THE GOLD COIN
The campaign against liquor selling in Polktown really had been opened on that Monday morning when Janice and Frank Bowman conferred together near the scene of the young engineer's activities for the railroad.
The determination of two wide-awake young people to do something was the beginning of activities.
Not only was the time ripe, but popular feeling was already stirred in the matter. The thoughtful people of Polktown were becoming dissatisfied with the experiment. Those who had considered it of small moment in the beginning were learning differently. If Polktown was to be "boomed" through such disgraceful means as the sale of intoxicants at the only hotel, these people with suddenly awakened consciences would rather see the town lie fallow for a while longer.
The gossip regarding Hopewell Drugg's supposed fall from sobriety was both untrue and unkind. That the open bar at Lem Parraday's was a real and imminent peril to Polktown, however, was a fact now undisputed by the better citizens.
Janice had sounded Elder Concannon on that very Monday when she had brought him home from the Trimmins place. The old gentleman, although conservative to a fault where money was concerned—his money, or anybody's—agreed that one or two men should not be allowed to benefit at the moral expense of their fellow townsmen.
That the liquor selling was causing a festering sore in the community of Polktown could not be gainsaid. Sim Howell and two other boys in their early teens had somehow obtained liquor, and had been picked up in a frightful condition on the public street by Constable Poley Cantor.
The boys were made very ill by the quantity of liquor they had drunk, and although they denied that they had bought the stuff at the hotel, it was soon learned that the supply of spirits the boys had got hold of, came from Lem Parraday's bar.
One of the town topers had purchased the half-gallon bottle and had hid it in a barn, fearing to take it home. The boys had found it and dared each other to taste the stuff.
"It's purty bad stuff 'at Lem sells, I allow," observed Walky Dexter.
"No wonder it settled them boys. It's got a 'kick' to it wuss'n
Josephus had that time the swarm of bees lit on him."