"He didn't say. I don't see how he can be. After all, the stuff was bound to come out, sooner or later. He's got something up his sleeve. This experience's done one thing. It's brought all the different factions together. Disgrace loves company as well as misery."
"I'm so worried about it all!" sighed Lydia.
"Kind of late in the day for you to worry," sniffed Amos. "I suppose Billy's worrying too! But there, I guess you two have put some saving grace into Lake City, in the commission's eyes. Of course, I'm going to give up any claim on those lands."
Amos pulled at his pipe thoughtfully and looked at Lydia's tired, wistful face complacently. He did not tell her that the three commissioners had individually and collectively congratulated him on Lydia and their praise had been such that he felt that any disgrace he had suffered in connection with the Indian lands had been more than counteracted by Lydia's performance.
To Lydia's pain and disappointment, Levine did not come to the cottage before he returned to Washington, which he did the week following the hearing. And then, all thought of her status with him was swallowed up in astonishment over the revelations that came out early in September when Dave Marshall and the Indian Agent were called before the commission.
Dave Marshall was the owner of the Last Chance! The Last Chance where "hussies" lay in wait like vultures for the Indian youths, took their government allowances, took their ancient Indian decency, and cast them forth to pollute their tribe with drink and disease. The Last Chance! The headquarters for the illegal selling of whisky to Indians. Where Indians were taught to evade the law, to carry whisky into the reservation and where in turn the bounty for their arrest was pledged to Marshall. The Last Chance, the main source of Dave Marshall's wealth!
Even Lake City was horrified by these revelations. People began to remove their money from his bank and for a time a run was threatened, then Dave resigned as president and the run was stayed. The drugstore owned by Dave was boycotted. The women of the town began to cut Margery and Elviry. The minister of the Methodist Church asked Dave for his resignation as Trustee.
To say that old Lizzie was pleased by the revelations would be perhaps to do the old lady an injustice. Yet the fact remains that she did go about with a knowing, "I told you so" air, that smacked of complacency.
"He always was just skulch," she insisted to Lydia. "When he was a child, he was the kind of a brat mothers didn't want their children to play with. I always prayed he'd get his come-uppers, and Elviry too. But I am sorry for Margery. Poor young one! Her future's ruined."
Lydia, sitting on the front steps in the lovely September afternoons, rubbed Adam's ears, watched the pine and the Norton herds and thought some long, long thoughts. Finally, one hazy Saturday afternoon, she gathered a great bunch of many colored asters and started off, without telling Lizzie of her destination.