THE LINE-UP OF THE FIGHT
"That's too rough--too rough, that kind of talk, Thelismer," protested
the State chairman.
Thornton swung away from him and went to the window of the living-room
and gazed out on his constituents.
"You can't handle voters the way you used to--you've got to hair-oil 'em
these days."
Presson was no stranger in "The Barracks." But he walked around the big
living-room with the fresh interest he always felt in the quaint place.
Thornton stayed at the window, silent. The crowd had not left the
yard--an additional insult to him. They were gathering around Niles and
his sheep, and Niles was declaiming again.
The broad room was low, its time-stained woods were dark, and the
chairman wandered in its shadowy recesses like an uneasy ghost.
"It isn't best to tongue-lash the boys that are for you," advised
Presson, fretfully, "not this year, when reformers have got 'em filled
up with a lot of skittish notions. Humor those that are _for_ you."
"_For_ me?" snarled "the Duke," over his shoulder, and then he turned on
Presson. "That bunch of mangy pups out there for _me?_ Why, Luke, that's
opposition. And it's nasty, sneering, insulting opposition. I ought to
go out there and blow them full of buckshot."
He shook his fists at the gun-rack beside the moose head which flung
its wide antlers above the fireplace.
"Where's the crowd that's backing you--your own boys?"
"Luke, I swear I don't know. I knew there was some growling in this
district--there always is in a district. A man like Ivus Niles would
growl about John the Baptist, if he came back to earth and went in for
politics. But this thing, here, gets me!" He turned to the window once
more. "There's men out there I thought I could reckon on like I'd tie to
my own grandson, and they're standing with their mouths open, whooping
on that old blatherskite."
Chairman Presson went and stood with him at the window, hands in
trousers pockets, chinking loose silver and staring gloomily through the
dusty panes.
"It's hell to pave this State, and no hot pitch ready," he observed.
"I've known it was bad. I knew they meant you. I warned you they were
going to get in early and hit hard in this district--but I didn't
realize it was as bad as this. They're calling it reform, but I tell
you, Thelismer, there's big money and big men sitting back in the dark
and rubbing the ears of these prohibition pussies and tom-cats. It's a
State overturn that they're playing for!"
He began to stride around the big room. In two of the corners stuffed
black bears reared and grinned at each other. In opposite corners
loup-cerviers stared with unwinking eyes of glass, lips drawn over their
teeth. "I'm running across something just as savage-looking in every
political corner of this State," he muttered, "and the trouble is those
outside of here are pretty blame much alive."
Niles was shouting without, and men were cheering his harangue.
"There used to be some sensible politics in this State," went on the
disgusted chairman. "But it's got so now that a State committee is
called on to consult a lot of cranks before drawing up the convention
platform. Even a fellow in the legislature can't do what he wants to for
the boys; cranks howling at him from home all the time. Candidates
pumped for ante-election pledges, petitions rammed in ahead of every
roll-call, lobby committees from the farmers' associations tramping
around the State House in their cowhide boots, and a good government
angel peeking in at every committee-room keyhole! Jeemsrollickins! Jim
Blaine, himself, couldn't play the game these days."
If Thornton listened, he gave no sign. He had his elbows on the
window-sill and was glowering on his constituents. They seemed
determined to keep up the hateful serenade. It was hard for the old man
to understand. But he did understand human nature--how dependence breeds
resentment, how favors bestowed hatch sullen ingratitude, how jealousy
turns and rends as soon as Democracy hisses, "At him!"
There was a dingy wall map beside him between the windows. A red line
surrounded a section of it: two towns, a dozen plantations, and a score
of unorganized townships--a thousand square miles of territory that
composed his political barony. And on that section double red lines
marked off half a million acres of timber-land, mountain, plain, and
lake that Thelismer Thornton owned.
Chairman Presson, walking off his indignation, came and stood in front
of the map.
"Between you and me, Thelismer, they've got quite a lot to grumble
about, the farmers have. You wild-land fellows have grabbed a good deal,
and you don't pay much taxes on it. You ought to have loosened a little
earlier."
"You feel the cold water on your feet and you lay it to me rocking the
boat, hey?" returned the Duke. "This is no time to begin to call names,
Luke. But I want to tell you that where there's one man in this State
grumbling about wild-land taxes, there are a hundred up and howling
against you and the rest of the gilt-edged hotel-keepers that are
selling rum and running bars just as though there wasn't any prohibitory
law in our constitution." He had turned from the window. "You're looking
at that map, eh? You think I've stolen land, do you? Look here! I came
down that river out there on a raft--just married--my wife and a few
poor little housekeeping traps on it. We never had a comfort till we got
to the age where most folks die. I've had to live to be eighty-five to
get a little something out of life. And she worked herself to death in
spite of all I could say to stop her. Why, when the bill of sale fell
due on the first pair of oxen I owned, she gave me the three hundred
old-fashioned cents that she--don't get me to talking, Presson! But, by
the Jehovah, I've earned that land up there! Dollars don't pay up a man
and a woman for being pioneers. I'm not twitting you nor some of the
rest of the men in this State in regard to how you got your money--but
you know how you did get it!"
"We've stood by you on the tax question."
"And I've stood by you against the prohibition ramrodders, who were
foolish enough to think that rumshops ought to be shut up because the
law said so; and I've stood with the corporations and I've stood with
the politicians, and played the game according to the rules. From the
minute you came into my dooryard to-day you've acted as though you
thought I'd stirred this whole uproar in the State."
"Did you ever know a man to get anywhere in politics if he didn't play
the game--honesty or no honesty?"
"Yes, a few--they got there, but they didn't stay there long," replied
the Duke, a flicker of humor in his wistfulness.
"You bet they didn't," agreed the chairman. "Thelismer, I'm just as
honest as the world will let me be and succeed! But when a man gets to
be perfectly honest in politics, and tries to lead his crowd at the same
time, they turn around and swat him. I reckon he makes human nature
ashamed of itself, and folks want to get him out of sight."
"I know," agreed the old man, and he looked out again on Niles and his
audience. "The tough part of it is, Presson, those men out there are
right--at bottom. They're playing traitor to me and acting like infernal
fools, and I wouldn't let them know that I thought them anything else.
But I'd like to step out there, Luke, and say, 'Boys, you're right. I've
been working you. I've done you a lot of favors, I've brought a lot of
benefits home to this district, but I've been looking after myself, and
standing in with the bunch that has got the best things of the State
tied up in a small bundle. I've only done what every successful
politician has done--played the game. But you're right. Now go ahead and
clean the State.'"
"You don't mean to say you'd do that?" demanded Presson, looking his old
friend over pityingly.
"Luke, _I mean_ that--but I don't intend to _do_ it, not by a blame
sight! I don't believe you ever realized that I was really honest deep
down. I have told you something from the bottom of my heart. But"--he
held out his big hands and closed and unclosed them--"if I should ever
let them loose that way they'd be picked up before they'd gone forty
feet by some other fellow that might be hollering reform and not be half
as honest as I am."
He shoved his hands in his pockets and squinted shrewdly, and spoke with
his satiric drawl.
"There was old Lem Ferguson. Lem got to reading books about soul
transmigration or something of the kind, and turned to and let all his
critters loose. Said that one living being didn't have any right to
enslave another living being. Told them to go and be free. And somebody
put his steers in the pound, and vealed two calves and sold 'em, and
milked his cows, and stole his sheep, and ripped the tags out of their
ears and sheared 'em for what wool they had. Luke, I'm no relative of
Lem Ferguson's when it comes to practical politics. I know just as well
as you do who's trying to steal this State, a hunk at a time. They've
had the nerve to tackle my district. But if they think that I'm going to
ungrip and let them grab it they've got a wrong line on old Thornton's
sheepfold."
"What do you need in the way of help?" asked the State chairman.
"Nothing." Thornton turned again to survey his unruly flock. It was
plain that they were baiting their overlord. Presson's acumen in
politics enlightened him. An angry man may be made to antagonize the
neutrals and even to insult his friends--and Thelismer Thornton was not
patient when provoked. There was shrewd management behind this revolt.
Suddenly the yard was full of men, new arrivals. It was an orderly
little army, woodsmen with meal-sack packs, an incoming crew on its
march to the woods. A big man plodded ahead and marshalled them.
Thornton hastened out upon the porch, and the chairman followed. The big
man halted his crew, and leaned his elbows on the porch rail.
"Thought I'd walk 'em early in the cool of the day," he explained, "and
lay off here for dinner and a rest. Pretty good lot of gash-fiddlers,
there, Mr. Thornton. I picked the market for you."
"And I'll sample 'em right now," said the Duke, grimly. "Ben, tell 'em
to drop those duffel-bags and rush that gang of steers out of my yard."
He pointed at the flock of constituents. Niles had begun fresh harangue
in regard to despots, addressing the new arrivals. They did not seem to
be especially interested. There were a few long-legged Prince Edward
Islanders, but most of them were wiry little French Canadians, who did
not seem to understand much of the orator's tumultuous speech.
"If you've got a crew that's any good on a log-landing, we'll find it
out," added the Duke. "Get at 'em!"
"Good gaddlemighty!" gasped Presson, "you ain't going to do anything
like that!"
"You watch."
"Politics?" queried the big boss, swinging about to go to his crew. He
grinned. It was evident that he considered that anything under that
general head was in the Duke's supreme control, and that his employer's
orders absolved him.
"It's just what they've been trying to prod into you--it's their game,"
adjured Presson, beating expostulating palms upon Thornton's breast.
"Then it has worked," the old man replied, calmly. He pushed the
chairman aside. "Rush'em, Ben, and, if they don't go easy, toss 'em over
the fence."
The big boss sauntered among his crew and growled a few crisp commands.
The smile he wore gave the affair the appearance of a lark, and the
woodsmen took it in that spirit. But the mob was sullen. Those who were
not active rebels had been stung by the contempt that their leader now
displayed. Some resisted when the woodsmen pushed them half playfully. A
burly fellow stood his ground. Ivus Niles lurked at his back.
"The folks up in the Jo Quacca Mountains will snicker in good shape when
I tell 'em that Fightin' MacCracken let himself be dumped out of Duke
Thornton's dooryard by a pack of lard-eating Quedaws," he sneered in
the giant's ear.
MacCracken swept away the first three men with swinging cuffs. He was
thinking of his reputation at home. The taunt pricked him.
"Call 'em off--call 'em off, sir," pleaded Davis. "I've been trying to
get these men out of your yard. I don't approve of Niles. Let's have our
politics clean, Mr. Thornton. I'm willing to argue with you. But don't
let's have it said outside that Fort Canibas' politics is run by
plug-uglies."
"He's right, Thelismer; you're letting them score a point on you,"
protested Presson.
But Thornton had been too grievously wounded that day to be able to
listen to peace measures. He strode down off the porch, shouting
commands. His men were willing, and MacCracken's defiance gave them the
provocation they wanted.
"If it's fight you're looking for, you spike-horn stag," announced the
boss, bursting through the press to reach the Jo Quacca champion, "we
can open a full assortment, and no trouble to show goods."
He knocked MacCracken flat, reaching over the heads of the smaller men,
and the next moment the Canadians swarmed on the fallen gladiator like
flies, lifted him and tossed him into the road. The rest of the mob
escaped. Niles's emblematic buck sheep, cropping the grass in the fence
corner, was tossed out behind the fugitives.
"I was hoping there'd be a little more cayenne in it," complained the
big boss, scrubbing his knuckles against his belted jacket.
"Come out in the road where it ain't private ground owned by the old
land-grabber," pleaded MacCracken. "I'll meet you somewhere, Ben Kyle,
where it'll have to be a fair stand-up." But Kyle gave him no further
attention.
"Take the boys into the ram pasture," directed his employer. He pointed
to a long, low addition in the rear of "The Barracks," the shelter that
served for the housing of the Thorntons' crews, migratory to or from the
big woods. "I'll bring out a present. I guess you've got a good, able
crew there, Ben."
Chairman Presson followed the old man back into the mansion. He was
angry, and made his sentiment known, but Thornton was stubborn.
"There may be another way of running this district just at this time,
Luke, but this is _my_ way of running it, and I'm going to control that
caucus. So what are you growling about?" He was opening a closet in the
wall.
"But you're starting a scandal--and they'll get so stirred up that
they'll put an independent ticket into the field. You'll have to fight
'em all over again at the polls. You're rasping them too hard."
"Luke, there are a lot of things you know about down-country politics,
and perhaps you know more than I do about politics in general. But
there's a rule in seafaring that holds good in politics. If you're
trying to ratch off a lee shore it's no time to be pulling down your
canvas."
He took a jug out of the closet, and went to the low building. The
chairman followed along, not comforted.
The woodsmen had piled their duffel-bags in corners and were waiting.
There were long tables up and down the centre of the room. They were
flanked by benches. The tables were furnished with tin plates, tin
pannikins, knives, and two-tined forks. The big boss had already given
his orders. He and his crew had been expected. Men were hustling food
onto the tables. There were great pans heaped with steaming baked beans,
dark with molasses sweetening, gobbets of white pork flecking the
mounds. Truncated cones of brownbread smoked here and there on platters.
Cubes of gingerbread were heaped high in wooden bowls, and men went
along the tables filling the pannikins with hot tea. The kitchen was in
a leanto, and the cook was pulling tins of hot biscuits from the oven.
There was not a woman in sight about "The Barracks." There had been none
for years. Those men in the dirty canvas aprons were maids, cooks, and
housekeepers.
It was hospitality rude and lavish. That low, dark room with its tiers
of bunks along the four sides, its heaped tables, its air of
uncalculated plenty, housed the recrudescence of feudalism in Yankee
surroundings. And the lord of the manor set his jug at one end of the
table and ordered the big boss to pipe all hands to grog.
"A pretty good lot, Ben," he commented as they crowded around. "And this
here is something in the way of appreciation."
"Mr. Harlan coming out here to meet me, or am I going in and hunt him
up?" inquired Kyle. "I suppose he has located most of the operations for
next season."
"You'll take them in. Harlan won't be out for a while." He turned and
walked away, the chairman with him.
"Your grandson seems to be as much in love with the woods as ever,"
commented Presson. "But I shouldn't think you'd want him to associate
with this kind of cattle all his life, herding Canuck goats on a logging
operation. You've got money enough, the two of you. He ought to get out
into the world, find an up-to-date girl for a wife, and get married."
Thornton had led the way out into the sunshine, and was strolling about
the yard, hands behind his back.
"Luke," he confided after a few moments, "you've just tapped me where
I'm tender. Look here, if it was just me and me only that this hoorah
here to-day was hitting, I'd tell 'em to take their damnation nomination
and make it a cock-horse for any reformer that wants to ride. I'd do
it, party or no party! But the minute it leaked out that I was putting
Harlan up for the caucus they turned on me. And now I propose to show
'em."
The chairman stopped and stared at his friend. That piece of news had
not reached him till then.
"You don't mean to tell me," he demanded, "that you're going to take
this time of all others to swap horses? Why, Harlan Thornton can't play
politics! He doesn't know--"
"He don't need to. I'll play it for him. Between you and me, Luke, he
doesn't even know yet that he's going to run for the legislature. I'm
keeping him up in the woods so that he won't know. He's one of those
stiff-necked young colts that wants to do only what he wants to do in a
good many things." He added the last with a growl of disgust. "And he
won't allow that any old man can tell him a few things that he doesn't
know."
"Now, Thelismer," protested the chairman, "I don't know anything about
what's going on in your family, here, and I don't care. I know your
grandson is a straight and square young chap, a worker, and a good
business man, but he's no politician. I'm not going to stand for his
butting in at this stage of the game."
"He isn't butting in. I'm throwing him in, like I'd train a puppy to
swim," retorted the old man, calmly. "And, furthermore, what business of
yours is it, anyway?"
"I'm chairman of the State committee."
"And I'm the boss of this legislative district. Now, hold on, Luke." He
bent over and planted his two big hands on the chairman's shoulders.
"Harlan is all I've got. He's always been a steady, hustling boy. But to
get him out of these woods and smoothed up like I want him smoothed up
has been worse than rooting up old Katahdin. I've been pioneer enough
for both of us. I don't propose to have him spend the rest of his life
here. First off, he thought it was his duty to me to take the business
burden off my shoulders. Now he's got into the life, and won't stand for
anything else. And the only thing I care for under God's heavens at my
age is to have him be something in this State. He's got the looks and
the brains and the money! And he's going to be something! And I'm going
to see him started on the way. God knows where I'll be two years from
now. You can't reckon on much after eighty. To-day I'm feeling pretty
healthy." There was a bite in his tone. "And I'm going to nominate
Harlan for the legislature, and then I'm going to elect him. I'm going
to see him started right before I die."
"And he doesn't want to go, and the voters don't want him to go,"
lamented Presson. "You're only trying to bull through a political
slack-wire exhibition for your own amusement--and this whole State on
the hair-trigger! By the mighty, it isn't right. I won't stand for it!"
The Duke started for the front of the mansion.
"And, furthermore, Thelismer, if you're willing to run a chance of
tipping over the politics of this State for the sake of giving your
grandson a course of sprouts, you're losing your mind in your old age,
and ought to be taken care of."
Thornton turned and bestowed a grim smile on his angry friend.
"Presson, I've stood by the machine a good many years. Now, if I can't
stand for a little business of my own without a riot, bring on your
riot. I'll lick you in that caucus with one hand while I'm licking that
dirty bunch of rebels with the other. I've got my reasons for what I'm
doing."
"Give me a good reason, then," begged the chairman. "Killing off your
friends for the sake of giving Harlan Thornton a liberal education
doesn't appeal to me."
"My real reason wouldn't, either--not just now," returned the Duke,
enigmatically.
At that moment half a dozen gaunt hounds raced around the corner of "The
Barracks." They leaped at Thornton playfully, daubing his crash suit
with their dusty paws. He seemed to recognize them. He cursed them and
kicked them away savagely.