Night after night secret
meetings were being held in out-of-the-way places to seduce those who clung
desperately to their honesty or held out for a bigger price. Bribery was in
the air, rampant, unashamed. Thousand-dollar bills were as common as
ten-dollar notes in ordinary times.
Sam Yesler, commenting on the situation to his friend Jack Roper, a fellow
member of the legislature who had been a cattleman from the time he had
given up driving a stage thirty years before, shook his head dejectedly
over his blue points.
"I tell you, Jack, a man has to be bed-rocked in honesty or he's gone.
Think of it. A country lawyer comes here who has never seen five thousand
dollars in a lump sum, and they shove fifteen thousand at him for his vote.
He is poor, ambitious, struggling along from hand to mouth. I reckon we
ain't in a position to judge that poor devil of a harassed fellow. Mebbe
he's always been on the square, came here to do what was right, we'll say,
but he sees corruption all round him. How can he help getting a warped
notion of things? He sees his friends and his neighbors falling by the
wayside.
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