Part 40 (2/2)

Mr. Plummer said nothing, and Mr. Crayon was content; he could do enough talking for two.

”Mr. Goodnight and other of my a.s.sociates are coming West very soon,” he continued. ”The velvet glove will be taken off, and it is high time.”

Then they went forth into the streets of Boise and they were seen walking together by many people, to which Mr. Crayon was not averse, and in an hour three or four local correspondents were sending eastward vivid despatches stating that Mr. Crayon, the representative of the conservative and dissatisfied minority in the party, was in Boise in close conference with ”King” Plummer, the political ruler of the mountains. And the burden of all these despatches was fast-coming evil for Jimmy Grayson.

Nor was the candidate long in hearing of it. The very next day a Boise newspaper containing a full first-page account of it reached them, and was read aloud to the party by Mr. Heathcote. Mr. Grayson made no comment as it was being read, but Harley once saw his face darken and his lips close tightly together; this was the only sign that he gave, and it quickly pa.s.sed.

But the others were not so chary of words. The train was full of indignant comment, and the ears of ”King” Plummer in the distance must have burned.

”I could not have believed it of him,” said Mr. Heathcote. ”It is untrue to the man's whole nature, even if he is swayed suddenly by some powerful emotion.”

Hobart glanced at Sylvia, who had withdrawn to the far end of the car, where she was apparently gazing at the mountains that fled by, although she said not one word and her face was red. Nor did Harley join in the talk, but, taking advantage of the slight bustle caused by Mr. Grayson's retirement to the drawing-room, he took refuge in a day car to which their own coach was attached for the time. That evening, while the others were at dinner, he saw Sylvia alone.

”I ought to tell you,” she said, ”that I have asked to leave the train, but my aunt has refused to consent to it. She says she needs me, and as I cannot go now to my old home in Boise, it is better for me to stay with her. I have heard that you asked to be recalled to the East, and I honor you for it.”

”Are you sorry that my request was refused?” asked Harley.

She did not falter, although the red in her cheeks flushed deeper.

”No, I am not sorry; I am glad,” she replied. ”Why should I tell an untruth about what is so great a matter to both of us? But it cannot change anything.”

Harley felt that this was, indeed, a maid well worth winning, and his hope yet to find a way, which had been weakened somewhat lately, grew high again. That night wild resolves ran through his mind. He would sacrifice his pride, hitherto an unthinkable thing--he would see ”King”

Plummer and tell him that Sylvia and he loved each other, that neither of them could possibly be happy unless they were wedded, then he would appeal to the older man's generosity; he would tell him how Sylvia loyally meant to keep her word and pay her debt of grat.i.tude with herself, then he would ask him to release her from the promise. But he gave up the idea as one that required too much; he could never humiliate himself so far, and even then it would be a humiliation without result.

If Harley had undertaken to carry out such a wild idea, he would have found it difficult, because no one in the party then knew where ”King”

Plummer was; they were hearing of him all over the West, and the Denver, Salt Lake, and smaller newspapers were filled with accounts of his doings, all colored highly. His bolt, they said, was now an accomplished fact; he showed the deepest hostility to the candidate, and he was also in constant correspondence with a powerful and dissatisfied wing in the East.

Mr. Grayson never said a word, he never spoke of Mr. Plummer in any of his speeches, and Harley believed there was only sadness in his mind, not anger, whenever he thought of the ”King.”

But there could be no doubt of the effect of all these events upon the campaign; to the public Jimmy Grayson seemed as one lost in the wilderness, and only in the mountains, where the people were far from the great centres of information, did they yet cherish a hope of his election. Churchill wrote to the _Monitor_ that Jimmy Grayson himself had abandoned hope.

Ominous rumblings were coming from the East, too. Goodnight, Crayon, and their friends had found a pretext upon which to take drastic action, and they were about to take it.

XX

THE GREAT PHILIPSBURG CONFERENCE

If ever you go to Philipsburg, which is in Wyoming, not far from the Montana line, you will hear the people proclaim the greatness of the town in which they live. You expect this sort of thing in the Far West, and you are prepared for it, but you will be surprised at the nature of the Philipsburg boast. Its proud inhabitants will not tell you that it is bound to be the largest city between the Missouri and the coast, they will not a.s.sert that since the horizon touches the earth at an equal distance on all sides of the town, it is, therefore, the natural centre of the world; but they will tell you stories of the Great Philipsburg Conference, and some of them will not be far from the truth.

Philipsburg is but a hamlet, fed by an irrigation ditch that leads the life-giving waters down from a distant mountain, and it has neither the beauty of nature nor that given by the hand of man, but the people will point importantly to the square wooden hotel of only two stories, and tell you that there occurred the great crisis in the most famous and picturesque Presidential campaign ever waged in the United States; they will even lead you to the very room in which the big talk occurred, and say, in lowered voices, that the furniture is exactly the same, and arranged just as it was on that momentous night when the history of the world might have been changed. In this room the people of Philipsburg have a reverential air, and there is cause for it.

The affair did not begin at Philipsburg--it merely had its climax there--but far away on the dusty plains of eastern Was.h.i.+ngton, where the wheat grows so tall, and it bubbled and seethed as the candidate and his party travelled eastward, stopping and speaking many times by the way.

It was all about the tariff, a dry subject in itself, but, as tall oaks from little acorns grow, so a dry subject often can make interesting people do interesting things.

At the convention that nominated Mr. Grayson for the Presidency the subject of the tariff had been left somewhat vague in the platform, not from deliberate purpose, but merely through the drift of events; the question had not interested the people greatly in some time; other things connected with both the foreign and internal policy of the government, particularly the continued occupation of the Philippines and a projected new banking system, were more to the fore; but as the campaign proceeded certain events caused the tariff also to be brought into issue and to receive a large share of public attention.

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