“It was simply an exhibition of what those fellows would call journalistic enterprise, I suppose. They wanted to make a sensation, and sell papers. They even sold a copy to you.” Fogg laughed. “You wouldn’t have bought that copy, otherwise.”
“Well, I wasn’t pleased by it. If anything would make me vote against the cattlemen when I thought I ought to vote with them, such attacks as that would.”
Fogg laughed again, and ran his fingers over the shining gold chain that lay across his rotund stomach.
“The fellow that stands in the limelight has got to take his medicine, and it’s no use kicking. The only way to do is to go straight ahead and take no notice of what the papers say. That’s what I try to do, though I admit I get my mad up sometimes over some of the things they print about me. That paper, which poured vitriol on you to-day, will shower you with rosewater and honey to-morrow, if what you do pleases it.”
“I shan’t try to please it!” Justin declared, angrily.
“No, I wouldn’t; I’d try to please myself, and I’d try to look out for Number One. Well, I must be going!” He rose again. “And just think over what I’ve said to you in friendship. The range will be here, and the cattlemen, when all these other little barking dogs are dead and forgotten. My word for it, a desire for loot and plunder is really all that holds them together now, though they’re making such a howl about public virtue and honesty. I’ve been in the political whirl before, and I know those men right down to the ground.”
He extended his hand as he reached the door, and Justin, having risen also, took it.
“I’m your friend,” said Fogg, as a final word, “and what I’ve said is for your own good.”
When he was gone Justin sat down to think it over. He knew there was much truth in Fogg’s statements. The conglomerate opposition struggling now to gain control of the legislature would fall to pieces inevitably by and by. If he voted with the ranch interests he would please the cowboys who had worked for his election, he would please Fogg and Davison, and he would not displease Lucy Davison. But would he please himself? Would he please Curtis Clayton? He could not hope by so doing to please the farmers.
Justin had ambition, though he was not consumed by it. He did not wish to wreck his future. Philip Davison, in that memorable interview, had told him to do something, be something, accomplish something. In the interval between that time and now no opportunity had come to him. He had left the ranch, where he could earn only cowboy’s wages, though not wholly because of the low wages. He had for a time secured employment in the town, but the position had been neither promising nor permanent. He had been thinking seriously of going to Denver, to try his fortunes in its larger field, when the fire came which incapacitated him, and after the fire this unexpected election.