Part 3 (2/2)
A sudden, jumbled vision of the past woven about this dwelling, his home, wheeled through Gordon's mind, scenes happy and unhappy; prevailing want and slim, momentary plenty; his father dead, in his coffin with a stony, pinched countenance, a jaw still unrelaxed above the bright flag that draped his nondescript uniform. Later events followed--his elder, vanished brother bullying him; the brief romance of his sister's courts.h.i.+p; the high, strident voice of his mother, that had always reminded him of her angry red nose--events familiar, sordid, unlovely, but now they seemed all of a piece of desirable, melancholy happiness; they endowed with a hitherto unsuspected value every board of the rough footing of the Makimmon dwelling, every rood of the poor, rocky soil, the weedy gra.s.s. He said aloud, in a subdued, jarring voice, ”By G.o.d, but Simmons won't get it!” But the dreary whippoorwills, the feverish crickets, offered him no confirmation, no a.s.surance.
IX
At noon, on the day following, he stood on the top of Cheap Mountain, gazing back into the deep, verdant cleft of Greenstream. From Cheap the reason for its name was clear--it flowed now direct, now turning, in a vivid green stream along the bases of its mountainous ranges; it flowed tranquil and dark and smooth between banks of tangled saplings, matted, multifarious underbrush, towering, venerable trees. It slipped like a river, bearing upon its balmy surface the promise of asylum, of sleep, of plenty, through the primitive, ruthless forest, which in turn pressed upon it everywhere the menace of its oblivion, its fierce, strangling life.
He saw below him stretches of the steep, rocky trail by which he had mounted with the mounting sun; both had now reached the zenith of their day's journey; from there he would sink into the shadow, the secretiveness, of night.... Greenstream village lay twenty-eight miles behind; it was seventeen more to Sprucesap: he hurried forward.
In his pocket rested not the thirty dollars, to which he had limited himself in thought, but his entire month's salary,--he might lose all by the lack of a paltry dollar or so.
He was dressed with more care than on the day previous: he wore a dark suit, the coat to which now swung on a stick over his shoulder, a rubber collar, a tie of orange brocade erected on a superstructure of cardboard; his head was covered by a hard, black felt hat, pushed back from his sweating brow, and his trousers hung from a pair of obviously home-knitted, yarn suspenders. He s.h.i.+fted the stick from right to left.
His revolver dragged chafing against a leg, and he removed it and thrust it into a pocket of the coat.
He followed by turn an old rutted postroad and faint, forest trails, and shortened distances by breaking through the trackless underbrush, watching subconsciously for rattlesnakes. The sun slowly declined, its rays fell diagonally, lengthening, through the trees; in a glade the air seemed filled with gold dust; the sky burned in a single flame of apricot. The air, rather than grow dark, appeared to thicken with raw color, with mauve and ultramarine, silver and cinnabar.
When he arrived at the little, deeply-gra.s.sed plain that held Sprucesap, it was bathed in a flaring after-glow, a magical, floating light. A double row of board structures faced each other across a street of raw clay and narrow, wood sidewalks; they were, for the most part, unpainted, hasty erections of a single story. A building labelled the Steel Spud Hotel was more pretentious. The others were eating houses, stores with small windows filled with a threatening miscellany--revolvers, leather slung shots and bra.s.s knuckles, besides lumbering boots, gaudy Mackinaw jackets, gleaming knives and ammunition. Beyond the street a single car track ran precariously over the green, and ended abruptly, without roadbed or visible terminus; at one side was a rude platform, on the other a great pile of bark, rotting from long exposure--the result of some artificial condition of the market, the spite of powerful and vindictive merchants.
A second hotel stood alone, beyond the car tracks, and there Gordon removed the marks of his journey, resettled his collar and the resplendent tie. He felt in his coat for the revolver, in order to transfer it to a more convenient pocket.... Its bulk, apparently, evaded his fingers. His search quickened--it had gone! He had lost it somewhere on his long, devious pa.s.sage of Cheap Mountain. Without it he would be in the power of any spindling gambler who faced a dishonest ace. It would be necessary to procure another weapon before proceeding with his purpose ... ten dollars, perhaps fifteen; revolvers were highly priced in the turbulent distant wild. Could he afford to lose that amount from his slender store of dollars? Intact it was absurdly inadequate. He debated the choice--on one hand the peril of gambling unarmed, on the other his desperate need for money. Once more he considered Clare: in the end his arrogance of manhood brought a decision--he would preserve the money for play. He was, he thought insolently of himself, quick as a copperhead snake, and as dangerous. After supper he sat on the porch, twisting and consuming cigarettes, waiting for the night.
X
Large kerosene lamps dilated by tin reflectors lit the front of the Steel Spud. In their radiance he saw the gaily-attired form of a woman. She wore a white hat, with a sweeping, white ostrich plume, which hid her face with the exception of a retreating chin and prominent, carmine lips; while a fat, unwieldy body was covered by a waist of Scotch plaid silk--lines and squares of black and primary colors--and a short, scant skirt of blue broadcloth that, drawn up by her knees, exposed small feet in white kid and heavy ankles.
Gordon Makimmon paused, and she leaned forward to meet his challenging gaze. ”Just in from camp?” she inquired, in a voice hoa.r.s.e, repellent, conciliatory, and with a mechanical grimace which he identified as a smile. He stopped at the invitation in her tones, and nodded. ”And looking for a good time,” he further informed her; ”perhaps a little game.”
”Stop right where you are,” she declared. ”You've found them both.” He mounted to the porch, and shook her extended hand, cus.h.i.+oned with fat, and oddly damp and lifeless. He could see her countenance now--it was plaster white with insignificant features and rose like an amorphous column from a swollen throat, a nose like a dab of putty, eyes obscured by drooping, pouchy lids, leaden-hued.
”It's a good thing you seen me,” she told him, endeavoring to establish a relations.h.i.+p of easy confidence, ”instead of them diseased Mags down the street. Shall we have a little drink upstairs?”
”It's early,” he negligently interposed; ”how about a turn of the cards first? Do you know any one who would take a hand?”
”I got my friend here, and there's a gentleman at the hotel would accommodate us. They're inside.” She rose, and moved toward the door, waving him to follow. Her slow, clumsy body and chinless, full-lidded head reminded him of a turtle; she gave a still deeper amphibious impression--there was something markedly cold-blooded, inhuman, deleted, in her incongruous, gaudy bulk--an impression of a low, primitive organism, the subtle smell of primal mud.
”Jake!” she called at the entrance to the crude hotel office; ”Jake! Mr.
Ottinger! here's a gentleman wants a little game.”
Two men hastily rose and advanced toward the door. The first, Jake, was small, with the narrow, high shoulders, the long, pale face, the long, pale hands, of a cripple. The other, a young man with a sodden countenance discolored by old purplish bruises, wore a misfitting suit that drew across heavy, bowed shoulders, thick, powerful arms. He regarded Gordon Makimmon with no light dawning upon his lowering face; no greeting disturbed the dark, hard line of his mouth. But the other, with an apparently hearty, stereotyped flow of words, applauded Gordon's design, approved his qualities of sportsmans.h.i.+p, courage.
”Give me the man from the woods for an open-handed sport,” he vociferated; ”he ain't a fool neither, he's wise to the time of night. The city crowd, the wise ones, are the real ringside marks.”
”Come up to my room,” the woman directed from the foot of a stairway; ”where no amateur John Condons will tell us how to play our cards. I got some good liquor, too.”
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