“You mean Brydges gave him the facts?” asked Eleanor.

“Well, maybe, Brydges may have had him out in the forty horse power car!  He sent a lot of awful rot East!  That wasn’t the worst of it.  You’d think the Eastern fellows would know the difference between a maverick and a long-horn!  He’s been going round to the Eastern editors giving them doped stuff, lies dated out here written right down in New York!  They’ve been hammering the Forest Service for the last month!  I’ll bet that dough-head never put a foot in National Forests once while he was West:  rot about running off settlers, and shutting down mines, and hampering lumbering operations, and low down personal stuff!  Anyway, between lies and dope, they’ve got Wayland!  He’s fired!  I’ve been trying to get hold of him all day.  Your old man’s phrase, ’United States of the World,’ kind of caught on with the crowd:  they’ve kind of wakened up!  Funny thing, the way that happens to a crowd!  Your professional wind-jammer can orate till he busts his head, he never knows it has happened till the crowd has got away from him!  Been a crush of men round Wayland all day, by G—­, I beg your pardon—­but if he isn’t drowned, ’twon’t be their fault!  They are talking of putting him up as a candidate.”

“As a what?” exclaimed Eleanor.

“Run for Congress,” explained the news man.

She had gone quickly forward to the window, righting a shade to hide the flood of joy that surged up to her face.

“Excuse me—­Mr.——?  But I don’t know your name?”

“My name?  Oh, my name is—­Legion,” said the news editor dryly.

“Well, what was it you said the other day,” she had mustered courage to turn and face him again, “what was it you said the other day about a moneyed man backing an independent paper through this fight?  Don’t you remember, after the inquest, Mr. Legion?”

He uttered a shout of laughter, and she understood and laughed too.

“Oh, the independent paper is floundering on the edge of failure.  They’ll have to swing in line with the side that pays them best at election time.  One could buy up their debts now for a few thousand dollars, perhaps not twenty thousand.  Another fifty or so would swing her off on an independent tack.  There’s been a great awakening.  The people have their ears down to the ground for the coming change, Miss MacDonald; and the politicians don’t know it!  If we could swing her off well, she’d be a paying concern in a year; then the politicians could be d—­I beg your pardon, the special interests could go to the Devil!  That’s what I wanted to talk about to Wayland.  He’s the winning horse!  We haven’t either of us got anything left to lose but some frayed convictions, and by God,” (this time, he did not notice he had said it), “we’d invest ’em in an independent for all we’re worth!  I’m hot; and I’ve an idea Wayland isn’t just at milk and water temperature; and the public isn’t; and we’d have them!  We’d force the other crowd to yell at the top of their voices for reform inside of six months.  There’s a lot about that Rim Rocks affair even the owners of the sheep don’t know; but why in the Devil am I telling all this to a woman?”