to interfere with the petty
plans of peanut politicians and public plunderers.

"It is level here! Let us gallop out of this bare burn to the shelter
of the evergreens," she said. "I don't mind wind, but I'd just as soon
get under cover where it couldn't lash us so."

And the horses came chugging and breathing hard up on the sheltered
trail below the evergreens. She reined her horse to the slowest of
walks.

"Did you see the news editor before you left town?" she asked.

"Yes, he came over to my hotel last night about twelve o'clock. He had
the biggest fool-scheme you ever heard of my running for Congress and
buying a paper to boost out the Ring and all that! Thunder, I don't
want to run! I've no ax to grind! I prefer to stay a free lance in
the fighting ranks!"

"And do you think the fellows, who want to run and have an ax to grind,
do best for the Nation?" asked Eleanor. "Why wouldn't you run if the
people demanded it?"

"There is the plain brutal fact that it takes money," explained
Wayland. "I haven't the ambition; and I have less money. I haven't
more than will set me up on some little one-horse irrigation farm. Oh,
I know some fool had been filling him up about my having rich friends
East, who would put up money for this campaign and finance a new kind
of newspaper for the Valley! I'd like to knock the fool's head off who
told him that! It's all a lie! Of course, I knew lots of moneyed
chaps at Yale; but thunderation, I'd have to want public office a good
deal harder than I do to go round cap in hand! Why, Eleanor, a fellow
who would do that wouldn't be worth shucks to represent the people."

"Did you tell him that?" asked Eleanor.

"Yes and more! I told him he was clean plumb fool-crazy! Why,
Eleanor, when that fellow was fired out of his job yesterday morning,
he hadn't ten dollars ahead in the world! I'm not a bank, myself; but
then I haven't a wife and kiddies. Do you know, Eleanor, that fellow
had more pluck than I would have had under the same circumstances? I
couldn't let the results of this kind of a fight come down on a woman."

"What did he say when you told him he was crazy?"

"Oh, went locoed clean out of his head, kicked my hat off the bed post,
took out a fiver, said, 'Wayland, that's my last! I'll bet it a
hundred odd you do the very thing I'm outlining tonight.'"

"It was a safe bet," said Eleanor. "He had come to see me before he
went to you! I was the person,