The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  "It's lucky Miss Frome recognized Mr. Farnum. Otherwise I suppose he would have been sent back to the Nancy Hanks ."

  "Oh, Miss Frome recognized him? Jeff said one of the passengers did. He couldn't remember who."

  "I don't suppose my name is necessary to the story. Just say a young woman on board," Alice suggested.

  Dunn's black eyes questioned her. "Are you for us, Miss Frome?"

  She smiled. "I'm for you."

  "Against Senator Frome and Mr. Powers?"

  "I think the bill ought to be passed. I'm not against anybody."

  "Well, I'll tell you this. It will help the story a lot to have you in it. Some people might say we framed the whole thing up. But with Senator Frome's daughter starring in it."

  "Oh, no, Mr. Farnum's the star."

  "Well, you're the leading lady. Don't you see how it helps? Clinches the whole thing as genuine. It's as good as putting the Senator himself on the stand as a witness for us. We've just got to have you."

  "It will really help, you think?"

  "No question."

  "Very well."

  "And photographs. You'll stand for one, of course."

  "Now really I don't see "

  "They can't get back of a photograph. It carries conviction. Of course we've got pictures of you at the office, Miss Frome. But I want to play fair with you. Besides, I want them to show the ship setting."

  She laughed. "Don't worry. Your enterprising photographer caught me twice before I knew it. And he got one of my cousin, Mrs. Van Tyle. She doesn't know it, though."

  "Good boy, Quillen. Now, if you'll begin at the beginning, Miss Frome, I'll listen to your story.

  When she had finished his eyes were gleaming. "It's the biggest scoop I ever got in on. Sounds too good to be true."

  Part 5

  At Gillam's Point Jeff and his friends, with Dunn and Quillen, left the Bellingham on the launch which brought the pilot. They caught the fast express a half hour later and reached Verden shortly after midnight. His hat drawn down over his eyes and muffied to the ears in an ulster so that he might not be recognized, Farnum took a cab with Captain Chunn, Dunn and Quillen for the office of the World. He slipped into the building and his private room unnoticed by any member of the staff.

  Dunn presently brought to him Jenkins, the make-up man.

  "Rip your front page to pieces. We've got the story of a life time," Captain Chunn exploded.

  Jenkins opened his eyes and grinned at Jeff. "That's what Jim tells me. Have you got the proof to hang the thing on Big Tim?"

  "I've got a letter he wrote to Captain Green of theNancy Hanks . It's on city hall stationery of the last administration."

  "Funny he used that paper."

  "Someone usually makes a slip in putting a deal of this kind through."

  "And the letter?"

  "Just a line, signed with O'Brien's initials. 'The terms agreed on are satisfactory.' I found the letter in Green's cabin. As I thought I might make use of it I helped myself."

  "Bully! We'll run a fac-simile of it on the front page."

  "Dunn's story covers the whole affair. I don't like some features of it, but our friends say it ought to be run as it stands. I've written three columns of editorial stuff dealing with the situation. And here's a story calling for a mass meeting in front of the State House to-morrow morning."

  "You'll speak to the people?"

  "I'll say a few words. Hardy and Rawson will be the speakers."

  "Pity we've lost your cousin. He'd stir them up."

  The muscles stood out on Jeff's lean jaw. James was a subject he could not yet discuss. "We're nailing the No Compromise flag to our masthead, Jenkins. We've got to prevent them from forcing through Garman's bill to-morrow. After that every day will be in our favor. Unless I'm mistaken the state will waken up as it never has before. The people will see how nearly they've been euchred out of what they want."

  Jenkins came bluntly to another point. "This story would carry a lot more weight if those charges made against your character by the other papers had been answered."

  "Then we'll answer them."

  The night editor looked at him dubiously. "They've got four affidavits to back their story."

  "Only four?" A gay smile was dancing in Jeff's eyes.

  "Both the Herald and the Advocate have been playing it strong. Every day they rehash the story and challenge a denial."

  "It will all be free advertising for us if we can make them eat crow."

  "If we can!" Jenkins did not see how any effective answer was possible and he knew that in the present state of public opinion an unsupported bluff would be fatal.

  "How would this do for a starter?"

  Jeff handed him two typewritten sheets. The night editor read them through. He looked straight at Jeff.

  "Can you back this up?"

  "I can."

  "But--what about those affidavits?"

  Farnum grinned. "We'll take care of them when we come to them."

  "It's your funeral," Jenkins admitted.

  The whole front page of the World next morning was filled with the Farnum story. As part of it there were interviews with Alice Frome, with Captain Barclay, and with other passengers. The deadly note from O'Brien to Green of the Nancy Hanks occupied the place usually held by the cartoon. Beneath it, exactly in the center of the page, was a leaded box with the caption "A Challenge." It ran as follows:

  The editor of the World does not think his reputation important enough to protect it at the expense of a woman. Yet he denies absolutely the import of the charges made by the Herald and the Advocate. That the matter may be forever set at rest the World challenges the papers named to a searching investigation. It proposes:

  (1) That the names of five representative citizens of Verden be submitted to Governor Hawley by each of the three papers, and that from this number be select a committee of five to sift thoroughly the allegations;

  (2) That the meetings of the committee be held in secret, no members of the press being admitted, and that those composing it pledge themselves never to divulge the names of any witnesses who may appear to give evidence;

  (3) That the Herald, the Advocate, and the World severally agree to print on the front page for a week the findings of the committee as soon as received and exactly as received, without any editorial or other comment whatsoever.

  By the decision of this committee Jefferson Farnum pledges himself to abide. If found guilty, he will at once resign from the editorial charge of the World and will leave Verden forever.

  CHAPTER 19

  The practical man is the man who knows what can't be done. When he begins to let hope take the place of information in this regard, he becomes a conservative. When prejudice takes the place of hope, the mere conservative graduates into a tory, or a justice of the supreme court. It's all a matter of the chemistry of substitution. --Dr.G.L. Knapp.

  THE SAFE MAN FURNISHES DIVERSION

  Part 1

  For once the machine had overplayed its hand. Caught unexpectedly by Jeff's return, no effective counter attack was possible. Dunn's story in the World swept the city and the state like wildfire. It was a crouched dramatic narrative and its effect was telling. From it only one inference could be drawn. The big corporations, driven to the wall, had attempted a desperate coup to save the day. It was all very well for Big Tim to file a libel suit. The mind of the public was made up.

  The mass meeting at the State House drew an enormous crowd, one so great that overflow meetings had to be held. Every corridor in the building was full of excited jostling people. They poured into the gallery of the Senate room and packed the rear of the floor itself. Against such a demonstration the upper house did not dare pass the Garman bill immediately. It was held over for a few days to give the public emotion a chance to die. Instead, the resentment against machine and corporate domination grew more bitter. Stinging resolutions from the back counties were wired to members who had backslidden. Committees of promi
nent citizens from up state and across the mountains arrived at Verden for heart-to- heart talks with the assemblymen from their districts.

  At a hurried meeting of the managers of the public utilities companies it was decided that the challenge of the World must be accepted. For many who had believed in the total depravity of Jefferson Farnum were beginning to doubt. Unless the man's character could be impeached successfully the day was lost. And with four witnesses against him how could the trouble maker escape?

  The committee of investigation consisted of Senator Frome; Clinton Rogers, the shipbuilder; Thomas Elliott, a law partner of Hardy; James Moran, a wholesale wheat shipper, and the leading clergyman of Verden. It sat behind locked doors, adjourning from one office to another to obtain secrecy.

  For the defense appeared as witnesses Marchant, Miller, Mrs. Anderson and Nellie. To doubt the truth of the young wife's story was impossible. The agony of shyness and shame that flushed her, the simple broken words of her little tragedy, bore the stamp of minted gold. It was plain to see that she was a victim of betrayal, being slowly won back to love of life by her husband and her child.

  The committee in its report told the facts briefly without giving names. Even P. C. Frome could find no excuse for not signing it.

  The effect was instantaneous. On this one throw the machine had staked everything. That it had lost was now plain. In a day Jeff was the hero of Verden, of the state at large. His long fight for reform, the dramatic features of the shanghaing and his return, the collapse of the charges against his character, all contributed to lift him to dizzy popularity. He was the very much embarrassed man of the hour.

  All the power of the Transcontinental, of the old city hall gang, of the money that had been spent to corrupt the legislature, was unable to roll back the tide of public determination. White-faced assemblymen sneaked into offices at midnight to return the bribe money for which they dared not deliver the goods. Two days after the report of the investigating committee Jeff's bill passed the Senate. Within three hours it was signed by Governor Hawley. That it would be ratified by a vote of the people and so become a part of the state constitution was a foregone conclusion.

  Jeff and his friends had forged the first of the tools they needed to rescue the government of the state from the control of the allied plunderers.

  Part 2

  In the days following her return to Verden Alice Frome devoured the newspapers as she never had before. They were full of the dramatic struggle between Jeff Farnum and the forces which hitherto had controlled the city and state. To her the battle was personal. It centered on the attacks made upon the character of her friend and his pledge to refute them.

  When she read in the Advocate the report of the committee Alice wept. It was like her friend, she thought, to risk his reputation for some poor lost wanderer of the streets. Another man might have done it for the girl he loved or for the woman he had married. But with Jeff it would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an old Indian proverb she had read. "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes! None were too deep sunk in the mire to be brothers and sisters to Jeff Farnum.

  Ever since her return Alice had known herself in disgrace with her father and that small set in which she moved. Her part in the big World story had been "most regrettable." It was felt that in letting her name be mentioned beside that of one who was a thoroughly disreputable vagabond she had compromised her exclusiveness and betrayed the cause of her class. Her friends recalled that Alice had always been a queer girl.

  Her father and Ned Merrill agreed over a little luncheon at the Verden Club that girls were likely to lose themselves in sentimental foolishness and that the best way to stop such nonsense was for one to get married to a safe man. Pending this desirable issue she ought to be diverted by pleasant amusements.

  The safe man offered to supply these.

  Part 3

  The farthest thing from Merrill's thoughts had been to discuss with her the confounded notions she had somehow absorbed. The thing to do, of course, was to ignore them and assume everything was all right. After all, of what importance were the opinions of a girl about practical things?

  How the thing cropped up he did not afterward remember, but at the thirteenth green he found himself mentioning that all reformers were out of touch with facts. They were not practical.

  The smug finality of his verdict nettled her. This may or may not have been the reason she sliced her ball, quite unnecessarily. But it was probably due to her exasperation at the wasted stroke that she let him have it.

  "I'm tired of that word. It means to be suicidally selfish. There's not another word in the language so abused."

  "Didn't catch the word that annoys you," the young man smiled.

  "Practical! You used it yourself. It means to tear down and not build up, to be so near-sighted you can't see beyond your reach. Your practical man is the least hopeful member of the community. He stands only for material progress. His own, of course!"

  "You sound like a Farnum editorial, Alice."

  "Do I?" she flashed. "Then I'll give you the rest of it. He--your practical man--is rutted to class traditions. This would not be good form or respectable. That would disturb the existing order. So let's all do nothing and agree that all's well with the world."

  Merrill greeted this outburst with a complacent smile. "It's a pretty good world. I haven't any fault to find with it--not this afternoon anyhow."

  But Alice, serious with young care and weighted with the problems of a universe, would have none of his compliments.

  "Can't you see that there's a--a " She groped and found a fugitive phrase Jeff had once used--"a want of adjustment that is appalling?"

  "It doesn't appall me. I believe in the survival of the fittest."

  Her eyes looked at him with scornful penetration. They went through the well-dressed, broad-shouldered exterior of him, to see a suave, gracious Pharisee of the modern world. He believed in the God-of-things-as-they-are because he was the man on horseback. He was a formalist because it paid him to be one. That was why he and his class looked on any questioning of conditions as almost atheistic. They were born to the good things of life. Why should they doubt the ethics of a system that had dealt so kindly with them?

  She gave him up. What was the use of talking about such things to him? He had the sense of property ingrained in him. The last thing he would be likely to do was to let any altruistic ideas into his head. He would play safe. Wasn't he a practical man?

  She devoted herself to the game. To see her play was a pleasure to the eye. The long lines and graceful curves of her supple young body never appeared to better advantage than at golf. Her motions showed the sylvan freedom of the woods. Ned Merrill appreciated the long, light tread of her, the harmony of movement as of a perfect young animal, together with the fine spiritual quality that escaped her personality so unconsciously.

  At the fifteenth hole he continued her education. "This country is founded upon individualism. It stands for the best chance of development possible to all its citizens. When you hamper enterprise you stop that development."

  She took him up dryly. "I see. So you and father and Uncle Joe have developed your individualism at the expense of a million other people's. You have gobbled up franchises, forests, ore lands, coal mines, and every other opportunity worth having. As a result you're making them your slaves and crushing out all individuality."

  "Not at all. We're really custodians for the people. We administer these things for their benefit because we are more fit to do it."

  "How do you know you are?"

  "The very fact that we have succeeded in getting what we have is evidence of it."

  "All I can see is that our getting it and keeping it--you and I and Uncle Joe and a thousand like us--is responsible for all the poverty in the world. We're helping to make it every time we eat a dinner we didn't work to get."

  Alice made a beautiful approach that lande
d her ball within four feet of the hole. Presently Merrill joined her.

  "That was a dandy shot," he told her, and watched Alice hole out. "I don't agree with you. For instance, I work as hard as other men."

  "But you're not working for the common good."

  His impatience reached words. "That sort of talk is nonsense, Alice. I don't know what has come over you of late."

  She smiled provokingly and changed the subject. Why argue with him? The slant with which they got at things was different. Like her father, he had the mental rigidity that is death to open- mindedness.

  Briskly she returned to small talk. "You're only three up."