that Roosevelt, convalescing
from the bullet wound, would take command again.

"You can't do it, colonel," he protested. "You will need to build up
your strength. I won't----"

"Fiddlesticks," interrupted the colonel. "You'll do what I say. I never
felt any stronger in my life. It's all a matter of being able to
breathe easier with this splintered rib. That won't bother me more than
a few days. Then they can't hold me back."

Flatly Gov. Johnson informed Col. Roosevelt that he wanted to stay in
the fight.

"I'm needed," he went on. "I'm going to let them take the governorship.
I'll resign."

Leaning out from the arm chair in which he sat, Roosevelt whacked his
right fist down on the table before him. A sharp pain went through the
breast pierced by the bullet.

"I tell you, governor, you'll not do it," fairly cried the colonel, so
vehemently that Mrs. Roosevelt, in the next room, stepped to the
doorway.

"You must be quiet, Theodore," spoke Mrs. Roosevelt, lifting a warning
finger.

"Yes, that's right," agreed the colonel, "but the governor here is
recalcitrant and I've got to speak roughly to him."

After a brisk interchange of opinion as to the feasibility of the
governor giving up the campaign the two violently taking opposite
sides, bidding the colonel an affectionate good-bye, Gov. Johnson left
the hospital. As he passed out to an automobile, Johnson said he had
promised the colonel to talk the matter over with other leaders before
deciding what to do.

"He insists that I return to California and I insist I won't,"
explained the governor. "We couldn't agree."

Later Gov. Johnson conferred at his hotel with William Allen White,
Francis J. Heney and other Bull Moose leaders. The governor was
obdurate in his decision to stick in the race.

"Col. Roosevelt is in no shape to take up the responsibility," he
maintained. "It is but an evidence of his magnanimity that he urges me
to return to California. I'd rather lost the job than desert the
colonel now."

Attorney General U. S. Webb of California on October 20 issued the
following opinion, however, which did away with possibility of Gov.
Johnson losing his office:

[Illustration: Elbert E. Martin.]

"There is a code section in the state limiting the absence of the
governor and other officials from the state to sixty days, but the
legislature of 1911 by resolution, removed the limitations on the
governor and other high state officials. In addition