"Go ahead and try it," was the laconic response.

"But that isn't all," the railroad dictator went on remorselessly. "Your fellow citizens here know you for exactly what you are, Blount. You rule them with a rod of iron, but that rule can be broken. When it is broken, you'll be hounded as a criminal. In our last talk together you had something to say to me about our not keeping up with the change in public sentiment; public sentiment _has_ changed; changed so far that it is coming to demand the punishment of the great offenders as well as the jailing of the little ones. If we want to push this fight hard enough, it is not impossible that you might find yourself in a hard row of stumps at the end of it, David."

"I'm taking all those chances," was the even-toned rejoinder of the man who was to be shown up.

"But there is one chance I'm sure you haven't considered," McVickar went on aggressively. "This son of yours; I know as much about him as you do--more, perhaps, for I have taken more pains to keep tab on him for the past few years than you have. He is clean and straight, Blount; a son for any father to be proud of. If that is the real reason why we don't want to have him instructing the grand juries of this State, it is also your best reason for wanting to keep the past decently under cover.

What will you say to him when the newspapers open up on you? And what will he say to you? And suppose you get him in, and we should show you up so that you'd be dragged into court with your own son for the prosecutor? How does that strike you?"

For the first time since the opening of the one-sided conference the senator laid his cigar aside and sat thoughtfully tugging at the drooping mustaches.

"You'd set the house afire over my head, would you, Hardwick?" he queried, with the gray eyes lighting up as with a glow of smouldering embers. "The last time we talked you'll remember that you posted your 'de-fi'; now I'll post mine. You go ahead and do your d.a.m.nedest! The boy and I will try to see to it that you don't have all the fun. I won't say that you mightn't turn him if you went at it right; but you won't go at it right, and as matters stand now--well, blood is thicker than water, Hardwick, and if you hit me you hit him. I reckon, between us, we'll make out to give you as good as you send. That's all"--he rose to lean heavily upon the table--"all but one thing: you fight fair, Hardwick; say anything you like about me and I'll stand for it; but if that boy has anything in his past that I don't know about--any little fool trick that he wouldn't want to see published--you let it alone and keep your d.a.m.ned newspaper hounds off of it!"

The vice-president, being of those who regain equanimity in exact proportion as an opponent loses it, chuckled grimly; was still chuckling when an interrupting tap came at the locked door. Blount got up and turned the latch to admit an office-boy wearing the uniform of the railroad headquarters. "Note for Mr. McVickar," said the messenger; and at a gesture from the senator he crossed the room to deliver it.

For a full half-minute after the boy had gone, the vice-president sat poring over the pencilled scrawl, which was all that the sealed envelope yielded. The note was lacking both date-line and signature, though the clerks in Richard Gantry's office were familiar enough with the hieroglyph that appeared at the bottom of the sheet. In his own good time the vice-president folded the bit of paper and thrust it into his pocket. Then he resumed the talk at the precise point at which it had been broken off.

"You needn't let the boy's record trouble you," he averred. "As I said a few minutes ago, it's as clean as a hound's tooth. That is one of the things I'm banking on, David. If you don't look out, I'm going to have that young fellow fighting on our side before we're through."

At this the light in the gray eyes flamed fiercely, and the ex-cattle-king took the two strides needful to place him before McVickar.

"Don't you try that, McVickar; I give you fair warning!" he grated, his deep-toned voice rumbling like the burr of grinding wheels. "There's only one way you could do it, and--"

The vice-president stood up and reached for his hat.

"And you'll take precious good care that I don't get a chance to try that way, you were going to say. All right, David; you tell me to do my d.a.m.nedest, and I'll hand _that_ back to you, too. You do the same, and we'll see who comes out ahead."

The vice-president caught an elevator at the end of his leisurely progress down the corridor, and had himself lowered to the lobby. The electric lights were glowing, and the great gathering-place was beginning to take on its evening stir. Mr. Hardwick McVickar pushed his way to the desk, and a row of lately arrived guests waited while he asked his question.

"Where shall I be most likely to find Mr. Evan Blount at this time of day?" he demanded; and the obliging clerk made the guest-line wait still longer while he summoned a bell-boy and sent him scurrying over to one of the writing-tables.

"This is Mr. Evan Blount," said the clerk, indicating the young man who came up with the returning bell-boy. "Mr. Blount, this is Mr. Hardwick McVickar, first vice-president of the Transcontinental Railway Company."

There was no trace of the recent battle in Mr. McVickar's voice or manner when he shook hands cordially with the son of the man who had so lately defied him.

"Your father and I were just now holding a little conference over your future prospects, Mr. Blount," he said, going straight to his point.

"Suppose you come down to the car with me for a private talk on legal matters. I'm inclined to think that we shall wish to retain you in a cause which is coming up in September. Gantry tells me that you are pretty well up in corporation law. Can you spare me a half-hour or so?"

Evan Blount glanced at the big clock over the clerk's head. Patricia had told him that she and her father would dine in the _cafe_ at seven, and that there would be a place at their table for him--and another for his father, if the ex-senator would so far honor a poor college professor.

There was an hour to spare; and if the vice-president of the Transcontinental was not the king, he was at least a great man, and one whose invitation was in some sense a royal command.

"Certainly, I'll be glad to go with you," was Blount's acquiescent rejoinder. So much the registry-clerk heard; and he saw, between jabs with his pen, the straight path to the revolving doors of the portal ploughed by the big man with young Blount at his elbow.

One minute after the spinning doors had engulfed the pair the registry-clerk was called on the house telephone. A sad-faced tourist who was waiting patiently for his room a.s.signment heard only the answer to the question which came over the wire from one of the upper floors: "No, Senator, Mr. Evan is not here; he has just this moment gone out--with Mr. McVickar. Could I overtake him? I'll try; but I don't know where they were going. Yes; all right. I'll send a boy right away."

VIII

THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT

When the news went forth to the dwellers in the sage-brush hills that Boss David's son had been appointed to fill an important office as a member of the railroad company's legal staff, the first wave of astoundment was swiftly followed by many speculations as to what young Blount's _debut_ as a railroad placeman really meant.

_The Plainsman_, the capital city's princ.i.p.al daily, and the outspoken organ of the people's party, was quick to discover an ulterior motive in Evan Blount's appointment and its acceptance. Blenkinsop, the leader-writer on _The Plainsman_, took a half-column in which to point out in emphatic and vigorous Western phrase the dangers that threatened the commonwealth in this very evident coalition of the railroad octopus and the machine.

The _Lost River Miner_, on the contrary, was unwilling to believe that the younger Blount was acting in the interest of machine politics in taking an employee's place on the railroad pay-roll. In this editor's comment there were veiled hints of a disagreement between father and son; of differences of opinion which might, later on, lead to a pitched battle. The _Capital Daily_, however--the stock in which was said to be owned or controlled by local railroad officials--took a different ground, covertly insinuating that nothing for nothing was the accepted rule in politics; that if the railroad company had made a place for the son, it was only a justifiable deduction that the father was not as fiercely inimical to the railroad interests as the opposition press was willing to have a too credulous public believe.

Elsewhere in the State press comment was divided, as the moulders of public opinion happened to read party loss or gain in the appointment of the new legal department head. Some were fair enough to say that young Blount had merely shown good sense in taking the first job that was offered him, following the commendation with the very obvious conclusion that the railroad company's pay check would buy just as much bread in the open market as anybody's else. On the whole, the senator's son was given the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove up.

Of the interview between the father and the son, in which Evan announced his intention of accepting a place under McVickar, nothing was said in the newspapers, for the very good reason that no reporter was present.

If the young man who had so summarily taken his future into his own hands was antic.i.p.ating a storm of disapproval and opposition, he was disappointed. He had seen Mr. McVickar's private car coupled to the east-bound Fast Mail, and had dined with Patricia and her father, the fourth seat at the table of reunion being vacant because the senator was dining elsewhere. Later in the evening he faced the music in the sitting-room of the private suite, waylaying his father on the Honorable David's return to the hotel.

Planning it out beforehand, Blount had meant to give the ethical reasons which had constrained him to put a conclusive end to the attorney-generalship scheme. But when the crux came, the carefully planned argument side-stepped and he was reduced to the necessity of declaring his purpose baldly. The railroad people had offered him a place, and he had accepted it.

"So McVickar talked you over to his side, did he?" was the boss's gentle comment. "It's all right, son; you're a man grown, and I reckon you know best what you want to do. If it puts us on opposite sides of the political creek, we won't let that roil the water any more than it has to, will we?"

To such a mild-mannered surrender, or apparent surrender, the stirring filial emotions could do no less than to respond heartily.

"We mustn't let it," was the quick reply; but after this the younger man added: "I feel that I ought to make some explanations--they're due to you. I've been knocking about here in the city with my eyes and ears open, and I must confess that the political field has been made to appear decidedly unattractive to me. From all I can learn, the political situation in the State is handled as a purely business proposition; it is a matter of bargain and sale. I couldn't go into anything like that and keep my self-respect."

"No, of course you couldn't, son. So you just took a job where you could earn good, clean money in your profession. I don't blame you a particle."

Blount was vaguely perturbed, and he showed it by absently laying aside the cigar which he had lately lighted and taking a fresh one from the open box on the table. He could not help the feeling that he ought to be reading between the lines in the paternal surrender.

"You think there will be more or less political work in my job with the railroad?" he suggested, determined to get at the submerged facts, if there were any.

"Oh, I don't know; you say McVickar has hired you to do a lawyer's work, and I reckon that is what he will expect you to do, isn't it?"

Blount laid the second cigar aside and crossed the room to readjust a half-opened ventilating transom. Mr. McVickar had not defined the duties of the new counselship very clearly, but there had been a strong inference running through the private-car conference to the effect that the headship of the local legal department would carry with it some political responsibilities. At the moment the newly appointed placeman had been rather glad that such was the case. The vice-president had convinced him of the justice of the railroad company's contention--namely, that the present laws of the State, if rigidly administered, amounted to a practical confiscation of the company's property. While Mr. McVickar was talking, Blount had hoped that the new office which the vice-president was apparently creating for him would give him a free hand to place the company's point of view fairly before the people of the State, and to do this he knew he would have to enter the campaign in some sort as a political worker. Surely, his father must know this; and he went boldly upon the a.s.sumption that his father did know it.

"As I have said, I am to be chief of the legal department on this division, and as such it will be necessary for me to defend my client both in court and out of court," he said finally. "Since I am fairly committed, I shall try to stay on the job."

"Of course you will. You've got to be honest with yourself--and with McVickar. I don't mind telling you, son, that I'm flat-footed on the other side this time, and I had hoped you were going to be. But if you're not, why, that's the end of it. We won't quarrel about it."

Now this was not at all the paternal att.i.tude as the young man had been prefiguring it. He had looked for opposition; finding it, he would have found it possible to say some of the things which were crying to be said and which still remained unsaid. But there was absolutely no loophole through which he could force the attack. If his late decision had been of no more importance than the breaking of a dinner engagement, his father could scarcely have dismissed it with less apparent concern.

Balked and practically talked to a standstill in the business matter, Blount switched to other things.

"I missed you to-night at dinner," he said, beginning on the new tack.

"Two of my Cambridge friends are here, and I wanted you to meet them."

The Honorable David looked up quickly.

"The fossil-digging professor and his daughter?" he queried shrewdly.

"Yes; how did you know? They came in on the Overland, and I find that the professor has made the long journey on the strength of what I once told him about the megatheriums and things. I guess it's up to me to make good in some way."

"Don't you worry a minute about that, Evan, boy," was the instant rejoinder. "Honoria's coming in from Wartrace to-morrow, and if you'll put us next, we'll take care of your friends--mighty good care of 'em."