“But Colonel Shiraf is out on the Ten Mile.”
“In that case,” said the Governor, “you must go up to the mines, and if the dignity of the Commonwealth needs to be maintained, you will maintain it, Dave. You should find some troops at the post, some herders at the cattle ranch, and a very large proportion of the State Guards, by this time quite drunk, at a horse fair in Garfield County. If they are required, notify me.”
As the secretary turned to leave the room, the Governor called him back. “Dave, my boy,” he said, “peace in this Commonwealth is a sacred thing—a superlatively sacred thing, so sacred that we are going to have it if thereby the word 'census' becomes a meaningless term; and remember, my boy, that the State is very expeditious.”
The secretary went out and closed the door behind him, while His Excellency, Alfred Capland Randal, forgetting the report, turned back to the window. The air from the great brown plain came up dry and hot; above the blue mountains the sun looked like a splotch of bloody red, and over it all brooded the monotonous—the almost hopeless silence of the far Southwest.
The something on the Governor's mind was a something of grave import, for which he could evidently find no solution, and presently he began to pace the length of his private office with long strides, and with his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
Suddenly the door opened and a Chinaman entered with a telegram. The Governor looked up sharply, and taking the envelope tore it open with evident unconcern. When his eyes ran over the message he drew in a deep breath, and, seating himself at a table, spread out the paper before him. This was the advent of the unexpected, for which Mr. Randal was not quite prepared, and this his manner exhibited to such a degree that the stolid Celestial wondered vaguely what was up with the big foreign devil.
“Our train stops at El Paso,” ran the telegram, “you will come up, won't you?—M. L.”
The Governor stroked his Van Dyke beard, and the fine lines came out on his face. “Of all times,” he muttered. Then he turned to the Chinaman. “Have my overcoat at the depot at six. I am going to El Paso, and shall not return until late.”
The Chinaman vanished, and the Executive crushed the telegram in his hands, thrust it into his pocket, and resumed his march up and down the private office.
This Governor was the crowning achievement of a machine. He was the elder son of an ancient family in Massachusetts, and had been reared and educated in an atmosphere of culture. It had been the intention of his family to have him succeed his father with the practice of the law, but the plans of men are subject to innumerable perils, and it soon developed that young Mr. Randal was not at all adapted to the duties of a barrister. Indeed it was very early apparent that nature had intended this man for the precarious vagaries of a public life. He was magnetic, generous, with a splendid presence, and the careless, speculative spirit of a gambler. In truth, Alfred Capland Randal was a politician per se. While in college he had been a restless element, injecting the principles of practical policy into everything he touched, from the Greek-letter fraternities to the examinations in Tacitus, and all with such reckless, jovial abandon that divers sage members of the faculty speculated with much wonder as to which particular penal institution would be his ultimate domicile.