“Better not say anything about it to Ansel,” he decided as he watched the paper twist open under the heat and break into a blaze. “He’d only call me a visionary crank again. And if it’s a trap, the precautions he’d take would play straight into Conover’s hand.”
Some blocks away, in his Pompton Avenue Mausoleum, the Railroader was giving final orders to the henchmen to whom he had intrusted the details of watching Standish’s forthcoming tour. And some of these same details he had even intrusted to the unenthusiastic Gerald.
CHAPTER VI
CALEB WORKS AT LONG RANGE
Clive Standish opened his up-State tour the following night in the small town of Wayne. It was a farming centre, and the hall was tolerably well filled with bearded and tanned men who had an outdoor look. Some of them had brought their wives; sallow, dyspeptic, angular creatures with the patient, dull faces of women who live close to nature and are too busy to profit thereby.
The audience listened interestedly as Clive outlined the Boss-ridden condition of the Mountain State, the exorbitant cost of transporting and handling agricultural products, the unjust taxes that fell so heavily on the farmer and wage-earner, the false system of legislation and the betrayal of the people’s rights by the men they were bamboozled into electing to represent them and protect their interests. He went on to tell how New York and other States had from time to time risen and shaken off a similar yoke of Bossism, and to show how, both materially and in point of self-respect, the voters of the Mountain State could profit by following such examples. In closing he briefly described the nature, aims and purposes of the Civic League and the practical reforms to which he himself stood pledged.
It did Clive’s heart good to see how readily his audience responded in interest to his pleas. He had not spoken ten minutes before he felt he had his house with him. He finished amid a salvo of applause. His hearers flocked about him as he came down from the platform, shaking his hand, asking him questions, praising his discourse.
One big farmer slapped him on the back, crying:
“You’re all right, Mr. Standish! If you can carry out all you’ve promised, I guess Wills County’ll stand by you, solid. But why on earth didn’t you advertise you was comin’ to Wayne to-night? If it hadn’t ’a’ been for your agent that passed through here yesterday and told some of the boys at the hotel and the post office, you wouldn’t ’a’ had anyone to hear you. If we’d known what was comin’, this hall’d ’a’ been packed.”
“But surely you read my advertisements in your local papers?” exclaimed Clive, “I——”
“We sure didn’t read anything of the kind,” retorted a dairyman. “I read everything in the Wayne Clarion, from editorials to soap ads., an’ there hasn’t been a line printed about your meetin’.”