Of Gwynne they took little notice, but he studied them, one and all, and it was not long before he understood the materials with which he must deal in the future. The State was Republican, although San Francisco presented the remarkable spectacle of a Democratic mayor with a Republican boss controlling the labor element, which was presumably democratic in essence, and devoted to the figurehead. But country politics were far less complicated, and it was possible that a strong Democrat with a sufficiency of inherent power could weld together the conflicting and half indifferent elements, and change the political current. Californians had gone thunderously Republican at the last Presidential election, because for the moment they were dazzled by the Roosevelt star and all it seemed to portend. There could be no better augury for a really great and sincere leader; for whether or not Roosevelt was all they imagined, the point to consider was that they had been carried away by their higher enthusiasms, not by those a mere trickster like Colton was trying to stimulate. They had rushed to the polls with all that was best in their natures in the ascendant, eager not only for a great servant that would reform many abuses, but for one that stood at the moment before the country as the embodiment of all that was high-minded, uncompromisingly honest, and nobly patriotic in American life. It was one of the greatest personal triumphs ever accomplished—for the leaders wished nothing more ardently than his downfall—and whether or not it was to be justified by history, it must ever remain to his credit that he had hypnotized his countrymen through the higher channels of their nature. The reaction might be bitter, but memory is short, and at least he had served to demonstrate that the American mind was not materialized by the lust of gain, was quite as susceptible to the loftier patriotic promptings as in the days of its revolutionary and simpler ancestors. A man like Colton might delude for a time, for the Democratic party was deplorably weak in leaders, and the Republican bosses, in California, as elsewhere, had made the State a byword for shameless corruption; and their iron heel ground hard even in that land of climate and plenty. Colton might be useful to rouse Californians to a sense of their wrongs and opportunities, but Gwynne doubted if he could hold them. He promised too much. The time would come when they would turn to a strong man who talked less and did more, who gradually imbued them with the conviction of absolute honesty, distinguished ability, and as much disinterestedness as it is reasonable to expect of any mortal striving for the great prizes of life.
One day there was a mass-meeting suddenly called to express sympathy with the orange growers of the South, who had dumped twelve carloads of early oranges into the San Francisco Bay rather than submit to the increased rates of the transcontinental railroads. Gwynne saw his opportunity and summoned his powers. There was a moment of doubt, of hesitancy, of reflection that he was rusty, and that the subject was of no special interest to him; then, at the eager insistence of Colton, he walked rapidly to the front of the platform with all the actor's exalted nervous delight in a new rôle. In a few moments there was no subject on earth so interesting to him as the iniquities of the railroads and the wrongs of the orange growers; he awoke from his torpor so triumphantly that his amazed audience, as of old, felt the deep flattery of its power over him, and he made a speech which was like the rushing of risen waters through a broken dam. Not that he permitted himself to be carried away wholly; he deliberately refrained from indiscriminate phillipics, from rousing their ire too far, grasped the opportunity to see what could be done by appealing to their reason through their higher emotions, and begged them to meet constantly and consider the question of electing men that were not mere politicians, that would deliver the State from the medieval tyranny that oppressed it; advised his hearers to employ the best legal counsel they could get, and to give their leisure moments to the study of practical politics, instead of indolently submitting all great questions to the hands of men as unscrupulous as the State bosses and corporations. With his peculiar gift he made each breathless man in the auditorium feel not only that he was being personally addressed, but that his mental equipment had mysteriously been raised to the plane of the speaker's. When Gwynne finished amid applause as great as any he had evoked in England after the expounding of great issues dear to his heart, he turned to find Colton regarding him with sharp eyes and lowering brow. He immediately took his arm and led him without.
"I am glad a climax has come so soon," he said. "Otherwise I should have begun to feel like a hypocrite. Not only are your principles and mine utterly antagonistic, but you must consider me as your rival. I can do nothing definite, of course, for nearly four years, and meanwhile you may reach the United States Senate. If you do I shall do my utmost to oust you. Nevertheless, if I can be of any service in sending you there I am perfectly willing to place myself at your disposal, for the experience and insight I shall acquire in exchange. And as you are no worse than the others, and some one must go, it might as well be you as another. But, I repeat, I shall use all my powers to oust you and take your place."
Colton stood for a few moments, his hands in his pockets, regarding the ground. Then he lifted his eyes and smiled ingenuously.
"You are dead straight, for a fact. And I think I have got just as good an opinion of myself as you have of yourself. You put me in the United States Senate with that tongue of yours—God, you can talk!—and I'll take the chances of even you getting me out. It will take more than eloquence to upset a great State machine, and before I get through I'll have the Democratic machine stronger than the Republican is to-day. You can't get anywhere in this country without the machine, and the man in control stays in control unless he falls down, and this I don't propose to do. I'll swap frankness and tell you right here that when I'm boss I may let you come to Congress as my colleague, but that you've got to do as I say when you get there. What do you say to that?"
"I'll take all the chances. At least we understand each other. I work for you now, and I break the power of both you and your infernal machine when I am a citizen of the United States."
"Shake," said Colton.
And they shook.