The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 43

"You mean that you have lost your position because of the evidence you gave for us?"

Then the news editor did what he always told his underlings not to do and to do--"Never lie; but if you have to, lie like a gentleman."

"Not at all, Miss MacDonald! I got fired because I told the truth! If I had given evidence that was simply in your favor, I'd deserve to be fired; but it was only a matter of somebody letting in a little honest daylight. I told Wayland at the time that I'd cooked my dough! Funny enough, the wire that came firing me this morning was immediately followed by a wire from Was.h.i.+ngton announcing that he has been dismissed for taking three weeks' absence without leave. We got it in the neck together, Miss MacDonald, and I thought maybe Wayland would be game enough to have a--a--a shake with me over it."

"Yes, a shake," smiled Eleanor. "I'd like to mix it for you!"

The news editor suddenly lost all shyness, burst out laughing, leaned forward and shook hands.

"Don't know whether you know it or not," he went on, "but about a month ago one of those d--I beg your pardon, Miss MacDonald, Down-East scribblerettes, that come out to see the West from a Pullman car window and put things right, pa.s.sed through here. Somebody got him and filled him up pretty full with a lot of lies about Wayland--"

"You mean Brydges gave him the facts?" asked Eleanor.

"Well, maybe, Brydges may have had him out in the forty horse power car! He sent a lot of awful rot East! That wasn't the worst of it.

You'd think the Eastern fellows would know the difference between a maverick and a long-horn! He's been going round to the Eastern editors giving them doped stuff, lies dated out here written right down in New York! They've been hammering the Forest Service for the last month!

I'll bet that dough-head never put a foot in National Forests once while he was West: rot about running off settlers, and shutting down mines, and hampering lumbering operations, and low down personal stuff!

Anyway, between lies and dope, they've got Wayland! He's fired! I've been trying to get hold of him all day. Your old man's phrase, 'United States of the World,' kind of caught on with the crowd: they've kind of wakened up! Funny thing, the way that happens to a crowd! Your professional wind-jammer can orate till he busts his head, he never knows it has happened till the crowd has got away from him! Been a crush of men round Wayland all day, by G--, I beg your pardon--but if he isn't drowned, 'twon't be their fault! They are talking of putting him up as a candidate."

"As a what?" exclaimed Eleanor.

"Run for Congress," explained the news man.

She had gone quickly forward to the window, righting a shade to hide the flood of joy that surged up to her face.

"Excuse me--Mr.----? But I don't know your name?"

"My name? Oh, my name is--Legion," said the news editor dryly.

"Well, what was it you said the other day," she had mustered courage to turn and face him again, "what was it you said the other day about a moneyed man backing an independent paper through this fight? Don't you remember, after the inquest, Mr. Legion?"

He uttered a shout of laughter, and she understood and laughed too.

"Oh, the independent paper is floundering on the edge of failure.

They'll have to swing in line with the side that pays them best at election time. One could buy up their debts now for a few thousand dollars, perhaps not twenty thousand. Another fifty or so would swing her off on an independent tack. There's been a great awakening. The people have their ears down to the ground for the coming change, Miss MacDonald; and the politicians don't know it! If we could swing her off well, she'd be a paying concern in a year; then the politicians could be d--I beg your pardon, the special interests could go to the Devil! That's what I wanted to talk about to Wayland. He's the winning horse! We haven't either of us got anything left to lose but some frayed convictions, and by G.o.d," (this time, he did not notice he had said it), "we'd invest 'em in an independent for all we're worth!

I'm hot; and I've an idea Wayland isn't just at milk and water temperature; and the public isn't; and we'd have them! We'd force the other crowd to yell at the top of their voices for reform inside of six months. There's a lot about that Rim Rocks affair even the owners of the sheep don't know; but why in the Devil am I telling all this to a woman?"

She had drawn her chair up to the table where he sat.

"Because, I suppose, the woman wants to know. In case, you don't see Wayland, do you mind giving me the exact figures about that independent paper? We are all to go home together to-morrow. Let us put the figures down. I can tell him the rest when the others are not about; and do you know, I think I have heard him speak of some one who might back this kind of scheme?"

Oh, crafty woman! Do you think the kindly eyes behind those strongly focussed gla.s.ses did not bore in behind your guarded words? Just once did she interrupt his quick run of explanations.

"Is your idea to run an altogether _staid_ journal, or a yellow one?"

she asked.

He was plainly taken aback. He laid down his pencil.

"If you were a man, I could explain that easier!"

"Because, I'm done with the kind of goodness that's pickled and put away in a self-sealer where it won't spoil like old-fas.h.i.+oned jam for company," she said.

The news editor's eyes opened very wide, indeed! She had said "_I'm done_" quite as unconsciously as he had let slip words inadmissable in polite converse.

"It isn't piety done up in h.o.m.oeopathic pills the world wants," she went on.

"No, it's punch," he broke in; "and what's the use of d.i.c.kering with a little two-for-a-cent high-brow, superior, exclusive, self-righteous rag of a daily that will reach only a handful of sissy people?

Democracy is here; and it's here for keeps, the rule of the many good or bad; and it's as your old parson said in the court room, it's _going to be the United States of the World_. What's the use of issuing a rag sheet that will preach to a little parlorful of sissies and high-brows?

You've got to get the crowd, and to educate 'em up to self-government, to pelt 'em to a pulp with facts! You've got to get 'em if you take them by the scruff of the neck, Miss MacDonald! While the churches and the teachers and the preachers sit back self-superior and self-sufficient, Miss MacDonald, where's the crowd? They're out in the street! You've got to get 'em! You've got to get the facts before 'em! People curse the yellow journals! All right! But they reach an audience of a million a day; every one of them; and your self-superior journals don't touch ten-thousand! Miss MacDonald, which is having the telling influence, for good or evil? Which is getting the crowd? Oh, I know they publish pictures of pugilists' big toes and base ball pitchers' thumbs the size of a half page; but if I could ram a moral truth or a hard fact down the fool-public's throat on the very next page by advertising it with a pugilist's big toe, I'd do it--you bet!

I'd take a leaf out of the Devil's note book and go him one better!

You ask whether I'd publish a yellow journal? Miss MacDonald, if I could get the facts of exactly what is going on in this country before the public, I wouldn't publish 'em yellow! I'd publish truth b.l.o.o.d.y red!"

When the Williams and Matthews came in from the missionary meeting, Eleanor was standing under the centre light leaning against the table with her back to the door.

"Feeling better, dear?" asked Mrs. Williams.

"So much better that I'm going to bed to sleep every minute for the first night for a week."

"Surely," cried Williams clapping his hands. "A MacDonald never had nerves."

Matthews was trying to read her face as she shook hands saying good-night.

"No," she answered his look, shaking her head, "I must decide for myself, Mr. Matthews."

The three stood talking in the room she had left.

"Do you think we ought to have told her?" asked Mrs. Williams solicitously.

"No! Leave Wayland t' tell her himself t'morrow! A make no doubt that buckboard won't hold five people! Is it six o'clock we set out? A'm longin' for m' own wee uns!"

"One thing," declared Williams, throwing himself on a chair, "if Wayland runs, I'm going to stump it for him! We've got to get busy, Matthews! The old order changeth! We've got to keep up with the procession!"

If you had not known her utter conservatism as to all things pertaining to women, you could not appreciate the response of the missionary's wife. (She was an ultra-anti-suffragette.)

"I am sure, my dear," she cried, "I know a couple of hundred people on our summer circuit in the Upper Pa.s.s that I could make vote right."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD

"Wayland, for a man who's had his head cut off, you look uncommon joyous, tho' you're a bit white about the chops."

"Had a shave," answered Wayland dryly.

The yellow buckboard was rattling over the pressed brick pavement of Smelter City towards the suburbs. Williams was in the front seat with Matthews, who was driving. Eleanor and Mrs. Williams were in the second seat, with Wayland standing behind as he had stood that night going up to the Rim Rocks. Behind trotted two range ponies with empty saddles.