Part 3 (1/2)

”It can't be done.” The last vestiges of Gordon's control were fast melting in the heat of his pa.s.sion. Simmons turned to the narrow ledger, picking up a pen. ”When you bought,” he remarked precisely, over his shoulders, ”the white shoes and ammunition and silk fis.h.i.+ng lines--didn't you intend to pay for them?”

”Yes, I did, and will. And when you said, 'Gordon, help yourself, load up, try those flies'; and 'Never mind the bill now, some other time, old friends pay when they please,' didn't you know I was getting in over my head? didn't you encourage it ... so you could get judgment on me? sell me out? Though what you settled on me for, what you see in my ramshackle house and used up ground, is over me.”

Simmons flashed a momentary, crafty glance at the other. ”Never overlook a location on good water,” he advised.

Gordon Makimmon stood speechless, trembling with rage. For a moment Simmons' pen, scratching over the page, made the only sound in the small enclosure, then, ”The provident man,” he continued, ”is always made a target for the abuse of the--the thoughtless. But he usually comes to the a.s.sistance of his unfortunate brother. You might arrange a loan.”

”Why, so I might,” Gordon a.s.sented in a thick voice; ”I could get it from your provident friend, Hollidew--three hundred dollars, say, at h.e.l.l's per cent; a little lien on my property. 'Never overlook a situation on good water.'

”By G.o.d!” he exclaimed, suddenly prescient, ”but I've done for myself.”

And he thought of Clare, of Clare fighting eternally that sharp pain in her side, her face now drawn and glistening with the sweat of suffering, now girlishly gay. He thought of her fragile hands so impotent to cope with the bitter poverty of the mountains. What, with their home, her place of retreat and security, gone, and--it now appeared more than probable--his occupation vanished, would she do?

”I've done for myself, for her,” he repeated, subconsciously aloud, in a harsh whisper. He stood rigid, unseeing; a pulse beat visibly in the brown throat by the collarless and faded s.h.i.+rt. Simmons regarded him with a covert gaze, then, catching the attention of the clerk in the store outside, beckoned slightly with his head. The clerk approached, vigorously brus.h.i.+ng the counters with a turkey wing.

Gordon Makimmon's gaze concentrated on the storekeeper. ”You're almost an old man,” he said, in a slow, unnatural voice; ”you have been robbing men and women of their homes for a great many years, and you are still alive.

It's surprising that some one has not killed you.”

”I have been shot at,” Valentine Simmons replied; ”behind my back. The men who fail are like that as a rule.”

”I'm not like that,” Gordon informed him; ”it's pretty well known that I stand square in front of the man I'm after. Don't you think, this time, you have made a little mistake? Hadn't I better give you that fifty, and something more later?”

Valentine Simmons rose from his chair and turned, facing Gordon. His muslin bow had slipped awry on the polished, immaculate bosom of his s.h.i.+rt, and it gave him a slightly ridiculous, birdlike expression. He gazed coldly, with his thin lips firm and hands still, into the other's threatening, virulent countenance. ”Two hundred and fifty dollars,” he insisted.

The thought of Clare, betrayed, persisted in Gordon's mind, battling with his surging temper, his unreasoning resentment. Valentine Simmons stood upright, still, against the lamplight. It was plain that he was not to be intimidated. An overwhelming wave of misery, a dim realization of the disastrous possibilities of his folly, inundated Gordon, drowning all other considerations. He turned, and walked abruptly from the office into the store. There the clerk placed on the counter the bottle, filled and wrapped. In a petty gust of rage, like a jet of steam escaping from a defective boiler, he swept the bottle to the floor, where he ground the splintering fragments of gla.s.s, the torn and stained paper, into an untidy blot.

VIII

Outside, the village, the Greenstream Valley, was folded in still, velvety dark. He crossed the street, and sat on one of the iron benches placed under the trees on the Courthouse lawn. He could see a dull, reddish light s.h.i.+ning through the dusty window of the _Bugle_ office. s.h.i.+ning like that, through his egotistical pride, the facts of his failure and impotence tormented him. It hurt him the more that he had been, simply, diddled, no better than a child in Simmons' astute, practised hands. The latter's rascality was patent, but Simmons could not have been successful unabetted by his own blind negligence. The catastrophe that had overtaken him rankled in his most vulnerable spot--his self-esteem.

He suffered inarticulately, an indistinguishable shape in the soft, summer gloom; about his feet, in the lush gra.s.s, the greenish-gold sparks of the fireflies quivered; above the deep rift of the valley the stars were like polished silver coins.

Vaguely, and then more strongly, out of a chaos of vain, sick regrets, his combativeness, his deep-lying, indomitable determination, a.s.serted itself--he would not fall like an over ripe apple into Simmons'

complacent, waiting grasp. But to get, without resources, two hundred and fifty dollars by Sat.u.r.day, was a preposterous task. Outside his, Clare's, home, he had nothing to sell; and to sell that now, he realized with a spoken oath, would be to throw it away--the vultures, Hollidew and Co., would have heard of his necessity, and regulate their action, the local supply of available currency, accordingly.

There was no possible way of earning such a sum in four days; there was little more chance, he realized sardonically, of stealing it.... Sometimes large sums of money were won in a night's gambling in the lumber and mining towns over the West Virginia line. But, for that, he would require capital; he would have his wages to-morrow; however, if he gambled with that and lost, Clare and himself would face immediate, irredeemable ruin.

He dismissed that consideration from the range of possibilities. But it returned, hovered on the border of his thoughts--he might risk a part of his capital, say thirty dollars. If he lost that they would be little worse off than they were at present; while if he won ... he might easily win.

He mentally arranged the details, a.s.suring himself, the while, that he was only toying with the idea.--He would pay the customary subst.i.tute to drive the stage to Stenton, and cross Cheap Mountain on foot; by dark he would be in Sprucesap, play that night, and return the following day, Friday.

With an effort he still put the scheme from his thoughts; but, while he kept it in abeyance, nothing further occurred to him. That gave him a possible reprieve; all else offered sure disaster. He rose, and walked slowly toward his home, revolving, testing, the various aspects of the trip to Sprucesap; at once deciding upon that venture, and repeating to himself the incontestable fact of its utter folly.

The dark was intense, blue-black, about his dwelling. He struck a match at the edge of the porch, a pointed, orange exclamation on the impenetrable gloom. Clare, weary of waiting, had gone to bed; her door was shut, her window tightly closed. The invisible stream gurgled sadly past its banks, the whippoorwills throbbed with ceaseless, insistent pa.s.sion.