第50章

A long afternoon of the toil that tires and vexes not, and at sundown he was glad to ride home on top of the last wagon instead of walking as he had intended.The supper-table was ready--was spread in the dining-shed.They washed their hands and sunburnt arms and soused their heads in cold water from the well, and sat, Scarborough at one end, Gabbard at the other, the strapping sons and the "hands" down either side.The whole meal was before them--huge platters of fried chicken, great dishes full of beans and corn and potatoes; plates piled high with hot corn bread, other plates of "salt-rising"; Mrs.Gabbard's miraculous apple pies, and honey for which the plundered flowers might still be mourning.Yesterday it would have seemed to Scarborough dinner enough for a regiment.To-day--he thought he could probably eat it all, and wished that he might try.To drink, there were coffee and cider and two kinds of milk.He tried the buttermilk and kept on with it.

"You must 'a' had a busy summer," said Gabbard."This is the first time you've been with us.""Yes," Scarborough replied."I did hope to get here for the threshing, but I couldn't."The threshing set them all off--it had been a record year;thirty-eight bushels to the acre on the average, twenty-seven on the hillsides which Gabbard had hesitated whether to "put in"or not.An hour after supper Scarborough could no longer hold his eyes open."Wake me with the others," he said to Mrs.

Gabbard, who was making up the "salt-rising" yeast for the morrow's baking."I'll have breakfast when they do.""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."