their way to the smoking-room, that some one on business bent stopped
Gantry in the corridor. Blount strolled on by himself, and, finding the
smoking-room unoccupied, went to lounge in a lazy-chair standing in a
little alcove lined with bookcases and half screened by the racks of the
newspaper files. Notwithstanding the successful topic changing at table,
he was still brooding over the false position in which his father's
plans had placed him; wherefore he craved solitude and a chance to think
things over fairly and without heat.
Shortly afterward Gantry looked in, and, apparently missing the
half-concealed easy-chair and its occupant in the bookcase alcove, went
his way. He had scarcely had time to get out of the building, one would
say, before two men entered the smoking-room, coming down the corridor
from the grill. Blount saw them, and he made sure that they saw him. But
when they had taken chairs on the other side of the sheltering newspaper
files he was suddenly assured that they had not seen him. They were
talking quite freely of him and of his father.
"Well, the Honorable Dave has got McVickar dead to rights this time,"
remarked the older of the two, a hard-featured, round-bodied real-estate
promoter to whom Blount had been introduced on his first day in the
capital, but whose name he could not now recall. "This scheme of the
senator's for shoving his son into the race for the attorney-generalship
is just about the foxiest thing he has ever put across. You can bet the
air was blue in the Transcontinental Chicago offices when the news got
there."
"What do you suppose McVickar will do?" asked the other.
"He will do anything the senator wants him to--he's got to. Blount is
land hungry, and I guess he'll take a few more sections of the railroad
mesa-land under the Clearwater ditch. That was what he did two years ago
when McVickar wanted the right of way for the branch through Carnadine
County."
"Don't you believe he's going to take any little Christmas gift this
time!" was the rasping reply. "He'll sell the railroad something, and
take good hard money for it. It's a cinch. The railroad can't afford to
have the courts against it, and McVickar will be made to sweat blood
this heat. You watch the wheels go round when McVickar comes out here."
Evan Blount found himself growing strangely sick and faint. Could it be
his father whom they were thus calmly accusing of graft and trickery and
blackmailing methods too despicable to be imagined? His first impulse
was to confront the two; to demand proofs; to do and say what a loyal
son should. But the crushing conviction that they were discussing only
well-known and well-assured facts unnerved him; and after that he was
anxious for only one thing--that they might finish their cigars and go
away without discovering him.
Fate was kind to him thus far. After a little further talk, in which the
accepted point of view of the on looker at the great game was made still
more painfully evident for the unwilling listener, the men went away.
For a long time after they had gone, Blount sat crumpled in the depths
of the big chair, chewing his extinct cigar and staring absently at the
row of books on a level with his eyes in the opposite case.
One clear thought, and one only, came out of the sorrowful confusion:
not for any inducement that could now be offered would he lend himself
to the furtherance of his father's plans. Beyond this he did not reason
in the miserable hour wrought out in the quiet of the club smoking-room.
But when he got up to go, another prompting was forcing its way to the
surface--a prompting to throw himself boldly into the scale against
graft and chicanery; to redeem at any cost, and by whatsoever means
might offer, the good old name which had been so shamefully dragged in
the mire.
He did not know just how it was to be done, but he told himself that he
would find a way. That the path would be full of thorns he could not
doubt, since every step in it would widen the breach which must be
opened between his father and himself. Possibly it might lead him to the
bar of justice as that father's accuser, but even in that hard case he
must not falter. He said to himself, in a fresh access of passionate
determination, that though he might have to blush for his father,
Patricia should not be made ashamed for her lover.
Upon leaving the club, he paused long enough to remember that he was in
no fit frame of mind to risk an immediate meeting with his father. To
make even a chance meeting impossible, he crossed the street, and,
passing through the Capitol grounds, strolled aimlessly out one of the
residence avenues until he came to the open country beyond the suburbs.
It was quite late in the afternoon when he re-entered the city by
another street and boarded a trolley car for the down-town centre. The
long afternoon tramp, and the conclusions it had bred, made it
imperative for him to see Gantry before the traffic manager should
leave his office for the day. His business with the railroad man was
purely personal. He meant to ask Gantry a few pointed questions
requiring such answers as friendship may demand. If Gantry's replies
were such as he feared they would be, he would seek his father and come
at once to a plain understanding with him.
The trolley car dropped him within a square of the railway station, on
the second floor of which Gantry had his business office. The shortest
way to the Sierra Avenue end of the station building was through the
great train-shed. Half-way up the platform Blount met the west-bound
Overland steaming in from the eastern yards. At the Sierra Avenue
crossing the yard crew was cutting off a private car. Blount saw the
number on the medallion, "008," and noted half absently the rich
window-hangings and the polished brass platform railings. A car
inspector in greasy overalls and jumper was tapping the wheels with his
long-handled hammer.
"Whose car is this?" asked Blount.
"'Tis Misther McVickar's, sorr--the vice-prisidint av the coompany,"
said the man.
Blount turned away, saying something which the hammer-man mistook for a
word of thanks. So the vice-president had come, hastening upon the wing
of occasions, it seemed. And in the light of the overheard conversation
in the club smoking-room, it was only too easy to guess his errand in
the Sage-brush capital. He had come to make such terms as he could with
the man who was going to hold him up.
VII
A BATTLE ROYAL
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-glasses 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 snatched 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-glasses 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 Megalosauridæ 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-button 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?"
"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 damnedest! 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 damned 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
damnedest, 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?"