Scattergood ate with ease and pleasure two complete suppers—­to the openly expressed admiration of Emma, the waitress.  Very shortly afterward he retired to his room, where, not trusting to the sturdiness of the bed-slats provided, he dragged mattress and bedding to the floor and was soon emitting snores that Landlord Coombs assured his wife was the beat of anybody ever slept in the house not countin’ that travelin’ man from Boston.  Next morning Scattergood was about early, padding slowly up and down the crossed streets which made up the village.  He was studying the ground for immediate strategic purposes, just as he had been studying the valley on his long trudge up from the railroad for purposes related to distant campaigns.  Though Scattergood’s arrival in Coldriver may have seemed impromptu, as his adoption of the town for a permanent location seemed abrupt, not to say impulsive, neither really was so.  Scattergood rarely acted without reason and after reflection.

True, he had but a moment’s glimpse of Coldriver before he decided he had moved there, but the glimpse showed him the location was the one he had been searching for....  Scattergood’s specialty, his hobby, was valleys.  Valleys down which splashed and roared sizable streams, whose mountain sides were covered with timber, and whose flats were comfortable farms—­such valleys interested him with an especial interest.  But the valley he had been looking for was one with but a single possible outlet.  He wanted a valley whose timber and produce and products could not go climbing off across the hills, over a number of easy roads, to market.  His valley must be hemmed in.  The only way to market must lie down the valley, with the river.  And the river that flowed down his valley must be swift, with sufficient volume all twelve months of the year to turn possible mill wheels....  As yet he thought only of the direct application of power.  He had not dreamed yet of great turbine generators which should transport thousands of horse power, written in terms of electricity, hundreds of miles across country, there to light cities and turn the wheels of huge manufactories....

Coldriver Valley was that valley!  He felt it as soon as he turned into it; certainty increased as he progressed between those gigantic walls black with tall, straight, beautiful spruce.  So, when he sat shoeless, resting his blistered feet on Locker’s porch, he was ready to make his decision.  The mere making of it was a negligible detail.

So Scattergood Baines found his valley.  He entered it consciously as an invader, determined to conquer.  Pitiful as were the resources of Cortez as he adventured against the power of Montezuma, or of Pizarro as he clambered over the Peruvian Andes, they were gigantic compared with Scattergood’s.  He was starting to make his conquest backed by one twenty, three fives, four twos, and ninety cents in silver.  It was obvious to him the country to be conquered must supply the sinews of war for its own conquest.