It was a fact, five hundred men had been rendered homeless for that day at least. Nevertheless, they were holding out. An hour later only one ballot had been cast at the polls in Possum Trot. The crowd thickened outside the courthouse door. Men eyed each other quizzically, morosely, some even avoided each other's questioning glances.
"Where's Jake Terry?" some one asked helplessly.
"Who, Terry?" answered Bill Long. "He was the first man here after the polls opened. Said if it was the last ballot he'd ever cast he'd vote against woman suffrage, went and put it in first for an example to the rest of us!"
"Susan Walton ain't got a mortgage on his sawmill, or he wouldn't be so gol dern frisky about votin' ag'in her!" growled Deal.
"What we going to do about this business, anyhow?" demanded one nervously.
"We could get drunk," suggested another. "There's nothing that takes the starch out of women and shows 'em their place quicker than that."
"But we can't stay drunk. We got to go home some time or other and have it out with 'em after we are sober and penitent," put in still another victim philosophically.
At this moment Tim Cates rode into the edge of the crowd, his mouth stretched in a broad grin, and his goatee working like a white peg in his chin.
"Boys," he shouted, rolling out of his saddle, "you'd as well give it up and take your medicine. I met a man coming from the Sugar Valley just now, and he 'lowed that out of a hundred and fifty votes down there this morning there wan't but three cast ag'in suffrage for women, and one of them was challenged. Susan Walton's got a man stationed at every precinct, with a list of the names of the men in that district that ain't registered nor paid their poll tax, ready to drop 'em if they try to vote!"
"Tim, step up to the store and telephone to Dry Pond and Calico Valley and see how the election is going."