“Well, Amos, you’re home.”
“Looks that way,” Amos agreed.
“Hardiston ain’t changed.”
“No, Hardiston don’t change.”
“Same old town.”
“Yeah, same old town.”
Silence settled down upon them again. Wint was thinking of Hetty. She had been in his mind all day; she and the miserable man who had faced him in the court that morning. They were somehow linked in his thoughts; linked in a fashion that accused him. Accused him, Wint Chase, of responsibility for them. He groped for understanding, trying to guess why this was so.
Amos, abruptly, looked at Peter Gergue. “Pete,” he said, “I want to talk to Wint.”
Peter got up instantly. “Why, sure, Amos,” he agreed. “I got to see some men, anyways.”
“Be in your office in the morning?” Amos asked.
“Guess likely.”
“I’ll drop in.”
Peter nodded, and Amos went with him to the door. When he came back, Wint was still sitting, nursing his pipe. Amos looked at him, sat down, looked at Wint again; and at last asked:
“We-ell, Wint, how’s tricks?”
Wint said, after a little consideration, that he guessed tricks were all right.
“Like being Mayor?”
“It’s—sobering,” Wint told him. “It’s a good deal of a job. For me.”
“Tell you,” said Amos. “Any job’s a good deal of a job; if a man takes it serious.”
Wint laughed. “Shouldn’t wonder if I took this too seriously,” he said.
“Can’t be done,” Amos reassured him. “Any man that has to look out for other men has a serious job.”
Wint said nothing to that. He was wondering if it were a part of his job to look out for Hetty, and that drunken man of the court.
“That’s what being Mayor amounts to,” Amos remarked. “Found it so, haven’t you?”
Wint stirred in his chair. “Amos,” he said, “a thing happened last night. I feel like telling you about it. Don’t need to ask you not to pass it on.”
Amos tilted his head on one side, squinting at Wint wisely. “That’s all right,” he said. “Tell on.”
The permission relieved Wint immensely; he felt as though he had been loosed from bondage. He told, in a swift rush of words, the story of Hetty. How she had come home last night. He went on, told about the man in court that day. Hetold Amos what had happened, what he had done, the order he had given Radabaugh.
Amos looked at him curiously. “Told Jim that, did you?”
“Yes.”
“What did Foster say?”
Wint grinned. “Said he’d be damned.”
“I reckon not,” Amos decided, after a moment’s thought. “He won’t be. He’s all right.”
“He thought I was foolish. I suppose I was.”
Amos said slowly: “Depends on why you did it, Wint. Depends on what was in your mind.”
That set Wint thinking again, trying to decide just what had been in his mind. Amos smoked steadily, not looking at Wint at all. At last he said again:
“Yes, sir, Wint. Depends what was in your mind.”
Wint assented thoughtfully. “I suppose so,” he said.
Amos tried waiting in silence for him to go on; but Wint was busy thinking; he beat Amos at his own game without knowing it. He drove Caretall to ask:
“What was in your mind, Wint?”
The boy groped for words; he flushed uneasily, as though afraid of being laughed at. “Well,” he said, “I had a fool sort of a feeling that I was to blame.”
Amos nodded slowly. “Well,” he said, “that’s what I meant—in a way—when I said you had a job that meant taking care of folks. Hetty, and that old rip—they’re folks, like any one else, like as not.”
“Yes, they are,” Wint agreed.
“Taking care of them; that’s your job, Wint. Maybe that just means fining them, and sending them to jail.”
“I tell you I won’t do that again,” Wint exclaimed. “I told you the order I gave Jim Radabaugh.”
“We-ell,” said Amos slowly. “That’s all right. Far as it goes. Might go farther.”
“Farther? How?” Wint demanded. “What can I do?”
“I hadn’t anything pa’ticular in mind,” Amos said carelessly. “Hadn’t a thing in mind.” He looked at Wint sidewise. Wint’s face was white with the intensity of his thought. Amos said slowly: “Looks like a shame to have drunk folks around in as pretty a town as Hardiston.”
“A shame?” Wint cried. “It’s damnable.”
“Guess most folks don’t like it,” Amos reminded him. “Town voted dry. Guess that shows most folks wanted it to be dry, don’t it?”
“I suppose it does,” Wint agreed. Amos looked at him; and Wint moved abruptly in his chair, and his eyes began to flame. The puzzle cleared; he began to understand. He began to understand himself, his own thoughts, his feeling that he was to blame for—Hetty. He began to understand, and his lips set. He said, half aloud: “By God, it means a fight! A hell of a fight in Hardiston.”
“Fight?” Amos asked casually, as though he were thinking of something else. “I like a fight, I’d like to see a good one.” And he added, after a moment: “I might take a hand; if it weren’t a private fight, or something.”
Wint sat forward in his chair, looked around the room. “Where’s the telephone?” he asked.
“Telephone?” said Amos. “Why, in the hall.”
Wint got up and went swiftly out into the hall. Amos listened; and he smiled, with a twinkling anticipation in his eyes. He heard Wint ask the operator to locate Jim Radabaugh and get him on the ’phone. Then Wint came back and stood in the doorway, waiting while she signaled for the marshal with the red light that was set on a pole in the heart of the town. Amos did not turn around to look at Wint. Wint did not move.
After a while, the ’phone rang twice. “That’s us,” said Amos, still without turning. “Our ring is two.”
Wint went to the ’phone. Radabaugh, at the other end, said: “This is the marshal. Who’s talking?”
“Wint. Mayor Chase.”
“Oh! All right, Mister Mayor. What’s on your mind?”
Wint said evenly: “I’ve instructions for you. If you are willing to carry them out, all right. If not, resign, and I’ll fill your place to-morrow.”
“You’re the boss,” said Radabaugh amiably. “I do what you say.”
“Either do what I say or resign,” said Wint again. “I want you to get busy and break up the liquor business in Hardiston.”
There was a long silence, and Wint heard the marshal whistle softly under his breath. Then Radabaugh asked:
“In earnest?”
“Absolutely. I want the town cleaned up. I want it bone dry. Will you take the job? Or quit?”
“Why,” said Radabaugh, “I’ll just naturally take the job. I’ve been a-wishing I had something to do.”
Wint spoke a word or two more, hung up, and came back to Amos. He sat down without speaking. After a little, Amos asked, looking at Wint sidewise:
“Going through with it?”
“Yes,” said Wint. There was more resolution in the simple word than there would have been in lengthier protestations.
“We-ell, all I can say,” Amos drawled, “is that this here is going to make an awful difference to V. R. Kite.”
It did: a difference to Kite, and to Wint’s father, and to Jack Routt; and a difference to Wint himself. A difference to Hardiston, too.
When Wint went home, at ten o’clock, the word was already humming around the town.
END OF BOOK THREE
JIM RADABAUGH, the city marshal, that is to say, the chief of police, was a man not without honor in Hardiston. A good fellow, and a cool, brave officer. That he was a good fellow, every one who knew him could attest. He had no enemies. It was a pleasure to be arrested by him. There was an equable good nature in the man, and a drawling humor in the very tones of his voice which inspired good nature and good humor in return. He was a lean man, lazily erect, as though it were too much trouble to be stoop-shouldered. Black hair, black eyes.... A chronic bulge in his cheek that housed the wad of tobacco which he kept there. An intimate acquaintance with the intricacies of big-league baseball as set forth in the public prints; a repository of racing lore; a good pool player and a redoubtable hand at poker. All in all, a good man to keep the peace according to his lights.
People said he was easy-going, but every one knew he was no slacker of duty or of obligation. Three years back—that was before they elected him marshal—he had been under fire for the first time. It was on the interurban street-car line that ran from Hardiston “up the crick.” Radabaugh sat in the front of the car, facing the rear; and a man in the middle of the car ran amuck with a revolver, shooting wildly. He killed one man, wounded another, in the seconds it took Radabaugh to charge down the aisle and overwhelm him. The conductor of the car, at the moment, was hiding under a rear seat; and the motorman had jammed off his power and jumped overboard, into a ditch that had more water in it than he had counted on. Radabaugh knocked the man over with a cuff of his fist, and pinned him, and took his gun away.
His friends told him he ought to run for office after that. He said he didn’t mind. His business was not an exacting one. He and his brother were tailors, and his brother could handle the bulk of their work anyway. So Jim ran for marshal, and was elected. Thereafter, when he was not occupied with his official duties, he used to drop in at the tailor shop to help things along there. It was no sight for timid customers, trying on their new suits while Jim’s brother chalked them in mysterious places, to see Jim come in and go to work. He always came in casually, spat in the appointed direction, then produced from one pocket and another his gun, his handcuffs, and his club. He was accustomed to lay these on one of the bolts of cloth which stocked the shelves, then seat himself cross-legged on the table, with a little cloth apron on his knees, and pick up the first task that came to hand.
His duties as marshal were not pressing, for Hardiston folk commit few crimes, and usually commit those away from home. When he was wanted during the day, the telephone operator called the shop. If she wanted to locate him after dusk, she flashed a signal light which called him to the telephone. For the most part, his time was his own.
And this is not to say that Jim Radabaugh had nothing to do. There was the case, for example, of the darky who was wanted for burglary in one of the cities in the southern part of the state. Jim got word that he was drinking in a hovel down by the creek, with two other men. So he went down there and strolled in and told the man he was wanted. Jim’s hands, at the moment, were in his coat pockets. The darky pulled a revolver, jammed it against Jim’s breast, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; that is to say, nothing happened to Jim. The darky’s gun did not explode, but Jim’s did. It burned a hole in his pocket, and it bored a hole in the darky, neatly amidships, in such fashion that there was no further occasion to trouble with that man. His body, laid open with two slashes of the coroner’s knife that intersected on the bullet hole, was on view for a day or two in the undertaker’s back room; and small boys went in to see it. They thought Jim Radabaugh was rather more than mortal, after that.
As a matter of fact, it had been a narrow squeak for Jim, asan examination of the darky’s weapon proved. That unfortunate man had apparently been unable to buy revolver ammunition, so he had bought rifle cartridges of the desired caliber and whittled off the bullets to make them fit into the cylinder of the revolver. Perhaps he had hurried with this bit of preparation; at any rate, he left one of the bullets too long, and when he pulled the trigger, the bullet caught and prevented the cylinder from turning. Which undoubtedly saved Jim Radabaugh’s life.
People agreed that was a good thing; for Jim was a good fellow. Wint’s orders to clean up the town interested him. They meant some measure of excitement, and he liked excitement. He told two or three people, that night, and they spread the news. But Jim took no official step till next day. Then he set out to serve notice on those most concerned.
One of these people most concerned was a man named Lutcher. His place of business was on the second floor of a building that fronted on one of the alleys in the heart of town. You climbed an outside stair from the alley to Lutcher’s door. Wint and Jack Routt went there, that night of Amos Caretall’s first home-coming, from their interrupted billiard game. Lutcher’s place was perhaps the best in town; that is to say, the surroundings were least sordid, and the wares he sold most meritorious. He was financed, of course, by Kite.
Radabaugh went there first. He had been there before, in his personal capacity. He had no scruples about such visits. Lutcher was a lawbreaker, of course; but the lawbreaking was tacitly accepted. There had been no orders against it. And Jim Radabaugh had no objection to a drink now and then. So he climbed the stairs from the alley to Lutcher’s door, and knocked, and Lutcher opened the door and admitted him. This Lutcher was not a bad fellow, say what you will of his business. A big, bald man with a husky, whispering voice, and a habit of appearing in his shirt sleeves. He wore rather attractive silk shirts, chosen with no mean taste; and his vests were often remarked. Also, he smoked good cigars, instead of the well-nigh universal stogie of Hardiston; and he gave these cigars freely to his regular customers.
Lutcher had not heard the news, the night before. So he greeted Marshal Radabaugh good-naturedly, and told him it was pretty early in the day for a drink, and that he would lose his reputation if he came here by daylight in this fashion. Jim laughed at that, and asked cheerfully whether Lutcher had a good stock on hand.
“Ice chest full, and a sawdust bin packed with bottles,” Lutcher told him. “What’s yours? The same.”
“Any reserve supply?” Radabaugh asked. Lutcher said there was no reserve; that he was expecting a shipment in a day or two. Radabaugh nodded.
“Got bad news for you, Lutch,” he said.
Lutcher beamed. He was always an amiable man. “Can’t make me feel bad, Jim,” he said. “Shoot the wad.”
“Going to close you up,” said Radabaugh.
Lutcher laughed. “Fat chance, I guess. What’re you trying to do? Work me for a snifter. All right. Say the word.”
“Straight goods,” Radabaugh assured him. “Mayor’s orders.”
“Wint’s orders? That’s a hot one.” Lutcher chuckled, his gay vest heaving with his mirth. “Why, Wint’s one of my regular customers.”
“Ain’t been in lately, has he?” Radabaugh suggested.
“No, not just lately. It wouldn’t look right.”
Radabaugh nodded. “He’s in earnest, I’d say,” he told Lutcher. “Anyway, I do what he says. He didn’t say anything about confiscating the stuff, or destroying it. Said to stop the sale. So I’ve got to seal you up, Lutch.”
Lutcher had been losing some of his amiability. He told Radabaugh so. “I’m a good-natured man,” he said. “But this is no joke.”
“No,” said Jim. “It’s no joke. Where’s your ice box?”
“What in time do you think you’re going to do?”
“Put a seal on it, and on that bin of yours. And drop in and look at the seals every day or two. And I’ll take charge of shipments that come in, unless you cancel them. If you bust the seals, I’ll have to take you into court, and Wint will soak you.”
“You’ve got a Chinaman’s chance,” Lutcher told him scornfully. “Why, I’ve given that pup his pap for two years. I’m not going to stand for this. Not for a minute. You tell him so.”
“If you’d rather have it so,” Jim said mildly, “I’ll pour it all out of the window, right now.” He said this mildly, but Lutcher knew Jim’s mildness was apt to be deceptive. In the end, he surrendered to the inevitable, because it was the inevitable. Jim placed his seals, and strolled away. Lutcher boiled out after him and hurried off to see V. R. Kite.
The marshal bent his steps toward the Weaver House, that infamous hostelry where Wint had spent the night of his election, and where he had been found next day. Radabaugh knew Mrs. Moody, the presiding genius of that place, as well as he knew Lutcher. He had always made it his business to know such folk. But Mrs. Moody did not receive him with the good nature Lutcher had shown. She had heard some rumors of what was to come.
The sunken office of the old hotel was little changed, when the marshal strolled in, since that night of Wint’s election. The light of day, fighting its way through the dingy windows, served only to make the interior more squalid. The same old men played their interminable game of checkers on the table in the corner. The miserable dog that bore Marshal Jim Radabaugh’s name sprawled beneath the table, its bony legs clattering on the floor when the creature stirred in its sleep. The boy, that boy who had been so painfully reading the literature of brewing on the night of the election, was not to be seen. It is to be hoped that he was out about some wholesome play. Radabaugh had a suspicion, founded on experience, that the boy was not in school. He never was. Mrs. Moody sat behind the high, bar-like counter. When Radabaugh came in, she got up with a quick, deadly movement like the stir of a coiling snake; and she smiled at the marshal with those hideously beautiful false teeth gleaming in her aged and distorted countenance.
“Why, good morning, deary,” she said, terribly amiable. “I don’t often see you down here any more.”
“Morning, Mrs. Moody,” said Jim. And stalked past the counter toward the door that led to that back room which overhung the creek. Mrs. Moody bustled after him and caught his arm at the door.
“Where you a-going, Jim Radabaugh?” she demanded. “You say what you want, and say it here.”
Radabaugh shook his head. He knew such measures as he had used with Lutcher would not serve with Mrs. Moody. The patrons of the Weaver House had little respect for such flimsy things as seals. He knew, also, that there was no possibility of relying upon the word of Mrs. Moody. Many women, especially such women as she, have the attitude toward promises that the Kaiser had toward treaties. They consider them interesting only when broken. Radabaugh meant to destroy her stock of liquor; and he told her so.
Then she began to scream at him. The old men at the checkerboard brushed at their ears as though her screaming were a swarm of flies, harassing them. Jim pushed her to one side and went through to the back room. When he set about his business there, she attacked him with a billet of wood; and Jim subdued the old warrior as gently as might be, and told her to mind what she did. So she began to weep and wail and scream hysterically; and Jim emptied bottles through the trap-door into the creek, knocking off the neck of each bottle so that there might be no survivors. All the while, Mrs. Moody wailed behind him.
When it was done, he turned to her, brushing his hands. “Orders are, no more selling, ma’am,” he said gently. “If you start up again, I’ll have to take you in.”
She was trying to placate him now. “Whose orders, deary?” she wheedled. “Who’s doing this to old Mother Moody, anyhow?”
“Mayor,” Jim told her; and she wailed:
“Wint Chase. Little Wint that I’ve put to bed here amany a time. He’d never go and do this, now. Who was it? Honest.”
“Mayor,” Jim repeated. “Straight goods. Hardiston has gone dry. This is serious, too. Don’t you go to startanything, ma’am. Because I always did hate to arrest a lady.”
“You’ll just have to—you might just as well take me right off to the poor farm, Jim Radabaugh. I’m not making ends meet, even right now.” Her withered old hands covered her face, and she rocked and wailed: “Eh, poor old Mother Moody! Poor old Mother Moody! You wouldn’t take me in if I sold just a little bit, would you, now?”
He said he would; and when she saw he meant it, she dropped her attempts to conciliate him; and she cursed him through the corridor and through the office; and she stood in the door of her hostelry and cursed him as long as he could hear, so that even Jim Radabaugh’s hardened ears turned red and burned with shame. It takes a brave man to face without inward shrinking the revilements of a thoroughly angry woman. Jim was glad to be rid of her.
He stopped, on the way back uptown, to warn a fly-by-nighter who ran a lunch cart near the station and served stronger drinks than coffee. This man denied any interest in Jim’s warning; and the marshal could find no liquor about the cart. Nevertheless he served notice, and made a mental memorandum to see to it that the notice was obeyed.
Remained only V. R. Kite. Radabaugh grinned as he thought of Kite. Kite would take this matter hard; and when V. R. Kite took a thing hard, the sight was worth seeing.
But Kite was not in the Bazaar when he got there, so Jim strolled back up street and dropped in on B. B. Beecham. The editor greeted him as courteously as he greeted every one. “Good morning,” he said. “Have a chair. Anything I can do for you?”
Radabaugh spat into the stove. “No,” he said, readjusting the bulge in his cheek. “Just dropped in. Waiting to see Kite.”
B. B. nodded. “Anything new with you?” he asked, for everybody was a source of news to B. B. Beecham. That was why theJournalwas popular.
“We-ell, I have got a sort of an item for you,” Jim told him. “Might be worth printing, maybe.”
B. B. asked what it was; and Jim told him. “Wint’s give orders that the town’s going dry.”
B. B. said: “H’m! Is that so?” And Jim said it was so.
“Guess that’ll be an item folks will read,” he remarked.
The editor shook his head. “We don’t feel we can print such things,” he said. “You see, it’s bad for Hardiston, outside. Legally, the town is already dry.”
“I never did have much of any use for laws,” Jim drawled.
“I suppose this means some work for you.”
“Can’t say. Don’t think so. There won’t be much of it done, except a little, on the sly. Not after the word I’ve passed around.”
“Well, it won’t do Hardiston any harm. Even as things are, they are better than they used to be. I can remember thirteen saloons here at one time. How many have there been, under cover?”
“Three-four, regular,” Jim told him.
“Very few people will really miss them,” B. B. said. “People do so many things, just because they’re in the habit, and the things are waiting to be done. It’s surprising how much a man can give up without realizing that he’s giving up anything. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that.”
“Can’t say I ever did,” said Jim, and spat into the stove.
“Like the horse in the story. You’ve heard about the horse?”
“What horse?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard it? The horse that was trained to live without eating.”
Jim looked mildly interested. “I’ll say that was some horse,” he remarked. “What happened to him?”
“Why, just as the man got him trained, the horse died,” said B. B.; and Jim chuckled, and B. B. laughed in the silently uproarious way habitual to him. Then Jim saw V. R. Kite pass by on the way to the Bazaar and got up quickly.
“There’s Kite,” he said. “See you later.”
He overtook the little man just inside the Bazaar; and Kite heard his step and turned and looked at him, and Jim saw that Kite knew. But he only said:
“Hello, Kite. Want to talk to you a minute.”
“Come back to my desk,” said Kite, and led the way, walking stiffly, head high, ever so much like a turkey. Jim marked this peculiarity to himself.
“Exactly like a man looking over a high fence,” he thought. “I’ll declare, it is.”
Kite sat down, tugged at his side whiskers, and bade Jim speak. The marshal looked for a place to spit, saw none, swallowed hard, and said:
“Guess you’ve heard the orders.”
“What orders?” Kite asked harshly. But his face was livid, and the veins stood out on his forehead with his effort at self-control.
“Mayor calls me up last night and tells me to stop whisky selling. Hardiston’s gone dry.”
“What has that to do with me?” Kite demanded.
The marshal did not grin. If Kite wanted to act that way, all right. It was the little man’s privilege. After all, he was outwardly respectable enough, a pillar of the church, and all that.
“Thought you might be interested,” said Jim.
“I am,” said Kite. “I believe in the free sale of liquor. Every man must have an opinion, one way or the other.”
Jim considered that. Then he got up. “Well,” he said, “I’ve passed the word around. Don’t know any one that’s planning to keep on selling, do you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Because if you do,” said Jim slowly, “tell ’em not to do it. Because if there’s any turns up, any selling, I’m going to come and ask you about it, Kite.”
Kite boiled up out of his chair and waved his fist. “Get out of here, you rat!” he raged, holding his voice to a monotonous whisper that was more deadly than an outcry would have been. “Get out of here, before I....”
“Before you what?” Jim asked; and Kite checked himself, and pulled at his side whiskers, and sat down abruptly, staring at the desk before him.
Jim left him there. As he emerged into the street, he began to whistle. The whistle was ragged, but the tune could be identified. Jim was whistling:
“‘There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.’”
WINT lay awake for a while, the night after he had given his orders to Radabaugh. He had many things to occupy his thoughts. There was in him none of the elation which might have been expected; he had no zest for the fight that was ahead of him. He was, rather, depressed and doubtful of the wisdom of what he had done, and doubtful of his own strength and determination to carry it through. He was acutely aware that a great many people would say: “Well, Wint’s got a nerve. A fish like him, trying to make Hardiston dry. I’ll bet he’s got a cellar full.” They would say this, and they would have a right to say it. Wint thought, miserably enough, that he had been foolish to start trouble. He might better have let well enough alone.
The boy’s stubbornness had played him false more than once in the past; this time it was to do him a good turn. A less stubborn person would have backed down, under the weight of these misgivings; would have canceled the orders given Radabaugh, and let matters slide along as they had slid in the past. But Wint, though he dreaded the ridicule that would follow what he had done, felt himself committed. They would laugh! Well, let them laugh! His jaw set; he swore to go on at any cost. On this determination, he slept at last.
In spite of his wakefulness, Wint was first downstairs in the morning. Hetty, sweeping out the sitting room, encountered him. He had not seen her the day before, except when his father and mother were about. Then she had avoided his eye. Now she looked at him sullenly, and said:
“Much obliged for getting me to bed, Wint.”
“That’s all right, Hetty. I remember you did as much for me.”
She laughed harshly and defiantly. “Sure I did.” Hereyes were watchful and on guard. Wint guessed that she expected him to reproach her, to warn her, to bid her mend her ways. But he did nothing of the kind.
“Forget it,” he said. “It wasn’t anything.”
Something wistful crept into her eyes, as though she would have said more. But Mrs. Chase came downstairs, and Hetty went on with her work, while Mrs. Chase volubly directed her.
After breakfast, Wint and his father walked downtown together. The elder Chase asked stiffly:
“Well, how did you find Amos?”
“Same as ever,” Wint said.
“Suppose he’s home for the summer.”
“I guess so.”
He wondered whether to tell his father what he had done; but something held his tongue. It may have been diffidence, a reluctant feeling that to tell his father this would be like an effort to justify himself in the elder Chase’s eyes. It may have been uncertainty as to what attitude the older man would take. It may have been a shrewd guess at the truth; that Chase would attribute the move to Amos, and oppose it on that ground. Wint had no illusions about his father’s attitude toward the Congressman. Chase held Amos as his enemy, without compromise.
As they reached the first stores on the outskirts of the business section of Hardiston, they met Ned Bentley and another man, and exchanged greetings. Bentley grinned at Wint in a friendly way, and Wint knew that Bentley had heard of his order to Radabaugh. The elder Chase saw something had passed between them, and asked Wint:
“What’s Bentley so cheerful about?”
“Why, I don’t know,” said Wint. “He’s usually pretty good-natured.”
He flushed at his own evasion, but the older man did not press the question, and a little later they separated.
Foster, the city solicitor—Foster was an earnest young fellow, and took his office seriously—was waiting for Wint in what passed as Wint’s office, off the main room above the fire-engine house. Foster looked flurried; and he asked quickly:
“Look here, Wint, Radabaugh says you told him to clean up the town.”
Wint nodded idly, fumbling among the papers on his desk. “Yes, I did.”
“Well, what’s the idea?” Foster demanded excitedly. “What’s the idea, anyway?”
“The idea is to—clean up the town,” Wint told him.
“You’re in earnest?”
“Yes.”
“You mean to stop bootlegging?”
“Yes.”
“Good Lord!” said Foster.
The solicitor’s consternation gave Wint confidence. He asked: “Why, what’s wrong with that?”
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. But you’ll surely start something.”
“I mean to stop something.”
“There’ll be an awful row.”
Wint said quietly: “If you don’t want to come through.... If you don’t want to make it stick, help me out, why, now’s the time to say so, and get out.”
“Good Lord!” Foster cried. “Of course I’ll stick. Nothing suits me better. I’m.... I tell you, you don’t know what you’ve started. But I’m with you, Wint. All along the line. Absolutely.”
Wint said: “That’s good.”
“It’s a great chance for me,” Foster said.
Wint chuckled. “Ought to do you and Hardiston both some good.”
“Prosecuting all those cases.”
“Oh, there won’t be many cases,” Wint said cheerfully.
“A lot you know. Why won’t there?”
“Because,” said Wint, “I’m going to see that the first man in here gets soaked, good and proper. I’m going to put the fear of—the fear of me into them.”
“You can’t scare those fellows.”
“Well,” Wint admitted, “that may be so. But I’m surely going to try.”
Foster had amused him, and encouraged him; but when Foster was gone, and he was left alone, his depression of the night before returned. He locked his door. He did not want to see people. And he sat down to think.
Radabaugh came in a little before noon to report what he had done. Wint listened, studying the marshal. “Think Lutcher will keep straight?” he asked.
“I should think so.”
“How about Mrs. Moody?”
“She’ll need watching.”
“See that you watch her.”
“I’m right on the job,” Radabaugh assured him easily; and Jim knew the marshal meant what he said. “I’ve left ’em run before, because there wasn’t any kick made. If you say shut ’em off, I’ll do it. That’s all.”
“I do say it,” Wint told him. He got up and gripped the other’s shoulder, something of the excitement of the coming fight already stirring in him. “Jim, we’ll make Hardiston dry as a bone.”
Radabaugh spat. “We-ell,” he drawled, “it don’t take much booze to wet a bone. But we’ll see to it the stuff don’t go sloshing around the gutters, anyway.”
For his lunch, Wint went to fat Sam O’Brien’s restaurant. He liked the place. The long, high counter, scrubbed white as the deck of a ship; the revolving stools before the counter; the shelves on which bottles of mustards and catsups and spices were ranged; and big Sam O’Brien in his vast white apron presiding over it all. There was a mechanical piano which played a tune for a nickel in the back of the restaurant, and it was jangling and tinkling when Wint came in. Half a dozen men were there before him; and they grinned when they saw Wint, and spoke among themselves. Sam O’Brien welcomed him with a chuckle. O’Brien was a jocular man. He set plate and knife and fork and a thick glass of water before Wint, and spread his hands on the counter, and asked in a booming voice:
“Well, how’s your appetite, you bold crusader?”
Wint flushed, and said uncomfortably: “Cut it out, Sam!”
The restaurant proprietor had his own ideas of a joke; and he made the most of them. At Wint’s words, he threw back his head and laughter poured out of him. He rocked, he slapped his great fist on the counter.
“Cut it out?” he repeated. “Oh, Wint, you’re the funny man. Cut it out, he says! The whole blamed town. ‘The booze is getting you, Hardiston. Cut it out,’ he says!” He bellowed the words. “Cut it out! Cut it out! Oh, Wint, you’ll be the death o’ me.”
There was never any use resenting Sam O’Brien. Wint laughed and said: “I’ll be the death of you if you don’t get me something to eat, Sam. Get a move on your old carcass.”
After lunch, he had a word or two with men upon the street; but he did not want to talk to them. He wanted to get out of their way, out of sight. His nerves were beginning to jangle; he wanted something to happen. There was hanging over him a storm; he wanted the storm to break. He had a thought of going to V. R. Kite and flinging a defiance in that old buzzard’s gold-filled teeth. He liked to think of Kite as an old buzzard; the phrase pleased him. Men will always be pleased to find they have used words tellingly. The gift of speech is what distinguishes man from the animals; it is right that he should vaunt himself upon it.
But in the end, Wint did not go to Kite; he went to Hoover’s office and hid himself in a back room with a law book. Neither Dick nor his father was there when he arrived; he counted on not being disturbed. He did not want to be disturbed. He wanted to be let alone. He was mistrustful of himself, of his motives and of his powers.
In mid-afternoon, the telephone rang; and he answered, expecting a call for one or the other of the Hoovers. But when he spoke into the instrument, some one said: “Is this you, Wint?”
He said it was; and the some one said: “This is Joan.”
Wint said: “Oh!” He was uncomfortable, wondering what she wanted, why she had called.
“I’ve just heard what you’ve done,” she said.
“What’s that?” Wint asked. “Done what?”
“About how you’re going to—to clean up Hardiston.”
“Oh, that,” said Wint. “Yes.”
“Central told me I could probably get you at the Hoover office.”
“Yes. Yes, I’m here.”
“I thought you might like to know that I’m glad you’re going to do this.”
“That’s all right,” he said awkwardly. The old, stubborn resentment at any praise was awake in him; but there was a curious tincture of happiness, too.
“It’s a good fight, Wint,” she said. “And—you’ll win.”
Wint laughed uneasily. “Oh, sure,” he said. He did not want to talk about it; and Joan understood and said good-by. Wint stared thoughtfully at the telephone for a while; then he went back to his probing into the musty recesses of the law which he found so live and vital.
But he was unable to keep his thoughts upon the book. They wandered. He kept thinking about V. R. Kite. He kept wondering what Kite would do.
And he wished insistently that whatever Kite meant to do, he would do quickly. Wint was tired of waiting for the storm to break.
IF V. R. Kite had been wise enough to let Wint severely alone, in the days that followed, it is not at all improbable that Wint’s resolution would have weakened. But if knaves were wise, they would not be knaves. So, instead of being left alone with his depression, and his doubts of himself, Wint was attacked front and flank; and the stimulus of battle proved to be exactly what he needed to forge his determination and whip his courage to the sticking point.
Kite first heard the news of what Wint had done from Lutcher, the amiable man in the distinctive vest, whose stock in trade Jim Radabaugh put under seal. Lutcher went straightaway to Kite when Radabaugh left him; and he found Kite still ignorant of what had come to pass. Lutcher took a decided pleasure in breaking the news to Kite. He found the little turkey of a man at his desk in the Bazaar; and he stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his vest and said in his husky, whispering voice:
“Well, Kite, we’re closed up.”
Kite had greeted Lutcher as pleasantly as he greeted any one. He was a little afraid of the big, bald man, and Lutcher knew it. He was as much afraid of Lutcher as Lutcher was of Jim Radabaugh. But he forgot to be afraid of Lutcher in this moment. He came up out of his chair like a Jack-in-the-Box—and Kite looked not unlike the conventional Jack-in-the-Box with his lean neck and his poised head and his side whiskers flying—and he snapped at Lutcher:
“What’s that you say?”
Lutcher grinned, and wheezed: “I say we’re closed up.”
“Closed up?” Kite repeated, in something like a shout. “Closed up? What do you mean? Talk English, man.”
Lutcher ran his thick finger around the soft collar of hissilken shirt. “I mean Radabaugh’s given orders not to sell any more stuff,” he said. “What did you think I meant?”
“You’re crazy,” said Kite flatly. “Radabaugh wouldn’t dare do that.”
“Well, he’s done it!”
“Jim Radabaugh? The marshal?”
“Sure,” said Lutcher impatiently. “Can’t you hear what I say? Came and sealed me up this morning. Said it was orders.”
“Orders? Whose orders?”
“Mayor’s.”
Kite’s clenched fists went into the air. “He can’t do that,” he said fiercely. “I won’t stand for it. By God, if he tries to do that, I’ll leave town. Or I’ll kill the pup. Or kill myself. I won’t stand for it, I tell you, Lutcher.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Lutcher, amiable again in the face of the other’s excitement. “Don’t tell me; tell the Mayor.”
Kite stood for a minute with staring, thoughtful eyes, as though Lutcher were not there. Then he grabbed his hat and started for the street. Lutcher looked after him, grinning with amusement. “The old buzzard does take it hard,” he told himself. “Well, I should worry. What’s he up to now?”
Kite had disappeared. When Lutcher got to the street, the little man was no longer in sight. Lutcher wondered what Kite had set off to do; and he loitered for a while in the hope of seeing the little man again. Kite’s fury amused him. But Kite had not returned when Jim Radabaugh drifted into sight; and Lutcher did not want to see Jim again, so he effaced himself. He saw Jim go into the Bazaar, and come out again, and stop at theJournaloffice; and after a little, Kite came down the street from the Court House, and Radabaugh emerged from theJournaloffice, and followed Kite into the Bazaar. Lutcher wished he could be near enough to hear what they said, but there was no chance of it, so he departed.
Kite held on to himself while he talked with Radabaugh; but when the marshal was gone, the little man, in the shelter of his desk, fretted and jerked in his chair in a tempest of furious anger. There was no doubt about it; he did take thisnews hard. But one watching with a seeing eye might have discovered in Kite’s anger something else; a touch of panic.
Perhaps fear is always a part of anger; perhaps it is one of the springs from which anger flows. But in the case of Kite, his fear and panic tended to quiet him and steady him and bid him go slowly and watch his every move. There had been a day when he would have leaped into such a fight as this, a terrible and furious figure. But Kite was getting old. There was something senile and pitiful in his fury now.
There in the rear of his busy little shop, with customers going and coming and the clerks laughing together, Kite twisted his fingers together and beat at his head with his clenched hands and tried to think what to do. He had been so sure that Wint would never take this step; he had been so sure that with Wint as Mayor, Hardiston would be safely and securely wet. He had been so sure of Amos Caretall’s good will. Chase and Jack Routt had warned him; but he had not believed their warnings, because he did not wish to believe. Wint was a drinker; it was just common sense that Wint would let the town go on as it had gone in the past. Kite had counted on it.
And now Wint had betrayed him. That was the word that sprang into Kite’s mind. Wint had betrayed him. He felt an honest indignation at the Mayor. He was more indignant than he had been when Wint called him a buzzard. He had accepted that good-naturedly enough. Hard names broke no bones; besides, Wint had been quite obviously suffering from an overnight bout, that morning. Kite knew the mood; he was not surprised; and he was not resentful. But this was different. Damnably different. This was out and out treachery, betrayal. He had helped elect Wint; now Wint turned against him.
Kit felt acutely sorry for himself; he felt acutely reproachful toward Wint. And when Jack Routt dropped in, half an hour after Radabaugh had gone, with a triumphant light in his eye, Kite told him so.
“I didn’t think Wint would do it,” he said dolefully. “Routt, I didn’t suppose Wint would do this to me.”
Routt chuckled. “It’s not Wint’s doing,” he said. “I told you this was coming, you know. It’s Amos.”
But Kite was in no mood for rage at Amos. “I don’t know,” he said. “This looks like Wint’s doing. It’s a boy’s trick. A man like Amos would have seen the harm for Hardiston in such a move. No, Jack, Wint did this, himself.”
Routt shook his head. “I know better. You get after Amos, and Wint will come to heel. I know them both, I tell you.”
“I can’t believe it,” Kite insisted. “What motive could he possibly have?”
“Trying to get on the band wagon,” Routt told him. “That’s Amos. Trying to get on the dry band wagon.”
“No, no, it’s Wint. He’s the one we must go to. He’s the one we must work on. He’s got to be stopped, Routt.” Something of the old fire was reviving in Kite. “He’s got to be stopped. Scared off. Called off. Something. I won’t stand for such a state of affairs. Such a thing.... In Hardiston.”
Routt grinned. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“Get after him. There must be a way. Don’t you know a way to get hold of him and bring him to time? Must be some way, Routt. Think, man; think. What can we do? Scare him off?”
Routt looked at Kite in a curious, intent way, as though he thought there might be a hidden meaning in what the other man had said. “What’s your idea exactly?” he asked. “What’s up your sleeve?”
“Idea?” Kite echoed. “Idea is to get something on that young skate and make him call Radabaugh off. That’s the idea. Get after him, heavy. There must be a way. Some way.”
Routt smiled faintly, tilting back in his chair, looking at the ceiling; and he blew a long stream of smoke straight upward. Kite snapped:
“Well?”
“Well,” said Routt, “there’s something in that. There might be a way....”
Kite leaned toward him intently. “What is it?”
Routt waved his hand. “Nothing definite. Might develop. Hold off a while.”
“I can’t hold off,” said Kite. “I won’t hold off. Something’s got to be done.”
“Then you do it,” Routt told him carelessly; and Kite pleaded with him.
“No, no. You do your own way. I’ll try mine. We’ll both work at this, Routt. Something ... I.... See what you can do. That’s all. I’ll see what I can do.”
Routt got up. “Don’t forget,” he said, “that Amos is back of this.”
Kite shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’ll hit Wint first. I don’t want to buck Amos.”
“You’ll find,” said Routt, “that you’ll have to buck Amos.”
After Routt left him, Kite sat for a while, fingers tapping nervously on his desk, wondering what to do next. And he wondered if it could be that Routt was right, that Amos was back of this move on Wint’s part. Routt had said Amos would do this; so, Kite remembered, had the elder Chase. Chase had come to him, shortly after the election, to warn Kite that this was sure to happen. Were Routt and Chase right; was it possible that Amos had betrayed him?
Kite would not believe it. Not because he had any doubt of Amos’s willingness to betray him, but because he did not dare believe that this was Amos’s doing. If Wint had made the move on his own account, there was some hope of swaying him, or frightening him. But if Amos had prompted it and were backing Wint now, the situation was almost hopeless.
Therefore Kite refused to believe that Amos was responsible; he clung to the idea that the whole thing was Wint’s own idea. Wint, then, he must fight.
He thought of Wint; and he thought of Wint’s father again. There might be a chance to move Wint through his father. “If the boy has any sense of duty,” Kite thought, “he’ll do what his father says.” He forgot that the elder Chase had always been a “dry” man. Politics takes little account of convictions; and Kite clutched at the hope that the elder Chase could changeWint’s mind. Chase had offered him alliance, once; had offered him an alliance against Amos. He should be willing to show his friendliness now. Kite’s eyes lighted with a faintly optimistic glint at the thought; and he took his hat and started forthwith down the street toward the furnace where Chase was to be found during the day.
He met a number of men; and he thought they all grinned at him with derision in their eyes. They must know what had happened; must be amused at this plight in which he found himself. The thought roused the anger in Kite, and strengthened him. He went on his way more boldly. By and by, at the end of the street, the smoky black bulk of the furnace loomed before him.
Kite did not like the looks of the furnace; there was such an atmosphere of harnessed power about it, and Kite was always a little afraid the power would break its harness. To reach the office, he had to go through the very heart of the monstrous thing. At the beginning of the way, a ten-foot flame hissed out of the very earth itself, at his right hand, so that he shrank past it timidly. Then he must pick his way through a corridor between structures like squat, brick ovens, below which living flame roared in a stream like a racing torrent. He could see this stream of flame. There was nothing to hold it, between the ovens. He trembled with fear that this stream would leap out at him.
When he passed under the stacks, pulsing with the rhythmic beat of life which stirred them, he could hear the roar of the fires inside, and the hiss of the air from the tuyères, and the sounds were like the ravenings of beasts to him. Kite felt immensely small, immensely insignificant. Toward the end of his way he was almost running, and he came out with vast relief upon the other side, and approached the iron-sheeted building which housed the furnace office and the chemist’s laboratory. He might have come here by circling around the furnace, but even Kite had pride enough to face dangers, rather than avoid them.
He found the elder Chase at his desk; and Chase dismissed the stenographer to whom he had been dictating, and offeredKite a cigar. Kite refused it. He was by personal habit an abstemious man. “I never smoke,” he said.
Chase nodded, a little ill at ease. He had tried to make an alliance with Kite, but he did not like the little man, and never would. He did not like Kite, and he was self-conscious about it, and felt that he ought to make up for his dislike by treating Kite with extreme courtesy. So now he asked: “Well, Mr. Kite,” and Kite responded with a sharp question:
“What’s this Wint’s doing?”
There had been a time when such an inquiry frightened Chase; because, when people asked him such a question, he knew they meant that Wint was in trouble again. But he was coming to have a certain faith in Wint; so he was puzzled by Kite’s question, and said so.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he told the little man.
Kite was surprised. “Good God! You must know. Didn’t he tell you?”
“He’s told me nothing in particular. What do you mean?”
“The young fool has given Radabaugh orders against any more liquor selling.”
Chase’s first reaction to this information was a leap of delighted pride. It was what he would have wished Wint to do; it was what he himself would have done in Wint’s place. It was a decent, strong thing to do, and Chase was glad. Kite saw this in the other man’s eyes; and he exclaimed challengingly:
“You look as though you were tickled, man. Don’t you know this thing will ruin Hardiston?”
Chase knew it would not ruin Hardiston; nevertheless he was willing to humor Kite. So he asked: “Do you know the details? Tell me about it.”
Kite laughed harshly. “You hadn’t heard of it, then. He didn’t tell you. It was Amos put him up to it, I guess, after all. But it looks as though he’d have told you, anyway.” Kite was shrewd enough in his way; he understood that Chase, as a father, must be jealous of Amos’s influence with Wint. And Chase reacted as Kite expected. His eyes clouded with hurt. Wint might have told him; should have told him. Instead,his son had laid him open to this new humiliation, the humiliation of hearing important news from a third person. And—Wint had had supper with Amos last night.
Chase struck back, in the instinct to defend himself. “You remember, I warned you Congressman Caretall would do just this.”
“Sure I remember,” Kite agreed. “That’s why I’ve come to you. Want to get together with you. That was our understanding. I’m going to skin Amos Caretall. Are you with me? That’s the question.” He was shrewd enough to rouse Chase against Amos, not against Chase’s own son. And Chase considered the matter, inwardly hurt and sorry because Wint had not confided in him, and boiling with jealous hostility toward Amos.
“All right,” he said at last. “You see I was right. What are we going to do?”
“Do?” Kite snapped. “We’re going to make Amos run to cover. That’s what we’re going to do.”
“After all,” Chase reminded him, “I’m a dry man. I can’t fight Amos on that issue.”
“Dry?” Kite demanded. “What of it? What’s that got to do with it? This is politics. Amos is no more dry than I am; but he plays the dry game because that’s politics, and there are votes in it. He’s trying to steal your thunder, Chase. If Amos grabs the dry vote, where do you come in? I tell you, we’ve got to lick him, man.”
“How?” Chase asked at last. “What are we going to do?”
“First thing,” Kite said, “is to get after Wint.” He had been ready with the answer to this question. “Caretall is using Wint. Making a tool of him. A scapegoat. Wint doesn’t know his own mind. Caretall’s using him. We’ve got to get him out of Caretall’s hands. Get him to work with you. You’re his father. He ought to want to work with you. Oughtn’t he?”
“He and I—understand each other,” Chase said. He was not at all sure this was true, but he could not confess to Kite that he and Wint were less than confidants.
“Sure,” Kite agreed. “Naturally. So the first thing todo is for you to go to Wint and tell him what he’s up against. How he’s being manipulated. Get him to rescind the order. Then we’ll go after Amos, with Wint helping us, and clean him up.”
“I don’t know,” said Chase reluctantly.
“Good God, man,” Kite snapped, “can’t you handle your own son?”
Chase got up and walked to the window, his back to Kite. His lips set firmly. Kite was right; he ought to be able to handle his own son, unless the world were all awry. After all, the dry question was only a pretext. Wint ought to train with him rather than with Amos. He would tell the boy so.
When at last he turned toward Kite again, the other man saw that he had won. “I’ll see,” said Chase. “I’ll talk to Wint and see.”
WINTHROP CHASE, SENIOR, was thoughtful all that day; he went home in the evening still undecided as to what he should do. He was unhappy, hurt at Wint’s reticence, disturbed as to his own course of action, and fiercely resentful of Amos’s influence over his son.
His conscience was troubling him; and he was trying to quiet it with Kite’s more or less specious argument that this was politics, not morality. If Chase had been asked to come out, point-blank, and champion the nonenforcement of the liquor law, he would have refused; and he would have refused with indignation at the suggestion. But the issue was not so clear as that. It was clouded by his dislike for Amos. It was not merely a question of enforcing the law; it was a question of balking Amos Caretall. And Chase was prepared to go a long way to put a spoke in Amos’s wheel.
Wint had not yet come, when he reached his home; and he was glad of that. It gave him some leeway, gave him some further time to think. But his thoughts ran in an endless circle; his convictions countered his enmity toward Amos. It was only by small degrees that his attitude toward Amos crowded other considerations out of his mind. He was gradually coming to the point of decision when he heard Wint at the door. Mrs. Chase met Wint in the front hall, and told him hurriedly:
“Now, Wint, you’re late again. You run right upstairs and wash your face and hands. Supper’s all ready, and Hetty wants to go out, and I don’t want to keep her waiting any—”
Wint laughed, and kissed her, and told her he would hurry, and he was gone up the stairs, two steps at a time, while his mother still talked to him. When he came down, his father and mother had already gone into the dining room. He followed them, answered his father’s “Good evening, Wint,” in an abstracted way, and sat down hurriedly. He did not looktoward his father; he was conscious he had not done the fair thing in failing to tell the older man of his orders to Radabaugh. He felt guilty.
Mrs. Chase never allowed any gaps in the conversation to go unplugged; and since Wint and his father were both normal men, with normal appetites, she did most of the talking during the early part of the meal, while they ate. It was only when Hetty brought on a thick rhubarb pie and Mrs. Chase began to cut it that Chase said casually to his son:
“Well, Wint, I hear you’ve set out to clean up Hardiston.”
Wint gulped what was in his mouth, and uneasily admitted that this was true. Mrs. Chase was talking to Hetty about the pie and did not hear what they said. Chase asked:
“What does Amos think of that?”
Wint looked for an instant at his father. “Thinks it’s all right,” he said.
Mrs. Chase came back into the conversation then. She had the aggravating habit of catching the tail end of a story or a remark and demanding that the whole be repeated for her benefit. “What’s all right?” she asked. “What’s all right, Wint? Who thinks it’s all right? It keeps me so busy looking after things here that it seems like I never hear what’s going on. What is it that—”
Chase told her quietly: “Wint has given Marshal Radabaugh orders not to allow any more selling of liquor in Hardiston.”
Mrs. Chase was astonished. She said so. “Well, I never,” she exclaimed. “You know, Wint, I never thought you’d do that. I think it’s time, though, something was done. I told Mrs. Hullis ... I was saying to Mrs. Hullis here only yesterday that it was a shame, the way men were getting drunk. That Ote Runns, that beats my carpets, came here yesterday to do some work for me, and I paid him; and Mrs. Hullis saw him coming home from town that afternoon, and he couldn’t even stay on the sidewalk, he was staggering so. I declare, it makes you feel like not paying a man like that for working for you, when he can go right off and spend his money on whisky, and his wife and children at home—”
Wint said, with a glance at his father: “Ote’s not married,mother. He hasn’t any wife; and as far as I know, he hasn’t any children.”
“Well, suppose he had,” she demanded, “wouldn’t it be just the same? I declare, Wint, you’re always contradicting me. But I said to Mrs. Hullis I thought it was a shame, and she said she thought so too, and it is. You’ve done just right, Wint. I didn’t think anybody could ever do that, or I’d have told you to do it before. I didn’t know the Mayor had the say of that, Wint. I thought the Mayor was the man you went to when your dogs got into the pound. I remember Mrs. Hullis’s dog got taken to the pound, three years ago, and she went to Mayor Johnson, he was then, and he got him out for her. And I told her—”
Wint had been watching his father. He had expected the older man to be proud of him, and had rather dreaded this pride. He had prepared himself to disclaim any praise that might come. But—Chase was not offering to praise him. There was no pride in his father’s face; there was rather an uneasy regret, and it fired the antagonism in Wint, and made him feel like defending himself. He asked, interrupting Mrs. Chase, whether the elder Chase thought the orders should be enforced.
“I suppose so,” Chase said, and Mrs. Chase lapsed into a momentary silence, pouring fresh tea into her cup.
“Don’t you think it’s a good thing?” Wint demanded challengingly. “Don’t you—aren’t you glad?”
Mrs. Chase said: “Of course it’s a good thing. It ought to have been done long ago. It’s a shame, the way things have been going on in this—”
Chase said to her: “Ordinarily, mother, I would think it a good thing. But in this case, it’s a part of Amos Caretall’s political game. A part of his—”
Wint looked at his father sharply, a word leaping to his lips. Mrs. Chase asked: “Congressman Caretall? Is he back here again, after the way he treated you? Wint, I should think you’d be ashamed to do anything to help him, after what he did to your father. I should think—”
Wint said quickly: “He has nothing to do with this. I decided to do it, and I gave the order, and I’m going through with it. Congressman Caretall isn’t in this at all.”
The elder Chase smiled and said: “You don’t understand, Wint. I’ve known him longer. He’s absolutely without principle or scruple. You know, for instance, that he’s a wet man; but he’s doing this for his own ends, using you—”
Wint protested: “He’s not doing this. I’m doing it.”
Mrs. Chase cried: “I should think you’d be ashamed, Wint, to do anything against your own father. He’s been a good father to you, Wint. You know he—”
Wint cut in, almost pleading: “But, mother, you said yourself this was a good thing. To clean up Hardiston. And father’s always been in favor of it.”
“That was before I understood that Congressman Caretall was doing it to hurt your father. I don’t think anything is good that hurts your father, Wint. You ought not to say that. You know I—”
“But he’s not doing it to hurt dad, mother. I told you that. I’m doing it myself; he’s not doing it at all.”
“Your father understands these things better than you, Wint. Didn’t he tell you Congressman Caretall was just using you? I shouldn’t think you’d be willing to—”
The elder Chase said uneasily: “I know him better than you, Wint.”
Wint pushed back his chair and looked steadily at the older man. “You talk like V. R. Kite, dad,” he said.
Chase confessed his guilt by the vehemence of his protestations. “That’s not so, Wint. And in any case, Kite is an honest man compared to Caretall. He plays square with his friends, at least. That’s more than Amos can say.”
Wint asked: “What makes you think Amos is playing crooked now? Not that he has anything to do with this....”
“I know him. He’s always crooked. A crooked, double-crossing politician.”
“I’m not defending Amos,” Wint said stubbornly. “He’s treated you badly. But he’s been decent to me. I’ll not turn against him. And anyway, this is my doing, my business. He’s not in it at all.”
“You said he was backing you.”
“I said he thought I was doing a good thing. I expected you to think that, too.”
Chase flushed uncomfortably. “Ordinarily, I would say so. If you’d done this without prompting from him, I would say so. But it’s significant that you didn’t; that you waited till he came home, and talked to you, and then gave your orders.”
“I’d been thinking about it for a long time.”
“But you didn’t act without word from him, Wint. That’s why I—regret it.”
Wint asked harshly: “Listen! Do I get this straight? You’d have me let them go on selling whisky in Hardiston just for fear I am helping Amos by stopping them?”