The Candidate: A Political Romance
wagon-train that was going up away into the Northwest where the
railroads did not then reach.
"It was long ago--when Sylvia was a little girl, not more than seven or
eight--and the train was massacred by Utes just as they reached the
Idaho line. The Utes were on the war-path--there had been some sort of
an outbreak--and the train had been warned by the soldiers not to go on,
but the emigrants were reckless. They laughed at danger, because they
did not see it before their faces. They pushed on, and they were
ambushed in a deep canyon.
"There was hardly any fight at all, the attack was so sudden and
unexpected. Before the people knew what was coming half of them were
shot down, and then those awful savages were among them with tomahawk
and knife. Mr. Harley, I've no use for the Indian. It is easy enough to
get sentimental about him when you are away off in the East, but when
you are close to him in the West all that feeling goes. I heard Sylvia
tell about that massacre once, and only once. It was years ago, but I
can't forget it; and if I can't forget it, do you think that she can?
Her father was killed at the first fire from the bushes, and then an
Indian, covered with paint and bears' claws, tomahawked both her mother
and her little brother before her eyes--yes, and scalped them, too. He
ran for the girl next, but Sylvia--I think it was just physical
impulse--dashed away into the scrub, and the Indian turned aside for a
victim nearer at hand.
"Sylvia lay hid until night came, and there was silence over the
mountain, the silence of death, Mr. Harley, because when she slipped
back in the darkness to the emigrant train she found every soul that had
been in it, besides herself, dead. Think, Mr. Harley, of that little
girl alone in all those vast mountains, with her dead around her! Do you
wonder that sometimes she seems hard?"
"No, I don't," replied Harley. Despite himself a mist came to his eyes
over this pathetic tragedy of long ago.
"Sylvia has never said much about that night she spent there with the
dead, in the midst of the wrecked and plundered train, but when a number
of border men, alarmed about the emigrants, pushed on the next day to
save them if possible, what do you suppose they found her doing?"
"I can't guess."
"She had got a spade somewhere from one of the wagons, and, little as
she was, she was trying to bury her own dead. She was so busy that she
didn't see them ride up, and William Plummer, their leader--he was a
young man then--actually shed tears, so they say. Well, these men
finished the burial, and Mr. Plummer put Sylvia on his horse before him
and rode away. He adopted the little thing as his daughter. He said she
was the bravest creature he had ever seen, and, as he was not likely to
have any real daughter, she should take a place that ought to be filled.
"Were the Utes who did this massacre punished?"
"No one knows; the soldiers killed a number of them in battle, but
whether the slain were those who ambushed the train is not decided in
border history."
"I think I understand the rest of the story of Mr. Plummer and Miss
Morgan," said Harley.
"Yes, it is not hard to guess. Mr. Grayson and her other relatives
farther East did not hear of her rescue until long afterwards; they
supposed her dead--but no one could have cared for her better than Mr.
Plummer. He kept her first at his mining-hut in the mountains, but after
two or three years he took her into town to Boise; he put her in the
care of a woman there and sent her to school. He loved her already like
a real daughter. She was just the kind to appeal to him, so brave and so
fond of the wild life. They say that at first she refused to stay in
Boise. She ran away and tried to go on foot to him away up in the
mountains, where the mining-camp was. When he heard of it, they say he
laughed, and I suspect that he swore an oath or two--he lived among
rough men you know--but if he did, they were swear words of admiration;
he said it was just like her independence and pluck. But he made her
stay in Boise."
"He knew what was right and what was due both him and her, because now
he was becoming a great man in the Northwest. He rose to power in both
financial and public life, and his daughter must be equal to her
fortune. But he spoiled her, you can see that, and how could he help
it?"
"She was fifteen before we heard that she was alive, and then Mr.
Grayson and her other relatives wanted to take her and care for her, but
Mr. Plummer refused to give her up, and he was right. He had saved her
when he found her a little girl alone in all those vast mountains, and
he was entitled to her. Don't you think so, Mr. Harley?"
"I do," replied Harley, with conviction.
"We yielded to his superior claim, but he sent her more than once to see
us. We loved her from the first, and we love her yet."
Here Mrs. Grayson paused and hesitated over her words, as if in
embarrassment.
"But it is not you and Mr. Grayson alone who love her," suggested
Harley.
"It is not we alone; in Boise everybody loves her, and at the mines and
on Mr. Plummer's ranches they all love her, too."
"I did not mean just that kind of love."
Mrs. Grayson flushed a little, but she continued:
"You are speaking of Mr. Plummer himself; she was his daughter at first,
and so long as she was a little girl I suppose that he never dreamed of
her in any other light. But when she began to grow into a young woman,
Mr. Harley--and a beautiful one, too, as beautiful as she is good--he
began to look at her in a different way. When these elderly men, who
have been so busy that they have not had time to fall in love, do fall
in love, the fall is sudden and complete. Mr. Plummer was like the
others. And what else could she do? She was too young to have seen much
of the world. There was no young man, none of her own age, who had taken
her heart. Mr. Plummer is a good man, and she owed him everything. Of
course, she accepted him. I ask you, what else could she do?"
There was a defensive note in her voice when she said: "I ask you, what
else could she do?" and Harley replied, with due deliberation:
"Perhaps she could do nothing else, but sometimes, Mrs. Grayson, I have
my doubts whether twenty and fifty can ever go happily together."
"We like Mr. Plummer, and he is a great friend of my husband's."
Harley said nothing, but he, too, liked Mr. Plummer, and he held him in
the highest respect. It required little effort of the imagination to
draw a picture of the brave mountaineer riding from the Indian massacre
with that little girl upon his saddle-bow. And much of his criticism of
Sylvia Morgan herself was disarmed. She was more a child of the
mountains even than his first fancy had made her, and it was not a
wonder that her spirit was often masculine in its strength and boldness.
It was involuntary, but he thought of her with new warmth and
admiration. Incited by this feeling, he soon joined her and the group
that was with her. He had expected to find her sad and comparatively
silent, but he had never seen her in a more lively mood, full of light
talk and jest and a gay good-humor that could not have failed to infect
the most hardened cynic. Certainly he did not escape its influence, nor
did he seek to do so, but as he watched her he thought there was a
slight touch of feverishness to her high spirits, as if she had just
escaped from some great danger.
Before they reached Detroit he talked a while with Mr. Grayson, in the
private drawing-room of the car--Mrs. Grayson had joined the others--and
"King" Plummer was the subject of their talk.
"Is he really such a great political power in the Northwest?" asked
Harley.
"He is. Even greater than popular report makes him. I believe that in a
presidential election he could decide the vote of five or six of those
lightly populated states. He has so many interests, so many strings that
he holds, and he is a man of so much energy and will. You see, I want to
keep "King" Plummer my friend."
"I surely would, if I were in your place," said Harley, with conviction.
VI
ON THE ROAD
The great success of Grayson as an orator was continued at Detroit. A
vast audience hung breathless upon his words, and he played upon its
emotions as he would, now thrilling the people with passion, and then
stirring them to cheers that rolled like thunder. It became apparent
that this hitherto obscure man from the Far West was the strongest
nominee a somewhat disunited party could have named, and Harley, whose
interest at first had been for the campaign itself rather than its
result, began to have a feeling that after all Grayson might be
elected--at least he had a fighting chance, which might be more if it
were not for the shadow of Goodnight, Crayon, and their kind. Part of
these men had gone back, among them the large and important Mr.
Goodnight; but Harley saw the quiet Mr. Crayon still watching from a
high box at Detroit, and he knew that no act or word of the candidate
would escape the scrutiny of this powerful faction within the party.
Ample proof of his conclusion, if it were needed, came the next morning
in a copy of the New York _Monitor_, Churchill's paper, which contained
on its front page a long, double-leaded despatch, under a Milwaukee date
line. It was Hobart who brought it in to Mr. Grayson and his little
party at the breakfast-table.
"Excuse me for interrupting you, Mr. Grayson," he said, flourishing the
paper as if it were a sort of flag; "but here is something that you are
bound to see. It's what might be called a word in your ear, or, at
least, it seems to me to have that sound. I guess that Churchill got a
beat on us all in Milwaukee."
"I wish you would join us, Mr. Hobart, and read the whole article to us,
if you will be so kind," said the candidate, calmly.
Nothing could have pleased Hobart better, and he read with emphasis and
care, resolved that his hearers should not lose a word. Churchill had a
good style, and he possessed a certain skill in innuendo, therefore he
was able throughout the article to make his meaning clear. He stated
that among those surrounding the candidate--he could give names if he
would, but it was not necessary--there was a certain feeling that Mr.
Grayson was not quite--at least not yet--as large as the position for
which he had been nominated. Keen observers had noticed in him a
predisposition to rashness; he had spoken lightly more than once of
great vested interests.
"Uncle James, how could you be so lacking in reverence?" exclaimed
Sylvia Morgan.
Mr. Grayson merely smiled.
"Go on, Mr. Hobart," he said.
"'But some of the ablest minds in the country are closely watching Mr.
Grayson,'" continued the article, "'and where he needs support or
restraint he will receive it. There are certain issues not embodied in
the platform from which he will be steered.'"
"Now, I think that is too much!" exclaimed Mrs. Grayson, the indignant
red rising in her cheeks.
"Their printing it does not make it true, Anna," said the candidate,
mildly.
"As if you did not know enough to run your own campaign!" exclaimed the
indignant wife.
But Jimmy Grayson continued to smile. "We must expect this sort of
thing," he said; "it would be a dull campaign without it. Please go on,
Mr. Hobart."
A number of eminent citizens, the article continued, would make a
temporary sacrifice of their great business interests for the sake of
the campaign and the people, and with their restraining care it was not
likely that Mr. Grayson could go far wrong, as he seemed to be an
amiable man, amenable to advice. Thus it continued at much length, and
Harley, keen and experienced in such matters, knew very well whence
Churchill had drawn his inspiration.