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, "God 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 passing
to another? I believe in silence and endurance, but not in such silence
and endurance as that. It is too much! God 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, "Damn 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 passed 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
passionate 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
association.
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 nobody 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
pass 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 cumulative 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 supposititious cases,
because, even if the latter came true, circumstances 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?"
Hobart glanced up the car, and noticed that Harley was not within
hearing. Then he replied, gravely:
"Churchill, I don't believe that Miss Morgan has broken her engagement
with the 'King'--she'll marry him yet if he says so--but I do believe
that she has some connection with this affair. What it is, I don't know,
and I'm mighty glad that I don't have to speak of it in my despatches;
it's too intangible."
But Churchill was not so scrupulous. Without giving any names, he wove
into his four-thousand-word despatch a very beautiful and touching
romance, in which Jimmy Grayson figured rather badly--in fact, somewhat
as an evil genius--and the _Monitor_, dealing in the fine vein of irony
which it considered its strongest card, wrote scornfully of a campaign
into which personal issues were obtruding to such an extent that they
were shattering it. The _Monitor_ still affected to see some good in Mr.
Grayson, but put the bad in such high relief that the good merely set it
off, like those little patches that ladies wear on their faces. And the
mystery of the Plummer bolt, involving a young and beautiful woman, just
hinted at in the despatches, heightened the effect of the story. "King"
Plummer himself appeared to the reading public as a martyr, and even to
many old partisans party rebellion seemed in this case honorable and
heroic.
For a day or so Harley scarcely spoke to any one, and, as far as was
possible within the limited confines of a train, he avoided Sylvia. He
did not wish to see her, because he was strengthening himself to carry
out a great resolution which he meant to take. In this crisis he turned
to only one person, and that was Mr. Heathcote, who he felt would give
him advice that was right and true.
When Harley told Mr. Heathcote of his purpose, the committeeman's face
became grave, but he said, "It is the hard thing for you to do, although
it is the best thing." An hour later, Harley sent to his editor in New
York a despatch, asking to be recalled; he said there had arisen
personal reasons which would make him valueless for the rest of the
campaign, and he felt that the _Gazette_ would be the gainer if he were
transferred to another field of activity.
Harley felt a deep pang, and he did not attempt to disguise it from
himself, when he sent this telegram, but after it was gone his
conscience came to his relief, although he still avoided the presence of
Sylvia with great care. But the pang was repeated many times, as he sat
silent among his companions and calculated how he could leave them that
night and get a train for New York in the morning.
He was still sitting among them about the twilight hour when the
conductor handed him a telegraphic despatch, and Harley knew that it was
from his editor, who had a high appreciation of his merits, both
personal and professional. The message was brief and pointed. It said:
"Can't understand your request for a transfer. Your despatches from the
campaign best work you have ever done; not only have all news, but write
from the inside; you present the candidate as he is. Have telegraphed
Mr. Grayson asking if there is any quarrel, and in reply he makes
special request that you represent _Gazette_ with him to the end. Stay
till you are sent for, and don't bother me again."
Harley read it over a second time. Despite himself he smiled, and he
smiled because he felt a throb of pleasure. "Good old chief," he said,
and he understood now that a refusal of his request was a hope that he
had dared not utter to himself. But he knew that he should have taken
the great risk.
He showed the despatch to Mr. Heathcote, and the committeeman was
sincerely glad.
"Your editor has done his duty," he said.
Mr. Grayson did not allude to the subject, and Harley respected his
silence, although devoutly grateful for the reply that he had made.
Other telegrams caused by the threatened revolt in the mountains were
also passing; some of them stopped at the house of Mr. Plummer, in
Boise, and upon the trail of one of these telegrams, a forcible one,
came a thin-faced and quiet but alert man, Mr. Henry Crayon, who in his
way was a power in both the financial and political worlds. Mr. Crayon
was perhaps the most trusted of the lieutenants of the Honorable Clinton
Goodnight, and the two had held a long conference before his departure
for the West, agreeing at the end of it that "it was time to make a
move, and after that move to spring a live issue."
Mr. Crayon was fairly well informed of the causes that agitated the soul
of "King" Plummer, and as he shot westward on a Limited Continental
Express he considered the best way of approach, inclining as always to
delicate but incisive methods. Long before he reached Boise his mind was
well made up, and he felt content because he anticipated no difficulty
in handling the crude mountaineer, who was unused to the ways of
diplomacy.
He found the "King" in Boise, still hot and sulky. Mr. Plummer had not
heard anything in person from the Graysons, nor had he sent any message
to them, and the mountains were full of talk about his bolt, which was
now spoken of as an accepted fact.
Mr. Crayon's first meeting with Mr. Plummer came about in quite an
accidental and easy way--Mr. Crayon saw to that--and the Easterner was
deferential, as became one who had so little experience of the West,
who, in case he was presumptuous, was likely to be reminded that Idaho
was nearly twenty times as large as Connecticut and twice as large as
the state of New York itself. After making himself pleasant by humility
and requests for advice, Mr. Crayon glided warily into the subject of
politics. He disclosed to Mr. Plummer how much a powerful faction in the
party was displeased with Mr. Grayson, and the equally important fact
that this faction felt the necessity of speedy action of some kind.
They were at that moment in a secluded corner of the reading-room of the
chief hotel in Boise, and Mr. Crayon had ordered a pleasant and powerful
Western concoction which he and Mr. Plummer sipped as they talked. The
"King's" face was red, partly with the sun and partly with the anger
that still burned him. Mr. Crayon's words fell soothingly upon his
ear--Mr. Crayon had a quiet, mellow voice--and his sense of injury at
the hands of Jimmy Grayson deepened. What right had Jimmy Grayson or
Jimmy Grayson's wife, which was the same thing, to interfere in his
private affairs? And it was only a step from one's private life to one's
public life. Wrong in one, wrong in the other. Mr. Crayon, watching him
keenly though covertly, was pleased with the varying expressions that
passed over the unbearded portions of the "King's" face. He read there
anger, jealousy, and revenge, and he said to himself that he would bend
this man, big and strong as he was, to his will.
Mr. Crayon now grew bolder. He said that the minority within the party,
which, for the present, he represented, was resolved to come to an issue
with Mr. Grayson; the destinies of a great party, and possibly the
country, could not be put in the hands of a man who had neither the
proper dignity nor the proper sense of responsibility. Thus far he went,
and then the wily Mr. Crayon stopped to notice the effect.
It seemed to him to be favorable, and Mr. Crayon was an acute man. The
"King" drank a little of his liquor and nodded his head. Yes, he had
been fooled in Jimmy Grayson, he had thought that he was as true as
steel, but there was a flaw in the steel; Jimmy Grayson had done him a
great injury, and he was not a man who turned one cheek when the other
was smitten; he smote back with all his might, and his own hand was
pretty heavy.
Mr. Crayon smiled--all things were certainly going well; he had caught
Mr. Plummer at the right moment, and there was no doubt of the
impression that he was making. Then he went a little further; he
suggested that a certain important issue not hitherto discussed in the
campaign was going to be brought up, even now they were proposing to
present it in the West, and Mr. Grayson would have to declare himself
either for or against it--there was no middle ground. Mr. Crayon again
stopped and observed the "King" with the same covert but careful
glance. The face of Mr. Plummer obviously bore the stamp of approval;
moreover, he nodded, and, thus encouraged, Mr. Crayon went further and
further, telling why the issue was so great, and why it must be
presented to the public without delay.
Mr. Plummer asked him to name the issue, and when Mr. Crayon did so,
without reserve, the "King's" face once more bore the stamp of approval,
and he nodded his head again.
"If Mr. Grayson accepts the law as we lay it down," said Mr. Crayon,
with satisfaction, "he places himself in our hands and we control him.
Our policies prevail, and, if he becomes President of the United States,
we remain the power that rules him, and that, therefore, rules the
country. If he resists us, well, that is the end of him!"
Mr. Crayon had lighted a cigar, and as he said "that is the end of him"
he flicked off the ash with a quick gesture that had in it the touch of
finality.
Mr. Plummer said nothing, and Mr. Crayon was content; he could do enough
talking for two.
"Mr. Goodnight and other of my associates are coming West very soon," he
continued. "The velvet glove will be taken off, and it is high time."
Then they went forth into the streets of Boise and they were seen
walking together by many people, to which Mr. Crayon was not averse, and
in an hour three or four local correspondents were sending eastward
vivid despatches stating that Mr. Crayon, the representative of the
conservative and dissatisfied minority in the party, was in Boise in
close conference with "King" Plummer, the political ruler of the
mountains. And the burden of all these despatches was fast-coming evil
for Jimmy Grayson.
Nor was the candidate long in hearing of it. The very next day a Boise
newspaper containing a full first-page account of it reached them, and
was read aloud to the party by Mr. Heathcote. Mr. Grayson made no
comment as it was being read, but Harley once saw his face darken and
his lips close tightly together; this was the only sign that he gave,
and it quickly passed.
But the others were not so chary of words. The train was full of
indignant comment, and the ears of "King" Plummer in the distance must
have burned.
"I could not have believed it of him," said Mr. Heathcote. "It is untrue
to the man's whole nature, even if he is swayed suddenly by some
powerful emotion."
Hobart glanced at Sylvia, who had withdrawn to the far end of the car,
where she was apparently gazing at the mountains that fled by, although
she said not one word and her face was red. Nor did Harley join in the
talk, but, taking advantage of the slight bustle caused by Mr. Grayson's
retirement to the drawing-room, he took refuge in a day car to which
their own coach was attached for the time. That evening, while the
others were at dinner, he saw Sylvia alone.
"I ought to tell you," she said, "that I have asked to leave the train,
but my aunt has refused to consent to it. She says she needs me, and as
I cannot go now to my old home in Boise, it is better for me to stay
with her. I have heard that you asked to be recalled to the East, and I
honor you for it."
"Are you sorry that my request was refused?" asked Harley.
She did not falter, although the red in her cheeks flushed deeper.
"No, I am not sorry; I am glad," she replied. "Why should I tell an
untruth about what is so great a matter to both of us? But it cannot
change anything."
Harley felt that this was, indeed, a maid well worth winning, and his
hope yet to find a way, which had been weakened somewhat lately, grew
high again. That night wild resolves ran through his mind. He would
sacrifice his pride, hitherto an unthinkable thing--he would see "King"
Plummer and tell him that Sylvia and he loved each other, that neither
of them could possibly be happy unless they were wedded, then he would
appeal to the older man's generosity; he would tell him how Sylvia
loyally meant to keep her word and pay her debt of gratitude with
herself, then he would ask him to release her from the promise. But he
gave up the idea as one that required too much; he could never humiliate
himself so far, and even then it would be a humiliation without result.
If Harley had undertaken to carry out such a wild idea, he would have
found it difficult, because no one in the party then knew where "King"
Plummer was; they were hearing of him all over the West, and the Denver,
Salt Lake, and smaller newspapers were filled with accounts of his
doings, all colored highly. His bolt, they said, was now an accomplished
fact; he showed the deepest hostility to the candidate, and he was also
in constant correspondence with a powerful and dissatisfied wing in the
East.
Mr. Grayson never said a word, he never spoke of Mr. Plummer in any of
his speeches, and Harley believed there was only sadness in his mind,
not anger, whenever he thought of the "King."
But there could be no doubt of the effect of all these events upon the
campaign; to the public Jimmy Grayson seemed as one lost in the
wilderness, and only in the mountains, where the people were far from
the great centres of information, did they yet cherish a hope of his
election. Churchill wrote to the _Monitor_ that Jimmy Grayson himself
had abandoned hope.
Ominous rumblings were coming from the East, too. Goodnight, Crayon, and
their friends had found a pretext upon which to take drastic action, and
they were about to take it.
XX
THE GREAT PHILIPSBURG CONFERENCE
If ever you go to Philipsburg, which is in Wyoming, not far from the
Montana line, you will hear the people proclaim the greatness of the
town in which they live. You expect this sort of thing in the Far West,
and you are prepared for it, but you will be surprised at the nature of
the Philipsburg boast. Its proud inhabitants will not tell you that it
is bound to be the largest city between the Missouri and the coast, they
will not assert that since the horizon touches the earth at an equal
distance on all sides of the town, it is, therefore, the natural centre
of the world; but they will tell you stories of the Great Philipsburg
Conference, and some of them will not be far from the truth.