ts
intersection with the main ravine. When they were within a hundred yards
of the curve the stretch below came into view. Blount had a momentary
glimpse of some barrier--a pine-tree, as it proved to be--lying across
the main road. Seeing it, he realized at the same instant that Patricia
was neither throttling the motor nor applying the brakes. After that he
had barely time to snap the switch and to throw the heavy wind-shield
down before the devastating crash came.

XXVIII

THE GOSSIPING WIRES

After his son had left him, the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush remained
standing before the library fire until he heard the machine-gun exhausts
of the small roadster distance-diminishing down the driveway avenue.
Then he stepped aside and pressed the bell-push ordinarily used to
summon the old negro footman.

In answer to the call a door opened beyond the chimney-jamb, and
immediately the gentle twig-tapping sounds resolved themselves into the
clickings of a pair of telegraph relays and the chatter of a typewriter.
A good-looking young fellow, with his coat off, entered the library,
carefully closing the door behind him.

"Want to send something, senator?" he asked, whipping a note-book from
his hip-pocket.

"No, not just this minute. Anything new coming over the wires?"

"Nothing startling. Steuchfield reports from Ophir that we swing the
miners' vote almost to a man unless something unforeseen breaks loose.
Hetchy gives us a good word from Twin Buttes; and Griggs, up in the
Carnadines, wires from Alkire that he has just completed an auto
canvass of the High Line district. The ranchmen up that way have had a
pretty bad scare. There was a threat made that the price of water was
going to be raised. But they're all right now."

The boss nodded approvingly. Then: "How about those microphone notes?"

"Crowell is writing them off," was the reply. "He'll have them in half
an hour or so."

The senator drew out his watch, a huge thick-crystalled time-piece
dating back to the range-riding period.

"As matters have turned out, I shall be going to the city before long,"
he said. "If the notes are not ready before I leave, you can order out
the speed-car and send them in by Gallagher any time before six o'clock.
Don't slip up on that, Fred; tell Gallagher to deliver the notes to me,
in person, at the Inter-Mountain. What's become of Professor Anners?"

"He's staying over at Haworth's ranch, just to be near the fossil