As customary on Saturday noon Gordon found his copy of the weekly _Bugle_
projecting from his numbered compartment at the post-office. There were no
letters. He thrust the paper into his pocket, and returned to the village
street. The day was warm, but the mists that had enveloped the peaks were
dissolving, the sky was sparkling, clear. By evening, Gordon decided, it
would be cold again, and then the long, rigorous winter would close upon
the valley and mountains.
He looked forward to it with relief, as a period of somnolence and
prolonged rest--the mental stress and labor of the past days had wearied
him of the active contact with men and events. He was glad that they were,
practically, solved, at an end--the towering columns of figures, the
perplexing problems of equity, the far-reaching decisions.
In rehearsing his course it seemed impossible to have hit upon a better, a
more comprehensive, plan. There was hardly a family he knew of in the
valley of which some member might not now have his chance. That, an
opportunity for all, was what Gordon was providing.
A number of horses were already hitched along the rail outside Valentine
Simmons' store; soon the rail would hardly afford room for another animal.
He passed the Presbyterian Church, Dr. Pelliter's drugstore and dwelling,
and approached his home. Seen from the road the long roof was variously
colored from various additions; there were regions of rusty tar-paper, of
tin with blistered remnants of dull red paint, of dark, irregular
shingling.
It was a dwelling weather-beaten and worn, the latest addition already
discolored by the elements, blended with the nondescript whole. It was
like himself, Gordon Makimmon recognized; in him, as in the house below,
things tedious or terrible had happened, the echoes of which lingered
within the old walls, within his brain.... Now it was good that winter was
coming, when they would lie through the long nights folded in snow, in
beneficent quietude.
There were some final details to complete in his papers. He took off his
overcoat, laid it upon the safe, and flung the _Bugle_ on the table, where
it fell half open and neglected. The names traced by his scratching pen
brought clearly before him the individuals designated: Elias Wellbogast
had a long, tangled grey beard and a gaze that peered anxiously through a
settling blindness. Thirty acres--eight dollars an acre. P. Ville was a
swarthy foreigner, called, in Greenstream, the Portugee; every crop he
planted grew as if by magic. Old Matthew Zane would endeavor to borrow
from Gordon the money with which to repurchase the option he had granted.
He worked steadily, while the rectangles of sunlight cast through the
windows on the floor shortened and shifted their place. He worked until
the figures swam before his eyes, when he laid aside the pen, and picked
up the _Bugle_, glancing carelessly over the first page.
His attention immediately concentrated on the headlines of the left-hand
column, his gaze had caught the words, "Tennessee and Northern."
"Goddy!" he exclaimed aloud; "they've got it in the _Bugle_, the railroad
coming and all."
He was glad that the information had been printed, it would materially
assist in the announcement and carrying out of his plan. He folded the
paper more compactly, leaned back in his chair to read ... Why!... Why,
damn it! they had it all wrong; they were entirely mistaken; they had
printed a deliberate--a deliberate--
He stopped reading to marshal his surprised and scattered faculties. Then,
with a rigid countenance, he pursued the article to the end. When he had
finished his gaze remained subconsciously fastened upon the paper, upon
the advertisement of a man who paid for and removed the bodies of dead
animals.
Gordon Makimmon's lips formed, barely audibly, a name; he whispered,
"Valentine Simmons."
At last the storekeeper had utterly ruined him. He raised the paper from
where it had fallen and read the article once more. It was a floridly and
violently written account of how a projected branch of the Tennessee and
Northern System through Greenstream valley, long striven for by solid and
public-spirited citizens of the County, had been prevented by the hidden
avarice of a well-known local figure, an ex-stage driver.
The latter, the account proceeded, with a foreknowledge of the projected
transportation, had secured for little or nothing an option on practically
all the desirable timber of the valley, and had held it at such a high
figure that the railroad had been forced to abandon the scheme.
"What Greenstream thus loses through blind gluttony cannot be enumerated
by a justly incensed pen. The loss to us, to our sons and daughters....
This secret and sinister schemer hid his purpose, it now appears, in a
cloak of seeming benevolence. We recall a feeling of doubt, which we
generously and wrongfully suppressed at the time, concerning the motives
of such ill-considered ..."
"Valentine Simmons," he repeated harshly. He controlled the _Bugle_ in
addition to countless other industries and interests of Greenstream. This
article could not have been printed without Simmons' cognizance, his
co-operation. It was the crown of his long and victorious struggle with
Gordon Makimmon. The storekeeper had sold him the options knowing that the
railroad was not coming to the valley--some inhibition had arisen in the
negotiations--he had destroyed him with Gordon's own blindness, credulity.
And he had walked like a rat into the trap.
The bitter irony of it rose in a wave of black mirth to his twisted lips;
he, Gordon Makimmon, was exposed as an avaricious schemer with the
prospects of Greenstream, with men's hopes, with their chances. While
Simmons, it was plainly intimated, had labored faithfully and in vain for
the people.
He rose and shook his clenched hands above his head. "If I had only shot
him!" he cried. "If I had only shot him at first!"
It was too late now: nothing could be gained by crushing the flickering
vitality from that aged, pinkish husk. It was, Gordon dimly realized, a
greater power than that contained by a single individual, by Valentine
Simmons, that had beaten him. It was a stupendous and materialistic force
against the metallic sweep of which he had cast himself in vain--it was
the power, the unconquerable godhead, of gold.
The thought of the storekeeper was lost in the realization of the collapse
of all that he had laboriously planned. The destruction was absolute; not
an inner desire nor need escaped; not a projection remained. The papers
before him, so painfully comprehended, with such a determination of
justice, were but the visible marks of the futility, the waste, of his
dreaming.
He sank heavily into the chair before his table. He recalled the younger
Entriken's smooth lies, the debauchery of his money by the Nickles;
William Vibard's accordions mocked him again ... all, all, had been in
vain, worthless. General Jackson rose, and laid his long, shaggy, heavy
head upon Gordon's knee.
"We're done for," he told the dog; "we're finished this time. Everything
has gone to hell."