One of the canvas-covered mountain wagons was unloading on the platform
before Simmons' store when Gordon entered the center of the village. A
miscellaneous pile of merchandise was growing, presided over by a clerk
with a pencil and tally book. Valentine Simmons, without his coat, in an
immaculate, starched white waistcoat, stood upon one side.
Gordon, without delay, approached him. "I can give you a hundred dollars,"
he informed the other, exhibiting that sum.
"Two hundred and fifty will be necessary," Simmons informed him concisely,
"to-day."
"Come to reason--"
Valentine Simmons turned his back squarely upon him. A realization of the
uselessness of further words possessed Gordon; he returned the money to
his pocket. The contemptuous neglect of the other lit the ever-trimmed
lamp of his temper. "What's this," he demanded, "I hear about driving
stage? about Buck boasting around that he had had me laid off?"
"That's not correct," Simmons informed him smoothly; "Buckley has no power
to do that ... the owners of the privilege decided that you were too
unreliable."
"Then it's true," Gordon interrupted him, "I'm off?" Simmons nodded.
Gordon's temper swelled and flared whitely before his vision; rage
possessed him utterly; without balance, check, he was no more than an
insensate force in the grip of his mastering passion. He would stop that
miserable, black heart forever. Old Valentine Simmons' lips tightened, his
fingers twitched; he turned his back deliberately upon Gordon. The metal
buckle which held the strap of his waistcoat caught the sun and reflected
it into Gordon's eyes. "How many gross pink celluloid rattles?" the
storekeeper demanded of the clerk.
Gordon Makimmon's hand crept toward his pocket ... then he remembered--he
had lost that which he sought ... on the side of Cheap Mountain. If
Simmons would turn, say something further, taunt him, he would kill him
with his hands. But Simmons did none of these things; instead he walked
slowly, unharmed, into the store.