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“Do we need his gang bad?” inquired the policeman deferentially.

“I need everybody bad! This is a good-sized job fer me, and I want to do it right. Throwin’ the precinck to Maxim is goin’ to do me some wrong with the Republican crowd, even if they don’t git on that it was throwed; and I want to throw it good! I couldn’t feel like I’d done right if I didn’t. I’ve give my word that they’ll git a majority of sixty-eight votes, and that’ll be jest twicet as much in my pocket as a plain majority. And I want them seven Dagoes! I’ve give up on votin‘ ’em; it can’t be done. It’d make a saint cuss to try to reason with ’em, and it’s no good. They can’t be fooled, neither. They know where the polls is, and they know how to vote–blast the Australian ballot system! The most that can be done is to keep ’em away from the polls.”

“Can’t you git ’em out of town in the morning?”

“D’you reckon I ain’t tried that? No, sir! That Dago wouldn’t take a pass to heaven! Everything else is all right. Doc Morgan’s niggers stays right here and votes. I know them boys, and they’ll walk up and stamp the rooster all right, all right. Them other niggers, that Hell-Valley gang, ain’t that kind; and them and Tooms’s crowd’s goin’ to be took out to Smelter’s ice-houses in three express wagons at four o’clock in the morning. It ain’t goin’ to cost over two dollars a head, whiskey and all. Then, Dan Kelly is fixed, and the Loo boys. Mike, I don’t like to brag, and I ain’t around throwin’ no bokays at myself as a reg’lar thing, but I want to say right, here, there ain’t another man in this city–no, nor the State neither–that could of worked his precinck better’n I have this. I tell you, I’m within five or six votes of the majority they set for their big money.”

“Have you give the Dagoes up altogether?”

“No, by—-!” cried the committee-man harshly, bringing his dirty fist down on the other’s knee. “Did you ever hear of Frank Pixley weakenin’? Did you ever see the man that said Frank Pixley wasn’t game?” He rose to his feet, a ragged and sinister silhouette against the sputtering electric light at the alley mouth. “Didn’t you ever hear that Frank Pixley had a barrel of schemes to any other man’s bucket o’ wind? What’s Frank Pixley’s repitation, lemme ast you that? I git what I go after, don’t I? Now look here, you listen to me,” he said, lowering his voice and shaking a bent forefinger earnestly in the policeman’s face; “I’m goin’ to turn the trick. And I ought to do it, too. That there Pete, he ain’t worth the powder to blow him up–you couldn’t learn him no politics if you set up with him night after night fer a year. Didn’t I try? Try? I dern near bust my head open jest thinkin’ up ways to make the flathead see. And he wouldn’t make no effort, jest set there and parrot out ‘Vote a Republican!’ He’s ongrateful, that’s what he is. Well, him and them other Dagoes are goin’ to stay at home fer two weeks, beginnin’ to-night.”

“I’ll be dogged if I see how,” said the policeman, lifting his helmet to scratch his head.

“I’ll show you how. I don’t claim no credit fer the idea, I ain’t around blowin’ my own horn too often, but I’d like fer somebody to jest show me any other man in this city could have thought it out! I’d like to be showed jest one, that’s all, jest one! Now, you look here; you see that nigger shanty over there, with the smallpox lanterns outside?”

The policeman shivered slightly. “Yes.”

“Look here; they’re rebuildin’ the pest-house, ain’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Leavin’ smallpox patients in their own holes under quarantine guard till they git a place to put ’em, ain’t they?”