XV

A BLACKJACK BARGAINER

The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old arm-chair.  The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street—­the main street of the town of Bethel.

Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge.  Above it the mountains were piled to the sky.  Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.

The June day was at its sultriest hour.  Bethel dozed in the tepid shade.  Trade was not.  It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where the “court-house gang” was playing poker.  From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the court-house.  The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had—­first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood.  The “gang” had cleaned him out.  The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game.  His word was no longer to be taken.  The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker.  The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing “from the valley,” sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.

Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway.  After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze.  The little white patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he had been born and bred.  There, also, was the birthplace of the feud between the Gorees and the Coltranes.  Now no direct heir of the Gorees survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune.  To the Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left —­Colonel Abner Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree’s father.  The feud had been a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong and slaughter.

But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds.  His befuddled brain was hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself and his favourite follies.  Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep—­but whiskey they would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey.  His law business was extinct; no case had been intrusted to him in two years.  He had been a borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from lack of opportunity.  One more chance—­he was saying to himself—­if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted.