The Ramrodders. Holman Day
shock of it! He kept his face from them as he toiled up the steps of the old house. Tears sparkled in his eyes, sudden tears that astonished him. For a moment he felt old and broken and childish, and was not surprised that they had detected the weakness of a failing old man. He would have gone into "The Barracks" without showing them his face, but on the porch he was forced to turn. Some one had arrived, and arrived tempestuously. It was the Hon. Luke Presson, Chairman of the State Committee. He stepped down out of his automobile and walked around the crowd, spatting his gloved hands together, and looking them over critically. So he came to Thelismer Thornton, waiting on the steps, and shook his hand.
Mr. Presson was short and fat and rubicund, and, just now, plainly worried.
"This was the last place I expected to have to jump into, Thelismer," he complained. "I know the bunch has been wanting to get at you, but I didn't believe they'd try. I see that you and your boys here realize that you're up against a fight!"
He shuttled glances from face to face, and the general gloom impressed him. But it was plain that he did not understand that he was facing declared rebels.
"They've slipped five thousand dollars in here, Thelismer," he went on, speaking low. "They'd rather lug off this caucus than any fifty districts in the State."
"I don't believe there's men here that'll take money to vote against me," insisted Thornton. "But they've been lied to—that much I'll admit."
"You've been king here too long, Thelismer. You take too much for granted. They're bunching their hits here, I tell you. There are fifty thousand straddlers in this State ready to jump into the camp of the men that can lick the Duke of Fort Canibas—it gives a h——l of a line on futures! I thought you had your eye out better."
The deeper guile had masked itself behind such characters as Ivus Niles, and now Thornton realized it, and realized, too, to what a pass his trustful serenity, builded on the loyalty of the years, had brought him.
That strained, strange look of grieved surprise went out of his face. He lighted a cigar, gazing at his constituents over his scooped hands that held the match.
They stared at him, for his old poise had returned.
"This is the chairman of our State Committee, boys," he said, "come up to look over the field. He says there's a rumor going that Thornton can't carry his caucus this year." The Duke dropped into his quizzical drawl now. "I was just telling my friend Luke that it's queer how rumors get started." He walked to the porch-rail and leaned over it, his shaggy head dominating them. And then he threw the challenge at them. "The caucus is going to be held in the other end of the village—not here in my front dooryard. You'd better get over there. I don't need any such clutter here. Get there quick. There may be some people that you'll want to warn. Tell 'em old Thornton hasn't lost his grip."
He took Presson by the arm, and swung him hospitably in at the big door of "The Barracks."
CHAPTER II
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