EITH GORDON and Tingle motioned to Garner, and the three stepped out on the sidewalk leaving Blackburn and the candidate together. The street was quite deserted. Only a few of the ramshackle street lights were burning, though the night was cloudy, the location of the stores, barbershop, hotel, and post-office being indicated by the oblong patches of light on the ground in front of them.
“You'll never be able to move him,” Keith Gordon said, stroking his blond mustache nervously. “The truth is, he's terribly worked up over it. Between us three, boys, Carson never loved but one woman in his life, and she's Helen Warren. Mam' Linda is her old nurse, and Carson knows when she comes home and hears of Pete's trouble it is going to hurt her awfully. Helen has a good, kind heart, and she loves Linda as if they were the same flesh and blood. If Carson meets Willis to-night he'll kill him or get killed. Say, boys, he's too fine a fellow for that sort of thing right on the eve of his election. What the devil can we do?”
“Oh, I see; there's a woman at the bottom of it,” Garner said, cynically. “I'm not surprised at the way he's acting now, but I thought that case was over with. Why, I heard she was engaged to a man down where she's visiting.”
“She really may be,” Gordon admitted, “but Carson is ready to fight her battles, anyway. I honestly think she turned him down when he was rolling so high with her brother, just before his death a year ago, but that didn't alter his feelings towards her.”
Garner grunted as he thrust his hand deep into his breast-pocket for his plug of tobacco and began to twist off a corner of it. “The most maddening thing on earth,” he said, “is to have a close friend who is a darned fool. I'm tired of the whole business. Old Dwight is out of all patience with Carson for the reckless way he has been living, but the old man is really carried away with pride over the boy's political chances. He had that sort of ambition himself in his early life, and he likes to see his son go in for it. He was powerfully tickled the other day when I told him Carson was going in on the biggest wave of popularity that ever bore a human chip, but he will cuss a blue streak when the returns come in, for I tell you, boys, if Carson has a row with Dan Willis to-night over this negro business, it will knock him higher than a kite.”
“Do you know whether Carson has anything to shoot with?” Tingle asked, thoughtfully.
“Oh yes, I saw the bulge of it under his coat just now,” Garner answered, still angrily, “and if the two come together it will be raining lead for a while in the old town.”
“I was just thinking about his sick mother,” Keith Gordon remarked. “My sister told me the other day that Mrs. Dwight was in such a low condition that any sudden shock would be apt to kill her. A thing like this would upset her terribly—that is, if there is really any shooting. Don't you suppose if we were to remind Carson of her condition that he might agree to go home?”