"I don't know but what you're right," Harran murmured vaguely. His
sense of discouragement, that feeling of what's-the-use, was never more
oppressive. All fair means had been tried. The wheat grower was at last
with his back to the wall. If he chose his own means of fighting, the
responsibility must rest upon his enemies, not on himself.

"It's the only way to accomplish anything," he continued, "standing in
with each other... well,... go ahead and see what you can do. If the
Governor is willing, I'll come in for my share of the campaign fund."

"That's some sense," exclaimed Annixter, shaking him by the hand. "Half
the fight is over already. We've got Disbrow you know; and the next
thing is to get hold of some of those rotten San Francisco bosses.
Osterman will----" But Harran interrupted him, making a quick gesture
with his hand.

"Don't tell me about it," he said. "I don't want to know what you and
Osterman are going to do. If I did, I shouldn't come in."

Yet, for all this, before they said good-bye Annixter had obtained
Harran's promise that he would attend the next meeting of the Committee,
when Osterman should return from Los Angeles and make his report. Harran
went on toward Los Muertos. Annixter mounted and rode into Bonneville.

Bonneville was very lively at all times. It was a little city of some
twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, where, as yet, the city hall, the
high school building, and the opera house were objects of civic
pride. It was well governed, beautifully clean, full of the energy and
strenuous young life of a new city. An air of the briskest activity
pervaded its streets and sidewalks. The business portion of the town,
centring about Main Street, was always crowded. Annixter, arriving at
the Post Office, found himself involved in a scene of swiftly
shifting sights and sounds. Saddle horses, farm wagons--the inevitable
Studebakers--buggies grey with the dust of country roads, buckboards
with squashes and grocery packages stowed under the seat, two-wheeled
sulkies and training carts, were hitched to the gnawed railings and
zinc-sheathed telegraph poles along the curb. Here and there, on the
edge of the sidewalk, were bicycles, wedged into bicycle racks painted
with cigar advertisements. Upon the asphalt sidewalk itself, soft and
sticky with the morning's heat, was a continuous movement. Men with
large stomachs, wearing linen coats but no vests, laboured ponderously
up and down. Girls in