All our candidates got odder yobs now."

"Yes," said Ezra Bronson. "Prue Foster wouldn't take our school now if she
could get it"

"And as I was sayin'," went on Bonner, "I want to get this guy, Jim Irwin.
An' bein' the cause of his gittin' the school, I'd like to be on the board
to kick him off; but if you fellers would like to have some one else, I
won't run, and if the right feller is named, I'll line up what friends I
got for him." "You got no friend can git as many wotes as you can," said
Peterson. "I tank you better run."

"What say, Ez?" asked Bonner.

"Suits me all right," said Bronson. "I guess we three have had our fight
out and understand each other."

"All right," returned Bonner, "I'll take the office again. Let's not start
too soon, but say we begin about a week from Sunday to line up our
friends, to go to the school election and vote kind of unanimous-like?"

"Suits me," said Bronson.

"Wery well," said Peterson.

"I don't like the way Colonel Woodruff acts," said Bonner. "He rounded up
that gang of kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing, didn't he?"

"I tank not," replied Peterson. "I tank he was yust interested in how
Yennie managed it."

"Looked mighty like he was managin' the demonstration," said Bonner. "What
d'ye think, Ez?"

"Too small a matter for the colonel to monkey with," said Bronson. "I
reckon he was just interested in Jennie's dilemmer. It ain't reasonable
that Colonel Woodruff after the p'litical career he's had would mix up in
school district politics."

"Well," said Bonner, "he seems to take a lot of interest in this
exhibition here. I think we'd better watch the colonel. That decision of
Jennie's might have been because she's stuck on Jim Irwin, or because she
takes a lot of notice of what her father says."

"Or she might have thought the decision was right," said Bronson. "Some
people do, you know."

"Right!" scoffed Bonner. "In a pig's wrist! I tell you that decision was
crooked."

"Vell," said Haakon Peterson, "talk of crookedness wit' Yennie Woodruff
don't get wery fur wit' me."

"Oh, I don't mean anything bad, Haakon," replied Bonner, "but it wasn't an
all-right decision. I think she's stuck on the guy."

The caucus broke up after making sure that the three members of the school
board would be as one man in maintaining a hostile front to Jim Irwin and
his tenure of office. It looked rather like a foregone conclusion, in a
little district wherein there