Jap Herron Part 14

j.a.p took off his coat, deliberately. He unclasped his cuffs and was in the act of unb.u.t.toning his collar, when the local freight whistled for the crossing below town. With a mighty leap the man from Barton cleared the s.p.a.ce between his chair and the door. The strolling populace of Main street was scattered like leaves before a sudden gust of wind. There was an abortive cry of "Stop, thief!" and a bewildered pursuit by several tipsy b.u.ms who had been loafing in front of Bingham's saloon, but the appearance of the marshal, wearing a broad grin of satisfaction, dispelled apprehension.

"That was Jones, travelin' light," he explained.

The next issue of the _Standard_ failed to mention the editorial visit to Bloomtown; but the scurrilous articles ceased and there was quiet again.

"Did Ellis ever have a fight--that kind of a fight--with anybody?" j.a.p asked Flossy, when Bill had finished his second-hand recital of the show that "he wouldn't have missed for his farm in Texas." In Bill's heart there arose a mighty resentment against Rosy Raymond, who had enticed him from the office just before Jones arrived.

"Ellis did a good deal of fighting before he got me to fight his battles for him," she said, a whimsical smile in her gentle eyes. "You ought to know, j.a.p. I never would have had Ellis if he hadn't whipped Brother William."

"But that wasn't a matter of personal grudge," j.a.p argued. It had seemed to him that somehow he had degraded himself when he went down to Jones's ethical level. "I wanted to use my fists because Jones ridiculed me. When Ellis licked the Judge, it wasn't a personal matter. He did it for me."

"And you did this for--for the honor of Bloomtown," cried Bill, with enthusiasm.

CHAPTER XII

"Something's broke loose," announced Bill, slamming the door violently.

"Pap's bought an automobile." Which illuminative remark indicated that Judge Bowers's mind had expanded to let in a fresh vagary.

j.a.p looked up inquiringly.

"I reckon it's all on account of Billy Wamkiss," Bill explained.

"Billy who? There never was no such animal," and j.a.p scowled at the stick in his hand. Conditions in Bloomtown were, as Jim Blanke expressed it, all to the bad. While the political fight was at white heat the Mayor had contrived to have his own way. He was going to "make the town" which Ellis Hinton had failed to make. There would be revenue enough to provide metropolitan improvements, and already there was a metropolitan, perhaps even a Monte Carlo-tan, air to the recently awakened village, as every train disgorged its Sat.u.r.day evening crowd of gamblers from the city where the lid had gone on with ruthless completeness.

Mrs. Granger had arisen from a sick-bed to call together the women of all the churches to make protest at the licensing of another pool-room, with bar and poker attachment, not two blocks from her home, a stroke that had met its counter stroke when the saloon element threatened to boycott Granger's bank and open a rival financial inst.i.tution in one of the store-rooms of the recently erected hotel that faced the Court House Square, half a block away. Another crowd, the men with store-rooms and cottages to rent, promised to carry all their banking business to Barton, if Granger didn't "sit on his wife good and proper."

"Never was no such animal?" Bill repeated. "Wake up, j.a.p. Don't you know who Billy Wamkiss is?"

"Never heard of the guy," j.a.p insisted.

"He's that greasy, wall-eyed temperance lecturer that's been stringing the town for a week."

"Humph!" j.a.p snorted. "Time for you to wake up, Bill. You brought in the ad yourself, and you wrote the account of the first lecture. The columns of the _Herald_ will bear me out that the reverend gentleman's name is Silas Parsons."

"Yes, that's his reverend name," Bill snorted. "When he's the advance agent of a rotgut whiskey house over in Kentucky that supplies fancy packages to all the dry territory around here, he's plain Billy Wamkiss."

"Oh, that's his game!" j.a.p sat up, his gray eyes wide with astonishment. "How did you get next to it?"

"Your good friend, Wilfred Jones, put me wise. He didn't mean to, but he let it slip out when he wasn't watching. I ran into him over in Barton this morning and he was roasting Bloomtown as usual. Said we were a bunch of Rubes, to fall for a raw proposition like Billy Wamkiss, dressed up as a temperance lecturer. And then he went on to say that my daddy would get richer'n he already is, from his rake-off on the moisture that'll be injected into the town after she goes dry.

He said he met Wamkiss in Chicago three years ago, and he's been doing a rattling business all over the country--deliver lectures on the evils of the Demon Rum that'd bring tears to the eyes of a potato; dry up the territory, with the help of the churches; and then fill up the town with drug stores. That's his program, and it's going to work here, thanks to my amiable and honorable father."

j.a.p was silent. He had no words with which to express his emotions.

Bill went out on the street, his reporter's pad under his arm. In half an hour he returned.

"It's worse--I mean more incriminating--than I thought, j.a.p," he said, as he drew his partner into the private office and shut the door.

"Did you attend that meeting at the Baptist Church?" j.a.p asked anxiously.

"Yes, and I had to dig out before it was over. I wanted to explode, and blow up the whole bunch of idiots and crooks. Pap and Wamkiss, alias Parsons, have formed some kind of a Templar lodge, and my daddy's got himself elected secretary. They're going to dry up Bloomtown.

Fancy it! They did a lot of crooked work over at the Court House, so as to make it look as if all the licenses would expire at the same time. Holmes is the only one that's likely to squeal, because he's paid his second fee, and the others have only a few months to run.

They'll make it up to Holmes, I reckon, rather'n have him give the snap away. Of course, j.a.p, I haven't got the goods for any of this. I just put two and two together while I was listening to the speeches, especially my father's speech."

"Bill"--j.a.p laid his hand on Bill's arm--"you made the mistake of your career when you picked that owl for a daddy. He has made more trouble than three towns could stand up against. First, he throws the place wide open and takes all the stray saloons and gambling dens to his bosom; and just when we have a reputation for being the toughest town on the road and doing a land-office business in sin, he is--he is fool enough to try to pull off a stunt like this. What becomes of his plea for munic.i.p.al revenue when he turns saloons into drug stores?"

"Well, the lid's going on," Bill returned. "The preachers and the ladies are strong for it, and the right honorable Mayor announced that he was the Poo Bah that was going to put up the shutters."

"Better order a granite," j.a.p muttered, as he returned to the composing room.

And his prediction was well founded, for the town had become so used to its "morning's morning" that it fairly ravened for the blood of Mayor Bowers. The _Herald_ office became a forum for indignant orators, while the Mayor strutted proudly up and down Main street, with the black-coated Parsons, feeling that the eyes of the world were glued on him.

"Parsons! Bah!" spluttered Kelly Jones, who had driven four miles with his empty jug. "Ef the town has got any git-up, it'll ride him and that old jacka.s.s of a mayor on a rail."

"Judge Bowers is the honored father of our a.s.sociate Editor," informed j.a.p gravely.

As Bill looked up he thumped the galley he was carrying against the case and pied the whole column. After he had said what he thought about the catastrophe, Kelly grinned appreciatively.

"Them's my sentiments, Bill. Ef you love your pappy, you'd better let him go, along of Parsons, 'cause there's goin' to be doings around Bloomtown that'll hurt his pride. Parsons! They say out our way that his right name's Wamkiss."

The turgid tide of popular sentiment caused Mayor Bowers some uneasiness; but before anything could happen five new drug stores were opened for business and things moved placidly along again. Barton began to refer to "our neighbor, b.u.mtown," and it was reported that two blind tigers prowled in the environs of the railroad station.

"Bill," said j.a.p one morning, "this won't do. We'll have to raise h.e.l.l in this town. This is Ellis's town, and we're not going to let a dod-blinged mugwump like your asinine daddy ruin it. Bill, if you have got any speech to make, get ready. If you can't stand for my program, name your price, for the _Herald_ is going to everlastingly lambaste William Bowers, Senior."

"Pull the throttle and run 'er wild," Bill retorted, as he ducked down behind the press and dragged forth a box from the corner. "I'm going to get out that last lot of cuts that Ellis made," he continued.

"Kelly Jones knows sense. If I remember right, Ellis had twenty-five cuts of jacks for the stock bill. We will stick every blamed one of 'em in next week's issue, and label 'em Mayor Bowers. He has killed the town with his ideas. What can we do with him but hang him?"

When the _Herald_ appeared the following Thursday afternoon, the town quit business to read the war cry of Ellis's boy. It was a flaming sword, hurled at the Board of Aldermen. Bowers, foaming with wrath, stormed into the office.

"You take all that back," he yelled, "or I'll put you out of this here building. I've told you times enough this office belongs to me. I never turned it over to Ellis."

j.a.p stuck type, deadly calm on the surface of his being. Bill shifted uneasily, his hands clinched, his ruddy face glowing.

"You hear me?" bawled the irate Mayor.

j.a.p turned to consult his copy. Before the act could be imagined Bowers had struck him over the head with the revolver he dragged from his pocket. j.a.p fell, crumpling to the floor, the blood spurting across the type. For an instant there was horrified silence. Then, with a howl like that of a wild beast, Bill threw himself upon his father. But for the intervention of Tom Granger, who had followed the Mayor because he scented trouble, there would have been a quick finish to the pompous career of Bill Bowers's progenitor, for Bill had wrested the pistol from his father's hand and was pressing it against the temple of the worst scared coward Bloomtown had ever seen. There was a sharp tussle between the broad-shouldered banker and the frenzied youth. Several men rushed in from the street.

"Let me go!" shouted Bill, "for if he's killed j.a.p he's got to die."

They were carrying j.a.p out of the composing room, limp and bleeding.

"Let him alone, Bill," Tom counselled wisely. "Let your father alone, for if j.a.p is dead, we'll lynch him."

j.a.p was pretty weak when they brought the Mayor's resignation up from the calaboose for him to read. A representative delegation stood around his bed.

"Let the Judge out, for Bill's sake," j.a.p said.