Levine looked down into the shadowy, childish eyes.  “Couldn’t you?  Well, you’re a dear, anyhow.  Now scoot and I’ll watch till you reach the gate.”

Lydia hesitated.  She felt a change in John’s manner and wondered if she had hurt his feelings.  “Kiss me good night, then,” she said.  “You don’t do it as regularly as you used to.  If I don’t watch you, you’ll be finding some one else to travel with you.”

John turned the little face up and kissed her gently on the forehead, but Lydia with rare demonstrativeness threw her arms about his neck and kissed his lips with a full childish smack.

“There!” she said complacently.  “Come on, Adam!  Don’t wait, Mr. Levine.  I’m safe with Adam.”

But John Levine did wait, standing with his hand against his lips, his head bowed, till he heard the gate click.  Then he lifted his face to the stars.  “God,” he whispered, “why do You make me forty-five instead of twenty-five?”

CHAPTER IX

THE ELECTION

“Perhaps, after all, I have fulfilled my destiny in being a lute for the wind.  But then why the cones and the broken boughs?”—­The Murmuring Pine.

It rained on Election Day, a cold November drizzle that elated the Democrats.  “A rainy day always brings a Democratic victory,” said Amos, gloomily, voicing the general superstition.

The day was a legal holiday and even the saloons were closed.  Yet Lake City was full of drunken men by noon.  Every hack, surrey and hotel bus in town was busy in the pay of one faction or the other hauling voters to the booths.  The Capitol square was deserted but groups of men, some of them very drunk and some of them very sober, were to be found throughout the business section of the city, bitterly debating the reservation question.

There were a great number of Indians in town that day, big dark fellows in muddy moccasins and faded mackinaws who stood about watching the machinations of the whites without audible comments.

Toward night the rain stopped and Lydia begged her father to take her into town to see the parade that would be indulged in by the victorious party.  Amos was not at all averse to taking in the parade, himself.  So nine o’clock found the two at the Square with a great waiting crowd.  There were very few women in the crowd.  Those that Lydia saw were painted and loud-voiced.  Amos told her vaguely that they were “hussies” and that she was not to let go of his arm for an instant.

Lydia didn’t know what a hussy was, but she didn’t want to stir an inch from her father’s side because of her fear of drunken men.  She was in a quiver of excitement; torn with pity and doubt when she thought of Charlie Jackson; speechless with apprehension when she thought of the possibility of Levine’s being defeated.

It was close on ten o’clock when the sound of a drum was heard from the direction of the Methodist Church.  The crowd started toward the sound, then paused as Binny Bates, the barber, in a stove-pipe hat, mounted on a much excited horse, rode up the street.  Binny was a Levine man and the crowd broke into cheers and cat-calls.