smarter folks 'n you be make it for you ... like I done."



CHAPTER II

SCATTERGOOD KICKS UP THE DUST


Scattergood Baines sat on the porch of his hardware store and looked
down Coldriver Valley. It was very beautiful, even under the hot summer
sun of the second anniversary of Scattergood's arrival in that part of
the world, but he was not seeing it as it was--mountainous, green,
with untouched forests, quickened to life and sound by the swift,
rushing, splashing downrush of a tireless mountain river. Scattergood
saw the valley as he was going to make it, for he was a specialist in
valleys.

For years he had searched for an undeveloped valley--for the sort of
valley it would be worth his while to take in hand, and two years ago he
had found it and invaded it. His equipment for its conquest had been
meager--some fifty dollars in money and a head filled from ear to ear
and from eyebrows to scalp lock with shrewdness. His progress in
twenty-four months had been notable, for he was sole proprietor of a
profitable hardware store in Coldriver village, and controlled the upper
stretches of Coldriver by virtue of a certain dam and boom company built
with other men's capital for Scattergood's benefit and behoof.

Now, in the eye of his mind, he could see the whole twenty-odd miles of
his valley. Along the left bank, hanging perilously to the slope of the