The Brown Mouse Part 17

"Not in nine years!" replied Jim.

"Well, then, let's plan for ten years," said the colonel. "I ain't going to become a reformer at my time of life as a temporary job. Will you stick if we can swing the thing for you?"

"I will," said Jim, in the manner of a person taking the vows in some solemn initiation.

"All right," said the colonel. "We'll keep quiet and see how many votes we can muster up at the election. How many oan you speak for?"

Jim gave himself for a few minutes to thought. It was a new thing to him, this matter of mustering votes--and a thing which he had always looked upon as rather reprehensible. The citizen should go forth with no coercion, no persuasion, no suggestion, and vote his sentiments.

"How many can you round up?" persisted the colonel.

"I think," said Jim, "that I can speak for myself and Old Man Simms!"

The colonel laughed.

"Fine politician!" he repeated. "Fine politician! Well, Jim, we may get beaten in this, but if we are, let's not have them going away picking their noses and saying they've had no fight. You round up yourself and Old Man Simms and I'll see what I can do--I'll see what I can do!"

CHAPTER XV

A MINOR CASTS HALF A VOTE

March came in like neither a lion nor a lamb, but was scarcely a week old before the wild ducks had begun to score the sky above Bronson's Slew looking for open water and badly-harvested corn-fields. Wild geese, too, honked from on high as if in wonder that these great prairies on which their forefathers had been wont fearlessly to alight had been changed into a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the ruin of their former paradise. Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, had no such foolish notions, however. He stopped Newton Bronson and Raymond Simms as they tramped across the colonel's pasture, gun in hand, trying to make themselves believe that the shooting was good.

"This ain't no country to hunt in," said he. "Did either of you fellows ever have any real duck-shooting?"

"The mountings," said Raymond, "air poor places for ducks."

"Not big enough water," suggested Pete. "Some wood-ducks, I suppose?"

"Along the creeks and rivers, yes seh," said Raymond, "and sometimes a flock of wild geese would get lost, and some bewildered, and a man would shoot one or two--from the tops of the ridges--but nothing to depend on."

"I've never been nowhere," said Newton, "except once to Minnesota--and--and that wasn't in the shooting season."

A year ago Newton would have boasted of having "b.u.mmed" his way to Faribault. His hesitant speech was a proof of the embarra.s.sment his new respectability sometimes inflicted upon him.

"I used to shoot ducks for the market at Spirit Lake," said Pete. "I know Fred Gilbert just as well as I know you. If I'd 'a' kep' on shooting I could have made my millions as champion wing shot as easy as he has. He didn't have nothing on me when we was both shooting for a livin'. But that's all over, now. You've got to go so fur now to get decent shooting where the farmers won't drive you off, that it costs nine dollars to send a postcard home."

"I think we'll have fine shooting on the slew in a few days," said Newton.

"Humph!" scoffed Pete. "I give you my word, if I hadn't promised the colonel I'd stay with him another year, I'd take a side-door Pullman for the Sand Hills of Nebraska or the Devil's Lake country to-morrow--if I had a gun."

"If it wasn't for a pa.s.sel of things that keep me hyeh," said Raymond, "I'd like to go too."

"The colonel," said Pete, "needs me. He needs me in the election to-morrow. What's the matter of your ol' man, Newt? What for does he vote for that Bonner, and throw down an old neighbor?"

"I can't do anything with him!" exclaimed Newton irritably. "He's all tangled up with Peterson and Bonner."

"Well," said Pete, "if he'd just stay at home, it would help some. If he votes for Bonner, it'll be just about a stand-off."

"He never misses a vote!" said Newton despairingly.

"Can't you cripple him someway?" asked Pete jocularly. "Darned funny when a boy o' your age can't control his father's vote! So long!"

"I wish I _could_ vote!" grumbled Newton. "I wish I _could_! We know a lot more about the school, and Jim Irwin bein' a good teacher than dad does--and we can't vote. Why can't folks vote when they are interested in an election, and know about the issues. It's tyranny that you and I can't vote."

"I reckon," said Raymond, the conservative, "that the old-time people that fixed it thataway knowed best."

"Rats!" sneered Newton, the iconoclast. "Why, Calista knows more about the election of school director than dad knows."

"That don't seem reasonable," protested Raymond. "She's prejudyced, I reckon, in favor of Mr. Jim Irwin."

"Well, dad's prejudiced against him,--er, no, he hain't either. He likes Jim. He's just prejudiced against giving up his old notions. No, he hain't neither--I guess he's only prejudiced against seeming to give up some old notions he seemed to have once! And the kids in school would be prejudiced right, anyhow!"

"Paw says he'll be on hand prompt," said Raymond. "But he had to be p'swaded right much. Paw's proud--and he cain't read."

"Sometimes I think the more people read the less sense they've got," said Newton. "I wish I could tie dad up! I wish I could get snakebit, and make him go for the doctor!"

The boys crossed the ridge to the wooded valley in which nestled the Simms cabin. They found Mrs. Simms greatly exercised in her mind because young McGeehee had been found playing with some blue vitriol used by Raymond in his school work on the treatment of seed potatoes for scab.

"His hands was all blue with it," said she. "Do you reckon, Mr. Newton, that it'll pizen him?"

"Did he swallow any of it?" asked Newton.

"Nah!" said McGeehee scornfully.

Newton rea.s.sured Mrs. Simms, and went away pensive. He was in rebellion against the strange ways grown men have of discharging their duties as citizens--a rather remarkable thing, and perhaps a proof that Jim Irwin's methods had already accomplished much in preparing Newton and Raymond for citizenship. He had shown them the fact that voting really has some relation to life. At present, however, the new wine in the old bottles was causing Newton to forget his filial duty, and his respect for his father.

He wished he could lock him up in the barn so he couldn't go to the school election. He wished he could become ill--or poisoned with blue vitriol or something--so his father would be obliged to go for a doctor. He wished----well, why couldn't he get sick. Mrs. Simms had been about to send for the doctor for Buddy when he had explained away the apparent necessity. People got dreadfully scared about poison---- Newton mended his pace, and looked happier. He looked very much as he had done on the day he adjusted the needle-pointed muzzle to his dog's nose. He looked, in fact, more like a person filled with deviltry, than one yearning for the right to vote.

"I'll fix him!" said he to himself.

"What time's the election, Ez?" asked Mrs. Bronson at breakfast.

"I'm goin' at four o'clock," said Ezra. "And I don't want to hear any more from any one"--looking at Newton--"about the election. It's none of the business of the women an' boys."

Newton took this reproof in an unexpectedly submissive spirit. In fact, he exhibited his very best side to the family that morning, like one going on a long journey, or about to be married off, or engaged in some deep dark plot.

"I s'pose you're off trampin' the slews at the sight of a flock of ducks four miles off as usual?" stated Mr. Bronson challengingly.

"I thought," said Newton, "that I'd get a lot of raisin bait ready for the pocket-gophers in the lower meadow. They'll be throwing up their mounds by the first of April."

"Not them," said Mr. Bronson, somewhat mollified, "not before May. Where'd you get the raisin idee?"

"We learned it in school," answered Newton. "Jim had me study a bulletin on the control and eradication of pocket-gophers. You use raisins with strychnine in 'em--and it tells how."