Vaguely, and then more strongly, out of a chaos of vain, sick regrets, his combativeness, his deep-lying, indomitable determination, asserted itself—he would not fall like an over ripe apple into Simmons’ complacent, waiting grasp. But to get, without resources, two hundred and fifty dollars by Saturday, was a preposterous task. Outside his, Clare’s, home, he had nothing to sell; and to sell that now, he realized with a spoken oath, would be to throw it away—the vultures, Hollidew and Co., would have heard of his necessity, and regulate their action, the local supply of available currency, accordingly.
There was no possible way of earning such a sum in four days; there was little more chance, he realized sardonically, of stealing it.... Sometimes large sums of money were won in a night’s gambling in the lumber and mining towns over the West Virginia line. But, for that, he would require capital; he would have his wages to-morrow; however, if he gambled with that and lost, Clare and himself would face immediate, irredeemable ruin. He dismissed that consideration from the range of possibilities. But it returned, hovered on the border of his thoughts—he might risk a part of his capital, say thirty dollars. If he lost that they would be little worse off than they were at present; while if he won ... he might easily win.
He mentally arranged the details, assuring himself, the while, that he was only toying with the idea.—He would pay the customary substitute to drive the stage to Stenton, and cross Cheap Mountain on foot; by dark he would be in Sprucesap, play that night, and return the following day, Friday.
With an effort he still put the scheme from his thoughts; but, while he kept it in abeyance, nothing further occurred to him. That gave him a possible reprieve; all else offered sure disaster. He rose, and walked slowly toward his home, revolving, testing, the various aspects of the trip to Sprucesap; at once deciding upon that venture, and repeating to himself the incontestable fact of its utter folly.
The dark was intense, blue-black, about his dwelling. He struck a match at the edge of the porch, a pointed, orange exclamation on the impenetrable gloom. Clare, weary of waiting, had gone to bed; her door was shut, her window tightly closed. The invisible stream gurgled sadly past its banks, the whippoorwills throbbed with ceaseless, insistent passion.
A sudden, jumbled vision of the past woven about this dwelling, his home, wheeled through Gordon’s mind, scenes happy and unhappy; prevailing want and slim, momentary plenty; his father dead, in his coffin with a stony, pinched countenance, a jaw still unrelaxed above the bright flag that draped his nondescript uniform. Later events followed—his elder, vanished brother bullying him; the brief romance of his sister’s courtship; the high, strident voice of his mother, that had always reminded him of her angry red nose—events familiar, sordid, unlovely, but now they seemed all of a piece of desirable, melancholy happiness; they endowed with a hitherto unsuspected value every board of the rough footing of the Makimmon dwelling, every rood of the poor, rocky soil, the weedy grass. He said aloud, in a subdued, jarring voice, “By God, but Simmons won’t get it!” But the dreary whippoorwills, the feverish crickets, offered him no confirmation, no assurance.
IX
At noon, on the day following, he stood on the top of Cheap Mountain, gazing back into the deep, verdant cleft of Greenstream. From Cheap the reason for its name was clear—it flowed now direct, now turning, in a vivid green stream along the bases of its mountainous ranges; it flowed tranquil and dark and smooth between banks of tangled saplings, matted, multifarious underbrush, towering, venerable trees. It slipped like a river, bearing upon its balmy surface the promise of asylum, of sleep, of plenty, through the primitive, ruthless forest, which in turn pressed upon it everywhere the menace of its oblivion, its fierce, strangling life.