can't do it--you mustn't do
+it; every drop of that father's blood in your veins ought to cry out
+against it."
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed with a sudden indrawing of his breath. "You don't
+know what it is costing me!"
+
+"Truly, I don't," she asserted calmly. "Your father is a great and good
+man. If he had a daughter instead of a son, she would know and
+understand." Then, in a quick and generous upflash of feeling: "I wish
+he had a daughter--I wish I were she! I should try to show him that
+blood is thicker than water!"
+
+"You wish--you were--his daughter? Do you realize what you are saying?"
+Then he went on brokenly: "_Don't_, Patricia, girl--for God's sake don't
+tempt me to do evil that good may come! Can't you understand how I am
+driven to do this thing--how every fibre of me is rebelling against the
+savage necessity? God knows, I'd give anything I am or hope to be if the
+necessity could be wiped out!"
+
+Instantly she changed her attack.
+
+"But I say you can not do it. You are a brave man, Evan; I know, because
+I have seen you tried. You mustn't turn cowardly now."
+
+"Nor shall I!" he countered quickly. "But I don't understand."
+
+"Don't you? Isn't it cowardly to strike this cruel blow in the dark? You
+_can't_ do this thing without giving your father the warning that you
+would give your bitterest enemy--you simply can't, and still be the man
+I have known and l--liked for two whole years!"
+
+"Father's going to Wartrace this afternoon is merely an added twist of
+the thumb-screws," he protested in fresh wretchedness. "I should have
+gone to him first--I meant to go to him first. From what you said over
+the telephone this morning I gathered that the Wartrace trip was to be
+made on my account, and I hoped, I believed, it would be given up when I
+refused to go. Now I can not see him first; the time is too short. That
+which is to be done must be done to-day--this afternoon; otherwise it
+will be too late. Don't make it any harder for me, Patricia. Surely you
+can see how hard it is, in any case!"
+
+"As I said a moment ago, I can see that you are about to do something
+for which, in all the years to come, you will never be able to get your
+own forgiveness. Oh, I know," she went on bitterly. "You will tell me
+that I am a woman, with only a woman's standards, which are valueless
+when they get mixed up with the emotions. But I can tell you that I know
+your father better than you do--much better. And I believe in him,
+utterly, absolutely. Won't you give him a chance, Evan? Won't you show
+him those dreadful papers and ask him what he will do when you have
+betrayed him?"
+
+Blount winced painfully at the hard word, and then he remembered that he
+had been the first to apply it. But he answered her in the only way that
+seemed possible:
+
+"The time: I have promised to meet Chief Justice Hemingway at his
+chambers between four and five this afternoon."
+
+"Chief Justice Hemingway?" she queried. "Why, he--" she broke off
+suddenly and sprang from her chair. "I have the little car here in the
+street. It was Mrs. Blount's proposal; she said you would change your
+mind if I came after you and offered to drive you. Come! I'll promise to
+bring you back before five o'clock. I know the time is awfully short,
+but I can do it!"
+
+If Blount hesitated it was only because her beauty and her eagerness
+thrilled him until, for the moment, he could think of nothing else. Then
+he closed his desk quickly and struggled into his overcoat, saying: "It
+shall be as you wish. Let's go."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+IN WHICH PATRICIA DRIVES
+
+
+For fifteen miles north of the capital the Quaretaro road is a
+well-kept, level speedway, and Miss Anners amply proved the worth of her
+summer's training by showing herself a fearless driver. Half an hour
+after the small roadster had left the curb in front of the Temple Court
+Building it was among the hills and climbing to the upper mesa level.
+
+Nearing the mouth of Shonoho Canyon, they overtook and passed a horseman
+turning into the canyon road. The man's horse shied and threatened to
+bolt at sight of the storming car, but Patricia was looking straight
+ahead, and she made no movement to slacken speed. At the passing
+glimpse, Blount's mind went shuttling backward to the homecoming night
+in the Lost Hills, and he made sure he recognized the rider as
+Hathaway's morose henchman, the man Barto.
+
+He wondered vaguely what Barto could be doing at the turn in the
+obstructed side-canyon road, and the wonder went with him while the
+little car was covering the remaining distance and flying up the
+cottonwood-shaded avenue at Wartrace Hall. But a glance at his watch
+made him forget the Barto incident in a heart-warming thrill of
+admiration--the joy of a skilled motorist recognizing kindred skill in
+another. The thirty miles from the city had been made in something under
+fifty minutes.
+
+When she brought the roadster to a stand at the carriage entrance,
+Patricia spoke for the first time since she had taken the wheel for the
+record-breaking drive.
+
+"Find your father quickly and say to him what you have come to say. When
+you are ready to go back, I'll keep my promise and drive you."
+
+"That won't be at all necessary," he protested, getting out to stand
+with his hand on the dash. "I am perfectly well able to drive myself;
+and, besides, it would leave you at the wrong end of the road, and
+alone."
+
+"Don't stand there talking about it," she commanded. "Go and do what you
+have to do. I'll wait here."
+
+Blount turned away and found old Barnabas holding the door open for him.
+A word passed, and the old negro bobbed his head. "Yas, sah; Marsteh
+David's in de libra'y," was the answer to Blount's query, and, throwing
+his overcoat and soft hat aside, the bearer of burdens not his own
+walked quickly through the hall and let himself into the room of trial.
+
+The bright autumn day was cool--cool enough to warrant the crackling
+wood-fire on the library hearth. With his easy chair planted at the
+cosey corner of the fire and an open book on the table at his elbow,
+the senator sat smoking his long-stemmed pipe in the Sunday afternoon
+quiet. Mingled with the fire-snapping there were faint tappings, as if
+one of the cottonwoods, growing too near the house, were sending twig
+signals to the inmates.
+
+The senator moved the open book a little farther aside when his son made
+an abrupt entrance into the cheerful room.
+
+"Well, son, you made out to get here after so long a time, didn't you?"
+he said gently. And then: "How's the broken head to-day?"
+
+"Better," answered the son shortly, adding: "It's the least of my
+troubles just now."
+
+"That's good," was the hearty comment. Then, with the long stem of the
+pipe pointing to a Morris-chair: "Draw up and sit down. I reckon the
+drive has tired you some, even if you won't admit it. Where's the little
+girl?"
+
+Evan Blount saw instantly that he must be brief and pitiless.
+
+"Patricia is waiting in the car to drive me back to town," he explained,
+forcing himself to speak calmly. "I have an appointment with Chief
+Justice Hemingway which must be kept, and he will wait in his chambers
+in the Capitol only until five o'clock. Father, do you know why I have
+made that appointment?"
+
+The senator wagged his great head in a way which might mean anything or
+nothing, and said: "How should I know, son?"
+
+"I hoped you would know. It's not a very pleasant task for me to tell
+you," the younger man went on, ignoring the chair to which the
+long-stemmed pipe was still pointing. "A short time ago--yesterday, to
+be exact--evidence, legal evidence, of corruption and false registration
+in four of the city wards, and in a number of outlying districts in the
+State, was put into my hands. This evidence incriminates a group of
+ringleaders and a still larger number of election officers. You know
+what I've got to do with it."
+
+The older man nodded slowly.
+
+"Yes, I reckon I know, son; and I'm not saying a word. If you weren't a
+Blount, I might ask if you haven't learned that one of the first rules
+in the book of politics is the one that says we mustn't hang the dirty
+clothes out where everybody can see 'em, but I know better than to say
+anything like that to you."
+
+The young man's heart sank within him. It seemed evident that his father
+was still unsuspecting, still unconscious of the dreadful consequences
+to himself. Only utter frankness could avail now.
+
+"I can't discuss the question of expediency with you," he said hastily,
+"any further than to say that I'd cheerfully give ten years of my life
+to be able to consider it. Let me be perfectly plain: This evidence I am
+speaking of involves you personally. If the papers are put into Judge
+Hemingway's hands there will be a searching investigation, prompt
+indictments, criminal proceedings, and all the disgrace that the widest
+publicity can bring upon the men who are responsible for the present
+desperate state of affairs."
+
+The senator had laid his pipe aside and was staring soberly into the
+fire. "Go on, son," he said quietly; "let's have the rest of it."
+
+"You know what has led up to the present wretched involvement--my
+involvement," Blount went on. "When I took the railroad job, I did it in
+good faith and went about preaching the gospel of the square deal for
+everybody, including the corporations. But in a very short time I
+discovered that my own people were not keeping faith with me; had no
+intention of keeping it. Later on, a number of corporation officials and
+managers, men who had formerly made corrupt deals with the railroad
+company, and are to this day profiting by them, became frightened.
+Assuming that I was the chief broker for the railroad company in the
+present campaign, these men wrote me letters which were in the highest
+degree incriminating."
+
+The big man who was staring into the heart of the fire nodded
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I remember; you told me something about that before, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, and we needn't go into the details again. I meant to use those
+letters as a club to hammer a little honesty into my own employers. Up
+to that time I had been trying to believe that the machine--your
+machine--and the railroad lawbreakers were not one and the same thing."
+
+"But you changed your mind about that?"
+
+"I had to, after I found out that you had corrupted one of my clerks and
+had sent one of your thugs to dynamite my safe. That is past and gone;
+but you can see where it left me. As you and everybody in the State
+know, I had been committing myself publicly everywhere, doing it with
+the assurance that when it came to the pinch I could bring Gantry and
+Kittredge and even Mr. McVickar himself to terms--the terms of honesty
+and fair dealing. With my weapon stolen, I was left helpless, facing the
+certainty that on the day after the election I should be pilloried in
+every hole and corner of my native State as the most shameless liar that
+ever breathed. Do you wonder that I was desperate?"
+
+"No, son; I reckon you wouldn't have been much of a Blount if you hadn't
+been."
+
+"I was desperate. I said to myself that I would find another weapon,
+even if I should have to take a leaf out of your own book, dad, to do
+it. I took the leaf, and I have the weapon. You drove Gryson away, but
+you made one small miscalculation. You didn't believe that his desire
+for revenge would be stronger than his fear of the gallows."
+
+Again the older man nodded thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, son; I know. He came back twice: once when he found you in your
+office last Wednesday night; and again yesterday, or rather last
+evening, when you got out of your bed and went to help him make his
+getaway on the east-bound Overland."
+
+Evan Blount started back, and his exclamation was of pure astoundment.
+
+"You knew all this?" he gasped.
+
+"Oh, yes; I reckon there isn't much happening that such a double-dyed
+old villain as I am doesn't find out, Evan," was the sober rejoinder.
+
+"But, good heavens! if you know so much, you must know what Gryson came
+back for, and what he gave me!"
+
+"Yes; I know that, too. I reckon I might as well make a clean breast of
+it while I'm at it."
+
+"You knew it last night, and yet you didn't send somebody to hold me up
+and take the papers away from me?"
+
+The senator's chuckle rumbled deep in his mighty chest.
+
+"Maybe I was counting a little on the kinship, Evan, boy. Maybe I was
+saying to myself: 'No, I reckon the boy won't do it, after all--not when
+he reads what's set down in the papers; he just naturally couldn't do
+it.'"
+
+"Oh, my Lord, dad!" was the choking response. "Can't you see that you
+are killing me by inches? Can't you see that I've got to choose between
+being a man clear through, or a scoundrel as weak and shifty as any of
+those I have been denouncing? My God, it's terrible!"
+
+"I reckon you're going to choose straight," said the older man, still
+with eyes averted.
+
+"I have chosen," said the son brokenly; "or perhaps it would be truer to
+say that there never has been any choice since the moment when I set my
+foot in the path which has led me thus far on the way to hell. I can
+despise myself utterly for the means I took to secure the evidence, but
+that very lapse makes it all the more needful that I should atone as I
+can."
+
+David Blount rose and put his back to the fire.
+
+"Son, you are a man among a thousand--among ten thousand," he said
+quietly. "When it comes to a pure question of good, old-fashioned right
+and wrong, you can buck up just like your old great-gran'pap, the judge,
+did when he had to sentence one of his own sons for killing an Indian.
+You haven't said it in so many words, so I'll say it for you: you've got
+me, and maybe some others, right where you can shove us into the
+penitentiary. That's about what you're trying to tell me, isn't it?"
+
+"For God's sake, don't put it that way!" Blount protested. "I gave you
+fair warning almost at the first. I've got to fight for the right as I
+see it. If I don't, I shall be less than a man--less than your son.
+Can't you see that it is breaking my heart?"
+
+A silence electrically surcharged with possibilities settled down upon
+the isolated room, with the stillness broken only by the crackling of
+the fire and that other distant tapping as of tree-twigs on the roof. At
+the end of the pause the senator took a forward step and put a hand on
+his son's shoulder.
+
+"I haven't one word to say, Evan, boy," he began slowly. "As you told me
+that first day out here, son, it's your job to hew to the line and let
+the chips fall where they may. You go ahead and do just what seems
+right and law-abiding to you. I'd rather go to jail twice over than have
+you do any different. Is that what you're wanting me to say?"
+
+Blount dropped into a chair, as if the touch on his shoulder had crushed
+him, and covered his face with his hands. It was hard--harder than even
+his own prefigurings had forecast it. Fighting against the patent facts,
+he had been cherishing a lingering hope that his father might be able to
+brush away the cruel necessity at the last moment. But now the hope was
+dead.
+
+It was a long minute before he staggered to his feet and groped his way
+to the door, leaving his father standing before the fire and once more
+puffing absently at the long-stemmed pipe. When old Barnabas had helped
+him into his coat and had given him his hat, he found Patricia still
+sitting in the car, with the motor purring softly under the hood.
+
+"Must you go back?" she queried, when he had descended the steps to
+climb stiffly into the seat beside her.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Your duty is clear?"
+
+"Perfectly clear--now."
+
+"And the consequences?" she asked.
+
+"I can only guess," he muttered. "Ruin and disgrace for all of us, I
+suppose. Of course, you understand that I have resigned from the
+railroad service and shall stand with my father when--when the thing is
+done."
+
+She was backing the little roadster into the circling driveway to turn
+for the start. At the reversing moment she made her final plea.
+
+"Don't do it, Evan--_don't do it!_ I have no more than a woman's reason
+to offer, but I am sure you are opening the door to a lifelong sorrow
+for yourself and--and--for me!"
+
+It was the last two words that steeled him suddenly. Not even at her
+beseeching would he turn aside from the plain path of the oath-bound
+obligation. It struck him like a blow that the turning aside would make
+him forever unworthy of her.
+
+"Take me back to the city as quickly as you can!" he said. "Or, better
+still, stay here and let me have the car. That is my last word."
+
+"You're not fit to drive a car!" she snapped; and for further answer she
+threw the speed lever into the intermediate gear and released the
+clutch. Like a projectile hurled from a catapult, the swift little
+roadster shot away down the cottonwood avenue, and with a jerk of the
+lever into the "high" the second race against time was begun.
+
+For the first few miles Patricia's passenger had all he could do to keep
+his seat. On its upper mesa windings the Quaretaro road follows the
+course of the stream which has been robbed of its waters for the
+cultivated lands, and though the roadway was good the hazards were
+plentiful when taken at speed. More than once Blount caught himself in
+the act of reaching for the steering-wheel, but as often he desisted. As
+on the outward race, Patricia was staring straight ahead, and giving
+the little car every throb of speed there was in its machinery. None the
+less, he could see that she had it under perfect control.
+
+What finally happened came with the suddenness of the thunder-clap
+following a bolt which strikes near at hand. They were on the down-grade
+approach to the mouth of Shonoho Canyon, and they could not see beyond
+the gentle curve to the left, where the smaller gulch found its
+intersection with the main ravine. When they were within a hundred yards
+of the curve the stretch below came into view. Blount had a momentary
+glimpse of some barrier--a pine-tree, as it proved to be--lying across
+the main road. Seeing it, he realized at the same instant that Patricia
+was neither throttling the motor nor applying the brakes. After that he
+had barely time to snap the switch and to throw the heavy wind-shield
+down before the devastating crash came.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+THE GOSSIPING WIRES
+
+
+After his son had left him, the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush remained
+standing before the library fire until he heard the machine-gun exhausts
+of the small roadster distance-diminishing down the driveway avenue.
+Then he stepped aside and pressed the bell-push ordinarily used to
+summon the old negro footman.
+
+In answer to the call a door opened beyond the chimney-jamb, and
+immediately the gentle twig-tapping sounds resolved themselves into the
+clickings of a pair of telegraph relays and the chatter of a typewriter.
+A good-looking young fellow, with his coat off, entered the library,
+carefully closing the door behind him.
+
+"Want to send something, senator?" he asked, whipping a note-book from
+his hip-pocket.
+
+"No, not just this minute. Anything new coming over the wires?"
+
+"Nothing startling. Steuchfield reports from Ophir that we swing the
+miners' vote almost to a man unless something unforeseen breaks loose.
+Hetchy gives us a good word from Twin Buttes; and Griggs, up in the
+Carnadines, wires from Alkire that he has just completed an auto
+canvass of the High Line district. The ranchmen up that way have had a
+pretty bad scare. There was a threat made that the price of water was
+going to be raised. But they're all right now."
+
+The boss nodded approvingly. Then: "How about those microphone notes?"
+
+"Crowell is writing them off," was the reply. "He'll have them in half
+an hour or so."
+
+The senator drew out his watch, a huge thick-crystalled time-piece
+dating back to the range-riding period.
+
+"As matters have turned out, I shall be going to the city before long,"
+he said. "If the notes are not ready before I leave, you can order out
+the speed-car and send them in by Gallagher any time before six o'clock.
+Don't slip up on that, Fred; tell Gallagher to deliver the notes to me,
+in person, at the Inter-Mountain. What's become of Professor Anners?"
+
+"He's staying over at Haworth's ranch, just to be near the fossil
+bone-field. They've made another plesio-something find, and Haworth
+telephones that the professor couldn't be dragged away with a derrick
+until those bones are safely out of the ground and boxed for shipment."
+
+The professor's host smiled indulgently, saying: "It's just as well, I
+reckon. The professor's about as blind as a bat when it comes to seeing
+anything this side of a million years ago, but if he were here he might
+wonder why we've set up a telegraph-office--wonder, and talk about it."
+
+The young man in his shirt-sleeves was turning to go. "I'll hustle
+Crowell on those notes," he promised: but as he was reaching for the
+door-knob the senator stopped him.
+
+"Hold on a minute, Fred; how is that contrivance of ours at the mouth of
+Shonoho working?"
+
+"It's working all right. Canby is on watch there now, and he says he can
+see everything that passes on both roads."
+
+"That's good. These little precautions are mighty necessary in a close
+fight. Those folks over at Shonoho Inn ought to have thought of this
+outer-guard business for themselves, but it seems they didn't. They'd be
+right awkwardly embarrassed if some fellow they don't want to see should
+slip in on 'em without notice. While I think of it, don't fail to keep
+me posted on what Canby sees after I go back to town. He thinks he's
+safe, does he?"
+
+"Perfectly. Nobody can see his dugout from the road, and his oil-heater
+doesn't make any smoke. That scheme of laying insulated wires on the
+ground works like a charm. You could walk all over them without noticing
+them." The young man was opening the door as he spoke, and he broke off
+suddenly to say: "That's his call ringing now. Would you like to come
+and talk to him?"
+
+"No; you can tell me what he says, if it's worth telling."
+
+The clerk disappeared into the room of the tapping noises, but he was
+back again almost immediately.
+
+"It was Canby," he said hurriedly. "He says two men on horseback have
+just dragged a good-sized pine-tree down the Shonoho road and are
+placing it across the county road. He can't see the men's faces very
+well, but he thinks the bigger of the two is Jack Barto."
+
+It was the senator's boast that he had never lost a tooth or had one
+filled, and his smile showed the double row, strong and evenly matched,
+under the drooping grayish mustaches.
+
+"That boy Canby is a mighty good guesser, Fred. I shouldn't be surprised
+if the fellow he has spotted _is_ Jack Barto, sure enough. If you didn't
+know beforehand what a good-natured, meechin' sort of rooster Jack is,
+you might think he was fixing to play some kind of a hold-up game on
+somebody."
+
+"That's what Canby thinks, and he asked me to hold the wire open."
+
+The big boss smiled again. "Then don't you reckon you'd better go and
+hold it?" he suggested mildly; and the young man in his shirt-sleeves
+vanished to do it.
+
+When he was left alone, the senator went to the house phone connecting
+the library with the remoter suites. A touch of the button brought an
+answering word, and he spoke softly into the transmitter.
+
+"The time is getting right ripe, and I thought you might want a minute
+or so to put on your things," he said, in answer to the low-toned
+"Well?" that came over the house wire. Then he added: "I don't know but
+what we may have to make a little bluff at somebody on the way in. When
+you order the car around, suppose you tell Rickert to put 'Tennessee'
+and Billy Shack in the tonneau, with a couple of shot-guns. We can drop
+'em if they look too warlike and conspicuous."
+
+He was hanging the ear-piece on its hook when the shirt-sleeved young
+man burst in again excitedly.
+
+"It _is_ a hold-up!" he declared breathlessly. "Miss Anners and Mr. Evan
+have slammed their car into the tree, and Canby says the two horseback
+men are watching them from the dry gulch just below him!"
+
+"All right," was the even-toned reply. "You go and tell Canby to keep
+his shirt on, Fred; and don't forget to send those papers in by
+Gallagher."
+
+While the senator was speaking, the door opened and the old negro came
+hobbling in with a driving-coat and the broad-brimmed planter's hat
+which made the Honorable David a marked man throughout the length and
+breadth of the Sage-Brush State.
+
+"De cyar's at de do', Marsteh David, and Mistis say she plumb ready when
+you is, yes-sah," stammered the serving-man, holding the coat for his
+master; and a moment later the senator was climbing to his place behind
+the big wheel of the touring-car, with Mrs. Honoria for his seat-mate on
+the mechanician's side, and the chauffeur, the horse wrangler, and Billy
+Shack comfortably filling the tonneau.
+
+While the touring-car, with its curiously assorted complement of
+passengers, was leaving Wartrace Hall, Evan Blount, having assured
+himself that Patricia was not hurt, was trying to estimate the extent
+of the damage done to the little red roadster by the collision with the
+tree. The inspection was brief. With the front axle bent and the
+radiator crushed, the car was safely out of commission.
+
+"We're definitely out of the fight," he reported shortly, helping his
+companion down from the driving-seat.
+
+Patricia was still trembling and pale.
+
+"You mean that we can't go on to the city?" she quavered.
+
+"Not unless we walk; and of course that is out of the question."
+
+"Then you--you can't keep your appointment with Judge Hemingway."
+
+Blount's smile was scornful. "I imagine it was no part of my father's
+plans that I should keep my appointment," he commented bitterly. "He
+took it for granted that I would drive out to Wartrace with you, and
+made his preparations accordingly. This tree wasn't here half an hour
+ago, and it is here now."
+
+"I can't believe it of him," she denied, and her lip quivered. And then
+she added: "Just think, Evan; we might have been killed--both of us!"
+
+Blount's teeth came together with a little clicking noise. "Politics, or
+what passes for politics in this God-forsaken region, seems to make no
+account of such a small thing as a human life or two," he said. And
+then: "I suppose we are due to wait until somebody comes along to pick
+us up. It's four miles or more back to the nearest ranch on the mesa."
+
+"It is all my fault!" lamented the young woman. "I--I might have
+stopped the car, don't you think?"
+
+"I wondered a little that you didn't at least try to stop it," he
+permitted himself to say; and at this she forgot the traditions,
+sociological or other, reverting to the type of the eternal feminine.
+
+"Say it all," she flashed out. "You are beginning to wonder if I didn't
+do it purposely. I _did_ do it purposely. All the way along I had been
+trying to muster up courage enough to smash the car in the ditch, and if
+I hadn't been such a coward I would have done it. Now hate me, if you
+want to!"
+
+Blount would have been less the lover than he was if he had not been
+moved to something much warmer than hatred.
+
+"Let us say that you are doing your level best to save my faith in human
+nature, Patricia, girl," he said soberly. "Do you know what you are? You
+are the one loyal person in a tricky world. I am still fair enough to
+say that it was fine--splendid! And I only wish my father were worthier
+of such superb loyalty and affection."
+
+She looked at him curiously for a moment. Then her mood changed in the
+twinkling of an eye, and she laughed and said: "Yes, I think women are
+more loyal than men; and I am sure they are vastly more discerning at
+times. Don't you think--"
+
+The interruption was the appearance of two horsemen pushing their
+animals out of a small gorge on the right. When they had gained the main
+road they came up, ambling easily, and Blount instantly recognized the
+leader of the pair. It was Barto again.
+
+"Howdy?" said the timber-looker, riding up to hang with one knee over
+the saddle while he grinned genially at the two castaways. "Lost out
+ag'in, ain't ye, Mr. Blount? Couldn't make out, nohow, to run yer
+chug-wagon over that there pine-tree, could ye?"
+
+"Did you put the tree in the road?" snapped Blount, his anger rising
+promptly, now that there was a man to quarrel with.
+
+"I reckon we did; and it was one Hades of a job, too," was the cool
+reply. "Had to drag the dern thing f'r more'n half a mile down the gulch
+with the hawss-ropes."
+
+Here was plenty of material for a wrathful explosion, but Blount
+controlled himself.
+
+"By whose orders did you do it?" he demanded.
+
+"Th' boss's."
+
+"Mr. Hathaway?"
+
+"Not on yer life; it was the big boss this time."
+
+Blount's quick glance aside at his companion was a wordless "I told you
+so!" and then to Barto: "Well, now that you have stopped us, what's
+next?"
+
+The outlaw grinned again and kicked his horse a little nearer.
+
+"I'm a-holdin' you up sure enough this time, Mr. Blount--jest like
+another little Billy th' Kid," he confided. "You're goin' to gimme them
+papers you've got in your pocket, and then me an' Kinky we rides away
+all peaceful and leaves you and the lady to set down quiet till
+somebuddy comes along to pick you up."
+
+Blount put his hand to his head. His wound was throbbing painfully
+again, and the pain may have been partly responsible for his answer.
+
+"When you get those papers you'll take them from a dead man, Barto. Do
+your instructions go that far?"
+
+The man of many trades swung straight in his saddle and fell into the
+attitude of one listening. Then the good-natured grin became a menacing
+scowl.
+
+"Shuck them papers out, and do it sudden!" he commanded.
+
+"No," said Blount crisply.
+
+Instantly the timber-looker's pistol was out.
+
+"Give 'em up!" he shouted; "shell 'em out, quick, 'r by the holy--"
+
+The interposition broke in stormily. Down the grade from the upper mesa
+level came a touring-car, with a big man at the wheel, a veiled woman
+beside him, and three men in the tonneau. "Holy smoke!" said the outlaw,
+and with his riding mate was slipping away up the Shonoho road when the
+touring-car, with brakes protesting, came to a stand at the tree
+barrier. Like a flash, two of the three men in the tonneau leaped out,
+and a charge of buckshot whistling over the heads of the two
+obstructionists halted them. Thereupon the Honorable David gave his
+orders tersely.
+
+"Tennessee, you go up yonder and argue with Jack Barto a spell," he
+directed. "Tell him and his partner that the Wartrace smoke-house is the
+safest place in Quaretaro County for a couple of club-witted bunglers
+like they are, and then you see to it that they get there. You, Billy,
+help Rickert get a tow-rope hitch on that road-car, and we'll see if we
+can't jerk it out of the way." After which he turned to his son as
+casually as if only the preconceived and preconcerted had come to pass:
+"Tried to wreck you, did they? Mighty near made a job of it, too, from
+the looks of Miss Patty's little car. Not hurt, are you? That's good.
+Climb in here, both of you, and when we get this windfall out of the
+road we'll go on to town."
+
+Blount put Patricia into the empty tonneau while Shack and the chauffeur
+were making the tow-rope hitch, but he was still angry enough to
+hesitate when it came his turn. A glance at his watch decided him. It
+was still only half past four. Had his father repented so far as to
+override the obstacle which he himself had interposed? Patricia was
+holding the tonneau-door open, and Blount got in and took his seat
+beside her.
+
+A small engineering feat, made possible by the power plant of the big
+car and the tow-rope, soon cleared the way of the wrecked roadster and
+the tree. Then the senator gave another order.
+
+"You and Billy stay here and see if you can't get that roadster so you
+can run it to town on its own power," he said to the chauffeur; and over
+his shoulder to the pair behind him: "If you'll change partners back
+there, and let Honoria ride on the cushions--"
+
+Though he could not remotely apprehend his father's reason for the
+rearrangement, Blount got out, helped Mrs. Honoria down and up again,
+and then climbed into the seat she had just vacated. At the click of the
+tonneau door-latch the big car rolled on down the grade, and for a good
+half of the straightaway fifteen miles to the city the younger man held
+his peace grimly. Finally he turned to his father and said:
+
+"I'm blaming you for the tree, and for Barto's attempt to get those
+papers away from me. Am I wrong?"
+
+The Honorable David shook his head.
+
+"This close to an election you're mighty near safe in blaming anybody
+and everybody in sight, son," he returned gravely; and apart from this
+small break in the monotony, the second half of the fifteen miles went
+speechless.
+
+The clock in the Temple Court tower was pointing to five minutes of five
+when the senator, instead of taking the direct street to the
+Inter-Mountain, as his son expected him to, turned the car aside into
+the Capitol grounds and brought it to rest before the side entrance
+which led to the chambers of the Supreme Court justices.
+
+"You're still in time, Evan, boy," he intimated gently; "and I'm only
+going to ask one thing of you. When you get through with Hemingway, come
+around to the hotel and show your grit by taking dinner with the rest
+of us. Are you man enough to do that?"
+
+If the son hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second. When he
+answered, it was to say: "If I were going up-stairs to put a noose
+around my own neck, it would be simpler and easier than the thing I've
+got to do. As to your one condition--dad, I'll be with you at dinner,
+and at all other times, after this thing is done. I've quit the
+railroad, and I did it so that I might be free to be your son and your
+lawyer when the smash comes. Can I say more?"
+
+"You don't need to say another blessed word, son," was the sober
+rejoinder; and when Evan Blount got out, the Honorable David drove away
+without a backward glance for the young man who was dragging himself up
+the granite steps of the Capitol entrance like a condemned criminal
+going to execution.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+AT SHONOHO INN
+
+
+Evan Blount's interview with the venerable chief justice was not at all
+what he had imagined it would be. To begin with, he found it blankly
+impossible to take the attitude he had meant to take--namely, that of a
+conscientious member of the bar, rigorously ignoring all the little
+cross-currents of human sympathy and the affections.
+
+Almost at once he found himself telling his story incident by incident
+to the kindly old man who was figuring rather as a father confessor than
+as a judge and a legal superior. When it was done, and the chief justice
+had gone thoughtfully over the mass of evidence, Blount saw no
+thunder-cloud of righteous indignation gathering upon the judicial brow.
+Nor was Judge Hemingway's comment in the least what he had expected it
+would be.
+
+"I can not commend too highly your prudence and good judgment in
+bringing these papers to me, Mr. Blount," was the form the comment took.
+"Your position was a difficult one, and not one young man in a hundred
+would have been judicious enough to choose the conservative middle path
+you have chosen. The fanatic would have rushed into print, and the vast
+majority would have weakly compromised with conscience. It is a source
+of the deepest satisfaction to me, as your father's friend, to find that
+you have done neither."
+
+"As my father's friend?" echoed Blount.
+
+"Yes, just that, Mr. Blount. There is an appreciation which transcends
+the commonplace things of life, and I don't know which is worthier of
+the greater admiration, your courage in coming to me, or your father's
+single-heartedness in urging you to do it after he had learned the
+purport of these papers. Yet this is what I should have expected of
+David Blount as I know him. Men say of him that he has sometimes wielded
+his tremendous political power regardless of the law and of other men's
+rights. But in the field of pure ethics, in the exercise of the high and
+holy duty which is laid upon the man who has become a father, I should
+look to find your father doing precisely what he has done. I assure you
+that it is not without reason that many of his fellow citizens call him
+most affectionately the 'Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.'"
+
+"But the consequences!" gasped the unwilling informer. "His name in
+those affidavits!"
+
+The chief justice was nodding slowly.
+
+"Without doubt a great crime has been committed, and a still greater one
+is contemplated. We shall take prompt action to defeat the contemplated
+crime at the polls next Tuesday, rest assured of that. But at the same
+time, let me say a word for your comfort: these papers came to you from
+the hands of a criminal, and that particular criminal had--as I am well
+informed--every reason to be vindictively enraged against your father. I
+am sure you are too good a lawyer to fail to see the point. If this man
+Gryson, in 'getting even,' as he expressed it to you, has added perjury
+to his other crimes--But we need not follow the suggestion any further
+at this time. Be hopeful, Mr. Blount, as I am. Leave these matters with
+me, and go and be as good a son as he deserves to my old friend David."
+
+Evan Blount left the venerable presence in the judges' chambers of the
+Capitol with a heart strangely mellowed, and with a feeling of relief
+too great to be measured. At last, without compromise, and equally
+without the slightest concession to the natural human passion for
+vindication, the momentous step had been taken. Whatever might come of
+it, there would be no daggerings from an outraged conscience, no remorse
+for an unworthy passion impulsively yielded to. Also, with the rolling
+of the terrible burden to other and entirely competent shoulders there
+came a sense of freedom that was almost jubilant; and under the
+promptings of this new light-heartedness he was able to make a
+reasonably cheerful fourth at the _café_ dinner-table a little later.
+
+Oddly enough, as he thought, Patricia was also cheerful, though she
+vanished with Mrs. Honoria to the private suite shortly after the
+adjournment to the mezzanine lounge. Past this, after the father and son
+had smoked their cigars in man-like silence for a time, Mrs. Honoria,
+coated and hatted as if to go out, came back to sit near the
+balustrade, looking down upon the kindling lobby activities. Shortly
+after her coming the senator rose to go. Instantly his wife sprang up to
+walk with him to the head of the great stair.
+
+"The time has come?" she asked quickly.
+
+"I reckon it has, little woman."
+
+"I wish I might be there to see," she said softly. And then, whipping a
+packet of papers from under her street-coat: "Take these. When you see
+what they are, you'll know why I haven't given them to you before this.
+As long as you didn't know anything about it, you could tell Evan the
+simple truth--that you didn't have them."
+
+The Honorable David pocketed the papers without looking at them.
+
+"I suspected you--or, rather, young Collins--quite a little spell ago,"
+he said with imperturbable good nature. "I couldn't have done it myself;
+I reckon no right-minded man could have done it, but--"
+
+"--But women have no conscience," she finished for him. "_I_ hadn't in
+this instance. There was too much at stake with a firebrand like Evan to
+deal with. Don't be too good-natured, David--to-night, I mean. You know
+that is your failing when you have a man down. But to-night you must
+make the man pay the price. That's all, I think. I'm going back to Evan
+now to see if I can't make him talk to me. That is the one thing I have
+seldom been able to do thus far."
+
+If Blount was a little surprised when the small plotter came back to
+take the chair recently vacated by his father, he was generous enough
+not to show it. The huge sense of relief was still with him, and its
+mellowing influence made him smile leniently when she said: "I want to
+be reasoned with, Evan. I have just let your father persuade me that a
+certain thing he is about to do is perfectly safe, when I am afraid it
+isn't."
+
+"Since he is undertaking to do it, it's safe enough, you may be sure,"
+he replied at random.
+
+"Then you know what it is?"
+
+"Oh, no; he didn't tell me where he was going. But on general
+principles, you know, I think he can be trusted to take care of himself.
+He is a many-sided man, Mrs. Blount. You are his wife, but I have
+sometimes found myself wondering if, after all, you know him as he
+really is."
+
+"Perhaps I don't," she agreed readily enough. "But I do know his
+absolute fearlessness, at least. That's why I'm a little nervous just
+now."
+
+Blount took the alarm at once, as she hoped he would.
+
+"You mean that he is really going into danger of some sort?" he
+demanded.
+
+She nodded. "He is going to meet a man who is--well, he is a big man
+with many of the same qualities that your father has. But down at the
+very bottom of him there is a quality that even your father doesn't
+suspect. Have you ever seen a cornered rat, Evan?"
+
+Blount had got upon his feet and was buttoning his coat.
+
+"I don't know how much or how little you know about what has taken place
+this afternoon, Mrs. Blount," he broke out hastily, "but I can tell you
+this much: I am my father's son now, whatever I have been in the past,
+and if he is in danger, my place is with him. Tell me where he has
+gone."
+
+The little lady's eyes were demurely downcast. "I shouldn't dare tell
+you that, but--but perhaps I might show you. I didn't promise not
+to--not to follow him," she returned with exactly the proper shade of
+half-frightened reluctance.
+
+"Is it far?" he asked.
+
+"Y-yes; we should have to drive."
+
+"Excuse me for a minute or two," he said abruptly, and, making a bolt
+for the elevator, he was back almost within the limit named with a
+top-coat for himself and a driving-wrap for his companion. "I broke into
+your suite and made Patricia give me the wrap," he explained. "If it
+isn't what you want, I'll try again."
+
+"It will do nicely," she told him; and together they went down the broad
+marble stair to the ground-floor.
+
+"Do we take a cab?" he asked, when they reached the sidewalk.
+
+"No; it's only a short walk to the garage, and we can take the
+touring-car."
+
+"I'm entirely in your hands," he rejoined; and then: "Perhaps you'd
+better take my arm. We can make quicker time that way."
+
+The small plotter's eyes were dancing when she slipped her hand under
+his arm. In a career which had not been entirely devoid of excitement,
+Mrs. Honoria had rarely found men difficult. But this particular young
+man was proving himself to be the easiest among many.
+
+At the garage Blount asked for the family touring-car, more than
+half-expecting to be told that his father had taken it. The garage man
+nodded and laughed. "You can have it, but you came within an ace of
+losing out," he said. "The senator was just here, and he was going to
+take it, but he changed his mind when I told him the big roadster was
+in."
+
+Blount made no comment, and when the car was ready he asked his
+companion where she would ride.
+
+"In front, with you," was the quick reply; and when they were placed she
+gave him his running orders. "Slip out of the city by the quietest
+streets you can find and take the Quaretaro road," she directed, and he
+obeyed in silence, holding the speed down until they had left the
+capital behind them and were bowling along under the stars on the fine
+boulevarded county road.
+
+"Do we take it easy or the other way?" he asked, speaking for the first
+time since they had left the town garage.
+
+"You may drive as fast as you like until we come to the hills," he was
+told; and with this permission Blount let the motor out and speedily put
+the fifteen miles of the straightaway road to the rear.
+
+"Is it Wartrace?" he inquired, when the touring-car was breasting the
+first of the grades in the gulch-threading climb to the second mesa
+level.
+
+"No. When you come to the pine-tree, turn to the right up Shonoho
+Canyon."
+
+"We can't get anywhere on that road," he objected. "It's washed out and
+posted. I tried to go up there the other day when I had Patricia out in
+the little car."
+
+"I think you will find it quite passable to-night," was all the answer
+he got; and a little later, when they had turned out of the main road
+and were ascending the small canyon, the prophecy came true. The brush
+barricade had been thrown aside, and there were fresh wheel tracks in
+the sand.
+
+At sight of the wheel marks the senator's wife spoke again.
+
+"You have been up here before?"
+
+"Yes, once; in the middle of the summer."
+
+"There is a small hotel at the head of the road."
+
+"I know; but it is closed."
+
+"It has been reopened--please throttle the motor so it won't make so
+much noise--the hotel is occupied now, as I say, and that is where we
+shall find your father. Are you still willing to do as I tell you to?"
+
+"In all things reasonable."
+
+"As if I'd ask you to do anything unreasonable!" she broke out
+half-petulantly. "Listen; there is a lawn with a circular driveway in
+front of the hotel. Drive to the outer edge, near the cliff, and stop
+the car."
+
+Five minutes later he had obeyed his instructions literally. Through
+the groving of trees on the lawn he could see the lights in the lower
+story of the inn. At the flicking of the motor-switch a man with a pair
+of lineman's climbing spurs at his belt rose up out of the shadows and
+touched his cap to the lady, saying: "The boss is here; he has just gone
+in."
+
+"I know," was the low-toned response. And then to Evan: "Help me out,
+please."
+
+When they stood together beside the car she spoke again to the lineman.
+
+"Is it all right, Jackson? Can you do what I asked you to?"
+
+"We can try it a whirl," said the man; and thereupon he led the way
+across the lawn, around to the darkened end of the bungalow-built resort
+house, and through a sheltering pergola to a side door. "I got hold of
+the key, and it's open," he signified, meaning the door. "Can you find
+your way in the dark on the inside?"
+
+"Perfectly," was the whispered reply; and then the lineman guide got his
+further orders: "Go back to the car and see that nobody interferes with
+it, Jackson." Then, when the man had disappeared in the tree shadows,
+the little lady turned short upon Blount. "I am going to take you where
+you can see and hear, but you must promise me not to interfere unless it
+becomes perfectly plain that your father needs you. Is it a bargain?"
+
+"It is--if you'll allow me to be the judge of the need."
+
+She laughed softly. "You are simply incorrigible, and I should think
+there would be times when Patricia would be tempted to stick pins into
+you," she mocked. Then: "Come on; we are wasting time," and, entering
+the house, she took his hand and led him through a dark passage, up a
+stair, through another passage into a long, low-pitched room, bare and
+empty save for a great pyramid of dining-tables and chairs piled in the
+middle of it, and lastly through a cautiously opened door which admitted
+a flood of yellow lamp-light from below.
+
+"The musicians' gallery," she whispered. "Go to the screen and look
+down, but for Heaven's sake, don't make any noise!"
+
+Blount obeyed mechanically. The orchestra gallery, screened on three
+sides by an open fretwork of Moorish design, was built out from the wall
+of the dining-room, and through the latticings of the fretwork he could
+look down upon the oblong lobby of the resort hotel. There was a
+table-desk with lamps on it drawn out in front of a cheerful wood-fire
+burning in a great stone fireplace, and in front of the fire, standing
+with his back to the blaze, Blount saw his father. From a lighted room
+at the opposite end of the lobby space came a confused clattering of
+telegraph instruments. Blount caught a glimpse of shirt-sleeved clerks
+moving about in the room beyond, and then a door opened beneath him and
+the vice-president of the Transcontinental Company strode out into the
+firelight to shake hands with his visitor and to say: "I've been looking
+for you; I thought you'd come in out of the wet before it was too late,
+David. Sit down and tell me how much you're going to bleed us for, and
+I'll make out the check."
+
+With a cold hand gripping at his heart, Blount turned away, sick and
+revolted, and there was a curse on his lips for the cruelty of the woman
+who had brought him to be a witness to his father's shame. But when he
+groped for the door of egress and found it, the knob refused to turn.
+The door was locked and he could not retreat.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+
+Evan Blount's first impulse when he found his retreat cut off by the
+locked door of the musicians' gallery was to make his presence known
+instantly to the two men standing before the fire in the lobby below.
+Shame, vicarious shame for the father who would thus find himself
+unmasked before his son, was all that made him hesitate; and in the
+pausing moment he heard his father's reply to the vice-president's
+challenging greeting.
+
+"The same old song; always the same old song with you, isn't it,
+Hardwick?" the senator was saying in jocose deprecation. "What money
+can't buy, isn't worth having; that's about the way you fellows always
+stack it up." Then, with sudden grimness: "Sit down, Hardwick. I've come
+to say a few things to you that won't listen very good, but you've got
+to take your medicine this time."
+
+"What's that?" demanded the vice-president, dropping mechanically into
+his desk-chair. And then: "It's no use, David. We've beat you at your
+own game. We're going to roll up a majority next Tuesday that will wipe
+you and your broken-down machine out of existence. Don't you believe
+it?"
+
+"Not yet--not quite yet" was the mild rejoinder.
+
+"Well, you'd better believe it, because it's the truth. You are down and
+out. I had you beat, David, that night last summer when you gave me your
+'de-fi' and I came back by taking your son away from you. The young
+gentleman you were going to spring on us for your next attorney-general
+has done more than any other one man in the campaign to help our lame
+dog over the stile."
+
+"Yes," said the big man, sunning his back at the fire, "that is one of
+the things we're going to flail out right here and now, Hardwick; about
+the boy and what he's been doing. You told him to go out and preach the
+good, clean gospel of the square deal, didn't you?"
+
+It was at this point that the listener in the musicians' gallery, a prey
+to tumultuous emotions which were making the freshly healing wound in
+his head throb like a trip-hammer, lost all of his compunctions and drew
+closer to the fretwork screen.
+
+"He didn't need any special instructions," was the vice-president's
+rejoinder, and his tone chimed in with the hard-bitted smile. "Now that
+it is all over, I don't mind telling you that he mapped the thing out
+for himself, and all we had to do was to sit tight and give him plenty
+of rope. Candidly, David, I don't believe I'm hardened enough to play
+the game as it ought to be played out here in the sage-brush hills. The
+young fellow's sincerity came pretty near getting away with me when I
+saw how ridiculously in earnest he was."
+
+"Yet you let him go on, putting himself deeper and deeper in the hole
+every time he stood up before an audience, and you never said a
+word--never gave him a hint that you were not going to back him up in
+everything he was saying?"
+
+This time the hard-bitted smile broke into a laugh.
+
+"Let's get down to business, David. You wouldn't expect us to throw the
+game away when somebody was trying his best to put the winning card into
+our hands. We needn't dig back into the campaign for something to jangle
+over, you and I. We can come right down to the present moment. You're
+cornered, but I don't deny that you've still got a few votes to dispose
+of. How much do you want for them?"
+
+Blount saw his father take a step forward, and for a flitting instant he
+thought there would be violence. But apparently nothing was farther from
+the senator's intention.
+
+"I'm not selling to-night, Hardwick; I'm buying," he said, with the
+good-natured smile wrinkling at the corners of his eyes. "I want to know
+how much you'll take to clean up right where you are and make my boy's
+word good to the people of this State."
+
+Mr. McVickar turned to his table-desk and took up a sheaf of telegrams.
+
+"I'm a pretty busy man this evening, David; and if you haven't anything
+better than that to offer--"
+
+"You've got a lot of crooked deals out--special rates and rebates and
+such things; the boy believed you were going to call them all off and
+be good, Hardwick."
+
+The vice-president laid the telegrams aside and turned back again with
+the air of a man determined to sweep away all the obstructions at one
+shrewd push.
+
+"You're wasting your time and mine; let's get down to business," he
+snapped. "Some little time ago your son began to urge this same 'reform
+measure,' as he termed it. I believe he even went so far as to threaten
+Gantry and Kittredge with the publication of certain private letters
+from our patrons, letters written to him in his capacity of field
+campaigner for our company. I don't suppose he really meant to do any
+such disloyal thing as that, but--"
+
+"But to make sure he wouldn't, you had one of your hired shadow-men blow
+up his safe and steal the letters," put in the senator mildly. "That was
+prudent, Hardwick. I was a little scared up myself for fear Evan might
+get real good and mad, and let the cat out of the bag; I was, for a
+fact."
+
+"Without admitting the safe-blowing, I may say that the letters were
+destroyed, and our friends were advised to be a little more conservative
+in their correspondence. That settles the 'reform measure' incident and
+brings us down to the present argument. If you are not here to get in
+line with us, what did you come for?"
+
+"I came to give you one more chance to be decent, Hardwick;
+just--one--more--last--chance."
+
+"David, there are times when you make me tired, and this is one of
+them. For years you've held us up and dictated to us; but this time
+we've got you by the neck. Did you ever happen to hear of a fellow named
+Thomas Gryson?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I've heard of him. I believe he has been on your pay-rolls for
+a while--notwithstanding the fact that he is an escaped criminal," was
+the shrewd counter-thrust.
+
+"He's a scoundrel; we'll admit that. Just the same, your son hired him
+to go out and get evidence in a certain matter of alleged crookedness in
+the registration lists. He got it, and delivered the papers to your son
+last night. Some of those affidavits incriminate you, David. If we
+wanted to use them, we could send you to the penitentiary, right here in
+your own State."
+
+The senator drew up a mock-Sheraton arm-chair and lowered his huge frame
+gently into it.
+
+"In order to use those papers against me you'd first have to get hold of
+them, wouldn't you, Hardwick?" he asked.
+
+"We have them," was the terse assertion.
+
+The Honorable David's chuckle rumbled deep in his capacious chest.
+
+"Barto phoned you an hour or so ago that he had 'em, but, owing to
+circumstances over which he had no control, he couldn't deliver 'em to
+you until to-morrow morning. Isn't that about the way it shapes up?"
+
+The vice-president's frown marked an added degree of irritation. "So
+you have a cut-in on my telephone wire, have you?" he rasped.
+
+The senator leaned forward and laid a forefinger on the
+vice-presidential knee.
+
+"Listen, Hardwick," he said. "I dictated that phone message to you, and
+Barto repeated it word for word because he had to--I reckon maybe it was
+because one of my men was holding a gun to his other ear while he talked
+to you. The little hold-up that you planned this afternoon didn't come
+off. Barto lost out bad, and when we get around to giving him the third
+degree, I shouldn't wonder if he'd tell a whole lot of things that you
+wouldn't want to see printed in the newspapers."
+
+Mr. McVickar sprang out of his chair with an agility surprising in so
+heavy a man, crossed to the open door of the room where his clerical
+force was at work, and slammed it shut. When he returned, he was no
+longer the confident tyrant of foregone conclusions.
+
+"Where are those papers now, Blount?" he inquired.
+
+"They are in the hands of Chief Justice Hemingway, for investigation and
+such action as he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench see fit
+to take."
+
+"Good God! Your son did that, knowing that you are as deep in the mud as
+we are in the mire?"
+
+"I reckon he did, so. That boy is all wool and a yard wide. He thought
+he was putting me in the hole, too, along with Kittredge and your
+railroad crooks, and it came mighty near tearing him in two. But he did
+it. You haven't been more than half-appreciating that boy, Hardwick."
+
+"'He thought,' you say; isn't it the fact that you are in the hole,
+David?"
+
+The senator reached over, took one of the gigantic McVickar cigars from
+the open box on the desk, and calmly lighted it.
+
+"You're a pretty hard man to convince, Hardwick," he said slowly, when
+the big cigar was filling the air of the lobby with its fragrance. "Away
+along back at the beginning of this fight I told you what I was aiming
+to do, and why. You wouldn't believe it then, and you don't want to
+believe it now; but that's because you don't happen to have a son of
+your own. When that boy of mine wired me that he was coming out here to
+get into the harness, I began to turn over the leaves of the record and
+look back a little. It was a mighty dirty record, McVickar. I don't know
+that I'm any better man now than I was in the days when we made that
+record--you and I--but when I looked it over, it struck me all in a heap
+that I'd have to get out the bucket and scrubbing-brush if I didn't want
+to make a clean-hearted, clean-minded boy plumb ashamed of his old
+daddy."
+
+"But, say--you haven't quit your scheming for a single minute, Blount!"
+retorted the railroad tyrant. "You are just as much the boss of the
+machine to-day as you've ever been!"
+
+"I reckon, that's so, too," was the measured reply. "But there's just
+this one little difference, Hardwick: a machine, in a factory or in
+politics, is a mighty necessary thing, and we wouldn't get very far
+nowadays without it. Here in America we're just coming to learn that
+machine politics--which is sometimes only another name for intelligent
+organization--needn't be bad politics unless we make 'em bad. To put it
+another way, the machine will grind corn or clean up the streets and
+alleys just as easily as it will grind up men and principles."
+
+The vice-president made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"Come to the point," he urged. "Do you mean to tell me that you can face
+an investigation by the Supreme Court?"
+
+"For this one time, Hardwick, I can. For this one time in the history of
+the Sage-Brush State, the slate--the machine slate--is as clean as the
+back of your hand. When the court comes to investigate, it will find
+that every crooked deal in this campaign has had a railroad man or a
+corporation man at the back of it. Let me tell you what's due to happen.
+Chief Justice Hemingway had luncheon with me to-day, and he came early
+enough to give me a quiet hour before we went to table with the ladies.
+There is going to be an investigation, and some sharp, shrewd young
+lawyer is going to be appointed by the court to take evidence. When this
+young man gets to work, every wheel in the machine is going to roll his
+way. Every bribe you've offered and paid, every false name you've put on
+the registration lists, every deal you've made with men like Pete
+Hathaway and McDarragh, has had its witnesses, and by the gods,
+Hardwick, they'll testify--every man of them!"
+
+Again the vice-president sprang from his chair, but this time it was to
+walk the floor with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets. The
+listener in the musicians' gallery found a seat and sat down to let the
+intoxicating, overwhelming joy of it all have its will of him. In the
+fulness of time the tramping magnate who had been so crushingly
+out-generalled in his own chosen field came to stand before the big man,
+who was still quietly smoking in the sham-Sheraton arm-chair.
+
+"You spoke of the appointment of a special prosecuting attorney, David,"
+he said in a harsh monotone. "Who will it be?"
+
+"You've guessed it already, I reckon. It'll be the boy, Hardwick.
+Hemingway will appoint him if he is willing to serve."
+
+"He's taken our retainer!" snapped the vice-president.
+
+"Not much, he hasn't! you hired him for wages, and if he wants to
+resign--he has resigned, by the way--and take another job, I reckon he
+can do it without breaking any of the Ten Commandments."
+
+"We can't stand for that--you know we can't."
+
+"No; I don't think you can--not as a corporation. Besides the flock of
+witnesses that we can drum up, he'll have those letters that we were
+talking about a while back. You missed fire on that, too, Hardwick. What
+your man dynamited out of Evan's office safe, and what you destroyed,
+were only clever copies. The real letters were stolen by the boy's
+friends, and little as you may believe it, the object of that theft was
+to give you this last chance. The boy was mighty hot under the collar,
+and we couldn't be sure that he wouldn't start the fireworks before the
+band was ready to play. He would have started them, too, if his match
+hadn't been taken away from him."
+
+Mr. McVickar walked around the other end of the table-desk and sat down
+heavily.
+
+"You've spoken twice of a 'last chance' David," he said grittingly.
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's the chance I gave you in the beginning. First, let me tell you
+what I reckon you're already admitting. You're whipped, Hardwick; your
+slate's broken, and your man Reynolds hasn't a ghost of a show--he nor
+any of the others on your string. You haven't made a move that we
+haven't caught onto just about as soon as you put your fingers on the
+piece you meant to move. For instance, that little box up there in the
+beaming just over your head--the one that looks as if it were a part of
+the house electric installation--is a microphone, and one of your own
+men helped to put it up. We've got copies of every letter and telegram
+you've dictated since you had this desk dragged out here a week ago
+Saturday."
+
+"I'm taking all that for granted," was the curt admission.
+
+"Then we'll come down to the nib of the thing and put you out of your
+misery. You've got two things to do--just two, Hardwick. One of 'em is
+to clean house and make a good job of it, just like you let Evan believe
+you were going to do when you sent him out to tell the people of this
+State a lot of things that you didn't mean to have come true; cut out
+all the deals, all the private tariffs, all the little preferentials and
+palm-warmings. When you've done that, you'll find that the other thing
+will mighty nearly do itself."
+
+"Name it," rasped the magnate.
+
+"It's just merely to take your railroad out of politics in this State,
+and keep it out. We've had enough of you, McVickar, and more than
+enough. Is it a bargain?"
+
+"It's a damned one-sided bargain thus far, Blount. What do we get for
+all this?"
+
+Again the senator chuckled genially. "You may not believe it, but we're
+going to let you down easy. You do these two things that I've mentioned,
+and get rid of Kittredge and a few others that have been caught
+red-handed, and the Supreme Court investigation won't touch your
+railroad as a corporation--in other words, it'll go after individuals.
+But you've got to play fair, you know--and bring forth fruits meet for
+repentance, before the fact. How does that strike you?"
+
+Again the vice-president got up to walk the floor, but this time the
+deliberative interval was shorter.
+
+"What is the political programme, as you have it figured out, David?" he
+asked presently.
+
+"It'll be a landslide for us, as I have told you. Gordon will go in by
+the biggest majority that has ever been rolled up in this State.
+Dortscher will succeed himself as attorney-general; and by and by, after
+things have quieted down, he will resign. That will give Gordon the
+appointment of his successor, and I'm thinking it might be a pretty good
+thing for you, as well as for the people of the State, if Alec should
+happen to pick out a bright young fellow who knows your side of the
+question as well as the people's, and who is square enough to give you a
+fair show when it comes to framing up any new railroad legislation."
+
+"That will be your son, I suppose?"
+
+"If he'll take it," was the imperturbable rejoinder.
+
+For the third time the vice-president, dying hard, as befitted him,
+deliberated thoughtfully. At the end of the thoughtful interval he took
+a cigar from the open box and clamped it between his teeth.
+
+"We trade," he said shortly. And then: "How will you take it--in stock
+or bonds?"
+
+The Honorable David rose slowly and snapped the cigar ash into the fire.
+
+"I'm right sorry, Hardwick, but this is one time when I reckon we'll
+have to have what you might call the spot cash. Promises don't go.
+You're too good a fighter to be allowed to get up merely because you've
+hollered 'enough.' Come on into your telegraph-shop and let me hear you
+dictate that string of 'come-off' orders. Then we'll drive to town in my
+road-car, and you can tip off Kittredge and a few of the other
+prominent victims by word of mouth, as you'll most likely want to."
+
+For a full minute after the two had left the lobby together Evan Blount
+sat motionless in the screened orchestra gallery. Then he got up and
+groped once more for the door-knob. It yielded at his touch, and in the
+semi-darkness beyond the opening he saw his father's wife with her arms
+upstretched to him.
+
+"Oh, Evan, dear--am I forgiven?" she asked softly.
+
+"Little mother!" he said, and then he took her face between his hands
+and kissed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the Honorable David Blount reached the city an hour or more later,
+and had dropped his passenger at the Railway Club, he found his son
+waiting for him in the otherwise deserted sitting-room of the
+Inter-Mountain private suite.
+
+"I couldn't sleep without telling you first, dad," the waiting one broke
+out. "I've been eavesdropping; I was a listener, unwilling at first, but
+not afterward, to everything that was said an hour or so ago in the
+lobby of the little hotel at the head of Shonoho. Do I need to tell you
+in so many words how deep the plough has gone?"
+
+"I reckon not," was the gentle reply. "Neither do you need to tell me
+how you came to be out at Shonoho when I thought I'd left you tied hand
+and foot right here in the hotel." Then, with the quizzical smile
+wrinkling at the corners of the grave eyes: "How does the political
+wrestle strike you by this time, son?"
+
+"It strikes me that I haven't been in it; not even in the outer edges of
+it. Isn't that about the size of it?"
+
+"Oh, no; you've been doing good work, mighty good work. You've helped
+out in the only way that help could come in this campaign; you've
+stirred up a good, healthy public sentiment in favor of a square deal
+for everybody. McVickar was fixing to tangle it all up--get the people
+down on him until they'd simply legislate the life out of his railroad.
+But he couldn't see that."
+
+"He sees it now--the 'machine' has made him see it."
+
+"Yes. You didn't know that a machine could be put to any really
+righteous use, did you, boy? But in this campaign it has gone in to
+knock out the crookedness, big _and_ little. Listen, son; you heard what
+I told McVickar. After you'd sent me that wire from Boston last summer,
+saying you'd come, I lay awake nights projecting how I'd put you in
+training for a spell, and then help you into the saddle and make you the
+boss of the round-up, the same as I'd been. Then it came over me, all of
+a sudden, that I'd been as crooked as a dog's hind leg--that we'd all
+been crooked. Not that I've ever taken a dollar for my personal pocket,
+for I haven't; but I've bought and sold and dickered and schemed with
+the best of 'em, and the worst of 'em. On top of that, I began to ask
+myself how I'd like it to see you wallowing in the same old mud-hole,
+and--well, Evan, boy, you may have a son of your own some day, and then
+you'll know. I let things rock along until you came; until that first
+day at Wartrace when you ripped out at me about hewing to the line.
+Right then and there I made up my mind that I'd put the whole power of
+the 'machine,' as you call it, into one campaign for a clean election
+and a square deal."
+
+"Oh, good Lord!" ejaculated the son, "and I've been fighting you and
+your organization at every turn!"
+
+"Oh, no, you haven't," was the quick rejoinder.
+
+"You've been fighting graft and crookedness, and that's what you thought
+you were hired to do. As you know now, McVickar wasn't playing quite
+fair with you. Just the same, you've been in the hands of your friends,
+right from the start. It's the organization that's been giving you all
+these chances to preach the gospel of the square deal; it was a shrewd
+little captain-general of the organization who pushed Hathaway up
+against you to let you know that the railroad people were running around
+in the same old circles--hollering for justice, and doing everything
+under the sun to defeat the ends of justice--muddying the spring
+because, they say, they don't know what else to do. And, by the way, it
+was that same little captain-general who put you up against the real
+thing to-night, without telling me or anybody else what she was going to
+do."
+
+The younger man left his chair to go to one of the windows where he
+stood for a moment or two looking down upon the street-lights. When he
+turned, it was to say: "I'm with you, dad, heart and soul. But you won't
+mind my saying that I'm still a little bit afraid that you and your kind
+are a menace to civilization and a free government. You'll let me hang
+on to that much of my prejudice, won't you?"
+
+"Sure! Hang on to anything you like, son, and say anything you like. Or,
+rather, let me say something first. How about this 'career' business of
+Patricia's? Have you fixed that up yet?"
+
+Blount shook his head. "She's going home with her father next week," he
+said. And then: "Do you know what she did to-day, dad? She ran the
+little red car into that pine-tree intentionally--so I couldn't get back
+here in time to give Judge Hemingway those affidavits, which we both
+supposed would incriminate you."
+
+"Well, God bless her loyal little soul!" exclaimed the Honorable David,
+and the grave eyes were suspiciously bright. "I hadn't told her a word
+of what I was trying to do; but, Lord love you, Evan, she knew: you
+trust a good woman for knowing, every time, son. And now one more thing:
+Have you come to know Honoria any better in these last few days?"
+
+"Yes; much better, within the last few hours, dad."
+
+"That's good; that does my old heart a heap of good, son! Now then, you
+go straight off to bed and sleep up some. You've had a mighty hard day
+for a sick man. To-morrow morning we'll drive out to Wartrace and get
+ready to touch off the fireworks when the returns trickle in on Tuesday.
+I tell you, boy, Tuesday's election is going to be a regular
+old-fashioned, heave-'em-up and keep-'em-a-going land-slide! Good-night,
+and good dreams--if that cracked head doesn't go and roil 'em all up for
+you."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+_À LA BONNE HEURE_
+
+
+By some law of contraries, whose workings not even the politically
+profound can fathom, the election proved the truth of the adage that all
+signs fail in a dry time by recording itself as one of the quietest and
+most orderly ever known in the Sage-Brush State. A few editors there
+were, like Blenkinsop, of _The Plainsman_, who maintained stoutly that
+it sounded the death-knell of the machine, but there was no gainsaying
+the result. The "Paramounters" ticket, with or without the help of the
+machine, was elected by sweeping majorities everywhere; and Gantry,
+roaming the corridors and lounging-rooms of the Railway Club and reading
+the bulletins as they were posted, shook his head despairingly over each
+fresh announcement.
+
+Late in the evening, finding that the senator's party had left the
+Inter-Mountain the day before to drive to Wartrace, the traffic manager
+called up the Quaretaro Mesa country-house and poured the news of the
+_débâcle_ into Evan Blount's ear.
+
+"We've gone to the everlasting bow-wows, and Mr. McVickar has
+disappeared, and the end of the world has come," was the way he phrased
+it for the listening ear; but the word which came back must have been
+peculiarly heartening, since from that time on to an hour well past
+midnight Gantry figured hilariously as the self-constituted host of any
+and all who would be entertained.
+
+At Wartrace Hall there was also rejoicing, albeit of a quieter sort.
+Five people sat around the cheerful blaze in the library, and when
+Crowell, whose telegraph instrument was in the adjoining den, had
+brought the final report from the outlying wards of the capital, he was
+told to close his key and go to bed.
+
+After the young man had withdrawn, the Honorable David rose to stand
+with his back to the fire.
+
+"Well, Evan, boy, are all the tangles straightened out for you for
+keeps, now?" he asked jovially.
+
+"Just about all of them, dad," laughed the younger man. He had been
+spending a very happy evening, due less to the triumphant story which
+had been pouring in over the wires than to the fact that Patricia had
+been occupying the other half of the small sofa which he had dragged out
+to face the fire.
+
+"Don't feel sore because you didn't get the governor you thought you
+were going to get when you went around preaching the gospel?" said the
+father, still chuckling.
+
+"We've got a better man and a bigger one, I'm sure," was the quick
+reply. Then he added: "But I think I am still doubtful about the
+advisability of injecting the machine principle into politics."
+
+The senator laughed silently.
+
+"Call it 'the organization' instead of 'the machine,' son, and you've
+named the power that moves the civilized world to-day. Man, the
+individual, is just about as helpless as a new-born baby. If you want to
+reform anything, from an unjust poor-law to the tariff, your first move
+is to rustle up a following; after that, you've got to solidify your
+bunch of sympathizers into a working organization--in other words, into
+a machine. Isn't that so, Professor Anners?"
+
+The white-haired professor of palæontology nodded sleepily. He had been
+dreaming of the Megalosauridæ, and had not heard the question.
+
+"You've heard me called 'the boss' from the time Dick Gantry had his
+first talk with you back yonder in Massachusetts," the senator went on,
+turning again to his son. "Call me a man with friends enough to make me
+a sort of foreman of round-ups in the old home State, and you've got it
+about right. I don't say that I've always used the power as it ought to
+be used; the good Lord knows, I'm no more infallible than other folks.
+You've gone through a heap of trouble and worry because you thought,
+when you got ready to knock the wedge out of the log, my fingers were
+going to get caught in the split, along with a lot of others. That would
+have been true enough any other year but this, I reckon, so you didn't
+have your fight and your worry for nothing. I've bought and trafficked
+and bargained and compromised--I don't deny that--but only when it
+seemed as though the end justified the means. Maybe the end never does
+justify the means--I'm open to conviction on that. But sometimes it's
+mighty easy to persuade yourself that it does."
+
+It was just here that the professor awoke with a start and a snort,
+excused himself abruptly, and stumped off to bed. Mrs. Honoria, sitting
+under the drop-light and stitching patiently at her bit of stretched
+linen, laid the tiny embroidery-hoop aside, signalled to her husband,
+and vanished in her turn. A few minutes after she had gone, the senator
+crossed from his corner of the fireplace to stand before the two sitting
+on the little sofa.
+
+"Son," he said gravely, "you've got your work cut out for you from this
+on, and it's a good-sized job. You're going to have a string of hard
+fights, one after the other, and there'll be times when you'll long with
+all your soul for some good, clean-hearted, bright-minded little girl to
+go to for comfort and counsel. Of course, I know that Patricia, here,
+has another job, but--"
+
+The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush had been out of sight and hearing for
+five full minutes when Evan Blount reached over and possessed himself of
+the hand that was shading a pair of deep-welled eyes from the firelight.
+
+"Last Sunday afternoon, Patricia, when I had right and reason and logic
+on my side, your woman's intuition found the truer path," he said, in
+sober humility. "I know I am only one, and your poor people to whom you
+have been planning to give yourself are many; still, I am selfish enough
+to--"
+
+She looked up quickly and the deep-welled eyes were shining.
+
+"We can't learn everything all at once, Evan, dear," she interrupted,
+breaking in upon his pleading. "There was one moment in that Sunday
+afternoon when I learned the greatest thing of all; it was the moment
+when I saw the pine-tree lying across the road and knew what I should
+do, and for whom I should do it."
+
+"I know," he returned gently. "You learned that love is stronger than
+death or the fear of death; and that loyalty is greater than many
+ideals. You heard what my father said just now, and it is true--only he
+didn't put it half vitally enough; I can't walk in the way he has marked
+out for me without you, Patricia."
+
+With a swift little love impulse she lifted his hand and pressed it to
+her cheek.
+
+"You needn't, Evan, dear," she said simply.
+
+THE END
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Transcribers Note: This section was originally at the beginning of the
+text.]
+
+
+BOOKS BY FRANCIS LYNDE
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+Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
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+       *       *       *       *       *
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+The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.
+  12mo                          _net_ $1.30
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