n into your head that it
was your duty to try!"

"You are side-stepping again, Dick, and that won't go any longer. You've
got to fish or cut bait, and do one or the other pretty soon."

"I'd cut the bait all right, if I were Mr. McVickar, Evan. I'd fire you
so blamed far that you wouldn't be able to find your way back in a month
of Sundays."

Blount tapped his pocket. "As long as I have these documents, Mr.
McVickar doesn't dare to fire me. And if you and he don't come down
within the next few days--yes, it's a matter of days, now--I'll fire
myself and go over every foot of the ground again, telling what I know."

Gantry's eyes darkened. He had graduated with honors from the particular
department in railroading in which patience is more than a virtue. Yet
there are limits.

"You seem to have entirely forgotten that little talk we had in my
office the night you were going to Angora," he said.

"No; I haven't forgotten it--not for a single waking minute."

"What I said to you then goes as it lies," was the threatening reminder.
"If you pull the props out, there'll be more than one death in the
family."

"You mean that you, or Mr. McVickar, will make it a point to include my
father; I've wrestled that out, too, Dick. I'm going to try to pull him
out of it, but whether I succeed or fail, the consequences will be the
same for you fellows. Come and hear me speak to-night, Dick--if you're
stopping over that long. Then you'll know how much in earnest--how
deadly in earnest--I am. You spoke of my father just now; I want to
remind you again that I, too, bear the Blount name--a name that I have
heard bandied about as a synonym for all that is worst in our political
life. Don't you see that I've got to make good?"

"Oh, great cats!--you and your high-strung notions of what you've got to
do!" snorted the traffic manager, and he went away to his classification
meeting.

XV

SWORD-PLAY

It was during this hard-travelling period that Blount saw, with keen
regret, the gradual widening of the breach between his father and
himself. In their infrequent meetings there was never anything remotely
approaching an open rupture; but in a thousand ways the younger man
fancied he could see and feel the steady growth of the rift.

That the long arm of the machine of which his father was the
acknowledged head was reaching out into all corners of the State, was a
fact no longer to be doubted, and that the influences thus set