s sufficient to convict
of bribery, the judge of the district court of the County of Mesa be
requested to call a special session of the grand jury to investigate
the report. It was not until Sam Yesler rose to speak upon that report
that the pent-up storm broke loose.

He stood there in the careless garb of the cattleman, a strong
clean-cut figure as one would see in a day's ride, facing with
unflinching steel-blue eyes the tempest of human passion he had evoked.
The babel of voices rose and fell and rose again before he could find a
chance to make himself heard. In the gallery two quietly dressed young,
women, one of them with her arm in a sling, leaned forward breathlessly
and waited Laska's eyes glowed with deep fire. She was living her hour
of hours, and the man who stood with such quiet courage the focus of
that roar of rage was the hero of it.

"You call me Judas, and I ask you what Christ I have betrayed. You call
me traitor, but traitor to what? Like you, I am under oath to receive
no compensation for my services here other than that allowed by law. To
that oath I have been true. Have you?

"For many weeks we have been living in a carnival of bribery, in a
debauched hysteria of money-madness. The souls of men have been sifted
as by fire. We have all been part and parcel of a man-hunt, an eager,
furious, persistent hunt that has relaxed neither night nor day. The
lure of gold has been before us every waking hour, and has pursued us
into our dreams. The temptation has been ever-present. To some it has
been irresistible, to some maddening, to others, thank God! it has but
proved their strength. Our hopes, our fears, our loves, our hates:
these seducers of honor have pandered to them all. Our debts and our
business, our families and our friendships, have all been used to hound
us. To-day I put the stigma for this shame where it belongs--upon Simon
Harley, head of the Consolidated and a score of other trusts, and upon
Waring Ridgway, head of the Mesa Ore-producing Company. These are the
debauchers of our commonwealth's fair name, and you, alas! the
traffickers who hope to live upon its virtue. I call upon you to-day to
pass this resolution and to elect a man to the United States senate who
shall owe no allegiance to any power except the people, or to receive
forever the brand of public condemnation. Are you free men? Or do you
wear the collar of the Consolidated, the yoke of Waring Ridgway? The
vote which you will