The Boss of Little Arcady/Chapter 5
A mad prank of the gods
A week after the publication of that blithe bit of acrimony which opens this tale, Colonel J. Rodney Potts, recreated and natty in a new summer suit of alpaca, his hat freshly ironed, sued the town of Little Arcady for ten thousand dollars damages to his person and announced his candidacy at the ensuing election for the honorable office of Judge of Slocum County. He did this at the earnest solicitation of his many friends, in whose hands he had placed himself, at least so read his card of announcement in the Banner, our other paper. He did not name these solicitous friends; but it was an easy suspicion that they were the Democratic leaders, who thought by this means to draw votes from the Republican candidate to the advantage of their own, who, otherwise, was conceded to have no hope of election in a county overwhelmingly Republican.
It may be told with adequate confidence that Westley Keyts was not of their number. As to the damage suit, Westley found it unthinkable that Potts could deteriorate ten thousand dollars' worth and still walk the earth. Indeed he believed, and uttered a few rough words to express it, that ten dollars would be an excessive valuation even if Potts were utterly destroyed.
Being an earnest soul, Westley had taken the Potts affair very seriously. He made it a point to encounter the Colonel on an early day and to address him on Main Street in tones that lacked the least affectation of suavity or diplomatic guile. He had seen diplomacy tried and found wretchedly wanting. He would have no more of it ever. Like the straightaway man he was, he went to the meat of the matter.
"You squandered that hundred dollars we give you to git out of town on," he burst forth to Potts, breathing with an ominous difficulty.
"You just wait till you hear the worst of it," answered Potts, as he confidingly dusted the shoulder of Westley's coat. "The worst of it is I had over twelve dollars of my own money that I'd saved up—you know how hard it is to save money in these little towns—well, that went, too, every cent of it!"
It was admitted by witnesses competent to form an opinion that Westley's contorted face, his troubled breathing, his manner of stepping back, and the curious writhing of his stout arms, all encouraged a supposition that he might be contemplating immediate violence upon the person of Potts. At all events, this view was taken by the aggrieved and puzzled Colonel, who fled through the Boston Cash Store and, by means of a rear exit from that emporium, gained the office of Truman Baird, Justice of the Peace, where he swore to a legal document which averred that "the said Jonas R. Potts" was "in fear of immediate and great bodily harm which he has reasonable cause to believe will be inflicted upon him by the said Westley Keyts."
The majesty of the law being thus invoked, Westley was put under a good and sufficient bond to refrain from "in any manner attacking or molesting the said Potts, against the statutes therein made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State of Illinois."
A proceeding so official somewhat dampened the fires of Mr. Keyts. He was a citizen law-abiding by intention, with a patriot's esteem for government. It had merely not occurred to him that the summary extinction of Potts could be a performance at all incompatible with the peace and dignity of the great commonwealth to which he was at heart loyal. Being convinced otherwise, he abode grimly by the statutes therein made and provided. Nevertheless he returned to his shop and proceeded to cut up a quarter of beef with an energy of concentration and a ruthlessness of fury that caused Potts to shudder as he passed the door sometime later. By such demeanor, also, were the bondsmen of Westley—the first flush of their righteous enthusiasm faded—greatly disturbed. They agreed that he ought to be watched closely by day, and they even debated the wisdom of sitting up nights with him for a time, turn by turn. But their charge dissuaded them from this precaution. He expended his first vicious fury usefully upon his stock in trade, with knife and saw and cleaver, and thereafter he was but petulant or sarcastic.
"I had the right of it," he insisted. "The only way to do with a person like him was to git your feathers and your kittle of tar cooked up all nice and gooey and git Potts on the ground and make a believer of him right there and then!" This he followed by his pointed reflection upon the administrative talents of Solon Denney—"A hand of mush in a glove of the same!" When listeners were not by, he would mutter it to himself in sinister gutturals.
Nor was he alone in this spirit of dissatisfaction with Solon. The too-trustful editor of the Argus was frankly derided. He was a Boss at whom they laughed openly. They waited, however, with interest for the subsequent issues of this paper.
The Banner that week contained the following bit of news:—
DASTARDLY ASSAULT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
Early last Thursday evening, as Colonel J. Rodney Potts, dean of the Slocum County bar, was enjoying a quiet stroll along our beautiful river bank near Cady's mill, he was set upon by a gang of ruffians and would have been foully dealt with but for his vigorous resistance. Being a man of splendid proportions and a giant's strength, the Colonel was making gallant headway against the cowardly miscreants when his foot slipped and he was precipitated into the chilling waters of the mill-race at a point where the city fathers have allowed it to remain uncovered. Seeing their victim plunged into a watery grave, as they thought, the thugs took to their heels. The Colonel extricated himself from his perilous plight, by dint of herculean strength, and started to pursue them, but they had disappeared from sight in the vicinity of Crowder & Fancett's lumber yard. Things have come to a pretty pass, we must say, if such a dastardly outrage as this should be allowed to go unpunished. Now that Colonel Potts has brought suit against the city we suppose the council will have that mill-race covered. We have repeatedly warned them about this. We wonder if they ever heard a well-known saying about "locking the stable door after horse is stolen," etc.
The card of Colonel Potts, printed elsewhere in this issue, is a sufficient refutation of the malicious gossip that has been handed back and forth lately that he had planned to leave Little Arcady. It looks now like certain busybodies in this community had overstepped themselves and been hoisted up by their own petard. The Colonel is a fine man for County Judge, and we bespeak for him the suffrages of every voter who wants an honest judiciary.
Westley Keyts, reading this, wanted to know what a petard was. Inquiry disclosed that he hoped it might be something that could be used upon Potts to the advantage of almost every one concerned. But in the minds of others of us an agonized suspicion now took form. Had the letters been upon Potts when he went down? Had they been saved? Were they legible? And would he use them?
It was decided that Solon Denney should try to illuminate this point before taking the candidacy of Potts seriously. In the next issue of the Argus, therefore, was this paragraph, meant to be provocative:—
God's providence has been said to watch over fools and drunkards. We guess this is so; and that the pretensions of a certain individual in our midst to its watchfulness in the double capacity indicated can no longer be in doubt.
These lines did their work. The next Banner spoke of a foul conspiracy whose nefarious end it was to blacken the sterling character of a good man, of that Nestor of the Slocum County Bar, Colonel J. Rodney Potts. As testimony that the best citizens of the town were not involved with this infamous ring, it had extorted from Colonel Potts his consent to print certain letters from these gentlemen setting forth the Colonel's surpassing virtues in no uncertain terms—letters which his innate modesty had shrunk from making public, until goaded to desperation by the hell-hounds of a corrupt and subsidized opposition.
The letters followed in a terrific sequence—a series of laudations which the Chevalier Bayard need not have scorned to evoke.
Then we waited for Solon, but he was rather disappointing. Said the next Argus:—
We have heretofore considered J. R. Potts to possess the antisocial instincts of a parasite without its moderate spirit of enterprise. But we were wrong. We now concede the spirit of enterprise. As for this candidacy of Potts, Horace Greeley once said, commenting, we think, on some action of Weed's, "I like cool things, of ordinary dimensions—an iceberg or a glacier; but this arctic circle of coagulation appals credulity and paralyzes indignation. Hence my numbness!" Hence, also, our own numbness. But, though Speech lieth prone on a paralytic's couch, Action is hearty and stalketh willingly abroad. In this campaign it will speak louder than words. Yea! it will be heard high above Noah Webster's entire assemblage of such of them as are decent. That is all! J. R. P., take notice!
It was jaunty enough, but Potts had unquestionably gained a following. Indeed he had ably cemented the foundations of one by his magnificent hospitality on that day of days. His whilom serfs were men not easily offended by faults of taste, and they were voters. To a man they came out strongly for Potts.
He himself behaved with a faultless discretion. Above the slurs of the Argus and the bickerings of faction he bore himself as one alienated from earth by the graces of his spirit; and he copiously promised deeds which should in the years to come be as a beauteous garment to his memory. The glaive of Justice should descend where erstwhile it had corruptly been stayed. Vice should suffer its meed of retribution, and Virtue come again into its glorious own.
Our letters of eulogy, printed at the Banner office, were scattered among the voters, and with them went a letter from Potts saying that if his strenuous labors as an attorney in the interests of humanity, public morals, and common decency met with the voter's approval, he would be gratified to have his good-will and assistance. "It is such gentlemen as yourself," read the letter, "constituting the best element of our society, to whom I must look for the endorsement of my work. The criminal classes of this community, whose minions have so recently sought my life by mob violence, will leave no stone unturned to prevent my sitting as Judge."
Our Democratic candidate, who had first felt but an academic interest in the campaign, began now to show elation. Old Cuthbert Mayne, the Republican candidate, who had been certain of success but for the accident of Potts, chewed his unlighted cigar viciously, and from the corner of his trap-like mouth spoke evil of Potts in a voice that was terrifying for its hoarseness. His own letter, among the others, told of Potts as one who sprang to arms at his country's call and was now richly deserving of political preferment. This had seemed to heighten the inflammation of his utterances. Daily he consulted with Solon, warning him that the town looked to the Argus to avert this calamity of Potts.
But Solon, if he had formed any plan for relief, refused to communicate it. Mayne and the rest of us were compelled to take what hope we could from his confident if secretive bearing.
Meantime the Banner was not reticent about "J. Rodney Potts, that gallant old war-horse." Across the top of its front page each week stood "Potts Forever—Potts the Coming Man!"
"Big Joe" Kestril was the chief henchman of Potts, and his fidelity was like to have been fatal for him. He threw himself into the campaign with a single-heartedness that left him few sober moments. Upon the City Hotel corner, day after day, he buttonholed voters and whispered to them with alcoholic fervor that Potts was a gentleman of character, "as blotchless as the driftin' snow." Joe believed in Potts pathetically.
The campaign wore its way through the summer, and Solon Denney was still silent, still secretive, still confident, but, alas! still inactive so far as we could observe. I may say that we lost faith in him as the barren weeks came and went. We came to believe that his assured bearing was but a shield for his real despair.
Having given up hope, some of us reached a point where we could view the whole affair as a jest. It became a popular diversion to enter the establishment of the ever serious Westley Keyts and whisper secretively to him that Solon Denney haad found a diplomatic way to rid the town of Potts. But this never moved Westley.
"Once bit—twice shy!" would be his response as he returned to slicing steaks.