"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 Sat.u.r.day."

"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 d.a.m.ned 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-k.n.o.b. 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 pa.s.senger 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 d.i.c.kered 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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, G.o.d 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."

x.x.xI

_a 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 _debacle_ 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-const.i.tuted 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.