They used to do it much more picturesquely. They rode in coats of
scarlet, in the crisp, clear morning, to the winding of horns and
the baying of hounds, to the thud-thud of hoofs, and the crackle
of underbrush. Across fresh-plowed fields they went, crashing
through forest paths, leaping ditches, taking fences, scrambling
up the inclines, pelting down the hillside, helter-skelter, until,
panting, wide-eyed, eager, blood-hungry, the hunt closed in at the
death.

The scarlet coat has sobered down to the somber gray and the
snuffy brown of that unromantic garment known as the business
suit. The winding horn is become a goblet, and its notes are the
tinkle of ice against glass. The baying of hounds has harshened to
the squawk of the motor siren. The fresh-plowed field is a blue
print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each
fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's
making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper.
All the romance is out of it, all the color, all the joy. But two
things remain the same: The look in the face of the hunter as he
closed in on the fox is the look in the face of him who sees the
coveted contract lying ready for the finishing stroke of his pen.
And his words are those of the hunter of long ago as, eyes
a-gleam, teeth bared, muscles still taut with the tenseness of the
chase, he waves the paper high in air and cries, "I've made a
killing!"

For two years Jock McChesney had watched the field as it swept by
in its patient, devious, cruel game of Hunt the Contract. But he
had never been in at the death. Those two years had taught him how
to ride; to take a fence; to leap a ditch. He had had his awkward