miners' vote almost to a man unless something unforeseen breaks loose.
Hetchy gives us a good word from Twin Buttes; and Griggs, up in the
Carnadines, wires from Alkire that he has just completed an auto
canvass of the High Line district. The ranchmen up that way have had a
pretty bad scare. There was a threat made that the price of water was
going to be raised. But they're all right now."
The boss nodded approvingly. Then: "How about those microphone notes?"
"Crowell is writing them off," was the reply. "He'll have them in half
an hour or so."
The senator drew out his watch, a huge thick-crystalled time-piece
dating back to the range-riding period.
"As matters have turned out, I shall be going to the city before long,"
he said. "If the notes are not ready before I leave, you can order out
the speed-car and send them in by Gallagher any time before six o'clock.
Don't slip up on that, Fred; tell Gallagher to deliver the notes to me,
in person, at the Inter-Mountain. What's become of Professor Anners?"
"He's staying over at Haworth's ranch, just to be near the fossil
bone-field. They've made another plesio-something find, and Haworth
telephones that the professor couldn't be dragged away with a derrick
until those bones are safely out of the ground and boxed for shipment."
The professor's host smiled indulgently, saying: "It's just as well, I
reckon. The professor's about as blind as a bat when it comes to seeing
anything this side of a million years ago, but if he were here he might
wonder why we've set up a telegraph-office--wonder, and talk about it."
The young man in his shirt-sleeves was turning to go. "I'll hustle
Crowell on those notes," he promised: but as he was reaching for the
door-knob the senator stopped him.
"Hold on a minute, Fred; how is that contrivance of ours at the mouth of
Shonoho working?"
"It's working all right. Canby is on watch there now, and he says he can
see everything that passes on both roads."
"That's good. These little precautions are mighty necessary in a close
fight. Those folks over at Shonoho Inn ought to have thought of this
outer-guard business for themselves, but it seems they didn't. They'd be
right awkwardly embarrassed if some fellow they don't want to see should
slip in on 'em without notice. While I think of it, don't fail to keep
me posted on what Canby sees after I go back to town. He thinks he's
safe, does he?"
"Perfectly. Nobody can see his dugout from the road, and his oil-heater
doesn't make any smoke. That scheme of laying insulated wires on the
ground works like a charm. You could walk all over them without noticing
them." The young man was opening the door as he spoke, and he broke off
suddenly to say: "That's his call ringing now. Would you like to come
and talk to him?"
"No; you can tell me what he says, if it's worth telling."
The clerk disappeared into the room of the tapping noises, but he was
back again almost immediately.
"It was Canby," he said hurriedly. "He says two men on horseback have
just dragged a good-sized pine-tree down the Shonoho road and are
placing it across the county road. He can't see the men's faces very
well, but he thinks the bigger of the two is Jack Barto."
It was the senator's boast that he had never lost a tooth or had one
filled, and his smile showed the double row, strong and evenly matched,
under the drooping grayish mustaches.
"That boy Canby is a mighty good guesser, Fred. I shouldn't be surprised
if the fellow he has spotted _is_ Jack Barto, sure enough. If you didn't
know beforehand what a good-natured, meechin' sort of rooster Jack is,
you might think he was fixing to play some kind of a hold-up game on
somebody."
"That's what Canby thinks, and he asked me to hold the wire open."
The big boss smiled again. "Then don't you reckon you'd better go and
hold it?" he suggested mildly; and the young man in his shirt-sleeves
vanished to do it.
When he was left alone, the senator went to the house phone connecting
the library with the remoter suites. A touch of the button brought an
answering word, and he spoke softly into the transmitter.
"The time is getting right ripe, and I thought you might want a minute
or so to put on your things," he said, in answer to the low-toned
"Well?" that came over the house wire. Then he added: "I don't know but
what we may have to make a little bluff at somebody on the way in. When
you order the car around, suppose you tell Rickert to put 'Tennessee'
and Billy Shack in the tonneau, with a couple of shot-guns. We can drop
'em if they look too warlike and conspicuous."
He was hanging the ear-piece on its hook when the shirt-sleeved young
man burst in again excitedly.
"It _is_ a hold-up!" he declared breathlessly. "Miss Anners and Mr. Evan
have slammed their car into the tree, and Canby says the two horseback
men are watching them from the dry gulch just below him!"
"All right," was the even-toned reply. "You go and tell Canby to keep
his shirt on, Fred; and don't forget to send those papers in by
Gallagher."
While the senator was speaking, the door opened and the old negro came
hobbling in with a driving-coat and the broad-brimmed planter's hat
which made the Honorable David a marked man throughout the length and
breadth of the Sage-Brush State.
"De cyar's at de do', Marsteh David, and Mistis say she plumb ready when
you is, yes-sah," stammered the serving-man, holding the coat for his
master; and a moment later the senator was climbing to his place behind
the big wheel of the touring-car, with Mrs. Honoria for his seat-mate on
the mechanician's side, and the chauffeur, the horse wrangler, and Billy
Shack comfortably filling the tonneau.
While the touring-car, with its curiously assorted complement of
passengers, was leaving Wartrace Hall, Evan Blount, having assured
himself that Patricia was not hurt, was trying to estimate the extent
of the damage done to the little red roadster by the collision with the
tree. The inspection was brief. With the front axle bent and the
radiator crushed, the car was safely out of commission.
"We're definitely out of the fight," he reported shortly, helping his
companion down from the driving-seat.
Patricia was still trembling and pale.
"You mean that we can't go on to the city?" she quavered.
"Not unless we walk; and of course that is out of the question."
"Then you--you can't keep your appointment with Judge Hemingway."
Blount's smile was scornful. "I imagine it was no part of my father's
plans that I should keep my appointment," he commented bitterly. "He
took it for granted that I would drive out to Wartrace with you, and
made his preparations accordingly. This tree wasn't here half an hour
ago, and it is here now."
"I can't believe it of him," she denied, and her lip quivered. And then
she added: "Just think, Evan; we might have been killed--both of us!"
Blount's teeth came together with a little clicking noise. "Politics, or
what passes for politics in this God-forsaken region, seems to make no
account of such a small thing as a human life or two," he said. And
then: "I suppose we are due to wait until somebody comes along to pick
us up. It's four miles or more back to the nearest ranch on the mesa."
"It is all my fault!" lamented the young woman. "I--I might have
stopped the car, don't you think?"
"I wondered a little that you didn't at least try to stop it," he
permitted himself to say; and at this she forgot the traditions,
sociological or other, reverting to the type of the eternal feminine.
"Say it all," she flashed out. "You are beginning to wonder if I didn't
do it purposely. I _did_ do it purposely. All the way along I had been
trying to muster up courage enough to smash the car in the ditch, and if
I hadn't been such a coward I would have done it. Now hate me, if you
want to!"
Blount would have been less the lover than he was if he had not been
moved to something much warmer than hatred.
"Let us say that you are doing your level best to save my faith in human
nature, Patricia, girl," he said soberly. "Do you know what you are? You
are the one loyal person in a tricky world. I am still fair enough to
say that it was fine--splendid! And I only wish my father were worthier
of such superb loyalty and affection."
She looked at him curiously for a moment. Then her mood changed in the
twinkling of an eye, and she laughed and said: "Yes, I think women are
more loyal than men; and I am sure they are vastly more discerning at
times. Don't you think--"
The interruption was the appearance of two horsemen pushing their
animals out of a small gorge on the right. When they had gained the main
road they came up, ambling easily, and Blount instantly recognized the
leader of the pair. It was Barto again.
"Howdy?" said the timber-looker, riding up to hang with one knee over
the saddle while he grinned genially at the two castaways. "Lost out
ag'in, ain't ye, Mr. Blount? Couldn't make out, nohow, to run yer
chug-wagon over that there pine-tree, could ye?"
"Did you put the tree in the road?" snapped Blount, his anger rising
promptly, now that there was a man to quarrel with.
"I reckon we did; and it was one Hades of a job, too," was the cool
reply. "Had to drag the dern thing f'r more'n half a mile down the gulch
with the hawss-ropes."
Here was plenty of material for a wrathful explosion, but Blount
controlled himself.
"By whose orders did you do it?" he demanded.
"Th' boss's."
"Mr. Hathaway?"
"Not on yer life; it was the big boss this time."
Blount's quick glance aside at his companion was a wordless "I told you
so!" and then to Barto: "Well, now that you have stopped us, what's
next?"
The outlaw grinned again and kicked his horse a little nearer.
"I'm a-holdin' you up sure enough this time, Mr. Blount--jest like
another little Billy th' Kid," he confided. "You're goin' to gimme them
papers you've got in your pocket, and then me an' Kinky we rides away
all peaceful and leaves you and the lady to set down quiet till
somebuddy comes along to pick you up."
Blount put his hand to his head. His wound was throbbing painfully
again, and the pain may have been partly responsible for his answer.
"When you get those papers you'll take them from a dead man, Barto. Do
your instructions go that far?"
The man of many trades swung straight in his saddle and fell into the
attitude of one listening. Then the good-natured grin became a menacing
scowl.
"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; "shell '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 pass:
"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 attitude 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 mass 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 assure 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 assured 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 passion 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 passion 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 _café_ 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
balustrade, 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 buttoning his coat.
"I don't know how much or how little you know about what has taken place
this afternoon, Mrs. Blount," he broke out hastily, "but I can tell you
this much: I am my father's son now, whatever I have been in the past,
and if he is in danger, my place is with him. Tell me where he has
gone."
The little lady's eyes were demurely downcast. "I shouldn't dare tell
you that, but--but perhaps I might show you. I didn't promise not
to--not to follow him," she returned with exactly the proper shade of
half-frightened reluctance.
"Is it far?" he asked.
"Y-yes; we should have to drive."
"Excuse me for a minute or two," he said abruptly, and, making a bolt
for the elevator, he was back almost within the limit named with a
top-coat for himself and a driving-wrap for his companion. "I broke into
your suite and made Patricia give me the wrap," he explained. "If it
isn't what you want, I'll try again."
"It will do nicely," she told him; and together they went down the broad
marble stair to the ground-floor.
"Do we take a cab?" he asked, when they reached the sidewalk.
"No; it's only a short walk to the garage, and we can take the
touring-car."
"I'm entirely in your hands," he rejoined; and then: "Perhaps you'd
better take my arm. We can make quicker time that way."
The small plotter's eyes were dancing when she slipped her hand under
his arm. In a career which had not been entirely devoid of excitement,
Mrs. Honoria had rarely found men difficult. But this particular young
man was proving himself to be the easiest among many.
At the garage Blount asked for the family touring-car, more than
half-expecting to be told that his father had taken it. The garage man
nodded and laughed. "You can have it, but you came within an ace of
losing out," he said. "The senator was just here, and he was going to
take it, but he changed his mind when I told him the big roadster was
in."
Blount made no comment, and when the car was ready he asked his
companion where she would ride.
"In front, with you," was the quick reply; and when they were placed she
gave him his running orders. "Slip out of the city by the quietest
streets you can find and take the Quaretaro road," she directed, and he
obeyed in silence, holding the speed down until they had left the
capital behind them and were bowling along under the stars on the fine
boulevarded county road.
"Do we take it easy or the other way?" he asked, speaking for the first
time since they had left the town garage.
"You may drive as fast as you like until we come to the hills," he was
told; and with this permission Blount let the motor out and speedily put
the fifteen miles of the straightaway road to the rear.