_ CHAPTER VIII. THE MANTLE OF THELISMER THORNTON
The fire on the Jo Quacca hills was checked at nightfall. Two hundred beaters and trenchers managed to fight it back and hold it in leash to feed on the slash of the timber operation. But, like a tiger confined in its cage, it had reached out through its bars and claimed victims. Three stands of farm buildings were in ruins.
Harlan Thornton, sooty and weary, left the fire-line as soon as he knew that the monster had been subdued. He rode about to reassure the owners that their losses would be made up by himself and his grandfather.
"Keep away from the lawyers," he counselled the losers. "They'll get half the money out of you if you hire them. We'll settle after appraisal."
The men that he talked to seemed sullen in spite of his assurances. They seemed to be repressing taunts or reproaches merely in consideration of the fact that he was holding the purse-strings. He noted this demeanor, and feared to ask questions.
Clare Kavanagh rode with him; she had not left his side, even when he led his crews into perilous places and entreated her to keep back.
And they rode away together down the long stretch of highway from the hills to the village. Behind them, against the dusk, glowed the red, last signals of the dying fires: tree-trunks upraised like smouldering torches, the timbers of the falling buildings tumbling from their props and sending up showers of sparks. A pale sliver of new moon made the red of the fires even more baleful, and the two who rode together looked back and felt the obsession of something they had never experienced before.
"I am unhappy, Big Boy," sighed the girl. "We have never come back from our rides like this."
"It has been a wicked day for both of us, child."
"And you cannot call me child after to-day--so my father says." Her voice was still plaintive, but there was a hint of the old mischief there. "I'll be sixteen to-morrow--and I didn't know until to-day that I'd be so sorry that it is so. Ever since I was ten I've been wishing I could be eighteen without waiting for the years. But I don't know, now, Harlan. It seemed as though I'd be getting more out of living. I thought so." Tears were in her voice now. "It seems as though I'd grown up all of a sudden; and things aren't beautiful and happy and--and as they used to be--not any more! I've lost something, Harlan. And if growing up is losing so much, I don't want to grow up."
He listened indulgently and understood this protest of the child. Their horses walked slowly side by side, and the tired hounds trailed after them.
"The grown-ups do lose a lot of things out of life, little girl--things that mean a great deal in childhood. But keep your heart open, and other things will come."
"Perhaps when I get to be twenty-four years old and as big as you are I can talk that way, and believe it, too. But just now I'm only a girl that doesn't believe she's grown up, even if they do tell her so, and tell her she mustn't be a playmate any longer. And you are not to ride with me any more, and you are not to come to my house nor may I come to yours. That's what they say. What are we to do, then?"
She cried her question passionately. He had no answer ready. Platitudes would not do for this child, he reflected, and to lecture her then even on the A B C's of the social code would be wounding her ingenuous faith.
"If this is the way it all turns out, and I can't have your friendship any longer, what is it that you're going to do or I'm going to do?" she insisted. "That's losing too much, just because one is grown up."
Tenderness surged in his heart toward this motherless girl--tenderness in which there was a new quality. But he had no answer for her just then. He did not understand his own emotions. He was as unsophisticated as she in the affairs of the heart. His man's life of the woods had kept him free from women. His friendship with this child, their rides, their companionship, had been almost on the plane of boy with boy; her character invited that kind of intimacy.
And so he wondered what to say; for her demand had been explicit, and she demanded candor in return.
At that moment he welcomed the appearance of even Ivus Niles. That sooty prophet of ill appeared around a bend in the road ahead. The twilight shrouded him, but there was no mistaking his stove-pipe hat and his frock-coat. He was leading his buck sheep, and the hounds rushed forward clamorously. Niles stopped in the middle of the road, and let them frolic about him and his emblematic captive.
"The dogs won't hurt you, Niles," Harlan assured him, spurring forward.
"I ain't afraid of dogs, I ain't afraid of wolves, not after what I've been through with the political Bengal tigers I've been up against to-day," Niles assured him, sourly. "And your grandfather is the old he one of the pack. You tell him--"
"You can take your own messages to my grandfather, Niles." He swung his horse to pass, the girl at his side, but the War Eagle threw up his hand commandingly.
"I've got a message for you, yourself, then, and you stay here and take it. He stole our caucus for you to-day, your grandfather did--"
"You don't mean to say I was nominated!"
"That's too polite a word, Mr. Harlan Thornton. I gave you the right one the first time. He stampeded our caucus by having that fire set on the Jo Quacca hills. Three sets of farm buildings offered up to the gods of rotten politics! That's a nice kind of sacrifice, Thornton's grandson! It goes well with the crowd you're in with. It will smell well in the nostrils of the people of this State. You ought to be proud of being made a lawmaker in that way."
It was not reproach--it was insult, sneered in the agitator's bitterest tone.
"The property of three poor toilers of the soil laid flat in ashes, a town terrified by danger rushing down through the heavens like the flight of the war eagle," shouted Niles, declaiming after his accustomed manner, "and all to put you into a seat in the State House, where you can keep stealing the few things that your grandfather ain't had time or strength to steal! You've had your bonfire and your celebration--now go down and hoist the Star-Spangled Banner over 'The Barracks'--but you'd better hoist it Union down!"
Harlan dropped off his horse and strode to Niles. He seized him by the shoulder and shook him roughly, for the man had begun his oratory once more.
"Enough of that, Niles! Was I chosen in the caucus to-day? I want yes or no."
"Yes--and after three-quarters of the voters had been stampeded to fight that fire that was sweeping down on their property! And you--"
Harlan pushed him to one side, leaped upon his horse, and rode away. The girl jumped her roan to his side.
"It's wicked, Harlan," she gasped, "wicked! I heard him! What are you going to do?"
That was another of her questions that he found it hard to answer. "I'm going to find my grandfather, Clare, and I'm going in a great hurry. Come, I can't talk now, little girl!"
They galloped down the long hill to the bridge, their horses neck and neck.
"The last ride as playmates!" she cried, as they started. Her voice broke, pathetically. He did not reply. He was too furiously angry to trust himself in conversation at that moment, and he rode like a madman, knowing that she could keep pace with him.
They drew rein at the end of the bridge.
"It's only a bit of a run for you now, little girl. I'll keep on home."
She put her hand out to him and held him for a moment.
"I'm afraid you'll go away to be a big man, after all, Harlan," she said, dolefully.
"Go in this way? What are you talking about, child?" he demanded, choking, his fury getting possession of him. "I've been disgraced--abused. I'll--but I mustn't talk to you now--the wicked words might slip out."
But she would not loose his hand just then.
"I sent for you to come home because I heard father say that politics is wicked business. But I didn't know it was as wicked as this. It's no wonder they can't get the good men like you to go into it. If they could it would be better, wouldn't it?"
Even in his distress it occurred to him that out of the mouth of this child was proceeding quaint and unconscious wisdom.
"I wish it wasn't wicked," she went on, wistfully. "I've been thinking as I rode along that I've been selfish. I'd like to see you a big man like some of those I've read about. It was selfish of me to say I didn't want you to get out of the woods and be a big man."
"I couldn't be one," he protested.
"Even a foolish little girl up here in the woods has got faith that you can--and men who are really big don't forget their old friends. I don't want you mixed up in any wicked thing, Harlan, but I wouldn't want you to go away from me thinking I was selfish and jealous. That isn't the right kind of a friend for any one to have. I've been thinking it over."
He stared at her through the dusk. This sudden flash of worldly wisdom, this unselfish loyalty in one so young, rather startled him.
"That's real grown-up talk, child," he blurted.
"Is it?" The wan little flicker of a smile that she mustered brought tears to his eyes. "Maybe it's because I'll be sixteen to-morrow. Good-night, Big Boy!" This new, womanly seriousness was full of infinite pathos. She had not released his hand. She bent forward suddenly, leaning from her saddle, and kissed his cheek. "And good-bye, my playmate!" she whispered. While his fingers still throbbed with the last pressure of her hand, the black mouth of the big bridge swallowed her. He listened to the ringing hoof-beats of her horse till sudden silence told him she had reached the soft soil on the other shore.
He did not gallop to meet his grandfather. He walked his horse for the long mile past the scattered houses of the village till he came to "The Barracks."
When he was still some distance away he saw in the gloom of the porch the red coal of the Duke's cigar. Even then he did not rush forward to protest and denounce.
He slipped off his horse, and led him toward the porch. But before he could speak his grandfather hailed him.
"Run in to your supper, bub. The boys are holding it hot for you. Luke and I were too hungry to wait."
"I can't eat now--not with what's on
my mind."
"Oh, bub--bub! Run along with you! There's plenty of time for talk. I'll be here when you come out. Get something to eat, now! That's a good boy!"
Somehow he couldn't begin the attack just then. That tone was too affectionate, too matter-of-fact. And even then his hand seemed to feel the pressure of the little fingers that had released him at the bridge, and the choking feeling was still in his throat.
He gave his horse over to the hostler, and went into the house.
The lamp in the old mess-room thrust its beams only a little way into the gloom. It shone over the table and left the corners dark. The cookee brought the food from the kitchen, poured the tea, and then wiped his hands briskly on his canvas apron.
"I want to shake with you, Mr. Harlan!" He put out his hand, so frankly confident that he was doing the proper thing that the young man grasped it. "It was done to 'em good and proper. They tried to pull too hot a kittle out of the bean-hole that time--sure they did! I congratulate you! I knowed you'd get into politics some day."
Harlan pulled his hand away, and began to eat.
"Served up hot to 'em--that mess was," chuckled the cookee, on the easy terms of the familiar in the household. "Nothing like a rousin' fire if you're going to make the political pot bile in good shape."
He chuckled significantly.
The man pushed the food nearer, for Harlan did not seem to be taking much interest in his supper.
"I suppose you'll be boardin' at Mr. Presson's hotel when you get down to the legislature. I had a meal there once. They certainly do put it up fine. Say, Mr. Harlan, what do you say? Can't you use your pull, and get me a job as waiter or something down there for the session? Excuse me for gettin' at it so quick, but I thought I'd hop in ahead of the rush--they'll all be after you for something, now that you're nominated."
The young man could not discuss with this cheerful suppliant his indignant resolve not to be a legislator.
"You'll have to stay home here and look after Grandfather Thornton, Bob," he hedged.
"Oh, thunder! He's goin' right down to spend the winter with you. Was tellin' Mr. Presson so when they et just now. Said you'd be needin' a steerin' committee of just his bigness!"
Harlan got up and kicked his chair from under him. It went over with a clatter. To his infinite relief he had suddenly recovered some of that wrathful determination that Ivus Niles's sneers had given him earlier in the evening.
Thelismer Thornton heard him coming.
"Pretty heavy on his heels, the boy is!" he observed to the State chairman. "He's been licking his dander around in a circle till he's got it rearing."
The young man halted, erect before his grandfather, but again the old man got in the first word.
"I'm going to give you all the time to talk in you want, bub. I was a little short with you to-day, when I was stirred up, but no more of that! Say all you want to. And I'm going to give you a little advice about starting in. Now--now--now! Hold on. I know just how you feel. I don't blame you for feeling that way. But it had to be done just as I did it--all of it! Now you ought to start in with me just the way Sol Lurchin was advised to when he wanted to tackle Cola Jordan, who had done him on a horse-trade. Sol went to old Squire Bain, and says he to the Squire, 'I want to stay inside the law in this. I don't want him to get no legal hold on me. But I want to talk to him. Now, what'll I say so's to give him what's comin' and still be legal?' 'Well,' says old Squire, rubbing his hands together, 'you've got to start easy, you know. You want to start easy, so's to make the climax worth something. Now, let's see! Well, suppose you walk up to him and say, "You spawn of the pike-eyed sneak that Herod hired to kill babies, you low-down, contemptible son of a body-snatcher, you was born a murderer, but lacked the courage and became a horse-thief!" There, Sol, start in easy like that and gradually work up to a climax, and you'll have him going--and all inside the law. Two dollars, please!'"
The Duke leaned back in his chair and nested his head in his big hands. He gazed up meekly at his chafing grandson.
"Start in easy, bub, like that, and work up to your climax. I know just how you feel!"
But just at that moment the chairman of the State Committee was laughing too loudly for any dignified protest to be heard.
"For some reason, grandfather, you seem all at once to have taken me as a subject for a practical joke," said the young man, stiffly. The interlude had taken the sharp edge off his indignation, but he was still bitter. "It may seem a joke to you. To me it seems insult and persecution. I have attended to business, I've worked hard and made money for both of us. To-day you've held me up before this section to be laughed at by some and hated by the rest. I'm glad I've had half an hour to think it over since I first heard about what happened in that caucus. I won't say the things to you I intended to say. I'll simply say this: I'm going to write a letter declining this nomination. I'm going to publish that letter. And I'm going to say in that letter that I will not take any office that isn't come at honestly."
"Harlan, sit down." His feet had been in one of the porch chairs. He pushed it toward his grandson. The young man sat down.
"You don't know much about the practical end of politics, do you?"
"I do not."
"You'll allow that I do?"
"You seem to, if that's what you call this sort of business that has been going on here to-day."
"Bub, look at the thing from my standpoint for just one moment. I'll consider it from yours, too--you needn't worry. I want you to be something in this world besides a lumber-jack. You've got the right stuff in you. I tried argument with you. You'll have to own up that I did. It didn't work--now, did it?"
"I told you I didn't want to get into politics. I don't want to get in. I don't like the company."
"Politics is all right, Harlan, when the right men are in. You are the kind the people are calling for these days. You're clean, straight, open-minded, and--"
"Clean and straight! And the people are calling for me!" The young man broke in wrathfully. "You say that to me after the sort of a caucus you sprung to-day? If that's what you consider a call from the people, I don't want to be called that way."
"It was a call, but it had to be
shaded by
politics a little," returned the Duke, serenely.
"If a good man is going into politics, he can go in square."
"Sometimes. But not when the opposition is out to do him with every dirty trick that's laid down in the back of the political almanac."
"If you wanted to start me, and start me fair and right, why didn't you let my name go before that caucus to-day, and then hold off your hands?"
"Because if I had you'd have stood about the same chance as a worsted dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell. Look here, bub, I wish I had the time; I'd like to tell you how most of the good men I know got their start in politics. You can be a statesman after you've got your head up where the sun can shine on it, but you've got to be touching ground to keep your head up. And if you're touching ground in politics, you'll find that your shoes are muddy--and you can't help it."
The grandson did not reply. Thornton relighted his cigar. The flare of the match showed disgust and stubbornness in the features opposite.
"You know Enoch Dudley as well as I do, Harlan. That's the man they put up. And a man that has let two of his sons be bound out and has turned back his wife for her own people to support can't hide behind any white necktie, so far's I'm concerned. Luke and I know where the money came from that they've been putting in here. We know the men behind, and what their object is. We know what they are trying to do in the next legislature. You'll see it all for yourself when the time comes, Harlan. You'll be up against them. You understand men. I'll only be wasting time in telling you what you'll see for yourself. Do you want to see a man like Enoch Dudley representing this district? If you do, go ahead and write that letter!"
"You'll not do that, Harlan," stated the chairman, with decision. "As it stands now, whatever they say about this caucus will be simply the whinings of a licked opposition. We know how to handle that kind of talk. There isn't a man on our side, from Sylvester to Urban Cobb, who will open his mouth, even if the thumb-screws are put to him. Harlan, are you the kind of a fellow that would hold your grandfather up before the people of this State in any such light? Of course you are not!"
"No, I don't suppose I am," acknowledged the young man. "But I can decline to run."
The State chairman pulled his chair close, and tapped emphasis on the candidate's knee.
"No, you can't. It would give 'em the one fact that they need for a foundation to build their case on. What you've got to do, Harlan, is accept this nomination, just as it is handed to you. Stand up and fight for your election like a man. The thing may look rank to you. Politics usually looks rank to a beginner, who has to get down and fight on the level of the other fellow. But you'll understand things better after you get along a little further. If you back out now you're leaving your grandfather open to attack. Those dogs can only bark, now. If you let 'em past you they'll have a chance to set their teeth in. Harlan, you think too much of your grandfather to do such a thing as that, don't you?"
The three of them sat in silence for a while.
"I hate to say anything just now, my boy," said the old man, at last. He leaned forward, his elbows on the arms of his chair. "Luke has put it to you a little stronger than I should have done. I don't want to beg you or coax you. If you think it's too much of a sacrifice to stand by me--if you want to quit, and can't look at it in any other way, go ahead. I can fight it out alone. I've had a good many lone fights. I'm good for one more. But before you say what you're going to say, I've got a last word to drop in. You know how I've dealt with men in business matters, my boy."
"But why can't you do the same in politics?" demanded his grandson, bitterly.
"It's just on that point that I want to put you right. I know pretty well why you haven't hankered to get into politics, Harlan. You've heard some of the sneers, slurs, and the gossip. You didn't know much about it, but you sort of felt ashamed of me on account of politics. Hold on! I know. It has been a kind of shame and pity mixed, like one feels for a drunkard in the family. This caucus seemed to you like a spree--and you got mixed into it, and you're angry with me. Listen: there are people in this world who won't allow that a man is honest in politics unless he goes about hunting for all the measures that might help him personally and kills 'em. And the same yellow-skins that howl because he doesn't do that would turn around and cuss him for seventeen kinds of a fool if he did, and ruined himself by doing it. I haven't stolen, boy. I've given my time and my energies to developing this State. I've seen it prosper and grow big. And I've shared in the prosperity by seeing that my own interests got their rights along with the rest. I'm where I can look back. And I can't see where the reputation of being a saint who cut off his own fingers for a sacrifice would help me get endorsers at the bank or find friends I could borrow money from. Harlan, boy, I'm an old man. I can't live much longer. A little reputation of some kind or another will live after me. I want you to know the right of it. And the only way for you to find out is to be what I have been. Hearing about it won't inform you. I want you to meet the men and play the game. I want you to realize that when I say I've done the best I could, I'm telling you the truth. Harlan, stand up here with me. Give me your hand. Say that you'll stand by the old man in this one thing--the biggest he ever has asked of you. It's a matter between the Thorntons, boy!"
There had been an appeal in his voice that was near wistfulness. And while he talked the wisdom that had come from the mouth of a child that evening threaded its own quaint appeal into the argument of the grandfather. Resentment and obstinacy, if they be tempered with youth, cannot fight long against affection and the ties of blood.
Harlan took his grandfather's hand.
"That's my boy!" cried the Duke, heartily, and he slipped his arm about his grandson's shoulders and patted him.
"It straightens things out a good deal," observed Presson, with the practicality of the politician. "Harlan, you're going to find a winter at the State House worth while. With your grandfather to set you going right and post you up, you ought to make good."
"I'd like to have a little light on one point," remarked the young man, curtly. He felt again the irritating prick of resentment. "What am I to be down to that legislature--myself, or Thelismer Thornton's grandson?"
"You can't afford to throw good advice over your shoulder," protested the chairman--"not when it comes from a man that's had fifty years of experience."
"Hold on, Luke, don't set the boy off on the wrong track. I know how he feels. Harlan, you're going down there just as I said you're going--with an open mind, clean hands, good, straight American spirit to do right just so far as a man in politics can do right! I want you to see for yourself. If you want my help in anything you shall have it. But it'll be Gramp advising his boy--not a boss, hectoring. Believe that!"
"You needn't be afraid of the city fellows," advised Presson.
Harlan stood up before them, earnest, intense, determined.
"A fellow placed as I have been has this much advantage over city chaps, and I'm going to take courage from it," he said: "I've had a chance to read. There are long evenings in the woods, and I haven't been able or obliged to kill time at clubs and parties. I have read, Mr. Presson. I don't know how much good it has done me. That remains to be found out. Perhaps a fellow who reads and hasn't real experience gets a wrong viewpoint. But this much I do believe: a man can be honest, himself, in politics, and can find enough honest men to stand with him. I'm going to try, at any rate. For if there's any dependence to be put in what I read there's something serious the matter in public affairs."
"Going to start a reform party, young man?" chuckled the State chairman. He had seen and tested youthful ideals before in his political experience.
"I didn't mean it that way. I wasn't talking about myself. I'll be only a little spoke in the wheel, sir. But I mean to say that when I get to the State House I'm going to hunt up the men who believe in a square deal, and I'm going to train with 'em." He spoke a bit defiantly. It was youth declaring itself. It was a spark from the fire that Ivus Niles had kindled by his sneers.
"Boy," said the old man, cheerfully, "you're prancing just a bit now. But you needn't be afraid of me, because I said I'd help you. The first thing I'll do will be to take you around and introduce you to the men down in the legislature who are proposing to reform the State. So you see I mean right!"
The State chairman seemed much amused. He chuckled.
The Duke walked to the end of the porch and gazed up at the Jo Quacca hills, where the dim, red glow still shone against the sky.
"So it took down three stands of buildings, did it, Harlan?" he called. "Did you tell the boys we'd settle promptly, and for them to keep away from the lawyers?"
"I arranged it the best I could and got their promise. But they seem to know the fire was set on purpose, and are pretty gruff about it."
"Of course the fire was set on purpose--and I have a right to clear my own land when I want to. But I know how to settle, bub, so as to turn their vinegar to cream. For when I square a political debt, whether it's pay or collect, there's no scaling down! Full value--and then a little over!"
He came back and as he passed he tweaked Harlan's ear.
"It's been a hard day, boy! Come on, let's all three go to bed." _