“We’ve got to fight this thing to the last ditch!  If the innocent may be done to death by our law makers; if murder can be planned and carried out unpunished; there’s an end to our democracy!  Last year it was a little school teacher strangled down in the Desert; nobody punished, because that would have interfered with a voting gang on election day.  This year, it’s Fordie. If these crimes had been committed under a monarchy, the people would have tanned the hide of the king into boot leather!  Last year it was the little school teacher.  This year it’s Fordie.  Tomorrow, it may be any man, woman or child in the Valley.  If they’d keep their crimes among their own kind, there would be some excuse for this let-alone policy; but when freedom to do what a man likes means freedom to push crime into your life and mine, freedom to deprive others of freedom, it’s time the Nation jumped on somebody!  We’ve got to fight this damnable thing to the last ditch, Eleanor!”

“Good luck and God speed,” she said without looking up; and she turned without once looking back, and walked up the slab steps of the rustic entrance to the ranch house.

CHAPTER IX

RIGHT INTO MIGHT

Don’t wait for Mr. Matthews and me.  We are setting out on the Long Trail.  It is the Long Trail this Nation will have to travel before Democracy arrives.  It is the Trail of the Man behind the Thing; and we’ll not quit till we get him.  You remember what our old visitor said about “splitting the air to get somewhere.”  We are going to quit “sawing the air” and “split it to get somewhere.”  We are going to set out after the Man; the little codger first, as a foot print on the Long Trail to the lair of the Man Higher Up.

You cannot stab a lot of things to life as you did last night and the night before, and then expect them to lie quiet and be the same.  You have sent me forth on the Long Trail, Eleanor; and I shall hunt the better because you have stabbed me alive and will never let me go to sleep again.  I thank you; and yet, I can’t thank you, mine Alder Liefest—­look up and see what that means in old Saxon—­Yours in Life and Death and Always and Out Beyond.

  Dick.

I have ordered a wreath from Smelter City for Fordie.  Find it hard to stop writing and go from you; but the darned old Mountain doesn’t look the same; it’s all draped out in such “dam-phool ’appiness” that I am glad in the shadow of Death.

  Dick. (2nd)

Don’t forget every day dawn and sunset, I come to renew the Seal.  Ever study Algebra in college?  Then look up what this means.

  Dick. (nth)