"It's a regular hold-up, isn't it?" said Garwood.
"That's what you've got to expect in politics," said Rankin. "But if that 'as all we might take care of it. The situation has taken a curious turn this last week."
"How's that?" asked Garwood, who had suffered from a candidate's myopia, and could not note the numerous turns a situation takes during a campaign.
"Well, it's this way. The committees is all kickin' because your assessments hasn't been paid. I've been tryin' to make a poor man's campaign fer you, an' I've succeeded pretty well so fur, if I do say it myself. But the boys needs money everywhere; they want to finish up the'r poll, and over in Moultrie, where we had to deal with the Sprague kickers, a little money has just _got_ to be used, that's all."
"Well, I made him come down, o' course, but I wouldn't trust the dirty whelp out o' my sight on'y when I could see him, as the old widow woman said of her grandson, an' I think we ought to pay the assessment over there anyway."
"How much is it?" asked Garwood, with the pain an unrendered bill can give one.
"Two hundred," said Rankin. "The boys over there say--shall I tell you what they say?"
"Yes; go on, I can stand anything nowadays."
"Well, they say that now you're goin' to marry ol' man Harkness's daughter, you'd ought to get him to put up fer you."
Garwood, in his hoarse voice, swore an oath.
"Well, I'm just tellin' you what they say. They're sayin' that right here to home, an' they're sayin' it pretty much all over the district. They think Harkness is made o' money, an' that it 'uld be easy fer him to put up some."
"Have they ever known him to put up any for a campaign?" asked Garwood with a sardonic smile that Rankin could not see in the gloom.
"No, reckon not; but they look to you to loosen him up. But let me tell you," Rankin hastened on, as if he had pleasanter information, "you know Bromley, when he got good an' goin', let loose a lot of his money--just sowed it 'round freely fer two or three weeks, an' it kind o' made up fer the mistakes he was makin' on the stump. But now he's done just what I knowed he'd do--here with election a week off, he's got skeered an' froze up stiff an' cold, tighter'n a mill race in January--not a red cent 'ill he bleed now, an' the whole push is sore on 'im. But I knowed he'd do it, I knowed it, from the very first." Rankin chuckled at his own prophetic instinct. "So you see, we'd ought to take advantage of the situation. If I had a little money to use judiciously, I'd have 'em licked to a stand-still a week from to-night."