Chapter X: Part 10

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?"