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Updated: May 21, 2025
The only sales he made were of small articles his competitors had forgotten or neglected to stock. He had not taken in enough money for a month to pay for the wear and tear on his fixtures. Coldriver was coming to set him down as a failure and a black disappointment; but it marveled that he took no action whatever and showed no signs of worry.
Immediately Locker and Kettleman and Lumley and the rest made it known to Coldriver and environs that they were dealing in hardware and not for profit, but merely as a convenience to their patrons. They emphasized the fact that they would sell hardware at cost, and exhibited prices which Scattergood studied and saw that he could not meet.
Preparations had been in the making for months, and the village was resolved that its collateral relatives to the remotest generation should be made aware that Coldriver was not deficient in the necessary "git up and git" to wear down its visitors to the last point of exhaustion.
"If I was to build in spite of you I calc'late you'd fix things so's runnin' it wouldn't do much good to me, eh? Stop no trains for me, and sich like?" "Exactly." "Um!... Mornin', Mr. President. If you ever git up to Coldriver don't go to the hotel. Come right to my house. Mandy'll be glad to see you. Mornin'."
He did not know where he was going, but expected to pick up information on that question en route. His method of reaching for it was to take a seat on a trunk in the baggage car. The railroad, Scattergood's individual property and his greatest step forward in his dream for the development of the Coldriver Valley, was but a year old now.
More than one tributary valley was in their hands, and, when the day ripened, small land purchases would connect their holdings, bring them to water, and place them in such a commanding position that the valley would be as surely theirs as if they owned every foot of it. Inasmuch as Scattergood planned, himself, to control Coldriver Valley, the prospect was not pleasing to him.
The deacon considered, puckering his thin lips and cocking a hard old eye. "'Tain't fer us to meddle," he said, righteously. "They's a divine plan in ever'thing, and we hain't able to see what's behind all this here. We'll jest set and wait the outcome." That is what all Coldriver did: it sat and awaited the outcome with ill-restrained enthusiasm, and while it waited it talked.
He made a mental memorandum of the fact that Bob Allen was seldom to be seen among the post-office loafers; that Bob preferred his office to any other spot; that Bob had ordered a new suit from a city tailor; that Bob wore a constant air of anxiety and excitement, and most expressive symptom of all for a Coldriver young man he became interested in residence property, in lots, and in the cost of erecting dwellings.... Scattergood looked in vain for reciprocal symptoms to be shown by Sarah.
Linderman looked up and frowned, then his eyes twinkled. "Who are you? What have you there?" "Young feller I found outside. 'Fraid of steppin' on him, so I picked him up to save him. You can run along now, sonny," he said to the clerk. "He let on I couldn't see you," Scattergood explained. "What's your name?" "Scattergood Baines." "Of Coldriver?" Scattergood was surprised, but did not show it.
He had not demanded the benefit of legal guidance; he had neither affirmed nor denied his guilt; indeed, he had uttered no word since the door of the jail had closed behind him. Mary Ware spoke to the young man through the window of the jail in full view of all Coldriver. "You didn't do it, Abner.
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