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.