The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ramrodders, by Holman Day

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Title: The Ramrodders A Novel

Author: Holman Day

Release Date: March 7, 2005 [EBook #15278]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAMRODDERS ***

Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE RAMRODDERS

BY HOLMAN DAY

AUTHOR OF KING SPRUCE, ETC.

1910

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. THE BAITING OF THE ANCIENT LION

II. THE LINE-UP OF THE FIGHT

III. DENNIS KAVANAGH'S GIRL

IV. THE DUKE AT BAY

V. A CAUCUS, AS IT WAS PLANNED

VI. A CAUCUS, AND HOW IT WAS RUN

VII. WITH THE KAVANAGH AT HOME

VIII. THE MANTLE OF THELISMER THORNTON

IX. IN THE CENTRE OF THE BIG STATE WEB

X. A POLITICAL CONVERT

XI. A MAN FROM THE SHADOWS

XII. DEALS AND IDEALS

XIII. THE DUKE'S DOUBLE CAMPAIGN

XIV. THE BEES AND THE WOULD-BES

XV. SITTING IN FOR THE DEAL

XVI. THE HANDS ARE DEALT

XVII. THE ODD TRICK

XVIII. THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP

XIX. THE RAMRODDERS RAMPANT

XX. A GIRL'S HEART

XXI. STARTING A MULE TEAM

XXII. FROM THE MOUTH OF A MAID

XXIII. A TRUCE

XXIV. A GOVERNOR AND A MAID

XXV. WOMEN, AND ONE WOMAN

XXVI. THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAID

XXVII. THE EVERLASTING PROBLEM

XXVIII. ONE PROBLEM SOLVED

THE RAMRODDERS

CHAPTER I

THE BAITING OF THE ANCIENT LION

War and Peace had swapped corners that morning in the village of Fort Canibas. War was muttering at the end where two meeting-houses placidly faced each other across the street. Peace brooded over the ancient blockhouse, relic of the "Bloodless War," and upon the structure that Thelismer Thornton had converted from officers' barracks to his own uses as a dwelling.

At dawn a telegraph messenger jangled the bell in the dim hall of "The Barracks." It was an urgent cry from the chairman of the Republican State Committee. It announced his coming, and warned the autocrat of the North Country of the plot. The chairman knew. The plotters had been betrayed to him, and from his distance he enjoyed a perspective which is helpful in making political estimates. But Thelismer Thornton only chuckled over Luke Presson's fears. He went back to bed for another nap.

When he came down and ate breakfast alone in the big mess-room, which he had not allowed the carpenters to narrow by an inch, he was still amused by the chairman's panic. As a politician older than any of them, a man who had served his district fifty years in the legislature, he refused to believe—intrenched there in his fortress in the north—that there was danger abroad in the State.

"Reformers, eh?" He sneered the word aloud in the big room of echoes.
"Well, I can show them one up here. There's Ivus Niles!"

And at that moment Ivus Niles was marching into the village from the Jo Quacca hills, torch for the tinder that had been prepared. It is said that a cow kicked over a lantern that started the conflagration of its generation. In times when political tinder is dry there have been great men who have underestimated reform torches.

It was a bland June morning. The Hon. Thelismer Thornton was bland, too, in agreement with the weather. A good politician always agrees with what cannot be helped.

He stood in the door of "The Barracks" and gazed out upon the rolling St. John hills—a lofty, ponderous hulk of a man, thatched with white hair, his big, round face cherubic still in spite of its wrinkles. He lighted a cigar, and gazed up into the cloudless sky with the mental endorsement that it was good caucus weather. Then he trudged out across the grass-plot and climbed into his favorite seat. It was an arm-chair set high in the tangle of the roots of an overturned spruce-tree. The politicians of the county called that seat "The Throne," and for a quarter of a century the Hon. Thelismer Thornton had been nicknamed "The Duke of Fort Canibas." Add that the nicknames were not ill bestowed. Such was the Hon. Thelismer Thornton.

He had brought newspapers in his pockets. He set his eyeglasses on his bulging nose, and began to read.

In the highway below him teams went jogging into the village. There were fuzzy Canadian horses pulling buckboards sagging under the weight of all the men who could cling on. There were top carriages and even a hayrack well loaded with men.

Occasionally the old man lifted his gaze from his reading and eyed the dusty wayfarers benignantly. He liked to know that the boys were turning out to the caucus. His perch was a lofty one. He could see that the one long street of Fort Canibas was well gridironed with teams—horses munching at hitching-posts, wagons thrusting their tails into the roadway.

It was quiet at Thornton's end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet that he could hear a tumult at the other end of the village; it was a tumult for calm Fort Canibas. A raucous voice bellowed oratory of some sort, and yells and laughter and cheers punctuated the speech. Thornton knew the voice, even at that distance, for the voice of "War Eagle" Niles. He grinned, reading his paper. The sound of that voice salted the article that he was skimming:

"—and the fight is beginning early this year. The reform leaders say they find the sentiment of the people to be with them, and so the reformers propose to do their effective work at the caucuses instead of waiting to lock horns with a legislature and lobby controlled by the old politicians of the State. There is a contest on even in that impregnable fortress of the old regime, the 'Duchy of Canibas.' It is said that the whole strength of the State reform movement is quietly behind the attempt to destroy Thelismer Thornton's control in the north country. His is one of the earliest caucuses, and the moral effect of the defeat of that ancient autocrat will be incalculable."

Still more broadly did Thornton smile. "War Eagle" Niles, down there, was a reformer. For forty years he had been bellowing against despots and existing order, and, for the Duke of Fort Canibas, he typified "Reform!" Visionary, windy, snarling, impracticable attempts to smash the