The stir and heat of Sim's presence died quickly away; the house was
without a sound; General Jackson lay like an effigy in ravelled black and
buff wool. Gordon assembled the scattered papers on the table into an
orderly pile. He moved into the kitchen, abstractedly surveyed the
familiar walls; he walked through the house to the sitting room, where he
stood lost in thought:
The County was "mad clear through"; Sim, supposing him guilty, had warned
him to escape, advised him to run away.... That had never been a habit of
the Makimmons, he would not form it now, at the end. He was not
considering the mere probability of being shot, but of the greater
disaster that had already smashed the spring of his living. His
sensibilities were deadened to any catastrophe of the flesh.
At the same time he was conscious of a mounting rage at being so
gigantically misunderstood, and his anger mingled with a bitter contempt
for Simeon Caley, for a people so blind, so credulous, so helpless in the
grasp of a single, shrewd individual.
He heard subdued voices without, and, through a window, saw that the
sweep by the stream was filling with a sullen concourse of men; he saw
their faces, grim and resentful, turned toward the house; the sun struck
upon the dusty, black expanse of their hats.
He walked deliberately through the bedroom and out upon the porch. A
sudden, profound silence met his appearance, a shifting of feet, a
concerted, bald, inimical stare.
"Well?" Gordon Makimmon demanded; "you've read the _Bugle_, well?"
He heard a murmur from the back of the throng,
"Give it to him, we didn't come here to talk."
"'Give it to him,'" Gordon repeated thinly. "I see Ben Nickles there,
behind that hulk from the South Fork; Nickles'll do it and glad. It will
wipe off the two hundred dollars he had out of me for a new roof. Or
there's Entriken if Nickles is afraid, his note falls due again soon."
"What about the railroad?"
"What about it? Greenstream's been settled for eighty years, why haven't
you moved around and got one? Do you expect the President of the Tennessee
and Northern to come up and beg you to let them lay tracks to your doors?
If you'd been men you'd had one long ago, but you're just--just stock. I'd
rather be an outlaw on the mountain than any of you; I'd ruther be what
you think I am; by God!" he cried out of his bitterness of spirit, "but
I'd ruther be Valentine Simmons!"
"Have you got the options?" Entriken demanded--"all them that Pompey had
and you bought?"
Gordon vanished into the house, and reappeared with the original contracts
in his grasp.
"Here they are," he exclaimed; "I paid eighty-nine thousand dollars to get
them, and they're worth--that," he flung them with a quick gesture into
the air, and the rising wind scattered them fluttering over the sere
grass. "Scrabble for them in the dirt."
"You c'n throw them away now the railroad's left you."
"And before," Gordon Makimmon demanded, "do you think I couldn't have
gutted you if I'd had a mind to? do you think anybody couldn't gut you?
Why, you've been the mutton of every little storekeeper that let you off
with a pound of coffee, of any note shaver that could write. The _Bugle_
says I let out money to cover up the railway deal, but that'd be no better
than giving it to stop the sight of the blind. God A'mighty! this
transportation business you're only whining about now was laid out five
years ago, the company's agents have driven in and out twenty times...."
"Let him have it!"
"Spite yourselves!" Gordon Makimmon cried; "it's all that's left for you."
General Jackson moved forward over the porch. He growled in response to
the menace of the throng on the sod, and jumped down to their level. A
sudden, dangerous murmur rose:
"The two hundred dollar dog! The joke on Greenstream!"
He walked alertly forward, his ears pricked up on his long skull.
"C'm here, General," Gordon called, suddenly urgent; "c'm back here."
The dog hesitated, turned toward his master, when a heavy stick, whirling
out of the press of men, struck the animal across the upper forelegs. He
fell forward, with a sharp whine, and attempted vainly to rise. Both legs
were broken. He looked back again at Gordon, and then, growling, strove to
reach their assailants.
Gordon Makimmon started forward with a rasping oath, but, before he could
reach the ground, General Jackson had propelled himself to the fringe of
humanity. He made a last, convulsive effort to rise, his jaws snapped....
A short, iron bar descended upon his head.
Gordon's face became instantly, irrevocably, the shrunken face of an old
man.
The clustered men with the dead, mangled body of the dog before them; the
serene, sliding stream beyond; the towering east range bathed in keen
sunlight, blurred, mingled, in his vision. He put out a hand against one
of the porch supports--a faded shape of final and irremediable sorrow.
He exhibited neither the courage of resistance nor the superiority of
contempt; he offered, apparently, nothing material whatsoever to satisfy
the vengeance of a populace cunningly defrauded of their just
opportunities and profits; he seemed to be no more colored with life, no
more instinct with sap, than the crackling leaves blown by the increasing
wind about the uneasy feet on the grass.
He lipped a short, unintelligible period, gazing intent and troubled at
the throng. He shivered perceptibly: under the hard blue sky the wind
swept with the sting of an icy knout. Then, turning his obscure,
infinitely dejected back upon the silent menace of the bitter, sallow
countenances, the harsh angular forms, of Greenstream, he walked slowly to
the door. He paused, his hand upon the knob, as if arrested by a memory, a
realization. The door opened; the house absorbed him, presented unbroken
its weather-worn face.
A deep, concerted sigh escaped from the men without, as though, with the
vanishing of that bowed and shabby frame, they had seen vanish their last
chance for reprisal, for hope.