“Course it has! What did they expect Missouri to do?”
“Buffalo—Doran—for mayor, has been elected. The rest of the reform ticket is——”
“Oh, dad blame it! Henry, throw that stuff away and see if there ain't some way to get something definite from Lang's Store or Clark's River on the race for state senator!”
“Yes, or for sheriff—that's the kind of thing we're all honin' to know.”
The telephone bell rang.
“Here you are, Mr. Tompkins—complete returns from Gum Spring Precinct.”
“Now—quiet, boys, please, so we can all hear.”
It was on this night that there befell the tragedy I made mention of in the first paragraph of this chapter. The old County Ring was smashing up. One by one the veterans were going under. A stripling youth not two years out of the law school had beaten old Captain Daniel Boone Calkins for representative; and old Captain Calkins had been representative so many years he thought the job belonged to him. Not much longer was the race for sheriff in doubt, or the race for state senator. Younger men snatched both jobs away from the old men who held them.
In a far corner, behind a barricade of backs and shoulders, sat Major J. Q. A. Pickett, a spare and knotty old man, and Judge Priest, a chubby and rounded one. Of all the old men, the judge seemingly had run the strongest race, and Major Pickett, who had been county clerk for twenty years or better, had run close behind him; but as the tally grew nearer its completion the major's chances faded to nothing at all and the judge's grew dimmed and dimmer.
“'What do you think, judge?” inquired Major Pickett for perhaps the twentieth time, dinging forlornly to a hope that was as good as gone already.