I'm willing to wait until this campaign is over. For one ought to
be willing to wait, if by waiting he can get such a good thing.
Still, I hate to think of you away off there in the East, so many
thousands of miles away from me, where there are no friendly old
mountains to look down on you and watch over you, and I'm glad that
my little girl is coming West again soon. I'll try to get down part
of the way, say to Nebraska or Kansas, to meet you. I feel safer
when I have you close by; then, if any of those young Eastern
fellows should try to kidnap you and run away with you, my old
six-shooter might have a word to say."
The sudden flush rose to her cheeks at this new joke, but she murmured
nothing. The rest of the letter was about people whom they knew in Boise
and elsewhere in Idaho, and it closed:
"Don't think I'm growing gushing at my age, Sylvia, but Idaho, fine
as she is, isn't near complete without you, and this is why I want
you back in it just as soon as you can come.
Yours, lovingly,
"WILLIAM PLUMMER."
She folded the letter carefully and put it back in the envelope. Then
she sat for a long time, and her look was one of mingled tenderness and
sadness. Her mind, too, ran back into the past, and she had a dim vision
of the little child, who was herself, borne away on his saddle-horn by
the strong mountaineer, who held her safely in the hollow of his arm.
And then the years followed, and she always looked to the mountaineer
for the protection and the love that were never wanting, but it was
always the protection and love of one older and stronger than herself,
one who belonged to the generation preceding her own.
Mr. Grayson, Harley, and the others were gone, and she heard no voices
in the next parlor. She realized with suddenness how strongly and in how
brief a time this little group, travelling through a vast country, had
become welded together by the very circumstances of their travel--the
comradeship of the road--and she sighed. She and Mrs. Grayson were about
to leave them and return to the Grayson home in the West, because women,
no matter how nearly related, could not be taken all the way on an
arduous campaign of six months. She had enjoyed this life, which was
almost the life of a soldier--the crowds, the enthusiasm, the murmur,
then the cheers of thousands of voices, the flight on swift trains from
one city to another, the dash for the station sometimes before daylight,
and all the freshness and keenness of youth about her. She had
affiliated, she had become one of the group, and now that she was to
leave it for a while she had a deep sense of loss.
There was a step beside her, and Mrs. Grayson, the quiet, the tactful,
and the observant, entered.
"Why, Sylvia," she said, "you are sitting in the dark!"
She touched the button, turned on the electric lights, and noticed the
letter lying in the girl's hand. Her glance passed swiftly to Sylvia's
face and as swiftly passed away. She knew instinctively the writer of
the letter, but she said nothing, waiting for Sylvia herself to speak.
"I have a letter from Mr. Plummer," said Sylvia.
"What does he say?"
"Not much besides his arrival at Boise--just some foolishness of his;
you know how he loves to jest."
"Yes, I have long known that," said Mrs. Grayson, but she noticed that
Sylvia made no offer to show the letter. Hitherto the letters of "King"
Plummer had been read by all the Graysons as a matter of course, just as
one shares interesting news.
"He is a good man, and he will be a good husband," said Mrs. Grayson.
She was for the moment ruthless with a purpose, and when she said the
words, although affecting not to watch, she saw the girl flinch--ever so
little, but still she flinched.
"The best man in the world," repeated Sylvia Morgan, softly.
"And yet there are other good men," said Mrs. Grayson, quietly. "One
good man does not exclude the existence of another."
Sylvia looked up at her, but she failed to take her meaning. Her quiet
aunt sometimes spoke in parables, and waited for events to disclose her
meaning.
Mrs. Grayson and Miss Morgan were to leave for the West the next
afternoon, and shortly before their departure Harley came to tell them a
temporary good-bye. Sylvia and he chanced to be alone for a little
while, and she genuinely lamented her departure--they had become franker
friends in these later days.
"I do not see why women cannot go through a political campaign from
beginning to end," she said; "I'm sure we can help Uncle James, and
there will be, too, so many interesting things to see. It will be like a
war without the wounds and death. I don't want to miss any of it."
"I half agree with you," said Harley, smiling, "and I know that it would
be a great deal nicer for the rest of us if you and Mrs. Grayson could
go along."
He paused, and he had a sudden bold thought.
"If anything specially interesting happens that the newspapers don't
tell about, will you let me write you an account of it?" he asked. "I
should really like to tell you."
She flushed ever so little, but she was of the free-and-open West, and
Harley always gave her the impression of courteous strength--he would
take no liberties.
"You can write," she said, briefly, and then she immediately regretted
her decision. It was the thought of "King" Plummer that made her regret
it, but she had too much pride to change it now.
Harley was at the train with Mr. Grayson when she and Mrs. Grayson left,
and Sylvia found that he had seen to everything connected with their
journey. Without making any noise, and without appearing to work much,
he accomplished a good deal. She had an impulse once to thank him, but
she restrained it, and she gave him a good-bye that was neither cool nor
warm, just sufficiently conventional to leave no inference whatever. But
when the train was gone and Mr. Grayson and he were riding back in the
cab to the hotel, the candidate spoke of her.
"She's a good girl, Harley," he said--he and Harley had grown to be such
friends that he now dropped the "Mr." when he spoke directly to the
correspondent. "She's real, as true as steel."
He spoke with emphasis, but Harley said nothing.
The group seemed to lose much of its vividness, color, and variety when
the women departed, but they settled down to work, the most intense and
exacting that Harley had ever known. All the great qualities of the
candidate came out; he seemed to be made of iron, and on the stump he
was without an equal; if any one in the audience was ready with a
troublesome question, he was equally ready with an apt reply; nor could
they disturb his good humor; and his smiling irony!--the rash fool who
sought to deride him always found the laugh turned upon himself.
Throughout the East the party was stirred to mighty enthusiasm, and
their antagonists, who had thought the election a foregone conclusion,
were roused from their security. Again the combat deepened and entered
upon a yet hotter phase. Meanwhile Mr. Goodnight, Mr. Crayon, and their
powerful faction within the party, kept quiet for the time. Mr. Grayson
was not yet treading on their toes, but he knew, and his friends knew,
that they were watching every motion of his with a hundred eyes.
Churchill's _Monitor_ was constantly coming, laden with suggestion,
advice, and warning, and Churchill himself alternately wore a look of
importance and disappointment. No one ever made the slightest reference
to his wise despatches. He had expected to be insulted, to be
persecuted, to be a martyr for duty's sake, and, lo! he was treated
always with courtesy, but his great work was ignored; he felt that they
must see it, but then they might be too dull to notice its edge and
weight. He now drew a certain consolation from his silent suffering, and
strengthened himself anew for the task which he felt required a delicate
and thoughtful mind.
Harley wrote several times to Sylvia Morgan, both at Boise and at her
aunt's home--long, careful letters, in which he strove to confine
himself to the purely narrative form, and to make these epistles
interesting as documents. He spoke of many odd personal details by the
way, and even at the distance of two thousand miles he continued to
touch the campaign with the breath of life, although told at
second-hand.
The replies came in due time, brief, impersonal, thanking him for his
trouble, and giving a little news of Mrs. Grayson, "King" Plummer, and
herself. Harley was surprised to see with what terseness, strength, and
elegance she expressed herself. "Perhaps there is a force in those
mountains which unconsciously teaches simplicity and power," he found
himself thinking. He was surprised, too, one day, when he was packing
his valise for a hurried start, to see all her letters reposing neatly
in one corner of the aforesaid valise. "Now, why have I done that?" he
asked; "why have I saved those letters? They take up valuable space; I
will destroy them." But when he closed the valise the undamaged letters
were still neatly reposing in their allotted corner.
Now the campaign in the East came to its end, and their special train
swung westward into the states supposed to be most doubtful--first
across the Mississippi, and then across the Missouri. The campaign
entered upon a new phase amid new conditions--in a new world, in
fact--and it required no intuition for Harley to feel that strange
events were approaching.
VII
HIS GREATEST SPEECH
It was the candidate's eighth speech that day, but Harley, who was in
analytical mood, could see no decrease either in his energy or
spontaneity of thought and expression. The words still came with the old
dash and the old power, and the audience always hung upon them, the
applause invariably rising like the rattle of rifle-fire. They had
started at daylight, hurrying across the monotonous Western plains, in a
dusty and uncomfortable car, stopping for a half-hour speech here, then
racing for another at a second little village, and then a third race and
a third speech, and so on. Nor was this the first day of such labors; it
had been so week after week, and always it lasted through the day and
far into the darkness, sometimes after midnight. But there was no sign
to tell of it on the face of the candidate, save a slight redness around
the edge of the eyelids, and a little hoarseness between the speeches
when he talked to his friends in an ordinary tone.
The village in which Grayson was speaking was a tiny place of twelve or
fifteen houses, all square, unadorned, and ugly, standing in the centre
of an illimitable prairie that rolled away on either side exactly like
the waves of the sea, and with the same monotony. It was a
weather-beaten gathering. The prairie winds are not good for the
complexion, and the cheeks of these people were brown, not red. On the
outskirts of the crowd, still sitting on their ponies, were cowboys, who
had ridden sixty miles across the Wyoming border to hear Grayson speak.
They were dressed exactly like the cowboys of the pictures that Harley
had seen in magazine stories of the Western plains. They wore the
sombreros and leggings and leather belts, but there was no disorder, no
cursing, no shouting nor yelling. This was a phase that had passed.
They listened, too, with an eagerness that few Eastern audiences could
show. This was not to them an entertainment or anything savoring of the
spectacular; it was the next thing to the word of God. There was a
reverence in their manner and bearing that appealed to Harley, and he
read easily in their minds the belief that Jimmy Grayson was the
greatest man in the world, and that he alone could bring to their
country the greatness that they wished as much for the country as for
themselves. Churchill sneered at this tone of the gathering, but Harley
took another view. These men might be ignorant of the world, but he
respected their hero-worship, and thought it a good quality in them.
They heard the candidate tell of mighty corporations, of a vague and
distant place called Wall Street, where fat men, with soft, white
fingers and pouches under their eyes, sat in red-carpeted offices and
pulled little but very strong strings that made farmers on the Western
plains, two thousand miles away, dance like jumping-jacks, just as the
fat men wished, and just when they wished. These fat men were allied
with others in Europe, pouchy-eyed and smooth-fingered like themselves,
and it was their object to own all the money-bags of the world, and
gather all the profits of the world's labor. Harley, watching these
people, saw a spark appear in their eyes many times, but it was always
brightest at the mention of Wall Street. That both speaker and those to
whom his words were spoken were thoroughly sincere, he did not doubt for
a moment.
Grayson ceased, the engine blew the starting signal, the candidate and
the correspondent swung aboard, and off they went. Harley looked back,
and as long as he could see the station the little crowd on the lone
prairie was still watching the disappearing train. There was something
pathetic in the sight of these people following with their eyes until
the last moment the man whom they considered their particular champion.
It was but an ordinary train of day cars, the red plush of the seats now
whitened by the prairie dust, and it was used in common by the
candidate, the flock of correspondents, and a dozen politicians, the
last chiefly committeemen or their friends, one being the governor of
the state through which they were then travelling.
Harley sought sleep as early as possible that night, because he would
need all his strength for the next day, which was to be a
record-breaker. A tremendous programme had been mapped out for Jimmy
Grayson, and Harley, although aware of the candidate's great endurance,
wondered how he would ever stand it. They were to cut the state from
southeast to northwest, a distance of more than four hundred miles, and
twenty-four speeches were to be made by the way. Fresh from war, Harley
did not remember any more arduous journey, and, like an old campaigner,
he prepared for it as best he could.
It was not yet daylight when they were awakened for the start of the
great day. A cold wind moaned around the hamlet as they ate their
breakfast, and then hastened, valise in hand, and still half asleep, to
the train, which stood steam up and ready to be off. They found several
men already on board, and Churchill, when he saw them, uttered the brief
word, "Natives!" They were typical men of the plains, thin, dry, and
weather-beaten, and the correspondents at first paid but little
attention to them. It was common enough for some local committeeman to
take along a number of friends for a half-day or so, in order that they
might have a chance to gratify their curiosity and show their admiration
for the candidate.
But the attention of Harley was attracted presently by one of the
strangers, a smallish man of middle age, with a weak jaw and a look
curiously compounded of eagerness and depression.
The stranger's eye met Harley's, and, encouraged by his friendly look,
he crossed the aisle and spoke to the correspondent.
"You are one of them newspaper fellers that travels with Grayson, ain't
you?" he asked.
Harley admitted the charge.
"And you see him every day?" continued the little man, admiringly.
"Many times a day."
"My! My! Jest to think of your comin' away out here to take down what
our Jimmy Grayson says, so them fellers in New York can read it! I'll
bet he makes Wall Street shake. I wish I was like you, mister, and could
be right alongside Jimmy Grayson every day for weeks and weeks, and
could hear every word he said while he was poundin' them fellers in Wall
Street who are ruinin' our country. He is the greatest man in the
world. Do you reckon I could get to speak to him and jest tech his
hand?"
"Why, certainly," replied Harley. He was moved by the little man's
childlike and absolute faith and his reverence for Jimmy Grayson as a
demigod. It was not without pathos, and Harley at once took him into the
next car and introduced him to Grayson, who received him with the
natural cordiality that never deserted him. Plover, the little man said
was his name--William Plover, of Kalapoosa, Choctaw County. He regarded
Grayson with awe, and, after the hand-shake, did not speak. Indeed, he
seemed to wish no more, and made himself still smaller in a corner,
where he listened attentively to everything that Grayson said.
He also stood in the front row at each stopping-place, his eyes fixed on
Grayson's face while the latter made his speech. The candidate,
by-and-by, began to notice him there. It is often a habit with those who
have to speak much in public to fix the eye on some especially
interested auditor and talk to him directly. It assists in a sort of
concentration, and gives the orator a willing target.
Grayson now spoke straight to Plover, and Harley watched how the little
man's emotions, as shown in his face, reflected in every part the
orator's address. There was actual fire in his eyes, whenever Grayson
mentioned that ogre, Wall Street, and tears rose when the speaker
depicted the bad condition of the Western farmer.
"Wouldn't I like to go on to Washington with Jimmy Grayson when he takes
charge of the government!" exclaimed Plover to Harley when this speech
was finished--"not to take a hand myself, but jest to see him make
things hum! Won't he make them fat fellers in Wall Street squeal! He'll
have the Robber Barons squirmin' on the griddle pretty quick, an'
wheat'll go straight to a dollar a bushel, sure! I can see it now!"
His exultation and delight lasted all the morning; but in the afternoon
the depressed, crushed feeling which Harley had noticed at first in his
look seemed to get control.
Although his interest in Grayson's speeches and his devout admiration
did not decrease, Plover's melancholy grew, and Harley by-and-by learned
the cause of it from another man, somewhat similar in aspect, but larger
of figure and stronger of face.
"To tell you the truth, mister," said the man, with the easy freedom of
the West, "Billy Plover--and my cousin he is, twice removed--my name's
Sandidge--is runnin' away."
"Running away?" exclaimed Harley, in surprise. "Where's he running to,
and what's he running from?"
"Where he's runnin' to, I don't know--California, or Washington, or
Oregon, I guess. But I know mighty well what he's runnin' away from;
it's his wife."
"Ah, a family trouble?" said Harley, whose delicacy would have caused
him to refrain from asking more. But the garrulous cousin rambled on.
"It's a trouble, and it ain't a trouble," he continued. "It's the
weather and the crops, or maybe because Billy 'ain't had no weather nor
no crops, either. You see, he's lived for the last ten years on a
quarter-section out near Kalapoosa, with his wife, Susan, a good woman
and a terrible hard worker, but the rain's been mighty light for three
seasons, and Billy's wheat has failed every time. It's kinder got on
his temper, and, as they 'ain't got any children to take care of, Billy
he's been takin' to politics. Got an idea that he can speak, though he
can't, worth shucks, and thinks he's got a mission to whack Wall Street,
though I ain't sure but what Wall Street don't deserve it. Susan says he
ain't got any business in politics, that he ought to leave that to
better men, an' stay an' wrastle with the ground and the weather. So
that made them take to spattin'."
"And the upshot?"
"Waal, the upshot was that Billy said he could stand it no longer. So
last night he raked up half the spare cash, leavin' the rest and the
farm and stock to Susan, an' he loped out. But first he said he had to
hear Jimmy Grayson, who is mighty nigh a whole team of prophets to him,
and, as Jimmy's goin' west, right on his way, he's come along. But
to-night, at Jimmy's last stoppin'-place, he leaves us and takes a train
straight to the coast. I'm sorry, because if Susan had time to see him
and talk it over--you see, she's the man of the two--the whole thing
would blow over, and they'd be back on the farm, workin' hard, and with
good times ahead."
Harley was moved by this pathetic little tragedy of the plains, the
result of loneliness and hard times preying upon the tempers of two
people. "Poor devil!" he thought. "It's as his cousin says; if Susan
could only be face to face with him for five minutes, he'd drop his
foolish idea of running away and go home."
Then of that thought was born unto him a great idea, and he immediately
hunted up the cousin again.
"Is Kalapoosa a station on the telegraph line?" he asked.
"Oh yes."
"Would a telegram to that point be delivered to the Plover farm?"
"Yes. Why, what's up?"
"Nothing; I just wanted to know. Now, can you tell me what time
to-night, after our arrival, a man may take a train for the coast from
Weeping Water, our last stop?"
"We're due at Weepin' Water," replied the cousin, "at eleven to-night,
but I cal'late it'll be nigher twelve when we strike the town. You see,
this is a special train, runnin' on any old time, an' it's liable now
and then to get laid out a half an hour or more. But, anyhow, we ought
to beat the Denver Express, which is due at twelve-thirty in the
mornin', an' stops ten minutes at the water-tank. It connects at Denver
with the 'Frisco Express, an' I guess it's the train that Billy will
take."
"Does the Denver Express stop at Kalapoosa?"
"Yes. Kalapoosa ain't nothin' but a little bit of a place, but the
Pawnee branch line comes in there, and the express gets some passengers
off it. Say, mister, what's up?"
But Harley evaded a direct answer, having now all the information he
wished. He went back to the next car and wrote this despatch:
"KALAPOOSA.
"SUSAN PLOVER,--Take to-day's Denver Express and get off to-night
at Weeping Water. You will find me at Grayson's speaking, standing
just in front of him. Don't fail to come. Will explain everything
to you then.
"WILLIAM PLOVER."
Harley looked at this message with satisfaction. "I guess I'm a forger,"
he mused; "but as the essence of wrong lies in the intention, I'm doing
no harm."
He stopped at the next station, prepaid the message, and, standing by,
saw with his own eyes the operator send it. Then he returned to the
train and resumed his work with fresh zest.
And he had plenty to do. He had seen Jimmy Grayson make great displays
of energy, but his vitality on this terrible day was amazing. On and on
they went, right into the red eye of the sun. The hot rays poured down,
and the dust whirled over the plain, entering the car in clouds, where
it clothed everything--floors, seats, and men alike--until they were a
uniform whitey-brown. It crept, too, into Harley's throat and stung his
eyelids, but at each new speech the candidate seemed to rise fresher and
stronger than ever, and at every good point he made the volleys of
applause rose like rifle-shots.
Harley, at the close of a speech late in the day, sought his new friend,
Plover. The little man was crushed down in a seat, looking very gloomy.
Harley knew that he was thinking of Kalapoosa, the spell of Grayson's
eloquence being gone for the moment.
"Tired, Mr. Plover?" said Harley, putting a friendly hand on his
shoulder.
"A little bit," replied Plover.
"But it's a great day," continued Harley. "I tell you, old man, it's one
to be remembered. There never was such a campaign. The story of this
ride will be in all the papers of the United States to-morrow."
"Ain't he great! Ain't he great!" exclaimed Plover, brightening into
enthusiasm. "And don't he hit Wall Street some awful whacks?"
"He certainly is great," replied Harley. "But you wait until we get to
Weeping Water. That's the last stop, and he'll just turn himself loose
there. You mustn't miss a word."
"I won't," replied Plover. "I'll have time, because the Denver Express,
on which I'm going to 'Frisco, don't leave there till twelve-forty. No,
I won't miss the big speech at Weeping Water."
They reached Weeping Water at last, although it was full midnight, and
they were far behind time, and together they walked to the speaker's
stand.
Harley saw Plover in his accustomed place in the front rank, just under
the light of the torches, where he would meet the speaker's eye, his
face rapt and worshipful. Then he looked at his watch.
"Twelve-fifteen," he said to himself. "The Denver Express will be here
in another fifteen minutes, and Susan will fall on the neck of her
Billy."