[Illustration: 9025]
EITH GORDON and Tingle motioned to Garner, and the three stepped out on
the sidewalk leaving Blackburn and the candidate together. The street
was quite deserted. Only a few of the ramshackle street lights were
burning, though the night was cloudy, the location of the stores,
barbershop, hotel, and post-office being indicated by the oblong patches
of light on the ground in front of them.
“You'll never be able to move him,” Keith Gordon said, stroking his
blond mustache nervously. “The truth is, he's terribly worked up over
it. Between us three, boys, Carson never loved but one woman in his
life, and she's Helen Warren. Mam' Linda is her old nurse, and Carson
knows when she comes home and hears of Pete's trouble it is going to
hurt her awfully. Helen has a good, kind heart, and she loves Linda as
if they were the same flesh and blood. If Carson meets Willis to-night
he'll kill him or get killed. Say, boys, he's too fine a fellow for that
sort of thing right on the eve of his election. What the devil can we
do?”
“Oh, I see; there's a woman at the bottom of it,” Garner said,
cynically. “I'm not surprised at the way he's acting now, but I thought
that case was over with. Why, I heard she was engaged to a man down
where she's visiting.”
“She really may be,” Gordon admitted, “but Carson is ready to fight
her battles, anyway. I honestly think she turned him down when he was
rolling so high with her brother, just before his death a year ago, but
that didn't alter his feelings towards her.”
Garner grunted as he thrust his hand deep into his breast-pocket for
his plug of tobacco and began to twist off a corner of it. “The most
maddening thing on earth,” he said, “is to have a close friend who is a
darned fool. I'm tired of the whole business. Old Dwight is out of all
patience with Carson for the reckless way he has been living, but the
old man is really carried away with pride over the boy's political
chances. He had that sort of ambition himself in his early life, and he
likes to see his son go in for it. He was powerfully tickled the
other day when I told him Carson was going in on the biggest wave of
popularity that ever bore a human chip, but he will cuss a blue streak
when the returns come in, for I tell you, boys, if Carson has a row with
Dan Willis to-night over this negro business, it will knock him higher
than a kite.”
“Do you know whether Carson has anything to shoot with?” Tingle asked,
thoughtfully.
“Oh yes, I saw the bulge of it under his coat just now,” Garner
answered, still angrily, “and if the two come together it will be
raining lead for a while in the old town.”
“I was just thinking about his sick mother,” Keith Gordon remarked.
“My sister told me the other day that Mrs. Dwight was in such a low
condition that any sudden shock would be apt to kill her. A thing like
this would upset her terribly--that is, if there is really any shooting.
Don't you suppose if we were to remind Carson of her condition that he
might agree to go home?”
“No, you don't know him as well as I do,” Garner said, firmly. “It would
only make him madder. The more reasons we give him for avoiding Willis
the more stubborn he'll be. I guess we'll have to let him sit there and
make a target of himself.”
Just then a tall mountaineer, under a broad-brimmed soft hat, wearing a
cotton checked shirt and jean trousers passed through the light of
the entrance to the hotel near by and slouched through the intervening
darkness towards them.
“It's Pole Baker,” said Keith. “He's a rough-and-ready supporter of
Carson's. Say, hold on, Pole!”
“Hold on yourself; what's up?” the mountaineer asked, with a laugh.
“Plottin' agin the whites?”
“We want to ask you if you've seen Dan Willis to-night,” Garner
questioned.
“Have I?” Baker grunted. “That's exactly why I'm lookin' fer you town
dudes instead o' goin' on out home where I belong. I'm as sober as an
empty keg, but I git charged with bein' in the Darley calaboose every
time I don't answer the old lady's roll-call at bed-time. You bet Willis
is loaded fer bear, and he's got some bad men with him down at the
wagon-yard. Wiggin has filled 'em up with a lot o' stuff about what
Carson said concernin' the White Cap raid t'other night. I thought I'd
sorter put you fellers on, so you could keep our man out o' the way
till their liquor wears off. Besides, I'm here to tell you, Bill Garner,
that's a nasty card Wiggin's set afloat in the mountains. He says a
regular gang of blue-bloods has been organized here to take up fer town
coons agin the pore whites in the country. We might crush such a report
in time, you know, but we'll never kill it if thar's a fight over it
to-night.”
“That's the trouble,” the others said, in a breath.
“Wait one minute--you stay right here,” Baker said, and he went and
stood in front of the store door and looked in for a moment; then he
came back. “I thought maybe he'd let us all talk sense to 'im, but you
can't put reason into a man like that any easier than you can dip up
melted butter with a hot awl. I can't see any chance unless you fellers
will leave it entirely to me.”
“Leave it to you?” Garner exclaimed. “What could you do?”
“I don't know whether I could do a blessed thing or not, boys, but the
dam thing is so desperate that I'm willin' to try. You see, I never talk
my politics--if I do, I talk it on t'other side to see what I kin pick
up to advantage. The truth is, I think them skunks consider me a Wiggin
man, and I'd like to git a whack at 'em. Maybe I can git 'em to leave
town. Abe Johnson is the leader of 'em, and he never gets too drunk to
have some natural caution.”
“Well, it certainly couldn't do any harm for you to try, Pole,” said
Tingle.
“Well, I'll go down to the wagon-yard and see if they are still hanging
about.”
As he approached the place in question, which was an open space about
one hundred yards square surrounded by a high fence, at the lower end
of the main street, Pole stood in the broad gateway and surveyed the
numerous camp-fires which gleamed out from the darkness. He finally
descried a group of men around a fire between two white-hooded wagons
to the wheels of which were haltered several horses. As Pole advanced
towards them, paying cheerful greetings to various men and women around
the different fires he had to pass, he recognized Dan Willis, Abe
Johnson, and several others.
A quart whiskey flask, nearly empty, stood on the ground in the light
of the fire round which the men were seated. As he approached they
all looked up and nodded and muttered careless greetings. It seemed to
suggest a movement on the part of Dan Willis, a tall man of thirty-five
or thirty-six years of age, who wore long, matted hair and had bushy
eyebrows and a sweeping mustache, for, taking up the flask, he rose
and dropped it into his coat-pocket and spoke to the two men who sat on
either side of Abe Johnson.
“Come on,” he growled, “I want to talk to you. I don't care whether you
join us or not, Abe.”
“Well, I'm out of it,” replied Johnson. “I've talked to you fellows till
I'm sick. You are too darned full to have any sense.”
Willis and the two men walked off together and stood behind one of the
wagons. Their voices, muffled by the effects of whiskey, came back to
the ears of the remaining two.
“Goin' out home to-night, Abe?” Baker asked, carelessly.
“I want to, but I don't like to leave that damned fool here in the
condition he's in. He'll either commit murder or git his blasted head
shot off.”
“That's exactly what _I_ was thinking about,” said Pole, sitting down
on the ground carelessly and drawing his knees up in the embrace of his
strong arms. “Look here, Abe, me'n you hain't to say quite as intimate
as own brothers born of the same mammy, but I hain't got nothin' agin
you of a personal nature.”
“Oh, I reckon that's all right,” the other said, stroking his round,
smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. “That's all
right, Pole.”
“Well, my family knowed yore family long through the war,” Abe. “My
daddy was with yourn at the front, an' our mothers swapped sugar an'
coffee in them hard times, an', Abe, I'm here to tell you I sorter
hate to see an unsuspectin' neighbor like you walk blind into serious
trouble, great big trouble, Abe--trouble of the sort that would make a
man's wife an' childern lie awake many and many a night.”
“What the hell you mean?” Johnson asked, picking up his ears.
“Why, it's this here devilment that's brewin' betwixt Dan an' Carson
Dwight.”
[Illustration: 0031]
“Well, what's that got to do with _me?_” Johnson asked, in surly
surprise.
“Well, it's jest this, Abe,” Pole leaned back till his feet rose from
the ground, and he twisted his neck as his eyes followed the three men
who, with their heads close together, had moved a little farther away.
“Maybe you don't know it, Abe, but I used to be in the government
revenue service, and in one way and another that's neither here nor
there I sometimes drop onto underground information, an' I want to give
you a valuable tip. I want to start you to thinkin'. You'll admit, I
reckon, that if them two men meet to-night thar will be apt to be blood
shed.”
Johnson stared over the camp-fire sullenly. “If Carson Dwight hain't had
the sense to git out o' town thar will be, an' plenty of it,” he said,
with a dry chuckle.
“Well, thar's the difficulty,” said Pole. “He hain't left town, an'
what's wuss than that, his friends hain't been able to budge 'im from his
seat in Blackburn's store, whar Dan couldn't miss 'im ef he was stalkin'
about blindfolded. He's heard threats, and he's as mad a man as ever
pulled hair.”
“Well, what the devil--”
“Hold on, Abe. Now, I'll tell you whar _you_ come in. My underground
information is that the Grand Jury is hard at work to git the facts
about that White Cap raid. The whole thing--name of leader and members
of the gang has been kept close so far, but--”
“Well”--the half-defiant look in the face of Johnson gave way to one of
growing alarm--“well!” he repeated, but went no further.
“It's this way, Abe--an' I'm here as a friend, I reckon. You know as
well as I do that if thar is blood shed to-night it will git into court,
and a lots about the White Cap raid, and matters even further back, will
be pulled into the light.”
Pole's words had made a marked impression on the man to whom they had
been so adroitly directed. Johnson leaned forward nervously. “So you
think--” But he hung fire again.
“Huh, I think you'd better git Dan Willis out o' this town, Abe, an'
inside o' five minutes, ef you can do it.”
Johnson drew a breath of evident relief. “I can do it, Pole, and I'll
act by your advice,” he said. “Thar's only one thing on earth that would
turn Dan towards home, but I happen to know what that is. He's b'ilin'
hot, but he ain't any more anxious to stir up the Grand Jury than some
of the rest of us. I'll go talk to 'im.”
As Johnson moved away, Pole Baker rose and slouched off in the darkness
in the direction of the straggling lights along the main street. At the
gate he paused and waited, his eyes on the wagons and camp-fire he had
just left. Presently he noticed something and chuckled. The horses, with
clanking trace-chains, passed between him and the fire--they were being
led round to be hitched to the wagons. Pole chuckled again. “I'm not
sech a dern fool as I look,” he said, “Well, I had to lie some and act
a part that sorter went agin the grain, but my scheme worked. If I
ever git to hell I reckon it will be through tryin' to do right--in the
main.”