CHAPTER VI

THE WHISTLE BLOWS

The festivities in Wint’s honor on the night before his inaugural were a great success, from every point of view.

There was nothing formal about them. They occurred in an upper room in one of the newer business blocks on Main Street. Only half a dozen young fellows attended them; but these were all chosen spirits, and congenial.

At half past nine, they were all pleasantly illuminated by their libations and the general good cheer of the occasion. At eleven, two of them were asleep quite peacefully in each other’s arms upon a couch at one side of the room. These two snored as they slept. The others were playing cards, and the refreshments which had been provided were in easy reach. Wint and Jack Routt were among those playing cards. Routt never passed a certain stage of intoxication, no matter how much he drank. He reached this stage with the first swallow.

With Wint, it was otherwise. In such matters, he progressed steadily toward a dismal end. As eleven o’clock struck, he had just passed the quarrelsome stage and was beginning to pity himself. He opened a hand with three queens, but when Routt raised his bet, Wint threw down his cards and put his head on his arms and wept because he could not win. Then he took another drink.

After a little, he cried himself to sleep.

Toward one o’clock, Routt and Hoover took Wint home to Amos Caretall’s. The streets, at that hour of the night, were utterly deserted. There was a moon, and the street lamps were unlighted as an economical consequence of this heavenly illumination. Wint was between Routt and Hoover. At times he took a sodden step or two; at other times he dragged to his knees upon the ground, wagging his head from side to side and singing huskily.

Hoover was almost as badly off as Wint; and now and then he joined in this song. Jack Routt was cold sober, and coldly exultant. His eyes shone in the moonlight; and he handled Wint with rough tenderness.

When they were about half a block from the Caretall home, Wint became very sick; and Hoover sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and giggled at him while Routt, leaning against a tree above the sprawling body of his friend, waited until the paroxysms were past and then caught Wint’s shoulders again and dragged him to his feet.

Wint had thrown off some of the poison; he was able now to help himself a little more than before; and they got him to their destination. There Routt propped him against a tree before the house and shook him and tried to impress upon him the necessity of silence.

“Don’t you sing, now, Wint,” he warned. “Brace up. Have some sense. Keep quiet.”

Wint pettishly protested that he liked to sing, and that he was a good singer; and he tried to prove it on the spot, but Routt gagged him with the flat of his hand until Wint surrendered.

“Cut it out, Wint,” he insisted. “You’ve got to be quiet while we get you to bed.”

Then Routt felt a hand on his shoulder, and some one drawled: “You’ve done your share, Routt. Go along. I’ll tuck him in.”

He turned and saw Amos Caretall. Amos was in a bath robe of rough toweling over his nightshirt; and his feet were in carpet slippers. Routt was tongue-tied for a moment; then he found his voice. “I’m mighty sorry about this, sir,” he said. “I tried to keep him from drinking too much. But you can’t stop him. He’s such a darned fool.”

Amos grinned at him in a way that somehow frightened Routt. “He sure is the darndest fool I ever see,” he agreed. “But don’t you mind, Jack. Boys will be boys. You and--who is it?--oh, Hoover. You and Hoover run along home. I’ll tend to him.”

“Don’t you want me to help get him in the house?”

“I’ll get him in. I’ve handled ’em before.”

Routt hesitated: but there was nothing to do but obey, and he obeyed. Congressman Amos Caretall, in carpet slippers, nightshirt, and faded bath robe, watched them go; and then he turned to where Wint had slouched down against the tree and said kindly:

“Well, Wint--come on in.”

Wint wagged his head and began to sing. The Congressman bent over him and slapped him expertly upon the cheeks with his open hands, one hand and then the other. The sting and smart of the blows seemed to dispel some of the clouds that fuddled Wint, and he grinned sheepishly, and got to his feet. Amos put his arm around him. “Come on, Wint,” he said again.

They went thus slowly up the walk and into the house. Amos shut the front door behind them, and led Wint to the stairs and up them.

In the upper hall, one electric bulb was burning; and as they came into its light, Agnes came out of her room. Her soft, fair hair was down her back; her eyes were dewy with sleep; and a flaming, silken garment was drawn close about her. “What is it, dad?” she asked: and then saw Wint lurching along on her father’s arm with nodding head and dull and drunken eyes, and she laughed softly and stepped toward him and shook her finger in his face. “Oh, you Wint! Naughty boy!” she chided.

Her father said sharply: “Get into your room, Agnes!” The girl looked at him, and at the anger in his eyes she turned a little pale and slipped silently away.

Amos took Wint to his room, where Wint fell helplessly across his bed and began instantly to snore. The Congressman looked down at him for an instant with a grim sort of pity mingled with the anger in his eyes. Then he bent and loosened Wint’s shoes and drew them off; and afterward he took off the boy’s collar, and unbuttoned his garments at the throat, and unbuckled his belt so that his sodden body should nowhere be constricted.

“I guess that’ll do, Wint,” he said slowly then. “You’re too heavy for me to handle. Besides, Wint--you ain’t right clean.” He stood for a moment longer, then turned toward the door. At the door he looked back once, snapped out the light, and so was gone.

Wint’s snores were unbroken.

* * * * *

The Caretall home stood in that end of town where the largest of the furnaces is located. A railroad siding passes this furnace, and a switching engine is busy here twenty-four hours of the day. The engine occasionally finds occasion to whistle; and the furnace itself has a whistle of enormous proportions; a siren whose blast carries for miles across the hills. This siren blows at every change of shift, it blows at casting time, and it blows at the whim of the engineer who may wish to startle some casual visitor or friend.

Persons who have lived long in this part of Hardiston grow accustomed to this great whistle. They sleep undisturbed when it rouses the night echoes; and they talk undisturbed when it shatters the peace of the day. It is even told of some of them that when the furnace went out of blast and its whistle was stilled, they used to be awakened in the middle of the night by the failure of the siren to sound at the accustomed time.

Wint’s own home was in the other end of town. He had not lived long enough near the furnace to accustom himself to its noises; and they disturbed him. They penetrated his stupefied sleep on the night of this debauch. The steady roar of the great fires, which could be heard three or four miles on a still night, played on his worn nerves and tortured them; the sharp toots of the switching engine made him jump and quiver in his sleep like a dreaming child; and when he woke in the morning to find Amos shaking him by the shoulder, he was miserable and sick and his head throbbed with the beat of a thousand drums, and seemed like to split with agony. He wished, weakly, that it would split and be done.

When he opened his bloodshot eyes, Amos laughed and jerked him upright and shook some of the slumber out of him. “Come, Wint,” he commanded heartily. “I’ve got a cold tub all ready. Jump in it. Got to get in shape, y’know. Inaugurated t’day.”

Wint groaned and held his head in both hands. “Hell with it,” he scowled. “Inaugural. Whole damn business. I’m not goin’ to do it. Goin’ sleep. Hell with it, I say.”

He tried to drop back on the bed, but Amos laughed and caught him and dragged him to his feet. “Come out of it,” he enjoined. “You’ll be all right.”

Wint shook his head stubbornly; then cried out with pain at the shaking. The fumes of the liquor were gone out of him; he was only dreadfully sleepy and dreadfully sick. He felt as though he were pulled and tortured by pricking wires that tore his flesh, and his eyelids were as heavy as lead and as hot as coals upon his bloodshot eyes. But he opened them, and said heavily: “No, Congressman Caretall. It’s off. I won’t do it. I’m through.”

It was as Amos groped for a next word that the siren began to blow. This was the signal for the morning’s casting. The engineer must have been in good spirits that morning, for he gave more than full measure on the blast. The whistle shrieked and roared till the very windows rattled and shivered in their places; and Wint, at the first sound, whipped up his hands to shield his agonized ears, and dropped on the bed and held his head and groaned until his groan became almost a shriek with the pain. Then, when the siren died into silence, he got dully to his feet, and glared at Amos, who said huskily: “I’d like t’ kill man that did that. Like to dynamite that whistle. Anything--make it keep quiet.”

Amos suddenly smiled; then he chuckled. “Well, Wint,” he said quickly, “there’s ways to make it keep quiet.”

Wint looked at him with torpid interest. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Tell me one.”

Amos waved his hands. “Why, f’r instance, the Mayor has power to enforce the abatement of a nuisance. Make them shut off that whistle, if it’s a nuisance. Anything like that.”

Wint swayed on his feet, and steadied himself with a hand on the foot of the bed. “Can the Mayor do a thing like that--on the square?”

“Why, sure,” said Amos.

Wint grinned; a cracked and painful grin, but mirthful too; and he took a step forward. “Then say,” he exclaimed. “Then say! There’s something in this Mayor job, after all....”

“Sure there is!”

Wint gripped Amos’ arm. “Lead me to that cold, cold tub,” he enjoined.

END OF BOOK II