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General Jackson moved forward over the porch. He growled in response to the menace of the throng on the sod, and jumped down to their level. A sudden, dangerous murmur rose: "The two hundred dollar dog! The joke on Greenstream!" He walked alertly forward, his ears pricked up on his long skull. "C'm here, General," Gordon called, suddenly urgent; "c'm back here."
The instinct of the highlander had led him deep into the rugged ranges, where he had lived to see the town and county of Greenstream crystallize about his log walls and stony patch. There, finally breaking down the resistance of a heroic constitution, he had succeeded in drinking himself to death.
"I'm used to it," he returned; "it doesn't bother me like it does you. Some people even like it. A man who came here from the city to die of lung trouble sat for weeks looking up Greenstream valley; he couldn't get enough morning or evening." "But I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm going to live, too; I've decided " "What?" "To stop teaching.
The woman appeared in the doorway from the kitchen. "Mrs. Caley," he repeated, "Lettice is dead." She started forward with a convulsive gasp, and he turned aside and walked heavily out onto the porch. He stood for a moment gazing absently into the darkened valley, at the few lights of Greenstream village, the stars like clusters of silver grapes on high, ultra-blue arbors.
"And you know it," he declared in a loud, ugly voice; "you know the size of every pocketbook in Greenstream; I'll bet, by God, you and old man Hollidew know personal every copper Indian on the pennies of the County." Valentine Simmons smiled at this conception. Gordon regarded him with hopeless, growing anger: Why, the old screw took that for a compliment!
Pompey Hollidew, the richest man in Greenstream, wore as was customary with him a crumpled yellow shirt, open at his stringy throat, and innocent of tie; his trousers, one time lavender, had faded to a repulsive, colorless hue, and hung frayed about cheap, heavy shoes fastened by copper rivets.
"What do you figure to get out of yours?" "That doesn't concern us now. I've had to put this through a tremendous thing for Greenstream, a lasting benefit entirely by myself. I will have to guarantee a wicked profit outside; I stand alone to lose a big sum. I'll give you ten dollars for the options." Gordon rose.
Lucy would have considerable property when he died; he'd like her to have all the advantages possible; and very suddenly Calvin decided to send her away to school, to Stanwick, the small city to and from which the Greenstream stage drove. She returned from her first term at Christmas, full of her experiences with teachers and friends, to which Ettie and he listened with absorbed attention.
Soon it would be evening and the frogs would begin again, the frogs and whippoorwills. The valley, just as Hannah had said, was lonely. He stirred and later found himself some supper in the kitchen where everything was new. On the following morning he left the Greenstream settlement; it was Friday, and Monday he returned with Ettie, his sister.
His immobile face, with its heavy, good features and slow-kindling comprehension, was at all times expressive of loud self-assertion, insatiable curiosity, facile confidence; from his clean shaven lips fell always satisfied comment, pronouncement, impatient opinion. If Hollidew was the richest man in Greenstream Valentine Simmons was a close second.
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