Some days after the Vibards' arrival Gordon Makimmon was standing by the
stable door, in the crisp flood of midday, when an ungainly young man
strode about the corner of the dwelling and approached him.
"You're Makimmon," he half queried, half asserted. "I'm Edgar Crandall,
Alexander's brother." He took off his hat, and passed his hand in a quick
gesture across his brow. He had close-cut, vivid red hair bristling like a
helmet over a long, narrow skull, and a thrusting grey gaze. "I came to
see you," he continued, "because of what you did for Alec. I can't make
out just what it was; but he says you saved his farm, pulled it right out
of Cannon's fingers, and that you've given him all the time he needs to
pay it back--" He paused.
"Well," Gordon responded, "and if I did?"
"I studied over it at first," the other frankly admitted; "I thought you
must have a string tied to something. I know Alexander's place, it's a
good farm, but ... I studied and studied until I saw there couldn't be
more in it than what appeared. I don't know why--"
"Why should you?" Gordon interrupted brusquely, annoyed by this searching
into the reason for his purchase of the farm, into the region of his
memories.
"I didn't come here to ask questions," the other quickly assured him; "but
to borrow four thousand dollars."
"Why not forty?" Gordon asked dryly.
"Because I couldn't put it out at profit, now." Edgar Crandall ignored the
other's factitious manner: "but I can turn four over two or three times in
a reasonable period. I can't give you any security, everything's covered I
own; that's why I came to you."
"You heard I was a fool with some money?"
"You didn't ask any security of Alexander," he retorted. "No, I came to
you because there was something different in what you did from all I had
ever known before. I can't tell what I mean; it had a--well, a sort of big
indifference about it. It seemed to me perhaps life hadn't got you in the
fix it had most of us; that you were free."
"You must think I'm free--with four thousand dollars."
"Apples," the other continued resolutely. "I've got the ground, acres of
prime sunny slope. I've read about apple growing and talked to men who
know. I've been to Albermarle County. I can do the same thing in the
Bottom. Ask anybody who knows me if I'll work. I can pay the money back
all right. But, if I know you from what you did, that's not the thing to
talk about now.
"I want a chance," he drove a knotted fist into a hardened palm; "I want a
chance to bring out what's in me and in my land. I want my own! The place
came to me clear, with a little money; but I wasn't content with a crop of
fodder. I improved and experimented with the soil till I found out what
was in her. Now I know; but I can't plant a sapling, I can't raise an
apple, without binding myself to the Cannons and Hollidews of the County
for life.
"I'd be their man, growing their fruit, paying them their profits. They
would stop at the fence, behind their span of pacers, and watch me--their
slave--sweating in the field or orchard."
"You seem to think," Gordon observed, "that you ought to have some special
favor, that what grinds other men ought to miss you. Old Pompey sold out
many a better man, and grabbed richer farms. And anyhow, if I was to money
all that Cannon and Valentine Simmons got hold of where would I
be?--Here's two of you in one family, in no time at all.... If that got
about I'd have five hundred breaking the door in."
The animation died from Edgar Crandall's face; he pulled his hat over the
flaming helmet of hair. "I might have known such things ain't true," he
said; "it was just a freak that saved Alec. There's no chance for a man,
for a living, in these dam' mountains. They look big and open and free,
but Greenstream's the littlest, meanest place on the earth. The
paper-shavers own the sky and air. Well, I'll let the ground rot, I won't
work my guts out for any one else."
He turned sharply and disappeared about the corner of the dwelling. Gordon
moved to watch him stride up the slope to where a horse was tied by the
public road. Crandall swung himself into the saddle, brought his heels
savagely into the horse's sides, and clattered over the road.
Gordon Makimmon's annoyance quickly evaporated; he thought with a measure
of amusement of the impetuous young man who was not content to grow a crop
of fodder. If the men of Greenstream all resembled Edgar Crandall, he
realized, the Cannons would have an uneasy time. He thought of the
brother, Alexander, of Alexander's wife, who resembled Lettice, and
determined to drive soon to the Bottom and see them and the farm. He would
have to make a practicable arrangement with regard to the latter, secure
his intention, avoid question, by a nominal scheme of payment.