Boone rose by gas-light the next morning and from the bureau of his hall
bedroom, after removing a slender pile of shirts and underwear, he
extracted a heavy-calibred revolver in a battered holster of the
mountain type--the kind that fits under the left armpit, supported by a
shoulder strap.
He took the thing out of its case and scrupulously examined into the
smoothness of its working after long disuse, debating the while whether
to take it or leave it. He knew that though the "pure in heart"--as an
administration speaker had humorously characterized the myrmidons of the
city hall--might, with impunity, carry--and even use--concealed weapons,
he and his like need expect no leniency in the courts for similar
conduct. The advice at headquarters had been emphatic on that point:
"Keep well within the law. There may be court sequels."
But Boone meant to be Colonel Wallifarro's bodyguard that day. He felt
designated and made responsible for the Colonel's safety by Anne, and he
knew that before nightfall contingencies might arise which would
overshadow lesser and technical considerations. So he strapped the
holster under his waistcoat, and went out into the autumn morning, which
was gray and still save for the rumbling of occasional milk wagons.
At Fusion headquarters few others had yet arrived, but shortly he was
joined by Colonel Wallifarro and General Prince, and within the hour the
barren suite of rooms was close thronged and thick with the smoke of
many cigars. Telephones were ajingle, and outside in the street a dozen
motors were parked.
Nor was there any suspense of long waiting before events broke into
racing stride, as a field of horses breaks from the upflung barrier.
From a half dozen sources came hurried complaints of flagrant violations
and of police violence or police blindness.
When the polling places had been open an hour the wires grew feverish.
"A crowd of fifteen men came here and registered at opening time,"
announced one herald. "Forty-five minutes later the same gang came back
and registered again. The protest of our challenger was ignored."
There were not enough telephones to carry the traffic of lamentation and
complaint. "Our camera men are being assaulted and their instruments
smashed...." "The Chief of Police has just been here and left
instructions that snapshotting is an invasion of private rights. He has
ordered his men to lock up all photographers...." "Our judge in this
precinct challenged a man when he tried to register, the second time,
and a crowd of thugs with blackjacks rushed the place and beat him
unconscious. The police said they saw no difficulty."
So came the burden of chorused indignation, and the automobiles began
cruising outward on tours of investigation and protest. The "boys" had
been assured that they were to have "all the protection in the world,"
and they were "going to it."
From this and that section of the city arrived news of men who had been
blackjacked, crowd-handled and arrested, but out of the whole rapidly
developing reign of terror certain precincts stood forth conspicuous.
Seated beside Colonel Wallifarro in the dust-covered car that raced from
ward to ward, while the Colonel's face streamed sweat from the hurried
tempo of his exertions, Boone marvelled at the fashion in which these
men combined indomitable perseverance with self-contained patience.
Often he himself burned with an angry impulse to jump down from his seat
and punish the insolent effrontery of some ruffian in uniform.
"I reckon you don't know who these gentlemen are," he protested at one
time to a police sergeant, whose manner had passed beyond impertinence
and become abuse.
"No and I don't give a damn who they are," retorted the guardian of
peace. "I know what this business means to me. It's four years with a
job or four years without one."
Twice during the morning they were called to a building that had once
been a shoemaker's shop. The erstwhile showcase was dimmed by the dust
of a dry summer and the grimy smears of a rainy autumn. There the tide
of bulldozing had run to flood, and the Fusion judge of registration, an
undersized chap with an oversized courage, had wrangled and fought
against overweening odds until they took him away with both eyes closed
beyond usefulness. A challenger with less stomach for punishment had
borne the brunt as long as he could--and weakened. Colonel Wallifarro's
car stood before the place and, with a weary gesture, he turned to
Boone.
"My boy," he said shortly, "we've got to put a man in there. I don't
like to ask it--but you'll have to take that challenger's place."
Boone had seen enough that morning to make him extremely reluctant to
leave the Colonel's side, and he answered evasively, "I'm not a citizen
of this town, Colonel."
"You don't have to be to challenge." So Boone went in. The place was
foul with the stench of bad tobacco. The registration officers, who had
so far had their way, were openly truculent.
"Here comes a new Sunday-school guy," sneered a clerk with a debauched
face, looking up from the broad page of the enrolment book. "I wonder
how long _he'll_ last."
For a time it seemed that Boone was to enjoy immunity from the heckling
under which his predecessors had fallen, but the word had gone out that
a "bad guy" had come in for the Fusionists who needed handling, and his
apparent acceptance was nothing more than the quiet that goes before the
bursting of a thunder head.
His place was inside, so he could make no move when news drifted in that
one of the outside watchers had been assaulted and perhaps seriously
hurt, though he guessed that the car, in which he had been riding that
day, would again roll up, and that perhaps Colonel Wallifarro would once
more be the target of gutter insult. Indeed, he fancied he recognized
the toot of that particular horn a few minutes later, but as he strained
his ears to make something of the confusion outside the door burst open
and a group of a dozen or so ruffians forced their way into the cramped
space, brandishing sticks and pistols.
"Where's this here fly guy at?" demanded the truculent leader of the
invasion, and others used fouler expletives. Boone should perhaps have
felt complimented that such a handsome number should have been told off
to deal with his case, but as he rose to his feet he caught a glimpse
over their heads of Colonel Wallifarro standing in his car outside and
of confused disorder eddying about it.
Boone drew so quickly that there was no opportunity to halt him, and he
fired as unhesitantly as he had drawn. With a threat unfinished on his
lips the leader of the "flying squadron" crumpled to the floor, and with
swift transition from bravos to fugitives his tatterdemalion gang left
on the run.
Boone, with the pistol still in his hand, hurried out to the sidewalk,
and at the picture which met his eyes halted on the dirty threshold.
Colonel Wallifarro still stood in the car, but on the sidewalk was
General Prince, and the chivalric old gentleman was wiping blood from
his face, while the dust on his clothes told clearly enough that he had
been knocked down. Boone's veins were channels of liquid fire.
But that was not all. Morgan Wallifarro, still as immaculate as usual,
was standing two paces away, and a burly policeman with a club raised
over his head was abusing him with vicious obscenities.
So Morgan was no longer sulking in his tent! Morgan had belatedly taken
his place at the Colonel's side, and as he stood there, threatened with
a night-stick, Boone heard his declaration of war.
"I've never been in politics before," he declared in a voice of
white-hot fury, "but I'm in now to stay until every damned jackal of you
is whipped out of office--and whipped into the penitentiary. Now hit me
with that stick--I dare you--hit me!"
Still brandishing the club above the young lawyer's head with his right
hand, the patrolman shoved him roughly in the chest with his left. He
was obviously seeking to force Morgan into striking at him so that,
given a specious plea of self-defence, he might crack his skull.
It was then the voice of Boone sounded from the rear:
"Yes, hit him--I dare you, too!"
The officer wheeled, to see the tall and physically impressive figure of
the mountain man standing the width of the sidewalk away. He held a
pistol, not levelled but swinging at his side, and as if in silent
testimony that it was not a mere plaything a thin wisp of smoke still
eddied about its mouth and the acrid smell of burnt powder came
insidiously out through the door.
Boone strolled forward.
"Mr. Wallifarro, get back in that car," he directed. "This blue-belly
isn't going to trouble you."
"What the hell have you got to do with this?" bellowed the officer, but
the club came down. "You are under arrest."
"Show me your warrant."
"I don't need no warrant."
The crowd, including those who had fled from the registration room, hung
back in a yapping but hesitant circle. Blackjacking non-combatants had
proven keen sport, but this fellow with the revolver in a hand that
seemed used to revolvers, and a gleam in the eye that seemed to relish
the situation, gave them pause.
Somewhat blankly the officer reiterated his pronunciamento. "I don't
need no warrant."
"This gun says you need one," came the calm rejoinder. "You've got one
yourself, and you can whistle up plenty of other harness bulls--all
armed, but if you do I'll get you first. My name is Boone Wellver. Now,
are you going to get that warrant or not?"
For an instant the policeman hesitated; then he conceded as though he
had never contested the point.
"I ain't got no objection in the world to swearing out a warrant for
you--since you've told me what your name is. But don't try to make no
get-away till I come back."
"I'll be right here--when you come back."
The patrolman turned and walked away, and Boone wheeled briskly to the
car.
"Now you gentlemen get out of this--and do a little warrant-swearing
yourselves. Be over at Central Station in about forty-five minutes fixed
to give bond for me. I reckon I'll be needing it."
Ten minutes later, with a spectacular clanging of gongs, a police patrol
clattered up, scattering the crowd and disgorging a wagonload of
officers headed by a lieutenant with a drawn pistol.
They handled Boone with unnecessary roughness as they nipped the
handcuffs on his wrists and bundled him into the wagon, but he had
expected that. It was their cheap revenge, and he gave them no
satisfaction of complaint.
In the cage at Central Station into which they thrust him, with more
violence, his companions were a drunken negro and one or two other
"election offenders" like himself.
It was through the grating that he looked out a half hour later, to see
Morgan Wallifarro standing outside.
"Father and the General are arranging bond," announced the visitor. "I
wanted a word with you alone."
Boone's only response was an acquiescent nod.
"I lost my head last night, Wellver," Morgan went on shamefacedly. "I
was a damned fool, of course, to imagine that I could bully you, and a
cad as well. I lied when I intimated that you were--not anybody's equal.
If I were you, I'd refuse to accept an apology, but at all events I've
got to offer it--abjectly and humbly."
There was no place in the close-netted grating of that door through
which a hand could be thrust, and Boone grinned boyishly as he said, "I
accept your advice and refuse to shake hands with you--Wallifarro--until
the door's opened."
Boone's pistol was held, of course, as evidence, but without it he went
back to the registration booth, and as he took his seat the man of the
debauched face looked up, with surprised eyes, from his book; but this
time he volunteered no comment.
In the police court on the following morning both Boone and his
arresting officer were presented, as defendants, and the officer's case
was called first on the docket. Taking the stand in his own defence, the
officer glibly testified that he had struck General Prince, of whose
identity he had been unfortunately ignorant, because that gentleman had
seemed to make a motion toward his hip pocket, but that he had, under
much goading, refrained from striking Morgan Wallifarro.
"Why," purred the shyster who defended him, "did you so govern your
temper under serious provocation?" And the unctuous reply was promptly
and virtuously forthcoming: "Because police officers are ordered not to
use no more force than what they have to."
General Prince smiled quietly, but Morgan fidgeted in his chair.
The police judge cleared his throat. "It appears obvious to the Court,"
he ruled, "that a man of General Prince's high character did not intend
to threaten or hamper an officer in the proper performance of his sworn
duty. But these gentlemen in the heat and passion of political fervour
seem to have assumed--unintentionally, perhaps--a somewhat high-handed
and domineering attitude. It would be manifestly unjust to exact of a
mere patrolman a superior temperateness of judgment. Let the case be
dismissed."
But when Boone was called to the dock, the magistrate eyed him severely
not through, but over, his glasses, putting into that silent scrutiny
the stern disapproval of a man looking down his nose.
"I find three charges against this defendant," he announced. "The first
is shooting and wounding; the second, carrying concealed a deadly
weapon, and the third, interference with an officer in the discharge of
his duty."
The wounding of the flying squadron's leader was a matter for the
future, since the victim of the bullet lay in a hospital, and that case
had already been continued under a heavy bond. After hearing the
evidence on the other accusations, the judge again cleared his throat.
"The 'pistol-toter' is a constant menace to the peace of the community,
and there seems to be no doubt of guilt in the present case--but since
the defendant has recently come from a section of the State which
condones that offence, the Court is inclined to be lenient. The
resistance to the officer was also a grave and inexcusable matter, but
because of the character testimony given by General Prince and Colonel
Wallifarro, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I will, on
my own motion, amend these charges to disorderly conduct. Mr. Clerk,
enter a fine of $19 and a bond of $1,000 for a year."
Morgan Wallifarro was, at once, on his feet.
"May it please your Honour, such a punishment is either much too severe
or much too lenient. I move, your Honour, to increase the fine."
"Motion overruled," came the laconic judgment. "Mr. Clerk, call the next
case."
"Your Honour has fixed a punishment," protested Colonel Wallifarro's son
with a deliberately challenging note in his voice, "which is the highest
fine in your power to inflict without opening to us the door of appeal.
Had you added one dollar, we could have carried it to the Circuit
Court--and we believe that it was only for the purpose of denying us
that right that you amended the charges. In the court of public opinion,
before which even judges must stand judgment, I shall endeavour to make
that unequivocally clear."
"Fine Mr. Wallifarro twenty dollars for contempt of Court!" This time
the voice from the bench rasped truculently, forgetting its suavity.
"And commit him to jail for twenty-four hours."
That evening Boone Wellver paid two calls behind the barred doors of the
city prison. One was to Asa Gregory, who still languished there, and the
other to the lawyer who had been willing to pay for his last word.
"I'm sorry you lashed out, Wallifarro," said Boone. "But I'd be willing
to change places with you, for the satisfaction of having said it."
Morgan grinned with a strong show of white teeth.
"It's cheap at the price," he declared, "and as for lashing out, I
haven't begun yet. From now on I'm going to work regularly at this
contempt of court job, unless I can put some of these gentry behind bars
or make them swim the river. I've hung back for a long while but now
I've enlisted for the war."
As Judge McCabe had said, Morgan lacked the diplomatic touch.