Doyle grinned encouragingly. He had never deluded himself as to the leanings of the west and northwest. "Wait for the cities," he said. "They'll make up in five minutes for all you're losing in an hour now."
A half hour more and his words were verified. First, River Falls, with its huge mill population, went in a perfect landslide for Gordon; Linton and Kingmouth followed suit, and by nine o'clock Gordon was able to make the rough calculation that he had come into the capital itself only some fifteen thousand votes behind. On the capital, then, with its twenty-six wards and its vote of ninety thousand odd, depended the result.
From the crowd below Audible comment came floating up to the little group. "Win!" they heard one man shouting at the top of his voice, "of course he'll win! He'll take the city by thirty thousand!" Then a howl of protest, offers of huge sums of money, for the most part put forward by men without a dollar to their names, on the result of the city vote; finally a strident voice, repeating over and over again, "He can't beat the Combine!" "He can't beat 'em." "He ain't got nothing on Endicott through the city--not a vote!" Just for a second Gordon's eye met Doyle's, and simultaneously they smiled.
Ten minutes passed, and then the first ward made return--ward ten, the respectable. It went for Endicott, and by a fairly good margin, so good, indeed, that the Republican sympathizers in the crowd raised a little cheer. Fortunate, indeed, for them, that they did so while they had a chance, for with the next bulletin the rout of the Republicans and the signal defeat of the Combine began. Twenty-six came strong--overwhelmingly strong--for Gordon; twenty-four hundred and fifty-one to five hundred and twelve were the figures; then twenty, the ever-faithful Republican stronghold, actually, for the first time in its history, swung into the Democratic column by the narrowest of margins, then thirteen, fourteen, six and eight went by large majorities for Gordon, and, to complete the ruin already begun, the famous Combine wards, eleven, two and twenty-five, made the weakest showing to be imagined, somehow not even getting out their full vote, and giving Endicott, just where he might well have expected to make one last stand for victory, at the best nothing more than lukewarm, half-hearted support. "Overconfidence," the spokesman of the Combine said to the Press next day when interviewed; they had rated Gordon altogether too lightly, and had paid the penalty. That was all. And Gordon, carrying the city by rising twenty-five thousand votes, left the little room for his home, governor-elect of the state by a plurality of nearly ten thousand.