CHAPTER XX
LEECH LOOKS HIGHER AND GETS A FALL
Major Leech was now one of the leading men in the State. No one had been so successful in his measures. He boasted openly that he owned his own county. Carried it in his breeches pocket, he said.
Hiram Still had become the largest property-holder in the county. “I don’t know so much about these here paper stocks,” he said to his son. “But I know good land, and when you’ve got land you’ve got it, and everybody knows you’ve got it.”
It was understood now that Leech was courting Still’s daughter, and it began to be rumored that reinforced by this alliance, after the next election he would probably be the leader in the State. He was spoken of as a possible candidate for the Governorship, the election for which was to come off the following year.
The people were now as flat on their backs as even Leech could wish.
Fortunately there is a law by which conditions through their very excess are sometimes rectified. Absolute success often bears in it the seeds of its own destruction. With the power to make such laws as they wanted, and to gild all their acts with the tinsel of apparent authority, Leech and his associates had been so successful that they had lost all reckoning of opposition, and in their security had begun to quarrel among themselves.
The present Governor, Krafton, was a candidate for re-election, and his city organ declared that Leech was pledged to him. He had “made Leech,” it said. “Leech was bound to him by every tie of gratitude and honor.” Leech in private sneered at the idea. “Does he think I’m bound to him for life? Ain’t he rich enough? Does he want to keep all the pie for himself? Why don’t he pay that rent to the State for the railroad him and his crowd leased? He talk about beatin’ me! I’ll show him. You wait until after next session and all h—l can’t beat me,” he said to Hiram Still. He did not say this to the Governor. But perhaps even counting this Leech did not count all the forces against him. Emboldened by the quietude which had existed so long, Leech moved more openly. He believed he was strong enough now for anything. Success was at length turning even Still’s head.
“You got to keep yourself before the people, and do it all the time. If you don’t they’ll forgit you, and somebody else will reap your harvest,” Still explained to his ally.