[Illustration: _Men paused to read the bulletin, and I stopped, too._] "That's so. I know him!" he shouted, and the attention of the room was his. The men around him moved back, and I could see that the speaker was Will. He was dressed in a long waterproof coat, and his hat was tipped back on his head. An untrimmed black beard covered the lower half of his face. "I can tell you all about him," he continued in a thin, high voice. "He's the man who got a bill through Congress giving himself and his partners a slice of land out of the Indian Territory. He's the man who kept the Texas legislature in his hire the same as a servant." [Illustration: "_He's the man who sold scraps and offal to the Government for canned beef_--"] Generally when I hear this kind of sawing-air I go about my business. The discontented always growl at the other fellow's bone. Give them a chance at the meat, and see how many bites they would make! It's hopeless to try and winnow out the truth from the mass of lies they talk about the trusts, capital, the tariff, corruption, and the rest of it. But it hurt all the same to have Will say such things about me.... "He's the man who sold scraps and offal to the Government for canned beef--" "That's a lie!" I spoke out promptly. "Don't I know what I am saying? Didn't I try to live on the rancid, rotten stuff? My God, I've got some home now I could show you!" Will turned to see who had contradicted him, and recognized me. "You ought to know better than that," I replied, directly to him. "Some of it was rotten, but not the Meat Products' goods. We lost on our contract, too, what's more." Will was a little startled, but he steadied himself soon and said again:-- "That's the same thing. You were all the same crowd." "No; that wasn't so," I remonstrated, "and you ought to know it." The men in the room had stopped their talking and were craning their heads to look at us. Will and I eyed each other for a time; then I turned to the crowd and made the first and last real public speech of my life. "That's all a d----d lie about the beef _we_ sold the Government. I know it because I inspected it myself. And I gave my own money, too, to support men at the front, and that is more than any of you fellows ever did. And the rest of the talk these gentlemen have been giving you is just about as wrong, too. Let me tell you one thing: if you folks were honest, if you didn't send rascals to Springfield and to Congress, if you weren't ready to take a dollar and club a man if he didn't hand it over, there wouldn't be this bribery business. I know it, because I've got the club over and over again. And one thing more, it's no more use for you and I to kick about the men who put their money into trusts than it would be to try to swallow all the water in the lake. That's the way business has got to be done nowadays, and if it weren't done you folks would starve, and your wives and children would starve--"