orders are given, and that they are
put in the way of being carried out. As God hears me, Dick, I mean what
I say: it's a clean sheet, or an exposure that will make a lot of you
wish you had never been born. If I have to put the screws on--as I hope
and pray I sha'n't--you can bet they'll be put on lawyer-fashion; with
evidence that will send a bunch of you to the penitentiary."

"Hold on--one question before you go, Evan!" pleaded Gantry. "I haven't
known half the time where I'm at in this latest muddle. Is this another
little blind lead of the Honorable Sen--of your father's?"

Blount's smile was as grim as any that Gantry had ever seen on the face
of the Honorable David.

"It's against nature for you to play the game straight, isn't it, Dick?"
he said in mild reproach. "If you don't know that my father is still the
head of the machine, and that the machine has always been for you in the
past, I imagine you're the only man in the Sage-Brush State who needs
enlightening. No, Gantry; you've got only one man to fight; but you
mustn't forget that his name, also, is Blount. Go to it and send me
word, and let the first word be that you have scotched the head of this
lumber-company snake. That's all for to-day. Good-by."

Notwithstanding the fact that his day's work was still ahead of him, the
traffic manager did not attack it when he was left alone. An able man in
his calling, and one who had fought his way rapidly by sheer merit and
hard work from a clerkship to an official desk, Richard Gantry was still
lacking, in a character admirable and most lovable in many ways, the
iron that refuses to bend, and--though perhaps in lesser measure--the
courage of his ultimate convictions. In addition to these basic
weaknesses he owned another--the weakness of the cog which is
constrained to turn with the great wheel of which it is a part.

In his heart of hearts Richard Gantry knew that Blount was right; knew
that the forlorn-hope fight into which his friend and college classmate
had plunged was a struggle to call out all that was best and finest in
friendly loyalty. But when he sprang from his chair and began to walk
the floor of his private office with his head down and his hands deeply
buried in his pockets, he was once more the true corporation liegeman,
loyal to his salt, and anxious only to contrive means to an end.

"Confound his picture!" he muttered, "why the devil can't he see that
he's got everything to lose and nothin