CHAPTER III

A HARD DAY FOR KITE

If V. R. Kite had been wise enough to let Wint severely alone, in the days that followed, it is not at all improbable that Wint’s resolution would have weakened. But if knaves were wise, they would not be knaves. So, instead of being left alone with his depression, and his doubts of himself, Wint was attacked front and flank; and the stimulus of battle proved to be exactly what he needed to forge his determination and whip his courage to the sticking point.

Kite first heard the news of what Wint had done from Lutcher, the amiable man in the distinctive vest, whose stock in trade Jim Radabaugh put under seal. Lutcher went straightaway to Kite when Radabaugh left him; and he found Kite still ignorant of what had come to pass. Lutcher took a decided pleasure in breaking the news to Kite. He found the little turkey of a man at his desk in the Bazaar; and he stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his vest and said in his husky, whispering voice:

“Well, Kite, we’re closed up.”

Kite had greeted Lutcher as pleasantly as he greeted any one. He was a little afraid of the big, bald man, and Lutcher knew it. He was as much afraid of Lutcher as Lutcher was of Jim Radabaugh. But he forgot to be afraid of Lutcher in this moment. He came up out of his chair like a Jack-in-the-Box--and Kite looked not unlike the conventional Jack-in-the-Box with his lean neck and his poised head and his side whiskers flying--and he snapped at Lutcher:

“What’s that you say?”

Lutcher grinned, and wheezed: “I say we’re closed up.”

“Closed up?” Kite repeated, in something like a shout. “Closed up? What do you mean? Talk English, man.”

Lutcher ran his thick finger around the soft collar of his silken shirt. “I mean Radabaugh’s given orders not to sell any more stuff,” he said. “What did you think I meant?”

“You’re crazy,” said Kite flatly. “Radabaugh wouldn’t dare do that.”

“Well, he’s done it!”

“Jim Radabaugh? The marshal?”

“Sure,” said Lutcher impatiently. “Can’t you hear what I say? Came and sealed me up this morning. Said it was orders.”

“Orders? Whose orders?”

“Mayor’s.”

Kite’s clenched fists went into the air. “He can’t do that,” he said fiercely. “I won’t stand for it. By God, if he tries to do that, I’ll leave town. Or I’ll kill the pup. Or kill myself. I won’t stand for it, I tell you, Lutcher.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Lutcher, amiable again in the face of the other’s excitement. “Don’t tell me; tell the Mayor.”

Kite stood for a minute with staring, thoughtful eyes, as though Lutcher were not there. Then he grabbed his hat and started for the street. Lutcher looked after him, grinning with amusement. “The old buzzard does take it hard,” he told himself. “Well, I should worry. What’s he up to now?”

Kite had disappeared. When Lutcher got to the street, the little man was no longer in sight. Lutcher wondered what Kite had set off to do; and he loitered for a while in the hope of seeing the little man again. Kite’s fury amused him. But Kite had not returned when Jim Radabaugh drifted into sight; and Lutcher did not want to see Jim again, so he effaced himself. He saw Jim go into the Bazaar, and come out again, and stop at the _Journal_ office; and after a little, Kite came down the street from the Court House, and Radabaugh emerged from the _Journal_ office, and followed Kite into the Bazaar. Lutcher wished he could be near enough to hear what they said, but there was no chance of it, so he departed.

Kite held on to himself while he talked with Radabaugh; but when the marshal was gone, the little man, in the shelter of his desk, fretted and jerked in his chair in a tempest of furious anger. There was no doubt about it; he did take this news hard. But one watching with a seeing eye might have discovered in Kite’s anger something else; a touch of panic.

Perhaps fear is always a part of anger; perhaps it is one of the springs from which anger flows. But in the case of Kite, his fear and panic tended to quiet him and steady him and bid him go slowly and watch his every move. There had been a day when he would have leaped into such a fight as this, a terrible and furious figure. But Kite was getting old. There was something senile and pitiful in his fury now.

There in the rear of his busy little shop, with customers going and coming and the clerks laughing together, Kite twisted his fingers together and beat at his head with his clenched hands and tried to think what to do. He had been so sure that Wint would never take this step; he had been so sure that with Wint as Mayor, Hardiston would be safely and securely wet. He had been so sure of Amos Caretall’s good will. Chase and Jack Routt had warned him; but he had not believed their warnings, because he did not wish to believe. Wint was a drinker; it was just common sense that Wint would let the town go on as it had gone in the past. Kite had counted on it.

And now Wint had betrayed him. That was the word that sprang into Kite’s mind. Wint had betrayed him. He felt an honest indignation at the Mayor. He was more indignant than he had been when Wint called him a buzzard. He had accepted that good-naturedly enough. Hard names broke no bones; besides, Wint had been quite obviously suffering from an overnight bout, that morning. Kite knew the mood; he was not surprised; and he was not resentful. But this was different. Damnably different. This was out and out treachery, betrayal. He had helped elect Wint; now Wint turned against him.

Kit felt acutely sorry for himself; he felt acutely reproachful toward Wint. And when Jack Routt dropped in, half an hour after Radabaugh had gone, with a triumphant light in his eye, Kite told him so.

“I didn’t think Wint would do it,” he said dolefully. “Routt, I didn’t suppose Wint would do this to me.”

Routt chuckled. “It’s not Wint’s doing,” he said. “I told you this was coming, you know. It’s Amos.”

But Kite was in no mood for rage at Amos. “I don’t know,” he said. “This looks like Wint’s doing. It’s a boy’s trick. A man like Amos would have seen the harm for Hardiston in such a move. No, Jack, Wint did this, himself.”

Routt shook his head. “I know better. You get after Amos, and Wint will come to heel. I know them both, I tell you.”

“I can’t believe it,” Kite insisted. “What motive could he possibly have?”

“Trying to get on the band wagon,” Routt told him. “That’s Amos. Trying to get on the dry band wagon.”

“No, no, it’s Wint. He’s the one we must go to. He’s the one we must work on. He’s got to be stopped, Routt.” Something of the old fire was reviving in Kite. “He’s got to be stopped. Scared off. Called off. Something. I won’t stand for such a state of affairs. Such a thing.... In Hardiston.”

Routt grinned. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Get after him. There must be a way. Don’t you know a way to get hold of him and bring him to time? Must be some way, Routt. Think, man; think. What can we do? Scare him off?”

Routt looked at Kite in a curious, intent way, as though he thought there might be a hidden meaning in what the other man had said. “What’s your idea exactly?” he asked. “What’s up your sleeve?”

“Idea?” Kite echoed. “Idea is to get something on that young skate and make him call Radabaugh off. That’s the idea. Get after him, heavy. There must be a way. Some way.”

Routt smiled faintly, tilting back in his chair, looking at the ceiling; and he blew a long stream of smoke straight upward. Kite snapped:

“Well?”

“Well,” said Routt, “there’s something in that. There might be a way....”

Kite leaned toward him intently. “What is it?”

Routt waved his hand. “Nothing definite. Might develop. Hold off a while.”

“I can’t hold off,” said Kite. “I won’t hold off. Something’s got to be done.”

“Then you do it,” Routt told him carelessly; and Kite pleaded with him.

“No, no. You do your own way. I’ll try mine. We’ll both work at this, Routt. Something ... I.... See what you can do. That’s all. I’ll see what I can do.”

Routt got up. “Don’t forget,” he said, “that Amos is back of this.”

Kite shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’ll hit Wint first. I don’t want to buck Amos.”

“You’ll find,” said Routt, “that you’ll have to buck Amos.”

* * * * *

After Routt left him, Kite sat for a while, fingers tapping nervously on his desk, wondering what to do next. And he wondered if it could be that Routt was right, that Amos was back of this move on Wint’s part. Routt had said Amos would do this; so, Kite remembered, had the elder Chase. Chase had come to him, shortly after the election, to warn Kite that this was sure to happen. Were Routt and Chase right; was it possible that Amos had betrayed him?

Kite would not believe it. Not because he had any doubt of Amos’s willingness to betray him, but because he did not dare believe that this was Amos’s doing. If Wint had made the move on his own account, there was some hope of swaying him, or frightening him. But if Amos had prompted it and were backing Wint now, the situation was almost hopeless.

Therefore Kite refused to believe that Amos was responsible; he clung to the idea that the whole thing was Wint’s own idea. Wint, then, he must fight.

He thought of Wint; and he thought of Wint’s father again. There might be a chance to move Wint through his father. “If the boy has any sense of duty,” Kite thought, “he’ll do what his father says.” He forgot that the elder Chase had always been a “dry” man. Politics takes little account of convictions; and Kite clutched at the hope that the elder Chase could change Wint’s mind. Chase had offered him alliance, once; had offered him an alliance against Amos. He should be willing to show his friendliness now. Kite’s eyes lighted with a faintly optimistic glint at the thought; and he took his hat and started forthwith down the street toward the furnace where Chase was to be found during the day.

He met a number of men; and he thought they all grinned at him with derision in their eyes. They must know what had happened; must be amused at this plight in which he found himself. The thought roused the anger in Kite, and strengthened him. He went on his way more boldly. By and by, at the end of the street, the smoky black bulk of the furnace loomed before him.

Kite did not like the looks of the furnace; there was such an atmosphere of harnessed power about it, and Kite was always a little afraid the power would break its harness. To reach the office, he had to go through the very heart of the monstrous thing. At the beginning of the way, a ten-foot flame hissed out of the very earth itself, at his right hand, so that he shrank past it timidly. Then he must pick his way through a corridor between structures like squat, brick ovens, below which living flame roared in a stream like a racing torrent. He could see this stream of flame. There was nothing to hold it, between the ovens. He trembled with fear that this stream would leap out at him.

When he passed under the stacks, pulsing with the rhythmic beat of life which stirred them, he could hear the roar of the fires inside, and the hiss of the air from the tuyères, and the sounds were like the ravenings of beasts to him. Kite felt immensely small, immensely insignificant. Toward the end of his way he was almost running, and he came out with vast relief upon the other side, and approached the iron-sheeted building which housed the furnace office and the chemist’s laboratory. He might have come here by circling around the furnace, but even Kite had pride enough to face dangers, rather than avoid them.

He found the elder Chase at his desk; and Chase dismissed the stenographer to whom he had been dictating, and offered Kite a cigar. Kite refused it. He was by personal habit an abstemious man. “I never smoke,” he said.

Chase nodded, a little ill at ease. He had tried to make an alliance with Kite, but he did not like the little man, and never would. He did not like Kite, and he was self-conscious about it, and felt that he ought to make up for his dislike by treating Kite with extreme courtesy. So now he asked: “Well, Mr. Kite,” and Kite responded with a sharp question:

“What’s this Wint’s doing?”

There had been a time when such an inquiry frightened Chase; because, when people asked him such a question, he knew they meant that Wint was in trouble again. But he was coming to have a certain faith in Wint; so he was puzzled by Kite’s question, and said so.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he told the little man.

Kite was surprised. “Good God! You must know. Didn’t he tell you?”

“He’s told me nothing in particular. What do you mean?”

“The young fool has given Radabaugh orders against any more liquor selling.”

Chase’s first reaction to this information was a leap of delighted pride. It was what he would have wished Wint to do; it was what he himself would have done in Wint’s place. It was a decent, strong thing to do, and Chase was glad. Kite saw this in the other man’s eyes; and he exclaimed challengingly:

“You look as though you were tickled, man. Don’t you know this thing will ruin Hardiston?”

Chase knew it would not ruin Hardiston; nevertheless he was willing to humor Kite. So he asked: “Do you know the details? Tell me about it.”

Kite laughed harshly. “You hadn’t heard of it, then. He didn’t tell you. It was Amos put him up to it, I guess, after all. But it looks as though he’d have told you, anyway.” Kite was shrewd enough in his way; he understood that Chase, as a father, must be jealous of Amos’s influence with Wint. And Chase reacted as Kite expected. His eyes clouded with hurt. Wint might have told him; should have told him. Instead, his son had laid him open to this new humiliation, the humiliation of hearing important news from a third person. And--Wint had had supper with Amos last night.

Chase struck back, in the instinct to defend himself. “You remember, I warned you Congressman Caretall would do just this.”

“Sure I remember,” Kite agreed. “That’s why I’ve come to you. Want to get together with you. That was our understanding. I’m going to skin Amos Caretall. Are you with me? That’s the question.” He was shrewd enough to rouse Chase against Amos, not against Chase’s own son. And Chase considered the matter, inwardly hurt and sorry because Wint had not confided in him, and boiling with jealous hostility toward Amos.

“All right,” he said at last. “You see I was right. What are we going to do?”

“Do?” Kite snapped. “We’re going to make Amos run to cover. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“After all,” Chase reminded him, “I’m a dry man. I can’t fight Amos on that issue.”

“Dry?” Kite demanded. “What of it? What’s that got to do with it? This is politics. Amos is no more dry than I am; but he plays the dry game because that’s politics, and there are votes in it. He’s trying to steal your thunder, Chase. If Amos grabs the dry vote, where do you come in? I tell you, we’ve got to lick him, man.”

“How?” Chase asked at last. “What are we going to do?”

“First thing,” Kite said, “is to get after Wint.” He had been ready with the answer to this question. “Caretall is using Wint. Making a tool of him. A scapegoat. Wint doesn’t know his own mind. Caretall’s using him. We’ve got to get him out of Caretall’s hands. Get him to work with you. You’re his father. He ought to want to work with you. Oughtn’t he?”

“He and I--understand each other,” Chase said. He was not at all sure this was true, but he could not confess to Kite that he and Wint were less than confidants.

“Sure,” Kite agreed. “Naturally. So the first thing to do is for you to go to Wint and tell him what he’s up against. How he’s being manipulated. Get him to rescind the order. Then we’ll go after Amos, with Wint helping us, and clean him up.”

“I don’t know,” said Chase reluctantly.

“Good God, man,” Kite snapped, “can’t you handle your own son?”

Chase got up and walked to the window, his back to Kite. His lips set firmly. Kite was right; he ought to be able to handle his own son, unless the world were all awry. After all, the dry question was only a pretext. Wint ought to train with him rather than with Amos. He would tell the boy so.

When at last he turned toward Kite again, the other man saw that he had won. “I’ll see,” said Chase. “I’ll talk to Wint and see.”