ou the situation out in the greasewood country, if that's
what you want to know," said Gantry after a thoughtful pause.

"Make it simple," was Blount's condition, adding: "What I don't know
about the business or the political situation in the West would fill a
much larger book than the one you were speaking of a few minutes ago."

"'Business or political,' you say; they are Siamese twins nowadays,"
returned the railroad man, with a short laugh. Then: "The outlook for
us out yonder in the greasewood hills is precisely what it is in a dozen
other States this year--east, west, north and south--everything
promising a renewal of the unreasoning, bull-headed legislative fight
against the railroads. I suppose our own case is typical. As everybody
knows, the Transcontinental Railway has practically created two-thirds
of the States through which it passes--made them out of whole cloth.
Where you left sage-brush and bare hills and unfenced cattle ranges a
dozen years ago you will now find irrigation, tilled farms, orchards,
rich mines--development everywhere, with a rapidly growing population to
help it along. To make all this possible, the railroad took a chance; it
was a mighty long chance, and somebody has to pay the bills."

"I know," smiled Blount; "the bill-paying is summed up in some railroad
man's clever phrase, 'all the tariff the traffic will stand.' I can
remember one year when my father rose up in his wrath and drove his beef
cattle one hundred and fifty miles across the Transcontinental tracks to
the Overland Central."

"That was in the old days," protested Gantry, who was loyal to his salt.
"As the State has filled up, we've tried to meet the situation half-way,
as a straight business proposition. Fares and tariffs have been lowered
from time to time, and--"

"You are not making it simple enough by half," warned Blount
quizzically. "You are getting further away from my telegram every
minute."

Gantry paused to relight his cigar.

"I don't know how your telegram figures in it specially, but I do know
this: the legislature to be elected this fall in our State will be
chosen entirely without regard to the old party lines. There is only one
issue before the people and that is the Transcontinental Railway. The
'Paramounters,' as they call themselves, taking the name from the
assumption that it is the paramount duty of the voter to pinch any
business interest bigger than his own, would like to legislate us out of