Dave Marshall was the owner of the Last Chance!  The Last Chance where “hussies” lay in wait like vultures for the Indian youths, took their government allowances, took their ancient Indian decency, and cast them forth to pollute their tribe with drink and disease.  The Last Chance!  The headquarters for the illegal selling of whisky to Indians.  Where Indians were taught to evade the law, to carry whisky into the reservation and where in turn the bounty for their arrest was pledged to Marshall.  The Last Chance, the main source of Dave Marshall’s wealth!

Even Lake City was horrified by these revelations.  People began to remove their money from his bank and for a time a run was threatened, then Dave resigned as president and the run was stayed.  The drugstore owned by Dave was boycotted.  The women of the town began to cut Margery and Elviry.  The minister of the Methodist Church asked Dave for his resignation as Trustee.

To say that old Lizzie was pleased by the revelations would be perhaps to do the old lady an injustice.  Yet the fact remains that she did go about with a knowing, “I told you so” air, that smacked of complacency.

“He always was just skulch,” she insisted to Lydia.  “When he was a child, he was the kind of a brat mothers didn’t want their children to play with.  I always prayed he’d get his come-uppers, and Elviry too.  But I am sorry for Margery.  Poor young one!  Her future’s ruined.”

Lydia, sitting on the front steps in the lovely September afternoons, rubbed Adam’s ears, watched the pine and the Norton herds and thought some long, long thoughts.  Finally, one hazy Saturday afternoon, she gathered a great bunch of many colored asters and started off, without telling Lizzie of her destination.

It was nearly five o’clock when she stopped at the Marshalls’ gate.  The front of the house was closed, but nothing daunted, she made her way round to the kitchen door, which was open.  Elviry answered her rap.

“Oh, it’s Lydia,” she said, brusquely.  “What do you want?”

“I brought Marg some flowers,” answered Lydia, awkwardly.

Elviry hesitated.  “Margery’s been having a headache and I don’t know as she’d want to see you.”

Lydia was not entirely daunted.  “Well, if you’re getting supper you might let me come and sit in the kitchen a few minutes.  It’s quite a walk in from the cottage.”

Elviry opened the screen door and Lydia marched in and paused.  Dave Marshall was sitting by the kitchen table, his hat on the back of his head, a pile of newspapers on the floor beside him.  He did not speak to Lydia when she came in, but Lydia nodded brightly at him and said, “You like to sit in the kitchen, the way Dad does, don’t you?”

She sat down in the rocker by the dining-room door and Elviry began to stir a kettle of catsup that was simmering on the back of the stove.

This was worse than Lydia had thought it would be.  She had not calculated on Dave’s being at home.  However, her fighting blood was up.