"I don't know as you will, you tote-road mule, you! But, by the suffering Herod, they'll have to show _me_ first!"

He elbowed his grandson aside and kept on pacing the porch.

CHAPTER IV

THE DUKE AT BAY

After that outburst Presson went away by himself to sulk. Young Thornton made no further protest. He stared at his grandfather, trying to comprehend what it meant--this bitterness, this savage resentment, this arbitrary authority that took no heed of his own wishes. He had always known a calm, kindly, sometimes caustic, but never impatient Thelismer Thornton. This old man, surly, domineering, and unreasonable, was new to him. And after a little while, worried and saddened, he went away. His presence seemed to stir even more rancor as the moments pa.s.sed.

Presson understood better, but could not forgive the bullheadedness that seemed to be wrecking their political plans. His own political training had taught him the benefits of compromise. He was angry at this old man who proposed to go down fighting among the fallen props of a lifetime of power. And even though Presson now understood better some of the motives that prompted the Duke to force young Harlan out into the world, his political sensibilities were more acute than his sympathy.

Therefore the beleaguered lord of Canibas was left to fight it out alone.

He stood at the end of the porch and listened to the menacing sounds of the village.

He glared down the long street and grunted, "Grinding their knives, eh?"

Evidently the centrifugal motion of the political machine down there was violent enough to throw off one lively spark. A man came up the road at a brisk gait, stamped across the yard, and went direct to the Duke, who waited for him at the far end of the porch. He did not glance at Presson or at Harlan Thornton.

"Did you ever _see_ anything like it, did you ever _hear_ anything like it, Honor'ble?" the new arrival demanded with heat. "They're goin' to make a caucus out of it--a _caucus_!"

The man had a lower jaw edged with a roll of black whisker, a jaw that protruded like a bulldog's. With the familiarity of the long-time lieutenant, he pecked with thumb and forefinger at the end of a cigar protruding from his chief's waistcoat-pocket. He wrenched off the tip between snaggy teeth. He spat the tip far.

"Yes, sir, by jehoshaphat, a caucus!"

Chairman Presson's ear had caught the sound of politics. He felt that he was ent.i.tled, ex officio, to be present at any conference. He hurried to the end of the porch.

"We ain't had a caucus in this district for more'n forty years," stated the new arrival, accepting the chairman as a friend of the cause.

"Except as the chairman catches the seckertery somewhere and then hollers for some one to come in from the street and renominate the Honor'ble Thornton. But, dammit, this is going to be a _caucus_." The word seemed suddenly to have acquired novel meaning for him. "They must have been p.u.s.s.y-footin' for a month. You could have knocked me down with your cigar-b.u.t.t, Squire, when I got in here to-day and found how she stood. If it hadn't been for War Eagle Ivus and his buck sheep breakin'

out, they'd have ambuscaded ye, surer'n palm-leaf fans can't cool the kitchen o' h.e.l.l. But even as it is--hoot and holler now, and tag-gool-I-see-ye, they say they've got you licked, and licked in the open--that's what they say!" The man's tone was that of one announcing the blotting-out of the stars.

"Walt Davis bragged about it," said the old man, outwardly calm, but eyes ablaze. "It must be a pretty sure thing when he's got the courage to crawl out from under the wagon and yap."

"Good G.o.d!" 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 c.o.c.k 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 d.i.c.ker 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.

"h.e.l.l! 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 d.i.c.kerer! 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 h.e.l.l." 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 d.i.c.kerer'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 a.s.sured 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 c.o.c.ked 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.