Altsheler Joseph Alexander
The Candidate: A Political Romance
Evidently the witnesses would attend Jimmy Grayson's meeting, which was natural, however, as every body in Grayville was sure to come, and Harley also surmised that Hobart had taken upon himself the task of instructing them as to the methods, the manner, and the greatness of the candidate. He had done such a thing himself, upon occasion, the Western interest in Jimmy Grayson being so great that often appeals were made to the correspondents for information about him more detailed than the newspapers gave.
Harley studied the faces of the three witnesses as attentively as the distance and the light would admit, but they remained near the door, evidently intending to stand there, back to the wall, a plan sometimes adopted by those who may wish to slip out quietly before a speech is finished. Harley, the trained observer, saw that Hobart, without their knowledge, was shepherding them as the shepherd gently makes his sheep converge upon a common spot.
The correspondent could draw no inference from the faces of the three men, which were all of usual Western types, without anything special to distinguish them, and his attention turned to the audience. He had received an intimation that Jimmy Grayson intended to deliver that evening a speech of unusual edge and weight. He would indict the other party in the most direct and forcible manner, pointing out that its sins were moral as well as political, but that a day of reckoning would come, when those who profited by such evil courses must pay the forfeit; it was a part of the law of nature, which was also the law of retribution.
The candidate was a little late, and the opera-house was filled to the last seat, with many people standing in the aisles and about the doors. Harley, glancing again at the rows and rows of faces, saw the three witnesses almost together, and just to the right of the main entrance, where they leaned against the wall, facing the stage. Hobart fluttered about them, holding them in occasional talk, and Harley was just about to look again, and with increasing attention, but at that instant the great audience, with a common impulse and a kind of rushing sound, like the slide of an avalanche, rose to its feet. The candidate, coming from the wings, had just appeared upon the stage, and the welcome was spontaneous and overwhelming. Jimmy Grayson was always a serious man, but Harley noticed that evening, when he first appeared before the footlights, that his face looked tense and eager, as if he felt that a great task which he must assume lay just before him.
He wasted no time, but went at once to the heart of his subject, the crime of a great party, the wicked ways by which it had attained its wicked ends, and from the opening sentence he had his big audience with him, heart and soul.
The indictment was terrible: in a masterly way he summed up the charges and the proof, as a general marshals his forces for battle, and the crowd, so clear were his words and so strong his statements, could see them all marching in unison, like the battalions and brigades, towards the common point, the exposed centre of the enemy. The faces of Sylvia and Mrs. Grayson, in the box, glowed with pride.
Again and again, at the pauses between sentences, the cheers of the audience rose and echoed, and then Harley would glance once more towards the door; there, always, he saw Hobart with the three witnesses, gathered under his wing, as it were, all looking raptly and intently at Jimmy Grayson.
The candidate, by-and-by, seemed to concentrate his attention upon the four men at the door, and spoke directly to them. Harley saw one of the group move as if about to leave, but the hand of Hobart fell upon his arm and he stayed. Harley, too, was conscious presently of an unusual effect having the quality of weirdness. The lights seemed to go down in the whole opera-house, except near the door. Jimmy Grayson and the correspondents were in a semi-darkness, but Hobart and his three new friends beside the door stood in a light that was almost dazzling through contrast. The three witnesses now seemed to be fixed in that spot, and their eyes never wandered from Jimmy Grayson's face.
Familiar as he was with the candidate's oratorical powers, Harley was surprised at his strength of invective that evening. He had proved the guilt, the overwhelming guilt, of the opposition party, and he was describing the punishment, a punishment sure to come, although many might deem it impossible:
"But there would be a day of judgment; justice might sleep for a while, but she must awake at last, and, the longer vengeance was delayed, the more terrible it became. Then woe to the guilty."
The audience was deeply impressed by the eloquence of Jimmy Grayson, coinciding so well with their own views. Harley saw a look of awe appear upon the faces of many—Sylvia's face was pale—and the house, save for the voice of Jimmy Grayson, was as still as death. Harley felt the effect himself, and the weird, unreal quality that he observed before increased. Once, when he went over to make some notes, he noticed that the words written a half-hour before were scarcely visible, but, when he glanced at the opposite end of the theatre, there stood Hobart and the three witnesses, gathered about him, in the very heart of a dazzling light that showed every changing look on the faces of the four. Harley's gaze lingered upon them, and again he tried to find something peculiar, something distinctive in at least one of the three witnesses, but, as before, he failed; they were to him just ordinary Westerners following with rapt attention every word and gesture of Jimmy Grayson.
The candidate went on with his story of the consequences; the crime had been committed; the profits had been reaped and enjoyed, but slumbering justice, awake at last, was at hand; it was time for the wicked to tremble, the price must be repaid, doubly, trebly, fivefold. Now he personified the guilty party, the opposition, which he treated as an individual; he compared it to a man who had committed a deed of horror, but who long had hidden his crime from the world; others might be suspected of it, others might be punished for it, but he could never forget that he himself was guilty; though he walked before the world innocent, the sense of it would always be there, it would not leave him night or day; every moment, even, before the full exposure it would be inflicting its punishment upon him; it would be useless to seek escape or to think of it, because the longer the guilty victim struggled the more crushing his punishment would be. The correspondents forgot to write, and, like the audience, hung upon every word and gesture of Jimmy Grayson, as he made his great denunciatory speech; they felt that he was stirred by something unusual, that some great and extraordinary motive was impelling him, and they followed eagerly where he led them.
Harley saw the look of awe on the faces of the audience grow and deepen. With their overwhelming admiration of Jimmy Grayson, they seemed to have conceived, too, a sudden fear of him. His long, accusing finger was shaken in their faces, he was not alone denouncing a guilty man, but he was seeking out their own hidden sins, and presently he would point at them his revealing finger.
Hobart stood with the three witnesses beside the door, still in the dazzling light. Harley was sure that not one of the four had moved in the last half-hour, and Jimmy Grayson still held them all with his gaze. Harley suddenly saw something like a flash of light, a signal glance, as it were, pass between him and Hobart, and the next instant the voice of the candidate swelled into greater and more accusing volume.
"Now you behold the guilty man!" said Jimmy Grayson. "I have shown him to you. He seems to the world full of pride and power, but he knows that justice is pursuing him, and that it will overtake him; he trembles, he cowers, he flees, but the avenging footsteps are behind him, and the sound of them rings in his frightened ears like a death-knell to his soul. A wall rises across his way. He can flee no farther; he turns back from the wall, raises his terror-stricken eyes, and there before him the hand of fate is raised; its finger points at him, and a terrible voice proclaims, 'Thou art the guilty man!"
The form of Jimmy Grayson swelled and towered, his hand was raised, the long forefinger pointed directly at the four who stood in the dazzling light, and the hall resounded with the tremendous echoes of his cry, "Thou art the guilty man!"
As if lifted by a common impulse, the great audience rose with an indescribable sound and faced about, following Jimmy Grayson's long, accusing finger.
The man Williams threw his arm before his face, as if to protect himself, and, with a terrible cry, "Yes, I did it!" fell in a faint on the floor.
They were all on the train the next day, and Harley was reading from a copy of the Grayville Argus an account of Boyd's release and the ovation that the people had given him.
"How did you trace the crime to Williams, Hobart?" asked Harley.
"I didn't trace it; it was Jimmy Grayson who brought it out by giving him 'the third degree,'" replied Hobart, though there was a quiet tone of satisfied pride in his voice. "You know that in New York, when they expose a man at Police Headquarters to some such supreme test, they call it giving him 'the third degree,' and that's what we did here. It seems that Williams was in the saloon when Boyd and his partner quarrelled, and he knew they had a lot of gold from the claim in their cabin. His object was robbery. When he saw Wofford go on ahead, he followed him quickly to the cabin, and killed him with the knife which lay on a table. He expected to have time to get the gold before Boyd came, but Boyd arrived so soon that he was barely able to slip out. Then Williams, cunning and bold enough, came back as if he were a chance passer-by, and had been called by Metzger and Thorpe. The other two were as innocent as you or I.
"I could not make up my mind which of the three was guilty, and I induced Jimmy Grayson to help me. It was right in line with his speech—no harm done even if the test had failed—and then the man who managed the lights at the opera-house, a friend of Boyd's, helped me with the stage effects. Jimmy Grayson, of course, knew nothing about that. I borrowed the idea. I have read somewhere that Aaron Burr by just such a device once convicted a guilty man who was present in court as a witness when another was being tried for the crime."
"Well, you have saved his life to an innocent man," said Harley.
"And I have cost a guilty one his." And then, after a moment's pause, Hobart added, with a little shiver:
"But I wouldn't go through such an ordeal again at any price. When Jimmy Grayson thundered out, 'Thou art the guilty man,' it was all I could do to keep from crying, 'Yes, I am, I am!'"
XIV
THE DEAD CITY
As they left the hall, Churchill overtook Harley and tapped him on the shoulder. Harley turned and saw an expression of supreme disgust on the face of the Monitor's correspondent, but Harley himself only felt amusement. He knew that Churchill meant attack.
"I never saw anything more theatrical and ill-timed," said Churchill. "Of course, it was all prearranged in some manner. But the idea of a Presidential nominee taking such a risk!"
"He has saved an innocent man's life, and I call that no small achievement."
"Because the trick was successful; but it was a trick, all the same, and it was beneath the dignity of a Presidential nominee."
"There was but little risk of any kind," said Harley, shortly, "and even had it been larger, it would have been right to take it, when the stake was a man's life. Churchill, you are hunting for faults, you know you are, or you would not be so quick to see them."
Churchill made no audible reply, but Harley could see that he was unconvinced, and, in fact, he sent his newspaper a lurid despatch about it, taking events out of their proper proportion, and hence giving to them a wholly unjustifiable conclusion. But Sylvia Morgan was devotedly loyal to her uncle. There were few deeds of his of which she approved more warmly than this of saving Boyd's life, and Hobart, the master spirit in it, she thanked in a way that made him turn red with pleasure. But the discussion of the whole affair was brief, because fast upon its heels trod another event which stirred them yet more deeply.
When the special train was at Blue Earth, in Montana, among the high mountains, there came to Jimmy Grayson an appeal, compounded of pathos and despair, that he could not resist. It was from the citizens of Crow's Wing, forty miles deeper into the yet higher and steeper mountains, and they recounted, in mournful words, how no candidate ever came to see them; all passed them by as either too few or too difficult, and they had never yet listened to the spell of oratory; of course, they did not expect the nominee of a great party for the Presidency of the United States to make the hard trip and speak to them, when even the little fellows ignored their existence; nevertheless, they wished to inform him in writing that they were alive, and on the map, at least, they made as big a dot as either Helena or Butte.
The candidate smiled when he read the letter. The tone of it moved him. Moreover, he was not deficient in policy—no man who rises is—and while Crow's Wing had but few votes, Montana was close, and a single state might decide the Union.
"Those people at Crow's Wing do not expect me, but I shall go to them," he said to his train.
"Why, it's a full day's journey and more, over the roughest and rockiest road in America," said Mr. Curtis, the state senator from Wyoming, who was still with them.
"I shall go," said Jimmy Grayson, decisively. "There is a break here in our schedule, and this trip will fit in very nicely."
The others were against it, but they said nothing more in opposition, knowing that it would be of no avail. Obliging, generous, and soft-hearted, the candidate, nevertheless, had a temper of steel when his mind was made up, and the others had learned not to oppose it. But all shunned the journey with him to Crow's Wing except Harley, Mr. Plummer, Mr. Herbert Heathcote—because there is no zeal like that of the converted—and one other.
That "other" was Sylvia, and she insisted upon going, refusing to listen to all the good arguments that were brought against it. "I know that I am only a woman—a girl," she said, "but I know, too, that I've lived all my life in the mountains, and I understand them. Why, I've been on harder journeys than this with daddy before I was twelve years old. Haven't I, daddy?" As she had predicted, she forgot his request not to call him "daddy."
Thus appealed to, Mr. Plummer was fain to confess the truth, though with reluctance. However, he said, rather weakly:
"But you don't know what kind of weather we'll have, Sylvia."
Then she turned upon him in a manner that terrified him.
"Now, daddy, if I couldn't get up a better argument than that I'd quit," she said. "Weather! weather! weather! to an Idaho girl! Suppose it should rain, I'm made of neither sugar nor salt, and I won't melt. I've been rained on a thousand times. Aunt Anna says I may go if Uncle James is willing, and he's willing—he has to be; besides, he's my chaperon. If you don't say 'yes,' Uncle James, I shall take the train and go straight home."
They were forced to consent, and Harley was glad that she insisted, because he liked to know that she was near, and he thought that she looked wonderfully well on horseback.
The going of Harley with the candidate was taken as a matter of course by everybody. Silent, tactful, and strong, he had grown almost imperceptibly into a confidential relationship with the nominee, and Mr. Grayson did not realize how much he relied upon the quiet man who could not make a speech but who was so ready of resource. As for Mr. Heathcote, being an Easterner, he wished to see the West in all its aspects.
They started at daybreak, guided by a taciturn mountaineer, Jim Jones, called simply Jim for the sake of brevity, and, the hour being so early, few were present to see them ride up the hanging slope and into the mighty wilderness.
But it was a glorious dawn. The young sun was gilding the sea of crags and crests with burnished gold and the air had the sparkle of youth. Mr. Heathcote threw back his slightly narrow chest, and, drawing three deep breaths of just the same length, he said, "I would not miss this trip for a thousand dollars!"
"And I wouldn't for two thousand!" exclaimed Sylvia, joyously.
Harley said nothing, but he, too, looked out upon the morning world with a kindling eye. Far below them was a narrow valley, a faint green line down the centre showing where the little river ran, with the irrigated farms on either side, like beads on a string. Above them towered the peaks, white with everlasting snow.
"A fine day for our ride," said the candidate to Jim.
"Looks like it now, though I never gamble on mountain weather," replied the taciturn man.
But the promise held good for a long time, the sun still shining and the winds coming fresh and brisk along the crests and ridges. The trail wound about the slopes and steadily ascended. Vegetation ceased, and before them stretched the bare rocks. Harley knew very well now that only the sunshine saved them from grimness and desolation. The loneliness became oppressive. Even Sylvia was silent. It was the wilderness in reality as well as seeming; nowhere did they see a miner's hut or a hunter's cabin, only nature in her most savage form.
The little group of horsemen forgot to talk. The candidate's head was bowed and his brow bent. Clearly he was immersed in thought. Mr. Heathcote, unused to such arduous journeys, leaned forward in his saddle in a state of semi-exhaustion. But Sylvia, although a girl, was accustomed to the mountains, and she showed few signs of fatigue. Harley said at last to the guide, "A wild country, one of the wildest, I think, that I ever saw."
"Yes, a wild country, and a bad 'un, too," responded Jim. "See off there to the left?"
He pointed to a maze of bare and rocky ridges, and when he saw that Harley's gaze was following his long forefinger, he continued:
"I say it's a bad 'un, because over there Red Perkins and his gang of horse-thieves, outlaws, and cut-throats used to have their hiding-place. It's a tangled-up stretch o' mountain, so wild, so rocky, so full of caves that they could have hid there till jedgment-day from all Montana. Yes, that's where they used to hang out."
"Used to?"
"Yes, 'cause I 'ain't heard much uv them fur some time. They came down in the valley and tried to stampede them new blooded horses from Kentucky on Sifton's ranch, but Sifton and his men was waitin', and when the smoke cleared off most uv the gang was wiped out. Red and two or three uv his fellers got away, but I 'ain't heard uv 'em since. Guess they've scattered."
"Wisest thing they could do," said Harley.
The guide made no answer, and they plodded on in silence until about two o'clock in the afternoon, when they stopped in a little cove to eat luncheon and refresh their horses.
It was the first grateful spot they had seen in hours. A brook fed by the snows above formed a pool in the hollow, and then, overflowing it, dropped down the mountain-wall. But in this sheltered nook and around the life-giving water green grass was growing, and there was a rim of goodly trees. The horses, when their riders dismounted, grazed eagerly, and the riders themselves lay upon the grass and ate with deep content.
Sylvia talked little. She seemed thoughtful, and, when neither of them was looking, she glanced now and then at Harley and "King" Plummer. Had they noticed they would have seen a shade of sadness on her face. Mr. Plummer did not speak, and it was because there was a growing anxiety in his mind. He was sorry now that they had let Sylvia come, and he silently called himself a weak fool.
"Shall we reach Crow's Wing by dark?" asked the candidate of the guide.
Jim had risen, and, standing at the edge of the cove, was gazing out over the rolling sea of mountains. Harley noticed a troubled look on his face.
"If things go right we kin," he replied, "but I ain't shore that things will go right."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you see that brown spot down there in the southwest, just a-top the hills? Waal, it's a cloud, an' it's comin' this way. Clouds, you know, always hev somethin' in 'em."
"That is to say we shall have rain," said the candidate. "Let it come. We have been rained on too often to mind such a little thing—eh, Sylvia? You see, I take you at your word."
The girl nodded.
"I don't think it'll be rain," said the guide. "We are so high up here that more 'n likely it'll be snow. An' when there's a snow-storm in the mountains you can't go climbin' along the side o' cliffs."
The others, too, looked grave now. Perhaps, with the exception of "King" Plummer, they had not foreseen such a difficulty, but the guide came to their relief with more cheering words—after all, the cloud might not continue to grow, "an' it ain't worth while to holler afore we're hit."
This seemed sound philosophy to the others, and, dismissing their cares, they started again, much refreshed by their stop in the little cove. The road now grew rougher, the guide leading and the rest following in single-file, Sylvia just ahead of Harley. By-and-by their cares returned. Harley glanced towards the southwest and saw there the same cloud, but now much bigger, blacker, and more threatening. The sunshine was gone, and the wrinkled surface of the mountains was gray and sombre. The air had grown cold, and down among the clefts there was a weird, moaning wind. Harley glanced at the guide, and noticed that his face was now decidedly anxious. But the correspondent said nothing. Part of his strength lay in his ability to wait, and he knew that the guide would speak in good time.
"Don't any of you be discouraged because of me," said Sylvia; "I'm not afraid of storms—even snowstorms. Am I not a good mountaineer, daddy?"
The "King" nodded his head. He knew that she was a better mountaineer than any in the party except the guide and himself, and he felt less alarm for her than was in the mind of Grayson or Harley.
But Harley was thrilled by her courage. Here, amid these wild mountains, with the threat of darkness and the storm, she was unafraid and still feminine. "This is a woman to be won," was his unuttered thought.
Another hour passed, and the air grew darker and colder. Then Jim stopped.
"Gentlemen," he said, "there's a snow-storm comin' soon. I didn't expect one so early, even on the mountains, but it's comin', anyhow, an' if we keep on for Crow's Wing they'll have to dig our bones out o' the meltin' drifts next summer. We've got to make for Queen City."
"Queen City!" exclaimed Mr. Heathcote. "I didn't know there was another town anywhere near here."
"She's a-standin' all the same," replied the guide, brusquely, "an' I wouldn't never hev started on the trip to Crow's Wing if there hadn't been such a stoppin'-place betwixt an' between, in case o' trouble with the weather. An' let me whisper to you, Queen City's quite a sizable place. We'll pass the night there. It's got a fine hotel, the finest an' biggest in the mountains."
He looked grimly at Mr. Heathcote, as much as to say, "Ask me as much more as you please, but I'll answer you nothing." Then he added, glancing at Sylvia:
"It's a wild night for a gal."
"But you said that the biggest and finest hotel in the mountains was waiting for me," replied Sylvia, with spirit.
The guide bowed his head admiringly, and said no more.
Something cold and damp touched Harley's cheek. He looked up, and another flake of snow, descending softly, settled upon his face. The clouds rolled over them, heavy and dark, and shut out all the mountains save a little island where they stood. The snow, following the first few flakes, fell softly but rapidly.
"It's Queen City or moulderin' in the drifts till next summer!" cried Jim, and he turned his horse into a side-path. The others followed without a word, willing to accept his guidance through the greatest peril they had yet faced in an arduous campaign. Despite the danger, which he knew to be heavy and pressing, and his anxiety for Sylvia, Harley's curiosity was aroused, and he wished to ask more of Queen City, but the saturnine face of the guide was not inviting. Nevertheless, he risked one question.
"How far is this place, Queen City?" he asked.
"Bout two miles," replied Jim, with what seemed to Harley a derisive grin, "an' it's tarnal lucky for us that it's so near."
Harley said no more, but he was satisfied with nothing in the guide's reply save the fact that the town was only two miles away; any shelter would be welcome, because he saw now that a snow-storm on the wild mountains was a terrible thing.
The guide led on; Jimmy Grayson, with bent head, followed; Mr. Heathcote, shrunk in his saddle, came next; then "King" Plummer; and after him Sylvia and Harley, who were as nearly side by side as the narrow path would permit.
"It won't be far, Miss Morgan," said Harley; the others could not hear.
She felt rather than heard the note of apprehension in his voice, and she knew it was for her. A thrill of singular sweetness passed over her. It was pleasant for some one, the one, to be afraid for her sake. She looked out at the driving snow and the dim peaks, but she had no fear for herself. She was glad, too, that she had come.
"I know the way of the mountains," she replied. "The guide will take us in safety to this city of his, of which he speaks so highly."
Harley saw her smile through the snow. The others rode on before, heads bowed, and did not look back. He and she felt a powerful sense of comradeship, and once, when he leaned over to detach her bridle rein from the horse's mane, he touched her hand, which was so soft and warm. Again the electric thrill passed through them both, and they looked into each other's eyes.
Now and then the vast veil of snow parted before the wind, as if cleft down the centre by a sword-blade, and Harley and Sylvia beheld a grand and awful sight. Before them were all the peaks and ridges, rising in white cones and pillars against the cloudy sky, and the effect was of distance and sublimity. From the clefts and ravines came a desolate moaning. Harley felt that he was much nearer to the eternal here than he could ever be in the plains. Then the rent veil would close again, and he saw only his comrades and the rocks twenty feet away.
They turned around the base of a cliff rising hundreds of feet above them, and Harley caught the dull-red glare of brick walls, showing through the falling snow. He was ready to raise a shout of joy. This he knew was Queen City, lying snugly in its wide valley. There was the typical, single mountain street, with its row of buildings on either side; the big one near-by was certainly the hotel, and the other big one farther on was as certainly the opera-house. But nobody was in the streets, and the whole place was dark; not a light appeared at a single window, although the night had come.
"We're here," Harley said to Sylvia, "but I confess that this does not look promising. Certainly there is nobody running to meet us."
She was gazing with curiosity.
"It's like no other town that I ever saw," she said.
Harley rode up by the side of the guide.
"The place looks lonesome," he said.
"Maybe they've all gone to bed; there ain't anythin' here to keep 'em awake," replied the guide, with the old puzzling and derisive smile.
Harley turned coldly away. He did not like to have any one make fun of him, and that he saw clearly was the guide's intention. Jimmy Grayson was still thinking of things far off, and Mr. Heathcote, chilled and shrunk, seemed to have lost the power of speech. "King" Plummer, for reasons of his own, was silent too.
The guide rode slowly towards the large brick building that Harley took to be the hotel, and, at that moment, the snow slackened for a little while; the last rays of the setting sun struck upon the dun walls and gilded them with red tracery; some panes of glass gave back the ruddy glare, but mostly the windows were bare and empty, like eyeless sockets. Harley looked farther, and all the other buildings—the opera-house, the stores, and the residences—were the same, desolate and decaying. About the place were snow-covered heaps, evidently the refuse of mining operations, but they saw no human being.
The effect upon all save the guide was startling. Harley saw the look of chilled wonder grow on Jimmy Grayson's face. Mr. Heathcote raised himself in his saddle and stared, uncomprehending. Harley had been deep in the desert, but never before had he seen such desolation and ruin, because here was the body, but all life had gone from it. He felt as one alone with ghosts. Sylvia was silent, her confidence gone for the moment. The guide laughed dryly.
"You guessed it," he said, looking at Harley. "It's a dead city. Queen City has been as dead as Adam these half-dozen years. When the mines played out, it died; there was no earthly use for Queen City any longer, and by-and-by everybody went away. But I've seen the old town when it was alive. Five thousand people here. Money a-flowin', drinks passin' over the counter one way and the coin the other, the gamblin'-houses an' the theatre chock-full, an' women, any kind you please. But there ain't a soul left now."
The snow thinned still more, and the buildings rose before them gaunt and grim.
"We'll stop to-night at the Grand Hotel—that is, if they ain't too much crowded; it'll be nice for the lady," said the guide, who had had his little joke and who now wished to serve his employers as best he could; "but first we'll take the horses into the dinin'-room; nobody will object; I've done it afore."
He rode towards a side-door, but over the main entrance Harley saw in tessellated letters the words "Grand Hotel," and he tried to shake off the feeling of weirdness that it gave him.
