Tremaine, with ever-ready gallantry, was about to join them, but Sylvia said:

"I thank you, Mr. Tremaine, but Mr. Harley has promised to see me to the hotel."

Her tone was light, but so decisive that Tremaine turned back at once, and Hobart, who was ahead, hid a smile.

"Now, I want to know what it is," she said, eagerly, to Harley. "That was a good speaker, an able man, but I don't believe that he or anybody else could beat Uncle James. How did it happen?"

Harley did not answer her at once, because it seemed to him just then that the action of Jimmy Grayson was an ill.u.s.tration, and the idea was hot in his mind.

"Perhaps there is nothing to tell, after all," she said, and her face fell.

"There is something to tell; I hesitated because I was looking for the best way to tell it. Mr. Grayson to-night made a sacrifice of himself, purposely and willingly."

"A sacrifice of himself! How could he have done such a thing?"

"For the best reason that makes a man do such a thing. For love."

She stared at him a moment, and then broke into a puzzled but ironic laugh.

"You are certainly dreaming a romance. Uncle James and Aunt Anna have been happily married for years, and there is nothing now that could force him to make such a sacrifice."

Harley smiled, and his smile was rarely tender, because he was thinking at that moment of Sylvia.

"The sacrifice was not to help his own cause, but the cause of another, the cause of the man who beat him--that is, seemed to beat him. Mr. Lee, through his victory to-night, wins the girl whom he loves, and he could have won her in no other way. There are people who can do great deeds and make great sacrifices for love, even to help the love of two others.

It will be printed in every paper of the United States in the morning that Mr. Grayson was defeated in debate to-night by a young local lawyer. His prestige will be greatly impaired."

Her eyes glowed, and her face, too, became rarely tender.

"Uncle James was truly great to-night!" she exclaimed.

"At his greatest. I know of no other man who could have done it. After all, Sylvia, don't you think love is the greatest and purest of motives, and that we should consider it first?"

"John," she said, and it was the first time that she had ever called him by his first name, "you must not tempt me to break my sacred word to the man to whom I owe all things. Oh, John, don't you see how hard it is for me, and won't you help me to bear it, instead of making the burden heavier?"

She turned upon him a face of such pathetic appeal that Harley was abashed.

"Sylvia," he replied, almost in a whisper, "G.o.d knows that I do not wish to make you unhappy, nor do I wish to make you do what is wrong. I spoke so because I could not help it. Do you think that I can love you, and know you to be what you are, and then stand idly by and see you pa.s.sing to another? I believe in silence and endurance, but not in such silence and endurance as that. It is too much! G.o.d never asks it of a man!"

She looked at him. Her eyes were dewy and tender, filled with love, a love tinged with sorrow, but he saw the brave resolution shining there, and he knew that, despite all, she would keep her word unless "King"

Plummer himself willingly released her from it. And he loved her all the more because she was so true.

"Sylvia," he said, "I was wrong. I should not have spoken to you in such a manner. I am a weak coward to make your duty all the harder for you."

They were at the "ladies' entrance" of the hotel, and the others either had gone in or had turned aside. They were alone, and she bent a little towards him.

"The things that you say may be wrong," she whispered, "but--oh, John--I love to hear you say them!"

Then she went into the hotel, and Harley wisely did not seek to follow.

XIX

AN IDAHO STORM

Among the mountains of Idaho, a dark storm-cloud, ribbed with flashes of steel-edged lightning, was growing. For thirty years "King" Plummer had lived a life after his own mind, and it had been a very free life. In four or five states he was a real monarch, and there was nothing at all derisive about his nickname. At fifty he was at his mental and physical zenith, never before had he felt so strong, both in body and mind, so capable of doing great deeds, and with so keen a zest in life. The blood flowed in a rich, red tide through his veins, and he breathed the breath of morning like a youth.

To this big, strong man, rioting in the very fulness of life, came Mrs.

Grayson's letter. He was not in Boise when it arrived there, but it was forwarded to him at a mining-camp in the very highest mountains. He read it early one morning sitting on a big rock at the edge of a valley that dropped off three thousand feet below, and first there was a shade of annoyance on his face, to be followed by a frown, which gave way in its turn to an angry red flush.

But while the shade of annoyance was still on his face the "King" asked, "What is she driving at?" and then, when it was replaced by the frown, he muttered, "Why does she waste so much time on Harley and a marriage for him?" and then, when the red flush came, he exclaimed, "d.a.m.n the Eastern kid!" In the mind of "King" Plummer everybody who did not live west of the Missouri River was Eastern.

He read the letter over four or five times, and it sank deeper and deeper into his soul, and as it sank it burned like fire. All that he had feared, but which he had refused to believe when he came away, was true. Sylvia did not love him, but she loved that raw youngster Harley.

And here was Mrs. Grayson, the wife of a man who was under obligations to him, whom he could ruin, hinting that he give her up, and she a woman whom he had supposed to be endowed with at least ordinary intelligence.

In his wrath, which was mighty, "King" Plummer swore at the whole tribe of women as fickle, heartless creatures. Then he rose to his feet, clinched his fist, shook it at the opposite mountain across the valley, and swore aloud at all creation. And "King" Plummer knew how to swear; he was no mealy-mouthed man; his had been a wild and tumultuous youth, and though he would never use oaths in the presence of Sylvia, he could still, in the seclusion of mountain or desert, let fly an imprecating volley that would burn the rocks themselves. It was apparent to some miners coming up the slope that their chief was no extinct volcano, and they wisely pa.s.sed in silence on the other side.

For the present there was little grief in the "King's" outpouring; the tide of wrath was too full and sparkling to be tinged yet awhile by other currents, and just now it flowed most against Mrs. Grayson, who had been bold enough to tell him what he was least willing to hear. His heart, too, was full of unspoken threats, as "King" Plummer was a pa.s.sionate man who had lived a rough life, close to the ground, and full of primitive emotions. And the threats he expressed in words were such as these: "They shall pay for it!" "I helped put that husband of hers where he is, I helped make him, and I can help unmake him; and, by thunder, I will do it, too!" In the hour of his wrath he hated Jimmy Grayson, and his head was filled with sudden schemes. He would "teach the man what it was to play the King of the Mountains for a sucker,"

and, still raging, he cast from him all the ties of party and a.s.sociation.

Within an hour he was on his swiftest horse, riding furiously towards Boise, his heart full of anger and his head full of plans for revenge.

Nor was he sparing in speech when he reached Boise. His words cracked so loud that the echo of them travelled several hundred miles and reached Mrs. Grayson, who was waiting vainly for a reply to a letter that she had written nearly two weeks before. Now, no reply was necessary, because this news was what she had feared, but which she had hoped would not come.

The report was winged and full of alarms. "King" Plummer, shooting out of the mountains like a cannon-ball, had made his appearance in the streets of Boise, openly denouncing Jimmy Grayson, calling him a traitor, and saying that he would beat him if he had to ruin himself to do it. What had caused this sudden change n.o.body knew, but it must be something astonishing, and it behooved the candidate to explain himself quickly.

The loyal soul of the candidate's wife flashed back an angry reply across the five hundred miles of mountain and desert. If "King" Plummer was not the man she had hoped he was, then they preferred that they should fight him rather than have him as a false friend. Yet there was in her heart a throb of admiration for him, because he was willing to throw everything overboard for the love of a woman.

The defection clothed the whole train in the deepest gloom. Tremaine spoke for the group when he said it was all up with Jimmy Grayson, and the others did not have the heart even to pretend to a different belief.

With a Plummer defection on one side and a Goodnight falling away on the other, there was no hope left for a party which even with these wings faithful had only a desperate fighting chance.

Harley was thoroughly miserable. He could guess--no, he did not guess, he knew the cause of "King" Plummer's bolt, and he knew, too, that if it were not for himself it would never have occurred; he had wrecked all the future of others, nor in making such a wreck had he secured his own happiness, provided even that he was selfish enough to be happy when others were ruined.

Sylvia, too, was sunk in the depths. She did not have to be told that her aunt had written to Mr. Plummer; she guessed that Mr. Plummer had received some warning, some message, it did not matter from whom, nothing else could cause him to burst forth with such violence, and the very nature of the case forbade her from speaking; she could only keep silent, knowing that significant talk was going on all around her, and pa.s.s sleepless nights and troubled days.

The situation brought a thrill of satisfaction and interest to one man on the train, and he was Churchill. The c.u.mulative effect of "King"

Plummer's bolt might force Jimmy Grayson off the track, and it was not yet too late to put up another candidate. Such a thing had never been done, but that was no reason why it could not succeed, and he telegraphed Mr. Goodnight that Mr. Grayson was very despondent, and that those about him knew he did not have a ghost of a chance.

Churchill guessed close to the cause of the Plummer bolt, but he was not sure, and for that and other reasons he at once sought an interview with the nominee.

Mr. Grayson was courteous, and seemingly not as despondent as Churchill had described him. He said that he could not speak of Mr. Plummer's defection, because he had no official knowledge of the fact; it was merely report, and hence he could not comment on what was not proved.

Mr. Churchill, he knew, would readily recognize the unfitness of such a thing, nor could he tell what he should do in supposit.i.tious cases, because, even if the latter came true, circ.u.mstances might give them another appearance.

Churchill skirmished as delicately as he could about the subject of Sylvia and the surmise that she was the key to the situation, which, if true, would make one of the greatest stories told in a newspaper; but here the candidate was impervious. Not only was he impervious, but he seemed to be densely ignorant; all the hints of Churchill glided off him like arrows from a steel breast-plate, all the most delicate and skilful art of the interviewer failed. So far as concerned the subject of politics, Sylvia was unknown to Mr. Grayson. Baffled upon this interesting point, Churchill retired to write his interview; but as he rested his pad upon the car-seat and sharpened his pencil he flung out a feeler or two.

"I say, Hobart," he said to the mystery man, who sat just in front of him, "I think there's something at the bottom of this Plummer revolt that we haven't probed. Now, isn't it the truth that Miss Morgan has thrown him over, and that he is taking his revenge on her uncle?"