“Make it simple,” was Blount’s condition, adding:  “What I don’t know about the business or the political situation in the West would fill a much larger book than the one you were speaking of a few minutes ago.”

“‘Business or political,’ you say; they are Siamese twins nowadays,” returned the railroad man, with a short laugh.  Then:  “The outlook for us out yonder in the greasewood hills is precisely what it is in a dozen other States this year—­east, west, north and south—­everything promising a renewal of the unreasoning, bull-headed legislative fight against the railroads.  I suppose our own case is typical.  As everybody knows, the Transcontinental Railway has practically created two-thirds of the States through which it passes—­made them out of whole cloth.  Where you left sage-brush and bare hills and unfenced cattle ranges a dozen years ago you will now find irrigation, tilled farms, orchards, rich mines—­development everywhere, with a rapidly growing population to help it along.  To make all this possible, the railroad took a chance; it was a mighty long chance, and somebody has to pay the bills.”

“I know,” smiled Blount; “the bill-paying is summed up in some railroad man’s clever phrase, ‘all the tariff the traffic will stand.’  I can remember one year when my father rose up in his wrath and drove his beef cattle one hundred and fifty miles across the Transcontinental tracks to the Overland Central.”

“That was in the old days,” protested Gantry, who was loyal to his salt.  “As the State has filled up, we’ve tried to meet the situation half-way, as a straight business proposition.  Fares and tariffs have been lowered from time to time, and—­”

“You are not making it simple enough by half,” warned Blount quizzically.  “You are getting further away from my telegram every minute.”

Gantry paused to relight his cigar.

“I don’t know how your telegram figures in it specially, but I do know this:  the legislature to be elected this fall in our State will be chosen entirely without regard to the old party lines.  There is only one issue before the people and that is the Transcontinental Railway.  The ‘Paramounters,’ as they call themselves, taking the name from the assumption that it is the paramount duty of the voter to pinch any business interest bigger than his own, would like to legislate us out of existence; as against that we shall beat the tomtom and do our level best to stay on top of earth.”

“Naturally,” Blount agreed, then half-absently, and with his eyes still resting upon the merrymakers twirling like paired automatons in the distant assembly-room:  “And my father—­how does he stand?”

“The idea of your having to ask me how the senator stands in his own State!” exclaimed Gantry.  “But really, Evan, I’d give a good bit of hard cash to be able to tell you in so many words just where he does stand.  There are a good many people in our neck of woods who would like mighty well to know.  It will make all the difference in the world when it comes to a show-down.”