The Man of Last Resort; Or, The Clients of Randolph Mason

by Melville Davisson Post

At times the elder Randal had been summoned to attend these grave sittings of the faculty, and straightway thereafter the rigid New England lawyer had lectured his son at great length and with bitter invective, to which the young man attended in a fashion that was amiable, and immediately disregarded in a fashion that was equally amiable. Thus in the Puritanic bosom of the father the conclusion grew and fattened and matured that the eldest scion of his house was an entirely worthless scapegrace, while the son was quite as certain that his father was a very sincere, but an entirely misguided old gentleman.

The result of these divergent opinions was that on a certain June evening young Randal sat down upon a bench in the park of his father's country place with the express purpose of planning his career. Out of the confidence of youth he determined upon two ultimate results. One was, of course, wealth, and the other was an elaborate and entirely proper wedding ceremony with a certain Miss Marion Lanmar. This young lady, Randal had met at a football game at Harvard, and afterward in New York, where she resided with her aunt, Mrs. Hester Beaufort.

The gigantic confidence of youth is certainly a matter of sublime wonder to the gods. One at all familiar with the ways of things would have at once pronounced both results quite impossible to the improvident young man. But from the standpoint of exuberant youth there seemed to be no important obstacles except the possible delay, and this was not very material, as the world was young and these were things to be had in the farther future.

For the present, Randal determined to organize a political machine and transport it into one of the remote Western States. The East offered no theatre for his talents; it was closely organized; its political machinery was too strong for him to hope to oppose it. He would be crushed out in the first skirmish.

Nor could he hope for early recognition by allying himself to any one of the established organizations. These were crowded with deserving men, and besides, he had no intention of serving as a political apprentice. He had ability, he believed, as a political strategist, and he proposed to operate free and untrammelled in a big, breezy arena.

Having determined upon a course, young Randal at once proceeded to put it into operation. He held a council of war at the Plaza on Fifth Avenue with two of his college associates, a stranded gambler, called for convenience “Billy the Plunger,” and an old Virginia gentleman named Major Culverson. The council sat in secret session for three days, and the result was that the machine moved out into the Commonwealth of Idaho, and began to operate. But the manners and customs of the West were varied and mystic, and with the following summer the machine, badly shaken, moved over into Nevada. Here, at Tulasco, on the Central Pacific Railroad, the first college man deserted and, helped by his father, returned with great penitence to the civilized East.

The machine passed on across the Humbolt River and proceeded to attempt to shape the political destinies of Nevada. But disaster was following in its wake, and, after an active and turbulent but quite unprofitable career of a few months, it moved southward, battered and beaten, but unconquered.

On the night of the third of October, the machine tramped into Hackberry, on the Southern Pacific, and while men slept, the second college man, concealing himself in a freight car, set out for the Atlantic coast, cursing with lurid language all that part of the continent lying west of the Mississippi.

On the following morning the machine held its second great council, but this time it sat in desperate conclave above the Cow-Punchers' Saloon in the town of Hackberry, facing a condition and not a theory. But three members remained—Randal, the dauntiess Culver-son, and Billy the Plunger.

The gambler was for organizing a faro bank, and working the towns down the Gila, but as the bank had no funds, and the death rate usually attendant upon such ventures in this primitive country was enormous, his plan was held impracticable, and at four o'clock in the afternoon he ceased to urge the wisdom of his scheme, and after having announced with great solemnity that he was game to any limit the gang wanted, he lapsed into the capacity of a spectator.