Page:Sunset Magazine vol. 31.pdf/495

506 something, and it ain't only that, it's genuine disappointment, too.

"My boy" says the Governor, and he has a sort of heartbreaking plea in his voice mixed up with a motherly kind of tenderness for the boy, "my boy, Barney Gilfoil here has helped me in many a campaign. This campaign means a whole lot to me" he says. "It's a crisis in my career. Barney Gilfoil" he goes on, "is always chuck full of fool idees—that is, I always thinks they're fool idees till the campaign is over, then we find" he says, "that Barney's doped things out all to the good. I don't want to spoil your summer, Midget" he goes on, "and it ain't as though I was asking you to work hard or to earn your living, and I ain't going to force you to do it, but Barney thinks it's of importance and I'm simply going to ask you to do as Barney says."

At that I sees a change come over Midget. There ain't no more young girl in him and his chin don't tremble no more. What going to Chicago means to him I don't know, but I sees a little struggle going on and I sees Midget MacFarland put Chicago behind him, as though there's no such place on the face of the map.

"Pop" he says, as though the old man had invited him out to a ten-dollar dinner, "it's a go" he says. "You can tell them two teams, Mr. Gilfoil" he says to me, "and any other teams in River county, that I'll play with them this summer. First come, first served—one game apiece."

He shakes hands with me and he pats the Governor gentle on the shoulder. He stalks to the door, straight as an Indian. He turns and looks at us again.

"You can tell them from me" he says—and believe me, there's a capital M to that "me"—"that Mr. Barney Gilfoil used his influence with me"—another capital M right here—"and if they got any gratitude in their system they'd better shake it loose next fall at the primaries. You can tell them that from me" he says, as he disappears into the hall.

Of course, he didn't have to tell me that. That night every district leader in the town got word about it hot over the wire, and next morning when I seeks my private office on the top floor of the Telephone building at the witching hour of nine, believe me the surroundings looks like I advertised for a office boy at a thousand dollars a day.

One lad has his nose smudged up against the "l" in "Gilfoil" on my ground-glass door, for fear something might get between him and the inside of my private office. But he's only one. Behind him is a lad who has got his chin hooked over the first lad's collar and it looks like you couldn't pry them apart with a crowbar. But that ain't all.

Believe me, from that there letter "l" in the aristocratic name of "Gilfoil" on the aforesaid ground-glass door, there stretches a serpentine—not to say snake-like—line of variegated members of the masculine race all the way down the hall to the sixth story stairs, and all the way down the sixth story stairs to the fifth story hall, and all the way down the fifth story stairs to the fourth story, and from thence—as Governor MacFarland would say—that amalgamated combination of gum-chewing reptile trails down by easy stages to the sidewalk, past the telephone offices and around the corner as far as the naked eye could reach.

I unlocks my door and the snake wriggles forward three feet and falls over my desk.

"Any application accompanied with disorder" I says, "gets vetoed quick—and the first lad" I goes on, throwing my voice down as much of the line as I can see, "that chews gum in my ear, gets thrown down stairs. Order now. First come, first served."

The first lad was from my own district and I makes short work of booking him. Well, believe me, after that I spent six solid hours booking Midget MacFarland for semi pro teams, then I drags my weary frame round to the Governor's. I finds the Governor sitting in his private law office, leaning back in his chair and gazing blankly at six or eight slim-legged high-collared young chaps of aristocratic mien. I don't know any of them to talk to, but I recognizes one of them by sight—his name is Taggart. He's the son of a millionaire and his old man is the Taggart Tool Works in town that employs three thousand men.

Silence reigns when I enters. The young sports is looking over the tops of their collars and waiting polite for the Governor to speak. It's plain the Governor don't know what to do. The minute he sees me he jumps and grabs me.