“Rant doesn’t win elections, Brydges!  It has to be fought out!  Sooner we accept the challenge and put ’em to bed for good, the better!  Money talks, Brydges!”

“But that’s just it, Senator!  Money does talk; and some body’s money has talked when the Independent sold out to Joe!”

“Fool and his money soon parted, Brydges!  Only, in this case, I’ve a suspicion it’s a Her!  Never fear a known enemy, Brydges!  It’s the unknown factors you want to look out for!  F’r instance, there is this sot of a drunken Shanty Town Irishman?  What’s become of him?  Did he burn himself, when he set fire to the slash?”

They had paused opposite that fallen giant which bridged the Gully where Wayland had laid the saplings to cross to the Rim Rocks.

“That’s a fine one; the fire didn’t bring that one down!  Been cheesy heart wood!  Wonder who placed the saplings for a bridge?  Think I’ll cross and go down to the ranch by the Rim Rocks, Brydges!”

“Then, excuse me, Mr. Senator!  I go back this way!  Napoleon had aversion to mice!  I’ve an aversion to wire walking.”

He saw Moyese, hands in pockets, stroll along the great log bridging the Gully.  Mid-way, he paused as if in contempt of Brydges’ timidity.  “Bark gives a little,” he said, pressing his whole weight up and down flexibly.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Senator,” called Brydges.  “Trunk looks to me as if the fire had run through the punk!”

Even as he spoke, he saw it happen, Calamity glide on the far end of the log, utter a maniacal laugh, throw her shawl to the winds and bound forward.

“Go back, you she-devil!  Look out, Senator!  That log won’t stand the weight of two—­”

There was the flash of a knife in her hand.  Moyese had jumped from the stabbing onslaught—­when he lost his balance:  the tree crunched, bent, doubled like a jack knife, and plunged in a swirl of smoke and dust to the bottom of the Gully.  It had been burnt through to the green mossed outer bark.  When Brydges looked fearfully over the bank, the Indian woman had crushed below the log; and Moyese lay very still, his face to the sky, his left hand in his pocket, his right hand thrown out as if to ward a blow, gashed and bloody, whether from rock or knife cut, one could not tell.

I do not intend to repeat the “Smelter City Herald’s” flare head announcement of “the deplorable and tragical accident that cut short one of the most promising political careers in the United States.”  “Senator Moyese had long been accustomed to search the mountains in autumn for seeds and roots of specimen flowers for his herbarium, of which he had made a hobby.  That reckless disregard of danger for which he was famous, etc., etc.”  You’ll find the salient features of it all in “Who’s Who.”  Pad that out with Mr. Bat Brydges’ imagination and devotion; and you will have an idea of the sorrow that convulsed the “Smelter City Herald.”