"Me?" said Rankin, smiling again all over. "You want me? An' what's Pusey goin' to have to do?"
"Oh, we'll let him print editorials," laughed Garwood.
"That's all right," said Rankin, "jus' so's I don't have to see him, that's all."
Garwood scrutinized Rankin closely an instant, and once more he leaned over in his persuasive way and laid his hand on Rankin's knee.
"Look here, Jim," he said, "I want you and Pusey to be friends."
"Yes, you must--now listen to me--I demand it. I want no mistakes made. I want you all to work harmoniously this fall, and a little ill-feeling right here in our camp may beat us. We've got a fight on our hands; I'm half afraid of those Sprague fellows. They'll have their knives out, and we've got to hold together; above all we've got to keep Pusey in line, for the Sprague fellows here don't feel any too good about his having come over to me, and Pusey has a following. More than that, he's got a newspaper, and he can make it tell. We've got to keep in with him, and I want you to patch up a truce with him. You must, do you hear?" Garwood gave Rankin's knee a shake. "Do you hear?"
"Well, if you say so, Jerry," he consented presently, "it'll have to be. Whatever you say goes, o' course, but the truce'll be a damned sight more out'ard than in'ard 'ith me, I tell you that."
"No, you mustn't feel that way, Jim; you mustn't."
"Well, my God, Jerry!" Rankin exclaimed, "it 'as fer your sake that I got to hatin' him like I do, though I never did like the little whelp. Gosh! It did gall me to have to sit in a convention beside him an' hear him announce the vote fer Polk County! I never thought I'd live to see the day when little Free Pusey could get on a Polk delegation, I didn't!"
And he shook his head as one who bewails the evil times on which he has fallen.
"Well, for my sake, then, make up with him. I don't cherish any ill-will towards him, Jim." Garwood said this with a swelling air of magnanimity as if he had attained to heights of charity known only to the early Christian martyrs.
"You never was a good hater, Jerry," said Rankin, as though it were a virtue to be as consistent and steadfast in hatreds as in friendships.
The August sun was ripening the corn, and in some of the more fertile fields the slender stalks already nodded their young plumes in the mid-summer heat that quivered over the prairies. It was too much to expect of politicians that they work in such weather, and they were loath to begin the campaign, yet it was necessary to make the first lazy preparations for the heavy work that would be upon them when the frost should begin to hint of coming fall.