doctored. Why, they've even got _me_ marked 'Socialist.' You can imagine
what they've done to the rest of the boys. It's one o'clock now." (He
had looked at four watches, one after the other, a part of his
dickerer's stock-in-trade.) "In an hour and fifteen minutes they'll be
organized and votin' by check-list. I ain't a man to give up easy,
Squire, but I swear it looks as though they had us headed so far on the
homestretch that we ain't near enough to trip 'em or bust a sulky wheel
on 'em."

"You've got more than an hour's leeway." It was a soft lisp of sound
that startled the group. The man had come by devious ways through the
gullies of the Thornton field, around the corner of "The Barracks," and
upon the porch. Those who knew him declared that "Whispering Urban" Cobb
never walked by the straight way when there was a crooked one by which
he could dodge around.

"No, they can't get a-goin' at no two o'clock," he assured them. A
drooping gray mustache curtained his mouth, drooping gray eyebrows
shaded his eyes, and he crowded very close to them and whispered, "I've
stole the call for the caucus, and they'll hunt for it about half an
hour, and then they'll have to round the committee up and get 'em to
sign another, and have constables swear that the other call was
posted--and, well, they won't get going much before four."

The Duke looked at him indulgently.

"I took it on myself to do it. I reckoned you might need the extra time,
seein' that they was tryin' to spring a trap on you."

He took the cigar that the Duke offered him in lieu of praise.