Gordon carefully explained the entire circumstance of the timber to
Lettice. "I just happened to be by the stream," he continued, "and
overheard them. Your father and Simmons evidently had arranged the thing,
and Simmons was going to crowd you out of all the gain."
"You see to it," she returned listlessly; "you have my name on that paper,
the power of something or other." She was seated on the porch of their
dwelling. A low-drifting mass of formless grey cloud filled the narrow
opening of the ranges, drooping in nebulous veils of suspended moisture
down to the vivid green of the valley. The mountains seemed to dissolve
into the nothingness above; the stream was unusually noisy.
"I might see him this evening," he observed; "and I could find out how
Buck was resting."
"However did he come to get hurt?"
"I never knew rightly, there we were all standing with Buckley a-talking,
when the stone flew out of the crowd and hit him on the head. Nobody saw
who did it."
"I wish you hadn't been there, Gordon. You always seem to be around, to
get talked about, when anything happens."
He saw that she was irritable, in a mood for complaint, and he rose. "You
mean Mrs. Caley talks wherever I am," he corrected. He left the porch and
walked over the road to the village. The store, he knew, would be closed;
but Valentine Simmons, an indefatigable church worker, almost invariably
after the service pleasantly passed the remainder of Sunday in the
contemplation and balancing of his long and satisfactory accounts and
assets.
He was, as Gordon had anticipated, in the enclosed office bent over his
ledgers. The door to the store was unlocked. Simmons rose, and briefly
acknowledged Gordon's presence.
"I was sorry Buckley got hurt," the latter opened; "it wasn't any direct
fault of mine. We were having words. I don't deny but that it might have
gone further with us, but some one else stepped in."
"So I was informed. Buckley will probably live ... that is all the Stenton
doctor will say; a piece of his skull has been removed. I am not prepared
to discuss it right now ... painful to me."
"Certainly. But I didn't come to discuss that. I want to talk to you about
the timber--those options of Lettice's."
"She doesn't agree to the deal?" Simmons queried sharply.
"Whatever I say is good enough for Lettice," Gordon replied.
An expression of relief settled over the other. "The papers will be ready
this week," he said. "I have taken all that, and some expense, off you.
You will make a nice thing out of it."
"I will," Gordon assented heartily. "And that reminds me--I saw an old
acquaintance of Pompey Hollidew's in Greenstream to-day. I don't know his
name; I drove him up in the stage, and Pompey greeted him like a long-lost
dollar."
A veiled, alert curiosity was plain on Simmons's smooth, pinkish
countenance.
"I wonder if you know him too?--a man with a beard, a great hand for maps
and cigars."
"Well?" Valentine Simmons temporized.
"Could he have anything to do with those timber options of the old man's,
with your offer for them?"
"Well?" Simmons repeated. His face was now absolutely blank; he sat turned
from his ledgers, facing Gordon, without a tremor.
"It's no use, Simmons," Gordon Makimmon admitted; "I was out by the old
mill this morning. I saw you both, heard something that was said. That
railroad will do a lot for values around here, but mostly for timber."
Instantly, and with no wasted regrets over lost opportunities, Simmons
changed his tactics to meet existing conditions. "Your wife's estate
controls about three thousand acres of timber," he pronounced. "What will
you take for them?"
"How much do you control?" Gordon asked.
"About twenty-five hundred at present."