CHAPTER XXVII
Boone rose by gas-light the next morning and from the bureau of his hall bedroom, after removing a slender pile of shirts and underwear, he extracted a heavy-calibred revolver in a battered holster of the mountain type – the kind that fits under the left armpit, supported by a shoulder strap.
He took the thing out of its case and scrupulously examined into the smoothness of its working after long disuse, debating the while whether to take it or leave it. He knew that though the "pure in heart" – as an administration speaker had humorously characterized the myrmidons of the city hall – might, with impunity, carry – and even use – concealed weapons, he and his like need expect no leniency in the courts for similar conduct. The advice at headquarters had been emphatic on that point: "Keep well within the law. There may be court sequels."
But Boone meant to be Colonel Wallifarro's bodyguard that day. He felt designated and made responsible for the Colonel's safety by Anne, and he knew that before nightfall contingencies might arise which would overshadow lesser and technical considerations. So he strapped the holster under his waistcoat, and went out into the autumn morning, which was gray and still save for the rumbling of occasional milk wagons.
At Fusion headquarters few others had yet arrived, but shortly he was joined by Colonel Wallifarro and General Prince, and within the hour the barren suite of rooms was close thronged and thick with the smoke of many cigars. Telephones were ajingle, and outside in the street a dozen motors were parked.
Nor was there any suspense of long waiting before events broke into racing stride, as a field of horses breaks from the upflung barrier.
From a half dozen sources came hurried complaints of flagrant violations and of police violence or police blindness.
When the polling places had been open an hour the wires grew feverish. "A crowd of fifteen men came here and registered at opening time," announced one herald. "Forty-five minutes later the same gang came back and registered again. The protest of our challenger was ignored."
There were not enough telephones to carry the traffic of lamentation and complaint. "Our camera men are being assaulted and their instruments smashed…" "The Chief of Police has just been here and left instructions that snapshotting is an invasion of private rights. He has ordered his men to lock up all photographers…" "Our judge in this precinct challenged a man when he tried to register, the second time, and a crowd of thugs with blackjacks rushed the place and beat him unconscious. The police said they saw no difficulty."
So came the burden of chorused indignation, and the automobiles began cruising outward on tours of investigation and protest. The "boys" had been assured that they were to have "all the protection in the world," and they were "going to it."
From this and that section of the city arrived news of men who had been blackjacked, crowd-handled and arrested, but out of the whole rapidly developing reign of terror certain precincts stood forth conspicuous. Seated beside Colonel Wallifarro in the dust-covered car that raced from ward to ward, while the Colonel's face streamed sweat from the hurried tempo of his exertions, Boone marvelled at the fashion in which these men combined indomitable perseverance with self-contained patience. Often he himself burned with an angry impulse to jump down from his seat and punish the insolent effrontery of some ruffian in uniform.
"I reckon you don't know who these gentlemen are," he protested at one time to a police sergeant, whose manner had passed beyond impertinence and become abuse.
"No and I don't give a damn who they are," retorted the guardian of peace. "I know what this business means to me. It's four years with a job or four years without one."
Twice during the morning they were called to a building that had once been a shoemaker's shop. The erstwhile showcase was dimmed by the dust of a dry summer and the grimy smears of a rainy autumn. There the tide of bulldozing had run to flood, and the Fusion judge of registration, an undersized chap with an oversized courage, had wrangled and fought against overweening odds until they took him away with both eyes closed beyond usefulness. A challenger with less stomach for punishment had borne the brunt as long as he could – and weakened. Colonel Wallifarro's car stood before the place and, with a weary gesture, he turned to Boone.
"My boy," he said shortly, "we've got to put a man in there. I don't like to ask it – but you'll have to take that challenger's place."
Boone had seen enough that morning to make him extremely reluctant to leave the Colonel's side, and he answered evasively, "I'm not a citizen of this town, Colonel."
"You don't have to be to challenge." So Boone went in. The place was foul with the stench of bad tobacco. The registration officers, who had so far had their way, were openly truculent.
"Here comes a new Sunday-school guy," sneered a clerk with a debauched face, looking up from the broad page of the enrolment book. "I wonder how long he'll last."
For a time it seemed that Boone was to enjoy immunity from the heckling under which his predecessors had fallen, but the word had gone out that a "bad guy" had come in for the Fusionists who needed handling, and his apparent acceptance was nothing more than the quiet that goes before the bursting of a thunder head.
His place was inside, so he could make no move when news drifted in that one of the outside watchers had been assaulted and perhaps seriously hurt, though he guessed that the car, in which he had been riding that day, would again roll up, and that perhaps Colonel Wallifarro would once more be the target of gutter insult. Indeed, he fancied he recognized the toot of that particular horn a few minutes later, but as he strained his ears to make something of the confusion outside the door burst open and a group of a dozen or so ruffians forced their way into the cramped space, brandishing sticks and pistols.
"Where's this here fly guy at?" demanded the truculent leader of the invasion, and others used fouler expletives. Boone should perhaps have felt complimented that such a handsome number should have been told off to deal with his case, but as he rose to his feet he caught a glimpse over their heads of Colonel Wallifarro standing in his car outside and of confused disorder eddying about it.
Boone drew so quickly that there was no opportunity to halt him, and he fired as unhesitantly as he had drawn. With a threat unfinished on his lips the leader of the "flying squadron" crumpled to the floor, and with swift transition from bravos to fugitives his tatterdemalion gang left on the run.
Boone, with the pistol still in his hand, hurried out to the sidewalk, and at the picture which met his eyes halted on the dirty threshold.
Colonel Wallifarro still stood in the car, but on the sidewalk was General Prince, and the chivalric old gentleman was wiping blood from his face, while the dust on his clothes told clearly enough that he had been knocked down. Boone's veins were channels of liquid fire.
But that was not all. Morgan Wallifarro, still as immaculate as usual, was standing two paces away, and a burly policeman with a club raised over his head was abusing him with vicious obscenities.
So Morgan was no longer sulking in his tent! Morgan had belatedly taken his place at the Colonel's side, and as he stood there, threatened with a night-stick, Boone heard his declaration of war.
"I've never been in politics before," he declared in a voice of white-hot fury, "but I'm in now to stay until every damned jackal of you is whipped out of office – and whipped into the penitentiary. Now hit me with that stick – I dare you – hit me!"
Still brandishing the club above the young lawyer's head with his right hand, the patrolman shoved him roughly in the chest with his left. He was obviously seeking to force Morgan into striking at him so that, given a specious plea of self-defence, he might crack his skull.
It was then the voice of Boone sounded from the rear:
"Yes, hit him – I dare you, too!"
The officer wheeled, to see the tall and physically impressive figure of the mountain man standing the width of the sidewalk away. He held a pistol, not levelled but swinging at his side, and as if in silent testimony that it was not a mere plaything a thin wisp of smoke still eddied about its mouth and the acrid smell of burnt powder came insidiously out through the door.
Boone strolled forward.
"Mr. Wallifarro, get back in that car," he directed. "This blue-belly isn't going to trouble you."
"What the hell have you got to do with this?" bellowed the officer, but the club came down. "You are under arrest."
"Show me your warrant."
"I don't need no warrant."
The crowd, including those who had fled from the registration room, hung back in a yapping but hesitant circle. Blackjacking non-combatants had proven keen sport, but this fellow with the revolver in a hand that seemed used to revolvers, and a gleam in the eye that seemed to relish the situation, gave them pause.
Somewhat blankly the officer reiterated his pronunciamento. "I don't need no warrant."
"This gun says you need one," came the calm rejoinder. "You've got one yourself, and you can whistle up plenty of other harness bulls – all armed, but if you do I'll get you first. My name is Boone Wellver. Now, are you going to get that warrant or not?"
For an instant the policeman hesitated; then he conceded as though he had never contested the point.
"I ain't got no objection in the world to swearing out a warrant for you – since you've told me what your name is. But don't try to make no get-away till I come back."
"I'll be right here – when you come back."
The patrolman turned and walked away, and Boone wheeled briskly to the car.
"Now you gentlemen get out of this – and do a little warrant-swearing yourselves. Be over at Central Station in about forty-five minutes fixed to give bond for me. I reckon I'll be needing it."
Ten minutes later, with a spectacular clanging of gongs, a police patrol clattered up, scattering the crowd and disgorging a wagonload of officers headed by a lieutenant with a drawn pistol.
They handled Boone with unnecessary roughness as they nipped the handcuffs on his wrists and bundled him into the wagon, but he had expected that. It was their cheap revenge, and he gave them no satisfaction of complaint.
In the cage at Central Station into which they thrust him, with more violence, his companions were a drunken negro and one or two other "election offenders" like himself.
It was through the grating that he looked out a half hour later, to see Morgan Wallifarro standing outside.
"Father and the General are arranging bond," announced the visitor. "I wanted a word with you alone."
Boone's only response was an acquiescent nod.
"I lost my head last night, Wellver," Morgan went on shamefacedly. "I was a damned fool, of course, to imagine that I could bully you, and a cad as well. I lied when I intimated that you were – not anybody's equal. If I were you, I'd refuse to accept an apology, but at all events I've got to offer it – abjectly and humbly."
There was no place in the close-netted grating of that door through which a hand could be thrust, and Boone grinned boyishly as he said, "I accept your advice and refuse to shake hands with you – Wallifarro – until the door's opened."
Boone's pistol was held, of course, as evidence, but without it he went back to the registration booth, and as he took his seat the man of the debauched face looked up, with surprised eyes, from his book; but this time he volunteered no comment.
In the police court on the following morning both Boone and his arresting officer were presented, as defendants, and the officer's case was called first on the docket. Taking the stand in his own defence, the officer glibly testified that he had struck General Prince, of whose identity he had been unfortunately ignorant, because that gentleman had seemed to make a motion toward his hip pocket, but that he had, under much goading, refrained from striking Morgan Wallifarro.
"Why," purred the shyster who defended him, "did you so govern your temper under serious provocation?" And the unctuous reply was promptly and virtuously forthcoming: "Because police officers are ordered not to use no more force than what they have to."
General Prince smiled quietly, but Morgan fidgeted in his chair.
The police judge cleared his throat. "It appears obvious to the Court," he ruled, "that a man of General Prince's high character did not intend to threaten or hamper an officer in the proper performance of his sworn duty. But these gentlemen in the heat and passion of political fervour seem to have assumed – unintentionally, perhaps – a somewhat high-handed and domineering attitude. It would be manifestly unjust to exact of a mere patrolman a superior temperateness of judgment. Let the case be dismissed."
But when Boone was called to the dock, the magistrate eyed him severely not through, but over, his glasses, putting into that silent scrutiny the stern disapproval of a man looking down his nose.
"I find three charges against this defendant," he announced. "The first is shooting and wounding; the second, carrying concealed a deadly weapon, and the third, interference with an officer in the discharge of his duty."
The wounding of the flying squadron's leader was a matter for the future, since the victim of the bullet lay in a hospital, and that case had already been continued under a heavy bond. After hearing the evidence on the other accusations, the judge again cleared his throat.
"The 'pistol-toter' is a constant menace to the peace of the community, and there seems to be no doubt of guilt in the present case – but since the defendant has recently come from a section of the State which condones that offence, the Court is inclined to be lenient. The resistance to the officer was also a grave and inexcusable matter, but because of the character testimony given by General Prince and Colonel Wallifarro, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I will, on my own motion, amend these charges to disorderly conduct. Mr. Clerk, enter a fine of $19 and a bond of $1,000 for a year."
Morgan Wallifarro was, at once, on his feet.
"May it please your Honour, such a punishment is either much too severe or much too lenient. I move, your Honour, to increase the fine."
"Motion overruled," came the laconic judgment. "Mr. Clerk, call the next case."
"Your Honour has fixed a punishment," protested Colonel Wallifarro's son with a deliberately challenging note in his voice, "which is the highest fine in your power to inflict without opening to us the door of appeal. Had you added one dollar, we could have carried it to the Circuit Court – and we believe that it was only for the purpose of denying us that right that you amended the charges. In the court of public opinion, before which even judges must stand judgment, I shall endeavour to make that unequivocally clear."
"Fine Mr. Wallifarro twenty dollars for contempt of Court!" This time the voice from the bench rasped truculently, forgetting its suavity. "And commit him to jail for twenty-four hours."
That evening Boone Wellver paid two calls behind the barred doors of the city prison. One was to Asa Gregory, who still languished there, and the other to the lawyer who had been willing to pay for his last word.
"I'm sorry you lashed out, Wallifarro," said Boone. "But I'd be willing to change places with you, for the satisfaction of having said it."
Morgan grinned with a strong show of white teeth.
"It's cheap at the price," he declared, "and as for lashing out, I haven't begun yet. From now on I'm going to work regularly at this contempt of court job, unless I can put some of these gentry behind bars or make them swim the river. I've hung back for a long while but now I've enlisted for the war."
As Judge McCabe had said, Morgan lacked the diplomatic touch.
CHAPTER XXVIII
One morning of frosty tang, that touched the pulses with its livening, found Boone's eyes and thoughts wandering discursively from the papers massed on his desk. His customary concentration had become a slack force, though these were days of pressing hours and insistent minutes in the Wallifarro offices. The reception room was crowded with waiting figures that savoured of the motley, and this was one of the new things brought to pass by the strange bedfellowship of politics. Yonder in a corner sat with fidgeting restiveness a young man whose eyes, despite his obvious youth, were mature in guile and pouched with that pasty ugliness with which unwholesome night life trade-marks its own.
He was one of that crew imported from elsewhere to register, re-register and vanish, but he had lingered, and now a grievance had sent him skulking to the enemy's camp with vengeance in his heart. In an interval of political inaction he had picked a pocket and had been locked up by a "harness bull" who had never liked him and who chose to disregard his present and special prerogative. In court he had been dismissed with an admonition, it is true, but his dignity was affronted. This morning he sat in the anteroom of Morgan Wallifarro, ready, in the inelegant but candid parlance of his ilk, to "spit up his guts."
Not far from him sat a woman whose profession was one of the most ancient and least revered. The vivid colouring of her lips and cheeks shone out through thickly laid powder in ghastly simulation of a coarse beauty long fled. "I lodged a good half-dozen of those beer-drinking loafers, though they roistered and drove away my respectable trade – and then the cops had the nerve to raid me," she inwardly lamented. Now she, too, sat among the informers.
Morgan had complained that reformers always failed through their dreamy impracticability. Now he was being as practical as the foes he sought to overthrow. From the dribble of small leaks come the breaks that wreck dams, and Morgan was neglecting none of them.
To Boone, whom he no longer quarantined behind a manner of aloofness, he had confided, "We have no illusions about the courts. Their judgments will bear the label of party, not justice; but when they turn us down I mean to make them do it in the face of a record that will damn them before the public."
So, together with gentlemen like General Prince and ministers of the Gospel bearing sworn narratives of police browbeating, came the backwash of the discontented riffraff: deserters who were willing to disclose their secrets to appease their various resentments.
Boone, who had played simple and direct politics in the backwoods, found himself in the midst of a more intricate version of the game – and into it he had thrown all the weight of his energies – until this morning.
Now, as he sat gazing out over roofs and chimney-pots, a messenger boy, impatient of anteroom delays, burst officiously into his office.
"Are you Mr. Morgan Wallifarro?" he demanded, scanning a label on the package he bore, and, as Boone shook his head, he heard Morgan's voice behind him: "I'm the man you're looking for."
Then as the younger Wallifarro took the package from the snub-nosed Mercury, he opened it, revealing a gold-knobbed riding crop. Once before that morning the young attorney had halted the all-but-congested tide of business to telephone to a florist, and through the open door Boone had heard the order given. Then Morgan had directed that violets and orchids be sent that evening to Miss Anne Masters. Presumably the riding crop was bound for the same destination.
"Anne's riding some of those Canadian hunters tonight at the Horse Show," was Morgan's casually put remark as he felt Boone's eyes upon him. "I thought she might like this."
It was the first time that Anne's name had passed conversationally between them since the evening when, in that same office, Morgan's pistol had clicked harmlessly, and upon each face fell a faint shadow of embarrassment. Then Wellver admitted, "It's a very handsome one," and the other passed on into his own office.
Already Boone had been thinking of those Canadian hunters. It was that which had lured his mind away from his littered desk and filled him with the spirit of truancy.
Tonight would see the opening of the Horse Show with the fanfare of its brass bands and the spreading of its peacock plumes of finery.
Following upon it, as musical numbers follow an overture, would come the dances for the débutantes, and Anne would be a débutante. In that far, tonight would be a sort of door closing against himself as one holding no membership in that circle whose edicts were written by Fashion. It was, however, of another phase of the matter that his present restiveness was born. Yesterday afternoon he had slipped into the emptiness of the Horse Show building for an inquisitive half hour, and had seen a hard bitten stable boy trying to rehearse a stubborn roan over the jumps.
The heavy white bars stretching between the wings of the hurdle had looked to him – thinking then, as now, of Anne – disquietingly formidable and full of bone-breaking possibilities. This morning she was to acquaint herself with her mounts. She might even now be at the hazardous business. Suddenly Boone pushed back his papers, locked the drawer of his desk, and took down his hat and overcoat. He was playing hookey.
Steps hurried by anxiety carried him to the building, where the great roof was festively draped with bunting and where the smell of tanbark came up fresh to the nostrils. A stretch of empty galleries and vacant tiers of boxes gave an impression of roofed vastness, and he searched the spacious arena, dotted here and there with knots of stable boys and blanketed horses, until he caught sight of Anne.
The mount to whose saddle she was at the moment being lifted was not reassuring to his mood. To its bit rings hung a stable boy by both hands, and the boy's dogged set of countenance bespoke hostile distrust for his charge, whose nostrils were distended and ember red. Boone noted, too, as he hurried across the tanbark, that one of the animal's eyes showed that wicked patch of white which bespeaks, for a horse, a lawless predilection. As the girl settled herself, the beast flinched and shivered, and the stable boy seemed about to be lifted clear of the earth where he hung, anchoring the splendidly shaped but vicious head.
Just then Boone came up and heard a fellow, whom he took to be a trainer, speaking near his elbow.
"There ain't no jump that will stop him. He can skim six foot like a swallow and cop every ribbon at the show – if he's a mind to. And if he ain't got a mind to, he'll just raise merry hell and tear up the place."
Then the groom cast loose, and the horse launched himself upward, plunging violently and lashing out with his fore-feet.
Boone halted and caught his breath with a nervous intake. He knew that Anne rarely and most reluctantly used a whip on a horse, and as he saw her lash fall twice, three times, with resolute sweeps that brought out welts upon the satin flanks, he realized that she had been warned upon what manner of horse she was to mount. It was a brief conflict of wills, then the red-nostrilled gelding came down to all fours and answered amenably to rein and bit. Round the arena he swept with the rhythm of his rapid gallop, breaking to a speedy dash as he neared the obstacles, rising upon a flawless and seemingly winged arc that skimmed the fences with swallow-like ease. Anne rode back flushed and triumphant, and as Boone came up, with breathing that was still quick, he heard the trainer voicing his commendation:
"You handled him like a professional, Miss Masters, and he takes a bit of handling, too. There ain't many ladies I'd be willin' to put up on him." Then the practical Canadian added, as Anne slid down and laid her gloved hand on the steaming neck: "He's a classy-looking individual, ain't he now? You'd never guess that I took him out of a plough, would you?"
"Out of a plough!" echoed the girl. "Why, he's a picture horse! His lines are almost perfect!"
The horseman nodded and grinned. "He's all of that, ma'am, but just the same when I first saw him he was pulling a plough – or, rather, he was trying to run away with one. Of course he must of had the breeding somewhere way off. I reckon he's a throw-back, but if I hadn't come along and seen him he'd still be drudging away on a rocky farm in the hills. As it is, he's took blues and reds all through Canada and the East – and I've a notion you're going to ride him out the gate with a championship tie on his brow-band tonight."
As Boone turned away with Anne, the words seemed to ring in his ears: "If I hadn't come along and seen him, he'd still be drudging away on a rocky farm in the hills." It fitted his own case precisely, but it made him think, too. He wondered if the time would ever come when people would look at him in public places and find it hard to realize that his youth had been like that magnificent show horse's colthood – a life close to the clods.
Nothing could have kept Boone Wellver away from the Horse Show that evening, but he went with a self-confessed trepidation hard to conceal. In the wide, barnlike foyer of the building, a vertigo of stage fright obsessed him. Never had he seen such a massed and bewilderingly colourful display of evening dress, nor heard such a confused chorus of bright laughter, light talk and blaring orchestration. In the first dizziness of the impression he had the sense of intruding on Fashion vaunting itself unabashed to the trumpetings of heralds, and there swept back over him the positive pain of diffidence which he had felt that other time, when he stood in the open doorway of Colonel Wallifarro's house and announced that he had come to the party.
Inside, as he forced himself onward, his disquiet increased as the blaze of colour heightened and bloomed in the flower-like tiers of the boxes. The glistening shoulders of women in filmy gowns, the sparkle of jewellery, the flash of silk hats and the nodding of pretty faces, all confused him as dry land things might confuse a fish, and he felt unintentionally impertinent when his sleeve of decent black brushed a soft arm white gloved to the shoulder.
Boone Wellver would have fled incontinently from that place had he not been held there by his anxiety for Anne, which would not be allayed until the ladies' hunters had been judged, the ribbons pinned on the fortunate head-stalls and the exit gates swung open and closed. And the jumping class, with its spectacular dash of danger, was held for the last, as the climax is held for the curtain of the act.