"There is a danger," she insisted, "a much greater danger than the one Mr.
Loring fears. Come as soon as you can, won't you?"

It was a new thing for her to plead with him, and he promised in an access
of tumultuous hope reawakened by her changed attitude. But afterward, when
he was walking down-town with Loring, the episode troubled him a little;
would have troubled him more if he had not been so deeply interested in
Loring's story of the campaign in the East.

Taking it all in all, the ex-manager's report was encouraging. The New
Englanders were by no means disposed to lie down in the harness, and since
the Western Pacific proper was an interstate line, the Advisory Board had
taken its grievance to Washington. Many of the small stockholders were
standing firm, though there had been panicky defections in spite of all
that could be done. Loring had no direct evidence to sustain the stock
deal theory; but it was morally certain that the Plantagould brokers were
picking up Western Pacific by littles wherever they could find it.

"I am inclined to believe we haven't much time to lose," was Kent's
comment. "Things will focus here long before Washington can get action.
The other lines are bringing a tremendous pressure to bear on Guilford,
whose cut rates are demoralizing business frightfully. The fictitious boom
in Trans-Western traffic is about worked out; and for political reasons
Bucks can't afford to have the road in the hands of his henchmen when the
collapse comes. The major is bolstering things from week to week now until
the Plantagould people get what they are after--a controlling majority of
the stock--and then Judge MacFarlane will come back."

They were within two squares of the Clarendon, and the cross-street was
deserted save for a drunken cow-boy in shaps and sombrero staggering
aimlessly around the corner.

"That's curious," Loring remarked. "Don't you know, I saw that same
fellow, or his double, lurching across the avenue as we came out of
Alameda Square, and I wondered what he was doing out in that region."

"It was his double, I guess," said Kent. "This one is many pegs too drunk
to have covered the distance as fast as we have been walking."

But drunk or sober, the cow-boy turned up again most unexpectedly; this
time at the entrance of the alley half-way down the block. In passing he
stumbled heavily against Kent; there was a thick-tongued oath, and Loring
struck out smartly with his walking-stick