itch I'm willing, right now. I wanted to tell you that if
you'd rather be a good little boy and get into line, I'm willing and
more than willing. Because I can promise you, since I talked it over
with O'Mara this afternoon, that we haven't any nice, dead-sure thing
on our hands any longer.

"Oh, you can sit there and smile your cold-blooded smile! And if you
think I'm experiencing pangs of conscience you're mistaken. All I
have, I got from other men who--who weren't strong enough to hang on to
it. There isn't any friendship in business--or if there is I never
played it that way. I'm just telling you that now is our one
opportunity, if we want to join hands and hurrah with the rest of them
for the completion of this job by next May. We lose a railroad at a
bargain, perhaps, but we've still got a mighty good right-of-way to the
border, that will insure our welcome in the ranks. Maybe we lose
and--and maybe--well, I never did like to be beaten! Nor do I say that
such an argument will have any weight with you, but it's a chance to be
on the dead level, for once. What do you say? Do we switch?"

Then Allison remembered the expression which had flitted over
Wickersham's face when Stephen O'Mara coolly appropriated Barbara. But
that expression had been a totally gentle thing beside the pale fury
which now slowly overspread his features. Wickersham twisted the
cigarette to fragments--flung them from him, and the very gesture was
vicious.

"Switch," he snarled. And he leaned forward, face bloodless, and beat
upon a chair arm. "Switch now!" He laughed shrilly. "Why, I'm going
to beat that damned woods-rat in his matinee-idol costume so bad
between now and next May that he'll be walking the roads for his next
job. Switch? I'm going to brand him as the worst incompetent that
ever dragged two poor fools down into pauperism. I'll see him broke.
I'll wipe that damned smooth smile from his lips, by God, if I have
to----"

Wickersham gasped; he came to his feet panting all in an instant with
the rage that set his dry lips writhing. But at that point he, too,
remembered himself. He swallowed and faced Allison, and the latter,
sitting pop-eyed before his outbreak, gaped now at the change that came
back over that twisted face. Wickersham smiled. Once more his bearing
was the very essence of perfect poise and self-control.

"If you--if you are afraid----" he inferred. "If you----"

Allison's laugh was big and