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You keep still about it, but be sure and come to the convention at the court house next Saturday at two o'clock." "Oh, I'll do that; so long." Colonel Chenault, with about twenty of his friends, all of whom were good judges of horses, whiskey and tobacco, and who could tell a pair of deuces from a full hand, came rather late to the convention, not having the least intimation of opposition.
The river had risen to full flood during the night and out of the darkness came the crash and grind of ice, the dull roar and splash of undermined banks, and the purling rumble of swift moving water. After breakfast Bill and Jeanne, armed with light spruce poles, took their places; Chenault pushed the boat into the current and it shot downstream, whirling in the grip of the flood.
"That is all right, providing I get through. What if the boat gets tipped over or smashed in the ice?" Chenault shrugged again. "You De-Man-Who-Cannot-Die," he said. "You got de good heart. In de woods all peoples know. You no mak' write. I got no penzil." Before daylight next morning the two men dragged the little flat boat to the water's edge.
Then the chairman called for nominations and Colonel Chenault was pompously nominated by Colonel Shackelford, who closed his remarks by moving that nominations close and the Colonel be unanimously declared the nominee. At this suggestion there was a stentorian clamour of noes.
In ten minutes the vote was counted and reported by the tellers. The secretary announced the vote: Colonel Hamilton Chenault 23 Hon. Caleb Saylor 217 Whereupon the Colonel marched out, followed by a mere squad, and, there being no other business, the convention adjourned. At the following November election Caleb Saylor beat his Republican opponent by more than three hundred majority.
The chairman directed that those favoring Colonel Chenault should gather on the right side of the center aisle, while those favoring Hon. Caleb Saylor should gather on the left, so they might be counted without confusion by the tellers. This was quickly done. Though it was midsummer, the Chenault men gathered about the court-house stove.
The temporary chairman of the meeting, Chesley Chilton, who expected to be nominated for sheriff the following year, and who saw that a surprise was about to be sprung on the Colonel, called Caleb to one side and asked the cause of the gathering. "Oh, you stand by us and we'll help you out next year. I know what you want. Chenault is a dead one and don't know it. We are after his scalp.
At the mention of Saylor's name and the resounding cheers which greeted it, Colonel Chenault nearly collapsed with surprise and indignation. He turned to Colonel Shackelford, saying: "I am beaten and by that mountain upstart. I would not let him in my front door."
Chenault, being a half-breed, was more inclined toward garrulity than his Indian spouse. "How you come?" he asked with evident interest. Jeanne answered him, speaking rapidly, and at the end of a half-hour the man was in full possession of the details of their plight. He slowly shook his head. "Moncrossen camp ver' far feefty seexty mile," he said. "You no mak'." Bill looked up suddenly.
Caleb began riding over the county, telling the tenant-farmers and laborers that they should send from a farming community a representative who was a laboring man like themselves, instead of a land-grabbing "Colonel," a man who thought himself better than anybody else. "Has Colonel Chenault or his wife or his daughters ever been in your house? You see them often at the house on the hill.
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