st as I see it by my
standards, and they are better standards than yours. You've come
dictating to me, ordering me to slip a knife into their backs. Are you
that kind of a sneak? Did you think I was? Now listen again, and
listen well, for I mean what I say!

"I want that railroad, if the man who is building it is too weak to
keep me from taking it away from him. But if I don't get it on such a
basis, I'll know that there is a man at the head of it who is big
enough to take care of my share of it. Have you got that? Very well.
And now go back to your melodrama, if you want to. Steal his men, if
he will let you; fight him every inch of his construction--that is your
job--and I'll still insist that it is his fault if he is tardy on the
first of May. But it's you and O'Mara from now on, Archie. I'll be a
spectator now! And, by Gad, don't you ever come near me again with a
request that I . . . don't you ever let me hear you threaten that
you----"

Allison's face was suffused before he finished, and Wickersham,
astounded past utterance, slid from his chair away from that
flourishing hand which had become a fist. It was no scene to take
place between a man and his prospective son-in-law. Realizing that
Allison tried to laugh, deprecatingly, at his temper.

"Go out and get him, Archie," he invited. "I'll be watching, don't
doubt that. And I know how much you want to win. It's a bigger stake
than most folks realize!"

Like Barbara he tried to make his side of the interview kindly at the
end, but he sent the other man away wondering whether he had understood
that last remark, and afraid to think that he had. And two other
things Allison had done. For once he had started to pay hush money to
his conscience. Once and for all, like Fat Joe, he had registered at
last a refusal to interfere in any way that might spoil the climax of
the "big show" for which Fate or Chance or Destiny, or whatever men may
call it, was setting the stage, with an unhurried calm that contrasted,
ironically, with the mad haste of her actors.

But he watched, as he had promised he would. The same day that more
than half of O'Mara's men went on strike and deserted to the Reserve
Company's payroll, the news reached him that a trainload of laborers
had been shot in to take their places--those very types of laborers
which Steve himself had warned Elliott would not last an hour, in the
event of trouble. For a week Allison wondered that t