Going to Sue, Sam told her frankly of his plans. “I want a free hand in the handling of your stock in the company,” he said. “I cannot lead this new life of yours. It may help and sustain you but it gets no hold on me. I want to be myself now and lead my own life in my own way. I want to run the company, really run it. I cannot stand idly by and let life go past. I am hurting myself and you standing here looking on. Also I am in a kind of danger of another kind that I want to avoid by throwing myself into hard, constructive work.” Without question Sue signed the papers he brought her. A flash of her old frankness toward him came back. “I do not blame you, Sam,” she said, smiling bravely. “Things have not gone right, as we both know, but if we cannot work together at least let us not hurt each other.” When Sam returned to give himself again to affairs, the country was just at the beginning of the great wave of consolidation which was finally to sweep all of the financial power of the country into a dozen pairs of competent and entirely efficient hands. With the sure instinct of the born trader Sam had seen this movement coming and had studied it. Now he began to act. Going to that same swarthy-faced lawyer who had drawn the contract for him to secure control of the medical student’s twenty thousand dollars and who had jokingly invited him to become one of a band of train robbers, he told him of his plans to begin working toward a consolidation of all the firearms companies of the country. Webster wasted no time in joking now. He laid out the plans, adjusted and readjusted them to suit Sam’s shrewd suggestions, and when a fee was mentioned shook his head. “I want in on this,” he said. “You will need me. I am made for this game and have been waiting for a chance to get at it. Just count me in as one of the promoters if you will.” Sam nodded his head. Within a week he had formed a pool of his own company’s stock controlling, as he thought, a safe majority and had begun working to form a similar pool in the stock of his only big western rival. This last job was not an easy one. Lewis, the Jew, had been making constant headway in that company just as Sam had made headway in the Rainey Company. He was a money maker, a sales manager of rare ability, and, as Sam knew, a planner and executor of business coups of the first class. Sam did not want to deal with Lewis. He had respect for the man’s ability in driving sharp bargains and felt that he would like to have the whip in his own hands when it came to the point of dealing with him. To this end he began visiting bankers and the men who were head of big western trust companies in Chicago and St. Louis. He went about his work slowly, feeling his way and trying to get at each man by some effective appeal, buying the use of vast sums of money by a promise of common stock, the bait of a big active bank account, and, here and there, by the hint of a directorship in the big new consolidated company.