The Ramrodders | Page 9

got a good, able crew there, Ben."
Chairman Presson followed the old man back into the mansion. He was angry, and made his sentiment known, but Thornton was stubborn.
"There may be another way of running this district just at this time, Luke, but this is my way of running it, and I'm going to control that caucus. So what are you growling about?" He was opening a closet in the wall.
"But you're starting a scandal--and they'll get so stirred up that they'll put an independent ticket into the field. You'll have to fight 'em all over again at the polls. You're rasping them too hard."
"Luke, there are a lot of things you know about down-country politics, and perhaps you know more than I do about politics in general. But there's a rule in seafaring that holds good in politics. If you're trying to ratch off a lee shore it's no time to be pulling down your canvas."
He took a jug out of the closet, and went to the low building. The chairman followed along, not comforted.
The woodsmen had piled their duffel-bags in corners and were waiting. There were long tables up and down the centre of the room. They were flanked by benches. The tables were furnished with tin plates, tin pannikins, knives, and two-tined forks. The big boss had already given his orders. He and his crew had been expected. Men were hustling food onto the tables. There were great pans heaped with steaming baked beans, dark with molasses sweetening, gobbets of white pork flecking the mounds. Truncated cones of brownbread smoked here and there on platters. Cubes of gingerbread were heaped high in wooden bowls, and men went along the tables filling the pannikins with hot tea. The kitchen was in a leanto, and the cook was pulling tins of hot biscuits from the oven. There was not a woman in sight about "The Barracks." There had been none for years. Those men in the dirty canvas aprons were maids, cooks, and housekeepers.
It was hospitality rude and lavish. That low, dark room with its tiers of bunks along the four sides, its heaped tables, its air of uncalculated plenty, housed the recrudescence of feudalism in Yankee surroundings. And the lord of the manor set his jug at one end of the table and ordered the big boss to pipe all hands to grog.
"A pretty good lot, Ben," he commented as they crowded around. "And this here is something in the way of appreciation."
"Mr. Harlan coming out here to meet me, or am I going in and hunt him up?" inquired Kyle. "I suppose he has located most of the operations for next season."
"You'll take them in. Harlan won't be out for a while." He turned and walked away, the chairman with him.
"Your grandson seems to be as much in love with the woods as ever," commented Presson. "But I shouldn't think you'd want him to associate with this kind of cattle all his life, herding Canuck goats on a logging operation. You've got money enough, the two of you. He ought to get out into the world, find an up-to-date girl for a wife, and get married."
Thornton had led the way out into the sunshine, and was strolling about the yard, hands behind his back.
"Luke," he confided after a few moments, "you've just tapped me where I'm tender. Look here, if it was just me and me only that this hoorah here to-day was hitting, I'd tell 'em to take their damnation nomination and make it a cock-horse for any reformer that wants to ride. I'd do it, party or no party! But the minute it leaked out that I was putting Harlan up for the caucus they turned on me. And now I propose to show 'em."
The chairman stopped and stared at his friend. That piece of news had not reached him till then.
"You don't mean to tell me," he demanded, "that you're going to take this time of all others to swap horses? Why, Harlan Thornton can't play politics! He doesn't know--"
"He don't need to. I'll play it for him. Between you and me, Luke, he doesn't even know yet that he's going to run for the legislature. I'm keeping him up in the woods so that he won't know. He's one of those stiff-necked young colts that wants to do only what he wants to do in a good many things." He added the last with a growl of disgust. "And he won't allow that any old man can tell him a few things that he doesn't know."
"Now, Thelismer," protested the chairman, "I don't know anything about what's going on in your family, here, and I don't care. I know your grandson is a straight and square young chap, a worker, and a good business man,