"I thought so," said he. "Those able gentlemen are loaded, Lawson, loaded, and without a by-your-leave have made up their minds that Mr. Rockefeller and myself are only in business to draw their load to some convenient safe-deposit vault, from which they can from time to time take it out to pay for palaces, yachts, fast horses, and society crowns. Lawson, don't tell me of their plight. Don't waste my time with their pleadings." The tiger was awake, his cage rattled; it was raw-meat time. I watched. Presently he snapped: "What do you suppose they would answer were they in our position? This: 'Give us the additional 50,000 shares we have demanded quick, or take the consequences.' They are able business men, so what they would do is just good enough for us to do. Take back this answer: 'You have the only proposition we will make; decide at once!'" I looked at him. I said not a word--I could not. Perhaps my thoughts were miles and ages away to scenes where Caesars, Napoleons, and Bismarcks stood gazing over fields strewn with corpses oozing blood. I remembered "to the victor belong the spoils"; but there also wandered into my mind the memory of a good mother's knee on a Sunday afternoon, and of a voice which repeated, "For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" As I left him Mr. Rogers said: "You had better sell 10,000 shares more of Utah. Sell them quick and sharp, and perhaps they will read our answer on the tape before you get to them." I sold the 10,000 shares. The price dropped two to three points, and, sure enough, by the time I got to Clark, Ward & Co.'s office I found them poring dazedly over the ticker tape. They knew my answer before I stated it, and were trembling with nervous apprehension. I wondered if they, too, saw the tiger, his bloody chops and claws and his piece of raw meat. I said what Mr. Rogers had told me to say in so many words, and then I talked frankly to them about their situation, and advised that they meet "Standard Oil's" demands. I called their attention to the tape: "They told me to throw over only 10,000 shares," I concluded. "Great heavens!" said Armstrong, the negotiating partner of Clark, Ward & Co., "they are likely to follow it up with 90,000 more. They have it; at least they can demand it of us, and if they do we are ruined. What can we do, Lawson? What _can_ we do?" I pointed out that their only possible course was to lay the situation before the large shareholders involved, stating the absolute necessity of coming to "Standard Oil's" time, and to make their medicine a little more palatable I added: "Once you come to time I can induce my people, I believe, to make a public announcement that they will take the open management and control of the Utah Company, and you know that will surely make the stock jump--enough, perhaps, to offset what you people lose on the extra 50,000 shares you yield up."