The Ramrodders. Holman Day
the wagon and yap."
"Good God!" blurted the chairman of the State Committee, "you don't mean to tell me!"
"It's the ramrodders! They've been up here, one or two of the old cock ones, workin' under cover," stated the unswerving one. "About once in so often the people are ripe to be picked. They've mebbe had drought, chilblains, lost a new milch cow, and had a note come due—and some one that's paid to do it tells 'em that it's all due to the political ring—and then they begin to club the tree! But standing here spittin' froth about it ain't convertin' the heathern nor cooperin' them that imagine vain things. Now here's what I've done, grabbin' in so's to lose no time. I—"
"No, just tell me what the other side has done," commanded the Duke.
"First place, they've got names in black and white of enough Republicans to down you in caucus. They've got 'em, them ramrodders have! I've hairpinned the truth out o' the cracks! They've been sayin' that you've only wanted your office so as to dicker and trade, and make yourself and them in your political bunch richer; they're showin' figgers to prove that much; sayin' you brag you carry our district in your vest-pocket; sayin' everything to stir up the bile that's in every man when you know how to stir for it. Furthermore, Squire, the fact that you're gettin' out yourself and proposin' to put your grandson in gives 'em their chance to say a lot. Next place, this is goin' to be a caucus. It ain't any imitation. They're goin' to use a marked check-list."
"What?" roared the Honorable Thelismer, jarred out of his baleful calm.
"Yes, sir! They've pulled the town clerk into camp and have had him mark a list. And you can imagine who they picked out as Republican voters in this town! And they'll stand and challenge every one else till their throats are sore. You and me has cut up a few little innocent tricks in politics in our time, Squire, but we never framed anything quite as tidy as this for a steal. If your friend, here, is in politics, he—"
"I'm Presson, chairman of the State Committee," explained that gentleman. The Duke of Fort Canibas was too much absorbed to make presentations.
"Hell! That so?" ripped out the other, frankly astonished. "Well, I'm glad you're here. You ought to be able to help us out."
Presson was not cheerful or helpful. "They're slashing this whole State open from one end to the other with their devilish reform hullabaloo," he said.
"I hear there is quite a stir outside," agreed the agitator, blandly. He looked the chairman up and down with interest. "You may call me Sylvester—Talleyrand Sylvester. Yankee dickerer! Buy and sell everything from a clap o' thunder to a second-hand gravestone. It brings me round the country up here, and so I've been the Squire's right-hand man in the political game, such as there's been of it." He turned his back on the pondering Duke and continued, sotto voce: "I reckon if he'd stayed in himself, Colonel, they wouldn't have had the courage to tackle him. They might have hit him with that whole stockin'ful of mud they've been collectin', and he wouldn't have staggered. But when they go to hit the young feller, there, with it, he's down and out."
"Eh!" barked the magnate of Canibas, catching the last words. "I am? Not by a—" He broke off, ashamed of wasting effort in mere boasts. "Presson," he went on, evidently now intent on proceeding according to the plan that he had been meditating, "you've got your own interest in seeing me keep this district in line, haven't you?"
"You're the head of our row of bricks," bleated the chairman. "We've got to keep you standing—got to do it."
"Then we'll get busy." The old man threw back his shoulders. "Carrying a caucus the way we've probably got to carry this one at the last gasp isn't going to be a genteel entertainment." He tapped a stubby finger on the honorable chairman's shirt-front. "I'm going to raise some very particular hell." He turned to his lieutenant. "The boys right in the village, here, our own bunch, are all right, of course, Sylvester?"
"Stickin' to you like pitch in a spruce crack, as usual. It's the outsiders from the other sections in the district. They hadn't known what a caucus was till them ramrodders got after 'em."
"Can't they be handled now that they're in here?"
"Have been lied to already too skilful and thorough. Me and Whisperin' Urban and a few others of the boys blew the haydust out of their ears, and tried to inject the usual—but they can't hold any more. They've got to be unloaded first—and there ain't time to do it."
"And you're pretty sure they can swing the organization when the caucus is called?" demanded the Duke.
"Two to one—and our men ain't got a smell on that check-list they've doctored. Why, they've even got me marked 'Socialist.' You can imagine what they've done to the rest of the boys. It's one o'clock now." (He had looked at four watches, one after the other, a part of his dickerer's stock-in-trade.) "In an hour and fifteen minutes they'll be organized and votin' by check-list. I ain't a man to give up easy, Squire, but I swear it looks as though they had us headed so far on the homestretch that we ain't near enough to trip 'em or bust a sulky wheel on 'em."
"You've got more than an hour's leeway." It was a soft lisp of sound that startled the group. The man had come by devious ways through the gullies of the Thornton field, around the corner of "The Barracks," and upon the porch. Those who knew him declared that "Whispering Urban" Cobb never walked by the straight way when there was a crooked one by which he could dodge around.
"No, they can't get a-goin' at no two o'clock," he assured them. A drooping gray mustache curtained his mouth, drooping gray eyebrows shaded his eyes, and he crowded very close to them and whispered, "I've stole the call for the caucus, and they'll hunt for it about half an hour, and then they'll have to round the committee up and get 'em to sign another, and have constables swear that the other call was posted—and, well, they won't get going much before four."
The Duke looked at him indulgently.
"I took it on myself to do it. I reckoned you might need the extra time, seein' that they was tryin' to spring a trap on you."
He took the cigar that the Duke offered him in lieu of praise.
"Bein' sure of that much time—if you'll see to it that they're regular about the call!" Mr. Cobb cocked inquiring eye at the old man.
"I'll see to it," stated Thornton, grimly.
"Well, then, bein' sure of that time, I'll—Mr. Thornton, would you object if I was to start in this afternoon on the contract of clearing up that slash where you operated on Jo Quacca last winter? Of course, this ain't just the best kind of weather for bonfires, but—the fire will certainly burn!" His whispering voice gave the suggestion ominous significance.
The Hon. Thelismer Thornton stared for a moment at Cobb, and then looked up at the heights that shimmered in the beating sun.
"You may start in, Cobb," he said at last. His perception of what the man meant came instantly. He had hesitated while he figured chances. "Take fifty of those men out behind there," his thumb jerked over his shoulder. "Give every man a shovel, and see that it doesn't get away from you. More smoke than fire, see!"
Mr. Cobb hastened away.
The duller comprehension of the chairman of the State Committee had not grasped the significance of the conversation.
"I'd let business wait till politics are finished, Thelismer," he chided.
"There is such a thing as running the two on a double track," returned Mr. Thornton, serene but non-committal. He whirled on Sylvester, his mien that of the commander-in-chief disposing his forces in the face of the enemy: "Talleyrand, you'll find fifty more quedaws out there after Cobb takes his pick. Take them down to Aunt Charette's and have her set out her best. And keep 'em well bunched and handy!"
He reached through an open window and filled the pockets of his crash suit with cigars from a box on a stand.
"Now, Luke," he invited, blandly, "let's go to a legislative district caucus. I haven't bothered to attend one for a good many years, but this one on the docket now gives signs of being interesting."
They