The Ramrodders Part 3

He took a jug out of the closet, and went to the low building. The chairman followed along, not comforted.

The woodsmen had piled their duffel-bags in corners and were waiting.

There were long tables up and down the centre of the room. They were flanked by benches. The tables were furnished with tin plates, tin pannikins, knives, and two-tined forks. The big boss had already given his orders. He and his crew had been expected. Men were hustling food onto the tables. There were great pans heaped with steaming baked beans, dark with mola.s.ses sweetening, gobbets of white pork flecking the mounds. Truncated cones of brownbread smoked here and there on platters.

Cubes of gingerbread were heaped high in wooden bowls, and men went along the tables filling the pannikins with hot tea. The kitchen was in a leanto, and the cook was pulling tins of hot biscuits from the oven.

There was not a woman in sight about "The Barracks." There had been none for years. Those men in the dirty canvas ap.r.o.ns were maids, cooks, and housekeepers.

It was hospitality rude and lavish. That low, dark room with its tiers of bunks along the four sides, its heaped tables, its air of uncalculated plenty, housed the recrudescence of feudalism in Yankee surroundings. And the lord of the manor set his jug at one end of the table and ordered the big boss to pipe all hands to grog.

"A pretty good lot, Ben," he commented as they crowded around. "And this here is something in the way of appreciation."

"Mr. Harlan coming out here to meet me, or am I going in and hunt him up?" inquired Kyle. "I suppose he has located most of the operations for next season."

"You'll take them in. Harlan won't be out for a while." He turned and walked away, the chairman with him.

"Your grandson seems to be as much in love with the woods as ever,"

commented Presson. "But I shouldn't think you'd want him to a.s.sociate with this kind of cattle all his life, herding Canuck goats on a logging operation. You've got money enough, the two of you. He ought to get out into the world, find an up-to-date girl for a wife, and get married."

Thornton had led the way out into the sunshine, and was strolling about the yard, hands behind his back.

"Luke," he confided after a few moments, "you've just tapped me where I'm tender. Look here, if it was just me and me only that this hoorah here to-day was. .h.i.tting, I'd tell 'em to take their d.a.m.nation nomination and make it a c.o.c.k-horse for any reformer that wants to ride. I'd do it, party or no party! But the minute it leaked out that I was putting Harlan up for the caucus they turned on me. And now I propose to show 'em."

The chairman stopped and stared at his friend. That piece of news had not reached him till then.

"You don't mean to tell me," he demanded, "that you're going to take this time of all others to swap horses? Why, Harlan Thornton can't play politics! He doesn't know--"

"He don't need to. I'll play it for him. Between you and me, Luke, he doesn't even know yet that he's going to run for the legislature. I'm keeping him up in the woods so that he won't know. He's one of those stiff-necked young colts that wants to do only what he wants to do in a good many things." He added the last with a growl of disgust. "And he won't allow that any old man can tell him a few things that he doesn't know."

"Now, Thelismer," protested the chairman, "I don't know anything about what's going on in your family, here, and I don't care. I know your grandson is a straight and square young chap, a worker, and a good business man, but he's no politician. I'm not going to stand for his b.u.t.ting in at this stage of the game."

"He isn't b.u.t.ting in. I'm throwing him in, like I'd train a puppy to swim," retorted the old man, calmly. "And, furthermore, what business of yours is it, anyway?"

"I'm chairman of the State committee."

"And I'm the boss of this legislative district. Now, hold on, Luke." He bent over and planted his two big hands on the chairman's shoulders.

"Harlan is all I've got. He's always been a steady, hustling boy. But to get him out of these woods and smoothed up like I want him smoothed up has been worse than rooting up old Katahdin. I've been pioneer enough for both of us. I don't propose to have him spend the rest of his life here. First off, he thought it was his duty to me to take the business burden off my shoulders. Now he's got into the life, and won't stand for anything else. And the only thing I care for under G.o.d's heavens at my age is to have him be something in this State. He's got the looks and the brains and the money! And he's going to be something! And I'm going to see him started on the way. G.o.d knows where I'll be two years from now. You can't reckon on much after eighty. To-day I'm feeling pretty healthy." There was a bite in his tone. "And I'm going to nominate Harlan for the legislature, and then I'm going to elect him. I'm going to see him started right before I die."

"And he doesn't want to go, and the voters don't want him to go,"

lamented Presson. "You're only trying to bull through a political slack-wire exhibition for your own amus.e.m.e.nt--and this whole State on the hair-trigger! By the mighty, it isn't right. I won't stand for it!"

The Duke started for the front of the mansion.

"And, furthermore, Thelismer, if you're willing to run a chance of tipping over the politics of this State for the sake of giving your grandson a course of sprouts, you're losing your mind in your old age, and ought to be taken care of."

Thornton turned and bestowed a grim smile on his angry friend.

"Presson, I've stood by the machine a good many years. Now, if I can't stand for a little business of my own without a riot, bring on your riot. I'll lick you in that caucus with one hand while I'm licking that dirty bunch of rebels with the other. I've got my reasons for what I'm doing."

"Give me a good reason, then," begged the chairman. "Killing off your friends for the sake of giving Harlan Thornton a liberal education doesn't appeal to me."

"My real reason wouldn't, either--not just now," returned the Duke, enigmatically.

At that moment half a dozen gaunt hounds raced around the corner of "The Barracks." They leaped at Thornton playfully, daubing his crash suit with their dusty paws. He seemed to recognize them. He cursed them and kicked them away savagely.

CHAPTER III

DENNIS KAVANAGH'S GIRL

A rangy roan horse followed the dogs, galloping so wildly that when his rider halted him his hoofs tore up the turf as he slid. A girl rode him.

She was mounted astride, and Presson had to look twice at her to make sure she was a girl, for she wore knickerbockers and gaiters, and her copper-red hair curled so crisply that it seemed as short as a boy's.

"Good-morning, Mr. Duke," she called. "Is Harlan down from the woods yet?"

The old man turned to march off after a scornful glance at her. He kicked away another dog. Then he whirled and stepped back toward her. It was anger and not courtesy that impelled him.

"He isn't here, and he won't be here. And how many times more have I got to tell you not to be impertinent to me?"

"How, Mr. Duke?"

"By that infernal nickname," he stormed. "Young woman, I've told you to stay on your side of the river, and you--"

"Really you ought to be called 'Duke' if you order folks off the earth that way," she cried, saucily. "But I did not come to see you, Mr. Duke.

I came to see Harlan. Has he got home yet?"

She swung sideways on her horse and nursed her slender ankle across her knee. It was plain that she had expected this reception, and knew how to meet it. She gazed at him serenely from big, gray eyes. She smiled and held her head a little to one side, her nose tiptilted a bit, giving her an aggravatingly teasing expression.

"I tell you he's not here, and he won't be here."

"Oh yes, he will. For"--she smiled more broadly, and there was malice in her eyes--"I sent word to him to come, and he's coming."

"You sent word to him, you red-headed Irish cat? What do you mean?"

The lord of Fort Canibas strode close to her, pa.s.sion on his face.

Presson could see that this was no suddenly evoked quarrel between the two. It was hostility reawakened.

"I mean that I'm looking out for the interests of Harlan when those at home are plotting against him. I hear the news. I listen to news for him, when he's away in the big woods. And I'm not going to let you send him off down to any old prison of a legislature, where he'll be spoiled for his friends up here. And he doesn't want to go. And he'll be here, Mr. Duke, to see that you don't trade him off into your politics."

She delivered her little speech resolutely, and gave him back his blistering gaze without winking.

"Oh, my G.o.d, if you were--were only Ivus Niles, or Beelzebub himself sitting there on that horse," Thornton gasped. "You--you--" he turned away from her maddening smile and stamped about on the turf. The hounds still played around him, persistent in their attentions. He kicked at them.

"It suits me to be just Clare Kavanagh, Mr. Duke--and I'm not afraid of you!"

"Kyle--ho there, Kyle!" The big boss came out of the "ram pasture,"

wiping food fragments from his beard. "Get a rifle and shoot these dogs. Clean 'em out! Take two men and ride this Irish imp across the river where she belongs."