“I know that is what you believe,” said Blount, drawing up a broken chair and planting himself carefully in it; “we are on opposite sides of the fence in this fight, if you are fighting the railroad merely because it is a railroad; otherwise, perhaps, we are not so far apart as we might be.  I don’t know whether or not you have listened to any of my speeches, but you’ve printed a good many of them.”

The editor nodded.  “I’ve read ’em, and I’m willing to be the hundredth man and say that I believe you are individually honest.  I hope you’re not going to ask me to go any further than that.”

“I’m not; I came for quite another purpose.  First, let me ask a frank question:  Is The Plainsman out for a square deal all around, regardless of who may be hit?”

Blenkinsop took time to consider the question and his answer, chewing thoughtfully upon his extinct cigar while he reflected.

“This is straight goods?” he asked finally.  “You’re not trying to pull me into an admission that can be used against us a little later on?”

“At the present moment you are talking to Evan Blount, the man, and not to the Transcontinental company’s lawyer, Blenkinsop.”

“All right; then I’ll tell you flat that we are out for blood.  We hold no brief for any living man.  There are no strings tied to us, and we wear nobody’s brass collar.”

“Then you are fighting the machine as well as the railroad?” Blount put in quickly.

The editor sat back in his chair, and the two furrows which deepened upon either side of his hard-bitted mouth answered for a smile.

“When you find a machine that hasn’t got ‘T-C.R.’ lettered on it somewhere, you let us know about it,” was his rather cryptic reply.

“That is not the point,” said Blount dryly.  “Here is the question I wanted to ask:  There are only five days intervening before the election.  How wide a swath could you cut if the evidence of wholesale corruption could be placed in your hands within twenty-four hours?”

Again the editor took time to consider.  When he spoke it was to say:  “I can’t quite believe that you are going to be disloyal to your salt at this late stage of the game, Blount.  Do you mean that you are going to show your own company up for what it really is?”

“Never mind about that.  I asked a question, and you haven’t answered it.”

“It was a question of time, wasn’t it?  There’s time enough to tip the skillet over and spill all the grease into the fire, if that’s what you mean; always time enough, up to the last issue before the polls open.”

“And you’d do it—­no matter who might happen to get in the way of the burning grease?”

“We print the news, and we try to get all the news there is.  But it would have to be straight goods, Blount; no ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ about it.  I’m not saying that you couldn’t produce the goods, you know.  If you could break into Gantry’s and Kittredge’s private files, the trick would be turned.  But I know well enough you’re not going to do that.”