“Climb in, Jim!” said he. “Dan and Dolly didn’t like to see you walk.”
“They’re looking fine,” said Jim.
There is a good deal to say whenever two horse lovers get together. Hoofs and coats and frogs and eyes and teeth and the queer sympathies between horse and man may sometimes quite take the place of the weather for an hour or so. But when Jim had alighted at his own door, the colonel spoke of what had been in his mind all the time.
“I saw Bonner and Haakon and Ez doing some caucusing to-day,” said he. “They expect to elect Bonner to the board again.”
“Oh, I suppose so,” replied Jim.
“Well, what shall we do about it?” asked the colonel.
“If the people want him—” began Jim.
“The people,” said the colonel, “must have a choice offered to ’em, or how can you or any man tell what they want? How can they tell themselves?”
Jim was silent. Here was a matter on which he really had no ideas except the broad and general one that truth is mighty and shall prevail—but that the speed of its forward march is problematical.
“I think,” said the colonel, “that it’s up to us to see that the people have a chance to decide. It’s really Bonner against Jim Irwin.”