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Once his back happened to be half turned towards the door, and, hearing a noise there, he wheeled and sprang up, uttering a loud cry. Scully's wrinkled visage showed grimly in the light of the small lamp he carried. This yellow effulgence, streaming upward, colored only his prominent features, and left his eyes, for instance, in mysterious shadow. He resembled a murderer.
It seemed to be merely a proper temple for an enormous stove, which, in the centre, was humming with godlike violence. At various points on its surface the iron had become luminous and glowed yellow from the heat. Beside the stove Scully's son Johnnie was playing High-Five with an old farmer who had whiskers both gray and sandy. They were quarrelling.
"No, thanks; I'm not drinkin'," answered the bartender. Afterwards he asked, "How did you hurt your face?" The Swede immediately began to boast loudly. "Why, in a fight. I thumped the soul out of a man down here at Scully's hotel." The interest of the four men at the table was at last aroused. "Who was it?" said one. "Johnnie Scully," blustered the Swede. "Son of the man what runs it.
But her inertia was of no moment, and very presently, Charles Scully's strong right arm propelling her, she was in the warm, bright-lighted hallway, its door closing her in and the wide-bosomed, wide-hipped figure in spotted silk fumbling the throat fastenings of her jacket, and the stooped form of Charley Scully dragging off her thin rubber shoes. "Whew! they're soaking wet, ma.
The wind tore the words from Scully's lips and scattered them far alee. "You are all a gang of " boomed the Swede, but the storm also seized the remainder of this sentence. Immediately turning their backs upon the wind, the men had swung around a corner to the sheltered side of the hotel.
A few paces away the cowboy was lecturing the Swede. "No, you don't! Wait a second!" The Easterner was plucking at Scully's sleeve. "Oh, this is enough," he pleaded. "This is enough! Let it go as it stands. This is enough!" "Bill," said Scully, "git out of the road." The cowboy stepped aside. "Now." The combatants were actuated by a new caution as they advanced towards collision.
This ain't the time and the place for rehashing, that's all. Sure you been a friend to me. I don't say you haven't. Only I can't be bossed by a girl like you. I don't say May Scully's any better than she ought to be. Only that's my business. You hear? my business. I got to have life and see a darn sight more future for myself than selling shirts in a Fourteenth Street department store."
Scully's intention to deliver an impromptu speech upon the occasion of the election, and he and his faithful Perkins prepared it between them: for the latter gentleman had wisely kept his uncle's counsel and his own and Mr. Scully was quite ignorant of the conspiracy that was brooding.
Jurgis sat dumb with dismay. "Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!" declared the other. "Can't I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it?" asked Jurgis, at length. "But Scully's out of town," the other answered. "I don't even know where he is he's run away to dodge the strike." That was a pretty mess, indeed. Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed.
He was not sure that he could manage the "sheeny," and he did not mean to take any chances with his district; let the Republicans nominate a certain obscure but amiable friend of Scully's, who was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an Ashland Avenue saloon, and he, Scully, would elect him with the "sheeny's" money, and the Republicans might have the glory, which was more than they would get otherwise.
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