Part 30 (2/2)

”You don't belong in Greenstream after that piece in the _Bugle_,” his hand rested on the k.n.o.b. ”Tie up anything you need, I'll hitch the buggy.”

”Don't you touch a strap,” Gordon commanded; ”because I won't put a foot in her.”

”It'll all settle down in a little; then maybe you can come back.”

”What'll settle down?”

”Why, the deal with the railroad.”

”Sim,” Gordon demanded sharply, ”you never believed that in the paper?”

”I don't know what to b'lieve,” the other replied evasively; ”a good many say those are the facts, that you have the options.”

”Get out of here!” Gordon shouted in a sudden moving rage; ”and stay out; don't come back when you find what's what.”

”I c'n do that. And I'll point out to you we just came for Lettice, we never took nothing of yours. I only stopped now to warn you away ... I'll hitch her up, Gordon; you get down the road.”

”It's mine now, whose ever it was awhile back. I've paid for it. You go.”

Simeon Caley lingered reluctantly at the door. Gordon stood rigidly; his eyes were bright points of wrath, his arm rose, with a finger indicating the world without. The former slowly opened the door, stepped out upon the porch; he stayed a moment more, then closed himself from sight.

XVIII

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 a.s.sembled 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 s.h.i.+fting 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?

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