"And I told you two weeks ago that we couldn't stand for any such programme as the one you had mapped out. And I added that you might name your own price for an alternative which wouldn't confiscate us and drive us off the face of the earth."
"Yes; and I named the price, if you happen to remember."
"I know; you said you wanted us to turn everything over to the Paramounters and take our chances on a clean administration. Naturally, we're not going to do any such Utopian thing as that. What I want to know now is what it is going to cost us to do the practical and possible thing."
"Want to buy me outright this time, do you, Hardwick?" said the boss, still smiling.
"We"—McVickar was going to say—"We have bought you before," but he changed the retort to a less offensive phrasing—"We have had no difficulty heretofore in arriving at some practical and sensible modus vivendi, and we shouldn't have now. But as a condition binding upon any sort of an arrangement, I am here to say that we can't let you nominate and elect your son as attorney-general; that's out of the question. If it's going to prove a personal disappointment to you, we'll be reasonable and try to make it up to you in some other way."
Again the grimly humorous smile was twinkling in the gray eyes of the old cattleman. "What is the market quotation on disappointments, right now, Hardwick?" he inquired.
With another man McVickar might have been too diplomatic to show signs of a shortening temper. But David Blount was an open-eyed enemy of long standing.
"I don't know anybody west of the Missouri River who has a better idea of market values than you have," the vice-president countered smartly. Then, dropping a heavy hand upon the arm of his chair: "This thing has got to be settled here and now, Blount. If you put your son in as public prosecutor, you can have but one object in view—you mean to squeeze us till the blood runs. We are willing to discount that object before the fact!"
"So you have said before, a number of times and in a whole heap of different ways. It's getting sort of monotonous, don't you think?"