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sweet-talk him into running for mayor of Sedalia? Overstreet’s prize for winning that race was two years of political shit to shovel off his desk every single day, never mind he had an active medical practice to keep up. Today, he’d started with a breech delivery at six in the morning, and what with the usual hospital rounds and house calls, afternoon office visits, a meeting with a bunch of irate citizens, two kids with firecracker burns, and a City Council meeting, he’d gone nonstop until ten that night. By then, he thought he might just be home free, but no. Martha Smith, daughter of George Smith, the founder of his fair city, was having one of her so-called spells. If Sarah Cotton, Martha’s sister, had heard what the good doctor said after she’d hung up the phone, he never again would have been allowed to set foot inside the Smith mansion in any capacity. Wearily, he grabbed up his bag, and was off to the huge stone house on East Broadway to dispense smelling salts, a touch of laudanum, and close to two hours of gentle sympathy and encouragement. By the time he dragged himself back, Bud Hastain and John Bothwell were waiting for him in his office, directly below his bachelor apartments. “No,” Bothwell told him. “This can’t wait until tomorrow. I have appointments all day tomorrow.”
    Dr. Overstreet slung his bag into a corner, pulled a decanter labeled SCOTCH and three glasses from a little cabinet next to the red-leather armchair behind his consultation desk. Hastain and Bothwell sipped at their drinks, but Overstreet threw his down in one swallow, then refilled his glass.
    His visitors glanced at each other, then Bothwell spoke. He was a good-looking man just past fifty, with a full head of dark hair, pompadoured in front, long sideburns and a thick mustache. Dark eyes peered out from below craggy, bushy brows. His bearing and tone of voice never left doubt that if he was not getting his way right then, he shortly would be. “Sorry to keep you up, Doc, but we need to keep moving forward on this State Fair business. We’ve got to be good and goddamn sure we don’t lose the Fair the way we lost out on the Capital.”
    Hastain, a stocky, light-haired man a few years younger than Bothwell, nodded.
    For a moment, Overstreet gave serious thought to asking the two men to leave, then resigning as mayor. Doctors had no business being in politics; he had no trouble imagining what his father would have had to say about that. Two of Overstreet’s patients had died that day, one from a heart attack, another from a railyard accident, and now he was supposed to get all worked up about Sedalia’s having lost out on the Capital and maybe losing the State Fair as well. But Bothwell and Hastain owned considerable real estate in Sedalia, were officers in banks, operated lucrative farms in the area; if Sedalia failed, the two of them would be just another couple of dime-a-dozen lawyers. That’s why Bothwell had got himself elected State Representative from Pettis County, and Hastain had served two terms as mayor. But Bud wasn’t allowed to stand for a third term in 1898, so he persuaded his friend, Dr. Walter Overstreet, that it was Walter’s civic duty to run for mayor. No worry, Hastain and Bothwell would give him all the help he needed. Some help. When Jefferson City managed to hold onto the State Capital, Sedalia was left holding a large plot of land where the capitol building was supposed to go, and Bothwell and Charlie Yeater, the Pettis County State Senator, were bound and determined that the state legislature would vote that fall to use Sedalia’s available acreage as the site for the Missouri State Fair. Not as good as getting the Capital, but a decent consolation prize, one that would bring considerable business into town, year after year. Overstreet had heard so much palaver about cows and sheep and horses, he thought he’d be better off had he gone into veterinary medicine.
    “Walter, God
damn
it.