CHAPTER I
ON HIS OWN FEET
THE inauguration of a small-town Mayor is no great matter for excitement. But Hardiston was interested in Wint, and wanted to have a look at him, so everybody came to see him step into his new responsibilities.
The Hardiston council chamber was on the second floor of the fire house. This was a three-story building of red brick, and a place of awe and wonder for the small boys of the town. The fire engine and the hose cart were kept on the ground floor, in front. Behind them were the stalls for the four sleek horses; behind the stalls again, a number of iron-barred stalls for human beings. Here were housed the minor criminals, arrested by Marshal Jim Radabaugh for petty peculations or disorders, and waiting for their hearings before the Mayor. These little cells were not designed to house prisoners for any length of time, and for the most part they were furnished simply with heaps of straw pilfered from the supply that was kept for the fire horses. The town drunkard, when the marshal got him, was treated as well as the fire horses; and this is more than may be said in larger towns than Hardiston.
At the left-hand side of the building there was an entrance hall, through which one passed to reach the stairs that led up to the council chamber. In the middle of this square hallway hung a rope, with a knot on the end. This rope disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. If you pulled it in the proper fashion, the bell in the steeple began a chattering, staccato beat like the clanging of a gong. This was the fire bell; and when it rang the fire chief came from his feed store across the street, and the firemen came from the bakery, and the hardware store, and the blacksmith shop where they worked; and the fat fire horses—they doubled in the street-cleaning department—came on the gallop from their abandoned wagons in the streets. Then everybody got into harness of one kind or another and went to the fire.
Everybody in town wanted to ring that fire bell. Any one who discovered a fire and reached the fire house with the news was privileged to do it. There was a tradition that a boy once tried to ring the bell and was jerked clear off the floor by the rebound after his first tug at the rope. This added to the wonder and the mystery of it. The boys used to hang around the doorway, watching this rope, and occasionally fingering it in a gingerly way, and wishing a fire would start somewhere so that they might see the bell rung.
It was through this hall where the rope hung that the people of Hardiston crowded to see Wint inaugurated. They went up the worn, wooden stairs into the council chamber, and they packed themselves in on the benches in the rear of the room. This was not only the council chamber; it was the seat of the Mayor’s court. There was an enclosure, surrounded by a railing. When some of the bigger, or perhaps it was only the braver, men of the town came in, they sat inside this railing, tilting their chairs back against it, with a spittoon drawn within easy range. The crowd came early; and they talked in cheerfully loud tones while they waited. One by one the aldermen drifted in, the new ones and the old. And Marshal Jim Radabaugh was there; and the clerk and the other officials arrived and took their places within the enclosure. They were carelessly matter of fact, as though the inauguration of a new Mayor was an everyday matter. The boys, perched on the window sills, whistled, and giggled, and then subsided into frightened silence to watch with staring eyes.
Amos Caretall had let Wint sleep as late as possible this morning. Wint needed the sleep, and Congressman Caretall made it his business to study the needs of his fellow men. His Congressional creed, which he summarized upon occasion, was as simple as that. “If a bill’s aimed to make you folks at home here more comfo’table, I’m for it,” he would say. “If it ain’t, I’m against it; and that’s all the way of it with me.” So he let Wint sleep this morning until the last minute, then shook him into wakefulness.
Even then, Wint might have thrown the whole thing over but for that whistle. He was sick and sore, his head hurt, and his eyes could not bear even the dim light of his bedroom. He told Amos he would not go through with it, that he would not be inaugurated. Then the whistle blew, and when Amos said it would be a part of his powers as Mayor to stop that plagued whistle if he wanted to, the idea struck Wint’s sense of humor. He grinned, and decided there was something in being Mayor, after all, and climbed unsteadily out of bed.
After the tub of cold water which Amos had waiting for him, he felt better. After old Maria Hale’s breakfast—fried eggs, and country-cured ham, and three cups of strong coffee—he felt better still. But he was not yet himself. Physically, he was acutely comfortable, blissfully comfortable. His legs and his arms felt warm; they tingled. His head did not hurt; it was merely numb. It was true that his tongue was furry and thick, so that he had to talk very carefully when he talked at all; but save for this precision of speech, there was no mark on him of the night before. He was young enough to recover quickly, his cheeks were red, his eyes were lazily clear.