"There"s a fire up Jo Quacca way!" called some one. The windows of town hall were high and uncurtained. All could see. Smoke, ominous and yellow, ballooned in huge volumes across the blue sky of the June day.
"There ain"t no bonfire in that, gents," declared a man. "That fire has got a start, and if it"s in that slash from that logging operation, it ain"t going to be put out with no pint dipperful."
There was sudden hush in the big room. All men were gazing at the mounting ma.s.ses that rolled into the heavens and blossomed bodefully over the wooded hills. Fat clouds of the smoke hung high and motionless.
From the earth went up to them whirls and spirals and billowing discharges like smoke from noiseless artillery.
A man had climbed upon a window-sill of the hall in order to see more clearly.
"I tell you, boys," he shouted, "that"s a racin" fire, and it"s in that Jo Quacca slash! I, for one, have got a stand of buildin"s in front of that fire."
He jumped down and started for the door. Several men followed him.
The chairman of the town committee began to shake a paper above his head.
"It"s no time to be leaving a caucus," he pleaded. "We"ve fixed up a new call. We"ll get down to business now."
"I know where my business is just this minute!" shouted the man who was leading the first volunteers. "And it ain"t in politics."
The chairman tried to put a motion to adjourn, but at that moment the meeting-house bell began to clang its alarm.
"Save your property, you Jo Quacca fellows!" some one cried, and the crowd stampeded.
Thornton remained in his place in front of the rostrum. He noted who were running away. The deserters were the back-district voters--the opposition among whom his enemies had prevailed. The villagers remained.
Here and there among them walked Talleyrand Sylvester. He was un.o.btrusive and he spoke low, but he was earnest.
When at last the chairman made his voice heard, Ivus Niles was shouting for recognition. That stern patriot had remained on guard.
"Maybe my house is burning, gents, but I ain"t going to desert my post of duty till a square deal has been given. I call on you to adjourn this caucus till evening."
"Question!" was the chorus that a.s.sailed the chairman. The villagers crowded around the rostrum.
The motion to adjourn was voted down with a viva voce vote there was no disputing.
"It ain"t just nor right!" squalled the War Eagle. "I"m here to protest! You ain"t giving the voters a show! This thing shan"t be bulled through this way!"
But that caucus was out of the hands of Mr. Niles and such as he, though some of the staunchest of Thornton"s opposition had remained to fight.
Sylvester elbowed his way to the front, his followers at his back.
"I move, Mr. Chairman, that the check-list be dispensed with. It ain"t ever been used in this caucus, anyway. And I"m in favor of hustling this thing so that we can all get up there and fight that fire. I don"t believe in staying here caucusing, and let folks" property burn up."
The opposition howled their wrath. They understood all the hypocrisy of this bland a.s.sertion, but protest amounted to nothing. The voters were behind Sylvester. That gentleman promptly put in nomination the name of Harlan Thornton for representative to the legislature from the Canibas cla.s.s of towns and plantations, and the choice was affirmed by a yell that made the protesting chorus seem only a feeble chirp. And then the caucus adjourned tumultuously.
Through it all Thelismer Thornton stood with shoulders against the boarding, that quizzical half-smile on his face. He walked out of the hall past the outraged Ivus Niles without losing that smile, though the demagogue followed him to the door with frantic threats and taunts.
The meeting-house bell still chattered its alarm, an excited ringer rolling the wheel over and over.
Chairman Presson, who had found speech inadequate for some time, followed the Duke to the stairway outside, and stood beside him, gazing up at the conflagration. Smoke masked the hills. Fire-flashes, pallid in the afternoon light, shot up here and there in the yellow billows rolling nearest the ground.
"I tell you, Thelismer, you"ll never get across with this! It"s too devilish rank!"
Elder Dudley marched past, leading the last stragglers of his following from the hall. His face was flushed with pa.s.sion, but he had neither word nor look for the Duke. Even Niles was silent, bringing up the rear of the retreat, pumped dry of invective.
"You"ll be up against Dudley, there, at the polls, running on an independent ticket. He"s sure to do it!" went on Presson, watching them out of sight.
"You don"t know the district," said Thornton, serenely. "And what"s more important, I"ve got almost three months to meet that possibility in. I had only three hours to-day. You needn"t worry about the election, Luke."
With his eyes still on the seething smoke vomiting up from the Jo Quacca hills he lighted a fresh cigar.
"There"s something up there that"s worrying me more. Cobb has got fire enough to break up a State convention."
Certain columns of smoke shot up, bearing k.n.o.bs like hideous mushrooms.
The k.n.o.bs were black with cinders and spangled with sparks. The menace they bore could be descried even at that distance. A breeze wrenched off one of those k.n.o.bs, and carried it out from the main conflagration. The roof of a barn half-way down the hillside began to smoke. Sparks had dropped there. After a time the two men could see trickles of fire running up the shingles.
"There goes one stand of buildings," announced Thornton.
"I swear, you take this thing cool enough!"
"Well, I"m not a rain-storm or a pipe-line, Luke. There"s nothing more I can do. When Sylvester gets there with his crowd I"ll have a hundred men or so of my own fighting it. And if a man sets fire on his land the law makes him pay the neighbors if the fire gets away and damages them. I"m prepared to settle without beating down prices. Let"s go over to The Barracks."
Presson went along grumbling.
"You ought to have stayed in this fight this year for yourself, Thelismer. There was no need of all this uproar in ticklish times. A proposition like this makes the general campaign all the harder." He kept casting apprehensive glances behind at the swelling smoke-clouds.
"I"m paying the freight, Luke."
"There"d have been no fight to it if you"d stayed in yourself. Even your old whooping cyclone of a Niles, there, said that much. You"ve gone to work and got your grandson nominated, but between him and the bunch and that fire up there it looks to me as though your troubles were just beginning. Say, look here, Thelismer, honest to gad, you"re using our politics just to grind your own axes with!"
"And you never heard of anybody except patriots in politics, eh?"
"When you prejudice a State campaign in order to break up a spooning-match and to give your grandson a course of sprouts outside a lumbering operation, you"re making it a little too personal--and a little too expensive for all concerned."
The State chairman had his eyes on the fire again.
"As far as my business goes--that"s _my_ business," said the Duke, placidly. "As for the expense--well, I never got a great deal of fun out of anything except politics, and politics is always more or less expensive. When the bills get in for what has happened to-day I reckon I"ll find the job was worth the price. You needn"t worry about me, Luke--not about my failing to get my money"s worth. For when I walk across the lobby of the State House, and they can say behind my back, "There"s old Thornton--a gone-by. Got licked in his district!" When they can say that, Luke, life won"t be worth living, not if I"ve got thousand-dollar bills enough to wad a forty-foot driving-crew quilt!"
CHAPTER VII
WITH THE KAVANAGH AT HOME
When Harlan Thornton rode away out of the yard of the town house he was the bitterest rebel in the Duke"s dominions. But he realized fully the futility of standing there in public and wrangling with his grandfather.
He understood pretty well the ambitious motive his grandfather had in forcing his will; Thelismer Thornton had urged the matter in the past.
It had been the only question in dispute between them. And the young man had never resented the urgings. He appreciated what his grandfather hoped to accomplish for the only one who bore his name. But this high-handed attempt to shanghai him into politics outraged his independence. His protests had been unheeded. The old man had not even granted him an interview in private, where he could plead his own case.