"That is good strong talk," retorted the banker, "but it doesn't tell me who you are, or why you are so evidently anxious to forget your past, Mr. Smith. I'm not asking much, if you'll stop to consider. And you'll give me credit for being fair and aboveboard with you. I might have held that engraving salesman and questioned him; he knows you--knows your other name." Smith put the entire matter aside with an impatient gesture. "Leave my past record out of it, if you please, Mr. Kinzie. At the present moment I am the financial head of Timanyoni High Line. What I want to know is this: do you continue to stand with us? or do you insist upon the privilege of seesawing every time Stanton turns up with a fresh scare? Let me have it, yes or no; and then I shall know what to do." The gray-haired man in the big chair took time to think about it, pursing his lips and making a quick-set hedge of his cropped mustache. In the end he capitulated. "I don't want to break with you--or with Dexter Baldwin," he said, at length. "But I'm going to talk straight to you. Your little local crowd of ranchmen and mining men will never be allowed to hold that dam and your ditch right of way; never in this world, Smith." "If you are our friend, you'll tell us why," Smith came back smartly. "Because you have got too big a crowd to fight; a crowd that can spend millions to your hundreds. I didn't know until to-day who was behind Stanton, though I had made my own guess. You mustn't be foolish, and you mustn't pull Dexter Baldwin in over his head--which is what you are doing now." Smith thrust his hands into his pockets and looked away. "What do you advise, Mr. Kinzie?" he asked. "Just this. At the present moment you seem to have a strangle-hold on the New York people that it will take a good bit of money to break. They'll break it, never fear. A Scotch terrier may be the bravest little dog that ever barked, but he can't fight a mastiff with any hope of saving his life. But there is still a chance for a compromise. Turn this muddle of yours over to me and let me make terms with the New Yorkers. I'll come as near to getting par for you as I can." Smith, still with his hands in his pockets, took a turn across the room. It was a sharp temptation. No one knew better than he what it would mean to be involved in a long fight, with huge capital on one side and only justice and a modest bank balance on the other. To continue would be to leave Colonel Baldwin and Maxwell and Starbuck and their local following a legacy of strife and shrewd battlings. He knew that Kinzie's offer was made in good faith. It was most probably based on a tentative proposal from Stanton, who, in turn, spoke for the great syndicate. By letting go he might get the local investors out whole, or possibly with some small profit.