“Don’t worry ’bout me, Jerry,” he said. He had dropped back into his own old way of calling Garwood by his familiar name since the contest for renomination had brought the congressman down to the hard earth again. “I’ll play my end of the game. Let Zeph here see him.”
They considered in turn the twenty-four men from Logan County. O’Malley was sent for, and came, half fearfully, reporting that his hands were tied by the exigencies of affairs in his own county. He was half afraid to be seen at Garwood’s headquarters, lest suspicion stab him, though a combination by which Garwood, when he knew his own chances were gone, would throw his strength to Barrett was the one practical thing to do.
With such manœuvering the night wore away. Garwood could reach no agreement with the Barrett men. Bailey saw Pusey, but the little editor was wily, he was playing some strange game of his own, and he sent word that if Garwood wished to see him, to come himself. What his game was none of them could find out; they did not think him at all sincere in his support of Barrett, and hourly feared that he might draw Barrett’s forces into the Sprague column. Meanwhile, Pusey’s political attitude was that of one who had simply taken refuge in the peaceful eddy that swam in the wake of Barrett’s utter respectability and availability, until some definite turn should be taken by the current. Towards morning some of the tired delegates declared truces, and arranged poker games. Their clicking chips could be heard on all that second floor of the hotel. And some of them went out under the purple sky of a summer night, a sky studded with brilliant stars. Leo was low in the west, the moon swam in a sea of silver along the horizon. They heard the calming voice of insects, they felt the breeze of the night on their brows.
The morning came, with its brazen sky. Once more the white clouds mounted in the west as if trying again for rain, and the day wore on like the one before, without change. The sun blazed on high, seeming to shrink in its own fierce dazzling concentration as it flashed its rays into that hot court room where the convention sat and balloted, one ballot after another, until a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, had been taken, until the floor was strewn with paper and discolored by tobacco, the air heavy with smoke, the feculence of all their breathing, the acrid smell of perspiration. The sky darkened, and those tired men sighed for rain. The thunder rolled down the valley of the Illinois, and then ceased. The sky cleared, and the heat increased. And all the while the ballots which Hale announced were the same:
| Garwood | Sprague | Barrett | |
| DeWitt | 18 | ||
| Logan | 24 | ||
| Mason | 18 | ||
| Moultrie | 15 | ||
| Piatt | 15 | ||
| Polk | 22 | 23 | |
| Tazewell | 30 | ||
| — | — | — | |
| Totals | 70 | 48 | 47 |
XIV
THURSDAY came and another day with its oppressive heat and even more oppressive suspense wore away; and still another came and wore away like the one before it. The week was marching by, and the delegates were no nearer a choice than when they first began. The convention had taken twelve hundred and sixty ballots; more than had been taken at the Clinton convention two years before. Still the ballot was unchanged, Garwood seventy, Sprague forty-eight, Barrett forty-seven.
Evening came, and the delegates, drawn and spent, refused to hold a night session. They trudged back to the hotel, and resumed the tiresome rounds of the headquarters, the fruitless conferences, the profitless scheming. They gathered in groups in the hotel office, filling the air with their cigar smoke. The noise of conversation ascended to the floors above, but it no longer was lightened by laughter; now it had a harsh, angry note of contest. Surely the strain could not last much longer. It must end as must the insatiable heat.
Up in Garwood’s room they had tried all their arts again, and again they had all proved unsuccessful. They had approached Pusey, and he had shuffled away with his impenetrable air, they had sounded the Logan County delegation, but found that the whim which had led it to bring out Barrett had now developed, under the pressure of the long unbroken deadlock, into an unaccountable opposition to Garwood, that had in it all the bitterness of a personal aversion. The Sprague men, of course, were utterly out of the question, and the only consolation they had was that Garwood was still in the lead, and that his delegates, upon being canvassed once more, declared that they would “go down into the last ditch with Jerry.” To Garwood it seemed that they were in the last ditch then. Each new step in the hall seemed to him the coming of the news that Sprague and Barrett had coalesced. He felt the need of instant action.