A smooth, conical hill rose sharply to the left, momentarily shutting out
the valley; and beyond, at the foot of a steep declivity, stood the
Makimmon dwelling. Originally a four-square, log house, the logs had been
covered by boards, and to its present, irregular length, one room in
width, had been added an uneven roofed porch broadside on a narrow lip of
sod by a wide, shallow stream. An indifferent stand of corn held
precariously to the sharp slope from the public road; an unkempt cow
grazed the dank sod by a primitive well sweep; a heap of tin cans, bright
or rusted, their fading paper labels loose and littering the grass, had
been untidily accumulated at a back door.
Gordon passed about the end of his dwelling to the side that faced the
water. A wave of hot air, a heavy, greasy odor and the sputtering of
boiling fat, swept out from the kitchen. He filled a tin basin on the
porch from a convenient bucket of water, and made a hasty toilet.
Clare paused at the door, a long handled spoon in her attenuated grasp;
she was an emaciated woman of thirty, with prominent cheek bones, a thin,
sensitive nose, and a colorless mouth set in a harsh line by excessive
physical suffering. There was about her, in spite of her gaunt features
and narrow, stooping frame, something appealingly simple, girlish. A blue
ribband made a gay note in her faded, scant hair; she had pinned a piece
of draggled color about her throat. "I've been looking for you the half
hour," she said querulously; "draw up t' the table."
"I stopped at Simmons', and brought you a pretty, too; it's in the
bundle."
"Gordon!" she exclaimed, as he unwrapped the shoes, "they are elegant! Had
you ought to have got them? We need so much--mosquito bar, the flies are
terrible wearing, the roof's crying for tin, and--"
"You're as bad as Sampson," he interrupted her, almost shortly; "we've got
to have pleasures as well as profits. And too," he directed, "don't put
those shoes away like you did that watered silk shawl I got you in
Stenton. Wear them ... to-night."
"Oh, no!" she cried, "not just setting around; they'll get smudged. Not
to-night, Gordon; maybe to-morrow, or when I go to church."
"Tonight," he repeated inexorably.
A bare, stained table with spreading legs pinned through the oak board was
ranged against a bench on the kitchen wall, where, in the watery light of
a small, glass lamp, Gordon and Clare Makimmon ate their supper of flat,
dark, salt-raised bread, strips of bacon and dripping greens, and
swimming, purplish preserves.
After supper they sat on the narrow porch, facing the dark, whispering
stream, the night pouring into the deep, still valley. A cold air rose
from the surface of the water, and Clare wrapped a worn piece of blanket
about her shoulders. At frequent intervals she gazed with palpable delight
at her feet, shod in the "real buck." A deep, melancholy chorus of frogs
rose from the creek, mingling with the high, metallic shrilling of
crickets, the reiterated calling of whippoorwills from a thicket of
pines.
Gordon Makimmon settled into a waking somnolence, lulled by the familiar,
profound, withdrawn repose of the valley. He could distinguish Clare's
form weaving back and forth in a low rocker; the moonless, summer night
embraced, hid, all; there were no lights in the house at his back, no
lights visible in the village beyond; only the impenetrable blackness of
the opposite range and the abrupt band of stars.
Suddenly Clare's even breathing, the tracking sound of the chair, ceased;
she drew two or three sharp, gasping inspirations. Gordon, instantly
alert, rose and stood over her. "Is it bad to-night again?" he asked
solicitously; "shall I get you the ginger water?"
"None ... in the house," she articulated laboriously; "pretty ... bad."
"No, don't leave me; just set; I'll be better in a spell." He fetched her
a glass of water, from which she gulped spasmodically, clutching with
cold, wet fingers to his wrist. Then the tension relaxed, her breathing
grew more normal. "It's by now," she proclaimed unsteadily.
"I'm going back the road for a little ginger," he told her from the edge
of the porch; "we'd best have the bottle filled."
The drug store was dark, closed for the night, and Gordon continued to
Simmons' store. The row of swinging, kerosene lamps cast a thick yellow
radiance over the long counters, the variously laden shelves. The store
was filled with the odor of coffee, the penetrating smell of print
muslins.
"Mr. Simmons wants you a minute in the office," the clerk responded
indirectly to his request for ginger. Gordon instinctively masked a
gathering premonition of trouble. "Fill her up the while," he demanded,
pushing forward the empty bottle.
Valentine Simmons was a small man with a pinkly bald head ornamented with
fluffs of white hair like cotton wool above his ears, and precise, shaven
lips forever awry in the pronouncing of rallying or benevolent sentences;
these, with appropriate religious sentiments, formed nine-tenths of his
discourse, through which the rare words that revealed his purposes, his
desires, flashed like slender and ruthless knives.
He was bending over a tall, narrow ledger when Gordon entered the office;
but he immediately closed the book and swung about in his chair. The small
enclosure was hot, and filled with the odor of scorching metal, the
buzzing of a large, blundering fly.
"Ah!" Valentine Simmons exclaimed pleasantly; "our link with the outer
world, our faithful messenger.... I wanted to see you; ah, yes." He turned
over the pages of a second, heavier ledger at his hand. "Here it
is--Gordon Makimmon, good Scotch Presbyterian name. Five hundred and
thirty dollars," he said suddenly, unexpectedly.
Gordon was unable to credit his senses, the fact that this was the sum of
his indebtedness; it was an absurd mistake, and he said so.
"Everything listed against its date," the other returned imperturbably,
"down to a pair of white buck shoes for a lady to-day--a generous present
for some enslaver."
"My sister," Gordon muttered ineptly. Five hundred and thirty dollars, he
repeated incredulously to himself. Five hundred.... "How long has it been
standing?" he asked.
The other consulted the book. "Two years, a month and four days," he
returned exactly.
"But no notice was served on me; nothing was said about my bill."
"Ah, we don't like to annoy old friends; just a little word at necessary
intervals."
Old rumors, stories, came to Gordon's memory in regard to the long credit
extended by Simmons to "old friends," the absence of any rendered
accounts; and, in that connection, the thought of the number of homesteads
throughout the county that had come, through forced sales, into the
storekeeper's hands. The circumstantial details of these events had been
bitten by impassioned oaths into his mind, together with the memory of the
dreary ruin that had settled upon the evicted.
"I can give you something day after to-morrow, when I am paid."
"Entirely satisfactory; three hundred--no, for you two hundred and fifty
dollars will be sufficient; the rest another time ... whenever you are
able."
"I get two dollars and fifty cents a day," Gordon reminded him, with a dry
and bitter humor, "and I have a month's pay coming."
Valentine Simmons had not, apparently, heard him. "Two hundred and fifty
only," he repeated; "we always like to accommodate old friends, especially
Presbyterian friends."
"I can give you fifty dollars," Gordon told him, at once loud and
conciliatory; wondering, at the same time, how, if he did, Clare and
himself would manage. He had to pay for his board in Stenton; the doctor
for Clare had to be met--fifty cents in hand a visit, or the visits
ceased.
"Have your little joke, then get out that hidden stocking, pry up that
particular fire brick ... only two hundred and fifty now ... but--now."
A hopeless feeling of impotence enveloped Gordon: the small, dry man
before him with the pink, bald head shining in the lamplight, the set
grin, was as remote from any appeal as an insensate figure cast in metal,
a painted iron man in neat, grey alpaca, a stiff, white shirt with a small
blue button and an exact, prim muslin bow.
Still, "I'll give you fifty, and thirty the next month. Why, damn it, I'll
pay you off in the year. I'm not going to run away. I have steady work;
you know what I am getting; you're safe."
"But," Valentine Simmons lifted a hand in a round, glistening cuff, "is
anything certain in this human vale? Is anything secure that might hang on
the swing of a ... whip?"
With an unaccustomed, violent effort of will Gordon Makimmon suppressed
his angry concern at the other's covert allusion: outside his occupation
as stage driver he was totally without resources, without the ability to
pay for a bag of Green Goose tobacco. The Makimmons had never been
thrifty ... in the beginning they had let their wide share of valley
holding grow deep in thicket, where they might hunt the deer, their
streams course through a woven wild where pheasant might feed and fall to
their accurate guns.
"Two hundred and fifty dollars," Valentine Simmons repeated pleasantly.
"I haven't got it, and can't get it, all at once," Gordon reiterated in a
conciliatory manner. Then his straining, chafing pride, his assaulted
self-esteem, overflowed a little his caution. "And you know it," he
declared in a loud, ugly voice; "you know the size of every pocketbook in
Greenstream; I'll bet, by God, you and old man Hollidew know personal
every copper Indian on the pennies of the County."
Valentine Simmons smiled at this conception. Gordon regarded him with
hopeless, growing anger: Why, the old screw took that for a compliment!
"This is Wednesday," the storekeeper pronounced; "say, by Saturday ... the
sum I mentioned."
"It can't be done." The last vestiges of Gordon's control were fast
melting in the heat of his passion. Simmons turned to the narrow ledger,
picking up a pen. "When you bought," he remarked precisely, over his
shoulders, "the white shoes and ammunition and silk fishing lines--didn't
you intend to pay for them?"
"Yes, I did, and will. And when you said, 'Gordon, help yourself, load up,
try those flies'; and 'Never mind the bill now, some other time, old
friends pay when they please,' didn't you know I was getting in over my
head? didn't you encourage it ... so you could get judgment on me? sell me
out? Though what you settled on me for, what you see in my ramshackle
house and used up ground, is over me."
Simmons flashed a momentary, crafty glance at the other. "Never overlook a
location on good water," he advised.
Gordon Makimmon stood speechless, trembling with rage. For a moment
Simmons' pen, scratching over the page, made the only sound in the small
enclosure, then, "The provident man," he continued, "is always made a
target for the abuse of the--the thoughtless. But he usually comes to the
assistance of his unfortunate brother. You might arrange a loan."
"Why, so I might," Gordon assented in a thick voice; "I could get it from
your provident friend, Hollidew--three hundred dollars, say, at hell's per
cent; a little lien on my property. 'Never overlook a situation on good
water.'
"By God!" he exclaimed, suddenly prescient, "but I've done for myself."
And he thought of Clare, of Clare fighting eternally that sharp pain in
her side, her face now drawn and glistening with the sweat of suffering,
now girlishly gay. He thought of her fragile hands so impotent to cope
with the bitter poverty of the mountains. What, with their home, her place
of retreat and security, gone, and--it now appeared more than
probable--his occupation vanished, would she do?
"I've done for myself, for her," he repeated, subconsciously aloud, in a
harsh whisper. He stood rigid, unseeing; a pulse beat visibly in the brown
throat by the collarless and faded shirt. Simmons regarded him with a
covert gaze, then, catching the attention of the clerk in the store
outside, beckoned slightly with his head. The clerk approached, vigorously
brushing the counters with a turkey wing.
Gordon Makimmon's gaze concentrated on the storekeeper. "You're almost an
old man," he said, in a slow, unnatural voice; "you have been robbing men
and women of their homes for a great many years, and you are still alive.
It's surprising that some one has not killed you."
"I have been shot at," Valentine Simmons replied; "behind my back. The men
who fail are like that as a rule."
"I'm not like that," Gordon informed him; "it's pretty well known that I
stand square in front of the man I'm after. Don't you think, this time,
you have made a little mistake? Hadn't I better give you that fifty, and
something more later?"
Valentine Simmons rose from his chair and turned, facing Gordon. His
muslin bow had slipped awry on the polished, immaculate bosom of his
shirt, and it gave him a slightly ridiculous, birdlike expression. He
gazed coldly, with his thin lips firm and hands still, into the other's
threatening, virulent countenance. "Two hundred and fifty dollars," he
insisted.
The thought of Clare, betrayed, persisted in Gordon's mind, battling with
his surging temper, his unreasoning resentment. Valentine Simmons stood
upright, still, against the lamplight. It was plain that he was not to be
intimidated. An overwhelming wave of misery, a dim realization of the
disastrous possibilities of his folly, inundated Gordon, drowning all
other considerations. He turned, and walked abruptly from the office into
the store. There the clerk placed on the counter the bottle, filled and
wrapped. In a petty gust of rage, like a jet of steam escaping from a
defective boiler, he swept the bottle to the floor, where he ground the
splintering fragments of glass, the torn and stained paper, into an untidy
blot.