ad not
come to the campaign without a barrel of his own.

The balloting for United States senator was not to begin until the
eighth day of the session, but the opening week was full of a tense and
suppressed excitement. It was known that agents of both sides were
moving to and fro among the representatives and State senators,
offering fabulous prices for their votes and the votes of any others
they might be able to control. Men who had come to the capital
confident in their strength and integrity now looked at their neighbors
furtively and guiltily. Day by day the legislators were being debauched
to serve the interest of the factions which were fighting for control
of the State. Night after night secret meetings were being held in
out-of-the-way places to seduce those who clung desperately to their
honesty or held out for a bigger price. Bribery was in the air,
rampant, unashamed. Thousand-dollar bills were as common as ten-dollar
notes in ordinary times.

Sam Yesler, commenting on the situation to his friend Jack Roper, a
fellow member of the legislature who had been a cattleman from the time
he had given up driving a stage thirty years before, shook his head
dejectedly over his blue points.

"I tell you, Jack, a man has to be bed-rocked in honesty or he's gone.
Think of it. A country lawyer comes here who has never seen five
thousand dollars in a lump sum, and they shove fifteen thousand at him
for his vote. He is poor, ambitious, struggling along from hand to
mouth. I reckon we ain't in a position to judge that poor devil of a
harassed fellow. Mebbe he's always been on the square, came here to do
what was right, we'll say, but he sees corruption all round him. How
can he help getting a warped notion of things? He sees his friends and
his neighbors falling by the wayside. By God, it's got to the point in
this legislature that an honest man's an object of obloquy."

"That's right," agreed Roper. "Easy enough for us to be square. We got
good ranches back of us and can spend the winter playing poker at the
Mesa Club if we feel like it. But if we stood where Billy George and
Garner and Roberts and Munz do, I ain't so damn sure my virtue would
stand the strain. Can you reach that salt, Sam?"

"Billy George has got a sick wife, and he's been wanting to send her
back to her folks in the East, but he couldn't afford it. The doctors
figured she ought to stay a year, and Billy would have to hire a woman
to take care of hi