CHAPTER XII
"Something's broke loose," announced Bill, slamming the door violently. "Pap's bought an automobile." Which illuminative remark indicated that Judge Bowers's mind had expanded to let in a fresh vagary.
Jap looked up inquiringly.
"I reckon it's all on account of Billy Wamkiss," Bill explained.
"Billy who? There never was no such animal," and Jap scowled at the stick in his hand. Conditions in Bloomtown were, as Jim Blanke expressed it, all to the bad. While the political fight was at white heat the Mayor had contrived to have his own way. He was going to "make the town" which Ellis Hinton had failed to make. There would be revenue enough to provide metropolitan improvements, and already there was a metropolitan, perhaps even a Monte Carlo-tan, air to the recently awakened village, as every train disgorged its Saturday evening crowd of gamblers from the city where the lid had gone on with ruthless completeness.
Mrs. Granger had arisen from a sick-bed to call together the women of all the churches to make protest at the licensing of another pool-room, with bar and poker attachment, not two blocks from her home, a stroke that had met its counter stroke when the saloon element threatened to boycott Granger's bank and open a rival financial institution in one of the store-rooms of the recently erected hotel that faced the Court House Square, half a block away. Another crowd, the men with store-rooms and cottages to rent, promised to carry all their banking business to Barton, if Granger didn't "sit on his wife good and proper."
"Never was no such animal?" Bill repeated. "Wake up, Jap. Don't you know who Billy Wamkiss is?"
"Never heard of the guy," Jap insisted.
"He's that greasy, wall-eyed temperance lecturer that's been stringing the town for a week."
"Humph!" Jap snorted. "Time for you to wake up, Bill. You brought in the ad yourself, and you wrote the account of the first lecture. The columns of the Herald will bear me out that the reverend gentleman's name is Silas Parsons."
"Yes, that's his reverend name," Bill snorted. "When he's the advance agent of a rotgut whiskey house over in Kentucky that supplies fancy packages to all the dry territory around here, he's plain Billy Wamkiss."
"Oh, that's his game!" Jap sat up, his gray eyes wide with astonishment. "How did you get next to it?"
"Your good friend, Wilfred Jones, put me wise. He didn't mean to, but he let it slip out when he wasn't watching. I ran into him over in Barton this morning and he was roasting Bloomtown as usual. Said we were a bunch of Rubes, to fall for a raw proposition like Billy Wamkiss, dressed up as a temperance lecturer. And then he went on to say that my daddy would get richer'n he already is, from his rake-off on the moisture that'll be injected into the town after she goes dry. He said he met Wamkiss in Chicago three years ago, and he's been doing a rattling business all over the country—deliver lectures on the evils of the Demon Rum that'd bring tears to the eyes of a potato; dry up the territory, with the help of the churches; and then fill up the town with drug stores. That's his program, and it's going to work here, thanks to my amiable and honorable father."
Jap was silent. He had no words with which to express his emotions. Bill went out on the street, his reporter's pad under his arm. In half an hour he returned.
"It's worse—I mean more incriminating—than I thought, Jap," he said, as he drew his partner into the private office and shut the door.
"Did you attend that meeting at the Baptist Church?" Jap asked anxiously.
"Yes, and I had to dig out before it was over. I wanted to explode, and blow up the whole bunch of idiots and crooks. Pap and Wamkiss, alias Parsons, have formed some kind of a Templar lodge, and my daddy's got himself elected secretary. They're going to dry up Bloomtown. Fancy it! They did a lot of crooked work over at the Court House, so as to make it look as if all the licenses would expire at the same time. Holmes is the only one that's likely to squeal, because he's paid his second fee, and the others have only a few months to run. They'll make it up to Holmes, I reckon, rather'n have him give the snap away. Of course, Jap, I haven't got the goods for any of this. I just put two and two together while I was listening to the speeches, especially my father's speech."
"Bill"—Jap laid his hand on Bill's arm—"you made the mistake of your career when you picked that owl for a daddy. He has made more trouble than three towns could stand up against. First, he throws the place wide open and takes all the stray saloons and gambling dens to his bosom; and just when we have a reputation for being the toughest town on the road and doing a land-office business in sin, he is—he is fool enough to try to pull off a stunt like this. What becomes of his plea for municipal revenue when he turns saloons into drug stores?"
"Well, the lid's going on," Bill returned. "The preachers and the ladies are strong for it, and the right honorable Mayor announced that he was the Poo Bah that was going to put up the shutters."
"Better order a granite," Jap muttered, as he returned to the composing room.
And his prediction was well founded, for the town had become so used to its "morning's morning" that it fairly ravened for the blood of Mayor Bowers. The Herald office became a forum for indignant orators, while the Mayor strutted proudly up and down Main street, with the black-coated Parsons, feeling that the eyes of the world were glued on him.
"Parsons! Bah!" spluttered Kelly Jones, who had driven four miles with his empty jug. "Ef the town has got any git-up, it'll ride him and that old jackass of a mayor on a rail."
"Judge Bowers is the honored father of our Associate Editor," informed Jap gravely.
As Bill looked up he thumped the galley he was carrying against the case and pied the whole column. After he had said what he thought about the catastrophe, Kelly grinned appreciatively.
"Them's my sentiments, Bill. Ef you love your pappy, you'd better let him go, along of Parsons, 'cause there's goin' to be doings around Bloomtown that'll hurt his pride. Parsons! They say out our way that his right name's Wamkiss."
The turgid tide of popular sentiment caused Mayor Bowers some uneasiness; but before anything could happen five new drug stores were opened for business and things moved placidly along again. Barton began to refer to "our neighbor, Bumtown," and it was reported that two blind tigers prowled in the environs of the railroad station.
"Bill," said Jap one morning, "this won't do. We'll have to raise hell in this town. This is Ellis's town, and we're not going to let a dod-blinged mugwump like your asinine daddy ruin it. Bill, if you have got any speech to make, get ready. If you can't stand for my program, name your price, for the Herald is going to everlastingly lambaste William Bowers, Senior."
"Pull the throttle and run 'er wild," Bill retorted, as he ducked down behind the press and dragged forth a box from the corner. "I'm going to get out that last lot of cuts that Ellis made," he continued. "Kelly Jones knows sense. If I remember right, Ellis had twenty-five cuts of jacks for the stock bill. We will stick every blamed one of 'em in next week's issue, and label 'em Mayor Bowers. He has killed the town with his ideas. What can we do with him but hang him?"
When the Herald appeared the following Thursday afternoon, the town quit business to read the war cry of Ellis's boy. It was a flaming sword, hurled at the Board of Aldermen. Bowers, foaming with wrath, stormed into the office.
"You take all that back," he yelled, "or I'll put you out of this here building. I've told you times enough this office belongs to me. I never turned it over to Ellis."
Jap stuck type, deadly calm on the surface of his being. Bill shifted uneasily, his hands clinched, his ruddy face glowing.
"You hear me?" bawled the irate Mayor.
Jap turned to consult his copy. Before the act could be imagined Bowers had struck him over the head with the revolver he dragged from his pocket. Jap fell, crumpling to the floor, the blood spurting across the type. For an instant there was horrified silence. Then, with a howl like that of a wild beast, Bill threw himself upon his father. But for the intervention of Tom Granger, who had followed the Mayor because he scented trouble, there would have been a quick finish to the pompous career of Bill Bowers's progenitor, for Bill had wrested the pistol from his father's hand and was pressing it against the temple of the worst scared coward Bloomtown had ever seen. There was a sharp tussle between the broad-shouldered banker and the frenzied youth. Several men rushed in from the street.
"Let me go!" shouted Bill, "for if he's killed Jap he's got to die."
They were carrying Jap out of the composing room, limp and bleeding.
"Let him alone, Bill," Tom counselled wisely. "Let your father alone, for if Jap is dead, we'll lynch him."
Jap was pretty weak when they brought the Mayor's resignation up from the calaboose for him to read. A representative delegation stood around his bed.
"Let the Judge out, for Bill's sake," Jap said.
"We'd better keep him locked up for his own sake," declared Tom Granger. "For in Bill's present frame of mind he's likely to make an orphan of himself."
Flossy came in from the little sitting-room and leaned over the bed.
"I am going to see Brother William," she said quietly. "I am going to take Brent Roberts with me. William will give you boys a quitclaim bill to this property, for this dastardly deed."
She was an impersonation of righteous wrath as she swept into the jail, followed by Bloomtown's leading attorney. Judge Bowers had said more than once that Flossy had a willing tongue, but its full willingness was never conceived until she descended upon him that eventful day.
An arrangement, made by Ellis just before his departure, gave the contents of the office to the boys, on regular payments to Flossy. The ground on which the new building stood had been deeded to Ellis and Flossy on their wedding day; but the building, presumed to be a gift to Ellis, had been reclaimed by Bowers; it was held, however, as Bill's share in the firm. As yet no occasion had arisen that demanded the settling of the question of ownership. Whenever the Judge had an attack of bile he came into the office to remind Bill and Jap that the building was still his.
For one heated hour Flossy detailed the past, present and future of her cowering brother. When she left him he was a wiser, and probably a sadder, man, for she had deprived him of his weapon.
There was a big bonfire on the circus grounds, and a celebration in Court House Square that night. The next day there was a great vacuum in the City Hall, for the Board of Aldermen resigned unanimously. A special election was called, and before Jap was strong enough to sit at his case he had been elected Mayor of Bloomtown.
He looked sadly from the window of his bedroom, after the joyous crowd of serenaders that had come to congratulate him. Bill had followed in their wake, to escort Rosy home. It was late. The clock in the Presbyterian church spire chimed twelve, as he stood alone. He took his hat from the rack and went cautiously downstairs. On the pavement he paused a moment to steady himself. His head still reeled after any unwonted exertion. Then he walked slowly up Main street, across the railroad tracks, and out to the quiet village whose inhabitants slept 'neath marble and sod. Standing beside the grave of his first friend, he said:
"Ellis, make the town proud of your boy. Help me to be your right hand. If I can only fulfill your plan, I am willing that no other ambition be fulfilled."
A lonely night bird called softly. The willow branches waved in the breeze. Thick darkness hung over the City of the Dead. Suddenly the moon peered through the clouds, flooding the night with beauty, and Jap read from the stone the last message of Ellis:
"I go, but not as one unsatisfied. In God's plan, my work will live."