Part 5

Gordon was unable to credit his senses, the fact that this was the sum of his indebtedness; it was an absurd mistake, and he said so.

"Everything listed against its date," the other returned imperturbably, "down to a pair of white buck shoes for a lady to-day--a generous present for some enslaver."

"My sister," Gordon muttered ineptly. Five hundred and thirty dollars, he repeated incredulously to himself. Five hundred.... "How long has it been standing?" he asked.

The other consulted the book. "Two years, a month and four days," he returned exactly.

"But no notice was served on me; nothing was said about my bill."

"Ah, we don't like to annoy old friends; just a little word at necessary intervals."

Old rumors, stories, came to Gordon's memory in regard to the long credit extended by Simmons to "old friends," the absence of any rendered accounts; and, in that connection, the thought of the number of homesteads throughout the county that had come, through forced sales, into the storekeeper's hands. The circumstantial details of these events had been bitten by impassioned oaths into his mind, together with the memory of the dreary ruin that had settled upon the evicted.

"I can give you something day after to-morrow, when I am paid."

"Entirely satisfactory; three hundred--no, for you two hundred and fifty dollars will be sufficient; the rest another time ... whenever you are able."

"I get two dollars and fifty cents a day," Gordon reminded him, with a dry and bitter humor, "and I have a month's pay coming."

Valentine Simmons had not, apparently, heard him. "Two hundred and fifty only," he repeated; "we always like to accommodate old friends, especially Presbyterian friends."

"I can give you fifty dollars," Gordon told him, at once loud and conciliatory; wondering, at the same time, how, if he did, Clare and himself would manage. He had to pay for his board in Stenton; the doctor for Clare had to be met--fifty cents in hand a visit, or the visits ceased.

"Have your little joke, then get out that hidden stocking, pry up that particular fire brick ... only two hundred and fifty now ... but--now."

A hopeless feeling of impotence enveloped Gordon: the small, dry man before him with the pink, bald head shining in the lamplight, the set grin, was as remote from any appeal as an insensate figure cast in metal, a painted iron man in neat, grey alpaca, a stiff, white shirt with a small blue button and an exact, prim muslin bow.

Still, "I'll give you fifty, and thirty the next month. Why, damn it, I'll pay you off in the year. I'm not going to run away. I have steady work; you know what I am getting; you're safe."

"But," Valentine Simmons lifted a hand in a round, glistening cuff, "is anything certain in this human vale? Is anything secure that might hang on the swing of a ... whip?"

With an unaccustomed, violent effort of will Gordon Makimmon suppressed his angry concern at the other's covert allusion: outside his occupation as stage driver he was totally without resources, without the ability to pay for a bag of Green Goose tobacco. The Makimmons had never been thrifty ... in the beginning they had let their wide share of valley holding grow deep in thicket, where they might hunt the deer, their streams course through a woven wild where pheasant might feed and fall to their accurate guns.

"Two hundred and fifty dollars," Valentine Simmons repeated pleasantly.

"I haven't got it, and can't get it, all at once," Gordon reiterated in a conciliatory manner. Then his straining, chafing pride, his assaulted self-esteem, overflowed a little his caution. "And you know it," he declared in a loud, ugly voice; "you know the size of every pocketbook in Greenstream; I'll bet, by God, you and old man Hollidew know personal every copper Indian on the pennies of the County."

Valentine Simmons smiled at this conception. Gordon regarded him with hopeless, growing anger: Why, the old screw took that for a compliment!

"This is Wednesday," the storekeeper pronounced; "say, by Saturday ... the sum I mentioned."

"It can't be done." The last vestiges of Gordon's control were fast melting in the heat of his passion. 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 fishing 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 assistance of his unfortunate brother. You might arrange a loan."

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

"By God!" 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?