CHAPTER XXV
When he went back to Louisville, early in September, Boone found the office of Colonel Wallifarro humming with a suppressed excitement, tinctured with indignation. A municipal campaign was on, and on the day of his arrival General Prince and Colonel Wallifarro were deep in its discussion. Seeing the earnest gleam in their eyes, Boone wondered a little at the contrasting indifference in Morgan's manner whenever the political topic was broached. He fancied that the Colonel himself was disappointed, and one morning that gentleman said with a tone as nearly bordering on rebuke as Boone had ever heard him employ with his son, "Morgan, I don't understand how you can remain so unmoved by a situation which makes an imperative demand upon a man's sense of citizenship."
Morgan laughed. "Father," he said easily, "it is law that interests me – not politics. Take it all in all, I don't think it's a very clean business."
The elder man studied his son thoughtfully for a space, and then he said quietly, "General Prince and myself take a different view. We think that at certain times – like the present – citizenship may mean a call to the colours… A failure to respond to such a summons seems to me a surrender of civil affairs into the hands of avowed despoilers – it seems almost desertion."
"And yet, sir," smiled the unruffled Morgan, "we rarely see permanent reforms result from crusading patriots. The ward heelers are usually the victors, because professionals have the advantage of amateurs."
That same evening Boone stood in a small downtown hall, crowded to the doors, and heard Colonel Wallifarro lay the stinging lash of denunciation across the shoulders of the city hall oligarchy. He heard him charge the police and the fire departments with fostering a perpetuation of machine abuses in the hands of machine hirelings – of maintaining a government by intimidation and force, and he too wondered how, if these charges were tinctured with any colour of truth, a free-hearted man could stand aside from the combat. He knew too that Colonel Wallifarro did not indulge in unconsidered libels.
At the door, when the sweltering meeting ended, he noticed close behind him a man talking to a policeman.
"These here silk-stocking guys buttin' in gives me a pain," announced that heated critic. "They spill out an earful of this Sunday-school guff before election day, but when the strong-arm boys get busy they fade away – believe me, the poor boobs fade out!"
"They ain't practical," agreed the patrolman judicially, and Boone made a mental note of his badge number. "They think one and one make two – but we know that if you fix a couple of ones right it's just as easy to make an eleven with 'em."
Boone and Anne had gone horseback riding one afternoon that September, and it was a different sort of excursion from those that they had taken together in the mountains.
The boy was mounted on Colonel Wallifarro's saddle mare, and the girl on a high-headed four-year-old from the same stable. They were not picking their way now through tangled trails that led upward, but were cantering along the level speedway toward the park set on a hill five miles south of the city. There, at the fringe of a line of knobs, was the only approach to be found in this table-flat land to the heights which they both loved.
These hills were only little brothers to the loftier peaks of the Cumberlands – but the air was full of Indian summer softness, and the horses under them were full of mettle – and they themselves were in love.
"Boone," demanded the girl, drawing down to a sedate pace, after a brisk gallop that had lathered the flanks and withers of their mounts, "what is it that interests you so in this campaign? You can't even vote here, can you?"
The young man shook his head, and now the smile of humour which had once been rare upon his face flashed there – because he had reached a point where his development was beginning to take some account of perspectives and balances.
"No, I can't vote here – but I can get as bitter over their fights as if they were my own. I couldn't explain why I'm interested any more than a hound could tell why he wants to run with the pack. It's just that the game calls a man."
"Morgan calls politics the sport of the great unwashed," observed Anne. "He says it gives the lower class a substitute for mental activity and demagogues a chance to exploit them."
"Does he?" inquired Boone drily.
"Boone" – Anne's eyes filled suddenly with a grave anxiety – "aren't you really working so hard about all this business – because Uncle Tom is so deeply involved in it and because you think he's in some danger?"
Boone leaned forward to right a twisted martingale, and when he straightened up he answered slowly: "I suppose any prominent man in a hard fight may be in – some danger, but he doesn't seem to take it very seriously."
"Why," she demanded, "can't men oppose each other in politics without getting rabid about it?"
"They can – when it's just politics. This is more than that, according to the way we feel about it."
"Why?"
"Because we charge that the city hall is in the hands of plunderers and that for tribute they give criminals a free hand in preying on the citizens."
"And yet," demurred the girl, with puzzled brow, "men like Judge McCabe laugh at all this 'reform hysteria,' as they call it. They aren't criminals."
Boone nodded. "There are good men in the city hall, too, but they belong to the old system that puts the party label above everything else."
They reached the brow of the hill and stood, their horses breathing heavily from the climb, looking off across the country where on the far side other knobs went trooping away to meet the sky.
The bridles hung loose, and the girl sat looking off over leagues of landscape with grave eyes, while Boone of course looked at her. The beauty of the green earth and blue sky was to his adoration only a background for her nearer beauty.
The boy, as he gazed at the delicate modelling of her brow and chin, wondered what was going on in her thoughts, for there was a wistful droop at the corner of her lips; yet presently, even while it lingered there, a twinkle riffled in her eyes.
"I ought to be all wrought up, I suppose, over this crusade on wickedness," she announced, though with no sense of guilt in her voice, "and yet if it weren't for my friends being in it, I doubt whether it would mean much to me – . I've got too much politics of my own to worry about."
"Politics of your own?" he questioned. "Why, Anne, your monarchy is absolute; there isn't a voice of anarchy or rebellion anywhere in your gracious majesty's realm – and your realm is your whole world."
Boone, the bluntly direct of speech, was coming on in the less straitened domain of the figurative. Anne was teaching him the bright lessons of gaiety.
She laughed and drew back her shoulders with a mock hauteur. "Our Viceroy from the Mountain Dominions flatters us. We have, however, the Mother Dowager – and we approach the age for a suitable alliance."
The two horses were standing so close together that the riders were almost knee to knee, and just then they had the hilltop to themselves. The humorous smile that had been on the lips of the young mountaineer vanished as characters on a slate are obliterated under a sponge. His cheeks, still bronzed from a mountain summer, went suddenly pale – and he found nothing to say. What was there to say, he reflected? When the mentor of a man's common sense has forewarned him that he is being shadowed by an inevitable spectre, and when that spectre steps suddenly out into his path, he should not be astonished. Boone only sat there with features branded under the shock of suffering. His fine young shoulders, all at once, seemed to lose something of their straight vigour and to grow tired. His palms rested inertly on his saddle pommel.
But the girl leaned impulsively forward and laid one of her gloved hands over his. Her voice was a caress – touched with only a pardonable trace of reproach.
"Do you doubt me, dear?" she asked. "In those politics that you are playing, I don't see anybody giving up – because there is opposition ahead."
Then the momentary despair altered in his manner to a grim expression of determination.
"Forgive me, Anne," he begged. "It's not that I doubt you – or ever could doubt you; but I know right well what a big word 'suitable' is in your mother's whole plan of life."
"I know it, too," was her grave response. "Mother's life has been an unhappy one, and she has given it all to me. That's why I say I have enough politics of my own. I couldn't bear to break her heart – and her heart is set on Morgan. So you see it's going to take some doing."
"Anne," he spoke firmly, but a tremour of feeling crept into his voice, "Mrs. Masters loves you with such a big and single love that it can't reason. Her own sufferings have come from knowing poverty, after she'd taken wealth for granted – so that is the one danger she'll guard against for you. It's an obsession with her. All the other things that might wreck your life – such as marrying a man you didn't love, for instance – she merely waves aside. If a man's been scarred with a knife, he's apt to forget that others have not only been hurt but killed by bullets. My God, dearest, she'll mean to be kind – but she'll put you on the rack – she'll take you straight through the torture-chamber, in her well-meant and cocksure certainty that she can choose for you better than you can choose for yourself."
"I think, Boone," said Anne, with more than a little pride in the rich softness of her voice, "you wouldn't hang back, because you had to come to me through things like that. I'm not afraid of the torture-chamber – it's just that I want to make it as easy for mother as I can."
On the night before the first day of registration Boone was dining at Colonel Wallifarro's house. Mrs. Masters found it difficult to maintain a total concealment of her distrust of the mountain boy. In her own heart she always thought of him as "that young upstart," but her worldly wisdom safeguarded her against the mistaken attitude of open hostility or even of too patronizing a tolerance. That course, she knew, had driven many high-spirited daughters into open revolt. "Make a martyr of him," she told herself with philosophically shrugged shoulders, "and you can convert an ape into a hero."
So after dinner Boone and the girl sat uninterrupted in the fine old drawing-room where the age-ripened Jouett portraits hung, while Morgan and his father went over some papers in the Colonel's study on the second floor.
"Boone," demanded the girl, "what is all this talk about camera squads and inspection parties? I'm afraid Uncle Tom – and you, too – are going to be running greater risks tomorrow than you admit."
He had risen to say good night, but it is not on record that lovers resent delays in their leave-takings.
"At the registration every qualified voter must be enrolled," he told her. "The camera squads have been formed to make rounds of the precincts and take certain pictures."
"Why?"
"Because we have fairly reliable information that the town will be overrun with flying squadrons of imported repeaters – and that the police who should lock them up mean to protect them."
"What are repeaters?" she naïvely inquired, and he enlightened her out of the treasury of his newly acquired wisdom.
"We believe that hundreds of floating and disreputable fellows have been brought in from other towns and will be registered here as voters. After registering they will disappear as unostentatiously as they came. But meanwhile they will not satisfy themselves with being enrolled once, as the decent citizens must do. They will go from precinct to precinct, using fake addresses and changing names."
He smiled grimly, and then added with inelegant directness:
"We aim to get pictures of some of those birds – for use in court later."
"And the police will hamper you?"
"We don't expect much help from them."
Anne's eyes clouded with apprehension. She laid her hands on the boy's arms. "Boone," she exclaimed, "you know Uncle Tom. In spite of his gentleness, indignation makes him reckless. Will he be armed tomorrow?"
Boone shook his head. His eyes narrowed a little, and his tone indicated personal disagreement with the decision which he repeated:
"No. They've decided that since they're seeking reform they must keep inside both the letter and the spirit of the law. They've advised every one to go unarmed except for heavy walking sticks. Even that has brought a howl of 'attempted intimidation' from the city hall crowd – but I reckon their gangs won't be unheeled."
"Are you going to be armed?"
Boone hesitated, but finally he answered with a trace of the ironic: "I haven't quite made up my mind yet. You see, I learned my politics in the bloody hills – though I never carried a gun when I was campaigning there. Here, where it's civilized – I'm not so sure."
"Will you be with Uncle Tom, all the time tomorrow? Will you go everywhere that he goes?" The question was put as an interrogation, but it was an earnest plea as well, and Boone took both her hands in his. They stood framed in the hall door, he holding her hands close pressed, and her eyes giving him back look for look.
"I'll be with him every minute he'll let me," he declared. "Of course a soldier must obey orders, and he can't choose his station."
It was standing like that with Boone holding Anne's hands, and their faces close together, that Morgan, whose footsteps were soundless on the carpeted stairway, saw them, and it was not a picture to reassure a rival or to assuage the disdainful anger of a man of Morgan's temperament for one whom he considered an ingrate and a presumptuous upstart.
CHAPTER XXVI
Morgan's teeth closed with a slight click. The sinews of his chest and arms tightened. Such insolence rightfully called for the chastisement of cane or dog-whip, he thought, but that was impossible. He might undertake to rebuke Boone openly but could hardly assume so high-handed a course with Anne – or in her presence. He would nevertheless conduct his own affairs in his own way; so, quietly and with no intimation that he had been a witness to what he construed as an actual embrace, he turned and went back to the stairhead.
From there his voice, raised in a conversational tone to reach his father in the study, carried with equal clarity to the room below.
"Father," he called, "I'll see you in the morning. I have to run down to the office for an hour or so now. I didn't quite finish looking over those latest depositions in the Sweeney case."
After having served that notice of his coming, he strolled casually down the stairs – to overhear nothing more incriminating than Anne's earnest exhortation: "Promise me not to take any foolish chances tomorrow," and Boone's laugh, deprecating the apprehension. Boone held only one hand now.
But Morgan ground his teeth. The young cub had doubtless been trying to capitalize his petty part in the petty political game, he reflected. That was about the thing one might expect from a youth pitchforked into polite society out of a vermin-infested log cabin, where the women smoked pipes and dipped snuff! But his own bearing was outwardly unruffled as he took down his hat from the old mahogany hall stand.
"Mr. Wellver," he suggested – (he always called Boone Mr. Wellver, because that was his way of indicating his line of aloofness against distasteful intimacy) – "could you come to the office this evening for a while? There's a matter I'd like to talk about."
Boone repressed the flash of surprise which the request brought into his eyes. He knew of no business at the office in which he and Morgan had shared responsibility, and heretofore Morgan had rather resented his participation in any work more responsible or dignified than that of an office boy or clerk.
"Why, yes," he answered. "I was going home, but of course if it's important, I'll be there."
"I regard it as important."
Boone caught the intimation of threat, but Anne, knowing little of law-office procedure, recognized only what she resentfully considered a peremptory and supercilious note.
Morgan nodded to Anne, and let himself out of the door, and less than an hour later Boone entered the office building, deserted now save for the night watchman, and for scattered suites, here and there, where window lights told of belated clerks toiling over ledgers, or lawyers over briefs.
As the young man from the mountains let himself in through the door that bore the name of his employer's firm, the other man was standing with his back turned and his eyes fixed on some trifle on his desk. The back of a standing figure, no less than its front, may be eloquent of its feelings, and had the shoulder blades of Colonel Wallifarro's gifted son been those of a hairy caveman, instead of an impeccably tailored modern, there would perhaps have been bristles standing erect along his spine. Wellver saw that warning of ugly mood in the instant before Morgan wheeled, and he wheeled with a military quickness and precision.
"I was a little bit puzzled," said the younger man, meeting the glaring eyes with a coldly steady glance, "at your asking me to come here tonight. I couldn't think of any work we'd been doing together."
"I won't leave you in perplexity long," the wrathful voice of the other assured him. "I asked you to come because I couldn't well say what needed to be said under my father's roof – while you were a guest there."
"I take it, then, that it's something uncomplimentary?"
"I mean to go further than that."
Boone nodded, but he came a step nearer, and the lids narrowed over his eyes. "Whatever you might feel like saying to me, Mr. Wallifarro," he announced evenly, "would be a thing I reckon I could answer in a like spirit. But because I owe your father so much – that I've got to be mighty guarded – I hope you won't push me too far."
"I haven't the right to say whom my father shall permit in his house," declared Morgan with, as yet, a certain remnant of restraint upon his anger, "but I do assert plainly and categorically that I shan't remain silent under the abuse of that hospitality."
"I'm afraid you're still leaving me in considerable perplexity. I believe you promised not to do that long."
"I'd rather not go into details – and I think you know what I mean. I came down the stairs there a short while ago. You were with Anne – and I didn't like the picture I saw."
"What picture?"
"For God's sake, at least be honest!" retorted Morgan passionately. "Whatever barbarities mountain men have, they are presumed to be outspoken and direct of speech."
"We generally aim to be. I'm asking you to be the same."
"Very well. I mean to marry Anne, who is my cousin – and whose social equal I am. It doesn't please me to have you confuse my father's welcome with the idea of free and easy liberty. Is that clear?"
Morgan was glaring up into Boone's eyes, since Boone stood several inches the taller, and Boone's fingers ached to take him by the neck and shake him as a terrier does a rat. The need of remembering whose son he was became a trying obligation.
"Does Anne – whose social equal you are – know – that you're going to marry her?" he inquired, with a quiet which should have warned Morgan had he just then been able to recognize warnings.
"Perhaps," was the curt rejoinder, and Boone laughed.
"No, Mr. Wallifarro," he said. "No – even that 'perhaps' is a lie. She doesn't so much as suspect it. As for me, I know you are not going to marry her."
Morgan had turned and walked around behind his desk, and as Boone added his paralyzing announcement, he threw open the drawer. "I aim to marry her myself – when I've made good – if she'll have me."
Morgan halted, half bent over, and his eyes burned madly.
"You!" he exclaimed, with a boiling over of contemptuous rage. "You damned baboon!"
The words had sent Wellver, like the force of uncoiled springs, vaulting over the table, and his face had gone paste-white. Yet as he landed on the far side he halted and drew himself rigidly straight, though to keep his arms inactive at his sides he had to tense every sinew from wrist to shoulder, until each fibre ached with the cramp of repression. He had caught himself on the brink of murder lust, with the murder fog in his eyes. He had caught himself and now he held himself with a desperate sense of need, though he saw Morgan's fingers close over the stock of a heavy revolver. He even smiled briefly as he noted that it was a gun with an elegant pearl grip.
"If any other man of God's earth had fathered you," he said, each word coming separately like the drippings from an icicle, "I'd prove that I wasn't only a baboon but a gorilla – and I'd prove it by pulling the snobbish head off of your damned, tailor-made shoulders. People don't generally say things like that to me and go free."
Morgan too was pallid with anger, and in neither of them was any tragedy-averting possibility of faltering courage. Wallifarro held the pistol before him, and gave back a step – only one, and that one not in retreat but in order that he might have a chance to speak before he was forced to fire.
"I realize perfectly," he said, "that physically I'd be helpless in your hands. I'm as much your inferior in brute strength as – as mentally and socially – you are – mine. I don't want to take any advantage of you – it seems that we have to fight. – I'm waiting for you to draw."
He paused there, breathing heavily, and Boone stood unmoving, his hands still at his sides.
"I'm not armed," he said, and now he had recovered a less strained composure. "Why should I come with a gun on me when a gentleman of high social standing invites me to his office?"
"You're quibbling," Morgan burst out with a fresh access of fury. "You've given me the right to demand satisfaction. You've got a pistol in your desk there, haven't you?"
"Maybe so. Why do you ask? Isn't one gun enough for you when your man's unarmed?"
"Great God," shouted the Colonel's son, "are you trying to goad me into insanity? You are going to need one sorely in a moment. I give you fair warning. I'm tired of waiting. Will you arm yourself?"
Boone shook his head.
"I told you when I came in here why I wouldn't fight you. I can't fight your father's son. You know as damned well as you know you're living that no other man on earth could say the things you've said and go unpunished – and you know just that damned well, too, why I'm holding my hand."
As he paused, both were breathing as heavily as though their battle had been violently physical instead of only verbal, and it was Boone who spoke next.
"Put away that gun," he ordered curtly. "Unless you're still bent on doing murder."
He stepped forward until his chest came in contact with the muzzle, his own hands still unlifted.
"Get back!" barked Morgan, who stood with his back against the desk. "If you crowd me I will shoot."
There was a swift panther-like sweep of Boone's right arm and Morgan felt fingers closing about his wrist. Then reason left him and he pressed the trigger.
But no report started echoes in the empty building. Morgan felt only the bone-crushing pressure that made his wrist ache as it was forced up, and then he saw that the hand which had closed vice-like on it had one finger thrust between the hammer and firing pin of his weapon.
The reaction left him dizzy, as he reflected that he had done all that man could do toward homicide and had been halted only by his unarmed adversary's quicker thought and action. Boone uncocked the firearm and laid it on the table, under the other's hand.
"I guess you see now," said Morgan in a low voice, "that after this the two of us can't stay in this office."
Boone nodded. "I know, too, that I've got to get out. You're his son, but" – his voice leaped – "but I know that having held myself in this long I can last a little longer. You're too sanctified for politics and dirty work like that. But your father's in it – and until this election is over I'm going to stay right with him – I'm going to do it because he's in actual danger. After that I'll quit – I'm not afraid of cooling off too much in the meantime, are you?"
"By God, NO!"