XV
IN the early twilight of a Saturday afternoon late in October Garwood walked up Kaskaskia Street from the station in a cold, sullen rain, conscious of but one sensation—he was glad that only one more week of the campaign remained. He walked with long, deliberate strides, indifferent to the rain, which had beaten down his wide hat brim and trickled off it, before and behind, in little streams. His face, under those drooping eaves, was long and serious; it brightened, automatically, only when he met some pedestrian to whom in his capacity as a candidate, he involuntarily spoke a greeting.
Garwood had come home in response to a telegram from Rankin, a telegram which had concentrated such an urgency into its economically chosen ten words that he had traveled many miles since daylight over country roads and by rail to reach Grand Prairie at night. Now, just as the twilight was darkening and the lights were beginning to show in the stores along Main Street, he turned into the Lawrence Block and climbed to his office. The office was dark; young Enright, who was reading law under him, had gone into the country to make one of the political speeches he was proud of having been asked to deliver that fall; the typewriter had closed her desk and gone, and herlittle clock was ticking lonesomely beside her little vase of flowers. But in his private room, Garwood found Rankin sitting with his feet on the window-sill looking abstractedly down into the street where the lights from the store-windows wriggled in many lines across the canal of mud.
Garwood took off his hat, lashed it back and forth to get the water off, and slapped it down on the top of his desk. And then he said, in a voice that was rough and hoarse:
“Well, what’s the matter? Everything’s gone to hell, I suppose—heh?”
“No, it’s all right. I just want a talk with you,” said Rankin. “Have a good meetin’ last night?”
“Oh, first-rate; made a poor speech, though. Truth is, I’m about done up. Thank God it’ll be over in another week, whichever way it goes. Don’t know that I care”—his sentence was broken by a cough that shook him.
Rankin turned and tried to distinguish his features.
“Look’e here, Jerry,” said the big fellow, “you’ve got a cold—you’ll best go down and have Chris mix you a hot tod.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said Garwood, scraping his throat. “Go on with your tale of woe.”
“Well,” began Rankin with evident reluctance, “I hate to tell you, but the truth is, we’ve got to have some money, an’ I don’t know where it’s comin’ from. I’ve spent all we had, an’ more, too, an’ I’ve held up everybody here in town till I’ve squeezed ’em dry. They don’t like to give to usanyway; most of ’em has already contributed to the county fund, an’ they think that’s enough. I can’t use all the county funds fer you; the candidates is kickin’ already; they say I’ve been neglectin’ ’em fer you, an’ it won’t do to git ’em sore on us—’taint hardly square nohow. Damned if I like it. We’ve got along so fur, but now we’re up to the limit.”
“Wouldn’t the Hutchinsons give?”
“Well, they put all theirn in the county fund, so’s to elect Sanford; they say anyhow a congressman can’t help ’em; they’re lookin’ fer the treas’rer only—all they care fer is the bank.”
“That’s the way with those bankers,” said Garwood. “Hogs, all of them. That’s what we get for giving them Sanford. If we’d nominated a fellow of our own for treasurer we might have forced him to lay down on them.”
“Yes, you’re right, but that time’s gone by now, no use cryin’ over spilt milk. We’ve got to face the present. We owe a good many bills, some fer printin’, an’—”
“Can’t they wait till after election?”
“Oh, maybe they might, but I hate to ask ’em; it wouldn’t help us any. The postage—well, I’ve paid all that out o’ my own pocket.”
“You know how I appreciate that, Jim, don’t you?”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Rankin, waving his gratitude aside. “Then there’s theCitizenan’ some other papers over the district, they’re beginning to clamor fer the’r money.”
“It’s a regular hold-up, isn’t it?” said Garwood.
“That’s what you’ve got to expect in politics,” said Rankin. “But if that ’as all we might take care of it. The situation has taken a curious turn this last week.”
“How’s that?” asked Garwood, who had suffered from a candidate’s myopia, and could not note the numerous turns a situation takes during a campaign.
“Well, it’s this way. The committees is all kickin’ because your assessments hasn’t been paid. I’ve been tryin’ to make a poor man’s campaign fer you, an’ I’ve succeeded pretty well so fur, if I do say it myself. But the boys needs money everywhere; they want to finish up the’r poll, and over in Moultrie, where we had to deal with the Sprague kickers, a little money has justgotto be used, that’s all.”
“I thought you’d fixed Sprague?”
“Well, I made him come down, o’ course, but I wouldn’t trust the dirty whelp out o’ my sight on’y when I could see him, as the old widow woman said of her grandson, an’ I think we ought to pay the assessment over there anyway.”
“How much is it?” asked Garwood, with the pain an unrendered bill can give one.
“Two hundred,” said Rankin. “The boys over there say—shall I tell you what they say?”
“Yes; go on, I can stand anything nowadays.”
“Well, they say that now you’re goin’ to marry ol’ man Harkness’s daughter, you’d ought to get him to put up fer you.”
Garwood, in his hoarse voice, swore an oath.
“Well, I’m just tellin’ you what they say. They’re sayin’ that right here to home, an’ they’re sayin’ it pretty much all over the district. They think Harkness is made o’ money, an’ that it ’uld be easy fer him to put up some.”
“Have they ever known him to put up any for a campaign?” asked Garwood with a sardonic smile that Rankin could not see in the gloom.
“No, reckon not; but they look to you to loosen him up. But let me tell you,” Rankin hastened on, as if he had pleasanter information, “you know Bromley, when he got good an’ goin’, let loose a lot of his money—just sowed it ’round freely fer two or three weeks, an’ it kind o’ made up fer the mistakes he was makin’ on the stump. But now he’s done just what I knowed he’d do—here with election a week off, he’s got skeered an’ froze up stiff an’ cold, tighter’n a mill race in January—not a red cent ’ill he bleed now, an’ the whole push is sore on ’im. But I knowed he’d do it, I knowed it, from the very first.” Rankin chuckled at his own prophetic instinct. “So you see, we’d ought to take advantage of the situation. If I had a little money to use judiciously, I’d have ’em licked to a stand-still a week from to-night.”
Rankin rubbed his palms in the enthusiasm he would have felt in such a triumphant finish to his campaign, while Garwood’s heart beat a little higher as he thought of the security he would feel in the possession of a campaign fund. The little wave of excitement brought on a return of his cough.
“An’ now, Jerry,” Rankin resumed, “I’ll tell you why I sent fer you.” He drew his chair closer to Garwood, and laid his hand on Garwood’s knee. “My God, man!” he exclaimed, suddenly. “You been sittin’ here in clothes as wet as that?”
“Oh, go on,” said Garwood. “Let’s hear what you have to say. Don’t mind me, I’m all right.”
“Well, I’ll make it short,” said Rankin. “An’ then we’ll go down to Chris’s. What I want to suggest is this—I hate to do it, but it’s a groun’hog case, an’ you an’ me’s ol’ friends”—
“Go on,” urged Garwood.
“Well,” Rankin continued, with a reluctance, “I don’t like to—but here goes. We’ve got to have money—an’ I thought—well, that you might jus’ go to old man Harkness an’ make a little touch—fer a thousand, say—”
Garwood had already begun shaking his head vigorously.
“No, Jim, no,” he said; “not for all the world. It’s impossible; I can’t think of it. You can understand my position—I just can’t do it, that’s all. We’ve got to find some other way.”
“Well,” said Rankin, flinging up his hands as if he were flinging up the problem, “all right; you find the other way. I’ve been here rackin’ what few brains I’ve got fer a week, an’ I can’t think of any other way. God knows I’ve spent all I’ve got as it is.” He settled back in his chair and plunged his hands deep in his empty pockets.
“Yes, I know, Jim, and I appreciate it—but—I’ll tell you.”
Garwood sat and thought intently an instant, knitting his strong brows.
“No, I won’t tell you either, but I think I can raise it—I’ll see you to-morrow morning. I think I know of a place.”
“All right, Jerry,” said Rankin, getting up; “I don’t care where you get it—jus’ so’s you get it. I only want to see you landed high an’ dry out of the wet, my boy, that’s all.” And he hit Garwood on the shoulder.
“Here, let me hold it fer you,” he said a minute later, when Garwood had picked up his overcoat, heavy with its soaking in the rain.
Down in Chris Steisfloss’s saloon as they stood at the bar, and just as Garwood was ordering a drink, Rankin pushed him aside and said:
“No, you wait. Now Chris,” he went on, addressing the stolid man in the white apron, “you take a whisky glass an’ fill it with beer, mostly foam—same as all your beers—an’ then put a spoonful o’ that quinine on the foam.”
The man did as Rankin bade him, and when the white powder was floating on the sparkling foam, Rankin gave it to Garwood and said:
“Now you swallow that, quick; you can’t taste it. Then you can have your whisky.”