"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. "Here they are," he exclaimed; "I paid eighty-nine thousand dollars to get them, and they're worth--that," he flung them with a quick gesture into the air, and the rising wind scattered them fluttering over the sere grass. "Scrabble for them in the dirt." "You c'n throw them away now the railroad's left you." "And before," Gordon Makimmon demanded, "do you think I couldn't have gutted you if I'd had a mind to? do you think anybody couldn't gut you? Why, you've been the mutton of every little storekeeper that let you off with a pound of coffee, of any note shaver that could write. The _Bugle_ says I let out money to cover up the railway deal, but that'd be no better than giving it to stop the sight of the blind. God A'mighty! this transportation business you're only whining about now was laid out five years ago, the company's agents have driven in and out twenty times...." "Let him have it!" "Spite yourselves!" Gordon Makimmon cried; "it's all that's left for you." 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 dog hesitated, turned toward his master, when a heavy stick, whirling out of the press of men, struck the animal across the upper forelegs. He fell forward, with a sharp whine, and attempted vainly to rise. Both legs were broken. He looked back again at Gordon, and then, growling, strove to reach their assailants. Gordon Makimmon started forward with a rasping oath, but, before he could reach the ground, General Jackson had propelled himself to the fringe of humanity. He made a last, convulsive effort to rise, his jaws snapped.... A short, iron bar descended upon his head. Gordon's face became instantly, irrevocably, the shrunken face of an old man. The clustered men with the dead, mangled body of the dog before them; the serene, sliding stream beyond; the towering east range bathed in keen sunlight, blurred, mingled, in his vision. He put out a hand against one of the porch supports--a faded shape of final and irremediable sorrow.