" asked the other.

"He will do anything the senator wants him to--he's got to. Blount is
land hungry, and I guess he'll take a few more sections of the railroad
mesa-land under the Clearwater ditch. That was what he did two years ago
when McVickar wanted the right of way for the branch through Carnadine
County."

"Don't you believe he's going to take any little Christmas gift this
time!" was the rasping reply. "He'll sell the railroad something, and
take good hard money for it. It's a cinch. The railroad can't afford to
have the courts against it, and McVickar will be made to sweat blood
this heat. You watch the wheels go round when McVickar comes out here."

Evan Blount found himself growing strangely sick and faint. Could it be
his father whom they were thus calmly accusing of graft and trickery and
blackmailing methods too despicable to be imagined? His first impulse
was to confront the two; to demand proofs; to do and say what a loyal
son should. But the crushing conviction that they were discussing only
well-known and well-assured facts unnerved him; and after that he was
anxious for only one thing--that they might finish their cigars and go
away without discovering him.

Fate was kind to him thus far. After a little further talk, in which the
accepted point of view of the on looker at the great game was made still
more painfully evident for the unwilling listener, the men went away.
For a long time after they had gone, Blount sat crumpled in the depths
of the big chair, chewing his extinct cigar and staring absently at the
row of books on a level with his eyes in the opposite case.

One clear thought, and one only, came out of the sorrowful confusion:
not for any inducement that could now be offered would he lend himself
to the furtherance of his father's plans. Beyond this he did not reason
in the miserable hour wrought out in the quiet of the club smoking-room.
But when he got up to go, another prompting was forcing its way to the
surface--a prompting to throw himself boldly into the scale against
graft and chicanery; to redeem at any cost, and by whatsoever means
might offer, the good old name which had been so shamefully dragged in
the mire.

He did not know just how it was to be done, but he told himself that he
would find a way. That the path would be full of thorns he could not
doubt, since every step in it would widen the breach which must be
opened between his father and himself. Possibly it might