The Candidate: A Political Romance

by Joseph A. Altsheler

He saw them stop at last, he saw Harley kiss Sylvia, and then he saw the girl turn away. He waited until he saw Sylvia pass over the swell, and then he took his opportunity. Whether he would have fired if Sylvia had not come he could not say to himself afterwards in his cooler moments. Remorse upon this point tortured him for some time.

When he turned away he saw nothing. He was agitated by the powerful truth that Sylvia preferred death with Harley to life with him, and all his views were inward. He still did not know what he would do, but there was much of a moving nature to him in the scene that he left. He had never before seen such a look on a woman's face as that on Sylvia's when she threw herself upon Harley's breast and defied his bullet; it was beautiful and wonderfully pathetic, and something like a sob came from the burly "King." Harley, too, had borne himself like a man; there was no fear in the face of the Eastern youth when he looked into the muzzle of the pistol that threatened instant death; "King" Plummer remembered more than once in the early days when he had been covered by the levelled weapon of an enemy, and he knew how hard it was in such a case to control one's nerves and keep steady. He could not help respecting a courage fully the equal of his own.

He wandered on in a series of circles that did not take him far, and in a half-hour he stopped at the crest of a swell higher than the rest. He saw Sylvia and Harley far away—but he knew them well—walking side by side. "Well, I suppose they have the right!" he said, moodily. The fire within him was dying down, but he added; "I'll be damned if I look at them making love."

The "King" had the habits bred by long years of necessity and precaution, and unless the distracting circumstances were very powerful he was always a keen observer of weather and locality. Now the fire was low, but he was almost at the edge of the town before his blood became normal and cool. Then he looked about. A half-mile away he saw a mass of heads, sometimes rising and falling, and a faint echo of cheers came to him. He knew that the candidate was still speaking, and he smiled rather sourly. Then he was conscious that the sunshine was not so brilliant, and there was a feeling of chill damp in the wind that came up from the southwest.

The "King" glanced up at the sky; it had turned a steely gray, and ugly brown clouds were coming up over the rim of the southwestern horizon. "There's going to be an early snow," he said, and for the moment the matter gave him no further concern. Then Sylvia and Harley suddenly shot up and filled his whole horizon. He had seen them far from where he stood, and they were going directly away from the town, not towards it! And one was a girl and the other a tenderfoot!

Now Harley disappeared from the "King's" horizon as suddenly as he had come into it, and the solitary figure of Sylvia filled all its space. She was not a woman now, but the desolate little girl whom he had found alone in the mountains, vainly trying to bury her massacred dead, and whom he had carried away on his saddle-bow. All the long years of protection and tenderness that he had given her came back to him; there was only the image of the slim little girl with flying curls who ran to meet him and who called him "Daddy!"

That little girl was lost out there on the plain, and as sure as the sun had gone from the heavens a snow-storm was coming fast on the wings of the southwestern wind. He knew, and his heart was filled with grief and despair; no rage was left there; that fire had burned out completely, and it seemed to the "King" that it never could be lighted again. It was wonderful now to him that the flame could ever have been so fierce. And the boy Harley was lost, too. Mr. Plummer again remembered, and with a certain admiration, how brave Harley had been, and he remembered, too, that when he first saw him his impulse was to like him greatly.

He ran back towards the swell where he had last beheld them, hoping to find them or at least to follow upon their traces before the snow fell and hid the trail. He was an old frontiersman, and with a favorable soil he might do it. But long before he reached the swell the snow flew, and the brown clouds and the whirling flakes together blotted out all the plain, save the little circle in which he stood.

He raised his powerful voice and called in tones that carried far, "Sylvia! Sylvia!" But no sound came back save the lonely cry of the wind and the soft, whirring rush of the snow, like the soft beat of wings. The "King" was a brave and sanguine man, physically and mentally disposed to hope, but his heart dropped like lead in water. He saw the slim little girl, with flying brown hair, dead and cold in the snow. Then his courage came back, and with it all his mental coolness. He did not seek to rush after them, floundering here and there in the semi-darkness and calling vainly, but hurried back to the town.

The people had just returned from the candidate's speech, and were crowding into the lobby of the hotel to shake Mr. Grayson's hand and to tell him that he would win by a "million majority." The candidate was enduring this ordeal with his usual good-nature and grace, although the crowded room was hot and close, and the odor of steaming boots arose.