Having already convinced himself that the time was ripe for a straightforward declaration of principles, Evan Blount saw in the arrival of the Overland, with the vice-president's private car attached, only an added argument for haste.

During the better part of the long tramp in the outskirts of the city he had been halting between two opinions. The fighting blood of the Tennessee pioneer strain had clamored for its hearing, prompting him to enter the lists, to set up the standard of honesty and fair-dealing in the Blount name, to plunge into the approaching political campaign with a single purpose--the purpose of overthrowing the power of the machine in his native State. On the other hand, filial affection had pleaded eloquently. The battle for political honesty would inevitably involve his father; would, if successful, defeat and disgrace him. As often as he thought he had closed decisively with the idealistic determination, the other side of the argument sprang up again, keen-edged and biting.

Up to the present moment he had owed his father everything--was still owing him day by day. Would it not be the part of a son to drop out quietly, leaving the political house-cleaning for some one who would not be obliged to pay such a costly price?

It was the idealistic decision which had been in the saddle when he dropped from the trolley car at the western portal of the railway station, and which was sending him to seek the scale-turning interview with Gantry. But, after all, it was chance and the swift current of events which seized upon him and swept him along, smashing all the arguments and fine-spun theories. Before he had gone ten steps in the direction of Gantry's office, some one in the throng of debarking Overland travellers called his name. Turning quickly, he found himself face to face with a white-haired little gentleman who had plucked impatiently at his sleeve.

"Why, bless my soul! Of all the lucky miracles!" gasped the young man who, but an instant earlier, had been deaf and blind to all external things. And then: "Where is Patricia?"

"She's here, somewhere," snapped the little gentleman irascibly. "I've lost her in this confounded mob. Find her for me. I've got my reading-gla.s.ses on, and I can't see anything. Why don't they have this barn of a place lighted up?"

"Stand still right where you are," Blount directed, and a moment later he had found Patricia guarding a pair of suit-cases which were too heavy for her to carry.

"You poor lost child!" was his burbled greeting.

"You don't mean to tell me that _this_ is the West to which you said you were coming?"

"I'm not lost; I'm here. It's father who is lost," she laughed. Then she answered his question; "Yes, this is the West I meant, and if you haven't been telling the truth about it--"

Blount had s.n.a.t.c.hed up the two hand-bags and had effected a reunion of the scattered pair. The little gentleman, standing immovable, as he had been told to do, was blinking impatiently through his reading-gla.s.ses at the surging throng. When Blount came up, the professor stabbed him with a sharp forefinger.

"Well, we're here, young man," he barked. "If you've been telling me fibs about those Megalosauridae which you said could be dug out of your sage-brush hills, you'll pay our fare back home again--just make up your mind to that. Now show us the best hotel in this mushroom city of yours, and do it quickly."

Having a hospitable thing to do, Blount shoved his problem into a still more remote background and bestirred himself generously. Though the Inter-Mountain was only three squares distant, he chartered the best-looking auto he could find in the rank of waiting vehicles, put his charges into it, and went with them to do the honors at the hotel. By this postponement of the visit to Gantry he missed a meeting which would have done something toward solving a part of his problem. But for the hospitable turning aside he might have reached the railroad office in time to see a round-bodied man halting at the open door of Gantry's private room for a parting word with the traffic manager.

"Oh, yes; he fell for it, all right," was the form the parting word took. "If you had seen his face when Lackner and I came away, you'd have said there was battle, murder, and sudden death in it for somebody."

"But, see here, Bradbury," Gantry held his visitor to say, "it wasn't in the game that you were to fill him up with a lot of lies. I won't stand for that, you know. He is too good a fellow, and too good a friend of mine."

It was at this conjuncture that Blount, if he had been present and invisible, would have seen a sour smile wrinkling upon the face of the club gossip.

"I owe the senator one or two on my own account, Gantry. But it wasn't necessary to go out of the beaten path. If young Blount or his daddy would like to sue us for libel, we could prove every word that was said--or prove that it was common report; too common to be doubted. And it got the young fellow; got him right in the solar plexus. If you don't see some fireworks within the next few days, I miss my guess and lose my ante."

This is what Evan Blount, carrying out his intention of going to Gantry, might have seen and heard. On the other hand, if he had lingered a few minutes longer on the station platform he could scarcely have failed to mark the side-tracking of private car "008," and he might have seen the herculean figure of the vice-president crossing to the carriage-stand to climb heavily into a waiting automobile.

Mr. McVickar's order to the chauffeur was curtly brief, and a little later the vice-president entered the lobby of the Inter-Mountain and shot a brisk question at the room-clerk.

"Is Senator Blount in his rooms?"

"I think not. He was here a few minutes ago. I'll send a boy to hunt him up for you. You want your usual suite, I suppose, Mr. McVickar?"

"No; I'm not stopping overnight. Is young Blount here in the hotel?"

"He has just gone up to the fifth floor with some friends of his--Mr.

Anners and his daughter, from Boston. Shall I hold him for you when he comes down?"

"No; I want to see the senator. Hustle out another boy or two. I can't wait all night."

It was at this moment that Evan Blount, bearing luggage-checks and going in search of the house baggageman, missed another incident which might have drawn him back suddenly to his problem and its unsettled condition.

The incident was the meeting between his father and the railroad vice-president at the room-clerk's counter. It was neither hostile nor friendly; on McVickar's part it was gruffly business-like.

"Well, Senator, I'm here," was the follow-up of the perfunctory hand-shake. "Let's find a place where we can flail it out," and together the two entered an elevator.

Reaching the floor of the private dining-room suites, the ex-cattle-king led the way in silence to his own apartments; rather let us say he pointed the way, since in the march down the long corridor the two field commanders tramped evenly abreast as if neither would give the other the advantage of an inch of precedence. In the sitting-room of the private suite the senator snapped the latch on the door, and pressed the wall-b.u.t.ton for the electric lights. McVickar dragged a chair over to one of the windows commanding a view of the busy street, and dropping solidly into it, like a man bracing himself for a fight, began abruptly:

"I suppose we may as well cut out the preliminaries and come to the point at once, Blount. Ackerton wired me that you had definitely announced your son as a candidate for the attorney-generalship. Have you?"

The senator had found an unopened box of cigars in a cabinet and he was inserting the blade of his pocket-knife under the lid when he said, with good-natured irony: "The primaries do the nominating in this State, Hardwick. Didn't you know that?"

"See here, Blount; I've come half-way across the continent to thresh this thing out with you, face to face, and I'm not in the humor to spar for an opening. Do you mean to run your son or not? That is a plain question, and I'd like to have an equally plain answer."

"I told you two weeks ago what you might expect if you insisted on sticking your crow-bar in among the wheels this fall, McVickar, but you wouldn't believe me. I'll say it again if you want to hear it."

"And I told you two weeks ago that we couldn't stand for any such programme as the one you had mapped out. And I added that you might name your own price for an alternative which wouldn't confiscate us and drive us off the face of the earth."

"Yes; and I named the price, if you happen to remember."

"I know; you said you wanted us to turn everything over to the Paramounters and take our chances on a clean administration. Naturally, we're not going to do any such Utopian thing as that. What I want to know now is what it is going to cost us to do the practical and possible thing."

"Want to buy me outright this time, do you, Hardwick?" said the boss, still smiling.

"We"--McVickar was going to say--"We have bought you before," but he changed the retort to a less offensive phrasing--"We have had no difficulty heretofore in arriving at some practical and sensible _modus vivendi_, and we shouldn't have now. But as a condition binding upon any sort of an arrangement, I am here to say that we can't let you nominate and elect your son as attorney-general; that's out of the question. If it's going to prove a personal disappointment to you, we'll be reasonable and try to make it up to you in some other way."

Again the grimly humorous smile was twinkling in the gray eyes of the old cattleman. "What is the market quotation on disappointments, right now, Hardwick?" he inquired.

With another man McVickar might have been too diplomatic to show signs of a shortening temper. But David Blount was an open-eyed enemy of long standing.

"I don't know anybody west of the Missouri River who has a better idea of market values than you have," the vice-president countered smartly.

Then, dropping a heavy hand upon the arm of his chair: "This thing has got to be settled here and now, Blount. If you put your son in as public prosecutor, you can have but one object in view--you mean to squeeze us till the blood runs. We are willing to discount that object before the fact!"

"So you have said before, a number of times and in a whole heap of different ways. It's getting sort of monotonous, don't you think?"

"I sha'n't say it many more times, David; you are pushing me too far and too hard."

"All right; what will you say, then?"

"Just this: if you won't meet me half-way--if you insist upon a fight--I'll fight you with any weapons I can get hold of!"

Once more the quiet smile played about the outer angles of the hereditary Blount eyes.

"You've said that in other campaigns, Hardwick; in the end you've always been like the 'possum that offered to come down out of the tree if the man wouldn't shoot."

"I'll hand you another proverb to go with that one," snapped the man in the arm-chair: "The pitcher that goes once too often to the well is sure to be broken. You've got a joint in your armor now, Blount. You've always been able to snap your fingers at public opinion before this; can you afford to do it now?"

"Oh, I don't know; I reckon I'll have to grin and bear it if you want to buy up a few newspapers and set them to blacklisting me, as you usually do," was the half-quizzical reply. Then: "I'm pretty well used to it by this time. You and your folks can't paint me much blacker than you have always painted me, Hardwick."

"Maybe not. But this time we're going to give you a chance to start a few libel suits--if you think you can afford to appear in the courts.

We've got plenty of evidence, and by heavens we'll produce it! You put your son in as public prosecutor and we might be tempted to make your own State too hot to hold you. Had you thought of that?"