Across the Many Waters

"The work here and the night are both over, let's go down to
headquarters," he added, and like two boys, with hands tight gripped,
they passed out into the winter street.

Down at the _Gray Picket_ they found some of David's ardent supporters
still fresh and enthusiastic though they had been making a night of it.
Soon waves of excitement were rising and falling all over the city and
the streets were thronged with men from out through the county.

At an early hour heavy wagons moved with the measured tread of blind
tigers and deposited blind tiger kittens, done up in innocent and
deceptive looking crates, at numbers of discreet alley covers near
the polls. At the machine headquarters rotund and blooming gentlemen
grouped and dissolved and grouped again, during which process wads of
greenbacks unrolled and flashed with insolent carelessness. The situation
was and had been desperate and this last stand must be brought through
for the whisky interest, come high as it would.

And so through the morning, delegations kept dropping in to David's
headquarters to keep up the spirits of the candidate and incidentally to
have their own raised. There were ugly rumors coming from the polls. The
police were machine instruments and the back door of every saloon in the
city was wide open, while a repeating vote was plainly indicated by
crowds of floaters who drifted from ward to ward. The faces of the bosses
were discreetly radiant.