The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush

by Francis Lynde

So ran the saving hope; and not content with mere watchfulness, Blount tried to get his finger upon the pulse of occasions whenever he could. On his brief stop-overs in the capital he kept his eyes and ears open for the earliest hint of any charge of chicanery, and though he was unable to get hold of Gantry personally, he kept up a steady fire of letters and telegrams, all pointing to the same end—absolute and utter good faith, and the upholding of his hands in the public plea for a square deal. To these the traffic manager always replied guardedly and optimistically. Everybody was delighted with the good work done, and doing, by the railroad company's field manager; public opinion was slowly but surely changing; let the good work go on—and much more to the same effect.

Blount did let the good work go on; but as the critical pre-election weeks approached, he began to arm himself, reluctantly but resolutely. A little quiet investigation, which was made to dovetail cleverly with his speech-making journeys, revealed—as Gantry had confessed it would—convincing evidence of past corruption and present law-breaking. Hathaway had told the truth when he had asserted that his own involvement was only one of many similar bargains. Blount called upon the president of the Irrigation Alliance at Romero, in the heart of the agricultural district, upon the managers of several of the electric-power companies, and upon a number of influential mining men—all shippers, and all large employers of labor. It was the same story everywhere. Preferential freight rates had been given in return for votes controlled, and the rates were still in effect.

The investigator turned sick at heart when these men talked quite freely to him, thus showing conclusively that they were cynically discounting his public utterances. McDarragh, owner and manager of the "Wire-Gold" properties in the Moscow district, winked slyly when Blount cautiously inserted the probe.

"You're on, Mr. Blount. I sat up there in the Op'ry-house last night listening to your game, and says I to myself, 'Thim railroad shift-bosses know their trade.' 'Twas a gr-reat talk you gave us, and it'll make the swinging of the har-rd-rock vote as easy as twice two. Of course, we have a thin paring on the ore rate; you'll be knowing that as well as annybody in the game, I'm thinking. 'Tis well that we fellows at the top know how to make one hand wash the other. Come again, Mr. Blount, and give my regards to the sinator when ye see him. And ye might whisper in his ear that it's a waste of good wor-rk for him to be sinding his gum-shoe wire-pullers to be laboring with our min. We're safe as the clock up here in the Moscow."

This was not the first hint that Blount had been given pointing to the underground work of the machine. That this work was being directed toward the subversion of the popular will, he made no doubt; and there were times when he was strongly tempted to carry the war boldly into the wider field of graft and bossism. That he postponed the bigger battle was due quite as much to the singleness of purpose which was his best gift as to the desire to spare his father. Telling himself resolutely that the reformation of the railroad company's political methods was his chief object, and the only one which warranted him in retaining his place on the Company's payrolls, he held aloof when his father's name was mentioned and bent himself to the task of providing the means for the subjugation of Gantry—and of Gantry's and his own superiors, if need be.

The securing of evidence of the kind which would really give him the whip-hand promised to be a delicate undertaking. Men like McDarragh talked openly enough about the illegal special freight rates, but talk was not evidence. Curiously enough, while he was trying to devise some way of obtaining the tangible proof without using his semiofficial position in the company's service as a lever, the thing itself was thrown at him. From some mysterious source a rumor went out that the special rates were in jeopardy; and the very men with whom he had talked began to write him importunate letters begging him to deny the rumor. With a sheaf of these letters in his pocket, each one inculpating both parties to the illegal "deals," Blount grew gayly exultant. The natural inference was that Gantry and "the powers" had been finally forced to yield—that he had won his victory. But if he had not yet won it, chance, or something better, had placed in his hands the weapon with which he could compel a return to fair dealing and honesty.

It was on a second speech-making visit to Ophir that Blount had his first face-to-face chance at Gantry. A meeting of the Mine-Owners' Association, moving for a readjustment of the classification on copper matte and bullion at a time when the railroad company might be supposed to be on the giving hand, brought Gantry to the gold camp in the Carnadine Hills, and the first man he met at the hotel was the stubborn dictator of new policies for the Transcontinental Company.

"Hello, Dick! made a mistake, didn't you—coming while I was here?" said the reformer, with a very lifelike replica of his father's grim smile. "I suppose you have an immediate engagement to go somewhere else, or to do something that will give you a chance to dodge?"

"No; I wish to the Lord I had!" was the hearty admission. "You're a fright, Evan; you are getting to be a perfect nightmare, with your letters and telegrams. You've got me so I'm afraid to open my desk."