"What man am I, Keating?" asked Briscoe, cheerily.
"We better explain, I guess," answered the other; and turning to his
compatriot: "You tell him, Boswell."
"Well--it's this way--" said Boswell, and came at once to an awkward
pause, turning aside sheepishly and unable to proceed.
"So that's the way of it, is it?" said the old gentleman.
Helen laughed cheerfully, and looked about her with a courageous and
encouraging eye. "It is embarrassing," she said. "Judge Briscoe, we are
contemplating 'a piece of the blackest treachery and chicanery.' We are
going to give Mr. Halloway the--the go-by!" The embarrassment fell away,
and everybody began to talk at once.
"Hold on a minute," said the judge; "let's get at it straight. What do you
want with me?"
"I'll tell you," volunteered Keating. "You see, the boys are getting in
line again for this convention. They are the old file that used to rule
the roost before the 'Herald' got too strong for them, and they rely on
Mr. Harkless's being sick to beat Kedge Halloway with that Gaines County
man, McCune. Now, none of us here want Rod McCune I guess. We had trouble
enough once with him and his heelers, and now that Mr. Harkless is down,
they've taken advantage of it to raise a revolution: Rod McCune for
Congress! He's a dirty-hearted swindler--I hope Miss Sherwood will pardon
the strong expression--and everybody thought the 'Herald' had driven him
out of politics, though it never told how it did it; but he's up on top
again. Now, the question is to beat him. We hold the committees, but the
boys have been fighting the committees--call 'em the 'Harkless Ring,' and
never understood that the 'Herald' would have turned us down in a second
if it thought we weren't straight. Well, we saw a week ago that Kedge
Halloway was going to lose to McCune; we figured it out pretty exactly,
and there ain't a ray of hope for Kedge. We wrote to Mr. Harkless about
it, and asked him to come down--if he'd been on the ground last Monday and
had begun to work, I don't say but what his personal influence might have
saved Halloway--but a friend of his, where he's staying, answered the
letter: said Mr. Harkless was down with a relapse and was very fretful;
and he'd taken the liberty of reading the letter and temporarily
suppressing it under doctor's orders; they were afraid he'd come, sick as
he was, from a sense of duty, and asked us to withdraw the letter, and
referred us to Mr. Harkless's representative on the 'Herald.' So we
applied here to Miss Sherwood, and that's why we had this meeting. Now,
Halloway is honest--everybody knows that--and I don't say but what he's
been the best available material Mr. Harkless had to send to Washington;
but he ain't any too bright----"