"It isn't doing Holt any good to sit tight clamped to that claim of his! He needs a change. Besides, I want him away so that we can contest his claim. Run him up into the hills. Or send him across to Siberia on a whaler. Or, better still, have him arrested for insanity and send him to Nome. I'll get Judge Landor to hold him a while."
"That would give him an alibi for his absence and prevent a contest."
"That's right. It would."
"Leave it to me. The old man is going on a vacation, though he doesn't know it yet."
"Good enough, Wally. I'll trust you. But remember, this fight has reached an acute stage. No more mistakes. The devil of it is we never seem to land the knockout punch. We've beaten this bunch of reform idiots before Winton, before the Secretary of the Interior, before the President, and before Congress. Now they're beginning all over again. Where is it to end?"
"This is their last kick. Probably Guttenchild agreed to it so as to let the party go before the people at the next election without any apologies. Entirely formal investigation, I should say."
This might be true, or it might not. Macdonald knew that just now the American people, always impulsive in its thinking, was supporting strongly the movement for conservation. A searchlight had been turned upon the Kamatlah coal-fields. Magazines and newspapers had hammered it home to readers that the Guttenchild and allied interests were engaged in a big steal from the people of coal, timber, and power-site lands to the value of more than a hundred million dollars.
The trouble had originated in a department row, but it had spread until the Macdonald claims had become a party issue. The officials of the Land Office, as well as the National Administration, were friendly to the claimants. They had no desire to offend one of the two largest money groups in the country. But neither did they want to come to wreck on account of the Guttenchilds. They found it impossible to ignore the charge that the entries were fraudulent and if consummated would result in a wholesale robbery of the public domain. Superficial investigations had been made and the claimants whitewashed. But the clamor had persisted.
Though he denied it officially, Macdonald made a present to the public of the admission that the entries were irregular. Laws, he held, were made for men and should be interpreted to aid progress. Bad ones ought to be evaded.