"Certainly, I'll be glad to go with you," was Blount's acquiescent rejoinder. So much the registry-clerk heard; and he saw, between jabs with his pen, the straight path to the revolving doors of the portal ploughed by the big man with young Blount at his elbow. One minute after the spinning doors had engulfed the pair the registry-clerk was called on the house telephone. A sad-faced tourist who was waiting patiently for his room assignment heard only the answer to the question which came over the wire from one of the upper floors: "No, Senator, Mr. Evan is not here; he has just this moment gone out--with Mr. McVickar. Could I overtake him? I'll try; but I don't know where they were going. Yes; all right. I'll send a boy right away." VIII THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT When the news went forth to the dwellers in the sage-brush hills that Boss David's son had been appointed to fill an important office as a member of the railroad company's legal staff, the first wave of astoundment was swiftly followed by many speculations as to what young Blount's _debut_ as a railroad placeman really meant. _The Plainsman_, the capital city's principal daily, and the outspoken organ of the people's party, was quick to discover an ulterior motive in Evan Blount's appointment and its acceptance. Blenkinsop, the leader-writer on _The Plainsman_, took a half-column in which to point out in emphatic and vigorous Western phrase the dangers that threatened the commonwealth in this very evident coalition of the railroad octopus and the machine. The _Lost River Miner_, on the contrary, was unwilling to believe that the younger Blount was acting in the interest of machine politics in taking an employee's place on the railroad pay-roll. In this editor's comment there were veiled hints of a disagreement between father and son; of differences of opinion which might, later on, lead to a pitched battle. The _Capital Daily_, however--the stock in which was said to be owned or controlled by local railroad officials--took a different ground, covertly insinuating that nothing for nothing was the accepted rule in politics; that if the railroad company had made a place for the son, it was only a justifiable deduction that the father was not as fiercely inimical to the railroad interests as the opposition press was willing to have a too credulous public believe. Elsewhere in the State press comment was divided, as the moulders of public opinion happened to read party loss or gain in the appointment of the new legal department head. Some were fair enough to say that young Blount had merely shown good sense in taking the first job that was offered him, following the commendation with the very obvious conclusion that the railroad company's pay check would buy just as much bread in the open market as anybody's else. On the whole, the senator's son was given the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove up.