"I calculate," rejoined the colonel, "that what you need is a champion."
"Well, I'm free to say I don't know that any one can, but I'm willing to try. I think that in about a week I shall pass the word around that I'd like to serve my country on the school board."
Jim's face lighted up--and then darkened.
"Even then they'd be two to one, Colonel."
"Maybe," replied the colonel, "and maybe not. That would have to be figured on. A cracked log splits easy."
"Anyhow," Jim went on, "what's the use? I shan't be disturbed this year--and after that--what's the use?"
"Why, Jim," said the colonel, "you aren't getting short of breath are you? Do I see frost on your boots? I thought you good for the mile, and you aren't turning out a quarter horse, are you? I don't know what all it is you want to do, but I don't, believe you can do it in nine months, can you?"
"Well, then, let's plan for ten years," said the colonel. "I ain't going to become a reformer at my time of life as a temporary job. Will you stick if we can swing the thing for you?"
"I will," said Jim, in the manner of a person taking the vows in some solemn initiation.
"All right," said the colonel. "We'll keep quiet and see how many votes we can muster up at the election. How many oan you speak for?"
Jim gave himself for a few minutes to thought. It was a new thing to him, this matter of mustering votes--and a thing which he had always looked upon as rather reprehensible. The citizen should go forth with no coercion, no persuasion, no suggestion, and vote his sentiments.
"How many can you round up?" persisted the colonel.
"I think," said Jim, "that I can speak for myself and Old Man Simms!"
"Fine politician!" he repeated. "Fine politician! Well, Jim, we may get beaten in this, but if we are, let's not have them going away picking their noses and saying they've had no fight. You round up yourself and Old Man Simms and I'll see what I can do--I'll see what I can do!"
March came in like neither a lion nor a lamb, but was scarcely a week old before the wild ducks had begun to score the sky above Bronson's Slew looking for open water and badly-harvested corn-fields. Wild geese, too, honked from on high as if in wonder that these great prairies on which their forefathers had been wont fearlessly to alight had been changed into a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the ruin of their former paradise. Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, had no such foolish notions, however. He stopped Newton Bronson and Raymond Simms as they tramped across the colonel's pasture, gun in hand, trying to make themselves believe that the shooting was good.
