"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; "sh.e.l.l '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 pa.s.s: "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?"

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 att.i.tude 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 _cafe_ 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 bal.u.s.trade, 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 b.u.t.toning his coat.