Against the acceptance of this alternative every fibre of the new-found manhood in him rose up in stubborn protest. Had it indeed come to a pass at which mere money could dominate and dictate, rob, steal, oppress, and ride roughshod over all opposition? Smith asked himself the question, and figured the big Missouri colonel's magnificent anger if it should be asked of him. That thought and another--the thought of what Corona would say and think if he should surrender--turned the scale. "No, Mr. Kinzie; we'll not compromise while I have anything to say about it; we'll fight it to a finish," he said abruptly; and with that he went out through the crowded anteroom and so back to his desk in the up-stairs offices. XIX Two Women For one day and yet another after the minatory interview with David Kinzie, Smith fought mechanically, developing the machine-like doggedness of the soldier who sees the battle going irresistibly against him and still smites on in sheer desperation. As if the night of fiascos had been the turning-point, he saw the carefully built reorganization structure, reared by his own efforts upon the foundation laid by Colonel Baldwin and his ranchmen associates, falling to pieces. In spite of all he could do, the panic of stock-selling continued; the city council, alarmed by the persistent story of the unsafety of the dam, was threatening to cancel the lighting contract with Timanyoni High Line; and Kinzie, though he was doing nothing openly, had caused the word about the proposed compromise with the Escalante people to be passed far and wide among the Timanyoni stockholders, together with the intimation that disaster could be averted now only by prompt action and the swift effacement of their rule-or-ruin secretary and treasurer. "They're after you, John," was the way the colonel put it at the close of the second day of back-slippings. "They say you're fiddlin' while Rome's a-burnin'. Maybe you know what they mean by that; I don't."