Marbleface by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2013-05-23T22:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XXI. — THE ELECTION

THE days drifted on towards election. There was a grand whirl of excitement in the town, of course. The colonel was always away, riding or driving, with relays of horses that tore him across the length and the breadth of the county. Was it to be called Maker County, or Piegan County. Was it to be Makerville for the county seat, or Piegan? Well, the colonel was writing pamphlets, news articles, making speeches, talking to individuals, persuading this man and bribing the next. All means were good means, in the eyes of the colonel, so long as they helped him towards the accomplishment of his object.

They were not days of excitement for me, however. I spent most of the time playing two-handed poker with Sidney Maker, in his jail room. I asked him if he would give me his parole to stay put until election day, and he flatly refused. So I kept his ankles shackled, and was jailer to him. The people left him strictly alone, except that the colonel, whenever he was in town, was sure to look in, and say ten words. And Maker would look at him with bright, thoughtful eyes and never say a word in return.

If ever he met Riggs with free hands!

Then came the election day. The town was wild with excitement from the morning on. Rumors came sweeping up all the time. In the middle of the afternoon election returns began to come in, and the numbers from the voting districts were chalked up on a big blackboard in front of the hotel.

The first district to be counted and registered, of course, was Piegan itself, and it was pleasant to see the large zero that had voted for Makerville as county seat, and the scores who had voted unanimously for Piegan. That gave the colonel a good, fat lead, and he kept it until evening, though it diminished with every return. Finally, in came the Makerville report, and everybody held breath, expecting to see the colonel wiped out. But we were amazed when fifty-odd votes were cast for Piegan in Makerville, itself!

We were amazed, I say, all of us except the colonel.

“I paid highest of all, for those,” he told me. “But they’re worth it. They cost me hard cash, but they make the election a sort of a moral victory for me over Maker, no matter how the whole thing turns out.”

The colonel’s idea of a “moral victory” bought with hard cash amused me a good deal, but I said nothing. There was no good in arguing with him. I was always afraid to unloose the large torrent of his vocabulary, you see.

As the evening wore on, there were only two precincts to be heard from, places which voted a good number at their mines, and where the voting had undoubtedly been done in the early morning, but fast riders, with relays of horses, could not get the news home to us any faster than

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