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?”

“No, you don't know him as well as I do,” Garner said, firmly. “It would only make him madder. The more reasons we give him for avoiding Willis the more stubborn he'll be. I guess we'll have to let him sit there and make a target of himself.”

Just then a tall mountaineer, under a broad-brimmed soft hat, wearing a cotton checked shirt and jean trousers passed through the light of the entrance to the hotel near by and slouched through the intervening darkness towards them.

“It's Pole Baker,” said Keith. “He's a rough-and-ready supporter of Carson's. Say, hold on, Pole!”

“Hold on yourself; what's up?” the mountaineer asked, with a laugh. “Plottin' agin the whites?”

“We want to ask you if you've seen Dan Willis to-night,” Garner questioned.

“Have I?” Baker grunted. “That's exactly why I'm lookin' fer you town dudes instead o' goin' on out home where I belong. I'm as sober as an empty keg, but I git charged with bein' in the Darley calaboose every time I don't answer the old lady's roll-call at bed-time. You bet Willis is loaded fer bear, and he's got some bad men with him down at the wagon-yard. Wiggin has filled 'em up with a lot o' stuff about what Carson said concernin' the White Cap raid t'other night. I thought I'd sorter put you fellers on, so you could keep our man out o' the way till their liquor wears off. Besides, I'm here to tell you, Bill Garner, that's a nasty card Wiggin's set afloat in the mountains. He says a regular gang of blue-bloods has been organized here to take up fer town coons agin the pore whites in the country. We might crush such a report in time, you know, but we'll never kill it if thar's a fight over it to-night.”

“That's the trouble,” the others said, in a breath.

“Wait one minute—you stay right here,” Baker said, and he went and stood in front of the store door and looked in for a moment; then he came back. “I thought maybe he'd let us all talk sense to 'im, but you can't put reason into a man like that any easier than you can dip up melted butter with a hot awl. I can't see any chance unless you fellers will leave it entirely to me.”

“Leave it to you?” Garner exclaimed. “What could you do?”

“I don't know whether I could do a blessed thing or not, boys, but the dam thing is so desperate that I'm willin' to try. You see, I never talk my politics—if I do, I talk it on t'other side to see what I kin pick up to advantage. The truth is, I think them skunks consider me a Wiggin man, and I'd like to git a whack at 'em. Maybe I can git 'em to leave town. Abe Johnson is the leader of 'em, and he never gets too drunk to have some natural caution.”

“Well, it certainly couldn't do any harm for you to try, Pole,” said Tingle.

“Well, I'll go down to the wagon-yard and see if they are still hanging about.”

As he approached the place in question, which was an open space about one hundred yards square surrounded by a high fence, at the lower end of the main street, Pole stood in the broad gateway and surveyed the numerous camp-fires which gleamed out from the darkness. He finally descried a group of men around a fire between two white-hooded wagons to the wheels of which were haltered several horses. As Pole advanced towards them, paying cheerful greetings to various men and women around the different fires he had to pass, he recognized Dan Willis, Abe Johnson, and several others.

A quart whiskey flask, nearly empty, stood on the ground in the light of the fire round which the men were seated. As he approached they all looked up and nodded and muttered careless greetings. It seemed to suggest a movement on the part of Dan Willis, a tall man of thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, who wore long, matted hair and had bushy eyebrows and a sweeping mustache, for, taking up the flask, he rose and dropped it into his coat-pocket and spoke to the two men who sat on either side of Abe Johnson.

“Come on,” he growled, “I want to talk to you. I don't care whether you join us or not, Abe.”

“Well, I'm out of it,” replied Johnson. “I've talked to you fellows till I'm sick. You are too darned full to have any sense.”

Willis and the two men walked off together and stood behind one of the wagons. Their voices, muffled by the effects of whiskey, came back to the ears of the remaining two.

“Goin' out home to-night, Abe?” Baker asked, carelessly.

“I want to, but I don't like to leave that damned fool here in the condition he's in. He'll either commit murder or git his blasted head shot off.”

“That's exactly what I was thinking about,” said Pole, sitting down on the ground carelessly and drawing his knees up in the embrace of his strong arms. “Look here, Abe, me'n you hain't to say quite as intimate as own brothers born of the same mammy, but I hain't got nothin' agin you of a personal nature.”

“Oh, I reckon that's all right,” the other said, stroking his round, smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. “That's all right, Pole.”

“Well, my family knowed yore family long through the war,” Abe. “My daddy was with yourn at the front, an' our mothers swapped sugar an' coffee in them hard times, an', Abe, I'm here to tell you I sorter hate to see an unsuspectin' neighbor like you walk blind into serious trouble, great big trouble, Abe—trouble of the sort that would make a man's wife an' childern lie awake many and many a night.”

“What the hell you mean?” Johnson asked, picking up his ears.

“Why, it's this here devilment that's brewin' betwixt Dan an' Carson Dwight.”

“Well, what's that got to do with me?” Johnson asked, in surly surprise.

“Well, it's jest this, Abe,” Pole leaned back till his feet rose from the ground, and he twisted his neck as his eyes followed the three men who, with their heads close together, had moved a little farther away. “Maybe you don't know it, Abe, but I used to be in the government revenue service, and in one way and another that's neither here nor there I sometimes drop onto underground information, an' I want to give you a valuable tip. I want to start you to thinkin'. You'll admit, I reckon, that if them two men meet to-night thar will be apt to be blood shed.”

Johnson stared over the camp-fire sullenly. “If Carson Dwight hain't had the sense to git out o' town thar will be, an' plenty of it,” he said, with a dry chuckle.

“Well, thar's the difficulty,” said Pole. “He hain't left town, an' what's wuss than that, his friends hain't been able to budge 'im from his seat in Blackburn's store, whar Dan couldn't miss 'im ef he was stalkin' about blindfolded. He's heard threats, and he's as mad a man as ever pulled hair.”

“Well, what the devil—”

“Hold on, Abe. Now, I'll tell you whar you come in. My underground information is that the Grand Jury is hard at work to git the facts about that White Cap raid. The whole thing—name of leader and members of the gang has been kept close so far, but—”

“Well”—the half-defiant look in the face of Johnson gave way to one of growing alarm—“well!” he repeated, but went no further.

“It's this way, Abe—an' I'm here as a friend, I reckon. You know as well as I do that if thar is blood shed to-night it will git into court, and a lots about the White Cap raid, and matters even further back, will be pulled into the light.”

Pole's words had made a marked impression on the man to whom they had been so adroitly directed. Johnson leaned forward nervously. “So you think—” But he hung fire again.

“Huh, I think you'd better git Dan Willis out o' this town, Abe, an' inside o' five minutes, ef you can do it.”

Johnson drew a breath of evident relief. “I can do it, Pole, and I'll act by your advice,” he said. “Thar's only one thing on earth that would turn Dan towards home, but I happen to know what that is. He's b'ilin' hot, but he ain't any more anxious to stir up the Grand Jury than some of the rest of us. I'll go talk to 'im.”

As Johnson moved away, Pole Baker rose and slouched off in the darkness in the direction of the straggling lights along the main street. At the gate he paused and waited, his eyes on the wagons and camp-fire he had just left. Presently he noticed something and chuckled. The horses, with clanking trace-chains, passed between him and the fire—they were being led round to be hitched to the wagons. Pole chuckled again. “I'm not sech a dern fool as I look,” he said, “Well, I had to lie some and act a part that sorter went agin the grain, but my scheme worked. If I ever git to hell I reckon it will be through tryin' to do right—in the main.”