ee him then. The sweat was popping out on his
forehead, and he stood dumb, tapping the little package with the ends
of his fingers. The colorado-maduro gang was after his graft. He had
only to change his politics, and stuff five fingers in his inside
pocket.

"Henry whispers to me and wants the pause in the programme
interpreted. I whisper back: 'H. P. is up against a bribe, senator's
size, and the coons have got him going.' I saw Mellinger's hand
moving closer to the package. 'He's weakening,' I whispered to
Henry. 'We'll remind him,' says Henry, 'of the peanut-roaster on
Thirty-fourth Street, New York.'

"Henry stooped down and got a record from the basketful we'd brought,
slid it in the phonograph, and started her off. It was a cornet solo,
very neat and beautiful, and the name of it was 'Home, Sweet Home.'
Not one of them fifty odd men in the room moved while it was playing,
and the governor man kept his eyes steady on Mellinger. I saw
Mellinger's head go up little by little, and his hand came creeping
away from the package. Not until the last note sounded did anybody
stir. And then Homer P. Mellinger takes up the bundle of boodle and
slams it in the governor man's face.

"'That's my answer,' says Mellinger, private secretary, 'and there'll
be another in the morning. I have proofs of conspiracy against every
man of you. The show is over, gentlemen.'

"'There's one more act,' puts in the governor man. 'You are a
servant, I believe, employed by the president to copy letters and
answer raps at the door. I am governor here. _Senores_, I call upon
you in the name of the cause to seize this man.'

"That brindled gang of conspirators shoved back their chairs and
advanced in force. I could see where Mellinger had made a mistake in
massing his enemy so as to make a grand-stand play. I think he made
another one, too; but we can pass that, Mellinger's idea of a graft
and mine being different, according to estimations and points of
view.

"There was only one window and door in that room, and they were in
the front end. Here was fifty odd Latin men coming in a bunch to
obstruct the legislation of Mellinger. You may say there were three
of us, for me and Henry, simultaneous, declared New York City and the
Cherokee Nation in sympathy with the weaker party.

"Then it was that Henry Horsecollar rose to a point of disorder
and intervened, showing, admirable, the advantages of education
as applied to the American Indian's na