Then unexpectedly would fall some crushing blow
that put the financial kings of Broadway on the defensive long enough for
him to slip out of the corner into which they had driven him. Greatly
daring, he had the successful cavalryman's instinct of risking much to
gain much. A gambler, his enemies characterized him fitly enough. But it
was also true, as Mesa phrased it, that he gambled "with the lid off,"
playing for large stakes, neither asking nor giving quarter.
At the end of five years of desperate fighting, the freebooter was more
strongly entrenched than he had been at any previous time. The railroads,
pledged to give rebates to the Consolidated, had been forced by Ridgway,
under menace of adverse legislation from the men he controlled at the
State-house, to give him secretly a still better rate than the trust. He
owned the county courts, he was supported by the people, and had become a
political dictator, and the financial outlook for him grew brighter every
day.
Such were the conditions when Judge Purcell handed down his Never Say Die
decision. Within an hour Hobart was reading a telegram in cipher from the
Broadway headquarters.
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