CHAPTER II

THE BREWING STORM

Wint lay awake for a while, the night after he had given his orders to Radabaugh. He had many things to occupy his thoughts. There was in him none of the elation which might have been expected; he had no zest for the fight that was ahead of him. He was, rather, depressed and doubtful of the wisdom of what he had done, and doubtful of his own strength and determination to carry it through. He was acutely aware that a great many people would say: “Well, Wint’s got a nerve. A fish like him, trying to make Hardiston dry. I’ll bet he’s got a cellar full.” They would say this, and they would have a right to say it. Wint thought, miserably enough, that he had been foolish to start trouble. He might better have let well enough alone.

The boy’s stubbornness had played him false more than once in the past; this time it was to do him a good turn. A less stubborn person would have backed down, under the weight of these misgivings; would have canceled the orders given Radabaugh, and let matters slide along as they had slid in the past. But Wint, though he dreaded the ridicule that would follow what he had done, felt himself committed. They would laugh! Well, let them laugh! His jaw set; he swore to go on at any cost. On this determination, he slept at last.

In spite of his wakefulness, Wint was first downstairs in the morning. Hetty, sweeping out the sitting room, encountered him. He had not seen her the day before, except when his father and mother were about. Then she had avoided his eye. Now she looked at him sullenly, and said:

“Much obliged for getting me to bed, Wint.”

“That’s all right, Hetty. I remember you did as much for me.”

She laughed harshly and defiantly. “Sure I did.” Her eyes were watchful and on guard. Wint guessed that she expected him to reproach her, to warn her, to bid her mend her ways. But he did nothing of the kind.

“Forget it,” he said. “It wasn’t anything.”

Something wistful crept into her eyes, as though she would have said more. But Mrs. Chase came downstairs, and Hetty went on with her work, while Mrs. Chase volubly directed her.

After breakfast, Wint and his father walked downtown together. The elder Chase asked stiffly:

“Well, how did you find Amos?”

“Same as ever,” Wint said.

“Suppose he’s home for the summer.”

“I guess so.”

He wondered whether to tell his father what he had done; but something held his tongue. It may have been diffidence, a reluctant feeling that to tell his father this would be like an effort to justify himself in the elder Chase’s eyes. It may have been uncertainty as to what attitude the older man would take. It may have been a shrewd guess at the truth; that Chase would attribute the move to Amos, and oppose it on that ground. Wint had no illusions about his father’s attitude toward the Congressman. Chase held Amos as his enemy, without compromise.

As they reached the first stores on the outskirts of the business section of Hardiston, they met Ned Bentley and another man, and exchanged greetings. Bentley grinned at Wint in a friendly way, and Wint knew that Bentley had heard of his order to Radabaugh. The elder Chase saw something had passed between them, and asked Wint:

“What’s Bentley so cheerful about?”

“Why, I don’t know,” said Wint. “He’s usually pretty good-natured.”

He flushed at his own evasion, but the older man did not press the question, and a little later they separated.

Foster, the city solicitor--Foster was an earnest young fellow, and took his office seriously--was waiting for Wint in what passed as Wint’s office, off the main room above the fire-engine house. Foster looked flurried; and he asked quickly:

“Look here, Wint, Radabaugh says you told him to clean up the town.”

Wint nodded idly, fumbling among the papers on his desk. “Yes, I did.”

“Well, what’s the idea?” Foster demanded excitedly. “What’s the idea, anyway?”

“The idea is to--clean up the town,” Wint told him.

“You’re in earnest?”

“Yes.”

“You mean to stop bootlegging?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord!” said Foster.

The solicitor’s consternation gave Wint confidence. He asked: “Why, what’s wrong with that?”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. But you’ll surely start something.”

“I mean to stop something.”

“There’ll be an awful row.”

Wint said quietly: “If you don’t want to come through.... If you don’t want to make it stick, help me out, why, now’s the time to say so, and get out.”

“Good Lord!” Foster cried. “Of course I’ll stick. Nothing suits me better. I’m.... I tell you, you don’t know what you’ve started. But I’m with you, Wint. All along the line. Absolutely.”

Wint said: “That’s good.”

“It’s a great chance for me,” Foster said.

Wint chuckled. “Ought to do you and Hardiston both some good.”

“Prosecuting all those cases.”

“Oh, there won’t be many cases,” Wint said cheerfully.

“A lot you know. Why won’t there?”

“Because,” said Wint, “I’m going to see that the first man in here gets soaked, good and proper. I’m going to put the fear of--the fear of me into them.”

“You can’t scare those fellows.”

“Well,” Wint admitted, “that may be so. But I’m surely going to try.”

Foster had amused him, and encouraged him; but when Foster was gone, and he was left alone, his depression of the night before returned. He locked his door. He did not want to see people. And he sat down to think.

Radabaugh came in a little before noon to report what he had done. Wint listened, studying the marshal. “Think Lutcher will keep straight?” he asked.

“I should think so.”

“How about Mrs. Moody?”

“She’ll need watching.”

“See that you watch her.”

“I’m right on the job,” Radabaugh assured him easily; and Jim knew the marshal meant what he said. “I’ve left ’em run before, because there wasn’t any kick made. If you say shut ’em off, I’ll do it. That’s all.”

“I do say it,” Wint told him. He got up and gripped the other’s shoulder, something of the excitement of the coming fight already stirring in him. “Jim, we’ll make Hardiston dry as a bone.”

Radabaugh spat. “We-ell,” he drawled, “it don’t take much booze to wet a bone. But we’ll see to it the stuff don’t go sloshing around the gutters, anyway.”

For his lunch, Wint went to fat Sam O’Brien’s restaurant. He liked the place. The long, high counter, scrubbed white as the deck of a ship; the revolving stools before the counter; the shelves on which bottles of mustards and catsups and spices were ranged; and big Sam O’Brien in his vast white apron presiding over it all. There was a mechanical piano which played a tune for a nickel in the back of the restaurant, and it was jangling and tinkling when Wint came in. Half a dozen men were there before him; and they grinned when they saw Wint, and spoke among themselves. Sam O’Brien welcomed him with a chuckle. O’Brien was a jocular man. He set plate and knife and fork and a thick glass of water before Wint, and spread his hands on the counter, and asked in a booming voice:

“Well, how’s your appetite, you bold crusader?”

Wint flushed, and said uncomfortably: “Cut it out, Sam!”

The restaurant proprietor had his own ideas of a joke; and he made the most of them. At Wint’s words, he threw back his head and laughter poured out of him. He rocked, he slapped his great fist on the counter.

“Cut it out?” he repeated. “Oh, Wint, you’re the funny man. Cut it out, he says! The whole blamed town. ‘The booze is getting you, Hardiston. Cut it out,’ he says!” He bellowed the words. “Cut it out! Cut it out! Oh, Wint, you’ll be the death o’ me.”

There was never any use resenting Sam O’Brien. Wint laughed and said: “I’ll be the death of you if you don’t get me something to eat, Sam. Get a move on your old carcass.”

After lunch, he had a word or two with men upon the street; but he did not want to talk to them. He wanted to get out of their way, out of sight. His nerves were beginning to jangle; he wanted something to happen. There was hanging over him a storm; he wanted the storm to break. He had a thought of going to V. R. Kite and flinging a defiance in that old buzzard’s gold-filled teeth. He liked to think of Kite as an old buzzard; the phrase pleased him. Men will always be pleased to find they have used words tellingly. The gift of speech is what distinguishes man from the animals; it is right that he should vaunt himself upon it.

But in the end, Wint did not go to Kite; he went to Hoover’s office and hid himself in a back room with a law book. Neither Dick nor his father was there when he arrived; he counted on not being disturbed. He did not want to be disturbed. He wanted to be let alone. He was mistrustful of himself, of his motives and of his powers.

In mid-afternoon, the telephone rang; and he answered, expecting a call for one or the other of the Hoovers. But when he spoke into the instrument, some one said: “Is this you, Wint?”

He said it was; and the some one said: “This is Joan.”

Wint said: “Oh!” He was uncomfortable, wondering what she wanted, why she had called.

“I’ve just heard what you’ve done,” she said.

“What’s that?” Wint asked. “Done what?”

“About how you’re going to--to clean up Hardiston.”

“Oh, that,” said Wint. “Yes.”

“Central told me I could probably get you at the Hoover office.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m here.”

“I thought you might like to know that I’m glad you’re going to do this.”

“That’s all right,” he said awkwardly. The old, stubborn resentment at any praise was awake in him; but there was a curious tincture of happiness, too.

“It’s a good fight, Wint,” she said. “And--you’ll win.”

Wint laughed uneasily. “Oh, sure,” he said. He did not want to talk about it; and Joan understood and said good-by. Wint stared thoughtfully at the telephone for a while; then he went back to his probing into the musty recesses of the law which he found so live and vital.

But he was unable to keep his thoughts upon the book. They wandered. He kept thinking about V. R. Kite. He kept wondering what Kite would do.

And he wished insistently that whatever Kite meant to do, he would do quickly. Wint was tired of waiting for the storm to break.