n't you tell the truth when you send the dispatches
East? If you did, Bat, we could clean out the gang in a month. Why
don't you play the game a man should play? Every newspaper man likes a
clean sporty fight; and no knifing in the back. Why don't you put up
that fight for us, now, Brydges, and stop giving us side jabs?"

Brydges' pipe fell from his teeth.

"Wayland--what in hell--do you think--I'm working for?"

There was a big silence.

The look of masterdom came back to Wayland's face; but he paused,
looking straight ahead in space. Perhaps he was looking for the hard
grip of the next grapple. He had a curious trick at such times of
clinching his teeth very tight behind open lips; and the pupil of his
eye became a blank.

"You are at least sincere, Brydges," he said. Bat gathered up his
shattered pipe.

"I'm not a past-master, _yet_," he said. "I haven't reached the point
where I can believe my own lies; so I don't tell 'em and get caught.
I've dug down in the mortuaries of other men too often--long as a man
doesn 't believe his own lies, he's on guard and doesn't get caught.
It's when he comes ping against a buzz-saw and finds it's a fact that
he has to pay or back down or lose out. You can't budge a fact, damn
it! Thing always shows the same!"

Bat had found the pieces of his pipe. Fitting the meerschaum to the
wood, he had gained confidence and was going ahead full steam.

"Saw 'Macbeth' in Smelter City Theatre last night. 'Member the place
where he says 'Thou canst not say I did it?' Well, that's the
beginning of the end for that old boy; fooled himself that time. If
he'd remembered that, though he didn't do it with his own hand, he did
do it all the same, he wouldn't have believed his own lie and got all
tangled up. One of the first things Moyese told me when I went on his
paper was never to monkey with the dee-fool who wastes time justifying
himself: do it and go ahead! Fact is, Dick, I look on a newspaper man
same as I do a lawyer: he has his price; and he finds his market for
his wares; and it's none of his business what his private convictions
are of the right or wrong. He's paid to defend or attack like a
lawyer; and he goes ahead--"

"And doesn't pretend he's fooling the public by giving news, eh, Bat?
Brydges, if you argue that fashion, you must excuse me if I grin."

"Who's the old party talking to your road gang down by the white tent?"
asked Brydges, pointing where the Ra