department in railroading in which patience is more than a virtue. Yet
there are limits.
"You seem to have entirely forgotten that little talk we had in my
office the night you were going to Angora," he said.
"No; I haven't forgotten it--not for a single waking minute."
"What I said to you then goes as it lies," was the threatening reminder.
"If you pull the props out, there'll be more than one death in the
family."
"You mean that you, or Mr. McVickar, will make it a point to include my
father; I've wrestled that out, too, Dick. I'm going to try to pull him
out of it, but whether I succeed or fail, the consequences will be the
same for you fellows. Come and hear me speak to-night, Dick--if you're
stopping over that long. Then you'll know how much in earnest--how
deadly in earnest--I am. You spoke of my father just now; I want to
remind you again that I, too, bear the Blount name--a name that I have
heard bandied about as a synonym for all that is worst in our political
life. Don't you see that I've got to make good?"
"Oh, great cats!--you and your high-strung notions of what you've got to
do!" snorted the traffic manager, and he went away to his classification
meeting.
XV
SWORD-PLAY
It was during this hard-travelling period that Blount saw, with keen
regret, the gradual widening of the breach between his father and
himself. In their infrequent meetings there was never anything remotely
approaching an open rupture; but in a thousand ways the younger man
fancied he could see and feel the steady growth of the rift.
That the long arm of the machine of which his father was the
acknowledged head was reaching out into all corners of the State, was a
fact no longer to be doubted, and that the influences thus set in motion
were sinister, he took for granted. Therefore, when it came in his way,
he scored the machine frankly, charging it with much of the mischief
which had been wrought in the way of arousing public sentiment against
the corporations. "The worst in politics joined with the worst elements
in capitalized industry," was his platform characterization of the
alliances of the past, and he usually added that he was fighting it as
every honest man was in duty bound to fight it. But it is hard to fight
in the dark. After all was said, he could not help admiring the
subtlety of the master brain which was able to control and direct such a
complicated piece of human mechanism; direct it so skilfully and
cleverly that, though the name of the thing was in everybody's mouth,
its workings were so carefully concealed that it was only by the merest
chance that he stumbled upon them now and then.
In more than one of the short stop-overs in the capital he had found his
father still occupying the private suite at the Inter-Mountain, and now
and again there was a meal shared in the more or less crowded _café_. On
such occasions the son leaned heavily upon the public character of the
place and carefully steered the table-talk--or thought he did--into
innocuous channels. But on a day shortly after the meeting with Gantry
in Ophir this desultory programme was broken. Reaching the hotel in the
evening after an all-day train journey from Lewiston, Blount found his
father waiting for him in the lobby, and when he proposed a _café_
dinner the senator shook his head.
"No, son; not this evening," he said. "I've been feeling sort of set up
and aristocratic to-day, and I've just ordered a dinner sent upstairs. I
reckon you'll join me?"
The young man was willing enough; more than willing, since he was now
ready to say a thing which must be said before he could be prepared to
set a time limit upon Gantry--a limit beyond which lay the firing of the
fuse and the blowing up of all things mundane.
"Certainly," he agreed. "Give me a few minutes to change my clothes--"
"You look good enough to me just as you are, boy," said the
dinner-giver, and he took his son by the arm and walked him to the
elevator.
In the private dining-room Blount found the table laid for two, much as
if his coming had been pre-figured. He let that go, and for the time the
talk was of the doings at Wartrace Hall: of the professor's enthusiastic
digging for fossils, of Patricia's keen enjoyment of the life in the
open, and--this put with gentle hesitation on the part of the
news-bringer--of Mrs. Honoria's growing affection for the young woman
whose ambitions reached out toward a sociological career.
"You say Patricia is learning to drive a car?" queried Patricia's lover.
"Best woman driver I ever saw," was the senator's praiseful rejoinder.
"Nothing feazes that little girl, and I'm telling you that she can turn
the wheels just about as fast as you want to ride."
This was a new aspect of Miss Anners, even to one who knew her as well
as Blount thought he knew her, and, lover-like, he found a grain of
encouragement in it. Patricia had never cared for the out-of-door things
save as they bore upon the hygienic condition of the poor in the great
cities. If she had changed in one respect, she might change in another.
"I'm glad to know that," he commented. "She was needing an outlet on
that side. There is a good bit of the Puritan in her--all work and no
play, you know."
The senator looked out from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "Speaking of
work; they're working you pretty hard these days, aren't they, son? If
you belonged to my generation instead of your own, you wouldn't be
cold-shouldering that young woman out yonder at Wartrace the way you do;
not for all the politics that were ever hatched."
"I have my work to do, and Patricia Anners would be the last person in
the world to put obstacles in the way of it," returned the son gravely.
Then he added: "I wish I could say as much for other people."
The boss shot another keen glance across the table. "Somebody been
trying to block you, Evan, boy?" he asked.
Blount met the gaze of the shrewd gray eyes without flinching.
"I don't know of any good reason why we shouldn't be entirely frank with
each other, dad," he said, using for the first time since his return to
the homeland the old boyhood father-name. "You know, better than any one
else, I think, what the stumbling-blocks are, and who is putting them in
my way."
"Maybe so; maybe I do," was the even-toned answer. "It happens so, once
in a while, that I know a heap of things I can't tell, son." Then: "Has
McVickar been calling you down?"
"No one has called me down. But some one, or something, is keeping me
out of the real fight. I don't mean that I'm not doing what I set out to
do: I've got my own particular abomination by the neck, and I'm about to
choke the life out of it. But that is, as you might say, a side issue.
The real struggle is going on all around me, but I'm not in it or of it.
Everywhere I go there is the same cut-and-dried welcome, the same
predetermined enthusiasm. Sometimes it seems as if all the people I meet
have been instructed to make things pleasant and easy for me."
The senator's chuckle was barely audible.
"Seems as if I wouldn't find fault with that, if I were you, son," he
suggested. "You are like the boy who has found a good piece of skating
over a sheet of fine, smooth ice, and takes to complaining because it
won't break and let him down into the cold water. You'll get enough of
the real thing by and by."
Evan Blount felt his anger rising. He was in precisely the right mood to
construe the gentle jest into an admission that his father, failing to
make him a cog in one of the wheels of the machine, had gone about in
some mysterious way to insulate him--to make it impossible for him to
get into the real tide of affairs. But he kept his temper, in a measure,
at least.
"I guess it's no use for us to try to get together," he said with a tang
of abruptness in his tone. "We are diametrically opposed to each other
at every point, you and I, dad. I stand for democracy, the will of the
people and its fullest and freest expression. You stand for--"
"Well, son, what do I stand for?" queried the father, and the question
was put with a quizzical smile that brought the hot blood boyishly to
Blount's cheeks.
"If I should say what all men say--what some of them are frank enough to
say even to me--" he stopped short, and then went on with better
self-control: "Let's keep the peace if we can, dad."
"Oh, I reckon we can do that," was the good-natured rejoinder. "Being on
the railroad side, yourself, you can't help feeling sort of hostile at
the rest of us, I reckon."
Blount put his knife and fork down and straightened himself in his
chair.
"There it is again, you see. We can't get together even on a question of
admitted fact! Do you suppose for a single minute, dad, that I've been
going up and down, and around and about, all these weeks without finding
out that the old alliance of the machine with the very element in the
railroad policy that I am fighting is still in existence?"
The senator was nodding soberly. "So you've found that out, too, have
you?" he commented.
"I have, and I wish that were the worst of it, but it isn't, dad.
There's a thing behind the alliance that cuts deeper than anything else
I've had to face."
Once more the deep-set eyes looked out from their bushy penthouses.
"Reckon you could give it a name, son?"
"Yes; when you found that I wasn't going to let you run me for the
attorney-generalship, you arranged with Mr. McVickar to have me put on
the railroad pay-roll. Isn't that the fact?"
"Not exactly," said the senator, and a grim smile went with the
qualified denial. "It was sort of the other way round. I reckon McVickar
thought he was putting one across on me when he offered you the railroad
job and got you to take it."
"I know; that was at first. You and he couldn't come to terms because
you--because the machine wanted more than he was willing to give. But
afterward there was another meeting and you got together. That part of
it was all right, if you see it that way. What broke my heart was the
fact that you and he agreed to put me up as a fence behind which all the
crookedness and rascality of a corrupt campaign could be screened."
In the pause which followed, a deft waiter slipped in to change the
courses. When the man was gone, Blount went on.
"It came mighty near smashing me when I found it out, dad. It wasn't so
much the thing itself as it was the thought that you'd do it--the
thought that you had forgotten that I was a Blount, and your son."
Again the older man nodded gravely. "How come you to find out, Evan,
boy?" he asked.
"It was when Hathaway had been given his chance at me. He opened the
cesspool for me, as you meant he should when you sent him to me. From
your point of view, I suppose it was necessary that I should be shown.
You knew what I was saying and doing; how I was taking it for granted
that the railroad was going in clean-handed, and the one ray of comfort
in the whole miserable business is the fact that you cared enough to
want to give me a glimpse of the real thing that was hiding behind all
my brave talk. But I don't think you counted fully upon the effect it
would have upon me."
"What was the effect, son?"
"At first, it made me want to throw up the fight and run away to the
ends of the earth. It seemed as if I didn't have anybody to turn to. You
were in it, and Gantry was in it--and Gantry's superiors and mine. That
evening I borrowed one of your cars and drove out to Wartrace. I meant
to have it out with you, and then to throw up my hands and quit."
"But you didn't do either one," said the father tentatively.
"No. Nothing went right that day, until just at the last. When I was
about to give up and go to bed, Patricia came into the smoking-room. I
had to talk to somebody, so I talked to her; told her where I had
landed."
"And she advised you to throw up your hands?"
"You don't know Patricia. She put a heart into my body and blood into my
veins. What she said to me that night is what has kept me going,
dad--what has made me drive this fight for a clean election on the part
of the railroad company home to the hilt. I have driven it home. There
will be no crooked deals on the part of the railroad company this time."
The senator looked up quickly. "That's a mighty good stout thing to
say," he remarked, adding: "I reckon you're not saying it without having
the right and proper club hid out somewhere where you can lay hands on
it?"
Blount tapped his coat-pocket. "I have the club right here--documentary
evidence that will rip this State wide open and send a lot of people to
the penitentiary. I've told Gantry to pass the word: a clean sheet, or I
go over to the other side and tell what I know. And that brings me to
the thing that I've got to say to you, dad--the thing that made me hope
I'd find you here to-night. After I'd got my battle-word from Patricia,
I had a jolt that was worse than the other. When I pulled the gun on
Gantry, he told me that I couldn't shoot without killing you; that you
were just as deeply involved as any one of the railroad officials. Is
that the truth?"
The senator had pushed his chair back and was burying his hands in his
pockets.
"You've come to try to haul me out of the fire?" he inquired, ignoring
the direct question.
"I've come to ask you, first, if it is possible for you to stand from
under. Can you?"
"Oh, yes; I reckon I could dodge, if I had to."
"Then do it, and do it quickly, dad! As there is a God above us, I'm
going to push this thing through to the bitter end. To-morrow morning I
shall give Gantry his time limit. If the time goes by, leaving the
house-cleaning still undone, I shall keep my promise to the letter. You
know, and I know, what will happen after that."
"Yes; I reckon I know," was the half-absent reply.
Blount threw his napkin aside and glanced at his watch.
"I've got to go back to the office and work a while," he said. And then:
"I feel better for having had this talk with you, dad. I'm sorry you are
finding it necessary to fight me, and a thousand times sorrier that I've
got to fight you. But I can't give ground now, and still be a man and
your son. Think it over and dodge. It'll break my heart a second time if
I have to pull the other fellow's house down and bury you in the wreck."
For some little time after his son had left the table and the private
dining-room, the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush sat absently toying with
his dessert-spoon. When he rose to go out, the battle light in the gray
eyes was the signal which not even his most faithful henchmen could
always interpret; but it was a signal which all of them knew by sight,
and one which many of them feared.
XVI
THE SAFE-BLOWER
About the time that Evan Blount was finishing the fourth week of the
campaign of education, the senator's wife began to detect signs of
country weariness in the eyes of Miss Patricia Anners.
"When you are tired of the out-door bignesses, you have only to say the
word," she told the professor's daughter one morning after they had
driven to Lost River Canyon and back in the small car. "As you have
doubtless discovered, the senator and I live either here or at the
capital indifferently during the season, and we shall be only too glad
to entertain you in town whenever you feel like going."
To similar proposals made earlier Miss Anners had always returned prompt
refusals. But for a week or more some impulse which she had not taken
the trouble to analyze seemed to be drawing her toward the city. The
mesa roads were just as inviting, and the free pleasures of motoring, in
a country where speed restrictions were conspicuous only by their
absence, were just as keen. But now Patricia confessed to a restless
longing for the sight of city streets and the brabble of city noises.
"Only you mustn't consider us, or me, so much as you do, Mrs. Blount,"
she protested. "I have a dreadful suspicion that we have already
interfered shamefully with your autumn plans. You are simply too kind
and too hospitable to admit it."
"You have interfered with nothing," was the ready assurance. "We were
not going anywhere, or thinking of going anywhere. No inducement that
was ever invented would take the senator away from his own State in a
political year, and your coming has been a blessing. But for the good
excuse to bring your father out here to the fossil-beds, we should have
been mewed up in the Inter-Mountain Hotel from the firing of the opening
gun to the day after election. But that isn't what I meant to say. You
are tired of so much country; I can read the call of the city in your
eyes--and they are very pretty eyes, my dear. Shall I telephone the
senator that we are coming in this afternoon to stay a while?"
"I shall be delighted," said Patricia, and the eyes, which were not only
pretty but exceedingly apt to tell tales, confirmed the eager assent.
Then she added: "Now that daddy has his box of books from the university
library, I doubt if he will know that we are gone."
On their first day in the capital Evan was away, but he returned the
following morning and Mrs. Blount promptly captured him for a theatre
box-party which she was inviting for the same evening. In Mrs. Honoria's
orderly scheme Blount was predestined to go, though he was allowed to
believe that his acceptance was of free will. Notwithstanding the lapse
of time and Mrs. Honoria's uniform kindness, he was still unreasonably
prejudiced, and with the prejudice he was now admitting a feeling akin
to jealousy. It was evident that Patricia's admiration for his father
extended over to his father's wife; and meaning consistently to dislike
Mrs. Honoria, he was irrational enough to want Patricia to dislike her,
too.
The box-party proved to be a more formal affair than he had anticipated,
since it was large enough to fill two of the open dress-circle boxes.
Gantry was included, and so were the Weatherfords--father, mother,
daughters, and son. These, with the Gordons and a Denver man whose name
of Critchett Blount was not quite sure that he caught in the
introduction, filled Mrs. Honoria's list. In the seating Blount meant to
make sure of having a measurably undisturbed evening with Patricia. But
fate, or a designing hostess, intervened, and he found himself cornered
between Mrs. Weatherford and her younger daughter, with the
square-shouldered "Paramounter" candidate for governor strengthening the
barrier which separated him from Miss Anners.
Blount had met Gordon socially a number of times, and in the intervals
allowed him by Mrs. Weatherford he was silently studying the face of the
big man who, singularly enough, as the student thought, was thus
identifying himself publicly as a friend of the boss. True, Blount did
not forget his father's warm commendation of Gordon in that earliest
political talk on the Quaretaro Canyon road, but that was before the
lines had been drawn and the gage of battle thrown down by the allied
forces of the machine and the railroad. Now, with the battle drawing to
its close, Blount thought that nothing could be more certain than the
fact that his father and his father's organization were joining hands
with the railroad oligarchy to slaughter Gordon at the polls.
Putting aside the wonder that Gordon should be accepting Mrs. Honoria's
hospitality, Blount fell to contrasting the strong, large-featured face
of the Mission Hills ranchman with that of Reynolds, the opposition
candidate. Though he was himself on the corporation campaigning staff,
Blount could not help admitting that the comparison was not favorable to
Reynolds. His first impression of the round-faced, portly gentleman who
was standing firmly upon what he was pleased to call a platform of law
and order--a man who was Gordon's opposite in every feature and
characteristic--had been unfavorable. He had been saying to himself,
since, that Reynolds's face, in spite of its heavy jaw and prominent
eyes, was the face of a time-server.
Another point of difference between the two men counted for much.
Reynolds wanted the office, and was spending money liberally to get it,
while Gordon had accepted the nomination reluctantly. Throughout the hot
campaign he had refused to stump the State for himself or his party, and
was said to be holding steadfastly aloof in the bargaining and
dickering. Weighing the two men one against the other--Reynolds was
sitting in an adjacent box with Kittredge and Bentley and two other
railroad officials--Blount admitted a twinge of regret that chance, or
his convictions, had made him a partisan of the weaker.
Having been lost in the shuffle, as he expressed it, Blount made the
most of these reflective excursions during the period of the box-party
captivity. From the rising of the curtain to the going down thereof the
Weatherfords, mother and daughter, kept him from exchanging so much as a
word with Patricia, whom Gantry was shamelessly monopolizing. But on the
short return walk to the hotel, Blount asserted his rights and gave
Patricia his arm.
"I think you owe me an abject apology," was the way she began on him,
when they had gained such privacy as the crowded sidewalk conferred.
"Consider it made, and then tell me what for," he rejoined, striving,
man-fashion, to catch step with her mood.
"For making us leave that dear, delightful, out-of-date, and
out-of-place Georgian mansion in the hills and come to town when we want
to get a sight of your face."
"If anybody else should say a thing like that, I'd blush and call it a
compliment," he retorted. Her near presence seemed to lift the burden he
was carrying, and it was good to be light-hearted again, if only for the
passing moment.
"It wasn't meant for a compliment," she returned, with the
straightforward sincerity which Blount had always been fond of likening
to a cup of cold water on a thirsty day. "Consider a moment. You come to
me with a really harrowing story of your new experiences, and just as I
am beginning to get interested we are interrupted. In the morning, at
some perfectly impossible hour, off you go, and we hear no more of you
for weeks and weeks. What have you been doing?"
"I have been doing precisely what you told me to do; preaching the
gospel of honesty and fair dealing, and trying my level best to make
other people practise it."
"You have been successful?" she asked quickly.
"Reasonably so in the preaching, since that depended solely upon me. As
to the other, I don't know. Sometimes I'm credulous enough to believe
that the house-cleaners are honestly at work, as they say they are, and
at other times I'm afraid they are only putting up a bluff to mislead
me. Some day, perhaps, I may tell you how far I have had to go into the
'practical-politics' armory to get my weapons."
There was still a half-square of the sidewalk privacy available, and she
made what seemed to be the most necessary use of it.
"And your father, Evan; are you coming to understand him any better?"
He shook his head despondently. "No; or rather yes. I might say that I
am coming to understand him--or his methods--only too well. The only
way we can keep from quarrelling now is to banish politics when we are
together."
"I am sorry," she said, and the sorrow was emphatic in her tone. "As I
have said before, you don't understand him. You are judging him by
standards which, however just and true they may be, are peculiarly your
own standards. I know you can be broad for others when you try. Can't
you be broad for him?"
It was good to hear her defend his father. It was what he would have
wished his wife to do. Suddenly there arose within him a huge reluctance
to lessen or to weaken in any way her trust in David Blount.
"Let us say that the fault is mine," he interposed hastily. "God forbid
that I should be the means of making you think less of him in any
respect."
"You couldn't do that, Evan. He is simply a grand old man--the first I
have ever known for whom the hackneyed phrase seemed to have been made,"
she asserted warmly. "If he has faults, I am sure they are nothing more
than gigantic virtues--the faults of a man who is too strong and too
magnanimous to be little in any respect."