When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.
The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him. They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them––the hill people were not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which he was quick to notice.
During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.
When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full news of the last four weeks.
It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only as they contributed to the general result.
Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as impersonal and detached 270 as the details in any business transaction. Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely incidental.
Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as an instrument, was now gone––a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been Rogers’ assistant, was gone––another broken tool. The fire had been used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey Whiting had been put out of the way––definitely, the railroad had hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.
Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.
The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned instantly of Rogers’ death and had instantly set to work to use that as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with 271 what seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands which the railroad coveted.