Part 40

"You must think I'm free--with four thousand dollars."

"Apples," the other continued resolutely. "I've got the ground, acres of prime sunny slope. I've read about apple growing and talked to men who know. I've been to Albermarle County. I can do the same thing in the Bottom. Ask anybody who knows me if I'll work. I can pay the money back all right. But, if I know you from what you did, that's not the thing to talk about now.

"I want a chance," he drove a knotted fist into a hardened palm; "I want a chance to bring out what's in me and in my land. I want my own! The place came to me clear, with a little money; but I wasn't content with a crop of fodder. I improved and experimented with the soil till I found out what was in her. Now I know; but I can't plant a sapling, I can't raise an apple, without binding myself to the Cannons and Hollidews of the County for life.

"I'd be their man, growing their fruit, paying them their profits. They would stop at the fence, behind their span of pacers, and watch me--their slave--sweating in the field or orchard."

"You seem to think," Gordon observed, "that you ought to have some special favor, that what grinds other men ought to miss you. Old Pompey sold out many a better man, and grabbed richer farms. And anyhow, if I was to money all that Cannon and Valentine Simmons got hold of where would I be?--Here's two of you in one family, in no time at all.... If that got about I'd have five hundred breaking the door in."

The animation died from Edgar Crandall's face; he pulled his hat over the flaming helmet of hair. "I might have known such things ain't true," he said; "it was just a freak that saved Alec. There's no chance for a man, for a living, in these dam' mountains. They look big and open and free, but Greenstream's the littlest, meanest place on the earth. The paper-shavers own the sky and air. Well, I'll let the ground rot, I won't work my guts out for any one else."

He turned sharply and disappeared about the corner of the dwelling. Gordon moved to watch him stride up the slope to where a horse was tied by the public road. Crandall swung himself into the saddle, brought his heels savagely into the horse's sides, and clattered over the road.

Gordon Makimmon's annoyance quickly evaporated; he thought with a measure of amusement of the impetuous young man who was not content to grow a crop of fodder. If the men of Greenstream all resembled Edgar Crandall, he realized, the Cannons would have an uneasy time. He thought of the brother, Alexander, of Alexander's wife, who resembled Lettice, and determined to drive soon to the Bottom and see them and the farm. He would have to make a practicable arrangement with regard to the latter, secure his intention, avoid question, by a nominal scheme of payment.

VII

He knew, generally, where Alexander Crandall's farm lay; and, shortly after, drove through the village and mounted the road over which plied the Stenton stage. In the Bottom, beyond the east range, he went to the right and passed over an ill-defined way with numerous and deep fords. It was afternoon; an even, sullen expanse of cloud hid the deeps of sky through which the sun moved like a newly-minted silver dollar. A sharp wind drew through the opening; the fallen leaves rose from the road in sudden, agitated whirling; the gaunt branches, printed sharply on the curtain of cloud, revealed the deserted nests of past springs.

He drove by solitary farms, their acres lying open and dead among the brush; and stopped, undecided, before a fenced clearing that swept back to the abrupt wall of the range, against which a low house was scarcely distinguishable from the sere, rocky ascent. Finally he drove in, over a faintly marked track, past a corner of the fence railed about a trough for sheep shearing, to the house. A pine tree stood at either side of the large, uncut stone at the threshold; except for a massive exterior chimney the somberly painted frame structure was without noticeable feature.

He discovered immediately from the youthful feminine figure awaiting him at the door that he was not at fault. Mrs. Crandall's face radiated her pleasure.

"Mr. Makimmon!" she cried; "there's just no one we'd rather see than you. Step right out, and Alexander'll take your horse. He's only at the back of the house.... Alec!" she called; "Alec, what do you suppose?--here's Mr. Makimmon."

Alexander Crandall quickly appeared, in a hide apron covered with curlings of wood. A slight concern was visible upon his countenance, as though he expected at any moment to see revealed the "string" of which his brother had spoken.

Gordon adequately met his salutation, and turned to the woman. He saw now that she was more mature than Lettice: the mouth before him, although young and red, was bitten in at the corners; already the eyes gazed through a shadow of care; the capable hands were rough and discolored from toil and astringent soaps.

"Come in, come in," Crandall urged, striving to banish the sudden anxiety from his voice.

"And you go right around, Alec," his wife added, "and twist the head off that dominicker chicken. Pick some flat beans too, there's a mess still hanging on the poles. Go in, Mr. Makimmon."

He was ushered into the ceremonious, barely-furnished, best room. There was a small rag carpet at the door, with an archaic, woven animal, and at its feet an unsteady legend, "Mary's Little Lamb"; but the floor was uncovered, and the walls, sealed in resinous pine, the pine ceiling, gave the effect, singular and depressing, of standing inside a huge box.

"It's mortal cold here," Mrs. Crandall truthfully observed; "the grate's broken. If you wouldn't mind going out into the kitchen--"

In the kitchen, from a comfortable place by the fire, Gordon watched her deft preparations for an early supper. Crandall appeared with the picked dominicker, and sat rigidly before his guest.

"I don't quite make out," he at last essayed, "how you expect your money, what you want out of it."

"I don't want anything out of it," Gordon replied with an almost bitter vigor; "leastways not any premium. I said you could pay me when you liked. I'll deed you the farm, and we'll draw up a paper to suit--to suit crops."

The apprehension in Alexander Crandall's face turned to perplexed relief. "I don't understand," he admitted; "but I haven't got to. It's enough to know that you pulled us out of ruination. Things will come right along now; we can see light; I'm extending the sheep-cots twice."

Supper at an end he too launched upon the lack of opportunity in Greenstream. "Some day," he asserted, "and not so far off either, we'll shake off the grip of these blood-money men; we'll have a state lawed bank; a rate of interest a man can carry without breaking his back. There's no better land than the Bottom, or the higher clearings for grazing ... it's the men, some of 'em...."

VIII

It was dark when Gordon closed the stable door and turned to his dwelling. A light streamed from a chink in the closed kitchen shutter like a gold arrow shot into the night. From within came the long-drawn quaver of William Vibard's performance of the Arkansas Traveller. He was sitting bowed over the accordion, his jaw dropped, his eyes glazed with the intoxication of his obsession. Rose was rigidly upright in a straight chair, her hands crossed at the wrists in her meager lap.

The fluctuating, lamentable sounds of the instrument, Rose's expression of conscious virtue, were suddenly petty, exasperating; and Gordon, after a short acknowledgment of their greeting, proceeded through the house to the sitting room beyond.

No fire had been laid in the small, air-tight stove; the room had a closed, musty smell, and was more chill than the night without; his breath hung before him in a white vapor. Soon he had wood burning explosively, the stove grew rapidly red hot and the chill vanished. He saw beyond the lamp with its shade of minute, variously-colored silks the effigy of Mrs. Hollidew dead. Undisturbed in the film of dust that overlaid the table stood a pink celluloid thimble ... Lettice had placed it there....