"Oh, that of course," he answered indifferently.
"Well, what did you do?"
"Played with 'em till I was elected. Then I dropped Goodrich a line. 'You can go to hell,' I wrote. 'I travel only with men'."
"Very imprudent," was my comment.
"Yes," he admitted, "but I had to do something to get the dirt off my hands."
"So Burbank has gone over to Goodrich!" I went on presently, as much to myself as to him.
"I always knew he was one of those chaps you have to keep scared to keep straight," said Woodruff. "They think your politeness indicates fear and your friendship fright. Besides, he's got a delusion that his popularity carried the West for him and that you and I did him only damage." Woodruff interrupted himself to laugh. "A friend of mine," he resumed, "was on the train with Scarborough when he went East to the meeting of Congress last month. He tells me it was like a President-elect on the way to be inaugurated. The people turned out at every cross-roads, even beyond the Alleghanies. And Burbank knows it. If he wasn't clean daft about himself he'd realize that if it hadn't been for you—well, I'd hate to say how badly he'd have got left. But then, if it hadn't been for you, he'd never have been governor. He was a dead one, and you hauled him out of the tomb."
True enough. But what did it matter now?
"He's going to get a horrible jolt before many months," Woodruff went on. "I can see you after him."
"You forget. He's President," I answered. "He's beyond our reach."