Part 38

"I reckon you've earned it," said Mrs. Gabbard. "Eph says you laid it over 'em all to-day."

"Well, I guess I at least earned my supper," replied Scarborough. "And I guess I ate it."

"You didn't do so bad, considerin'," Mrs. Gabbard admitted. "Nothin' like livin' in town to take appetite away."

"That isn't all it takes away," said Scarborough, going on to his own part of the house without explaining his remark. When his head touched the pillow his brain instantly stopped the machinery. He needed no croonings or dronings from the fields to soothe him. "Not an idea in my head all day," he said to himself with drowsy delight.

Four days of this, and on the fifth came the outside world in the form of Burdick, chairman of the county committee of his party in the county in which his farm lay. They sat on the fence under the big maple, out of earshot of the others.

"Larkin's come out for John Frankfort for the nomination for governor," said Burdick.

Scarborough smiled. "Even Larkin couldn't get it for Frankfort--he's too notorious."

"He don't want to get it for him," replied Burdick. "His real man's Judge Graney."

Scarborough stopped fanning himself with his wide-brimmed straw. Judge Graney was the most adroit and dangerous of John Dumont's tools. He had given invaluable aid from the bench at several of the National Woolens Company's most critical moments. Yet he had retained and increased his popularity and his reputation by deciding against his secret master with a brave show of virtue when he knew the higher courts must reverse him. For several years Scarborough had been looking forward to the inevitable open conflict between the forces of honesty in his party and the forces of the machine as ruled by the half-dozen big corporations who also ruled the machine of the opposition party. He had known that the contest must come, and that he must take part in it; and he had been getting ready. But he had not wished to give battle until he was strong enough to give a battle which, even if he lost it, would not strengthen the hold of the corruptionists.

After he rejected Larkin's dazzling offers, conditioned upon his aloofness rather than frank subservience, he had thought the whole situation over, and, as he hinted to Pauline, had realized how apparently hopeless a fight against the machine would be just then, with the people prosperous and therefore quiescent. And he had decided to stand aside for the time. He now saw that reluctance to attack Dumont had been at least a factor in this decision; and he also saw that he could not delay, as he had hoped. There was no escape--either he must let his work of years be undermined and destroyed or he must give battle with all his strength and skill. He remembered what Pauline had said: "You can't lose!"

"No, one can't lose in this sort of fight," he thought. "Either WE win or there'll be no victory." He sprang from the fence to the ground. "Let's go to the house," he said to Burdick.

"What you going to do?" asked Burdick, as they walked toward the gate, where his horse and buggy were hitched.

"Fight, of course," said Scarborough. "Fight Larkin and his gang in the open. I'll get ex-Governor Bowen to let us use his name and canvass the state for him."

Burdick shook his head sadly.

"It ain't politics," he said. "You'll split the party; then the party'll turn and split you." And later, as they were separating, Scarborough to drive to Saint X, Burdick to go back to Marshaltown, he said: "I'll help all I can in a quiet way. But--I hope you've got your cyclone cellar dug."

Scarborough laughed. "I haven't been digging a cyclone cellar. I've been trying to manufacture a cyclone."

There were thirty-three clear days before the meeting of the convention. He wasted not an hour of them on the manufacturing towns; he went to the country--to the farmers and the villagers, the men who lived each man in his own house, on his own soil from which he earned his own living. Up and down and across the state he went, speaking, organizing, planning, inspiring--he and the coterie of young men who looked up to him as their leader and followed him in this desperate assault as courageously as if victory were assured.

Not long before the convention he paused at ex-Judge Bowen's country place and spent two hours with him in his great, quiet, cool library.

"Isn't it inspiring," Scarborough said, "to see so many young men in arms for a principle?"

The old man slowly shook his magnificent white head and smiled at the young man. "Principles without leaders go begging," he replied. "Men rally to the standard only when the right voice calls. The right voice at the right time." He laid his hand on Scarborough's shoulder with affection and pride. "If the moment should come for you to think of it, do not forget that the leader is the principle, and that in this fight the leader is not I--but you."

XIX.

PAULINE GOES INTO POLITICS.

Larkin decided that the state convention should be held at Saint X because his machine was most perfect there. The National Woolens Company, the Consolidated Pipe and Wire Company and the Indiana Oil and Gas Corporation--the three principal political corporations in the state--had their main plants there and were in complete political control. While Larkin had no fear of the Scarborough movement, regarding it as a sentimental outburst in the rank and file of the party that would die away when its fomenter had been "read out of the party" at the convention by the regular organization, still he had been in the game too long to take unnecessary chances. He felt that it would be wise to have the delegates assemble where all the surroundings would be favorable and where his ablest and confidential men could do their work in peace and quiet.

The convention was to, meet on the last Thursday in September. On the preceding Monday morning, Culver--Dumont's small, thin, stealthy private secretary--arrived at Saint X and, after making an appointment with Merriweather for half-past twelve, went out to the Eyrie to go through a lot of accumulated domestic business with Mrs. Dumont. When she in a most formal and unencouraging manner invited him to stop there, he eagerly accepted. "Thank you so much," he said effusively. "To be perfectly frank, I've been tempted to invite myself. I have some valuables with me that I don't feel at all easy about. If I should be robbed, it would be a very serious matter. Would it be asking too much of you to ask you to put a package in your jewel safe?"

"I'll be glad to do it for you," replied Pauline. "There's plenty of room--the safe's almost empty and it's ridiculously large."

"My package isn't small," said Culver. "And on my mind it weighs tons." He reached into his large bag--at sight of it Pauline had wondered why he had brought such a bag up from the hotel when his papers for her inspection were so few. He lifted out an oblong, bulky package.

"If you'll just touch that button," said she, "James will come and show you how to get to the safe."

Culver hesitated nervously. Finally he said: "I'm making a nuisance of myself, Mrs. Dumont, but would you mind going to the safe with me? I'd much rather none of the servants knew about this."