ingle, 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 shifting 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?
If you'd been men you'd had one long ago, but you're just--just stock. I'd
rather be an outlaw on the mountain than any of you; I'd ruther be what
you think I am; by God!" he cried out of his bitterness of spirit, "but
I'd ruther be Valentine Simmons!"

"Have you got the options?" Entriken demanded--"all them that Pompey had
and you bought?"

Gordon vanished into the house, and reappeared with the original contracts
in his grasp.

"Here they are," he exclaimed; "I paid eighty-nine thousand dollars to get
them, and they're worth--that," he flung them with a quick gesture into
the air, and the rising wind scattered them fluttering over the sere
grass. "Scrabble for them in the dirt."

"You c'n throw them away now the railroad's left you."

"And before," Gordon Makimmon demanded, "do you think I couldn't have
gutted you if I'd had a mind to? do you think anybody couldn't gut you?
Why, you've been the mutton of every little storekeeper that let you off
with a pound of coffee, of any note shaver that could write. The _Bugle_
says I let out money to cover up the railway deal, but that'd be no better
than giving it to stop the sight of the blind. God A'mighty! this
transportation business you're only whining about now was laid out five
years ago, the company's agents have driven i