“That’s a fact,” the attorney agreed.
“Working along that line, we can afford to wait, for a little while at least, to see how the cat is going to jump. Jennings is over here to get into the newspaper fight himself. In Maxwell’s demoralization tussle of two weeks ago, it was demonstrated that The Times-Record had been subsidized by the enemy. Now we shall see Higginson and his editor jump in and take up the clubs in defence of the Mesquite Company.”
“I guess that is pretty good advice—to wait,” said Stillings. “But we have an active crowd in the High Line, and its blood is up. Our people will want to be doing something while they wait.”
“Let them talk,” said Sprague quickly. “Tell them to resolve themselves into committees of one to throw the big scare into the Brewster public which depends upon the safety of the High Line dam for its own safety. Then pick out a few good, dependable men like Smith, his old fighting father-in-law the colonel, and Williams the engineer, who will hold themselves in readiness to start at a moment’s notice, night or day, for the firing line—any firing line that may happen to show up.”
“That is more like it,” rejoined the attorney. “I’m sworn to uphold the majesty of the law, but——”
“But, as you remarked last night, there are extra-judicial crises now and then which have to be met in any old way that offers. Let it rest at that, and see me at the hotel this evening, if you can make it convenient.”
With the appearance on the streets of the evening edition of The Times-Record, the Brewster public learned that there were two sides to the Mesquite question. In terms of unmeasured scorn Editor Healy attacked the narrow prejudice which would seek to place stumbling-blocks in the way of a great enterprise designed to benefit, not only the region locally concerned, but the entire West.
In the course of a long and vituperative editorial, the High Line company, the Brewster public-service corporations, and the railroad, each came in for its share of accusation, and their joint lack of public spirit was roundly condemned. It was pointed out that the High Line plant, by the admission of its own officials, would be in no danger even in the unsupposable case of the breaking of the Mesquite dam. Also, it was urged that the penny-wise policy of the railroad in adopting the low grade in Timanyoni Canyon was a matter of its own risk. Was the development of the nation to be halted, it was asked, because a niggardly railroad company was unwilling to spend a little money in raising its grade beyond a possible danger line?
But the sting of the editorial for Maxwell was in its tail. Healy concluded by darkly hinting that certain of the railroad officials were interested financially in sundry Timanyoni Park lands owned by the High Line Company, and that they were willing to kill the prospects of the new district for the sake of their own pockets.
Maxwell was furiously hot about this blast in the evening paper, as his demeanor at the dinner-table, where he spoke his mind freely to Sprague, sufficiently proved.