The Jay County delegates had begun to straggle into town, and percolate aimlessly through the throngs in and about the bar-rooms, listening to the discussions, and exchanging compliments and small talk with acquaintances. Pending the appearance of their leader there was nothing else for them to do. There was a rumor that Abe Beekman was in town, sending for men as he wanted to see them, one by one, but nobody professed to be in the secret of his hiding place, and nobody dreamed of attempting to find out what Abe wished to keep dark.
The Adams County men, delegates and others, came over the hill from the Spartacus station in a carryall, with four horses, and created a genuine sensation as they drew up with a great clatter and splashing of mud in front of the Nedahma House, and descended jauntily from the rear step to the curb-stone. The natives eyed them all with deep interest, for upon their action depended the issue of the day, but there was a special excitement in watching the nine delegates with stove-pipe hats and gloves, and tight rolled umbrellas, who came from Tecumseh itself. Tecumseh was the only city in the district, or the whole section, for that matter, and Jay County people timidly, wistfully dreamed of its gilded temptations, its wild revels of sumptuous gayety, its dazzling luxuriance of life, as shepherd boys on the plain of Dura might have dreamed of the mysteries and marvels of Babylon. It was something, at least, to touch elbows with men whose daily life was passed in Tecumseh.
Such of the younger Tyreans as had been introduced to these exalted creatures on their previous visit crowded around them now, to deferentially renew the acquaintance, and shine before their neighbors in its reflected light.
Then the news filtered through the groups round about that Ansdell himself had come up this time, and was the short, wiry little man with the drab overcoat and the sharp black eyes. This aroused a fleeting interest, and there was some standing on tip-toe to get a good view of him, but it could not last long, for Ansdell as a politician was not a tangible thing on which the tendrils of Tyre’s imagination could get a real grip.
It was of more importance to learn whether the views of the Adams delegates had undergone any change—whether a new light had dawned upon them in the interim. They submitted graciously to the preliminary test of drinks at the bar, and pretended with easy affability to remember distinctly the various Tyre men who came up and recalled their acquaintance of a fortnight ago, but they had nothing to say that was to the purpose. They were waiting; they would see what turned up; they would certainly vote for Ansdell on the first ballot; further than that they couldn’t say, but they saw no reason now why they shouldn’t keep on voting for him; still, perhaps something might happen—this and nothing more.
Meanwhile there was an uneasy whisper going the rounds to the effect that the two Adams men who had previously voted for Fairchild were now for Ansdell, having succumbed to local pressure during the fortnight. The story could not be verified, for the two gentlemen in question had secreted themselves upon their arrival, and the other Adams men only grinned bland mystery when interrogated on the subject. This worried the Tyre men a good deal more than they would have liked to admit, but there was a certain element of pleasure in it, too, for it added piquancy to the coming fight.
The wooden minute hand of the old clock on the court house cupola had laboriously twitched along to the zenith of the dial once more, marking ten o’clock; only half an hour remained now before the time for the Convention to reassemble, and the Dearborn delegates were still absent. People began to stroll toward the court house, and casually attach themselves to the outskirts of the cluster of saturnine, clean-shaven, thin-featured old villagers, in high black stocks and broad-brimmed soft hats, who stood on the steps, behind the fluted columns of the building’s ambitious Grecian front, and chewed tobacco voraciously while they set up the rival claims of Martin Van Buren and Francis Granger, or mumblingly wrangled over the life and works of De Witt Clinton. These old men, by reason of the antiquity and single-heartedness of their devotion to their country, had two inalienable and confirmed rights: to sit on the platform close by the speakers when the Declaration of Independence was read each Fourth of July and to have the first chance for seats when the doors were opened at a political Convention.
At last the eyes of those who had lingered about the Turnpike Tavern were gladdened by the sight of the Dearborn crowd, driving furiously up in three or four vehicles. Milton Squires was in the foremost wagon, and he was the first to alight.
He trembled and turned around swiftly as a man laid a hand on his shoulder.
“What d’yeh want?” he demanded, with nervous alertness.