The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush Part 37

"He did his work all right?"

"Yes, and came swaggering around for his pay. I sized it up one side and down the other. He had a pretty bad case of swelled head and tried to hold me up for a bonus, hinting around about what he could do if he wanted to throw the gaff into us. As I say, I sized it up, and took snap judgment on him--pulled the Montana racket and gave him twenty-four hours' start of the police."

The vice-president frowned and shook his head. "You took a chance--a long chance, Kittredge! Twenty-four hours gave him all the time he needed to fall afoul of young Blount."

The big superintendent grinned amiably.

"The senator helped out on that," he explained.

"The senator? How was that?"

"It's the first time he has shown any part of his hand to me in the entire campaign. About an hour after I had shot Tom Gryson to pieces a note came down from the Inter-Mountain, asking me to come up. I didn't get to see the senator himself, but Mrs. Blount gave me the dope. As a result, young Blount got a hurry telegram from you, directing him to go to Lewiston at once in that right-of-way matter of Brodhead's. I gave him my car, and the trip cost him the better part of two whole days."

Again the vice-president shook his head.

"Your methods are always pretty crude, Kittredge," he commented. "You took another long chance when you forged my name to a telegram for as shrewd a young lawyer as Evan Blount. But go on. You got Blount out of the way--then what?"

"Then I went after Gryson again. The little woman's hint hit the bull's-eye as true as a rifle bullet. Tom meant to give us away to Blount. He haunted Blount's up-town office the better part of the day; and finally, in sheer self-defence, I had to tip him off to the police, as I had threatened to. Another little mystery bobbed up there. Chief Robertson winked one eye at me and said: 'You're too late, Mr.

Kittredge; your man has already been piped off and he's gone.'"

"Who did it?" snapped McVickar.

"I don't know, and Robertson wouldn't tell me. But I got him to promise to put out the reward quietly. If Gryson comes back he'll be nipped before he can talk."

"With young Blount laid up, it won't make much difference," was the summing-up rejoinder. And then: "I think that is all--for this morning.

Go around to the telephone-exchange when you get back to town and tell the manager that I want a special operator--a man, if he's got one--put on this long-distance wire. Have you sent your linemen out to guard the wires on the Shoshone mine track?"

"Yes; all the way from the switch to the hills."

"All right; that's all. Keep your finger on the pulse of things in town to-day, and arrange with your despatcher to give my operators here a clear wire in any direction whenever it's called for. Above all, keep me posted, Kittredge; don't let anything get by you, no matter how trivial it may seem."

As the superintendent was climbing into his car, the railroad electrician who was in charge of the men guarding the telegraph-wires came up.

"One minute, Mr. Kittredge. I've put the box in, according to orders--"

"What box, and whose orders?"

"The recording microphone in Mr. McVickar's office, in there; and by his orders, I guess--at least they came from one of his men. We're needing a couple more batteries, and I was just wondering if it'd be all right to take 'em from that gasolene unit-car. We could put 'em back afterwards."

"Yes; take 'em wherever you can find 'em," said the superintendent, who was thinking pointedly of other things just then; and the permission given, he started his motor and drove away.

XXV

BLOOD AND IRON

Ten o'clock in the Sat.u.r.day forenoon marked the time of Superintendent Kittredge's flying visit to his chief's headquarters-on-the-field at the head of Shonoho Canyon; and at that hour Evan Blount, blinking dizzily, and with his head bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that the drum-beating clamor might be minimized to some bearable degree.

"You are feeling better now?" suggested the volunteer nurse, going to adjust the window-curtains for the better comfort of the blinking and aching eyes.

The victim of the hook-and-ladder squad's mascot answered qualitatively.

"I feel as if I had been having an argument with a battering-ram and had come off second-best. I've been out of my head, haven't I?"

"A little, yes; but that was to be expected. You were pretty badly hurt."

"Have I been talking?"

"Not very much--nothing intelligible." The little lady had drawn her chair to the window and was busying herself with the never-finished embroidery.

"What hit me--was it the truck?"

"No; some of the people in the street said it was a dog; a coach-dog running and jumping at the heads of the fire-horses. In falling you struck your head against the iron grating of a sewer inlet."

"Umph!" said Blount, and the face-wrinkling which was meant to be a sardonic smile turned itself into a painful grin. "Shot to death by a dog! Blenkinsop or some of the others ought to have run that for a head-line." Then, with a twist of the hot eyeb.a.l.l.s: "This isn't my room.

Where am I?"

"You are in the spare room of our suite. Your father had you brought here so that we could take care of you properly. But you mustn't talk too much; it's the doctor's orders."

Blount lay for a long time watching her as she pa.s.sed the needle in and out through the bit of snowy linen stretched upon the tiny embroidery-ring. She had fine eyes, he admitted; eyes with the little downward curve in brow and lid at the outer corners--the curve of allurement, he had heard it called. Also, her hands were shapely and pretty. He recalled the saying that a woman may keep her age out of her face, but her hands will betray her. Mrs. Honoria's hands were still young; they looked almost as young as Patricia's, he decided. At the comparison he broke over the rule of silence.

"Does Patricia know?" he asked.

"Certainly. She has been here nearly all morning. She wouldn't let anybody else hold your head while the doctor was sewing it up."

"I know," he returned; "that is a part of her--of her special training: first aid to the injured, and all that. They teach it in the German sociological schools she attended last year."

"Oh, yes; I see"--with a malicious little smile to accentuate the curving downdroop of the pretty eyelids. "You mean that she was just getting a bit of practice. I wondered why she was so willing; most young women are so silly about the sight of a little blood. Don't you think you'd better try to sleep for a while? Doctor Dillon said it would be good for you if you could."

"Heavens and earth!" he chanted impatiently; "I'm not sick!" And then, with a sharp fear stabbing him: "What day is this, please?"

She looked up with a smile. "Are you wondering if you have lost a day?

You haven't. The fire was at three o'clock this morning, and this is Sat.u.r.day."

As if the naming of the day had been a spell to strike him dumb, Blount shut his eyes and groped helplessly for some hand-hold upon the suddenly rehabilitated responsibilities. Sat.u.r.day--the day when Gryson would return with the proofs which, if they were to serve any good end, must be given the widest possible publicity in the two days remaining before the election. Blount recalled his carefully laid plans: he had intended giving Collins and the two record clerks a half-holiday, so that Gryson might come and go unnoticed. Also, he had meant to make a definite appointment with Blenkinsop and the representative of the United Press, to the end that there might be no delay in the firing of the mine.

Lastly, Gryson must be s.h.i.+elded and gotten out of the city in safety; so much the traitor had a right to demand if he should risk his liberty and his life by returning with the evidence.

It was a hideous tangle to owe itself to the joyous gambollings of the firemen's mascot dog. And there was more to it than the hopeless smas.h.i.+ng of the Sat.u.r.day's plans. Into the midst of the mordant reflections, and adding a sting which was all its own, came the thought of this newest obligation laid upon him by his father and his father's wife. They had taken him in and were loading him down with kinsman gifts of care and loving-kindness, while his purpose had been--must still be--to strike back like a merciless enemy. He remembered the old fable of the adder warmed to life in a man's bosom, and it left him sick and nerveless.

None the less, the obsession of the indomitable purpose persisted, gripping him like the compelling hand of a giant in whose grasp he was powerless. For a time he sought to escape, not realizing that the obsession was the call of the blood pa.s.sed on from the men of his race who, with axe and rifle, had hewn and fought their way in the primeval wilderness, and would not be denied. Neither did he suspect that the dominating pa.s.sion driving him on was his best gift from the man against whom he was pitting his strength. What he did presently realize was that the giant grip of purpose was not to be broken; and thereupon a vast cunning came to possess him. He must have time and a chance to plan again: if he should feign sleep, perhaps the woman whose presence and personality were shackling the inventive thought would go away and leave him free to think.

She did go after a while, though so noiselessly that when he opened his eyes it was with the fear that he should see her still bending over the little embroidery frame at the window. Finding himself alone, he sat up in bed and gave the broken head an opportunity to blot him out if it could. For a little s.p.a.ce the walls of the room became as the interior of a hollow peg-top, spinning furiously with a noise like the rus.h.i.+ng of many waters. After the surroundings had resumed their normal figurings he rose to his knees. There was another grapple with the whirling peg-top, and again he mastered the dizzying confusion. Made bold by success, he got his feet on the floor and stood up, clinging to the bra.s.s foot-rail of the bed until the unstable encompa.s.sments had once more come to rest.

By this time he was able to conquer all save the throbbing headache.

Shuffling first to one door and then to the other, he shot the bolts against intrusion. Then he staggered across to the dressing-case and took a look at himself in the gla.s.s. The bandaged head, with its haggard, pain-distorted face grimacing back at him, extorted a grunt of sardonic disapproval, but the mirror answered the query which had sent him stumbling across to it. The bandage was comparatively small and tightly drawn; a soft hat could be worn over it--the hat would cover and decently hide it.