When he went back to Louisville, early in September, Boone found the
office of Colonel Wallifarro humming with a suppressed excitement,
tinctured with indignation. A municipal campaign was on, and on the day
of his arrival General Prince and Colonel Wallifarro were deep in its
discussion. Seeing the earnest gleam in their eyes, Boone wondered a
little at the contrasting indifference in Morgan's manner whenever the
political topic was broached. He fancied that the Colonel himself was
disappointed, and one morning that gentleman said with a tone as nearly
bordering on rebuke as Boone had ever heard him employ with his son,
"Morgan, I don't understand how you can remain so unmoved by a situation
which makes an imperative demand upon a man's sense of citizenship."
Morgan laughed. "Father," he said easily, "it is law that interests
me--not politics. Take it all in all, I don't think it's a very clean
business."
The elder man studied his son thoughtfully for a space, and then he said
quietly, "General Prince and myself take a different view. We think that
at certain times--like the present--citizenship may mean a call to the
colours.... A failure to respond to such a summons seems to me a
surrender of civil affairs into the hands of avowed despoilers--it seems
almost desertion."
"And yet, sir," smiled the unruffled Morgan, "we rarely see permanent
reforms result from crusading patriots. The ward heelers are usually the
victors, because professionals have the advantage of amateurs."
That same evening Boone stood in a small downtown hall, crowded to the
doors, and heard Colonel Wallifarro lay the stinging lash of
denunciation across the shoulders of the city hall oligarchy. He heard
him charge the police and the fire departments with fostering a
perpetuation of machine abuses in the hands of machine hirelings--of
maintaining a government by intimidation and force, and he too wondered
how, if these charges were tinctured with any colour of truth, a
free-hearted man could stand aside from the combat. He knew too that
Colonel Wallifarro did not indulge in unconsidered libels.
At the door, when the sweltering meeting ended, he noticed close behind
him a man talking to a policeman.
"These here silk-stocking guys buttin' in gives me a pain," announced
that heated critic. "They spill out an earful of this Sunday-school guff
before election day, but when the strong-arm boys get busy they fade
away--believe me, the poor boobs fade out!"
"They ain't practical," agreed the patrolman judicially, and Boone made
a mental note of his badge number. "They think one and one make two--but
we know that if you fix a couple of ones right it's just as easy to make
an eleven with 'em."
Boone and Anne had gone horseback riding one afternoon that September,
and it was a different sort of excursion from those that they had taken
together in the mountains.
The boy was mounted on Colonel Wallifarro's saddle mare, and the girl on
a high-headed four-year-old from the same stable. They were not picking
their way now through tangled trails that led upward, but were cantering
along the level speedway toward the park set on a hill five miles south
of the city. There, at the fringe of a line of knobs, was the only
approach to be found in this table-flat land to the heights which they
both loved.
These hills were only little brothers to the loftier peaks of the
Cumberlands--but the air was full of Indian summer softness, and the
horses under them were full of mettle--and they themselves were in love.
"Boone," demanded the girl, drawing down to a sedate pace, after a
brisk gallop that had lathered the flanks and withers of their mounts,
"what is it that interests you so in this campaign? You can't even vote
here, can you?"
The young man shook his head, and now the smile of humour which had once
been rare upon his face flashed there--because he had reached a point
where his development was beginning to take some account of perspectives
and balances.
"No, I can't vote here--but I can get as bitter over their fights as if
they were my own. I couldn't explain why I'm interested any more than a
hound could tell why he wants to run with the pack. It's just that the
game calls a man."
"Morgan calls politics the sport of the great unwashed," observed Anne.
"He says it gives the lower class a substitute for mental activity and
demagogues a chance to exploit them."
"Does he?" inquired Boone drily.
"Boone"--Anne's eyes filled suddenly with a grave anxiety--"aren't you
really working so hard about all this business--because Uncle Tom is so
deeply involved in it and because you think he's in some danger?"
Boone leaned forward to right a twisted martingale, and when he
straightened up he answered slowly: "I suppose any prominent man in a
hard fight may be in--some danger, but he doesn't seem to take it very
seriously."
"Why," she demanded, "can't men oppose each other in politics without
getting rabid about it?"
"They can--when it's just politics. This is more than that, according to
the way we feel about it."
"Why?"
"Because we charge that the city hall is in the hands of plunderers and
that for tribute they give criminals a free hand in preying on the
citizens."
"And yet," demurred the girl, with puzzled brow, "men like Judge McCabe
laugh at all this 'reform hysteria,' as they call it. They aren't
criminals."
Boone nodded. "There are good men in the city hall, too, but they
belong to the old system that puts the party label above everything
else."
They reached the brow of the hill and stood, their horses breathing
heavily from the climb, looking off across the country where on the far
side other knobs went trooping away to meet the sky.
The bridles hung loose, and the girl sat looking off over leagues of
landscape with grave eyes, while Boone of course looked at her. The
beauty of the green earth and blue sky was to his adoration only a
background for her nearer beauty.
The boy, as he gazed at the delicate modelling of her brow and chin,
wondered what was going on in her thoughts, for there was a wistful
droop at the corner of her lips; yet presently, even while it lingered
there, a twinkle riffled in her eyes.
"I ought to be all wrought up, I suppose, over this crusade on
wickedness," she announced, though with no sense of guilt in her voice,
"and yet if it weren't for my friends being in it, I doubt whether it
would mean much to me--. I've got too much politics of my own to worry
about."
"Politics of your own?" he questioned. "Why, Anne, your monarchy is
absolute; there isn't a voice of anarchy or rebellion anywhere in your
gracious majesty's realm--and your realm is your whole world."
Boone, the bluntly direct of speech, was coming on in the less
straitened domain of the figurative. Anne was teaching him the bright
lessons of gaiety.
She laughed and drew back her shoulders with a mock hauteur. "Our
Viceroy from the Mountain Dominions flatters us. We have, however, the
Mother Dowager--and we approach the age for a suitable alliance."
The two horses were standing so close together that the riders were
almost knee to knee, and just then they had the hilltop to themselves.
The humorous smile that had been on the lips of the young mountaineer
vanished as characters on a slate are obliterated under a sponge. His
cheeks, still bronzed from a mountain summer, went suddenly pale--and
he found nothing to say. What was there to say, he reflected? When the
mentor of a man's common sense has forewarned him that he is being
shadowed by an inevitable spectre, and when that spectre steps suddenly
out into his path, he should not be astonished. Boone only sat there
with features branded under the shock of suffering. His fine young
shoulders, all at once, seemed to lose something of their straight
vigour and to grow tired. His palms rested inertly on his saddle pommel.
But the girl leaned impulsively forward and laid one of her gloved hands
over his. Her voice was a caress--touched with only a pardonable trace
of reproach.
"Do you doubt me, dear?" she asked. "In those politics that you are
playing, I don't see anybody giving up--because there is opposition
ahead."
Then the momentary despair altered in his manner to a grim expression of
determination.
"Forgive me, Anne," he begged. "It's not that I doubt you--or ever could
doubt you; but I know right well what a big word 'suitable' is in your
mother's whole plan of life."
"I know it, too," was her grave response. "Mother's life has been an
unhappy one, and she has given it all to me. That's why I say I have
enough politics of my own. I couldn't bear to break her heart--and her
heart is set on Morgan. So you see it's going to take some doing."
"Anne," he spoke firmly, but a tremour of feeling crept into his voice,
"Mrs. Masters loves you with such a big and single love that it can't
reason. Her own sufferings have come from knowing poverty, after she'd
taken wealth for granted--so that is the one danger she'll guard against
for you. It's an obsession with her. All the other things that might
wreck your life--such as marrying a man you didn't love, for
instance--she merely waves aside. If a man's been scarred with a knife,
he's apt to forget that others have not only been hurt but killed by
bullets. My God, dearest, she'll mean to be kind--but she'll put you on
the rack--she'll take you straight through the torture-chamber, in her
well-meant and cocksure certainty that she can choose for you better
than you can choose for yourself."
"I think, Boone," said Anne, with more than a little pride in the
rich softness of her voice, "you wouldn't hang back, because you had
to come to me through things like that. I'm not afraid of the
torture-chamber--it's just that I want to make it as easy for mother as
I can."
* * * * *
On the night before the first day of registration Boone was dining at
Colonel Wallifarro's house. Mrs. Masters found it difficult to maintain
a total concealment of her distrust of the mountain boy. In her own
heart she always thought of him as "that young upstart," but her worldly
wisdom safeguarded her against the mistaken attitude of open hostility
or even of too patronizing a tolerance. That course, she knew, had
driven many high-spirited daughters into open revolt. "Make a martyr of
him," she told herself with philosophically shrugged shoulders, "and you
can convert an ape into a hero."
So after dinner Boone and the girl sat uninterrupted in the fine old
drawing-room where the age-ripened Jouett portraits hung, while Morgan
and his father went over some papers in the Colonel's study on the
second floor.
"Boone," demanded the girl, "what is all this talk about camera squads
and inspection parties? I'm afraid Uncle Tom--and you, too--are going to
be running greater risks tomorrow than you admit."
He had risen to say good night, but it is not on record that lovers
resent delays in their leave-takings.
"At the registration every qualified voter must be enrolled," he told
her. "The camera squads have been formed to make rounds of the precincts
and take certain pictures."
"Why?"
"Because we have fairly reliable information that the town will be
overrun with flying squadrons of imported repeaters--and that the police
who should lock them up mean to protect them."
"What are repeaters?" she naively inquired, and he enlightened her out
of the treasury of his newly acquired wisdom.
"We believe that hundreds of floating and disreputable fellows have been
brought in from other towns and will be registered here as voters. After
registering they will disappear as unostentatiously as they came. But
meanwhile they will not satisfy themselves with being enrolled once, as
the decent citizens must do. They will go from precinct to precinct,
using fake addresses and changing names."
He smiled grimly, and then added with inelegant directness:
"We aim to get pictures of some of those birds--for use in court later."
"And the police will hamper you?"
"We don't expect much help from them."
Anne's eyes clouded with apprehension. She laid her hands on the boy's
arms. "Boone," she exclaimed, "you know Uncle Tom. In spite of his
gentleness, indignation makes him reckless. Will he be armed tomorrow?"
Boone shook his head. His eyes narrowed a little, and his tone indicated
personal disagreement with the decision which he repeated:
"No. They've decided that since they're seeking reform they must keep
inside both the letter and the spirit of the law. They've advised every
one to go unarmed except for heavy walking sticks. Even that has brought
a howl of 'attempted intimidation' from the city hall crowd--but I
reckon their gangs won't be unheeled."
"Are you going to be armed?"
Boone hesitated, but finally he answered with a trace of the ironic: "I
haven't quite made up my mind yet. You see, I learned my politics in the
bloody hills--though I never carried a gun when I was campaigning
there. Here, where it's civilized--I'm not so sure."
"Will you be with Uncle Tom, all the time tomorrow? Will you go
everywhere that he goes?" The question was put as an interrogation, but
it was an earnest plea as well, and Boone took both her hands in his.
They stood framed in the hall door, he holding her hands close pressed,
and her eyes giving him back look for look.
"I'll be with him every minute he'll let me," he declared. "Of course a
soldier must obey orders, and he can't choose his station."
It was standing like that with Boone holding Anne's hands, and their
faces close together, that Morgan, whose footsteps were soundless on the
carpeted stairway, saw them, and it was not a picture to reassure a
rival or to assuage the disdainful anger of a man of Morgan's
temperament for one whom he considered an ingrate and a presumptuous
upstart.