Tom did not answer. He had no mind to cry for help. He stood alertly watching them, his hands in his coat pockets.
Jake laid off his hat and coat—there was leisure, and it enlarged his pleasure to take his time—and moved forward in advance of his two companions.
"Good-by," he said leering. He was on the point of lunging at his victim, when Tom's right hand came out and a fistful of sand went stinging full into his face. He gave a cry, but before he could so much as make a move to brush away the sand Tom's fist caught him on the ear. He dropped limply.
The two men sprang forward, to be met in the face by Tom's revolver.
"If you fellows want button-holes put into you, just move another step!" he said.
They took another step, several of them—but backward steps. Tom kept them covered for a minute, then moved toward the light, walking backward, his eyes never leaving them. On gaining the door he slipped the revolver into his vest pocket and stepped quickly into the blinding street.
When Tom, entering the union hall that evening, passed Jake at his place at the door, the latter scowled fiercely, but the presence of several of Tom's friends, who had been acquainted with the afternoon's encounter, pacified his fists.
"Why, what's the matter with your eyes, Jake?" asked Pig Iron Pete sympathetically.
Jake consigned Pete to the usual place, and whispered in Tom's ear: "Youse just wait! I'll git youse yet!"
That night Tom sat his first time in the president's chair. His situation was painfully grotesque,—instead of being the result of the chances of election, it might well have been an ironic jest of Foley: there was Connelly, two tables away, at his right; Brown, the vice-president, at the table next him; Snyder, the corresponding secretary, at his left; Jake Henderson, sergeant-at-arms, at the door;—every man of them an intimate friend of Foley. And it was not long before Tom felt the farce-tragedy of his position. Shortly after he rapped the meeting to order a man in the rear of the hall became persistently obstreperous. After two censured outbreaks he rose unsteadily amid the discussion upon a motion. "I objec'," he said.