Jim Jackson came in specially from his ranch, a long journey by the C.P.R., to tell Hector just what he thought of Molyneux.
"Represents the people, does he? I wonder! Which d'you thinks likely to have the backing of the West, eh? This fly-by-night Mr. Nobody from God-knows-where, or Superintendent Adair, who came into the country with the early birds and has grown up with it to what he is today?"
"He's very strong, Jim," said Hector, smiling a little.
"Never mind, Hec'. The ranchers will back their Manitou-pewabic to the last ditch."
"Thanks, old man," said Hector.
At the other end of the scale was Tom Williams, Editor of the Broncho Branding-Iron. Tom was eminently respectable, but, for business purposes, assumed the air of a hardened sinner, in order to be in keeping with his paper, which he had founded when 'up against it' several years before. The Branding-Iron was a weekly and relied for sales on an unfathomable fund of scandalous stories, directed against the great and would-be great, plus a marvellous array of rejuvenated bar-room jokes of very doubtful character. The public taste being captured, Tom's paper was regularly sold in every corner of Canada. Its influence was greatly strengthened because it never assailed any man without just cause but went out of its way to 'brand' every crook and grafter in the Dominion. The support of such a champion was not to be sneezed at. It was a drunken roysterer but could use its rapier; and its thrust went home.
So Hector had powerful allies at both ends of the ladder.
Then there were the men—behind him to a man. Let Corporal Savage's room stand for an example. One afternoon, in the worthy Corporal's absence, a group of them got together over the Branding-Iron containing Tom's latest tirade.
There were present in this gathering of mighties the red-headed and hideous York, constable under Cranbrook in the days when they had arrested the gambler Perkins, and likely to remain so till promoted to non-commissioned angel; Mason, Hector's trumpeter ten years before, also a constable today; Dunsmuir, son of a Canadian millionaire, driven to enlist by boredom; and Constable Kellett, once a Colonel in the British Army, with a dazzling breast of ribbons, driven to enlist by necessity.
They were perhaps a little prejudiced in Hector's favour but were none the less representative on that account.