Chapter XI: Part 11

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.]

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