THE MERCY OF THE COURT
Mrs. Hullis stayed late, and Wint had time to do some thinking before
she finally departed. But he did very little. He was in no mood for
thinking. It was characteristic of Wint that when his sympathies were
aroused, he was an unfaltering partisan; and there was no question that
his sympathies had been aroused in behalf of Hetty.
It was equally characteristic of him that he wasted very little time
wondering who was to blame for what had happened; and that he wasted no
time at all in considering what Hardiston would say about it all. He was
going to help the girl; he had made up his mind to that. The rest did
not matter at all.
He counted on his mother’s sympathy and understanding; and when, after a
time, he heard her showing Mrs. Hullis to the door, and heard their two
voices upraised in a last babel as they cleaned up the tag ends of
conversation and said good-by, he went out into the upper hall, to be
ready to descend. Hetty had gone upstairs a little earlier; he could
hear her now, moving about in her room.
His mother went out on the front steps with Mrs. Hullis, to be sure no
word had been forgotten; and when she came in after her visitor had
gone, Wint was waiting for her. She said: “Why, Wint, I thought you’d
gone to bed long ago. I told Mrs. Hullis you were studying the law books
up in your room. Mr. Hullis is a lawyer, you know. She says he brings
his books home and sits up half the night, but I told her you were
always one to go early to bed, ever since you was a boy. And she said
she--”
Wint took her arm good-naturedly. “There, mother,” he interrupted. “I
don’t care what Mrs. Hullis said. I want to talk to you about something
that has just come up. Come in and sit down.”
Mrs. Chase, like most talkative women, was habitually so absorbed in her
own conversation and her own thoughts that it was hard to surprise her.
She took Wint’s announcement as a matter of course; and they went into
the sitting room arm in arm, and she picked up her sewing basket and sat
down in the chair she had occupied all evening, and began to rock primly
back and forth while she stretched a sock on her fingers to discover any
holes it might have acquired. “...do get such a comfort out of talking
to Mrs. Hullis,” she was saying, as she sat down. “She’s such a nice
woman, Wint. I never could see why you didn’t like her more. She and
I--”
Wint said: “I don’t want to talk to you about Mrs. Hullis, mother. I
want to talk to you about Hetty.”
Mrs. Chase did drop her work in her lap at that. “About Hetty?” she
echoed. “Why should you want to talk about Hetty? Wint! You’re never
going to marry her, are you? I--”
Wint laughed. “No, no. Not that Hetty isn’t a nice girl; and she’ll make
some fellow a mighty fine wife. But I want to--”
“There,” said Mrs. Chase, immensely reassured. “I knew it couldn’t be
that. I always knew you and Joan.... I said to Mrs. Hullis to-night that
you and Joan were friendly as ever. She’s a nice girl, Wint. I don’t see
why you don’t get married right away. Your father and I were married
before--”
Wint said, persistently bringing her back to the point: “I don’t want to
talk about Joan, either, mother. It’s Hetty.”
“Well, I should think you would want to talk about Joan,” Mrs. Chase
declared. “She’s worth talking about. I’m sure she wouldn’t like it very
much to know you didn’t want to talk about her, Wint. She--”
“Mother,” Wint insisted. “Hetty needs our help. I want you to--”
Mrs. Chase looked at him with a face that had suddenly turned white and
cold. She put one trembling hand to her throat. “Wint?” she asked, in a
husky whisper. “What’s the matter with Hetty? What are you talking
about? What is the--”
“Hetty’s going to have a little baby,” said Wint gently.
Mrs. Chase exclaimed: “Wint! You’re not.... You haven’t.... It isn’t
you?”
“No, no,” Wint said impatiently. “Of course not. I--”
“The shameless girl!” his mother cried, all her alarm turning into
anger. “The shameless hussy. In my house. I declare--”
“Please,” her son protested. His mother got up.
“She sha’n’t sleep another night under my roof,” she declared. “I never
thought to live to--”
“Mother,” said Wint, so sternly that his mother stopped in the doorway.
“Come back,” he told her. And she obeyed him, protesting weakly. “Sit
down,” he said. “Hetty needs our help. Don’t you understand?”
When a wolf is injured, his own pack pulls him down; when a crow is
hurt, his fellows of the flock peck him to death relentlessly; but wolf
and crow are merciful compared to womankind. There is no deeper instinct
in woman than that which condemns the sister who has strayed. It is true
that, in many women, the compassion overpowers the cruelty of wrath. But
Mrs. Chase was a very simple person, elemental, a woman and nothing
more. She sat down at Wint’s command; but she said implacably:
“I won’t have her in the house, Wint. A girl like that. I should think
you’d be ashamed to stand up for her. A shameless, worthless thing....
You can talk all you’re a mind to, but I’m going to send her packing.
You and your father have your own way, most of the time, but this is
once that I’m going to have mine. I always knew she was too pretty for
any good. Pretty, and impudent, and all. I won’t have her--”
Wint asked: “Hasn’t she worked hard enough for you? Done her work well?
Tried to do what you wanted?”
“Course she’s done her work, or I wouldn’t have kept her. That hasn’t a
thing to do with it, Wint. I’m surprised at you, standing up for her. I
told Mrs. Hullis, only the other day, that she was too pretty for her
own good. I might have known she would get into trouble. The nasty
little--”
“Mother,” Wint cried sharply, “I won’t let you talk like that. I told
Hetty we’d help her; and she said you’d be against her; and I wouldn’t
believe it. I can’t believe it. A poor girl without a friend anywhere,
in the worst kind of trouble, and you--”
“Wint, I don’t see why you stand up for her if you aren’t--”
“You know I’m not. Don’t be ridiculous, mother. But I’ve known her all
our lives. Grew up with her. And I’m going to--”
His mother shook her head positively: “I’m not going to have her in the
house, Wint. You don’t need to talk any more. That’s all there is to it.
I won’t!”
“I counted on you.”
“Well, you needn’t to count on me any more. I know what’s best; and I’m
not going to have that shameless--”
She was interrupted, this time, by the arrival of Wint’s father. They
heard the front door open, and heard him come in. Wint got up and went
to the door that led into the hall. The elder Chase was hanging up his
hat. Mrs. Chase, behind Wint, was talking steadily. Wint said to his
father:
“Come in, will you? Mother and I are talking something over.”
Chase nodded; but he had news of his own. “Heard uptown to-night that
Routt’s going to run against you in the fall,” he said. “Did you know
that, Wint?”
Wint nodded. “I’d heard so.”
“I thought you and he were good friends.”
“We are,” Wint said good-naturedly. “But that doesn’t prevent our being
political enemies. He’s had some break with Amos. Come in, dad. I want
you to hear--”
But the older man heard it first from Mrs. Chase. She came across the
room to meet them, pouring it out indignantly. “And Wint wants me to
keep her,” she concluded. “Wants me to keep that girl in the house after
this. I told him--”
Chase asked: “What’s that? Wint, what is this? Hetty--in trouble?”
“Yes, sir,” said Wint. “I found it out to-night; and I promised her we’d
stand by her. Help her.”
Chase demanded sharply: “What right had you to commit us? If she chooses
to destroy herself, how does that concern us? I’m surprised at you,
Wint. It’s impossible.”
Wint said, in a steady voice: “She needs friends badly. She hasn’t any
one to turn to. And Hetty’s a good sort, underneath. I told her--”
“Why doesn’t she turn to the man?” Chase interjected. “He’s the one that
ought to--”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t thought of him,” said Wint. “But if he
were likely to help her, it seems to me he would have taken a hand
before this. Don’t you think so?”
“Don’t I think so?” Wint’s father was outraged and angry. “I don’t think
anything about it. It’s no concern of ours, so long as she packs herself
out of here. Let her get out of her own mess.”
“I’m going to make it a concern of mine,” said Wint, his jaw stiffening.
“I’m not going to see her turned adrift. I’m going to help her.”
Chase looked at him keenly. “By God, Wint, is this your doing? Are
you--”
Wint said, a little wearily: “That was the first thing mother asked. You
people don’t think very highly of me, do you?”
“Isn’t it the natural question to ask?” his father demanded. “Isn’t it
the only possible explanation of this attitude on your part? Is it true,
young man? That you--”
“Have it any way you want,” Wint exclaimed, too angry to deny again. “I
don’t care. The point is this. Hetty is in trouble; she needs friends.
I’ve promised that we would help her. I’ve promised you and mother would
back me up. I counted on you.”
Chase lifted his hand in a terrible, silent rage. “You want to shame us,
your mother and me, in the face of all Hardiston. I tell you, Wint,
whether it’s your doing or not, you’re crazy. If it’s you--then we’ll
give her some money and get rid of her. If it’s not, then she gets out
of here to-night. Inside the hour.”
Wint said, half to himself: “We’d have to send her away, in any case.
Somewhere. For a while.”
Chase laughed bitterly. “All right. If this is a new scrape you’ve got
yourself into, I’ll buy you out of it. How much does the girl want?”
Wint flamed at him: “It’s not my concern, I tell you. You ought not to
need to be told.”
“Then get her out of the house,” Chase exclaimed; “as quick as you can.
Or I will. Where is she?” He turned toward the door.
But Wint was before him; blocked the doorway. “Father,” he said. “You
and mother.... I’ve promised her help. Promised you would be good to
her.”
“The more fool you. She goes out to-night.”
“If she goes,” Wint cried, “I go with her. You can do as you please.”
For a little after that, there was silence in the room. Wint stood in
the doorway, head high and eyes hot. His father faced him. His mother
stood by her chair, across the room, her lips moving soundlessly. It was
she who first found voice. She came toward Wint in a clumsy, stumbling
little run; and she caught his arms, and she pleaded with him.
“Don’t you do that, Wint. Don’t you. Don’t go away and leave us again.
We’re getting old, sonny. Your father and I. Your old mother. Don’t you
go away. We’d.... We couldn’t ever stand it again. We--”
Wint said gently: “I don’t want to go. I want to stay at home here with
you both, and be proud of you, and love you.”
“You shall stay,” she told him. “You shall. Anything you want, Wint,
sonny. I don’t care whether you did it or not. I’ll be good to her. I
will, Wint. If you’ll stay--”
The boy said, half abashed: “I don’t want to seem to drive you to it.
Only--I’ve promised her. I can’t break my word to her. Please, can’t you
see?”
“It’s all right,” his mother protested. “I’ll do anything.” She clutched
her husband’s arm. “Tell him to stay, Winthrop,” she begged. “Don’t let
him go away. We’ll take care of Hetty.”
Chase said: “You’re making lots of trouble for us, Wint.” He smiled a
little unsteadily. “We’re too old for so much excitement. You’ll have to
remember that. Remember to take care of us--as well as Hetty.”
Wint could not hold out. He said: “All right. I won’t go away. Do as you
think best about Hetty. I hope you’ll let her--”
“I’ll keep her,” his mother cried. “I’ll be as good as I know to her.”
And his father echoed: “We’ll take care of her, Wint.”
“You’re doing it because you want to,” Wint pleaded. “You don’t have to.
I’ll stay anyway. But I--hope you’ll want to help her, anyway.”
“Yes,” Chase said. “We’ll keep her--because we want to. Do what we can.”
* * * * *
But they were not to keep her very long, for Hetty’s time was near. It
was decided that she should go to Columbus for a little while, returning
to them in the fall. Wint wrote a check to cover her expenses. Hetty’s
old sullenness had returned to her. She took the check without thanks,
and tucked it away in her pocketbook. She was to go to the train alone,
to avoid talk.
The night of her going, Jack Routt met V. R. Kite, and took Kite to his
office. And he told him certain things, an evil elation in his eyes.
Told him in detail that which he had planned.
Kite listened with eyes shining; and at the end he said: “He’ll deny it.
What can you prove?”
“This proves the whole thing,” said Routt triumphantly, and slid a slip
of paper across the desk to Kite. Kite looked at it. A check, drawn by
Winthrop Chase, Junior, to the order of Henrietta Morfee.
The buzzard of a man banged his hard old fist upon the table. “By God,
Routt!” he cried, “we win. We’ll skin that cub. We’ll hang his hide on
the barn!”
Routt reached into the drawer of his desk. “And that means,” he said,
“that it’s time to have a drink. Say when?”
END OF BOOK IV
BOOK V
DEFEAT
CHAPTER I
SUNNY SKIES
At this time, and for a long while afterward, it seemed to Wint that all
was well with the world. He had some reason to think so. He kept his
promise to Hetty; and that matter, which had threatened to cause a
difference between him and his father and mother, had resulted in the
end in a closer understanding between them. They had let him see their
dependence on him; they had let him see something of the depths of
affection in their hearts for him. The Chases were not a demonstrative
family; not given to much talk of these matters, and Wint found their
attitude in some sort a happy revelation. His father began, in an
uncertain way, to defer to Wint; the elder Chase began to ask his son’s
advice, now and then; he seemed to have recognized the fact of Wint’s
manhood; he seemed to have discovered that Wint was no longer a boy.
There was a new respect in his bearing toward his son.
Wint’s mother had changed, too; she was, perhaps, a little less
loquacious. She and the elder Chase were beginning to be proud of Wint;
and this pride forced them to see him in a new light. Not as their boy,
their son, their child; but as a man whom other men respected.
For Wint was respected. That was one of the things that made the world
look bright to him. He was surprised to find, as the days passed, and as
it was seen that his orders to clean up the town were being enforced,
that good citizens rallied to him. Hardiston was normally a law-abiding,
decent place; its people were normally decent and law-abiding people.
They would not have condemned Wint for failure to enforce the law. In
fact, with his antecedents, they had expected him to fail. They were the
more pleased when he did enforce it; and they took occasion to let him
see it. Also, they took occasion to tell the elder Chase that his son
was doing well; and Winthrop Chase, Senior, took a diffident pride in
these assurances. Chase was never a hypocrite, even with himself; he
could not forget that he had urged Wint to rescind those orders to
Radabaugh.
Wint found a surprising number and variety of people rallying to his
support, in those days after his clash with the carnival men and his
victory in that matter. Dick Hoover’s father, for example; a solid man,
a lawyer of the old school, and one who spoke little and to the point.
Hoover told Wint he had done well.
Wint said he had tried to do well.
“You understand, young man,” Hoover drawled in the slow, whimsical
fashion that was characteristic of him. “You understand, I’m no
teetotaller, myself. I’ve been accustomed to a drink, when I chose, for
a good many years. This--crusade--of yours has made it damned
inconvenient for me, too. But it’s a good cause. I’ve no complaint. More
power to your elbow!”
Wint laughed, and said: “I guess there would be no kick at anything you
might do, sir.”
Hoover nodded. “Oh, of course, I could bring the stuff in if I chose.
But a man can’t afford to be on the wrong side in these matters, you
know; not if he wants to keep his self-respect. And I can do without it.
I can do without it. Stick to your guns, young man.”
“I’m going to,” Wint told him, flushed and proud at the older man’s
praise. “I’m going to, sir.”
Peter Gergue came to Wint, scratching the back of his head and grinning
a sly and knowing grin, and told Wint he was making votes by what he had
done. “That’s a funny thing, too,” said Gergue. “Man’d think you’d make
a pile of enemies. But I could name two or three of the worst soaks in
town that say you’re all right; got good stuff in you; all that.” Gergue
scratched his head again. “Yes, sir, men are funny things, Wint.”
Wint had never particularly liked Gergue, because he had never seen
under the surface of the man. He was coming to have a quite genuine
respect and affection for Amos’s lieutenant. “I’m not doing it to make
votes,” he said good-naturedly.
“That’s the reason you’re making votes by it,” Gergue assured him. “And
that’s the way politics goes. Take James T. Hollow now; he’s always
trying to do what is right. He says so hisself. But it don’t get him
anywhere; and I reckon that’s because he does what’s right because he
thinks there’s votes in it. You go ahead and do it anyway. Maybe you do
it because you think it’ll start a fight. Make some folks mad. And
instead of that, they eat out o’ your hand.”
Wint nodded. “Even Kite,” he said. “He made some fuss at first. But it
looks as though he had decided to take it lying down.”
Gergue shook his head. “Don’t you make any mistake about V. R. Kite,” he
warned Wint. “He don’t like a fight, much. Getting too old. But he’ll
fight when he’s got a gun in both hands. He’ll play poker when he holds
four aces and the joker. V. R. will start something when he’s ready. I
wasn’t talking about him.”
“I’m ready when he is,” Wint declared.
“He won’t be ready till he thinks you ain’t,” Gergue insisted.
But Wint was in no mood to be depressed by a possibility of future
trouble. In fact, he rather looked forward to this potential clash with
V. R. Kite. It added to the zest of life.
Old Mrs. Mueller, who ran the bakery, whispered to Wint when he stopped
for a loaf of bread one night that he was a fine boy. “My Hans,” she
said gratefully. “He is working now; and that he would never do when he
could get his beer regular, every second day a case of it. And there is
more money in the drawer all the time, too.”
And Davy Morgan, the foreman of his father’s furnace, told Wint that
save for one or two irreconcilables, the men at the furnace were with
him. “And the men that kick the most, they are the ones who are the
better off for it,” he explained, in the careful English of an old
Welshman to whom the language must always be an acquired and unfamiliar
instrument. “William Ryan has never been fit for work on Mondays until
now.”
Murchie, Attorney General of the state, who lived up the creek, and who
had been a speaker at the elder Chase’s rallies in the last mayoral
campaign, happened into town one day and told Wint he had heard of the
matter at Columbus and that people were talking about him, Wint Chase,
up there. “They knew old Kite, you see,” he told Wint. “He comes up
there to lobby on every liquor bill; and they like to see him get a kick
in the slats, as you might say. But you’ll have to look out for him.”
“I’m going to,” Wint assured Murchie.
“If you can down Kite, there’ll be a place for you at Columbus, some
day,” Murchie predicted. “They don’t like Kite, up there.”
Sam O’Brien, the fat restaurant man, stopped laughing long enough to
tell Wint he was all right, had good stuff in him, was a comer. “The
Greek next door,” he explained. “He thinks you’re a tin god. He runs the
candy store, you know. Says there never was so much candy sold. He’ll
vote for you, my boy. If he ever gets his papers. And learns to read.
And if you live that long.”
Wint got most pleasure, perhaps, out of the attitude of B. B. Beecham.
He had an honest respect for the editor’s opinion on most matters. Every
one had. Beecham was habitually right. In his editorial capacity, he
took no notice of what had come to pass in Hardiston. When the carnival
men were arrested, he printed the fact without comment. “Michael Rand
was fined for assault and improper language,” the _Journal_ said. The
other man for “illegal sales of liquor.” And the “permit of the carnival
for the use of the streets was canceled.” Thus the news was recorded,
and every man might draw his own deductions. B. B. was never one to
force his opinions on any man, which may have been the reason why people
went out of their way to discover them.
Wint stopped in at the _Journal_ office one hot day in July. B. B. was
in his shirt sleeves, and collarless. He wore, habitually, stiff-bosomed
shirts of the kind usually associated with evening dress. On this
particular day, he had been working over the press--his foreman was
ill--and there were inky smears on the white bosom. Nevertheless, B.
B.’s pink countenance above the shirt was as clean as a baby’s. There
was always this refreshing atmosphere of cleanliness about the editor.
Wint came into the office and sat down in one of the chairs and took off
his hat and fanned himself. The afternoon sun was beginning to strike in
through the open door and the big window; but there was a pleasantly
cool breath from the dark regions behind the office where the press and
the apparatus that goes to make a small-town printing shop were housed.
Wint said:
“This is one hot day.”
“Hottest day of the summer,” B. B. agreed.
“How hot is it? Happen to know?”
“Ninety-four in the shade at one o’clock,” said B. B. “Mr. Waters
telephoned to me, half an hour ago.”
“J. B. Waters? He keeps a weather record, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. Has, for a good many years. We print his record every week.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed it.”
Wint nodded. “Yes. I suppose every one likes to read about the weather.
Even on a hot day.”
B. B. smiled. “That’s because every one likes to read about things they
have experienced. You won’t find a big daily in the country without its
paragraph or its temperature tables devoted to the weather, every day in
the year. And a day like this is worth a front-page story any time.”
“You know what a day like this always makes me think of?” Wint asked;
and B. B. looked interested. “A glass of beer,” said Wint. “Cool and
brown, with beads on the outside of the glass.”
The editor smiled. “The beads on the outside of the glass won’t cool you
off half as much as the beads on the outside of your head,” he said.
“Did you ever stop to think of that?”
“Sweat, you mean?”
“Exactly. You know, when troops go into a hot country, they get
flannel-covered canteens; and when they want to cool off the water in
the canteens, they wet the flannel and let it dry. The evaporation of
your own perspiration is the finest cooling agency in the world.”
“May be,” Wint agreed. “But it doesn’t stop your thirst.”
B. B. said good-naturedly: “A thirst is one of the handicaps of the
smoker. I quit smoking a good many years ago. A non-smoker can satisfy
his own thirst by swallowing his own spittle. I don’t suppose you ever
thought of that?”
“Is that straight?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Wint asked amiably: “Mean to say you wouldn’t have to take a barrel of
water to cross the Sahara.”
“Oh, when the bodily juices are exhausted, of course....”
Wint grinned. “I’ll stick to my beer.”
B. B. laughed and said: “I expect a good many Hardiston men are cussing
you to-day because they can’t get beer.”
“I suppose so. I’ve a notion to cuss myself.” He added, a moment later:
“You know, B. B., it’s surprising to me how little fuss has been made
over that.”
“You mean--the--enforcing the law?”
“Yes. I looked for a row.”
“Oh, you’ll find most people are on your side. You know, most people are
for the decent thing, in the long run. That’s what makes the world go
around.”
“Think so?”
“Yes, indeed. If that weren’t so, where would be the virtue in
democracy?”
“Well,” Wint said good-naturedly, “I’ve always had an idea that a
democracy was a poor way to run things, anyway. About all you can say
for it is that a man has a right to make a fool of himself.”
“Well, that’s about all you can say against slavery, isn’t it?”
Wint considered. “I don’t get you.”
“There were good men in the South before the war, owning slaves,” said
B. B. “And the slaves were better off than their descendants are now.
Materially; perhaps morally, too. But that doesn’t prove slavery was
right.” He added: “The darkies had a right to make fools of themselves
if they chose, you see. Their masters--even the good masters--prevented
them.”
“I suppose that’s what a benevolent despot does?”
“Exactly.”
“If it wasn’t so hot, I’d give three cheers for democracy.” He
considered thoughtfully, fanning himself with his hat. “But that’s what
I’m doing, B. B. I’m refusing to let some that would like to, make fools
of themselves with booze.”
B. B. shook his head. “Not at all. It’s not your doing. The people are
doing it themselves. They voted dry; they elected you to enforce their
vote. See the distinction?”
“Think I’ve done right, then?” Wint asked.
And B. B. said: “Yes, indeed.” Wint got a surprising amount of
satisfaction out of that. Because, as has been said, he valued B. B.’s
opinion.
So, on the whole, that month of July was a cheerful one for Wint. Things
were going his way; the world was bright; the skies were sunny.
The first cloud upon them came on the second of August. It was a very
little cloud; but it was a forerunner of bigger ones to come. Wint did
not, in the beginning, appreciate its full significance. In fact, he was
not sure it had any significance at all. It merely puzzled him.
His month’s statement from the bank came in. When it first came, he
tossed the long envelope aside without opening it; and it was not till
that night that he compared the bank statement with the balance in his
check book.
He discovered, then, that there was a mistake somewhere. The bank
credited him with more money than he should have had. He said to
himself, good-naturedly, that he ought not to kick about that.
Nevertheless, he ran through his canceled checks, comparing them with
his stubs, to see where the difference lay.
He located the discrepancy almost at once; and when he discovered it, he
sat back and considered its significance with a puzzled look in his
eyes.
The trouble was that his check to Hetty, for her expenses in Columbus,
had never been cashed; and Wint could not understand that at all.
CHAPTER II
A FRIENDLY RIVALRY
This matter of the check that he had given Hetty stuck in Wint’s mind,
disquieting him. This in spite of the fact that he tried to forget it,
told himself it had no significance, that it meant nothing at all.
He gathered up the other canceled checks and put them back in the bank’s
long, yellow envelope, and stuck the envelope in a drawer of his desk.
Hetty had not yet cashed the check; that was all. She would cash it when
she needed the money. He tried to believe this was the key to the
puzzle.
But it was not a satisfactory key; and this was proved by the fact that
his thoughts kept harking back to the matter during the next day or two.
When he gave Hetty the check, he had expected her to cash it before she
left town. In fact, his first thought had been to draw the money
himself, and give it to her; but this had been slightly less convenient
than to write the check. So he had written the check, and given it to
her, and now Hetty had not cashed it.
It was characteristic of Wint that he saw no threat against himself in
this circumstance. Wint was never of a suspicious turn of mind. He was
loyal to his friends and to those who seemed to be his friends; he took
them, and he took the world at large, at face value. So in this case, he
was not uneasy on his own account, but on Hetty’s. For Hetty had needed
this money; yet she had not cashed the check.
He knew she needed the money. Her wage from his mother left no great
margin for saving, if a girl liked to spend money as well at Hetty did.
She could not have saved more than a few dollars; twenty, or perhaps
thirty.... Besides, she had told him she needed money. When he told her
she had better go away, she had said: “A fat chance of that. Where
would I get the money, anyway?” It was this that had led him to write a
check for her.
She had needed the money; she had accepted it. That is to say, she had
accepted the check, but had not cashed it. Not yet, at least. Why not?
What was the explanation?
His uneasiness, all on Hetty’s account, began to take shape. He
remembered the girl’s sullen hopelessness, her friendlessness. She had
been ready to give up, to submit to whatever misfortunes might come upon
her. There had always been a defiant, reckless, fatalistic streak in
Hetty. And Wint, remembering, was afraid it had taken the ascendant in
the girl. He was afraid.
He did not put into words, even in his thoughts, the truth of this fear.
But he did write to a college classmate, who was working at the time on
one of the Columbus papers, and asked him to try to locate Hetty at one
of the hospitals. He told the circumstances. And two or three days
later, the man wrote to say that there was no such person as Hetty in
any hospital in Columbus under her own name; and that as far as he could
learn, there was no one approximating her description.
When this letter came, it tended to clinch Wint’s fears. He was not yet
convinced that Hetty had chosen to--do that which writes “Finis” as the
bottom of life’s last page. But he was almost convinced, almost ready to
believe.
It made Wint distinctly unhappy. He had an honest liking and respect for
Hetty, an old friendship for the girl.
He did not tell either his father or mother of the matter of the check;
nor did he tell them what he feared had come to pass. There was no need,
he thought, of worrying them. There was nothing that could be done.
The long, lazy summer dragged slowly past, and nothing happened. Which
is the way of Hardiston. That is to say, nothing happened that was in
any way extraordinary. The Baptist Sunday school held its annual picnic
in the G. A. R. grove, south of town; and every one went, Baptist or
not, Sunday school scholar or not. Everybody went, and took his dinner.
Fried chicken, and sandwiches, and deviled eggs, and bananas; and there
were vast freezers of ice cream. And some played baseball, and some
idled in the swings, and there were the sports that go with such an
occasion. Cracker-eating, shoe-lacing, egg-and-spoon race, greased pole,
and so on and so on, to the tune of a great deal of laughter and general
good nature. And the Hardiston baseball team played a game every week,
sometimes away from home, sometimes on the baseball field down by the
creek, where the muddy waters over-flowed every spring. And Lint Blood,
the hard-throwing left fielder who was fully as good as any big leaguer
in the country, if he could only get his chance, had his regular season
as hero of the town. And there were a few dances, where the men appeared
in white trousers and soft shirts and took off their coats to dance; and
there were hay rides, on moonlight nights; and Ed Skinner’s
nine-year-old boy almost got drowned in the swimming hole at Smith’s
Bridge; and Jim Radabaugh and two or three others went fishing down on
Big Raccoon, thirty miles away; and the tennis court in Walter Roberts’s
back yard was busy every fine afternoon; and Ringling Brothers and
Buffalo Bill paid Hardiston their regular summer visits. It rained so
hard, for three days before Ringling Brothers came, that the big show
had to be canceled, which made it hard for every father in town. And Sam
O’Brien’s brother caught a thirty-five-pound catfish in the river, and
sent it up to Sam, who kept it alive in a tub in his restaurant for two
days, and killed and fried it for his customers only when it began to
pine away in captivity. And Ed Howe’s boy fell off a home-made acting
bar and broke his arm; and the Welsh held their County Eisteddfod in a
tent on the old fair grounds, and John Morgan won the first prize in the
male solo competition. Hardiston boys thought that was rather a joke,
because John was the only entry in this particular event; and they
reminded him of this fact for a good many years to come, in their
tormenting moments. And the hot days and the warm days and the wet days
came and went, and the summer dragged away.
In September, Joan suggested a picnic at Gallop Caves, a dozen miles
from Hardiston; and Wint liked the idea, so they discussed who should
go, and how, and in due time the affair took place. Joan and Agnes and
two or three other girls made the domestic arrangements, with Wint and
Dick Hoover and Jack Routt and one or two besides to look after the
financial end, and the transportation. In the old days, they would have
hired one of the big barges from the livery stable, with a long seat
running the length of each side; and they would have crowded into that
and ridden the dozen jolting miles, with a good deal of singing and
laughing and talking as they went; but there were automobiles in
Hardiston now, and no one thought of the barge.
They started early; that is to say, at eight o’clock in the morning, or
thereabouts. There were three automobiles full of them, with hampers and
boxes and freezers full of things to eat in every car. And they made the
trip at a breakneck and break-axle speed over the rough road, and came
to the Caves by nine, and unloaded the edibles and got buckets of water
from the well behind the house at the entrance to the Caves. The farmer
who lived in this house had an eye to business; and a year or two before
he had put up a pavilion in the grove by the Caves, and had begun to
charge admission. Besides the pavilion, there were swings, and there was
a seesaw; and there were always the Caves themselves, and the winding,
clear-watered little stream that came down over the rocks in a feathery
cascade and wound away among the trees.
This day, they danced a little, in the pavilion--Joan had brought a
graphophone--and when it grew too warm to dance, some of them went to
climb about on the cool, wet rocks of the Caves; and some took off shoes
and stockings, or shoes and socks as the case might be, and waded in the
brook; and some sprawled on the sand at the base of the rocky wall and
called doodle bugs. A pleasant, idle sport. The doodle bug is more
scientifically known as an ant lion. He digs himself a hole in the sand
like an inverted cone, and hides himself in the loose sand at the bottom
of the hole. The theory of the thing is that an ant tumbles in, slides
down the sloping sides, and falls a prey to the ingenious monster at the
bottom. To call a doodle bug, you simply chant over and over:
“Doodle up, doodle up, doodle up....”
And at the same time, you stir the sand on the sides of the trap with a
twig. Either the song or the sliding sand causes the bug to emerge from
his ambush at the bottom of the pit, when you may see him for an
instant; a misshapen, powerful little thing. If you happen to be an ant,
he looks to you as formidable as a behemoth, bursting out of the sand
and tumbling it from his shoulders as a mammoth bursts out of the
primeval forest. If you happen to be a human, you laugh at his awkward
movements, and find another pit, and call another doodle bug.
Routt and Agnes, Wint and Joan, all four together, investigated doodle
bugs this day. They had a good-natured time of it till Jack Routt caught
an ant and dropped it into one of the pits to see the monster at the
bottom in action. The sight of the ant’s swift end was not pleasant to
Joan; and she looked at Routt in a critical way. He and Agnes seemed to
think it rather a joke on the ant. Wint and Joan moved away and left
them there and went clambering up among the rocks, and picked
wintergreen and chewed it, and came out at last on the upper level, on
top of the Caves. They looked down from there and shouted to the others
below. And when they tired of that, they sat down and talked to each
other for a while. That was one pursuit they never tired of.
Wint had been meaning to ask Joan something. It concerned that letter
which he had received the day after his election as Mayor. The letter
had been anonymous; a friendly, loyal, sympathetic little note. He had
torn it up angrily, as soon as he read it, because he was in no mood for
good advice that day, and the letter had given good advice. He could
remember, even now, snatches of it. He had wondered who wrote it; and
this wonder had revived, during the last few days, and he had considered
the matter, and asked a question or two.
Now he asked Joan whether she had written it; and Joan hesitated, and
flushed a little, and then said, looking at him bravely: “Yes, I wrote
it, Wint.”
He said in an embarrassed way: “But that was when you had told me you
would have no more to do with me.”
She nodded.
“I tore it up,” he said.
“I thought you would.” She smiled a little. “But I hoped you--would
remember it, too.”
“I do,” Wint told her. “You said I had ‘the finest chance a man ever had
to retrieve his mistakes,’ and you told me to buckle down.”
“Yes, I remember,” she agreed.
Wint looked at her, and his heart was pounding softly. “You said there
were some who would watch me--lovingly,” he reminded her.
For a minute she did not speak; then she nodded her head slowly; and she
said: “Yes.” Her eyes met his honestly.
Wint had been very sure, before he asked her, that she had written the
letter; he had meant to remind her of this word, and if she confessed
it, to go on. But now that he had come thus far, he found that he could
go no farther. It was not that she forbade him; not that there was any
prohibition in her eyes. It was something within himself that restrained
him. Something that held his tongue, bade him not risk his
fortune--lest, perchance, he lose it.
Any one but a blind man would have seen there was no danger of his
losing it; but Wint, in this matter, was blind--for the immemorial
reason. So all the courage that had brought him thus far deserted him,
and he only said:
“Oh!”
That did not seem to Joan to call for any answer, so she said nothing;
and after a moment Wint got hurriedly to his feet and exclaimed:
“Well, I’m getting hungry. Better be getting back, hadn’t we?”
Joan looked, perhaps, a little disappointed. But she said she guessed
so; and they made their way down to join the others.
After every one had eaten till there was no more eat in them, there was
a general tendency to take things easy. The dishes had to be washed in
the brook; and the girls undertook to do that. Dick Hoover found some
horseshoes, and started a game of quoits. Wint would have taken a hand;
but Jack Routt drew him aside and said:
“I’d like a little talk with you, Wint. Mind?”
Wint was surprised; but he didn’t say so. “All right,” he agreed.
“Shoot.”
Routt offered him a cigar, and Wint took it, and they walked slowly away
from the others, back toward the Caves. Routt came to the point without
preliminaries. “It’s like this, Wint,” he said frankly. “A good many
people have been telling me I ought to get into politics.”
Wint had ears to hear; and he had heard something of this. But he
pretended ignorance, and only said: “I thought you were in politics.
Thought you were linked up with Amos.”
“I have been, in the past,” Routt agreed. “But the trouble with that is,
if you tie up with a big man, you get only what he chooses to give you.
I’ve been advised to strike out for myself.”
Wint said: “I think that’s good advice. It ought to help your law
practice, too.”
“Matter of fact,” said Routt. “They’re telling me I ought to run against
you.”
“Against me?” Wint seemed only mildly interested. “For Mayor?”
“Yes. On the wet issue. You know my ideas on that. I’m not on your side
of the fence there at all.”
“Well, I don’t find fault with any man’s ideas, Jack.”
“The trouble is this,” Routt explained. “You and I are pretty good
friends. Always have been. I don’t want to start anything that will
spoil that friendship.”
Wint laughed and said: “Good Lord, Jack; I guess there’s no fear of
that.”
“By God, I knew you’d say so!” Routt exclaimed. “Just the same. I was
leary. You know what kind of a fellow I am. When I go into a thing, I go
in with both feet. If I run against you, Wint, I’ll give you a fight.”
“Go to it. We’ll show Hardiston some action.”
“I’ll lam it into you, Wint.”
“Well, I can give as good as you send,” Wint promised cheerfully.
“The only thing is,” Routt explained, “I just want an understanding with
you first; that is, I want you to know there’s nothing personal in
anything I may say. It’s politics, Wint; and if I go in, it will be hot
politics. If you’ll promise to take it as that and nothing else.”
Wint said easily: “I don’t suppose you can tell Hardiston anything about
me that it doesn’t already know.”
Routt grasped his hand. “Attaboy, Wint,” he exclaimed. “You’re a good
sport. By God, I believe I’ll go into it!”
“Come ahead. It’s no private fight,” Wint assured him.
“The only thing is, I wanted to know first. I want you to know I’m on
the level with you personally.”
“Well, I should say I know that, Jack.”
Routt thrust out his hand. “Shake on it, Wint.”
Wint laughed. “You’re dramatic enough.” But he shook hands.
They rejoined the others after a while, and Wint was glad of it. He had
hidden his feelings from Routt; but as a matter of fact he was a good
deal surprised and chagrined at Jack’s news. He had heard rumors; but he
had not believed Routt would come out against him. It was a thing he,
Wint, would not have done.... It smacked, he felt, of disloyalty to a
friend. He had even, for a moment, a thought of withdrawing and leaving
the field free to Routt. But he put it away. After all, he was first in
the fight; it was Routt who had brought about this situation, not he. He
could not well avoid the issue.
Nevertheless, he was troubled. The world that had seemed so bright and
fair a month ago had a less cheerful aspect now. His fears for Hetty,
his anxiety over her, were always with him, faintly oppressive. Now
Routt’s desertion, his projected opposition. Try as he would to shake it
off, Wint could not rid himself of the feeling that there were rough
places on the road that lay ahead.
His anxiety over Hetty was relieved--though only to take a new turn--in
the last week of September. For Hetty came back to Hardiston.
Wint met her on the street one day. He was immensely surprised; and he
was immensely pleased to see her, safe and sound. He cried: “Why, Hetty,
where did you come from?”
She looked around furtively, as though she would have avoided him if it
had been possible to do so. “Didn’t you expect me to come back?” she
asked sullenly.
“Of course. But.... How are you? All right? Where have you been?”
“Summering in New England,” she said ironically. “Where’d you think?”
“Mother’s been wondering when you’d come back. She needs you.”
“She’ll have to go on needing me.”
“Aren’t you--”
“I’ve got a job in the shoe factory.”
Wint said: “Oh!” He was disturbed and uncertain, puzzled by Hetty’s
attitude. He asked: “Is the.... Did you....”
“The baby?” said Hetty listlessly. “Oh, he died.” There was dead agony
in her tone, so that Wint ached for her.
“I’m sorry,” he told her.
“That’s all right. I can stand it.”
He asked: “Did you need any money? The check I gave you never came
through the bank.”
“I lost it,” she said.
“Why, you must have had trouble. You didn’t have enough.”
“I went in as a charity-ward patient.”
“Columbus?”
“No. Cincinnati. I didn’t want any one knowing.”
Wint smiled in a friendly way and said: “I was worried about you.”
Hetty laughed. “You’d better worry about yourself. Do you know people
are looking at you, while you’re talking to me? It won’t help you any to
be seen with me.”
Wint said “Pshaw! You’re morbid, Hetty.”
“Besides,” she told him. “I’ve got to look out. Mind my p’s and q’s. If
I want to hold my job.”
Wint flushed uncomfortably. “Why.... All right,” he said. “But if
there’s ever anything....”
“Oh, I’ll let you know,” Hetty said impatiently, and turned away.
He had been afraid that she had killed herself; that her body was dead.
He was afraid now, as he watched her move down the street, that
something more important was dead in the girl.
It was at this moment that he realized for the first time that a man had
been responsible for what had come to Hetty. He wondered who the man
was; and he thought it would be satisfying to say a word or two to the
fellow.
CHAPTER III
POLITICS
Jack Routt was as good as his word to Wint. Early in October, he
announced his candidacy for Mayor; and he proceeded to push it.
In their talk at the Caves, he had warned Wint what to expect. But in
spite of that warning, Wint had looked for no more than a polite and
friendly rivalry, a congenial conflict, a good-natured tussle between
friends.
He was to find that Routt had meant exactly what he said; that Routt as
a political opponent and Routt as a friend were two very different
personalities. On the heels of his open announcement that he was a
candidate, Jack began a canvass of the town, and a direct and virulent
assault upon Wint.
Wint heard what Routt was doing first through his father. The elder
Chase came home to supper one evening in a fuming rage; and he said
while they were eating:
“Wint, this Routt is a fine friend of yours!”
Wint looked at his father in some surprise. “Why, Jack’s all right,” he
declared.
“All right?” Chase demanded. “Do you know what he’s doing?”
“I know he’s out for Mayor. That’s all right. I’ve no string on the job.
I want to be re-elected, just as a sort of a--testimonial that I’ve made
good. And I intend to be re-elected. But at the same time, any one has a
right to run against me.”
“Nobody denies that,” his father exclaimed. “But no one has a right to
hark back a year for mud to throw at you.”
Wint said: “Pshaw, there’s always mud-throwing in politics.”
Chase challenged: “Do you mean to say you think Routt has a right to do
as he is doing?”
“Well, just what is he doing?” Wint asked good-naturedly.
“What is he doing? He’s saying you’re a common drunkard; that you always
have been; that you are still, in secret.”
Wint flushed with slow anger. “Well,” he said, “if any one believes
that, they’re welcome to.”
“But damn it, son, you’re not!” Chase exclaimed; and there was such a
fierce rush of pride in his father’s voice that Wint was startled, and
he was suddenly very happy about nothing; and he said:
“I’m glad you know it, anyway, dad.”
“Damn it!” Chase repeated. “Don’t you suppose I can see? Don’t you
suppose I have a right to be proud of my own son, when he does something
to be proud of? Your mother and I have.... Well, Wint, we’re--we’re a
good deal happier than we were a year ago.”
Wint said gently: “I’m only sorry I didn’t make you happy a year ago.”
“That’s all right,” his father declared. “You were a headstrong
youngster; and I didn’t know how to control you. An unruly colt takes
careful handling. I’m not a--tactful man. But I’ll be damned if I can
see how you can take this from the man you call your friend.”
Wint smiled slowly, and he said: “That’s three times in two minutes
you’ve said ‘damn,’ dad. Cut it out. Don’t get profane in your
excitement. Routt’s all right, really. Don’t swear at him.”
“Do you realize that he’s saying you’re drinking as regularly as ever,
while you pretend to keep this a dry town?”
“Well, no one will believe him.”
“You can find men to believe anything; and there are plenty in Hardiston
that want to believe anything against you.”
“Let them,” said Wint confidently. “There are plenty who will stand back
of me.”
“But what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not going to call names,” Wint told him cheerfully. “I’ll fight it
out quietly and decently; and I’ll win. That’s what I mean to do.”
“You act as though you had expected this.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Jack came to me and told me, before he told
any one else, that he was going to run. And he warned me he was going to
make it a real fight.”
“A real fight? This is assassination!”
Wint laughed. “You’re taking it too hard. I know it’s just because
you’re--proud of me. Are you going to back me in this?”
Chase frowned. “As a matter of fact, Wint, I’m in a hard position. I
want to back you--of course. But I can’t stomach Caretall. If you
weren’t tied up with him.”
“He’s been a pretty good friend to me. Can’t you take him on that
ground?”
“If I tied up with him, I’d be called a bootlicker, and justly. After
what he did to me, I can’t cater to him and keep my self-respect.”
“Pshaw, dad! The world has a short memory. That’s all forgotten.”
“I’ve not forgotten.”
“Every one else has.”
“I’m not talking about every one else. I’m talking about my own
self-respect.”
They had finished supper; and they got up and went into the other room.
Mrs. Chase--she was doing her own work since Hetty had left her--began
to clear away the dishes. In the sitting room, Wint said: “I’ve been
counting on you, dad.”
Chase said: “I’ll do what I can--quietly. But I can not come out in the
open and side with Amos. If he’d turn against you....”
Wint laughed. “I might kick up a row with him.”
“You’ll never regret breaking with Caretall. He’s a crooked politician
of the worst type, without honor. A traitor to his own friends. He’ll be
a traitor to you when it pleases him.”
His son said quickly: “Don’t. Please don’t talk against him to me. Let’s
just not talk about him. After all, he’s been square to me.”
Chase flung up his hand. “All right. But how about Routt? Are you going
to sit still and take the mud he’s throwing?”
“Jack will be too busy to throw mud, pretty soon,” Wint promised
cheerfully. “Mud is trimmings. I’ll bring him down to brass tacks.”
“You ought to shut his lying--”
“Come, dad, don’t take it so seriously.”
“Well, then, you take it more seriously.”
Wint laughed. “All right. You wait and see.”
* * * * *
Nevertheless, he could not deny to himself that Routt’s move troubled
him. Not for its effect on his candidacy, but for the light in which it
showed Routt himself. For all his loyalty, Wint thought it was unworthy.
Thought Routt was hurting himself and sullying himself. He met Jack
uptown that night, and told him so in a friendly way. “Do as you like,”
he said. “But I think it hurts you more than it does me,” he suggested.
Routt laughed, and asked: “It’s not getting under your skin, is it? I
told you I’d give you a run.”
“Pshaw, no. Say anything you like about me. But it doesn’t get you any
votes.”
“You’ll know better than that on the eighth of November,” Jack told him;
and Wint smiled and let it go at that. After all, it was Routt’s own
concern.
But if Wint took Routt’s tactics equably, Hardiston did not. Hardiston
folk love politics. The great American game is the breath in their
nostrils. They have an expert’s appreciation of the tactical value of
this move and that; and they are keen spectators at such a battle as
Routt and Wint were staging.
Wint would have liked to consult with Amos at this time; but it happened
that Amos was out of town. He had gone to Columbus for a day or two. In
lieu of Amos, Wint went to Peter Gergue, and asked Gergue how things
looked to him. Gergue fumbled in his back hair in the thoughtful way he
had and said he guessed Routt was making a lively fight of it, anyway.
“Do you think he’s making votes?” Wint asked.
“We-ell,” said Peter, “you can’t always tell what folks will do. I’d say
he’s persuading every enemy you’ve got to vote against you.”
Wint said: “They would, anyway.”
“Sure.”
“The question is, is he persuading any of my friends?”
“I’d say not.”
“Then I don’t need to worry.”
Gergue spat at the curb. “Can’t say. You see, Wint, there’s about sixty
per cent. of this town--or any town--that’s neither enemy nor friend.
Just neutral. Them’s the votes you got to get.”
“I don’t believe Routt will get many of those votes by lies.”
“Not if they’re knowed to be lies.”
“Every one knows they are lies.”
“It’s a funny thing,” Gergue ruminated. “But lots of folks take a kind
of pleasure out of believing lies about other folks.”
Wint shook his head. “I don’t believe Routt is accomplishing a thing.”
“We-ell,” said Gergue, “matter of fact, I’m thinking you may be right.
Thing is, he’s laying a foundation, like.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s laying the tracks. He’s doing a lot of talk that won’t be
believed much now; but he might bring on something later along that
would make folks say: ‘Well, maybe that other was true, too.’”
“What can he bring?” Wint challenged.
“Has he got anything on you?”
“Every one knows all there is to know about me, I suppose.”
Gergue scratched his head. “We-ell, I dunno,” he said. “Anyway, that’s
what I was kind of thinking.”
Wint met V. R. Kite one day, and the little man spoke to him so affably
that Wint asked: “Well, how are things, Mr. Kite?”
“Excellent. First class, young man.”
“I suppose you’ll vote for me for Mayor?” Wint asked, grinning
good-naturedly; and Kite chuckled and said he guessed not.
“Routt’s more my style,” he said.
“Don’t waste your vote on a loser,” Wint told him; but Kite said Routt
might be a loser and might not. He left Wint with an unpleasant feeling
that there had been a secretly triumphant note in the little old
buzzard’s voice.
Jim Radabaugh met James T. Hollow at the Post Office one morning, and
said cheerfully: “Well, James T., how’s it happen you’re not out for
Mayor again?”
“I try to do what is right,” Hollow said earnestly. “But I really don’t
know what to do, Mr. Marshal. I have thought of coming out, but
Congressman Caretall gives me very little encouragement.”
“Don’t encourage you, eh?”
“No. In fact, I might say he discouraged--”
“Well, now,” said Radabaugh, “maybe you’d best just lie low.”
Hollow looked doubtful and said he didn’t know.
Thus all Hardiston talked, each man after his fashion. Ed Skinner of the
_Sun_ maintained a strict neutrality. He was closely allied with Wint’s
father; and the elder Chase held his hand. B. B. Beecham seldom let the
_Journal_ take an active part in local politics, except on broad party
lines. And Wint--since he had the patronage of Amos Caretall--was of the
same party as Routt, who had been Amos’s ally. He carried the
announcement cards of both men and let it go at that. But he went so far
as to say to Wint, and to those who dropped in at the _Journal_ office,
that Routt’s methods were not likely to be profitable. “It never pays to
open up old sores,” he said. “And it’s never a good plan to say anything
that will unjustly hurt another man’s feelings. He may be in a position
to resent it, some day.”
Sam O’Brien, the restaurant man, told Wint that Routt would never get
his vote. “I like nerve,” he said, “and you’ve got it. You’ve made me
laugh sometimes, Wint. Lord, I’ve thought you’d be the death of me. But
you’ve took your nerve in your hands. You’ve got me, boy. More power to
your elbow.”
The first two weeks of October slid swiftly by. Wint heard Routt was
planning for a rally or two; and he began to make his own arrangements
to a similar end. But in mid-October, word came to him which put the
mayoralty race out of his mind.
The word came through Ote Runns, that hopeless drunkard whose cheerful
services were in such demand by Hardiston housewives at rug-beating
time. Wint met Ote one evening, on his way home, and Ote was bibulously
cheerful. He greeted Wint hilariously; and told him in triumphant tones
that Hardiston was itself again.
Wint, with a suspicion of what was coming, asked Ote what he meant; and
Ote chortled:
“‘S a good ol’ town. Good ol’ wet town! Plenny o’ booze now.”
Wint asked Ote where he got it, but the man put his finger to his nose
and shook his head. Wint left him and went on his way.
When he got home, he telephoned Radabaugh. “They’re selling again, Jim,”
he said.
The marshal asked: “Who?”
“Don’t know,” said Wint. “I met Ote Runns with a load aboard. I want you
to get after them right away.”
“I’m started, now,” said Jim Radabaugh. “I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER IV
A CLOUD ON THE MOON
Wint was rather pleased than otherwise to learn that Kite and others of
his ilk had resumed their illicit traffic in Hardiston. It gave him
something to do. He had none of the instincts of a political campaigner;
he could not for the life of him have made a really rousing speech. And
it was next to impossible for him to ask a man for his vote. The old
pride, the stubborn pride that had done him so much harm, was still
alive in Wint; and this pride made him uncomfortable when he found
himself asking favors.
He hated campaigning. If there had been no opposition for him to fight,
if the way had been made easy before him, it is not unlikely that he
would have quit the race. But there was opposition, and strenuous
opposition. Jack Routt had kept his word; he was making a real fight out
of it. When he encountered Wint, he was friendly--profusely so--and
affable enough; but when he was canvassing, he made no bones of
attacking Wint unmercifully, striking below the belt or above it as the
moment might inspire him. He had dragged up Wint’s old drunken record
and aired it until people were beginning to ask themselves if there
wasn’t something in what he said, after all.
Against this, up till the middle of October, Wint had made a very poor
fight indeed. He would not denounce Routt as Routt denounced him. As a
matter of fact, there was no particular charge he could bring against
Routt. Jack was no hypocrite, at least; he took an honest and
straightforward stand. The liquor issue, for example. He was a drinker,
he believed in it. And he said so. At the same time, he added that Wint
was a drinker, but pretended not to be. He said Wint was a hypocrite.
The viciousness of Routt’s campaign stunned Wint at first; he was half
incredulous. The thing didn’t seem possible. When he was forced to
understand that it was not only possible but true, he was left at a
loss. It was in the midst of his floundering attempts to find some means
to advocate his cause that he got through Ote Runns the first word that
the lawbreakers were at work again.
He grasped at that as though it were an opportunity. He telephoned Jim
Radabaugh that night; and he sent for Jim the first thing in the morning
and asked the marshal what he had discovered. Radabaugh shifted the knob
in his cheek, and spat, and said he had discovered nothing.
“Did you find Ote?” Wint asked.
“Sure. I just listened, and then went where he was. He was singing,
some.”
“Question him?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What did he say? Where did he get it?”
“He wouldn’t say,” Radabaugh explained.
Wint nodded. “I suppose not. What then?”
“We-ell, I scouted around.”
“Find out anything?”
“Skinny Marsh had a skinful, too. And there was a drunk in the Weaver
House when I drifted over there.”
“Is it Mrs. Moody that’s selling?”
Radabaugh shook his head. “I guess not.”
Wint banged his desk. “Damn it, Jim! Who is it, then?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Well, I want you to find out.”
Radabaugh spat and considered. “They’s one thing,” he suggested mildly.
“You might not have thought of it.”
Wint grinned. “You talk like B. B. Beecham. What is it, Jim?”
“I mean to say,” said Radabaugh, “this didn’t just happen. What I mean
is, it didn’t just happen to happen. It was meant.”
Wint studied him. “What’s in your mind?”
“They’d have held off till after election, maybe,” Jim suggested.
“Looks to me like they’re starting this to hit the election somehow. I
can’t say just how. Don’t know. But it looks to me it was meant.”
“You mean they’re trying to discredit me, say I don’t enforce the laws.”
“Maybe that. Maybe something else. Just struck me it was something.”
Wint got up abruptly. “I don’t give a hoot. This campaign business bores
me, anyhow. But I’m not going to stand for this. You get busy, Jim. If
you need help, say so. I’ll bring a man in from outside, if necessary.
But I want to grab the man that’s selling. You understand?”
“It’s your funeral,” said Radabaugh cheerfully, shifting the bulge in
his cheek. “I’ll do my do.”
“Go to it,” Wint told him. “I’m leaving it to you.”
* * * * *
But nothing happened. A week dragged past; a week in which it was
reasonably clear that Wint was losing ground to Routt. Wint himself saw
this as quickly as any man, and it troubled him. He asked Peter Gergue
for advice--Amos was still out of town--and Peter told him to get up on
his hind legs and rear and tear, but Wint shook his head. “I can’t do
that. It isn’t in me. The whole thing makes me sick.”
“You’ve naturally got to do it,” Gergue assured him. “Routt’s telling
’em to vote for him; and he’s telling them the same thing, over and
over, till they know their lesson like a parrot. That’s advertising,
Wint. Keep a-telling them the same thing till they know what they’re to
do. You got to. Might as well come to it first as last.”
“I can’t ask a man to vote for me.”
“Why not?”
Wint grinned, and flushed, and gave it up. And Gergue told him again
that he would have to make a noise if he wanted to be heard in
Hardiston; and he left Wint to think it over.
B. B. Beecham, a day or two later, gave Wint the same advice, but to
more purpose. Wint had dropped in at the _Journal_ office casually
enough, and talked with two or three others who were there before him,
till they drifted away and left him with B. B. Wint asked:
“Well, how do things look to you, B. B.?”
B. B. looked doubtful. “You’re not making a very strong campaign,” he
said.
Wint nodded. “I know it. It goes against the grain.”
The editor was surprised. “Is that so? Just how do you mean?”
“Oh, I hate to ask a man to vote for me. I hate to ask favors.”
B. B. smiled. “Who are you going to vote for, on the eighth?”
“Why, Routt, of course. I can’t vote for myself.”
The editor looked blandly interested, and commented: “Well, if that’s
the case, of course you can’t ask any one else to vote for you?”
“Why not?” Wint was puzzled.
“You know yourself better than they do. If you can’t vote for
yourself--”
“Oh, it isn’t.... Why, you naturally vote for the other fellow?”
“This isn’t a class election at college, you know,” B. B. reminded him.
“It’s more serious. Not play. You want to remember that. But if you
don’t think enough of yourself to vote for yourself....”
Wint laughed. “All right,” he said. “I’ll vote for myself. You’ve
persuaded me.”
B. B. nodded. “Who do you think will make the best mayor; you, or
Routt?” he asked.
“I don’t....” Wint flushed. “Why, I....”
“Routt?”
“No, by God!” Wint exclaimed angrily. “I’ve done a good job; and I’ll do
another. He’d open the town up. Let things go.”
“Do you want to be Mayor? For your own sake?”
“Why, yes.”
“Like the job so well?”
“No, not particularly. But I want--well, it would show that people think
I’ve made good.”
“If you’re going to make a better Mayor than Routt, your election is
best for the town, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then it’s best for every man in Hardiston, isn’t it?”
“In a way.”
B. B. tilted back in his chair and lifted his hand in a gesture of
confirmation. “That’s what I was getting at. The fact of the matter is,
when you ask a man to vote for you, you’re not asking him to do you a
favor. You’re asking him to do himself a favor. I don’t suppose you ever
thought of that.”
Wint grinned. “Well, no.”
“It’s true?”
“I guess it is.”
B. B. leaned forward. “Then go out and say so. Start something. Keep
telling them to elect you; tell them louder and longer and oftener than
Routt does, and they will.”
This was so like what Gergue had said that Wint told B. B. so; and the
editor nodded and said Gergue was a wise man. “But I can’t do it,” Wint
protested. “I don’t know how. I’ll never make a speaker.”
B. B. considered that for a while: and then he said: “You know, printed
advertising was invented by the first tongue-tied man.”
“I don’t get it,” Wint confessed.
“He had something to sell, but he couldn’t tell people about it, so he
put an ad in the papers; and after that, every one got the habit.”
“You mean I ought to advertise?”
B. B. said that was exactly what he meant. And Wint was interested; he
asked some questions. He had heard of advertising rates as things of
astounding proportions; and so he was surprised to find that a full-page
advertisement in the _Journal_ would only cost him ten dollars. He
laughed and said he could stand half a dozen of those. B. B. told him to
put an advertisement in each Hardiston paper, and let them appear in
every issue till the election. “Say the same thing, over and over, in
different ways,” he advised. “Try it. You’ll be surprised.”
In the end, Wint decided to do just this. B. B. helped him write the
advertisements. In them, Wint recited what he had done and what he meant
to do, but briefly. In each full, black-lettered page, the burden of his
song was just three words, repeated over and over:
“Vote for Chase; vote for Chase; vote for Chase.”
* * * * *
Amos came home toward the end of October; and when Wint heard he was in
town, he telephoned and made arrangements to see him at his home that
night. When he got there, Amos was upstairs. He called to Wint to go
into the sitting room and wait, and Wint went in there and sat down.
After a moment, Agnes came in to restore a book to its place on the
shelves, and Wint got up and stood, talking with her. He thought she
seemed uneasy, on edge. Her eyes went now and then through the open door
toward the stairs down which Amos would come. She fumbled with her hair,
and a lock became disarranged and fell down beside her face.
She said, abruptly, that there was something in her shoe; and she held
to his arm with one hand, and stood on one foot, and pulled off her
slipper and shook it, upside down. Then she seemed to lose her balance
and toppled toward Wint; and he caught her in his arms. She straightened
up and pushed him away with what seemed to him unnecessary force; and
then turned and went swiftly out into the hall without a word. He looked
after her, and saw Amos, halfway down the stairs, watching them with a
curiously grave countenance; and Wint, for no reason in the world, was
confused, and felt his face burning. He looked down and saw Agnes’s
slipper on the floor, where she had dropped it; and he slid it out of
sight under the bookcase before Amos came into the room. He was sorry as
soon as he had done this; but Agnes had somehow contrived to make him
feel guilty. He could hardly face Amos when the Congressman came into
the room. He had a miserable feeling that everything was going wrong;
all the trifles in the world seemed conspiring to harass him.
But Amos seemed to have seen nothing. He was perfectly amiable, bade
Wint sit down, filled his black pipe, squinted at Wint with his head on
one side and asked how things were going.
Wint said they were going badly; and Amos smiled.
“Why, now, that’s too bad,” he declared.
“I wasn’t made for a campaigner,” Wint said. “I’ll never be able to make
a speech.”
“You write a good ad,” Amos told him; and Wint asked:
“You’ve read them?”
“I guess everybody’s read them.”
“Are they all right?”
“First rate. They’ll do.”
Wint said impatiently: “I’m sick of the whole thing.”
Amos studied him. “Routt getting under your skin?”
“No. He’s playing it pretty strong, though.”
“I’ll say he is.”
“Of course, it’s just politics. He and I are as friendly as ever.”
“Oh, sure,” Amos agreed indolently. “He told you so, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He came to me, in the beginning.”
“I heard so.”
“I don’t know how to answer him--the line he’s taking,” Wint explained.
“That’s all.”
“Don’t have to answer him, do you? Don’t have to answer a lie.”
Wint laughed uneasily. “Just the same, he’s stirring people up.”
“I never heard of anybody being permanently hurt by a lie but the liar,”
said Amos.
Wint leaned forward. “I tell you, Amos, I want to be elected. I’ve gone
into this; and I want to win. Routt and I are friendly enough; but he
started this fight, and I want to beat him. I want to beat him to a
whisper. I’d like to see him skunked. I don’t care if he doesn’t get
two votes in Hardiston. That’s the way I feel.” His fierce enthusiasm
dropped away from him; he said hopelessly: “But I’m darned if I know how
to manage it.”
Amos nodded slowly. “Sick of it, eh?”
“Yes.”
The Congressman puffed for a while in silence, thinking; and Wint waited
for the other man to speak. At last Amos looked at him and asked
curiously: “Wint, you dead set on being Mayor?”
Something in his tone put Wint on guard. “Dead set? Why?” he asked.
Amos lifted a hand. “Why, just this,” he explained. “I’ve been talking
around, here and there. Far as I hear, they’ve heard about you in
Columbus. The way it strikes me, right now, if you was to run for the
House, say, you could get it; and you’d have a good start up there.
That’s all.”
Wint laughed uneasily. “That can come later. Maybe.”
“Thing is,” said Amos, “if you was to get licked for Mayor, it’d hurt
you.”
“I’m not going to get licked,” Wint exclaimed. “I’m going to win.”
“Well--maybe,” Amos agreed. “Only I just want you to know that if you’d
rather try for something else, I’d back you to the limit.”
“You mean after election? Next year?”
“I couldn’t do much if you was licked.”
Wint leaned toward him. “Just what do you mean?”
“Just what I say.”
“Are you asking me to withdraw?” Wint asked. His heart was in his mouth.
“I know you and Routt have always worked together. Do you want me to get
out and let him have it?”
“I’m not asking you to do a thing. I’m offering you a good excuse
to--maybe--dodge a licking.”
“I’m not going to get licked,” Wint insisted. “And if there’s a licking
waiting for me--by God, I won’t dodge!”
Amos looked at him curiously. “Well, that’s all right. I just put the
thing up to you.”
“But I owe you enough,” said Wint, “so that if you asked me to quit--I’d
do it.”
“I’m not asking you.”
“Then,” Wint declared, “I stick; and I win.”
Amos moved a little in his chair; and he sighed. “Well,” he drawled,
“I’m watching you.”
* * * * *
Wint left Amos, a little later; and he walked home with a weight on his
shoulders. He had counted on the Congressman; but--this was half-hearted
support at best that Amos was offering. Wint was puzzled, he could not
understand; and he was depressed, and worried, and unhappy. He had an
impulse to get out, throw the whole matter to one side, forget it all;
but on the heels of the thought, his jaw hardened and he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No; I’ll stick it out to the end.”
He would have been more concerned, and he would have been thoroughly
angry, if he could have heard Agnes Caretall talk to Amos when he had
left. She came in to retrieve her lost slipper; and she was fuming
indignantly. Old Maria Hale, setting the table for breakfast as she
always did, the last thing at night, overheard a word or two of their
talk. She heard Agnes exclaim:
“I don’t see how you can be so calm, just because you elected him. But
that doesn’t give him any right to think he can do a thing like that
with me.”
And she heard Amos’s slow, even voice reply:
“No; it doesn’t give him any right.”
“I should think you could say something,” Agnes cried. “Your own
daughter!”
Maria heard Amos say something about “fooling.” And Agnes retorted:
“It wasn’t fooling! It was--plain insulting!”
“Well, we can’t let him do that,” Amos agreed drawlingly. Then Maria
departed to the kitchen and heard no more. She had paid no particular
attention. The old darky lived in a world of her own. A quiet world. A
world that was not far from coming to its end. She was very old.
After Agnes left him and went upstairs Amos sat for a long time, very
still, before the fire. His eyes were weary, and his calm face was
troubled.
Once he lifted his glance from the fire and saw a picture of Agnes on
the mantel; and he got up and took it in his big hands. It had been
taken two or three years ago; and it was very beautiful. A gay, happy
face; the face of a child without cares. A good face, Amos thought. An
honest one.
He compared it in his thoughts with Agnes as she was now; and the
trouble in his countenance deepened. After a little, he said to himself
as he had said once before: “I wish her mother hadn’t ’ve died.”
He put the picture slowly back on the mantel, and sat down and once more
became motionless, staring into the fire. To one watching him it would
have seemed in that moment that Amos, too, was very old.
CHAPTER V
A LOST ALLY
Congressman Amos Caretall staged, next morning in the Post Office, one
of those dramatic incidents which had checkered his career and done a
good deal to make him what he was. These scenes were meat and drink to
Amos. He liked to hark back to them and chuckle at the memory. In
Washington, last winter, for example, he had told over and over the
story of his speech at the rally of Winthrop Chase, Senior; his pledge
to vote for a Chase, and the sequel to that pledge. The thing appealed
to his sense of humor.
This morning he met Wint in the Post Office and snubbed him. And within
half an hour all Hardiston knew about it, and was talking about it. The
way of the thing was this.
Wint had met Jack Routt on the way uptown; and they came up Broad Street
together, and down Main to the Post Office. Wint was thoughtful and a
little silent; Routt expansively amiable in the fashion that had become
habitual with him since the campaign opened. He asked Wint, jocularly,
whether he was downhearted, and Wint said he was not. Routt told him he
would be. “You’ll be ready to quit before I’m through with you, old
man,” he warned Wint. “You’ll be ready to crawl into your hole. Oh, I’m
laying for you.”
“Go ahead,” Wint told him quietly.
“All your ads in the papers won’t do you a bit of good, either. That’s
good money wasted. You have to get out and talk to the voters, Wint.
Take a tip from me. It’s the word of mouth that does the trick.”
Wint said if this were so Routt would surely come out on top. “You’ve
used word of mouth pretty freely,” he remarked.
“Getting into the quick, am I?” Routt chuckled.
“Why, no. I just commented on the fact that....”
Routt asked solicitously: “Look here. You’re not sore, are you? You
know, the understanding was that this was to be a real fight.”
“Of course,” Wint agreed. “And I’m not sore. Go as far as you like.”
A moment later, Routt said: “I heard Amos was going to throw you down.
Anything in that? If he does, you haven’t got a chance.”
“Nothing in it,” Wint told him. “I had a talk with Amos last night.”
Routt laughed and said Amos’s promises didn’t amount to anything. “Is he
backing you; or is he holding off?” he asked. “I haven’t heard that he’s
doing much.”
“You’ll hear in due time,” Wint told him.
He thought, afterward, that it was a curious coincidence that Routt
should have said this about Amos on this particular morning. It was
almost as though Routt had really had some foreknowledge. But at the
time, the question made no great impression on him.
When they turned into the Post Office, the mail had not yet been
distributed, and the windows were closed. There were perhaps a dozen men
there, waiting before their boxes, talking, smoking, spitting on the
floor. Routt and Wint took their places among these men; and Routt stuck
near Wint. There was some good-natured chaffing. And after a little,
Amos and Peter Gergue came in together. Every one had a word for Amos.
It was a minute or two after he came in the door before he worked back
through the groups to where Routt and Wint stood. He looked at the two,
head on one side, and Wint said:
“Good morning, Amos.”
Amos squinted a little; then, without replying to Wint, he turned to
Jack Routt, at Wint’s side, and thrust out his hand. “Morning, Routt.”
He and Routt shook hands, and Wint went a little white with surprise,
still not fully understanding. Routt said cheerfully:
“Back in time to see the election, Amos.”
Amos nodded cordially. “And back in time to shake hands with the next
Mayor, Routt,” he said. “You’re making a first-rate campaign. If you
need any help--”
Routt took it all as a matter of course. Wint had stepped back a little;
he was leaning his shoulders against the wall, and it seemed to him the
world was swimming. “I’ll surely call on you,” Routt said.
Amos turned toward his mail box and unlocked it. Gergue shook Routt by
the hand. “Morning, Mister Mayor,” he said; and then, casually, to the
other: “H’lo, Wint.”
Every one had seen; no one had a word to say. The windows opened as sign
that the mail was all distributed. Every one bustled forward to open
their boxes; and they went out, ripping open letters and papers, talking
in low voices, glancing sidewise at Wint. Routt had gone out with Amos
and Peter. Wint pulled himself together, got his mail, and went out into
the street by himself. Hardiston seemed like a new town; it was changed,
terribly changed, by a word or two from Amos.
Every one seemed to know what had happened, almost as soon as it had
happened. The people who spoke to him on his way to Hoover’s office--he
was planning a day with the law books--seemed to Wint to be grinning
maliciously. He was still dazed, unable to think clearly. When he was
settled in the back room with the leather-bound books, Wint tried to put
his mind on them; but he could not. He was groping for understanding. He
felt as a child feels, when it has received a blow it cannot understand.
He was incredulous. The thing could not have happened; but it had
happened. The ground was cut from under his feet. Cut from under his
feet. He was lost, helpless. He had been supported for so long by Amos;
he had felt the Congressman’s substantial strength upholding him for so
many months that it had come to seem to him as an inevitable feature of
his very life. He did not see how he could go on without it.
Yet in the end he had to believe, had to accept the new condition. He
remembered Amos’s attitude, the night before. Amos had suggested his
withdrawing from the fight; the Congressman had almost asked him to
withdraw. He had refused; now Amos would force him. Would beat him to
his knees. At least, Amos would try to do that. A slow anger began to
grow in Wint; a slow determination not to be beaten. Or if he was to be
beaten, he would not be beaten without a fight. In simple words, Wint
got mad; and he always fought best when he was mad. His resolution
hardened; a certain fire of inspiration came to light within him. He
began to make plans to meet this new contingency. He would go to the
people of Hardiston with the facts. Appeal to them. Prove to them that
he deserved their good will; and that he deserved their votes. An hour
after the scene in the Post Office, Wint was more determined to win than
he had ever been before. Even Amos was not invincible. The man could be
beaten. Not only in this fight, but in others. Wint began to cast
forward into the future, and plan what he would do.
Dick Hoover came in, after a while, and gripped him by the shoulder. “I
say,” he exclaimed excitedly, “they tell me Amos has thrown you down. Is
it true?”
Wint nodded. “Yes,” he said crisply.
Hoover swore. “The dirty, double-crossing hound. What are you going to
do?”
“Lick him,” Wint replied.
Hoover looked doubtful. “Lick him? You can’t, Wint.”
Wint said nothing.
“Can you?” Dick Hoover asked.
“I’m going to,” said Wint.
Hoover banged his fist on the book that lay open before Wint. “By God,
you’ll find some that are willing to help!”
“I know it,” Wint agreed.
“My father and I.... Whatever we can do.”
“Thanks!”
“Get after him, Wint,” Hoover urged. “Show him up. No one has ever gone
after Caretall the right way. Start something. The people are always
looking for fun, for a change. By God, I believe you can do it!”
“I told you I was going to,” Wint repeated.
That night, his father spoke to him of the matter. The elder Chase had
heard it during the day, had heard what Amos had done. And there was
fire in his eye. He had no sooner come into the house, before supper,
than he called:
“Oh, Wint!”
Wint was upstairs, getting ready for supper. He answered: “Hello, dad.”
“Coming down?”
“Right away.”
“Well, hurry.”
Wint was surprisingly cheerful. The elation of battle was on him. He
chuckled at the impatience in his father’s tone; but he did make haste,
and a moment later joined the other man in the sitting room. The elder
Chase was standing, stirring about, his face hot and angry.
“Look here, Wint,” he exclaimed, without parley. “I hear Amos Caretall
turned you down, to-day.”
“Yes.”
“In the Post Office.”
“Yes, this morning.”
“Told Routt he was going to win.”
“Just that, dad.”
Chase threw up his hands furiously. “By God, Wint, I told you he’d cut
your throat! The dirty....”
Wint put his hand up to his neck. “Cut my throat?” he repeated. “I seem
to be all here.”
“You wouldn’t believe me, Wint. But I warned you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“What do you say now to this fine friend of yours? Damn the man!”
“I say he’s started trouble for himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m going to prove that when he said Routt would be elected, he
was either a fool or a liar.”
Chase banged his hand on the table beside him till the lamp jumped in
its place, and the shade tilted to one side. Mrs. Chase came bustling in
just then, and straightened it, and protested anxiously: “I declare,
Winthrop, you’re the hardest man around the house. You do disturb things
so. I don’t see--”
“Caretall has turned against Wint,” Chase told her.
She nodded wisely. “Well, didn’t you always say he would?”
“Of course I did. Wint wouldn’t believe me. Now he’s done it.”
“He ought to be ashamed of himself,” Mrs. Chase declared. “But I always
did think you were wrong, Wint, to be so friendly with a man who had
treated your father as he did. He--”
“I know you did, mother.”
Chase cried: “You take it almighty calmly, Wint. Isn’t there any blood
in you, son? Don’t you ever get mad? Damn it, the man ought to be kicked
out of town.”
Wint laughed good-naturedly. “Oh, I don’t know. He has a right to
support Jack if he wants to.”
“A right? What have his rights to do with it? By God, I’d have more
respect for you if you could get good and mad!”
Wint chuckled. “I’ll try to work up a fever if you like. I always want
your respect, dad.”
Chase said in a softer tone: “You always have it, Wint. You’ve earned
it. But it makes my blood boil to see Caretall do this to you. To my
son.”
“It’s terrible,” Wint agreed whimsically; and Chase protested:
“I believe you’re laughing at me.”
Wint shook his head anxiously. “No. But I don’t see that it does any
good to get excited. I’m aiming to keep my head--and my job.”
“You’re going to fight?”
“Fight?” Wint echoed. “Why, dad, you won’t be able to see me for dust.”
“You’ve waked up at last. You’re not going to sit back and let Routt lie
about you, and let Amos trick you.”
“I’m going to fight,” said Wint. “Also I’m going to win.”
Chase exclaimed: “I believe you can. If you try.”
“You know,” said Wint, “in a way I’m glad this has happened.”
“Glad?” Chase asked. “For God’s sake, why?”
Wint touched his arm in a comradely way. “Because now you and I can line
up together. Fight side by side. I’d rather have you with me than Amos.”
Chase said, with a sudden humility: “Amos might be able to help you more
than I can.”
“I’d rather have your personal vote than all the votes Amos can swing.”
“You’d have had that, anyway.”
“Well, isn’t that worth being crossed by Amos?”
Chase said: “But don’t fool yourself, Wint. Don’t imagine this is going
to be easy. Caretall is powerful.”
Wint said with a slow energy: “I’ve done some thinking, dad. Amos is
powerful. But--I don’t know just how to say it, but what I mean is this.
I think I’ve been a good Mayor. I’ve tried to be a good one, anyway. And
if a fellow tries to do the right thing, it seems to me the world has a
habit of turning his way. I’ve done my share, straight out and out. And
I’m going to the voters on that record. If there’s anything
in--democracy--then I can beat Amos. He’s cleverer; he’s better at
tricks and contraptions. But he can’t beat the right thing, dad.
And--I’ve a hunch that the right is on my side, on our side, in this.”
“Right or wrong,” Chase declared, “we’ll lick him if there’s any way in
the world it can be done.” His eyes lighted. “I believe I can get Kite
to line up with you.”
Wint shook his head. “No.”
“I think I can,” Chase urged. “He hates Amos.”
“I don’t want him,” said Wint. “This is a clean fight.”
“You want all the help you can get.”
“All the decent help. There are enough decent folk in town to put this
thing through.”
“You can’t be too squeamish, Wint.”
“I’m too squeamish to take help from Kite,” said Wint. “That’s flat,
dad. Put it out of your head.”
Mrs. Chase was still doing her own work. She called them to supper, just
then; and while they ate, she told them how tired she was. “I declare,”
she said, “I wish Hetty would come back here. I saw her, uptown,
yesterday; and I asked her to. But she wouldn’t. Said she had a better
job. I told Mrs. Hullis last night that the girl--”
“Hetty never cooked a better supper than this,” her husband told her;
and the little woman smiled happily, and bridled like a girl, and said:
“Now, Winthrop, you’re always telling me things like that, when you know
they’re not true. I’m just a--”
Wint laughed: “Quit apologizing for yourself, mother. It’s a darned bad
habit. Tell people you’re a wonder, and they’ll believe you. I’ve found
that out. That’s the way I’m going to be re-elected.”
“You can tell them that, but you have to back it up,” his father
reminded him. “Brag’s not so bad, if there’s something to base it on.”
“Well, isn’t there?” Wint asked quietly; and his father’s eyes lighted,
and he cried:
“Yes, son, by Heaven, there is!”
* * * * *
Wint made no move, during the next day or two; but he laid his plans. He
intended to do a great many things in the last week before election. He
would concentrate his effort in those last days, so that the effect
should not have time to disappear. He talked with Dick Hoover, and
Dick’s father; he talked with others. And he was surprised to find that
such loyal supporters of Amos as Sam O’Brien and Ed Howe and even James
T. Hollow were inclined to support him. Support him in spite of Amos.
Sam told him as much.
He met Sam at the moving-picture show that night; that is to say, he met
Sam just outside. And Sam and Hetty Morfee were together. That surprised
Wint; he had not even known that they were friends. But it was obvious
that they were very good friends indeed. When he stopped to speak to
them, Hetty looked at him with an appealing defiance. He wondered if Sam
knew. He did not think it would matter. Sam was the sort who could, if
he chose, forgive.
He spoke to Sam of the coming election; and Sam said: “Sure, I’m for
you. Amos’s all right in Congress. But he’d make a mighty poor Mayor.
I’m for you, Wint, m’boy. You’ve got nerve; and you’re funny, sometimes.
Lord, but I’ve thought there was times when I’d die laughing at you. But
you’re there, Wint. You can have me.”
He and Hetty went away together, and Wint watched them, forgetting what
Sam had said in wondering about Sam and Hetty.
He got further comfort the next day from a man as close to Amos as Peter
Gergue. Peter told him it looked as though Routt would win. “But there’s
a pile that’ll vote for you,” he added. “It ain’t hurt you much, Amos
quitting.” He looked all around furtively, and fumbled in his back hair,
and said: “Amos didn’t do you such a bad turn, even if he meant to. I
might give you a vote myself, Wint. I don’t know but I might.”
Wint laid plans for rallies on Friday and Saturday nights of the week
before election. On Monday and Tuesday of that week, he worked all day,
preparing the words he meant to say at those rallies. It was tough work;
it was hard for him to put his own determination into words.
Tuesday night, the first of November, there came a diversion. Jim
Radabaugh telephoned to him at midnight, summoning him out of bed. When
Wint answered the ’phone, the marshal asked:
“That you, Wint?”
“Yes.”
“You r’member you told me to get after the bootleggers?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ve done that little thing.”
Wint exclaimed: “First rate. You mean you’ve arrested some one?”
“I should say I had.”
“Who?” Wint asked.
“You know Lutcher?”
“Of course.”
“Him,” said Radabaugh.
CHAPTER VI
KITE TAKES A HAND
That Radabaugh should have arrested Lutcher was almost as though he had
arrested Kite himself; and Wint knew it. It brought matters to an issue,
direct and unavoidable. Lutcher, for all practical purposes, was Kite.
His arrest meant an open defiance to the head and front of the
opposition. Wint, characteristically, leaped at the chance. He might
have been more lenient with a lesser man.
He asked the marshal: “Where is he?”
“Locked up,” said Radabaugh.
“In the calaboose?”
“Yeah. Him and the fire horses are all little pals together.”
“You’ve got the evidence?”
“Sure.”
“No doubt about it?”
“Not a bit. I’ll tell you--”
“That can wait till morning. What does he say?”
“Acts like he wasn’t surprised. Acts like he expected it. Matter of
fact, he pretty near invited me to pinch him.”
Wint nodded to himself. “That means they’re looking for trouble.”
“I’d say so.”
“Haven’t seen Kite, have you?”
“Hear he’s out of town. Be back Thursday.”
“All right. We’ll hold Lutcher till then and have it out.”
Wint heard a gulp that told him Radabaugh was shifting that bulge in his
cheek. “He’s wanted to furnish bail,” the marshal said.
“Nothing doing,” Wint told him.
“We-ell--he’s got a right to want to.”
“We’re sound sleepers here. You couldn’t raise me with the telephone,”
Wint suggested.
“Lutcher’s all dressed up in a yellow vest and everything; and he didn’t
fetch his jail pajamas with him.”
“He can sleep in the yellow vest.”
“It’s your funeral,” Radabaugh decided philosophically. “Whatever you
say.”
“That’s right.” And Wint added: “I’m glad you got him, Jim. Good work.”
“Oh, he weren’t so much to get. I told you he put himself in the way of
it.”
“Just the same, you had good nerve.”
“We-ell--maybe so.”
Wint went back to bed; but he didn’t go to sleep. He was tingling with
the pleasurable excitement of combat; and he was immensely pleased at
this chance to give evidence of the sincerity of his fight for a clean
Hardiston. Those orders to Radabaugh which had become something like a
proverb in Hardiston.... This was their test. He meant that they should
meet the test.
He could not decide whether the incident would help him or hurt him at
the polls; it was impossible to tell. But--he did not care. Hurt or
help, his course would be the same. Unchangeable. Lutcher should get the
limit. Whatever the evidence justified. The rest was on the lap of the
gods. Let them take care of it.
It may have been an hour or two before he was asleep again; and he woke
in the morning a little tired because of the sleep he had lost. But the
cold tub revived him; he was cheerful enough when he came down to
breakfast; and when his father appeared, Wint told him the news.
“Something doing, dad,” he said.
Chase looked at him in quick and surprised interest; and he asked:
“What? What do you mean, Wint?”
“Did you hear the telephone last night, about midnight?”
“No.”
“I did,” said Mrs. Chase. “I thought I heard the bell; but your father
was asleep, and I wasn’t sure. I came to the head of the stairs, but you
were already down.”
“I answered as quickly as I could. The bell only rang once or twice.”
“Who was it?” Chase asked quickly.
“Radabaugh. Jim. The marshal. He’s arrested Lutcher.”
“Lutcher! What for?”
“Bootlegging!”
Chase uttered an involuntary exclamation. “Lutcher? He’s Kite’s
right-hand man.”
“Absolutely.”
“Radabaugh arrested him?”
“Yes.”
“Has he got a case?”
“Jim always has a case, when he makes an arrest.”
“But Lutcher.... He’s shrewd. Knows how to cover his tracks.”
“He didn’t cover well enough this time.” Wint’s elation was singing in
his voice.
“But he--”
“As a matter of fact,” said Wint, “Radabaugh thinks Lutcher allowed
himself to be caught. Thinks he wanted to get arrested.”
“By God, that doesn’t sound reasonable!”
“He’ll be sorry.”
“They’ve got something up their sleeves, Wint.”
“So have I!”
“You--What?”
“My arms,” said Wint cheerfully. “With a fist on each one and a punch in
each fist.”
Chase looked uncertain. “They’ll try some trick.”
Wint touched the other’s arm. “Don’t worry. They’ve got to fight in the
open, now. The time’s short. And I’m not afraid of them in the open.”
“They’re treacherous. They’ll strike behind your back.”
“I’m not worried.”
But the older man was worried. He said little more; nevertheless his
concern was plain. Wint was sorry, a little disappointed. His father’s
uneasiness did not affect his own confidence. He was as sure of himself
as before. But he had expected his father to be as confident as himself,
as sure. To him, the matter of Lutcher simply offered an opportunity for
a telling blow; but it was evident that to his father the incident was
rather a threat than an opportunity.
He and his father walked downtown together; they separated when Wint
turned aside toward the fire-engine house where his office was. The
older man gave him a word of warning there. “Go carefully, Wint,” he
urged. “Watch yourself.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Be sure of the law, Wint. Don’t make a mistake. They would jump on it.”
“That’s Foster’s job. And I’m no ... I’ve studied up a bit.”
“Take care.”
“Right, dad.”
They separated, and Wint went on to his office. Radabaugh was not there,
but he appeared a little later. “I’ve just had Lutcher up to Sam
O’Brien’s for breakfast,” he explained. “He wanted to go to the hotel;
but I told him Sam had the contract to victual the city prisoners.”
Wint chuckled. “Where is he now?”
“Down in the calaboose.”
“Does he still want to furnish bail?”
“Says he does.”
“Kite comes home to-morrow, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’ll let Lutcher out on bail till then. I’m curious to hear what
Kite will have to say.”
Radabaugh shifted the plug in his cheek. “Think he’ll have anything to
say?”
“Don’t you?”
“We-ell, he might.”
“Bring Lutcher up, and we’ll turn him loose.”
Lutcher came. Wint chuckled inwardly at sight of what Radabaugh had
called a yellow vest. It was an ornate affair; no doubt of it. He was
inclined to expect an outbreak from Lutcher, but the big, bald man was
cheerfully amiable. Wint said: “Sorry we had to hold you in jail. The
marshal tried to get me, but I’m a sound sleeper.”
“Well, the bed wasn’t soft,” Lutcher admitted. “But I can stand it.”
“I’m going to hold you till to-morrow,” Wint said. “Unless you want to
plead guilty and accept sentence now.”
“Guilty? No, sir. You can’t pin anything on me, Wint. You ought to know
that.”
“We’ll see,” Wint told him. “Want to stay in jail, or furnish bail?”
“Bail, of course. I can get any one.”
“I’d rather have money.”
“Check any good?”
“I’ll cash it before you leave here.”
Lutcher said amiably that that was all right, and asked the amount. Wint
said “Four hundred.” And Lutcher whistled, and protested: “That’s pretty
hard.”
“Harder than the bed in the calaboose?”
Lutcher grinned, and wrote. Wint took the check and his hat and left
Lutcher with the marshal. He went to the bank, drew the money, and
deposited the cash to the city’s account. “Just so there can be no
question of stopping payment on that check,” he explained.
Back at his office, he told Lutcher he was free to go. Lutcher,
contriving to look dapper and well-dressed in spite of his night, took
himself away. Then Wint turned to the marshal.
“Now, Jim, how about it?” he asked. “What’s the case against him?”
Radabaugh shifted the knob in his cheek to clear the way for speech; and
he sat down, and hitched his trousers up, and opened his coat and put
his thumbs in his armholes. “We-ell,” he said, “it was like this.”
He had been scouting around for two weeks past, he said, according to
Wint’s orders, without discovering anything. But the afternoon before,
an automobile had come into town with some boxes in the tonneau and a
stranger driving. It made some stir on Main Street; and then it drove
openly enough to Lutcher’s place, on the alley. He had seen the boxes
carried up Lutcher’s stair.
“First off,” he explained, “I figured it couldn’t be what it looked
like. Didn’t seem as if they’d be so open about it. Lutcher had been
lying low. I figured they might be aiming to get me excited, just to
make a fool of me. So I held off a spell.
“But the thing stuck in my head. They might be trying a game, and they
might not. I decided to keep an eye on Lutcher’s place, and I did. All
that afternoon.”
Wint said: “They were brazen, eh?”
“I’d say so,” Radabaugh agreed; and he shifted his plug and went on.
“Nothing happened, particular, all afternoon. I et my supper; and after
it was dark, I took another walk down that way. Met Jack Routt coming
out of the alley; and he stopped me and talked to me. It was on his
breath. Plain enough. He must have knowed that; must have meant me to
smell it. He was so darned open, I suspicioned there was a trick. So I
still held off.
“But I took a walk through the alley about nine o’clock. All quiet. A
light in Lutcher’s place, that was all. Some men up there. I wondered.
“I walked through again, after a while. Sounded like they was having a
game. Finally, about a quarter past eleven, I come along through, and
some one yelled. Sounded boozy. So I says to myself: ‘Jim, you’re the
goat. You got to bite, if it’s only to see the joke.’ So I went up the
stairs. Quiet.”
“No search warrant?” Wint asked.
“Why, no,” said Radabaugh innocently. “I was just dropping in for a
drink, like I’d done before. Some time back.”
Wint grinned. “Of course. Go ahead.”
“We-ell, the door wasn’t locked,” said Radabaugh. “So I knew I was meant
to come in. And I went in. On in where they were. Four of them. Tuttle,
and Harley, and Gates, and this Lutcher. I went in; and Tuttle throws a
five-dollar bill to Lutcher and says: ‘Here’s for that last bottle,
Lutch.’
“Lutcher took it. And he’d seen me before he took it. Then he got up and
says: ‘Hello, Jim. Have a drink?’
“So I told him to come along.”
He stopped; it was evident that his story was done. Wint nodded. “Well,
that’s plain enough,” he agreed.
“It’s my evidence against theirs,” Radabaugh reminded him. “But that’s
the way it’s got to be.”
“Your evidence is good enough for me.”
“Sure. But he’ll fight.”
“We can’t help that,” Wint reminded him. “All we can do is--soak him.”
There was a sudden heat in his voice; and Radabaugh eyed him curiously
and asked:
“In earnest, ain’t you?”
“Absolutely,” said Wint.
“Well, it never hurt any, to be in earnest. Go to it, boss.”
* * * * *
Hardiston talked it over that day, and wondered what Wint would do. Most
people thought he would sentence Lutcher; some declared he would wait
till after election, for fear of influencing the vote. Sam O’Brien
laughed at this view. “Wint wasn’t ever afraid of anything,” he
declared. “Why man, you make me laugh. He’ll soak Lutcher so hard
Lutcher’ll need to be wrung out like a sponge.”
There were others who were loyal to Wint; and there were some few--not
very vociferous except among those of like views--who were loyal to
Lutcher. But for the most part, people waited. Waited for Kite to come
home. This was his fight; that was understood. Lutcher was his man.
He came on the early morning train next day; and his coming was marked.
Lutcher met him at the train. They came up the hill from the station
together, and went to the Bazaar, and were alone there for a little
while. Routt joined them presently. Routt would represent Lutcher in
court, he said. But Kite laughed at that.
“It will never come to court, man,” he told Routt. “You know that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jack objected.
“Then we’ll smash that young rip, flat as an egg,” said Kite harshly,
with a gesture of his clenched fist. “But he’ll crawl, I say.”
Lutcher got up. “I’m willing to see that,” he declared amiably. “Come
along and stage the show.”
So they went down to the fire-engine house together, and they found the
council room where Wint held court crowded with Hardiston folk who
wanted to see what was going to happen. Radabaugh was there; and he told
them Wint was in his office, in the rear. Kite bade Routt and Lutcher
sit down. “I want to see the Mayor,” he told Radabaugh, in a peremptory
tone. “Take me in.”
Radabaugh shifted the bulge in his cheek, and told Kite to stay where he
was. “I’ll see if he wants to see you,” he said, and went into Wint’s
office. A moment later, he appeared at the door and beckoned to Kite,
and there was an instant’s hush in the big room as every one watched
Kite go in. Then they began to whisper and talk together; and instantly
were still again, trying to hear what Wint and Kite were saying.
Radabaugh had shut the door behind Kite and stood, with his back against
it, indolently studying the crowd.
They tried to hear; but they did not hear anything except a murmur of
voices now and then. They could only guess at what had been said from
what happened when Kite had been with Wint five minutes, or perhaps ten.
At the end of that period, the door opened so suddenly that Radabaugh
was thrown off balance. He stumbled to one side, and Wint came out and
sat down at his desk. Kite was on Wint’s heels; he whispered to Wint
fiercely, but Wint, without heeding Kite, said to the clerk:
“Call Lutcher’s case.”
And at that Kite looked at Wint for a moment with a red and furious
face, and then he turned and bolted for the stairs and was gone.
Wint’s countenance was steady, his lips were white. He heard Radabaugh’s
story of the arrest of Lutcher; and when it was done, he asked Routt,
who was appearing for Lutcher, whether the man denied anything. Routt
hesitated, uncertain what Kite would wish him to do. He whispered with
Lutcher. Then he stood up and said:
“He has decided to plead guilty, your Honor.”
Wint nodded, consulted in a low voice with Foster, and said: “Two
hundred and costs.”
That was all. While Routt and Lutcher arranged the payment of the fine,
the crowd began to disperse, a few lingering in the hope of some fresh
sensation. And those who lingered and those who went their way were
agreeing, one with another, that this matter was not ended.
“Kite’s got something up his sleeve,” Gates told Bob Dyer. “You wait and
see.”
And Dyer nodded, and grinned, and said: “Yes, wait till old V. R. takes
a hand.”
When every one was gone except Radabaugh, and Foster, and one or two
others, Wint got up and went into his office and shut the door.
CHAPTER VII
A FEW WORDS TO THE WISE
Those minutes--five or ten--which Wint spent with V. R. Kite in his
office behind the council chamber, before he sentenced Lutcher, left
Wint depressed, shaken by foreboding. He was like one beset in the
darkness by enemies he could not see. He felt the imminence of disaster
without being able to avert it. The world was all wrong. Life had turned
her thumbs down. There could be only destruction ahead.
He felt this, without being able to put a name to the peril. It was
intangible; Kite had only hinted at it. But the little buzzard of a man
had been in deadly earnest. Wint was sure of that. So.... There was
nothing to do but wait for the blow to fall; and waiting is the hardest
thing in the world to do.