Title: The Octopus : A Story of California
Author: Norris, Frank
Language: English
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THE OCTOPUS

A Story of California

by Frank Norris



BOOK 1



CHAPTER I


Just after passing Caraher’s saloon, on the County Road that ran south
from Bonneville, and that divided the Broderson ranch from that of Los
Muertos, Presley was suddenly aware of the faint and prolonged blowing
of a steam whistle that he knew must come from the railroad shops near
the depot at Bonneville. In starting out from the ranch house that
morning, he had forgotten his watch, and was now perplexed to know
whether the whistle was blowing for twelve or for one o’clock. He hoped
the former. Early that morning he had decided to make a long excursion
through the neighbouring country, partly on foot and partly on his
bicycle, and now noon was come already, and as yet he had hardly
started. As he was leaving the house after breakfast, Mrs. Derrick had
asked him to go for the mail at Bonneville, and he had not been able to
refuse.

He took a firmer hold of the cork grips of his handlebars--the road
being in a wretched condition after the recent hauling of the crop--and
quickened his pace. He told himself that, no matter what the time was,
he would not stop for luncheon at the ranch house, but would push on
to Guadalajara and have a Spanish dinner at Solotari’s, as he had
originally planned.

There had not been much of a crop to haul that year. Half of the wheat
on the Broderson ranch had failed entirely, and Derrick himself had
hardly raised more than enough to supply seed for the winter’s sowing.
But such little hauling as there had been had reduced the roads
thereabouts to a lamentable condition, and, during the dry season of the
past few months, the layer of dust had deepened and thickened to such
an extent that more than once Presley was obliged to dismount and trudge
along on foot, pushing his bicycle in front of him.

It was the last half of September, the very end of the dry season, and
all Tulare County, all the vast reaches of the San Joaquin Valley--in
fact all South Central California, was bone dry, parched, and baked
and crisped after four months of cloudless weather, when the day seemed
always at noon, and the sun blazed white hot over the valley from the
Coast Range in the west to the foothills of the Sierras in the east.

As Presley drew near to the point where what was known as the Lower Road
struck off through the Rancho de Los Muertos, leading on to Guadalajara,
he came upon one of the county watering-tanks, a great, iron-hooped
tower of wood, straddling clumsily on its four uprights by the roadside.
Since the day of its completion, the storekeepers and retailers of
Bonneville had painted their advertisements upon it. It was a landmark.
In that reach of level fields, the white letters upon it could be read
for miles. A watering-trough stood near by, and, as he was very thirsty,
Presley resolved to stop for a moment to get a drink.

He drew abreast of the tank and halted there, leaning his bicycle
against the fence. A couple of men in white overalls were repainting
the surface of the tank, seated on swinging platforms that hung by hooks
from the roof. They were painting a sign--an advertisement. It was all
but finished and read, “S. Behrman, Real Estate, Mortgages, Main Street,
Bonneville, Opposite the Post Office.” On the horse-trough that stood
in the shadow of the tank was another freshly painted inscription: “S.
Behrman Has Something To Say To You.”

As Presley straightened up after drinking from the faucet at one end of
the horse-trough, the watering-cart itself laboured into view around
the turn of the Lower Road. Two mules and two horses, white with dust,
strained leisurely in the traces, moving at a snail’s pace, their limp
ears marking the time; while perched high upon the seat, under a yellow
cotton wagon umbrella, Presley recognised Hooven, one of Derrick’s
tenants, a German, whom every one called “Bismarck,” an excitable little
man with a perpetual grievance and an endless flow of broken English.

“Hello, Bismarck,” said Presley, as Hooven brought his team to a
standstill by the tank, preparatory to refilling.

“Yoost der men I look for, Mist’r Praicely,” cried the other, twisting
the reins around the brake. “Yoost one minute, you wait, hey? I wanta
talk mit you.”

Presley was impatient to be on his way again. A little more time wasted,
and the day would be lost. He had nothing to do with the management
of the ranch, and if Hooven wanted any advice from him, it was so much
breath wasted. These uncouth brutes of farmhands and petty ranchers,
grimed with the soil they worked upon, were odious to him beyond words.
Never could he feel in sympathy with them, nor with their lives, their
ways, their marriages, deaths, bickerings, and all the monotonous round
of their sordid existence.

“Well, you must be quick about it, Bismarck,” he answered sharply. “I’m
late for dinner, as it is.”

“Soh, now. Two minuten, und I be mit you.” He drew down the overhanging
spout of the tank to the vent in the circumference of the cart and
pulled the chain that let out the water. Then he climbed down from the
seat, jumping from the tire of the wheel, and taking Presley by the arm
led him a few steps down the road.

“Say,” he began. “Say, I want to hef some converzations mit you. Yoost
der men I want to see. Say, Caraher, he tole me dis morgen--say, he tole
me Mist’r Derrick gowun to farm der whole demn rench hisseluf der next
yahr. No more tenants. Say, Caraher, he tole me all der tenants get der
sach; Mist’r Derrick gowun to work der whole demn rench hisseluf, hey?
ME, I get der sach alzoh, hey? You hef hear about dose ting? Say, me, I
hef on der ranch been sieben yahr--seven yahr. Do I alzoh----”

“You’ll have to see Derrick himself or Harran about that, Bismarck,”
 interrupted Presley, trying to draw away. “That’s something outside of
me entirely.”

But Hooven was not to be put off. No doubt he had been meditating his
speech all the morning, formulating his words, preparing his phrases.

“Say, no, no,” he continued. “Me, I wanta stay bei der place; seven yahr
I hef stay. Mist’r Derrick, he doand want dot I should be ge-sacked.
Who, den, will der ditch ge-tend? Say, you tell ‘um Bismarck hef gotta
sure stay bei der place. Say, you hef der pull mit der Governor. You
speak der gut word for me.”

“Harran is the man that has the pull with his father, Bismarck,”
 answered Presley. “You get Harran to speak for you, and you’re all
right.”

“Sieben yahr I hef stay,” protested Hooven, “and who will der ditch
ge-tend, und alle dem cettles drive?”

“Well, Harran’s your man,” answered Presley, preparing to mount his
bicycle.

“Say, you hef hear about dose ting?”

“I don’t hear about anything, Bismarck. I don’t know the first thing
about how the ranch is run.”

“UND DER PIPE-LINE GE-MEND,” Hooven burst out, suddenly remembering a
forgotten argument. He waved an arm. “Ach, der pipe-line bei der Mission
Greek, und der waater-hole for dose cettles. Say, he doand doo ut
HIMSELLUF, berhaps, I doand tink.”

“Well, talk to Harran about it.”

“Say, he doand farm der whole demn rench bei hisseluf. Me, I gotta
stay.”

But on a sudden the water in the cart gushed over the sides from the
vent in the top with a smart sound of splashing. Hooven was forced to
turn his attention to it. Presley got his wheel under way.

“I hef some converzations mit Herran,” Hooven called after him. “He
doand doo ut bei hisseluf, den, Mist’r Derrick; ach, no. I stay bei der
rench to drive dose cettles.”

He climbed back to his seat under the wagon umbrella, and, as he
started his team again with great cracks of his long whip, turned to the
painters still at work upon the sign and declared with some defiance:

“Sieben yahr; yais, sir, seiben yahr I hef been on dis rench. Git oop,
you mule you, hoop!”

Meanwhile Presley had turned into the Lower Road. He was now on
Derrick’s land, division No. I, or, as it was called, the Home ranch,
of the great Los Muertos Rancho. The road was better here, the dust laid
after the passage of Hooven’s watering-cart, and, in a few minutes, he
had come to the ranch house itself, with its white picket fence, its few
flower beds, and grove of eucalyptus trees. On the lawn at the side
of the house, he saw Harran in the act of setting out the automatic
sprinkler. In the shade of the house, by the porch, were two or three
of the greyhounds, part of the pack that were used to hunt down
jack-rabbits, and Godfrey, Harran’s prize deerhound.

Presley wheeled up the driveway and met Harran by the horse-block.
Harran was Magnus Derrick’s youngest son, a very well-looking young
fellow of twenty-three or twenty-five. He had the fine carriage that
marked his father, and still further resembled him in that he had the
Derrick nose--hawk-like and prominent, such as one sees in the later
portraits of the Duke of Wellington. He was blond, and incessant
exposure to the sun had, instead of tanning him brown, merely heightened
the colour of his cheeks. His yellow hair had a tendency to curl in a
forward direction, just in front of the ears.

Beside him, Presley made the sharpest of contrasts. Presley seemed to
have come of a mixed origin; appeared to have a nature more composite,
a temperament more complex. Unlike Harran Derrick, he seemed more of a
character than a type. The sun had browned his face till it was almost
swarthy. His eyes were a dark brown, and his forehead was the forehead
of the intellectual, wide and high, with a certain unmistakable lift
about it that argued education, not only of himself, but of his people
before him. The impression conveyed by his mouth and chin was that of
a delicate and highly sensitive nature, the lips thin and loosely shut
together, the chin small and rather receding. One guessed that Presley’s
refinement had been gained only by a certain loss of strength. One
expected to find him nervous, introspective, to discover that his mental
life was not at all the result of impressions and sensations that came
to him from without, but rather of thoughts and reflections germinating
from within. Though morbidly sensitive to changes in his physical
surroundings, he would be slow to act upon such sensations, would not
prove impulsive, not because he was sluggish, but because he was merely
irresolute. It could be foreseen that morally he was of that sort
who avoid evil through good taste, lack of decision, and want of
opportunity. His temperament was that of the poet; when he told himself
he had been thinking, he deceived himself. He had, on such occasions,
been only brooding.

Some eighteen months before this time, he had been threatened with
consumption, and, taking advantage of a standing invitation on the part
of Magnus Derrick, had come to stay in the dry, even climate of the San
Joaquin for an indefinite length of time. He was thirty years old,
and had graduated and post-graduated with high honours from an
Eastern college, where he had devoted himself to a passionate study of
literature, and, more especially, of poetry.

It was his insatiable ambition to write verse. But up to this time,
his work had been fugitive, ephemeral, a note here and there, heard,
appreciated, and forgotten. He was in search of a subject; something
magnificent, he did not know exactly what; some vast, tremendous theme,
heroic, terrible, to be unrolled in all the thundering progression of
hexameters.

But whatever he wrote, and in whatever fashion, Presley was determined
that his poem should be of the West, that world’s frontier of Romance,
where a new race, a new people--hardy, brave, and passionate--were
building an empire; where the tumultuous life ran like fire from dawn
to dark, and from dark to dawn again, primitive, brutal, honest, and
without fear. Something (to his idea not much) had been done to catch at
that life in passing, but its poet had not yet arisen. The few sporadic
attempts, thus he told himself, had only touched the keynote. He strove
for the diapason, the great song that should embrace in itself a whole
epoch, a complete era, the voice of an entire people, wherein all people
should be included--they and their legends, their folk lore, their
fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their
stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day
and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity
and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity,
their self-sacrifice and obscenity--a true and fearless setting forth of
a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its
proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch,
the range, and the mine--all this, all the traits and types of every
community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe,
gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together in one
single, mighty song, the Song of the West. That was what he dreamed,
while things without names--thoughts for which no man had yet invented
words, terrible formless shapes, vague figures, colossal, monstrous,
distorted--whirled at a gallop through his imagination.

As Harran came up, Presley reached down into the pouches of the
sun-bleached shooting coat he wore and drew out and handed him the
packet of letters and papers.

“Here’s the mail. I think I shall go on.”

“But dinner is ready,” said Harran; “we are just sitting down.”

Presley shook his head. “No, I’m in a hurry. Perhaps I shall have
something to eat at Guadalajara. I shall be gone all day.”

He delayed a few moments longer, tightening a loose nut on his forward
wheel, while Harran, recognising his father’s handwriting on one of the
envelopes, slit it open and cast his eye rapidly over its pages.

“The Governor is coming home,” he exclaimed, “to-morrow morning on the
early train; wants me to meet him with the team at Guadalajara; AND,” he
cried between his clenched teeth, as he continued to read, “we’ve lost
the case.”

“What case? Oh, in the matter of rates?”

Harran nodded, his eyes flashing, his face growing suddenly scarlet.

“Ulsteen gave his decision yesterday,” he continued, reading from his
father’s letter. “He holds, Ulsteen does, that ‘grain rates as low as
the new figure would amount to confiscation of property, and that, on
such a basis, the railroad could not be operated at a legitimate profit.
As he is powerless to legislate in the matter, he can only put the rates
back at what they originally were before the commissioners made the
cut, and it is so ordered.’ That’s our friend S. Behrman again,” added
Harran, grinding his teeth. “He was up in the city the whole of the time
the new schedule was being drawn, and he and Ulsteen and the Railroad
Commission were as thick as thieves. He has been up there all this last
week, too, doing the railroad’s dirty work, and backing Ulsteen up.
‘Legitimate profit, legitimate profit,’” he broke out. “Can we raise
wheat at a legitimate profit with a tariff of four dollars a ton for
moving it two hundred miles to tide-water, with wheat at eighty-seven
cents? Why not hold us up with a gun in our faces, and say, ‘hands up,’
and be done with it?”

He dug his boot-heel into the ground and turned away to the house
abruptly, cursing beneath his breath.

“By the way,” Presley called after him, “Hooven wants to see you. He
asked me about this idea of the Governor’s of getting along without the
tenants this year. Hooven wants to stay to tend the ditch and look after
the stock. I told him to see you.”

Harran, his mind full of other things, nodded to say he understood.
Presley only waited till he had disappeared indoors, so that he might
not seem too indifferent to his trouble; then, remounting, struck at
once into a brisk pace, and, turning out from the carriage gate, held
on swiftly down the Lower Road, going in the direction of Guadalajara.
These matters, these eternal fierce bickerings between the farmers of
the San Joaquin and the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad irritated him
and wearied him. He cared for none of these things. They did not belong
to his world. In the picture of that huge romantic West that he saw in
his imagination, these dissensions made the one note of harsh colour
that refused to enter into the great scheme of harmony. It was material,
sordid, deadly commonplace. But, however he strove to shut his eyes to
it or his ears to it, the thing persisted and persisted. The romance
seemed complete up to that point. There it broke, there it failed, there
it became realism, grim, unlovely, unyielding. To be true--and it was
the first article of his creed to be unflinchingly true--he could not
ignore it. All the noble poetry of the ranch--the valley--seemed in his
mind to be marred and disfigured by the presence of certain immovable
facts. Just what he wanted, Presley hardly knew. On one hand, it was his
ambition to portray life as he saw it--directly, frankly, and through no
medium of personality or temperament. But, on the other hand, as well,
he wished to see everything through a rose-coloured mist--a mist that
dulled all harsh outlines, all crude and violent colours. He told
himself that, as a part of the people, he loved the people and
sympathised with their hopes and fears, and joys and griefs; and yet
Hooven, grimy and perspiring, with his perpetual grievance and his
contracted horizon, only revolted him. He had set himself the task of
giving true, absolutely true, poetical expression to the life of the
ranch, and yet, again and again, he brought up against the railroad,
that stubborn iron barrier against which his romance shattered itself to
froth and disintegrated, flying spume. His heart went out to the people,
and his groping hand met that of a slovenly little Dutchman, whom it was
impossible to consider seriously. He searched for the True Romance, and,
in the end, found grain rates and unjust freight tariffs.

“But the stuff is HERE,” he muttered, as he sent his wheel rumbling
across the bridge over Broderson Creek. “The romance, the real romance,
is here somewhere. I’ll get hold of it yet.”

He shot a glance about him as if in search of the inspiration. By now he
was not quite half way across the northern and narrowest corner of Los
Muertos, at this point some eight miles wide. He was still on the Home
ranch. A few miles to the south he could just make out the line of wire
fence that separated it from the third division; and to the north, seen
faint and blue through the haze and shimmer of the noon sun, a long file
of telegraph poles showed the line of the railroad and marked Derrick’s
northeast boundary. The road over which Presley was travelling ran
almost diametrically straight. In front of him, but at a great distance,
he could make out the giant live-oak and the red roof of Hooven’s barn
that stood near it.

All about him the country was flat. In all directions he could see for
miles. The harvest was just over. Nothing but stubble remained on the
ground. With the one exception of the live-oak by Hooven’s place, there
was nothing green in sight. The wheat stubble was of a dirty yellow; the
ground, parched, cracked, and dry, of a cheerless brown. By the roadside
the dust lay thick and grey, and, on either hand, stretching on toward
the horizon, losing itself in a mere smudge in the distance, ran the
illimitable parallels of the wire fence. And that was all; that and the
burnt-out blue of the sky and the steady shimmer of the heat.

The silence was infinite. After the harvest, small though that harvest
had been, the ranches seemed asleep. It was as though the earth, after
its period of reproduction, its pains of labour, had been delivered of
the fruit of its loins, and now slept the sleep of exhaustion.

It was the period between seasons, when nothing was being done, when the
natural forces seemed to hang suspended. There was no rain, there was no
wind, there was no growth, no life; the very stubble had no force even
to rot. The sun alone moved.

Toward two o’clock, Presley reached Hooven’s place, two or three grimy
frame buildings, infested with a swarm of dogs. A hog or two wandered
aimlessly about. Under a shed by the barn, a broken-down seeder lay
rusting to its ruin. But overhead, a mammoth live-oak, the largest tree
in all the country-side, towered superb and magnificent. Grey bunches
of mistletoe and festoons of trailing moss hung from its bark. From its
lowest branch hung Hooven’s meat-safe, a square box, faced with wire
screens.

What gave a special interest to Hooven’s was the fact that here was the
intersection of the Lower Road and Derrick’s main irrigating ditch, a
vast trench not yet completed, which he and Annixter, who worked the
Quien Sabe ranch, were jointly constructing. It ran directly across
the road and at right angles to it, and lay a deep groove in the field
between Hooven’s and the town of Guadalajara, some three miles farther
on. Besides this, the ditch was a natural boundary between two divisions
of the Los Muertos ranch, the first and fourth.

Presley now had the choice of two routes. His objective point was the
spring at the headwaters of Broderson Creek, in the hills on the
eastern side of the Quien Sabe ranch. The trail afforded him a short cut
thitherward. As he passed the house, Mrs. Hooven came to the door, her
little daughter Hilda, dressed in a boy’s overalls and clumsy boots, at
her skirts. Minna, her oldest daughter, a very pretty girl, whose
love affairs were continually the talk of all Los Muertos, was visible
through a window of the house, busy at the week’s washing. Mrs. Hooven
was a faded, colourless woman, middle-aged and commonplace, and offering
not the least characteristic that would distinguish her from a thousand
other women of her class and kind. She nodded to Presley, watching
him with a stolid gaze from under her arm, which she held across her
forehead to shade her eyes.

But now Presley exerted himself in good earnest. His bicycle flew.
He resolved that after all he would go to Guadalajara. He crossed the
bridge over the irrigating ditch with a brusque spurt of hollow sound,
and shot forward down the last stretch of the Lower Road that yet
intervened between Hooven’s and the town. He was on the fourth division
of the ranch now, the only one whereon the wheat had been successful, no
doubt because of the Little Mission Creek that ran through it. But he no
longer occupied himself with the landscape. His only concern was to get
on as fast as possible. He had looked forward to spending nearly the
whole day on the crest of the wooded hills in the northern corner of the
Quien Sabe ranch, reading, idling, smoking his pipe. But now he would
do well if he arrived there by the middle of the afternoon. In a few
moments he had reached the line fence that marked the limits of the
ranch. Here were the railroad tracks, and just beyond--a huddled mass of
roofs, with here and there an adobe house on its outskirts--the little
town of Guadalajara. Nearer at hand, and directly in front of Presley,
were the freight and passenger depots of the P. and S. W., painted in
the grey and white, which seemed to be the official colours of all the
buildings owned by the corporation. The station was deserted. No trains
passed at this hour. From the direction of the ticket window, Presley
heard the unsteady chittering of the telegraph key. In the shadow of
one of the baggage trucks upon the platform, the great yellow cat that
belonged to the agent dozed complacently, her paws tucked under her
body. Three flat cars, loaded with bright-painted farming machines,
were on the siding above the station, while, on the switch below, a huge
freight engine that lacked its cow-catcher sat back upon its monstrous
driving-wheels, motionless, solid, drawing long breaths that were
punctuated by the subdued sound of its steam-pump clicking at exact
intervals.

But evidently it had been decreed that Presley should be stopped at
every point of his ride that day, for, as he was pushing his bicycle
across the tracks, he was surprised to hear his name called. “Hello,
there, Mr. Presley. What’s the good word?”

Presley looked up quickly, and saw Dyke, the engineer, leaning on
his folded arms from the cab window of the freight engine. But at the
prospect of this further delay, Presley was less troubled. Dyke and he
were well acquainted and the best of friends. The picturesqueness of the
engineer’s life was always attractive to Presley, and more than once he
had ridden on Dyke’s engine between Guadalajara and Bonneville. Once,
even, he had made the entire run between the latter town and San
Francisco in the cab.

Dyke’s home was in Guadalajara. He lived in one of the remodelled ‘dobe
cottages, where his mother kept house for him. His wife had died some
five years before this time, leaving him a little daughter, Sidney, to
bring up as best he could. Dyke himself was a heavy built, well-looking
fellow, nearly twice the weight of Presley, with great shoulders and
massive, hairy arms, and a tremendous, rumbling voice.

“Hello, old man,” answered Presley, coming up to the engine. “What are
you doing about here at this time of day? I thought you were on the
night service this month.”

“We’ve changed about a bit,” answered the other. “Come up here and sit
down, and get out of the sun. They’ve held us here to wait orders,” he
explained, as Presley, after leaning his bicycle against the tender,
climbed to the fireman’s seat of worn green leather. “They are changing
the run of one of the crack passenger engines down below, and are
sending her up to Fresno. There was a smash of some kind on the
Bakersfield division, and she’s to hell and gone behind her time. I
suppose when she comes, she’ll come a-humming. It will be stand clear
and an open track all the way to Fresno. They have held me here to let
her go by.”

He took his pipe, an old T. D. clay, but coloured to a beautiful shiny
black, from the pocket of his jumper and filled and lit it.

“Well, I don’t suppose you object to being held here,” observed Presley.
“Gives you a chance to visit your mother and the little girl.”

“And precisely they choose this day to go up to Sacramento,” answered
Dyke. “Just my luck. Went up to visit my brother’s people. By the way,
my brother may come down here--locate here, I mean--and go into the
hop-raising business. He’s got an option on five hundred acres just back
of the town here. He says there is going to be money in hops. I don’t
know; may be I’ll go in with him.”

“Why, what’s the matter with railroading?”

Dyke drew a couple of puffs on his pipe, and fixed Presley with a
glance.

“There’s this the matter with it,” he said; “I’m fired.”

“Fired! You!” exclaimed Presley, turning abruptly toward him. “That’s
what I’m telling you,” returned Dyke grimly.

“You don’t mean it. Why, what for, Dyke?”

“Now, YOU tell me what for,” growled the other savagely. “Boy and man,
I’ve worked for the P. and S. W. for over ten years, and never one yelp
of a complaint did I ever hear from them. They know damn well they’ve
not got a steadier man on the road. And more than that, more than that,
I don’t belong to the Brotherhood. And when the strike came along, I
stood by them--stood by the company. You know that. And you know, and
they know, that at Sacramento that time, I ran my train according to
schedule, with a gun in each hand, never knowing when I was going over a
mined culvert, and there was talk of giving me a gold watch at the
time. To hell with their gold watches! I want ordinary justice and fair
treatment. And now, when hard times come along, and they are cutting
wages, what do they do? Do they make any discrimination in my case? Do
they remember the man that stood by them and risked his life in their
service? No. They cut my pay down just as off-hand as they do the pay
of any dirty little wiper in the yard. Cut me along with--listen to
this--cut me along with men that they had BLACK-LISTED; strikers that
they took back because they were short of hands.” He drew fiercely on
his pipe. “I went to them, yes, I did; I went to the General Office, and
ate dirt. I told them I was a family man, and that I didn’t see how
I was going to get along on the new scale, and I reminded them of my
service during the strike. The swine told me that it wouldn’t be fair
to discriminate in favour of one man, and that the cut must apply to all
their employees alike. Fair!” he shouted with laughter. “Fair! Hear the
P. and S. W. talking about fairness and discrimination. That’s good,
that is. Well, I got furious. I was a fool, I suppose. I told them that,
in justice to myself, I wouldn’t do first-class work for third-class
pay. And they said, ‘Well, Mr. Dyke, you know what you can do.’ Well, I
did know. I said, ‘I’ll ask for my time, if you please,’ and they gave
it to me just as if they were glad to be shut of me. So there you are,
Presley. That’s the P. & S. W. Railroad Company of California. I am on
my last run now.”

“Shameful,” declared Presley, his sympathies all aroused, now that the
trouble concerned a friend of his. “It’s shameful, Dyke. But,” he added,
an idea occurring to him, “that don’t shut you out from work. There are
other railroads in the State that are not controlled by the P. and S.
W.”

Dyke smote his knee with his clenched fist.

“NAME ONE.”

Presley was silent. Dyke’s challenge was unanswerable. There was a lapse
in their talk, Presley drumming on the arm of the seat, meditating on
this injustice; Dyke looking off over the fields beyond the town, his
frown lowering, his teeth rasping upon his pipestem. The station agent
came to the door of the depot, stretching and yawning. On ahead of the
engine, the empty rails of the track, reaching out toward the horizon,
threw off visible layers of heat. The telegraph key clicked incessantly.

“So I’m going to quit,” Dyke remarked after a while, his anger somewhat
subsided. “My brother and I will take up this hop ranch. I’ve saved a
good deal in the last ten years, and there ought to be money in hops.”

Presley went on, remounting his bicycle, wheeling silently through the
deserted streets of the decayed and dying Mexican town. It was the hour
of the siesta. Nobody was about. There was no business in the town. It
was too close to Bonneville for that. Before the railroad came, and
in the days when the raising of cattle was the great industry of
the country, it had enjoyed a fierce and brilliant life. Now it was
moribund. The drug store, the two bar-rooms, the hotel at the corner of
the old Plaza, and the shops where Mexican “curios” were sold to those
occasional Eastern tourists who came to visit the Mission of San Juan,
sufficed for the town’s activity.

At Solotari’s, the restaurant on the Plaza, diagonally across from the
hotel, Presley ate his long-deferred Mexican dinner--an omelette in
Spanish-Mexican style, frijoles and tortillas, a salad, and a glass
of white wine. In a corner of the room, during the whole course of his
dinner, two young Mexicans (one of whom was astonishingly handsome,
after the melodramatic fashion of his race) and an old fellow! the
centenarian of the town, decrepit beyond belief, sang an interminable
love-song to the accompaniment of a guitar and an accordion.

These Spanish-Mexicans, decayed, picturesque, vicious, and romantic,
never failed to interest Presley. A few of them still remained in
Guadalajara, drifting from the saloon to the restaurant, and from the
restaurant to the Plaza, relics of a former generation, standing for a
different order of things, absolutely idle, living God knew how, happy
with their cigarette, their guitar, their glass of mescal, and their
siesta. The centenarian remembered Fremont and Governor Alvarado, and
the bandit Jesus Tejeda, and the days when Los Muertos was a Spanish
grant, a veritable principality, leagues in extent, and when there
was never a fence from Visalia to Fresno. Upon this occasion, Presley
offered the old man a drink of mescal, and excited him to talk of the
things he remembered. Their talk was in Spanish, a language with which
Presley was familiar.

“De La Cuesta held the grant of Los Muertos in those days,” the
centenarian said; “a grand man. He had the power of life and death over
his people, and there was no law but his word. There was no thought of
wheat then, you may believe. It was all cattle in those days, sheep,
horses--steers, not so many--and if money was scarce, there was always
plenty to eat, and clothes enough for all, and wine, ah, yes, by the
vat, and oil too; the Mission Fathers had that. Yes, and there was wheat
as well, now that I come to think; but a very little--in the field north
of the Mission where now it is the Seed ranch; wheat fields were there,
and also a vineyard, all on Mission grounds. Wheat, olives, and the
vine; the Fathers planted those, to provide the elements of the Holy
Sacrament--bread, oil, and wine, you understand. It was like that, those
industries began in California--from the Church; and now,” he put his
chin in the air, “what would Father Ullivari have said to such a crop
as Senor Derrick plants these days? Ten thousand acres of wheat! Nothing
but wheat from the Sierra to the Coast Range. I remember when De La
Cuesta was married. He had never seen the young lady, only her miniature
portrait, painted”--he raised a shoulder--“I do not know by whom, small,
a little thing to be held in the palm. But he fell in love with that,
and marry her he would. The affair was arranged between him and the
girl’s parents. But when the time came that De La Cuesta was to go to
Monterey to meet and marry the girl, behold, Jesus Tejeda broke in upon
the small rancheros near Terrabella. It was no time for De La Cuesta to
be away, so he sent his brother Esteban to Monterey to marry the girl by
proxy for him. I went with Esteban. We were a company, nearly a hundred
men. And De La Cuesta sent a horse for the girl to ride, white, pure
white; and the saddle was of red leather; the head-stall, the bit,
and buckles, all the metal work, of virgin silver. Well, there was
a ceremony in the Monterey Mission, and Esteban, in the name of his
brother, was married to the girl. On our way back, De La Cuesta rode
out to meet us. His company met ours at Agatha dos Palos. Never will
I forget De La Cuesta’s face as his eyes fell upon the girl. It was a
look, a glance, come and gone like THAT,” he snapped his fingers. “No
one but I saw it, but I was close by. There was no mistaking that look.
De La Cuesta was disappointed.”

“And the girl?” demanded Presley.

“She never knew. Ah, he was a grand gentleman, De La Cuesta. Always he
treated her as a queen. Never was husband more devoted, more respectful,
more chivalrous. But love?” The old fellow put his chin in the air,
shutting his eyes in a knowing fashion. “It was not there. I could tell.
They were married over again at the Mission San Juan de Guadalajara--OUR
Mission--and for a week all the town of Guadalajara was in fete. There
were bull-fights in the Plaza--this very one--for five days, and to each
of his tenants-in-chief, De La Cuesta gave a horse, a barrel of tallow,
an ounce of silver, and half an ounce of gold dust. Ah, those were days.
That was a gay life. This”--he made a comprehensive gesture with his
left hand--“this is stupid.”

“You may well say that,” observed Presley moodily, discouraged by the
other’s talk. All his doubts and uncertainty had returned to him. Never
would he grasp the subject of his great poem. To-day, the life was
colourless. Romance was dead. He had lived too late. To write of the
past was not what he desired. Reality was what he longed for, things
that he had seen. Yet how to make this compatible with romance. He rose,
putting on his hat, offering the old man a cigarette. The centenarian
accepted with the air of a grandee, and extended his horn snuff-box.
Presley shook his head.

“I was born too late for that,” he declared, “for that, and for many
other things. Adios.”

“You are travelling to-day, senor?”

“A little turn through the country, to get the kinks out of the
muscles,” Presley answered. “I go up into the Quien Sabe, into the high
country beyond the Mission.”

“Ah, the Quien Sabe rancho. The sheep are grazing there this week.”

Solotari, the keeper of the restaurant, explained:

“Young Annixter sold his wheat stubble on the ground to the sheep
raisers off yonder;” he motioned eastward toward the Sierra foothills.
“Since Sunday the herd has been down. Very clever, that young Annixter.
He gets a price for his stubble, which else he would have to burn, and
also manures his land as the sheep move from place to place. A true
Yankee, that Annixter, a good gringo.”

After his meal, Presley once more mounted his bicycle, and leaving the
restaurant and the Plaza behind him, held on through the main street of
the drowsing town--the street that farther on developed into the road
which turned abruptly northward and led onward through the hop-fields
and the Quien Sabe ranch toward the Mission of San Juan.

The Home ranch of the Quien Sabe was in the little triangle bounded on
the south by the railroad, on the northwest by Broderson Creek, and on
the east by the hop fields and the Mission lands. It was traversed in
all directions, now by the trail from Hooven’s, now by the irrigating
ditch--the same which Presley had crossed earlier in the day--and again
by the road upon which Presley then found himself. In its centre were
Annixter’s ranch house and barns, topped by the skeleton-like tower of
the artesian well that was to feed the irrigating ditch. Farther on,
the course of Broderson Creek was marked by a curved line of grey-green
willows, while on the low hills to the north, as Presley advanced, the
ancient Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, with its belfry tower and
red-tiled roof, began to show itself over the crests of the venerable
pear trees that clustered in its garden.

When Presley reached Annixter’s ranch house, he found young Annixter
himself stretched in his hammock behind the mosquito-bar on the front
porch, reading “David Copperfield,” and gorging himself with dried
prunes.

Annixter--after the two had exchanged greetings--complained of terrific
colics all the preceding night. His stomach was out of whack, but
you bet he knew how to take care of himself; the last spell, he had
consulted a doctor at Bonneville, a gibbering busy-face who had filled
him up to the neck with a dose of some hogwash stuff that had made him
worse--a healthy lot the doctors knew, anyhow. HIS case was peculiar. HE
knew; prunes were what he needed, and by the pound.

Annixter, who worked the Quien Sabe ranch--some four thousand acres
of rich clay and heavy loams--was a very young man, younger even than
Presley, like him a college graduate. He looked never a year older than
he was. He was smooth-shaven and lean built. But his youthful appearance
was offset by a certain male cast of countenance, the lower lip thrust
out, the chin large and deeply cleft. His university course had hardened
rather than polished him. He still remained one of the people, rough
almost to insolence, direct in speech, intolerant in his opinions,
relying upon absolutely no one but himself; yet, with all this, of
an astonishing degree of intelligence, and possessed of an executive
ability little short of positive genius. He was a ferocious worker,
allowing himself no pleasures, and exacting the same degree of energy
from all his subordinates. He was widely hated, and as widely trusted.
Every one spoke of his crusty temper and bullying disposition,
invariably qualifying the statement with a commendation of his resources
and capabilities. The devil of a driver, a hard man to get along with,
obstinate, contrary, cantankerous; but brains! No doubt of that; brains
to his boots. One would like to see the man who could get ahead of him
on a deal. Twice he had been shot at, once from ambush on Osterman’s
ranch, and once by one of his own men whom he had kicked from the
sacking platform of his harvester for gross negligence. At college,
he had specialised on finance, political economy, and scientific
agriculture. After his graduation (he stood almost at the very top of
his class) he had returned and obtained the degree of civil engineer.
Then suddenly he had taken a notion that a practical knowledge of law
was indispensable to a modern farmer. In eight months he did the work of
three years, studying for his bar examinations. His method of study was
characteristic. He reduced all the material of his text-books to notes.
Tearing out the leaves of these note-books, he pasted them upon the
walls of his room; then, in his shirt-sleeves, a cheap cigar in his
teeth, his hands in his pockets, he walked around and around the room,
scowling fiercely at his notes, memorising, devouring, digesting. At
intervals, he drank great cupfuls of unsweetened, black coffee. When the
bar examinations were held, he was admitted at the very head of all the
applicants, and was complimented by the judge. Immediately afterwards,
he collapsed with nervous prostration; his stomach “got out of whack,”
 and he all but died in a Sacramento boarding-house, obstinately refusing
to have anything to do with doctors, whom he vituperated as a rabble
of quacks, dosing himself with a patent medicine and stuffing himself
almost to bursting with liver pills and dried prunes.

He had taken a trip to Europe after this sickness to put himself
completely to rights. He intended to be gone a year, but returned at
the end of six weeks, fulminating abuse of European cooking. Nearly his
entire time had been spent in Paris; but of this sojourn he had brought
back but two souvenirs, an electro-plated bill-hook and an empty bird
cage which had tickled his fancy immensely.

He was wealthy. Only a year previous to this his father--a widower, who
had amassed a fortune in land speculation--had died, and Annixter, the
only son, had come into the inheritance.

For Presley, Annixter professed a great admiration, holding in deep
respect the man who could rhyme words, deferring to him whenever there
was question of literature or works of fiction. No doubt, there was
not much use in poetry, and as for novels, to his mind, there were only
Dickens’s works. Everything else was a lot of lies. But just the same,
it took brains to grind out a poem. It wasn’t every one who could rhyme
“brave” and “glaive,” and make sense out of it. Sure not.

But Presley’s case was a notable exception. On no occasion was
Annixter prepared to accept another man’s opinion without reserve.
In conversation with him, it was almost impossible to make any direct
statement, however trivial, that he would accept without either
modification or open contradiction. He had a passion for violent
discussion. He would argue upon every subject in the range of
human knowledge, from astronomy to the tariff, from the doctrine of
predestination to the height of a horse. Never would he admit himself to
be mistaken; when cornered, he would intrench himself behind the remark,
“Yes, that’s all very well. In some ways, it is, and then, again, in
some ways, it ISN’T.”

Singularly enough, he and Presley were the best of friends. More than
once, Presley marvelled at this state of affairs, telling himself
that he and Annixter had nothing in common. In all his circle of
acquaintances, Presley was the one man with whom Annixter had never
quarrelled. The two men were diametrically opposed in temperament.
Presley was easy-going; Annixter, alert. Presley was a confirmed
dreamer, irresolute, inactive, with a strong tendency to melancholy;
the young farmer was a man of affairs, decisive, combative, whose
only reflection upon his interior economy was a morbid concern in
the vagaries of his stomach. Yet the two never met without a mutual
pleasure, taking a genuine interest in each other’s affairs, and often
putting themselves to great inconvenience to be of trifling service to
help one another.

As a last characteristic, Annixter pretended to be a woman-hater, for
no other reason than that he was a very bull-calf of awkwardness in
feminine surroundings. Feemales! Rot! There was a fine way for a man to
waste his time and his good money, lally gagging with a lot of feemales.
No, thank you; none of it in HIS, if you please. Once only he had an
affair--a timid, little creature in a glove-cleaning establishment in
Sacramento, whom he had picked up, Heaven knew how. After his return
to his ranch, a correspondence had been maintained between the two,
Annixter taking the precaution to typewrite his letters, and never
affixing his signature, in an excess of prudence. He furthermore made
carbon copies of all his letters, filing them away in a compartment
of his safe. Ah, it would be a clever feemale who would get him into a
mess. Then, suddenly smitten with a panic terror that he had committed
himself, that he was involving himself too deeply, he had abruptly sent
the little woman about her business. It was his only love affair. After
that, he kept himself free. No petticoats should ever have a hold on
him. Sure not.

As Presley came up to the edge of the porch, pushing his bicycle in
front of him, Annixter excused himself for not getting up, alleging that
the cramps returned the moment he was off his back.

“What are you doing up this way?” he demanded.

“Oh, just having a look around,” answered Presley. “How’s the ranch?”

“Say,” observed the other, ignoring his question, “what’s this I hear
about Derrick giving his tenants the bounce, and working Los Muertos
himself--working ALL his land?”

Presley made a sharp movement of impatience with his free hand. “I’ve
heard nothing else myself since morning. I suppose it must be so.”

“Huh!” grunted Annixter, spitting out a prune stone. “You give Magnus
Derrick my compliments and tell him he’s a fool.” “What do you mean?”

“I suppose Derrick thinks he’s still running his mine, and that the same
principles will apply to getting grain out of the earth as to getting
gold. Oh, let him go on and see where he brings up. That’s right,
there’s your Western farmer,” he exclaimed contemptuously. “Get the
guts out of your land; work it to death; never give it a rest. Never
alternate your crop, and then when your soil is exhausted, sit down and
roar about hard times.”

“I suppose Magnus thinks the land has had rest enough these last two dry
seasons,” observed Presley. “He has raised no crop to speak of for two
years. The land has had a good rest.”

“Ah, yes, that sounds well,” Annixter contradicted, unwilling to be
convinced. “In a way, the land’s been rested, and then, again, in a way,
it hasn’t.”

But Presley, scenting an argument, refrained from answering, and
bethought himself of moving on.

“I’m going to leave my wheel here for a while, Buck,” he said, “if you
don’t mind. I’m going up to the spring, and the road is rough between
here and there.”

“Stop in for dinner on your way back,” said Annixter. “There’ll be a
venison steak. One of the boys got a deer over in the foothills last
week. Out of season, but never mind that. I can’t eat it. This stomach
of mine wouldn’t digest sweet oil to-day. Get here about six.”

“Well, maybe I will, thank you,” said Presley, moving off. “By the way,”
 he added, “I see your barn is about done.”

“You bet,” answered Annixter. “In about a fortnight now she’ll be all
ready.”

“It’s a big barn,” murmured Presley, glancing around the angle of the
house toward where the great structure stood.

“Guess we’ll have to have a dance there before we move the stock in,”
 observed Annixter. “That’s the custom all around here.”

Presley took himself off, but at the gate Annixter called after him, his
mouth full of prunes, “Say, take a look at that herd of sheep as you go
up. They are right off here to the east of the road, about half a mile
from here. I guess that’s the biggest lot of sheep YOU ever saw. You
might write a poem about ‘em. Lamb--ram; sheep graze--sunny days. Catch
on?”

Beyond Broderson Creek, as Presley advanced, tramping along on foot now,
the land opened out again into the same vast spaces of dull brown earth,
sprinkled with stubble, such as had been characteristic of Derrick’s
ranch. To the east the reach seemed infinite, flat, cheerless,
heat-ridden, unrolling like a gigantic scroll toward the faint shimmer
of the distant horizons, with here and there an isolated live-oak to
break the sombre monotony. But bordering the road to the westward, the
surface roughened and raised, clambering up to the higher ground, on the
crest of which the old Mission and its surrounding pear trees were now
plainly visible.

Just beyond the Mission, the road bent abruptly eastward, striking off
across the Seed ranch. But Presley left the road at this point, going
on across the open fields. There was no longer any trail. It was toward
three o’clock. The sun still spun, a silent, blazing disc, high in the
heavens, and tramping through the clods of uneven, broken plough was
fatiguing work. The slope of the lowest foothills begun, the surface of
the country became rolling, and, suddenly, as he topped a higher ridge,
Presley came upon the sheep.

Already he had passed the larger part of the herd--an intervening rise
of ground having hidden it from sight. Now, as he turned half way about,
looking down into the shallow hollow between him and the curve of the
creek, he saw them very plainly. The fringe of the herd was some two
hundred yards distant, but its farther side, in that illusive shimmer of
hot surface air, seemed miles away. The sheep were spread out roughly
in the shape of a figure eight, two larger herds connected by a smaller,
and were headed to the southward, moving slowly, grazing on the wheat
stubble as they proceeded. But the number seemed incalculable. Hundreds
upon hundreds upon hundreds of grey, rounded backs, all exactly alike,
huddled, close-packed, alive, hid the earth from sight. It was no longer
an aggregate of individuals. It was a mass--a compact, solid, slowly
moving mass, huge, without form, like a thick-pressed growth of
mushrooms, spreading out in all directions over the earth. From it there
arose a vague murmur, confused, inarticulate, like the sound of very
distant surf, while all the air in the vicinity was heavy with the warm,
ammoniacal odour of the thousands of crowding bodies.

All the colours of the scene were sombre--the brown of the earth, the
faded yellow of the dead stubble, the grey of the myriad of undulating
backs. Only on the far side of the herd, erect, motionless--a single
note of black, a speck, a dot--the shepherd stood, leaning upon an empty
water-trough, solitary, grave, impressive.

For a few moments, Presley stood, watching. Then, as he started to move
on, a curious thing occurred. At first, he thought he had heard some one
call his name. He paused, listening; there was no sound but the vague
noise of the moving sheep. Then, as this first impression passed, it
seemed to him that he had been beckoned to. Yet nothing stirred; except
for the lonely figure beyond the herd there was no one in sight. He
started on again, and in half a dozen steps found himself looking over
his shoulder. Without knowing why, he looked toward the shepherd; then
halted and looked a second time and a third. Had the shepherd called
to him? Presley knew that he had heard no voice. Brusquely, all his
attention seemed riveted upon this distant figure. He put one forearm
over his eyes, to keep off the sun, gazing across the intervening herd.
Surely, the shepherd had called him. But at the next instant he started,
uttering an exclamation under his breath. The far-away speck of black
became animated. Presley remarked a sweeping gesture. Though the man
had not beckoned to him before, there was no doubt that he was beckoning
now. Without any hesitation, and singularly interested in the incident,
Presley turned sharply aside and hurried on toward the shepherd,
skirting the herd, wondering all the time that he should answer the call
with so little question, so little hesitation.

But the shepherd came forward to meet Presley, followed by one of his
dogs. As the two men approached each other, Presley, closely studying
the other, began to wonder where he had seen him before. It must have
been a very long time ago, upon one of his previous visits to the ranch.
Certainly, however, there was something familiar in the shepherd’s face
and figure. When they came closer to each other, and Presley could see
him more distinctly, this sense of a previous acquaintance was increased
and sharpened.

The shepherd was a man of about thirty-five. He was very lean and spare.
His brown canvas overalls were thrust into laced boots. A cartridge belt
without any cartridges encircled his waist. A grey flannel shirt, open
at the throat, showed his breast, tanned and ruddy. He wore no hat. His
hair was very black and rather long. A pointed beard covered his chin,
growing straight and fine from the hollow cheeks. The absence of any
covering for his head was, no doubt, habitual with him, for his face was
as brown as an Indian’s--a ruddy brown quite different from Presley’s
dark olive. To Presley’s morbidly keen observation, the general
impression of the shepherd’s face was intensely interesting. It was
uncommon to an astonishing degree. Presley’s vivid imagination chose to
see in it the face of an ascetic, of a recluse, almost that of a young
seer. So must have appeared the half-inspired shepherds of the Hebraic
legends, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the wilderness,
beholders of visions, having their existence in a continual dream,
talkers with God, gifted with strange powers.

Suddenly, at some twenty paces distant from the approaching shepherd,
Presley stopped short, his eyes riveted upon the other.

“Vanamee!” he exclaimed.

The shepherd smiled and came forward, holding out his hands, saying, “I
thought it was you. When I saw you come over the hill, I called you.”

“But not with your voice,” returned Presley. “I knew that some one
wanted me. I felt it. I should have remembered that you could do that
kind of thing.”

“I have never known it to fail. It helps with the sheep.”

“With the sheep?”

“In a way. I can’t tell exactly how. We don’t understand these things
yet. There are times when, if I close my eyes and dig my fists into
my temples, I can hold the entire herd for perhaps a minute. Perhaps,
though, it’s imagination, who knows? But it’s good to see you again. How
long has it been since the last time? Two, three, nearly five years.”

It was more than that. It was six years since Presley and Vanamee had
met, and then it had been for a short time only, during one of the
shepherd’s periodical brief returns to that part of the country. During
a week he and Presley had been much together, for the two were devoted
friends. Then, as abruptly, as mysteriously as he had come, Vanamee
disappeared. Presley awoke one morning to find him gone. Thus, it had
been with Vanamee for a period of sixteen years. He lived his life in
the unknown, one could not tell where--in the desert, in the mountains,
throughout all the vast and vague South-west, solitary, strange. Three,
four, five years passed. The shepherd would be almost forgotten. Never
the most trivial scrap of information as to his whereabouts reached Los
Muertos. He had melted off into the surface-shimmer of the desert, into
the mirage; he sank below the horizons; he was swallowed up in the waste
of sand and sage. Then, without warning, he would reappear, coming in
from the wilderness, emerging from the unknown. No one knew him well. In
all that countryside he had but three friends, Presley, Magnus Derrick,
and the priest at the Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, Father Sarria.
He remained always a mystery, living a life half-real, half-legendary.
In all those years he did not seem to have grown older by a single day.
At this time, Presley knew him to be thirty-six years of age. But since
the first day the two had met, the shepherd’s face and bearing had, to
his eyes, remained the same. At this moment, Presley was looking into
the same face he had first seen many, many years ago. It was a face
stamped with an unspeakable sadness, a deathless grief, the permanent
imprint of a tragedy long past, but yet a living issue. Presley told
himself that it was impossible to look long into Vanamee’s eyes without
knowing that here was a man whose whole being had been at one time
shattered and riven to its lowest depths, whose life had suddenly
stopped at a certain moment of its development.

The two friends sat down upon the ledge of the watering-trough, their
eyes wandering incessantly toward the slow moving herd, grazing on the
wheat stubble, moving southward as they grazed.

“Where have you come from this time?” Presley had asked. “Where have you
kept yourself?”

The other swept the horizon to the south and east with a vague gesture.

“Off there, down to the south, very far off. So many places that I can’t
remember. I went the Long Trail this time; a long, long ways. Arizona,
The Mexicos, and, then, afterwards, Utah and Nevada, following the
horizon, travelling at hazard. Into Arizona first, going in by Monument
Pass, and then on to the south, through the country of the Navajos, down
by the Aga Thia Needle--a great blade of red rock jutting from out the
desert, like a knife thrust. Then on and on through The Mexicos, all
through the Southwest, then back again in a great circle by Chihuahua
and Aldama to Laredo, to Torreon, and Albuquerque. From there across
the Uncompahgre plateau into the Uintah country; then at last due west
through Nevada to California and to the valley of the San Joaquin.” His
voice lapsed to a monotone, his eyes becoming fixed; he continued to
speak as though half awake, his thoughts elsewhere, seeing again in the
eye of his mind the reach of desert and red hill, the purple mountain,
the level stretch of alkali, leper white, all the savage, gorgeous
desolation of the Long Trail.

He ignored Presley for the moment, but, on the other hand, Presley
himself gave him but half his attention. The return of Vanamee had
stimulated the poet’s memory. He recalled the incidents of Vanamee’s
life, reviewing again that terrible drama which had uprooted his soul,
which had driven him forth a wanderer, a shunner of men, a sojourner in
waste places. He was, strangely enough, a college graduate and a man of
wide reading and great intelligence, but he had chosen to lead his own
life, which was that of a recluse.

Of a temperament similar in many ways to Presley’s, there were
capabilities in Vanamee that were not ordinarily to be found in the
rank and file of men. Living close to nature, a poet by instinct, where
Presley was but a poet by training, there developed in him a great
sensitiveness to beauty and an almost abnormal capacity for great
happiness and great sorrow; he felt things intensely, deeply. He never
forgot. It was when he was eighteen or nineteen, at the formative and
most impressionable period of his life, that he had met Angele Varian.
Presley barely remembered her as a girl of sixteen, beautiful almost
beyond expression, who lived with an aged aunt on the Seed ranch back of
the Mission. At this moment he was trying to recall how she looked, with
her hair of gold hanging in two straight plaits on either side of her
face, making three-cornered her round, white forehead; her wonderful
eyes, violet blue, heavy lidded, with their astonishing upward slant
toward the temples, the slant that gave a strange, oriental cast to her
face, perplexing, enchanting. He remembered the Egyptian fulness of the
lips, the strange balancing movement of her head upon her slender neck,
the same movement that one sees in a snake at poise. Never had he seen a
girl more radiantly beautiful, never a beauty so strange, so troublous,
so out of all accepted standards. It was small wonder that Vanamee had
loved her, and less wonder, still, that his love had been so intense, so
passionate, so part of himself. Angele had loved him with a love no
less than his own. It was one of those legendary passions that sometimes
occur, idyllic, untouched by civilisation, spontaneous as the growth of
trees, natural as dew-fall, strong as the firm-seated mountains.

At the time of his meeting with Angele, Vanamee was living on the Los
Muertos ranch. It was there he had chosen to spend one of his college
vacations. But he preferred to pass it in out-of-door work, sometimes
herding cattle, sometimes pitching hay, sometimes working with pick
and dynamite-stick on the ditches in the fourth division of the ranch,
riding the range, mending breaks in the wire fences, making himself
generally useful. College bred though he was, the life pleased him. He
was, as he desired, close to nature, living the full measure of life, a
worker among workers, taking enjoyment in simple pleasures, healthy in
mind and body. He believed in an existence passed in this fashion in the
country, working hard, eating full, drinking deep, sleeping dreamlessly.

But every night, after supper, he saddled his pony and rode over to the
garden of the old Mission. The ‘dobe dividing wall on that side, which
once had separated the Mission garden and the Seed ranch, had long since
crumbled away, and the boundary between the two pieces of ground was
marked only by a line of venerable pear trees. Here, under these trees,
he found Angele awaiting him, and there the two would sit through the
hot, still evening, their arms about each other, watching the moon
rise over the foothills, listening to the trickle of the water in the
moss-encrusted fountain in the garden, and the steady croak of the great
frogs that lived in the damp north corner of the enclosure. Through all
one summer the enchantment of that new-found, wonderful love, pure and
untainted, filled the lives of each of them with its sweetness. The
summer passed, the harvest moon came and went. The nights were very
dark. In the deep shade of the pear trees they could no longer see each
other. When they met at the rendezvous, Vanamee found her only with his
groping hands. They did not speak, mere words were useless between them.
Silently as his reaching hands touched her warm body, he took her in his
arms, searching for her lips with his. Then one night the tragedy had
suddenly leaped from out the shadow with the abruptness of an explosion.

It was impossible afterwards to reconstruct the manner of its
occurrence. To Angele’s mind--what there was left of it--the matter
always remained a hideous blur, a blot, a vague, terrible confusion.
No doubt they two had been watched; the plan succeeded too well for any
other supposition. One moonless night, Angele, arriving under the
black shadow of the pear trees a little earlier than usual, found the
apparently familiar figure waiting for her. All unsuspecting she gave
herself to the embrace of a strange pair of arms, and Vanamee arriving
but a score of moments later, stumbled over her prostrate body, inert
and unconscious, in the shadow of the overspiring trees.

Who was the Other? Angele was carried to her home on the Seed ranch,
delirious, all but raving, and Vanamee, with knife and revolver ready,
ranged the country-side like a wolf. He was not alone. The whole county
rose, raging, horror-struck. Posse after posse was formed, sent out, and
returned, without so much as a clue. Upon no one could even the shadow
of suspicion be thrown. The Other had withdrawn into an impenetrable
mystery. There he remained. He never was found; he never was so much
as heard of. A legend arose about him, this prowler of the night, this
strange, fearful figure, with an unseen face, swooping in there from
out the darkness, come and gone in an instant, but leaving behind him a
track of terror and death and rage and undying grief. Within the year,
in giving birth to the child, Angele had died.

The little babe was taken by Angele’s parents, and Angele was buried
in the Mission garden near to the aged, grey sun dial. Vanamee stood by
during the ceremony, but half conscious of what was going forward. At
the last moment he had stepped forward, looked long into the dead face
framed in its plaits of gold hair, the hair that made three-cornered
the round, white forehead; looked again at the closed eyes, with their
perplexing upward slant toward the temples, oriental, bizarre; at the
lips with their Egyptian fulness; at the sweet, slender neck; the long,
slim hands; then abruptly turned about. The last clods were filling the
grave at a time when he was already far away, his horse’s head turned
toward the desert.

For two years no syllable was heard of him. It was believed that he had
killed himself. But Vanamee had no thought of that. For two years he
wandered through Arizona, living in the desert, in the wilderness, a
recluse, a nomad, an ascetic. But, doubtless, all his heart was in the
little coffin in the Mission garden. Once in so often he must come
back thither. One day he was seen again in the San Joaquin. The priest,
Father Sarria, returning from a visit to the sick at Bonneville, met him
on the Upper Road. Eighteen years had passed since Angele had died, but
the thread of Vanamee’s life had been snapped. Nothing remained now
but the tangled ends. He had never forgotten. The long, dull ache, the
poignant grief had now become a part of him. Presley knew this to be so.

While Presley had been reflecting upon all this, Vanamee had continued
to speak. Presley, however, had not been wholly inattentive. While
his memory was busy reconstructing the details of the drama of the
shepherd’s life, another part of his brain had been swiftly registering
picture after picture that Vanamee’s monotonous flow of words struck
off, as it were, upon a steadily moving scroll. The music of the
unfamiliar names that occurred in his recital was a stimulant to the
poet’s imagination. Presley had the poet’s passion for expressive,
sonorous names. As these came and went in Vanamee’s monotonous
undertones, like little notes of harmony in a musical progression, he
listened, delighted with their resonance.--Navajo, Quijotoa, Uintah,
Sonora, Laredo, Uncompahgre--to him they were so many symbols. It was
his West that passed, unrolling there before the eye of his mind:
the open, heat-scourged round of desert; the mesa, like a vast altar,
shimmering purple in the royal sunset; the still, gigantic mountains,
heaving into the sky from out the canyons; the strenuous, fierce life
of isolated towns, lost and forgotten, down there, far off, below the
horizon. Abruptly his great poem, his Song of the West, leaped up again
in his imagination. For the moment, he all but held it. It was there,
close at hand. In another instant he would grasp it.

“Yes, yes,” he exclaimed, “I can see it all. The desert, the mountains,
all wild, primordial, untamed. How I should have loved to have been with
you. Then, perhaps, I should have got hold of my idea.”

“Your idea?”

“The great poem of the West. It’s that which I want to write. Oh, to
put it all into hexameters; strike the great iron note; sing the vast,
terrible song; the song of the People; the forerunners of empire!”

Vanamee understood him perfectly. He nodded gravely.

“Yes, it is there. It is Life, the primitive, simple, direct Life,
passionate, tumultuous. Yes, there is an epic there.”

Presley caught at the word. It had never before occurred to him.

“Epic, yes, that’s it. It is the epic I’m searching for. And HOW I
search for it. You don’t know. It is sometimes almost an agony. Often
and often I can feel it right there, there, at my finger-tips, but I
never quite catch it. It always eludes me. I was born too late. Ah, to
get back to that first clear-eyed view of things, to see as Homer saw,
as Beowulf saw, as the Nibelungen poets saw. The life is here, the same
as then; the Poem is here; my West is here; the primeval, epic life
is here, here under our hands, in the desert, in the mountain, on the
ranch, all over here, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe. It is the man who is
lacking, the poet; we have been educated away from it all. We are out of
touch. We are out of tune.”

Vanamee heard him to the end, his grave, sad face thoughtful and
attentive. Then he rose.

“I am going over to the Mission,” he said, “to see Father Sarria. I have
not seen him yet.”

“How about the sheep?”

“The dogs will keep them in hand, and I shall not be gone long. Besides
that, I have a boy here to help. He is over yonder on the other side of
the herd. We can’t see him from here.”

Presley wondered at the heedlessness of leaving the sheep so slightly
guarded, but made no comment, and the two started off across the field
in the direction of the Mission church.

“Well, yes, it is there--your epic,” observed Vanamee, as they went
along. “But why write? Why not LIVE in it? Steep oneself in the heat of
the desert, the glory of the sunset, the blue haze of the mesa and the
canyon.”

“As you have done, for instance?”

Vanamee nodded.

“No, I could not do that,” declared Presley; “I want to go back, but not
so far as you. I feel that I must compromise. I must find expression.
I could not lose myself like that in your desert. When its vastness
overwhelmed me, or its beauty dazzled me, or its loneliness weighed down
upon me, I should have to record my impressions. Otherwise, I should
suffocate.”

“Each to his own life,” observed Vanamee.

The Mission of San Juan, built of brown ‘dobe blocks, covered with
yellow plaster, that at many points had dropped away from the walls,
stood on the crest of a low rise of the ground, facing to the south. A
covered colonnade, paved with round, worn bricks, from whence opened the
doors of the abandoned cells, once used by the monks, adjoined it on the
left. The roof was of tiled half-cylinders, split longitudinally, and
laid in alternate rows, now concave, now convex. The main body of the
church itself was at right angles to the colonnade, and at the point of
intersection rose the belfry tower, an ancient campanile, where swung
the three cracked bells, the gift of the King of Spain. Beyond the
church was the Mission garden and the graveyard that overlooked the Seed
ranch in a little hollow beyond.

Presley and Vanamee went down the long colonnade to the last door next
the belfry tower, and Vanamee pulled the leather thong that hung from
a hole in the door, setting a little bell jangling somewhere in the
interior. The place, but for this noise, was shrouded in a Sunday
stillness, an absolute repose. Only at intervals, one heard the trickle
of the unseen fountain, and the liquid cooing of doves in the garden.

Father Sarria opened the door. He was a small man, somewhat stout, with
a smooth and shiny face. He wore a frock coat that was rather dirty,
slippers, and an old yachting cap of blue cloth, with a broken leather
vizor. He was smoking a cheap cigar, very fat and black.

But instantly he recognised Vanamee. His face went all alight with
pleasure and astonishment. It seemed as if he would never have finished
shaking both his hands; and, as it was, he released but one of them,
patting him affectionately on the shoulder with the other. He was
voluble in his welcome, talking partly in Spanish, partly in English. So
he had come back again, this great fellow, tanned as an Indian, lean as
an Indian, with an Indian’s long, black hair. But he had not changed,
not in the very least. His beard had not grown an inch. Aha! The rascal,
never to give warning, to drop down, as it were, from out the sky. Such
a hermit! To live in the desert! A veritable Saint Jerome. Did a lion
feed him down there in Arizona, or was it a raven, like Elijah? The good
God had not fattened him, at any rate, and, apropos, he was just about
to dine himself. He had made a salad from his own lettuce. The two would
dine with him, eh? For this, my son, that was lost is found again.

But Presley excused himself. Instinctively, he felt that Sarria and
Vanamee wanted to talk of things concerning which he was an outsider. It
was not at all unlikely that Vanamee would spend half the night before
the high altar in the church.

He took himself away, his mind still busy with Vanamee’s extraordinary
life and character. But, as he descended the hill, he was startled by
a prolonged and raucous cry, discordant, very harsh, thrice repeated at
exact intervals, and, looking up, he saw one of Father Sarria’s peacocks
balancing himself upon the topmost wire of the fence, his long tail
trailing, his neck outstretched, filling the air with his stupid outcry,
for no reason than the desire to make a noise.

About an hour later, toward four in the afternoon, Presley reached the
spring at the head of the little canyon in the northeast corner of the
Quien Sabe ranch, the point toward which he had been travelling since
early in the forenoon. The place was not without its charm. Innumerable
live-oaks overhung the canyon, and Broderson Creek--there a mere
rivulet, running down from the spring--gave a certain coolness to the
air. It was one of the few spots thereabouts that had survived the
dry season of the last year. Nearly all the other springs had dried
completely, while Mission Creek on Derrick’s ranch was nothing better
than a dusty cutting in the ground, filled with brittle, concave flakes
of dried and sun-cracked mud.

Presley climbed to the summit of one of the hills--the highest--that
rose out of the canyon, from the crest of which he could see for thirty,
fifty, sixty miles down the valley, and, filling his pipe, smoked lazily
for upwards of an hour, his head empty of thought, allowing himself to
succumb to a pleasant, gentle inanition, a little drowsy comfortable in
his place, prone upon the ground, warmed just enough by such sunlight
as filtered through the live-oaks, soothed by the good tobacco and the
prolonged murmur of the spring and creek. By degrees, the sense of his
own personality became blunted, the little wheels and cogs of thought
moved slower and slower; consciousness dwindled to a point, the animal
in him stretched itself, purring. A delightful numbness invaded his mind
and his body. He was not asleep, he was not awake, stupefied merely,
lapsing back to the state of the faun, the satyr.

After a while, rousing himself a little, he shifted his position and,
drawing from the pocket of his shooting coat his little tree-calf
edition of the Odyssey, read far into the twenty-first book, where,
after the failure of all the suitors to bend Ulysses’s bow, it is
finally put, with mockery, into his own hands. Abruptly the drama of
the story roused him from all his languor. In an instant he was the
poet again, his nerves tingling, alive to every sensation, responsive
to every impression. The desire of creation, of composition, grew big
within him. Hexameters of his own clamoured, tumultuous, in his brain.
Not for a long time had he “felt his poem,” as he called this sensation,
so poignantly. For an instant he told himself that he actually held it.

It was, no doubt, Vanamee’s talk that had stimulated him to this
point. The story of the Long Trail, with its desert and mountain, its
cliff-dwellers, its Aztec ruins, its colour, movement, and romance,
filled his mind with picture after picture. The epic defiled before his
vision like a pageant. Once more, he shot a glance about him, as if in
search of the inspiration, and this time he all but found it. He rose to
his feet, looking out and off below him.

As from a pinnacle, Presley, from where he now stood, dominated the
entire country. The sun had begun to set, everything in the range of his
vision was overlaid with a sheen of gold.

First, close at hand, it was the Seed ranch, carpeting the little hollow
behind the Mission with a spread of greens, some dark, some vivid,
some pale almost to yellowness. Beyond that was the Mission itself,
its venerable campanile, in whose arches hung the Spanish King’s bells,
already glowing ruddy in the sunset. Farther on, he could make out
Annixter’s ranch house, marked by the skeleton-like tower of the
artesian well, and, a little farther to the east, the huddled, tiled
roofs of Guadalajara. Far to the west and north, he saw Bonneville very
plain, and the dome of the courthouse, a purple silhouette against the
glare of the sky. Other points detached themselves, swimming in a golden
mist, projecting blue shadows far before them; the mammoth live-oak by
Hooven’s, towering superb and magnificent; the line of eucalyptus trees,
behind which he knew was the Los Muertos ranch house--his home; the
watering-tank, the great iron-hooped tower of wood that stood at the
joining of the Lower Road and the County Road; the long wind-break of
poplar trees and the white walls of Caraher’s saloon on the County Road.

But all this seemed to be only foreground, a mere array of
accessories--a mass of irrelevant details. Beyond Annixter’s, beyond
Guadalajara, beyond the Lower Road, beyond Broderson Creek, on to the
south and west, infinite, illimitable, stretching out there under the
sheen of the sunset forever and forever, flat, vast, unbroken, a huge
scroll, unrolling between the horizons, spread the great stretches of
the ranch of Los Muertos, bare of crops, shaved close in the recent
harvest. Near at hand were hills, but on that far southern horizon only
the curve of the great earth itself checked the view. Adjoining Los
Muertos, and widening to the west, opened the Broderson ranch. The
Osterman ranch to the northwest carried on the great sweep of landscape;
ranch after ranch. Then, as the imagination itself expanded under the
stimulus of that measureless range of vision, even those great ranches
resolved themselves into mere foreground, mere accessories, irrelevant
details. Beyond the fine line of the horizons, over the curve of the
globe, the shoulder of the earth, were other ranches, equally vast, and
beyond these, others, and beyond these, still others, the immensities
multiplying, lengthening out vaster and vaster. The whole gigantic
sweep of the San Joaquin expanded, Titanic, before the eye of the mind,
flagellated with heat, quivering and shimmering under the sun’s red eye.
At long intervals, a faint breath of wind out of the south passed slowly
over the levels of the baked and empty earth, accentuating the silence,
marking off the stillness. It seemed to exhale from the land itself, a
prolonged sigh as of deep fatigue. It was the season after the harvest,
and the great earth, the mother, after its period of reproduction, its
pains of labour, delivered of the fruit of its loins, slept the sleep
of exhaustion, the infinite repose of the colossus, benignant, eternal,
strong, the nourisher of nations, the feeder of an entire world. Ha!
there it was, his epic, his inspiration, his West, his thundering
progression of hexameters. A sudden uplift, a sense of exhilaration, of
physical exaltation appeared abruptly to sweep Presley from his feet. As
from a point high above the world, he seemed to dominate a universe, a
whole order of things. He was dizzied, stunned, stupefied, his morbid
supersensitive mind reeling, drunk with the intoxication of mere
immensity. Stupendous ideas for which there were no names drove headlong
through his brain. Terrible, formless shapes, vague figures, gigantic,
monstrous, distorted, whirled at a gallop through his imagination.

He started homeward, still in his dream, descending from the hill,
emerging from the canyon, and took the short cut straight across the
Quien Sabe ranch, leaving Guadalajara far to his left. He tramped
steadily on through the wheat stubble, walking fast, his head in a
whirl.

Never had he so nearly grasped his inspiration as at that moment on the
hilltop. Even now, though the sunset was fading, though the wide reach
of valley was shut from sight, it still kept him company. Now the
details came thronging back--the component parts of his poem, the signs
and symbols of the West. It was there, close at hand, he had been in
touch with it all day. It was in the centenarian’s vividly coloured
reminiscences--De La Cuesta, holding his grant from the Spanish crown,
with his power of life and death; the romance of his marriage; the white
horse with its pillion of red leather and silver bridle mountings; the
bull-fights in the Plaza; the gifts of gold dust, and horses and tallow.
It was in Vanamee’s strange history, the tragedy of his love; Angele
Varian, with her marvellous loveliness; the Egyptian fulness of her
lips, the perplexing upward slant of her violet eyes, bizarre, oriental;
her white forehead made three cornered by her plaits of gold hair; the
mystery of the Other; her death at the moment of her child’s birth.
It was in Vanamee’s flight into the wilderness; the story of the Long
Trail, the sunsets behind the altar-like mesas, the baking desolation of
the deserts; the strenuous, fierce life of forgotten towns, down there,
far off, lost below the horizons of the southwest; the sonorous music of
unfamiliar names--Quijotoa, Uintah, Sonora, Laredo, Uncompahgre. It
was in the Mission, with its cracked bells, its decaying walls, its
venerable sun dial, its fountain and old garden, and in the Mission
Fathers themselves, the priests, the padres, planting the first wheat
and oil and wine to produce the elements of the Sacrament--a trinity of
great industries, taking their rise in a religious rite.

Abruptly, as if in confirmation, Presley heard the sound of a bell from
the direction of the Mission itself. It was the de Profundis, a note
of the Old World; of the ancient regime, an echo from the hillsides
of mediaeval Europe, sounding there in this new land, unfamiliar and
strange at this end-of-the-century time.

By now, however, it was dark. Presley hurried forward. He came to the
line fence of the Quien Sabe ranch. Everything was very still. The stars
were all out. There was not a sound other than the de Profundis, still
sounding from very far away. At long intervals the great earth sighed
dreamily in its sleep. All about, the feeling of absolute peace
and quiet and security and untroubled happiness and content seemed
descending from the stars like a benediction. The beauty of his poem,
its idyl, came to him like a caress; that alone had been lacking. It was
that, perhaps, which had left it hitherto incomplete. At last he was
to grasp his song in all its entity. But suddenly there was an
interruption. Presley had climbed the fence at the limit of the
Quien Sabe ranch. Beyond was Los Muertos, but between the two ran the
railroad. He had only time to jump back upon the embankment when, with
a quivering of all the earth, a locomotive, single, unattached, shot
by him with a roar, filling the air with the reek of hot oil, vomiting
smoke and sparks; its enormous eye, cyclopean, red, throwing a glare far
in advance, shooting by in a sudden crash of confused thunder; filling
the night with the terrific clamour of its iron hoofs.

Abruptly Presley remembered. This must be the crack passenger engine
of which Dyke had told him, the one delayed by the accident on the
Bakersfield division and for whose passage the track had been opened all
the way to Fresno.

Before Presley could recover from the shock of the irruption, while the
earth was still vibrating, the rails still humming, the engine was far
away, flinging the echo of its frantic gallop over all the valley. For a
brief instant it roared with a hollow diapason on the Long Trestle over
Broderson Creek, then plunged into a cutting farther on, the quivering
glare of its fires losing itself in the night, its thunder abruptly
diminishing to a subdued and distant humming. All at once this ceased.
The engine was gone.

But the moment the noise of the engine lapsed, Presley--about to start
forward again--was conscious of a confusion of lamentable sounds that
rose into the night from out the engine’s wake. Prolonged cries of
agony, sobbing wails of infinite pain, heart-rending, pitiful.

The noises came from a little distance. He ran down the track, crossing
the culvert, over the irrigating ditch, and at the head of the long
reach of track--between the culvert and the Long Trestle--paused
abruptly, held immovable at the sight of the ground and rails all about
him.

In some way, the herd of sheep--Vanamee’s herd--had found a breach in
the wire fence by the right of way and had wandered out upon the tracks.
A band had been crossing just at the moment of the engine’s passage. The
pathos of it was beyond expression. It was a slaughter, a massacre of
innocents. The iron monster had charged full into the midst, merciless,
inexorable. To the right and left, all the width of the right of way,
the little bodies had been flung; backs were snapped against the fence
posts; brains knocked out. Caught in the barbs of the wire, wedged in,
the bodies hung suspended. Under foot it was terrible. The black blood,
winking in the starlight, seeped down into the clinkers between the ties
with a prolonged sucking murmur.

Presley turned away, horror-struck, sick at heart, overwhelmed with a
quick burst of irresistible compassion for this brute agony he could not
relieve. The sweetness was gone from the evening, the sense of peace,
of security, and placid contentment was stricken from the landscape. The
hideous ruin in the engine’s path drove all thought of his poem from his
mind. The inspiration vanished like a mist. The de Profundis had ceased
to ring.

He hurried on across the Los Muertos ranch, almost running, even putting
his hands over his ears till he was out of hearing distance of that
all but human distress. Not until he was beyond ear-shot did he pause,
looking back, listening. The night had shut down again. For a moment the
silence was profound, unbroken.

Then, faint and prolonged, across the levels of the ranch, he heard the
engine whistling for Bonneville. Again and again, at rapid intervals in
its flying course, it whistled for road crossings, for sharp curves, for
trestles; ominous notes, hoarse, bellowing, ringing with the accents of
menace and defiance; and abruptly Presley saw again, in his imagination,
the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single
eye, cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now
as the symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible, flinging the echo of
its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and
destruction in its path; the leviathan, with tentacles of steel
clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron-hearted Power, the
monster, the Colossus, the Octopus.



CHAPTER II


On the following morning, Harran Derrick was up and about by a little
after six o’clock, and a quarter of an hour later had breakfast in the
kitchen of the ranch house, preferring not to wait until the Chinese
cook laid the table in the regular dining-room. He scented a hard
day’s work ahead of him, and was anxious to be at it betimes. He was
practically the manager of Los Muertos, and, with the aid of his foreman
and three division superintendents, carried forward nearly the entire
direction of the ranch, occupying himself with the details of his
father’s plans, executing his orders, signing contracts, paying bills,
and keeping the books.

For the last three weeks little had been done. The crop--such as
it was--had been harvested and sold, and there had been a general
relaxation of activity for upwards of a month. Now, however, the fall
was coming on, the dry season was about at its end; any time after the
twentieth of the month the first rains might be expected, softening the
ground, putting it into condition for the plough. Two days before this,
Harran had notified his superintendents on Three and Four to send in
such grain as they had reserved for seed. On Two the wheat had not even
shown itself above the ground, while on One, the Home ranch, which was
under his own immediate supervision, the seed had already been graded
and selected.

It was Harran’s intention to commence blue-stoning his seed that day, a
delicate and important process which prevented rust and smut appearing
in the crop when the wheat should come up. But, furthermore, he wanted
to find time to go to Guadalajara to meet the Governor on the morning
train. His day promised to be busy.

But as Harran was finishing his last cup of coffee, Phelps, the foreman
on the Home ranch, who also looked after the storage barns where the
seed was kept, presented himself, cap in hand, on the back porch by the
kitchen door.

“I thought I’d speak to you about the seed from Four, sir,” he said.
“That hasn’t been brought in yet.”

Harran nodded.

“I’ll see about it. You’ve got all the blue-stone you want, have you,
Phelps?” and without waiting for an answer he added, “Tell the stableman
I shall want the team about nine o’clock to go to Guadalajara. Put them
in the buggy. The bays, you understand.” When the other had gone,
Harran drank off the rest of his coffee, and, rising, passed through the
dining-room and across a stone-paved hallway with a glass roof into the
office just beyond.

The office was the nerve-centre of the entire ten thousand acres of
Los Muertos, but its appearance and furnishings were not in the least
suggestive of a farm. It was divided at about its middle by a wire
railing, painted green and gold, and behind this railing were the
high desks where the books were kept, the safe, the letter-press and
letter-files, and Harran’s typewriting machine. A great map of Los
Muertos with every water-course, depression, and elevation, together
with indications of the varying depths of the clays and loams in the
soil, accurately plotted, hung against the wall between the windows,
while near at hand by the safe was the telephone.

But, no doubt, the most significant object in the office was the
ticker. This was an innovation in the San Joaquin, an idea of shrewd,
quick-witted young Annixter, which Harran and Magnus Derrick had been
quick to adopt, and after them Broderson and Osterman, and many others
of the wheat growers of the county. The offices of the ranches were
thus connected by wire with San Francisco, and through that city with
Minneapolis, Duluth, Chicago, New York, and at last, and most important
of all, with Liverpool. Fluctuations in the price of the world’s crop
during and after the harvest thrilled straight to the office of Los
Muertos, to that of the Quien Sabe, to Osterman’s, and to Broderson’s.
During a flurry in the Chicago wheat pits in the August of that year,
which had affected even the San Francisco market, Harran and Magnus had
sat up nearly half of one night watching the strip of white tape jerking
unsteadily from the reel. At such moments they no longer felt their
individuality. The ranch became merely the part of an enormous whole,
a unit in the vast agglomeration of wheat land the whole world round,
feeling the effects of causes thousands of miles distant--a drought on
the prairies of Dakota, a rain on the plains of India, a frost on the
Russian steppes, a hot wind on the llanos of the Argentine.

Harran crossed over to the telephone and rang six bells, the call for
the division house on Four. It was the most distant, the most isolated
point on all the ranch, situated at its far southeastern extremity,
where few people ever went, close to the line fence, a dot, a speck,
lost in the immensity of the open country. By the road it was eleven
miles distant from the office, and by the trail to Hooven’s and the
Lower Road all of nine.

“How about that seed?” demanded Harran when he had got Cutter on the
line.

The other made excuses for an unavoidable delay, and was adding that he
was on the point of starting out, when Harran cut in with:

“You had better go the trail. It will save a little time and I am in
a hurry. Put your sacks on the horses’ backs. And, Cutter, if you see
Hooven when you go by his place, tell him I want him, and, by the way,
take a look at the end of the irrigating ditch when you get to it. See
how they are getting along there and if Billy wants anything. Tell him
we are expecting those new scoops down to-morrow or next day and to get
along with what he has until then.... How’s everything on Four? ...
All right, then. Give your seed to Phelps when you get here if I am not
about. I am going to Guadalajara to meet the Governor. He’s coming down
to-day. And that makes me think; we lost the case, you know. I had a
letter from the Governor yesterday.... Yes, hard luck. S. Behrman did
us up. Well, good-bye, and don’t lose any time with that seed. I want to
blue-stone to-day.”

After telephoning Cutter, Harran put on his hat, went over to the barns,
and found Phelps. Phelps had already cleaned out the vat which was to
contain the solution of blue-stone, and was now at work regrading the
seed. Against the wall behind him ranged the row of sacks. Harran cut
the fastenings of these and examined the contents carefully, taking
handfuls of wheat from each and allowing it to run through his fingers,
or nipping the grains between his nails, testing their hardness.

The seed was all of the white varieties of wheat and of a very high
grade, the berries hard and heavy, rigid and swollen with starch.

“If it was all like that, sir, hey?” observed Phelps.

Harran put his chin in the air.

“Bread would be as good as cake, then,” he answered, going from sack
to sack, inspecting the contents and consulting the tags affixed to the
mouths.

“Hello,” he remarked, “here’s a red wheat. Where did this come from?”

“That’s that red Clawson we sowed to the piece on Four, north the
Mission Creek, just to see how it would do here. We didn’t get a very
good catch.”

“We can’t do better than to stay by White Sonora and Propo,” remarked
Harran. “We’ve got our best results with that, and European millers like
it to mix with the Eastern wheats that have more gluten than ours. That
is, if we have any wheat at all next year.”

A feeling of discouragement for the moment bore down heavily upon him.
At intervals this came to him and for the moment it was overpowering.
The idea of “what’s-the-use” was upon occasion a veritable oppression.
Everything seemed to combine to lower the price of wheat. The extension
of wheat areas always exceeded increase of population; competition was
growing fiercer every year. The farmer’s profits were the object of
attack from a score of different quarters. It was a flock of vultures
descending upon a common prey--the commission merchant, the elevator
combine, the mixing-house ring, the banks, the warehouse men, the
labouring man, and, above all, the railroad. Steadily the Liverpool
buyers cut and cut and cut. Everything, every element of the world’s
markets, tended to force down the price to the lowest possible figure at
which it could be profitably farmed. Now it was down to eighty-seven.
It was at that figure the crop had sold that year; and to think that the
Governor had seen wheat at two dollars and five cents in the year of the
Turko-Russian War!

He turned back to the house after giving Phelps final directions,
gloomy, disheartened, his hands deep in his pockets, wondering what was
to be the outcome. So narrow had the margin of profit shrunk that a
dry season meant bankruptcy to the smaller farmers throughout all the
valley. He knew very well how widespread had been the distress the last
two years. With their own tenants on Los Muertos, affairs had reached
the stage of desperation. Derrick had practically been obliged to
“carry” Hooven and some of the others. The Governor himself had made
almost nothing during the last season; a third year like the last, with
the price steadily sagging, meant nothing else but ruin.

But here he checked himself. Two consecutive dry seasons in California
were almost unprecedented; a third would be beyond belief, and the
complete rest for nearly all the land was a compensation. They had
made no money, that was true; but they had lost none. Thank God, the
homestead was free of mortgage; one good season would more than make up
the difference.

He was in a better mood by the time he reached the driveway that led up
to the ranch house, and as he raised his eyes toward the house itself,
he could not but feel that the sight of his home was cheering. The ranch
house was set in a great grove of eucalyptus, oak, and cypress, enormous
trees growing from out a lawn that was as green, as fresh, and as
well-groomed as any in a garden in the city. This lawn flanked all one
side of the house, and it was on this side that the family elected to
spend most of its time. The other side, looking out upon the Home ranch
toward Bonneville and the railroad, was but little used. A deep porch
ran the whole length of the house here, and in the lower branches of a
live-oak near the steps Harran had built a little summer house for his
mother. To the left of the ranch house itself, toward the County Road,
was the bunk-house and kitchen for some of the hands. From the steps of
the porch the view to the southward expanded to infinity. There was not
so much as a twig to obstruct the view. In one leap the eye reached
the fine, delicate line where earth and sky met, miles away. The flat
monotony of the land, clean of fencing, was broken by one spot only, the
roof of the Division Superintendent’s house on Three--a mere speck, just
darker than the ground. Cutter’s house on Four was not even in sight.
That was below the horizon.

As Harran came up he saw his mother at breakfast. The table had been set
on the porch and Mrs. Derrick, stirring her coffee with one hand, held
open with the other the pages of Walter Pater’s “Marius.” At her feet,
Princess Nathalie, the white Angora cat, sleek, over-fed, self-centred,
sat on her haunches, industriously licking at the white fur of her
breast, while near at hand, by the railing of the porch, Presley
pottered with a new bicycle lamp, filling it with oil, adjusting the
wicks.

Harran kissed his mother and sat down in a wicker chair on the porch,
removing his hat, running his fingers through his yellow hair.

Magnus Derrick’s wife looked hardly old enough to be the mother of two
such big fellows as Harran and Lyman Derrick. She was not far into the
fifties, and her brown hair still retained much of its brightness. She
could yet be called pretty. Her eyes were large and easily assumed a
look of inquiry and innocence, such as one might expect to see in a
young girl. By disposition she was retiring; she easily obliterated
herself. She was not made for the harshness of the world, and yet she
had known these harshnesses in her younger days. Magnus had married her
when she was twenty-one years old, at a time when she was a graduate
of some years’ standing from the State Normal School and was teaching
literature, music, and penmanship in a seminary in the town of
Marysville. She overworked herself here continually, loathing the strain
of teaching, yet clinging to it with a tenacity born of the knowledge
that it was her only means of support. Both her parents were dead; she
was dependent upon herself. Her one ambition was to see Italy and
the Bay of Naples. The “Marble Faun,” Raphael’s “Madonnas” and “Il
Trovatore” were her beau ideals of literature and art. She dreamed of
Italy, Rome, Naples, and the world’s great “art-centres.” There was no
doubt that her affair with Magnus had been a love-match, but Annie Payne
would have loved any man who would have taken her out of the droning,
heart-breaking routine of the class and music room. She had followed his
fortunes unquestioningly. First at Sacramento, during the turmoil of
his political career, later on at Placerville in El Dorado County, after
Derrick had interested himself in the Corpus Christi group of mines, and
finally at Los Muertos, where, after selling out his fourth interest
in Corpus Christi, he had turned rancher and had “come in” on the new
tracts of wheat land just thrown open by the railroad. She had lived
here now for nearly ten years. But never for one moment since the time
her glance first lost itself in the unbroken immensity of the ranches
had she known a moment’s content. Continually there came into her
pretty, wide-open eyes--the eyes of a young doe--a look of uneasiness,
of distrust, and aversion. Los Muertos frightened her. She remembered
the days of her young girlhood passed on a farm in eastern Ohio--five
hundred acres, neatly partitioned into the water lot, the cow pasture,
the corn lot, the barley field, and wheat farm; cosey, comfortable,
home-like; where the farmers loved their land, caressing it, coaxing it,
nourishing it as though it were a thing almost conscious; where the seed
was sown by hand, and a single two-horse plough was sufficient for the
entire farm; where the scythe sufficed to cut the harvest and the grain
was thrashed with flails.

But this new order of things--a ranch bounded only by the horizons,
where, as far as one could see, to the north, to the east, to the south
and to the west, was all one holding, a principality ruled with iron and
steam, bullied into a yield of three hundred and fifty thousand bushels,
where even when the land was resting, unploughed, unharrowed, and
unsown, the wheat came up--troubled her, and even at times filled her
with an undefinable terror. To her mind there was something inordinate
about it all; something almost unnatural. The direct brutality of ten
thousand acres of wheat, nothing but wheat as far as the eye could see,
stunned her a little. The one-time writing-teacher of a young ladies’
seminary, with her pretty deer-like eyes and delicate fingers, shrank
from it. She did not want to look at so much wheat. There was something
vaguely indecent in the sight, this food of the people, this elemental
force, this basic energy, weltering here under the sun in all the
unconscious nakedness of a sprawling, primordial Titan.

The monotony of the ranch ate into her heart hour by hour, year by year.
And with it all, when was she to see Rome, Italy, and the Bay of Naples?
It was a different prospect truly. Magnus had given her his promise
that once the ranch was well established, they two should travel. But
continually he had been obliged to put her off, now for one reason, now
for another; the machine would not as yet run of itself, he must still
feel his hand upon the lever; next year, perhaps, when wheat should go
to ninety, or the rains were good. She did not insist. She obliterated
herself, only allowing, from time to time, her pretty, questioning eyes
to meet his. In the meantime she retired within herself. She surrounded
herself with books. Her taste was of the delicacy of point lace. She
knew her Austin Dobson by heart. She read poems, essays, the ideas
of the seminary at Marysville persisting in her mind. “Marius the
Epicurean,” “The Essays of Elia,” “Sesame and Lilies,” “The Stones of
Venice,” and the little toy magazines, full of the flaccid banalities of
the “Minor Poets,” were continually in her hands.

When Presley had appeared on Los Muertos, she had welcomed his arrival
with delight. Here at last was a congenial spirit. She looked forward
to long conversations with the young man on literature, art, and ethics.
But Presley had disappointed her. That he--outside of his few chosen
deities--should care little for literature, shocked her beyond words.
His indifference to “style,” to elegant English, was a positive affront.
His savage abuse and open ridicule of the neatly phrased rondeaux and
sestinas and chansonettes of the little magazines was to her mind
a wanton and uncalled-for cruelty. She found his Homer, with its
slaughters and hecatombs and barbaric feastings and headstrong passions,
violent and coarse. She could not see with him any romance, any poetry
in the life around her; she looked to Italy for that. His “Song of the
West,” which only once, incoherent and fierce, he had tried to explain
to her, its swift, tumultous life, its truth, its nobility and savagery,
its heroism and obscenity had revolted her.

“But, Presley,” she had murmured, “that is not literature.”

“No,” he had cried between his teeth, “no, thank God, it is not.”

A little later, one of the stablemen brought the buggy with the team of
bays up to the steps of the porch, and Harran, putting on a different
coat and a black hat, took himself off to Guadalajara. The morning was
fine; there was no cloud in the sky, but as Harran’s buggy drew away
from the grove of trees about the ranch house, emerging into the open
country on either side of the Lower Road, he caught himself looking
sharply at the sky and the faint line of hills beyond the Quien Sabe
ranch. There was a certain indefinite cast to the landscape that to
Harran’s eye was not to be mistaken. Rain, the first of the season, was
not far off.

“That’s good,” he muttered, touching the bays with the whip, “we can’t
get our ploughs to hand any too soon.”

These ploughs Magnus Derrick had ordered from an Eastern manufacturer
some months before, since he was dissatisfied with the results obtained
from the ones he had used hitherto, which were of local make. However,
there had been exasperating and unexpected delays in their shipment.
Magnus and Harran both had counted upon having the ploughs in their
implement barns that very week, but a tracer sent after them had only
resulted in locating them, still en route, somewhere between The Needles
and Bakersfield. Now there was likelihood of rain within the week.
Ploughing could be undertaken immediately afterward, so soon as the
ground was softened, but there was a fair chance that the ranch would
lie idle for want of proper machinery.

It was ten minutes before train time when Harran reached the depot at
Guadalajara. The San Francisco papers of the preceding day had arrived
on an earlier train. He bought a couple from the station agent and
looked them over till a distant and prolonged whistle announced the
approach of the down train.

In one of the four passengers that alighted from the train, he
recognised his father. He half rose in his seat, whistling shrilly
between his teeth, waving his hand, and Magnus Derrick, catching sight
of him, came forward quickly.

Magnus--the Governor--was all of six feet tall, and though now well
toward his sixtieth year, was as erect as an officer of cavalry. He was
broad in proportion, a fine commanding figure, imposing an immediate
respect, impressing one with a sense of gravity, of dignity and a
certain pride of race. He was smooth-shaven, thin-lipped, with a
broad chin, and a prominent hawk-like nose--the characteristic of
the family--thin, with a high bridge, such as one sees in the later
portraits of the Duke of Wellington. His hair was thick and iron-grey,
and had a tendency to curl in a forward direction just in front of his
ears. He wore a top-hat of grey, with a wide brim, and a frock coat, and
carried a cane with a yellowed ivory head.

As a young man it had been his ambition to represent his native
State--North Carolina--in the United States Senate. Calhoun was his
“great man,” but in two successive campaigns he had been defeated.
His career checked in this direction, he had come to California in the
fifties. He had known and had been the intimate friend of such men as
Terry, Broderick, General Baker, Lick, Alvarado, Emerich, Larkin, and,
above all, of the unfortunate and misunderstood Ralston. Once he had
been put forward as the Democratic candidate for governor, but failed
of election. After this Magnus had definitely abandoned politics and had
invested all his money in the Corpus Christi mines. Then he had sold
out his interest at a small profit--just in time to miss his chance of
becoming a multi-millionaire in the Comstock boom--and was looking
for reinvestments in other lines when the news that “wheat had been
discovered in California” was passed from mouth to mouth. Practically
it amounted to a discovery. Dr. Glenn’s first harvest of wheat in
Colusa County, quietly undertaken but suddenly realised with dramatic
abruptness, gave a new matter for reflection to the thinking men of the
New West. California suddenly leaped unheralded into the world’s market
as a competitor in wheat production. In a few years her output of wheat
exceeded the value of her out-put of gold, and when, later on, the
Pacific and Southwestern Railroad threw open to settlers the rich lands
of Tulare County--conceded to the corporation by the government as a
bonus for the construction of the road--Magnus had been quick to seize
the opportunity and had taken up the ten thousand acres of Los Muertos.
Wherever he had gone, Magnus had taken his family with him. Lyman had
been born at Sacramento during the turmoil and excitement of Derrick’s
campaign for governor, and Harran at Shingle Springs, in El Dorado
County, six years later.

But Magnus was in every sense the “prominent man.” In whatever circle he
moved he was the chief figure. Instinctively other men looked to him
as the leader. He himself was proud of this distinction; he assumed the
grand manner very easily and carried it well. As a public speaker he was
one of the last of the followers of the old school of orators. He even
carried the diction and manner of the rostrum into private life. It was
said of him that his most colloquial conversation could be taken down
in shorthand and read off as an admirable specimen of pure, well-chosen
English. He loved to do things upon a grand scale, to preside, to
dominate. In his good humour there was something Jovian. When angry,
everybody around him trembled. But he had not the genius for detail,
was not patient. The certain grandiose lavishness of his disposition
occupied itself more with results than with means. He was always ready
to take chances, to hazard everything on the hopes of colossal returns.
In the mining days at Placerville there was no more redoubtable poker
player in the county. He had been as lucky in his mines as in his
gambling, sinking shafts and tunnelling in violation of expert theory
and finding “pay” in every case. Without knowing it, he allowed himself
to work his ranch much as if he was still working his mine. The
old-time spirit of ‘49, hap-hazard, unscientific, persisted in his mind.
Everything was a gamble--who took the greatest chances was most apt to
be the greatest winner. The idea of manuring Los Muertos, of husbanding
his great resources, he would have scouted as niggardly, Hebraic,
ungenerous.

Magnus climbed into the buggy, helping himself with Harran’s
outstretched hand which he still held. The two were immensely fond
of each other, proud of each other. They were constantly together and
Magnus kept no secrets from his favourite son.

“Well, boy.”

“Well, Governor.”

“I am very pleased you came yourself, Harran. I feared that you might be
too busy and send Phelps. It was thoughtful.”

Harran was about to reply, but at that moment Magnus caught sight of the
three flat cars loaded with bright-painted farming machines which still
remained on the siding above the station. He laid his hands on the reins
and Harran checked the team.

“Harran,” observed Magnus, fixing the machinery with a judicial frown,
“Harran, those look singularly like our ploughs. Drive over, boy.”

The train had by this time gone on its way and Harran brought the team
up to the siding.

“Ah, I was right,” said the Governor. “‘Magnus Derrick, Los Muertos,
Bonneville, from Ditson & Co., Rochester.’ These are ours, boy.”

Harran breathed a sigh of relief.


“At last,” he answered, “and just in time, too. We’ll have rain before
the week is out. I think, now that I am here, I will telephone Phelps to
send the wagon right down for these. I started blue-stoning to-day.”

Magnus nodded a grave approval.

“That was shrewd, boy. As to the rain, I think you are well informed; we
will have an early season. The ploughs have arrived at a happy moment.”

“It means money to us, Governor,” remarked Harran.

But as he turned the horses to allow his father to get into the buggy
again, the two were surprised to hear a thick, throaty voice wishing
them good-morning, and turning about were aware of S. Behrman, who had
come up while they were examining the ploughs. Harran’s eyes flashed
on the instant and through his nostrils he drew a sharp, quick breath,
while a certain rigour of carriage stiffened the set of Magnus Derrick’s
shoulders and back. Magnus had not yet got into the buggy, but stood
with the team between him and S. Behrman, eyeing him calmly across the
horses’ backs. S. Behrman came around to the other side of the buggy and
faced Magnus.

He was a large, fat man, with a great stomach; his cheek and the upper
part of his thick neck ran together to form a great tremulous jowl,
shaven and blue-grey in colour; a roll of fat, sprinkled with sparse
hair, moist with perspiration, protruded over the back of his collar.
He wore a heavy black moustache. On his head was a round-topped hat of
stiff brown straw, highly varnished. A light-brown linen vest, stamped
with innumerable interlocked horseshoes, covered his protuberant
stomach, upon which a heavy watch chain of hollow links rose and fell
with his difficult breathing, clinking against the vest buttons of
imitation mother-of-pearl.

S. Behrman was the banker of Bonneville. But besides this he was many
other things. He was a real estate agent. He bought grain; he dealt in
mortgages. He was one of the local political bosses, but more important
than all this, he was the representative of the Pacific and Southwestern
Railroad in that section of Tulare County. The railroad did little
business in that part of the country that S. Behrman did not supervise,
from the consignment of a shipment of wheat to the management of a
damage suit, or even to the repair and maintenance of the right of
way. During the time when the ranchers of the county were fighting the
grain-rate case, S. Behrman had been much in evidence in and about
the San Francisco court rooms and the lobby of the legislature in
Sacramento. He had returned to Bonneville only recently, a decision
adverse to the ranchers being foreseen. The position he occupied on
the salary list of the Pacific and Southwestern could not readily be
defined, for he was neither freight agent, passenger agent, attorney,
real-estate broker, nor political servant, though his influence in all
these offices was undoubted and enormous. But for all that, the ranchers
about Bonneville knew whom to look to as a source of trouble. There was
no denying the fact that for Osterman, Broderson, Annixter and Derrick,
S. Behrman was the railroad.

“Mr. Derrick, good-morning,” he cried as he came up. “Good-morning,
Harran. Glad to see you back, Mr. Derrick.” He held out a thick hand.

Magnus, head and shoulders above the other, tall, thin, erect, looked
down upon S. Behrman, inclining his head, failing to see his extended
hand.

“Good-morning, sir,” he observed, and waited for S. Behrman’s further
speech.

“Well, Mr. Derrick,” continued S. Behrman, wiping the back of his neck
with his handkerchief, “I saw in the city papers yesterday that our case
had gone against you.”

“I guess it wasn’t any great news to YOU,” commented Harran, his face
scarlet. “I guess you knew which way Ulsteen was going to jump after
your very first interview with him. You don’t like to be surprised in
this sort of thing, S. Behrman.”

“Now, you know better than that, Harran,” remonstrated S. Behrman
blandly. “I know what you mean to imply, but I ain’t going to let it
make me get mad. I wanted to say to your Governor--I wanted to say to
you, Mr. Derrick--as one man to another--letting alone for the minute
that we were on opposite sides of the case--that I’m sorry you didn’t
win. Your side made a good fight, but it was in a mistaken cause. That’s
the whole trouble. Why, you could have figured out before you ever went
into the case that such rates are confiscation of property. You must
allow us--must allow the railroad--a fair interest on the investment.
You don’t want us to go into the receiver’s hands, do you now, Mr.
Derrick?”

“The Board of Railroad Commissioners was bought,” remarked Magnus
sharply, a keen, brisk flash glinting in his eye.

“It was part of the game,” put in Harran, “for the Railroad Commission
to cut rates to a ridiculous figure, far below a REASONABLE figure, just
so that it WOULD be confiscation. Whether Ulsteen is a tool of yours or
not, he had to put the rates back to what they were originally.”

“If you enforced those rates, Mr. Harran,” returned S. Behrman calmly,
“we wouldn’t be able to earn sufficient money to meet operating
expenses or fixed charges, to say nothing of a surplus left over to pay
dividends----”

“Tell me when the P. and S. W. ever paid dividends.”

“The lowest rates,” continued S. Behrman, “that the legislature
can establish must be such as will secure us a fair interest on our
investment.”

“Well, what’s your standard? Come, let’s hear it. Who is to say what’s a
fair rate? The railroad has its own notions of fairness sometimes.”

“The laws of the State,” returned S. Behrman, “fix the rate of interest
at seven per cent. That’s a good enough standard for us. There is no
reason, Mr. Harran, why a dollar invested in a railroad should not earn
as much as a dollar represented by a promissory note--seven per cent.
By applying your schedule of rates we would not earn a cent; we would be
bankrupt.”

“Interest on your investment!” cried Harran, furious. “It’s fine to talk
about fair interest. I know and you know that the total earnings of the
P. and S. W.--their main, branch and leased lines for last year--was
between nineteen and twenty millions of dollars. Do you mean to say that
twenty million dollars is seven per cent. of the original cost of the
road?”

S. Behrman spread out his hands, smiling.

“That was the gross, not the net figure--and how can you tell what was
the original cost of the road?” “Ah, that’s just it,” shouted Harran,
emphasising each word with a blow of his fist upon his knee, his eyes
sparkling, “you take cursed good care that we don’t know anything about
the original cost of the road. But we know you are bonded for treble
your value; and we know this: that the road COULD have been built
for fifty-four thousand dollars per mile and that you SAY it cost you
eighty-seven thousand. It makes a difference, S. Behrman, on which of
these two figures you are basing your seven per cent.”

“That all may show obstinacy, Harran,” observed S. Behrman vaguely, “but
it don’t show common sense.”

“We are threshing out old straw, I believe, gentlemen,” remarked Magnus.
“The question was thoroughly sifted in the courts.”

“Quite right,” assented S. Behrman. “The best way is that the railroad
and the farmer understand each other and get along peaceably. We are
both dependent on each other. Your ploughs, I believe, Mr. Derrick.” S.
Behrman nodded toward the flat cars.

“They are consigned to me,” admitted Magnus.

“It looks a trifle like rain,” observed S. Behrman, easing his neck and
jowl in his limp collar. “I suppose you will want to begin ploughing
next week.”

“Possibly,” said Magnus.

“I’ll see that your ploughs are hurried through for you then, Mr.
Derrick. We will route them by fast freight for you and it won’t cost
you anything extra.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Harran. “The ploughs are here. We have
nothing more to do with the railroad. I am going to have my wagons down
here this afternoon.”

“I am sorry,” answered S. Behrman, “but the cars are going north,
not, as you thought, coming FROM the north. They have not been to San
Francisco yet.”

Magnus made a slight movement of the head as one who remembers a fact
hitherto forgotten. But Harran was as yet unenlightened.

“To San Francisco!” he answered, “we want them here--what are you
talking about?”

“Well, you know, of course, the regulations,” answered S. Behrman.
“Freight of this kind coming from the Eastern points into the State must
go first to one of our common points and be reshipped from there.”

Harran did remember now, but never before had the matter so struck
home. He leaned back in his seat in dumb amazement for the instant.
Even Magnus had turned a little pale. Then, abruptly, Harran broke out
violent and raging.

“What next? My God, why don’t you break into our houses at night? Why
don’t you steal the watch out of my pocket, steal the horses out of the
harness, hold us up with a shot-gun; yes, ‘stand and deliver; your money
or your life.’ Here we bring our ploughs from the East over your lines,
but you’re not content with your long-haul rate between Eastern points
and Bonneville. You want to get us under your ruinous short-haul rate
between Bonneville and San Francisco, AND RETURN. Think of it! Here’s a
load of stuff for Bonneville that can’t stop at Bonneville, where it
is consigned, but has got to go up to San Francisco first BY WAY OF
Bonneville, at forty cents per ton and then be reshipped from San
Francisco back to Bonneville again at FIFTY-ONE cents per ton, the
short-haul rate. And we have to pay it all or go without. Here are the
ploughs right here, in sight of the land they have got to be used
on, the season just ready for them, and we can’t touch them. Oh,” he
exclaimed in deep disgust, “isn’t it a pretty mess! Isn’t it a farce!
the whole dirty business!”

S. Behrman listened to him unmoved, his little eyes blinking under his
fat forehead, the gold chain of hollow links clicking against the pearl
buttons of his waistcoat as he breathed.

“It don’t do any good to let loose like that, Harran,” he said at
length. “I am willing to do what I can for you. I’ll hurry the ploughs
through, but I can’t change the freight regulation of the road.”

“What’s your blackmail for this?” vociferated Harran. “How much do you
want to let us go? How much have we got to pay you to be ALLOWED to use
our own ploughs--what’s your figure? Come, spit it out.”

“I see you are trying to make me angry, Harran,” returned S. Behrman,
“but you won’t succeed. Better give up trying, my boy. As I said, the
best way is to have the railroad and the farmer get along amicably. It
is the only way we can do business. Well, s’long, Governor, I must trot
along. S’long, Harran.” He took himself off.

But before leaving Guadalajara Magnus dropped into the town’s small
grocery store to purchase a box of cigars of a certain Mexican brand,
unprocurable elsewhere. Harran remained in the buggy.

While he waited, Dyke appeared at the end of the street, and, seeing
Derrick’s younger son, came over to shake hands with him. He explained
his affair with the P. and S. W., and asked the young man what he
thought of the expected rise in the price of hops.

“Hops ought to be a good thing,” Harran told him. “The crop in Germany
and in New York has been a dead failure for the last three years, and
so many people have gone out of the business that there’s likely to be a
shortage and a stiff advance in the price. They ought to go to a dollar
next year. Sure, hops ought to be a good thing. How’s the old lady and
Sidney, Dyke?”

“Why, fairly well, thank you, Harran. They’re up to Sacramento just now
to see my brother. I was thinking of going in with my brother into this
hop business. But I had a letter from him this morning. He may not be
able to meet me on this proposition. He’s got other business on hand. If
he pulls out--and he probably will--I’ll have to go it alone, but I’ll
have to borrow. I had thought with his money and mine we would have
enough to pull off the affair without mortgaging anything. As it is, I
guess I’ll have to see S. Behrman.”

“I’ll be cursed if I would!” exclaimed Harran.

“Well, S. Behrman is a screw,” admitted the engineer, “and he is
‘railroad’ to his boots; but business is business, and he would have to
stand by a contract in black and white, and this chance in hops is too
good to let slide. I guess we’ll try it on, Harran. I can get a good
foreman that knows all about hops just now, and if the deal pays--well,
I want to send Sid to a seminary up in San Francisco.”

“Well, mortgage the crops, but don’t mortgage the homestead, Dyke,” said
Harran. “And, by the way, have you looked up the freight rates on hops?”

“No, I haven’t yet,” answered Dyke, “and I had better be sure of that,
hadn’t I? I hear that the rate is reasonable, though.”

“You be sure to have a clear understanding with the railroad first about
the rate,” Harran warned him.

When Magnus came out of the grocery store and once more seated himself
in the buggy, he said to Harran, “Boy, drive over here to Annixter’s
before we start home. I want to ask him to dine with us to-night.
Osterman and Broderson are to drop in, I believe, and I should like to
have Annixter as well.”

Magnus was lavishly hospitable. Los Muertos’s doors invariably stood
open to all the Derricks’ neighbours, and once in so often Magnus had a
few of his intimates to dinner.

As Harran and his father drove along the road toward Annixter’s ranch
house, Magnus asked about what had happened during his absence.

He inquired after his wife and the ranch, commenting upon the work on
the irrigating ditch. Harran gave him the news of the past week, Dyke’s
discharge, his resolve to raise a crop of hops; Vanamee’s return, the
killing of the sheep, and Hooven’s petition to remain upon the ranch as
Magnus’s tenant. It needed only Harran’s recommendation that the German
should remain to have Magnus consent upon the instant. “You know more
about it than I, boy,” he said, “and whatever you think is wise shall be
done.”

Harran touched the bays with the whip, urging them to their briskest
pace. They were not yet at Annixter’s and he was anxious to get back to
the ranch house to supervise the blue-stoning of his seed.

“By the way, Governor,” he demanded suddenly, “how is Lyman getting on?”

Lyman, Magnus’s eldest son, had never taken kindly toward ranch life. He
resembled his mother more than he did Magnus, and had inherited from her
a distaste for agriculture and a tendency toward a profession. At a time
when Harran was learning the rudiments of farming, Lyman was entering
the State University, and, graduating thence, had spent three years
in the study of law. But later on, traits that were particularly his
father’s developed. Politics interested him. He told himself he was
a born politician, was diplomatic, approachable, had a talent for
intrigue, a gift of making friends easily and, most indispensable of
all, a veritable genius for putting influential men under obligations to
himself. Already he had succeeded in gaining for himself two important
offices in the municipal administration of San Francisco--where he
had his home--sheriff’s attorney, and, later on, assistant district
attorney. But with these small achievements he was by no means
satisfied. The largeness of his father’s character, modified in Lyman
by a counter-influence of selfishness, had produced in him an inordinate
ambition. Where his father during his political career had considered
himself only as an exponent of principles he strove to apply, Lyman saw
but the office, his own personal aggrandisement. He belonged to the new
school, wherein objects were attained not by orations before senates
and assemblies, but by sessions of committees, caucuses, compromises
and expedients. His goal was to be in fact what Magnus was only in
name--governor. Lyman, with shut teeth, had resolved that some day he
would sit in the gubernatorial chair in Sacramento.

“Lyman is doing well,” answered Magnus. “I could wish he was more
pronounced in his convictions, less willing to compromise, but I believe
him to be earnest and to have a talent for government and civics. His
ambition does him credit, and if he occupied himself a little more with
means and a little less with ends, he would, I am sure, be the ideal
servant of the people. But I am not afraid. The time will come when the
State will be proud of him.”

As Harran turned the team into the driveway that led up to Annixter’s
house, Magnus remarked:

“Harran, isn’t that young Annixter himself on the porch?”

Harran nodded and remarked:

“By the way, Governor, I wouldn’t seem too cordial in your invitation to
Annixter. He will be glad to come, I know, but if you seem to want him
too much, it is just like his confounded obstinacy to make objections.”

“There is something in that,” observed Magnus, as Harran drew up at the
porch of the house. “He is a queer, cross-grained fellow, but in many
ways sterling.”

Annixter was lying in the hammock on the porch, precisely as Presley
had found him the day before, reading “David Copperfield” and stuffing
himself with dried prunes. When he recognised Magnus, however, he got
up, though careful to give evidence of the most poignant discomfort. He
explained his difficulty at great length, protesting that his stomach
was no better than a spongebag. Would Magnus and Harran get down and
have a drink? There was whiskey somewhere about.

Magnus, however, declined. He stated his errand, asking Annixter to come
over to Los Muertos that evening for seven o’clock dinner. Osterman and
Broderson would be there.

At once Annixter, even to Harran’s surprise, put his chin in the
air, making excuses, fearing to compromise himself if he accepted too
readily. No, he did not think he could get around--was sure of it, in
fact. There were certain businesses he had on hand that evening. He had
practically made an appointment with a man at Bonneville; then, too,
he was thinking of going up to San Francisco to-morrow and needed his
sleep; would go to bed early; and besides all that, he was a very sick
man; his stomach was out of whack; if he moved about it brought the
gripes back. No, they must get along without him.

Magnus, knowing with whom he had to deal, did not urge the point, being
convinced that Annixter would argue over the affair the rest of the
morning. He re-settled himself in the buggy and Harran gathered up the
reins.

“Well,” he observed, “you know your business best. Come if you can. We
dine at seven.”

“I hear you are going to farm the whole of Los Muertos this season,”
 remarked Annixter, with a certain note of challenge in his voice.

“We are thinking of it,” replied Magnus.

Annixter grunted scornfully.

“Did you get the message I sent you by Presley?” he began.

Tactless, blunt, and direct, Annixter was quite capable of calling even
Magnus a fool to his face. But before he could proceed, S. Behrman in
his single buggy turned into the gate, and driving leisurely up to the
porch halted on the other side of Magnus’s team.

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” he remarked, nodding to the two Derricks as
though he had not seen them earlier in the day. “Mr. Annixter, how do
you do?”

“What in hell do YOU want?” demanded Annixter with a stare.

S. Behrman hiccoughed slightly and passed a fat hand over his waistcoat.

“Why, not very much, Mr. Annixter,” he replied, ignoring the
belligerency in the young ranchman’s voice, “but I will have to lodge
a protest against you, Mr. Annixter, in the matter of keeping your line
fence in repair. The sheep were all over the track last night, this
side the Long Trestle, and I am afraid they have seriously disturbed our
ballast along there. We--the railroad--can’t fence along our right of
way. The farmers have the prescriptive right of that, so we have to look
to you to keep your fence in repair. I am sorry, but I shall have to
protest----” Annixter returned to the hammock and stretched himself out
in it to his full length, remarking tranquilly:

“Go to the devil!”

“It is as much to your interest as to ours that the safety of the
public----”

“You heard what I said. Go to the devil!”

“That all may show obstinacy, Mr. Annixter, but----”

Suddenly Annixter jumped up again and came to the edge of the porch; his
face flamed scarlet to the roots of his stiff yellow hair. He thrust out
his jaw aggressively, clenching his teeth.

“You,” he vociferated, “I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a--a--a PIP!”

To his mind it was the last insult, the most outrageous calumny. He had
no worse epithet at his command.

“----may show obstinacy,” pursued S. Behrman, bent upon finishing the
phrase, “but it don’t show common sense.”

“I’ll mend my fence, and then, again, maybe I won’t mend my fence,”
 shouted Annixter. “I know what you mean--that wild engine last night.
Well, you’ve no right to run at that speed in the town limits.”

“How the town limits? The sheep were this side the Long Trestle.”

“Well, that’s in the town limits of Guadalajara.” “Why, Mr. Annixter,
the Long Trestle is a good two miles out of Guadalajara.”

Annixter squared himself, leaping to the chance of an argument.

“Two miles! It’s not a mile and a quarter. No, it’s not a mile. I’ll
leave it to Magnus here.”

“Oh, I know nothing about it,” declared Magnus, refusing to be involved.

“Yes, you do. Yes, you do, too. Any fool knows how far it is from
Guadalajara to the Long Trestle. It’s about five-eighths of a mile.”

“From the depot of the town,” remarked S. Behrman placidly, “to the head
of the Long Trestle is about two miles.”

“That’s a lie and you know it’s a lie,” shouted the other, furious at
S. Behrman’s calmness, “and I can prove it’s a lie. I’ve walked that
distance on the Upper Road, and I know just how fast I walk, and if I
can walk four miles in one hour.”

Magnus and Harran drove on, leaving Annixter trying to draw S. Behrman
into a wrangle.

When at length S. Behrman as well took himself away, Annixter returned
to his hammock, finished the rest of his prunes and read another chapter
of “Copperfield.” Then he put the book, open, over his face and went to
sleep.

An hour later, toward noon, his own terrific snoring woke him up
suddenly, and he sat up, rubbing his face and blinking at the sunlight.
There was a bad taste in his mouth from sleeping with it wide open, and
going into the dining-room of the house, he mixed himself a drink of
whiskey and soda and swallowed it in three great gulps. He told himself
that he felt not only better but hungry, and pressed an electric button
in the wall near the sideboard three times to let the kitchen--situated
in a separate building near the ranch house--know that he was ready for
his dinner. As he did so, an idea occurred to him. He wondered if Hilma
Tree would bring up his dinner and wait on the table while he ate it.

In connection with his ranch, Annixter ran a dairy farm on a very small
scale, making just enough butter and cheese for the consumption of the
ranch’s PERSONNEL. Old man Tree, his wife, and his daughter Hilma looked
after the dairy. But there was not always work enough to keep the three
of them occupied and Hilma at times made herself useful in other ways.
As often as not she lent a hand in the kitchen, and two or three times
a week she took her mother’s place in looking after Annixter’s house,
making the beds, putting his room to rights, bringing his meals up
from the kitchen. For the last summer she had been away visiting with
relatives in one of the towns on the coast. But the week previous to
this she had returned and Annixter had come upon her suddenly one day
in the dairy, making cheese, the sleeves of her crisp blue shirt waist
rolled back to her very shoulders. Annixter had carried away with him a
clear-cut recollection of these smooth white arms of hers, bare to the
shoulder, very round and cool and fresh. He would not have believed that
a girl so young should have had arms so big and perfect. To his surprise
he found himself thinking of her after he had gone to bed that night,
and in the morning when he woke he was bothered to know whether he had
dreamed about Hilma’s fine white arms over night. Then abruptly he
had lost patience with himself for being so occupied with the subject,
raging and furious with all the breed of feemales--a fine way for a
man to waste his time. He had had his experience with the timid little
creature in the glove-cleaning establishment in Sacramento. That was
enough. Feemales! Rot! None of them in HIS, thank you. HE had seen Hilma
Tree give him a look in the dairy. Aha, he saw through her! She was
trying to get a hold on him, was she? He would show her. Wait till
he saw her again. He would send her about her business in a hurry. He
resolved upon a terrible demeanour in the presence of the dairy girl--a
great show of indifference, a fierce masculine nonchalance; and when,
the next morning, she brought him his breakfast, he had been smitten
dumb as soon as she entered the room, glueing his eyes upon his
plate, his elbows close to his side, awkward, clumsy, overwhelmed with
constraint.

While true to his convictions as a woman-hater and genuinely despising
Hilma both as a girl and as an inferior, the idea of her worried him.
Most of all, he was angry with himself because of his inane sheepishness
when she was about. He at first had told himself that he was a fool not
to be able to ignore her existence as hitherto, and then that he was a
greater fool not to take advantage of his position. Certainly he had not
the remotest idea of any affection, but Hilma was a fine looking girl.
He imagined an affair with her.

As he reflected upon the matter now, scowling abstractedly at the button
of the electric bell, turning the whole business over in his mind, he
remembered that to-day was butter-making day and that Mrs. Tree would
be occupied in the dairy. That meant that Hilma would take her place. He
turned to the mirror of the sideboard, scrutinising his reflection with
grim disfavour. After a moment, rubbing the roughened surface of his
chin the wrong way, he muttered to his image in the glass:

“That a mug! Good Lord! what a looking mug!” Then, after a moment’s
silence, “Wonder if that fool feemale will be up here to-day.”

He crossed over into his bedroom and peeped around the edge of the
lowered curtain. The window looked out upon the skeleton-like tower of
the artesian well and the cook-house and dairy-house close beside it. As
he watched, he saw Hilma come out from the cook-house and hurry across
toward the kitchen. Evidently, she was going to see about his dinner.
But as she passed by the artesian well, she met young Delaney, one of
Annixter’s hands, coming up the trail by the irrigating ditch, leading
his horse toward the stables, a great coil of barbed wire in his gloved
hands and a pair of nippers thrust into his belt. No doubt, he had been
mending the break in the line fence by the Long Trestle. Annixter saw
him take off his wide-brimmed hat as he met Hilma, and the two stood
there for some moments talking together. Annixter even heard Hilma
laughing very gayly at something Delaney was saying. She patted his
horse’s neck affectionately, and Delaney, drawing the nippers from his
belt, made as if to pinch her arm with them. She caught at his wrist
and pushed him away, laughing again. To Annixter’s mind the pair seemed
astonishingly intimate. Brusquely his anger flamed up.

Ah, that was it, was it? Delaney and Hilma had an understanding between
themselves. They carried on their affair right out there in the open,
under his very eyes. It was absolutely disgusting. Had they no sense
of decency, those two? Well, this ended it. He would stop that sort of
thing short off; none of that on HIS ranch if he knew it. No, sir. He
would pack that girl off before he was a day older. He wouldn’t have
that kind about the place. Not much! She’d have to get out. He would
talk to old man Tree about it this afternoon. Whatever happened, HE
insisted upon morality.

“And my dinner!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I’ve got to wait and go
hungry--and maybe get sick again--while they carry on their disgusting
love-making.”

He turned about on the instant, and striding over to the electric bell,
rang it again with all his might.

“When that feemale gets up here,” he declared, “I’ll just find out why
I’ve got to wait like this. I’ll take her down, to the Queen’s taste.
I’m lenient enough, Lord knows, but I don’t propose to be imposed upon
ALL the time.”

A few moments later, while Annixter was pretending to read the county
newspaper by the window in the dining-room, Hilma came in to set the
table. At the time Annixter had his feet cocked on the window ledge and
was smoking a cigar, but as soon as she entered the room he--without
premeditation--brought his feet down to the floor and crushed out the
lighted tip of his cigar under the window ledge. Over the top of the
paper he glanced at her covertly from time to time.

Though Hilma was only nineteen years old, she was a large girl with
all the development of a much older woman. There was a certain generous
amplitude to the full, round curves of her hips and shoulders that
suggested the precocious maturity of a healthy, vigorous animal life
passed under the hot southern sun of a half-tropical country. She
was, one knew at a glance, warm-blooded, full-blooded, with an even,
comfortable balance of temperament. Her neck was thick, and sloped to
her shoulders, with full, beautiful curves, and under her chin and
under her ears the flesh was as white and smooth as floss satin, shading
exquisitely to a faint delicate brown on her nape at the roots of her
hair. Her throat rounded to meet her chin and cheek, with a soft swell
of the skin, tinted pale amber in the shadows, but blending by barely
perceptible gradations to the sweet, warm flush of her cheek. This
colour on her temples was just touched with a certain blueness where
the flesh was thin over the fine veining underneath. Her eyes were light
brown, and so wide open that on the slightest provocation the full disc
of the pupil was disclosed; the lids--just a fraction of a shade darker
than the hue of her face--were edged with lashes that were almost black.
While these lashes were not long, they were thick and rimmed her eyes
with a fine, thin line. Her mouth was rather large, the lips shut
tight, and nothing could have been more graceful, more charming than the
outline of these full lips of hers, and her round white chin, modulating
downward with a certain delicious roundness to her neck, her throat and
the sweet feminine amplitude of her breast. The slightest movement of
her head and shoulders sent a gentle undulation through all this
beauty of soft outlines and smooth surfaces, the delicate amber shadows
deepening or fading or losing themselves imperceptibly in the pretty
rose-colour of her cheeks, or the dark, warm-tinted shadow of her thick
brown hair.

Her hair seemed almost to have a life of its own, almost Medusa-like,
thick, glossy and moist, lying in heavy, sweet-smelling masses over her
forehead, over her small ears with their pink lobes, and far down upon
her nape. Deep in between the coils and braids it was of a bitumen
brownness, but in the sunlight it vibrated with a sheen like tarnished
gold.

Like most large girls, her movements were not hurried, and this
indefinite deliberateness of gesture, this slow grace, this certain ease
of attitude, was a charm that was all her own.

But Hilma’s greatest charm of all was her simplicity--a simplicity that
was not only in the calm regularity of her face, with its statuesque
evenness of contour, its broad surface of cheek and forehead and the
masses of her straight smooth hair, but was apparent as well in the long
line of her carriage, from her foot to her waist and the single deep
swell from her waist to her shoulder. Almost unconsciously she dressed
in harmony with this note of simplicity, and on this occasion wore a
skirt of plain dark blue calico and a white shirt waist crisp from the
laundry.

And yet, for all the dignity of this rigourous simplicity, there were
about Hilma small contradictory suggestions of feminine daintiness,
charming beyond words. Even Annixter could not help noticing that her
feet were narrow and slender, and that the little steel buckles of her
low shoes were polished bright, and that her fingertips and nails were
of a fine rosy pink.

He found himself wondering how it was that a girl in Hilma’s position
should be able to keep herself so pretty, so trim, so clean and
feminine, but he reflected that her work was chiefly in the dairy, and
even there of the lightest order. She was on the ranch more for the sake
of being with her parents than from any necessity of employment. Vaguely
he seemed to understand that, in that great new land of the West, in the
open-air, healthy life of the ranches, where the conditions of earning
a livelihood were of the easiest, refinement among the younger women was
easily to be found--not the refinement of education, nor culture, but
the natural, intuitive refinement of the woman, not as yet defiled and
crushed out by the sordid, strenuous life-struggle of over-populated
districts. It was the original, intended and natural delicacy of an
elemental existence, close to nature, close to life, close to the great,
kindly earth.

As Hilma laid the table-spread, her arms opened to their widest reach,
the white cloth setting a little glisten of reflected light underneath
the chin, Annixter stirred in his place uneasily.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Miss Hilma?” he remarked, for the sake of saying
something. “Good-morning. How do you do?”

“Good-morning, sir,” she answered, looking up, resting for a moment on
her outspread palms. “I hope you are better.”

Her voice was low in pitch and of a velvety huskiness, seeming to come
more from her chest than from her throat.

“Well, I’m some better,” growled Annixter. Then suddenly he demanded,
“Where’s that dog?”

A decrepit Irish setter sometimes made his appearance in and about the
ranch house, sleeping under the bed and eating when anyone about the
place thought to give him a plate of bread.

Annixter had no particular interest in the dog. For weeks at a time he
ignored its existence. It was not his dog. But to-day it seemed as if he
could not let the subject rest. For no reason that he could explain even
to himself, he recurred to it continually. He questioned Hilma minutely
all about the dog. Who owned him? How old did she think he was? Did she
imagine the dog was sick? Where had he got to? Maybe he had crawled
off to die somewhere. He recurred to the subject all through the meal;
apparently, he could talk of nothing else, and as she finally went away
after clearing off the table, he went onto the porch and called after
her:

“Say, Miss Hilma.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If that dog turns up again you let me know.”

“Very well, sir.”

Annixter returned to the dining-room and sat down in the chair he had
just vacated. “To hell with the dog!” he muttered, enraged, he could not
tell why.

When at length he allowed his attention to wander from Hilma Tree, he
found that he had been staring fixedly at a thermometer upon the wall
opposite, and this made him think that it had long been his intention
to buy a fine barometer, an instrument that could be accurately depended
on. But the barometer suggested the present condition of the weather and
the likelihood of rain. In such case, much was to be done in the way of
getting the seed ready and overhauling his ploughs and drills. He had
not been away from the house in two days. It was time to be up and
doing. He determined to put in the afternoon “taking a look around,”
 and have a late supper. He would not go to Los Muertos; he would ignore
Magnus Derrick’s invitation. Possibly, though, it might be well to run
over and see what was up.

“If I do,” he said to himself, “I’ll ride the buckskin.” The buckskin
was a half-broken broncho that fought like a fiend under the saddle
until the quirt and spur brought her to her senses. But Annixter
remembered that the Trees’ cottage, next the dairy-house, looked out
upon the stables, and perhaps Hilma would see him while he was mounting
the horse and be impressed with his courage.

“Huh!” grunted Annixter under his breath, “I should like to see that
fool Delaney try to bust that bronch. That’s what I’D like to see.”

However, as Annixter stepped from the porch of the ranch house, he was
surprised to notice a grey haze over all the sky; the sunlight was
gone; there was a sense of coolness in the air; the weather-vane on the
barn--a fine golden trotting horse with flamboyant mane and tail--was
veering in a southwest wind. Evidently the expected rain was close at
hand.

Annixter crossed over to the stables reflecting that he could ride the
buckskin to the Trees’ cottage and tell Hilma that he would not be home
to supper. The conference at Los Muertos would be an admirable excuse
for this, and upon the spot he resolved to go over to the Derrick ranch
house, after all.

As he passed the Trees’ cottage, he observed with satisfaction that
Hilma was going to and fro in the front room. If he busted the buckskin
in the yard before the stable she could not help but see. Annixter found
the stableman in the back of the barn greasing the axles of the buggy,
and ordered him to put the saddle on the buckskin.

“Why, I don’t think she’s here, sir,” answered the stableman, glancing
into the stalls. “No, I remember now. Delaney took her out just after
dinner. His other horse went lame and he wanted to go down by the Long
Trestle to mend the fence. He started out, but had to come back.”

“Oh, Delaney got her, did he?”

“Yes, sir. He had a circus with her, but he busted her right enough.
When it comes to horse, Delaney can wipe the eye of any cow-puncher in
the county, I guess.”

“He can, can he?” observed Annixter. Then after a silence, “Well, all
right, Billy; put my saddle on whatever you’ve got here. I’m going over
to Los Muertos this afternoon.”

“Want to look out for the rain, Mr. Annixter,” remarked Billy. “Guess
we’ll have rain before night.”

“I’ll take a rubber coat,” answered Annixter. “Bring the horse up to the
ranch house when you’re ready.”

Annixter returned to the house to look for his rubber coat in deep
disgust, not permitting himself to glance toward the dairy-house and
the Trees’ cottage. But as he reached the porch he heard the telephone
ringing his call. It was Presley, who rang up from Los Muertos. He had
heard from Harran that Annixter was, perhaps, coming over that evening.
If he came, would he mind bringing over his--Presley’s--bicycle. He had
left it at the Quien Sabe ranch the day before and had forgotten to come
back that way for it.

“Well,” objected Annixter, a surly note in his voice, “I WAS going to
RIDE over.” “Oh, never mind, then,” returned Presley easily. “I was to
blame for forgetting it. Don’t bother about it. I’ll come over some of
these days and get it myself.”

Annixter hung up the transmitter with a vehement wrench and stamped out
of the room, banging the door. He found his rubber coat hanging in the
hallway and swung into it with a fierce movement of the shoulders that
all but started the seams. Everything seemed to conspire to thwart him.
It was just like that absent-minded, crazy poet, Presley, to forget his
wheel. Well, he could come after it himself. He, Annixter, would ride
SOME horse, anyhow. When he came out upon the porch he saw the wheel
leaning against the fence where Presley had left it. If it stayed there
much longer the rain would catch it. Annixter ripped out an oath. At
every moment his ill-humour was increasing. Yet, for all that, he went
back to the stable, pushing the bicycle before him, and countermanded
his order, directing the stableman to get the buggy ready. He himself
carefully stowed Presley’s bicycle under the seat, covering it with a
couple of empty sacks and a tarpaulin carriage cover.

While he was doing this, the stableman uttered an exclamation and paused
in the act of backing the horse into the shafts, holding up a hand,
listening.

From the hollow roof of the barn and from the thick velvet-like padding
of dust over the ground outside, and from among the leaves of the few
nearby trees and plants there came a vast, monotonous murmur that seemed
to issue from all quarters of the horizon at once, a prolonged and
subdued rustling sound, steady, even, persistent.

“There’s your rain,” announced the stableman. “The first of the season.”

“And I got to be out in it,” fumed Annixter, “and I suppose those swine
will quit work on the big barn now.”

When the buggy was finally ready, he put on his rubber coat, climbed in,
and without waiting for the stableman to raise the top, drove out into
the rain, a new-lit cigar in his teeth. As he passed the dairy-house, he
saw Hilma standing in the doorway, holding out her hand to the rain, her
face turned upward toward the grey sky, amused and interested at this
first shower of the wet season. She was so absorbed that she did not see
Annixter, and his clumsy nod in her direction passed unnoticed.

“She did it on purpose,” Annixter told himself, chewing fiercely on his
cigar. “Cuts me now, hey? Well, this DOES settle it. She leaves this
ranch before I’m a day older.”

He decided that he would put off his tour of inspection till the next
day. Travelling in the buggy as he did, he must keep to the road which
led to Derrick’s, in very roundabout fashion, by way of Guadalajara.
This rain would reduce the thick dust of the road to two feet of viscid
mud. It would take him quite three hours to reach the ranch house on Los
Muertos. He thought of Delaney and the buckskin and ground his teeth.
And all this trouble, if you please, because of a fool feemale girl. A
fine way for him to waste his time. Well, now he was done with it. His
decision was taken now. She should pack.

Steadily the rain increased. There was no wind. The thick veil of
wet descended straight from sky to earth, blurring distant outlines,
spreading a vast sheen of grey over all the landscape. Its volume became
greater, the prolonged murmuring note took on a deeper tone. At the
gate to the road which led across Dyke’s hop-fields toward Guadalajara,
Annixter was obliged to descend and raise the top of the buggy. In doing
so he caught the flesh of his hand in the joint of the iron elbow that
supported the top and pinched it cruelly. It was the last misery, the
culmination of a long train of wretchedness. On the instant he hated
Hilma Tree so fiercely that his sharply set teeth all but bit his cigar
in two.

While he was grabbing and wrenching at the buggy-top, the water from
his hat brim dripping down upon his nose, the horse, restive under the
drench of the rain, moved uneasily.

“Yah-h-h you!” he shouted, inarticulate with exasperation.
“You--you--Gor-r-r, wait till I get hold of you. WHOA, you!”

But there was an interruption. Delaney, riding the buckskin, came around
a bend in the road at a slow trot and Annixter, getting into the buggy
again, found himself face to face with him.

“Why, hello, Mr. Annixter,” said he, pulling up. “Kind of sort of wet,
isn’t it?”

Annixter, his face suddenly scarlet, sat back in his place abruptly,
exclaiming:

“Oh--oh, there you are, are you?”

“I’ve been down there,” explained Delaney, with a motion of his head
toward the railroad, “to mend that break in the fence by the Long
Trestle and I thought while I was about it I’d follow down along the
fence toward Guadalajara to see if there were any more breaks. But I
guess it’s all right.”

“Oh, you guess it’s all right, do you?” observed Annixter through his
teeth.

“Why--why--yes,” returned the other, bewildered at the truculent ring
in Annixter’s voice. “I mended that break by the Long Trestle just now
and----

“Well, why didn’t you mend it a week ago?” shouted Annixter wrathfully.
“I’ve been looking for you all the morning, I have, and who told you you
could take that buckskin? And the sheep were all over the right of way
last night because of that break, and here that filthy pip, S. Behrman,
comes down here this morning and wants to make trouble for me.” Suddenly
he cried out, “What do I FEED you for? What do I keep you around here
for? Think it’s just to fatten up your carcass, hey?”

“Why, Mr. Annixter----” began Delaney.

“And don’t TALK to me,” vociferated the other, exciting himself with his
own noise. “Don’t you say a word to me even to apologise. If I’ve spoken
to you once about that break, I’ve spoken fifty times.”

“Why, sir,” declared Delaney, beginning to get indignant, “the sheep did
it themselves last night.”

“I told you not to TALK to me,” clamoured Annixter.

“But, say, look here----”

“Get off the ranch. You get off the ranch. And taking that buckskin
against my express orders. I won’t have your kind about the place,
not much. I’m easy-going enough, Lord knows, but I don’t propose to be
imposed on ALL the time. Pack off, you understand and do it lively. Go
to the foreman and tell him I told him to pay you off and then clear
out. And, you hear me,” he concluded, with a menacing outthrust of his
lower jaw, “you hear me, if I catch you hanging around the ranch house
after this, or if I so much as see you on Quien Sabe, I’ll show you the
way off of it, my friend, at the toe of my boot. Now, then, get out of
the way and let me pass.”

Angry beyond the power of retort, Delaney drove the spurs into the
buckskin and passed the buggy in a single bound. Annixter gathered up
the reins and drove on muttering to himself, and occasionally looking
back to observe the buckskin flying toward the ranch house in a
spattering shower of mud, Delaney urging her on, his head bent down
against the falling rain.

“Huh,” grunted Annixter with grim satisfaction, a certain sense of good
humour at length returning to him, “that just about takes the saleratus
out of YOUR dough, my friend.”

A little farther on, Annixter got out of the buggy a second time to open
another gate that let him out upon the Upper Road, not far distant from
Guadalajara. It was the road that connected that town with Bonneville
and that ran parallel with the railroad tracks. On the other side of the
track he could see the infinite extension of the brown, bare land of
Los Muertos, turning now to a soft, moist welter of fertility under
the insistent caressing of the rain. The hard, sun-baked clods were
decomposing, the crevices between drinking the wet with an eager,
sucking noise. But the prospect was dreary; the distant horizons were
blotted under drifting mists of rain; the eternal monotony of the earth
lay open to the sombre low sky without a single adornment, without a
single variation from its melancholy flatness. Near at hand the wires
between the telegraph poles vibrated with a faint humming under the
multitudinous fingering of the myriad of falling drops, striking among
them and dripping off steadily from one to another. The poles themselves
were dark and swollen and glistening with wet, while the little cones of
glass on the transverse bars reflected the dull grey light of the end of
the afternoon.

As Annixter was about to drive on, a freight train passed, coming
from Guadalajara, going northward toward Bonneville, Fresno and San
Francisco. It was a long train, moving slowly, methodically, with a
measured coughing of its locomotive and a rhythmic cadence of its trucks
over the interstices of the rails. On two or three of the flat cars near
its end, Annixter plainly saw Magnus Derrick’s ploughs, their bright
coating of red and green paint setting a single brilliant note in all
this array of grey and brown.

Annixter halted, watching the train file past, carrying Derrick’s
ploughs away from his ranch, at this very time of the first rain,
when they would be most needed. He watched it, silent, thoughtful, and
without articulate comment. Even after it passed he sat in his place a
long time, watching it lose itself slowly in the distance, its prolonged
rumble diminishing to a faint murmur. Soon he heard the engine sounding
its whistle for the Long Trestle.

But the moving train no longer carried with it that impression of terror
and destruction that had so thrilled Presley’s imagination the night
before. It passed slowly on its way with a mournful roll of wheels, like
the passing of a cortege, like a file of artillery-caissons charioting
dead bodies; the engine’s smoke enveloping it in a mournful veil,
leaving a sense of melancholy in its wake, moving past there,
lugubrious, lamentable, infinitely sad under the grey sky and under
the grey mist of rain which continued to fall with a subdued, rustling
sound, steady, persistent, a vast monotonous murmur that seemed to come
from all quarters of the horizon at once.



CHAPTER III


When Annixter arrived at the Los Muertos ranch house that same evening,
he found a little group already assembled in the dining-room. Magnus
Derrick, wearing the frock coat of broadcloth that he had put on for
the occasion, stood with his back to the fireplace. Harran sat close at
hand, one leg thrown over the arm of his chair. Presley lounged on the
sofa, in corduroys and high laced boots, smoking cigarettes. Broderson
leaned on his folded arms at one corner of the dining table, and
Genslinger, editor and proprietor of the principal newspaper of the
county, the “Bonneville Mercury,” stood with his hat and driving gloves
under his arm, opposite Derrick, a half-emptied glass of whiskey and
water in his hand.

As Annixter entered he heard Genslinger observe: “I’ll have a leader in
the ‘Mercury’ to-morrow that will interest you people. There’s some talk
of your ranch lands being graded in value this winter. I suppose you
will all buy?”

In an instant the editor’s words had riveted upon him the attention of
every man in the room. Annixter broke the moment’s silence that followed
with the remark:

“Well, it’s about time they graded these lands of theirs.”

The question in issue in Genslinger’s remark was of the most vital
interest to the ranchers around Bonneville and Guadalajara. Neither
Magnus Derrick, Broderson, Annixter, nor Osterman actually owned all
the ranches which they worked. As yet, the vast majority of these wheat
lands were the property of the P. and S. W. The explanation of this
condition of affairs went back to the early history of the Pacific and
Southwestern, when, as a bonus for the construction of the road, the
national government had granted to the company the odd numbered sections
of land on either side of the proposed line of route for a distance of
twenty miles. Indisputably, these sections belonged to the P. and S. W.
The even-numbered sections being government property could be and had
been taken up by the ranchers, but the railroad sections, or, as they
were called, the “alternate sections,” would have to be purchased direct
from the railroad itself.

But this had not prevented the farmers from “coming in” upon that part
of the San Joaquin. Long before this the railroad had thrown open these
lands, and, by means of circulars, distributed broadcast throughout the
State, had expressly invited settlement thereon. At that time patents
had not been issued to the railroad for their odd-numbered sections, but
as soon as the land was patented the railroad would grade it in value
and offer it for sale, the first occupants having the first chance of
purchase. The price of these lands was to be fixed by the price the
government put upon its own adjoining lands--about two dollars and a
half per acre.

With cultivation and improvement the ranches must inevitably appreciate
in value. There was every chance to make fortunes. When the railroad
lands about Bonneville had been thrown open, there had been almost a
rush in the matter of settlement, and Broderson, Annixter, Derrick, and
Osterman, being foremost with their claims, had secured the pick of the
country. But the land once settled upon, the P. and S. W. seemed to be
in no hurry as to fixing exactly the value of its sections included in
the various ranches and offering them for sale. The matter dragged along
from year to year, was forgotten for months together, being only brought
to mind on such occasions as this, when the rumour spread that the
General Office was about to take definite action in the affair.

“As soon as the railroad wants to talk business with me,” observed
Annixter, “about selling me their interest in Quien Sabe, I’m ready.
The land has more than quadrupled in value. I’ll bet I could sell it
to-morrow for fifteen dollars an acre, and if I buy of the railroad for
two and a half an acre, there’s boodle in the game.”

“For two and a half!” exclaimed Genslinger. “You don’t suppose the
railroad will let their land go for any such figure as that, do you?
Wherever did you get that idea?”

“From the circulars and pamphlets,” answered Harran, “that the railroad
issued to us when they opened these lands. They are pledged to that.
Even the P. and S. W. couldn’t break such a pledge as that. You are new
in the country, Mr. Genslinger. You don’t remember the conditions upon
which we took up this land.”

“And our improvements,” exclaimed Annixter. “Why, Magnus and I have
put about five thousand dollars between us into that irrigating ditch
already. I guess we are not improving the land just to make it valuable
for the railroad people. No matter how much we improve the land, or how
much it increases in value, they have got to stick by their agreement on
the basis of two-fifty per acre. Here’s one case where the P. and S. W.
DON’T get everything in sight.”

Genslinger frowned, perplexed.

“I AM new in the country, as Harran says,” he answered, “but it seems
to me that there’s no fairness in that proposition. The presence of the
railroad has helped increase the value of your ranches quite as much
as your improvements. Why should you get all the benefit of the rise
in value and the railroad nothing? The fair way would be to share it
between you.”

“I don’t care anything about that,” declared Annixter. “They agreed to
charge but two-fifty, and they’ve got to stick to it.”

“Well,” murmured Genslinger, “from what I know of the affair, I don’t
believe the P. and S. W. intends to sell for two-fifty an acre, at all.
The managers of the road want the best price they can get for everything
in these hard times.”

“Times aren’t ever very hard for the railroad,” hazards old Broderson.

Broderson was the oldest man in the room. He was about sixty-five years
of age, venerable, with a white beard, his figure bent earthwards with
hard work.

He was a narrow-minded man, painfully conscientious in his statements
lest he should be unjust to somebody; a slow thinker, unable to let a
subject drop when once he had started upon it. He had no sooner uttered
his remark about hard times than he was moved to qualify it.

“Hard times,” he repeated, a troubled, perplexed note in his voice;
“well, yes--yes. I suppose the road DOES have hard times, maybe.
Everybody does--of course. I didn’t mean that exactly. I believe in
being just and fair to everybody. I mean that we’ve got to use their
lines and pay their charges good years AND bad years, the P. and S. W.
being the only road in the State. That is--well, when I say the only
road--no, I won’t say the ONLY road. Of course there are other roads.
There’s the D. P. and M. and the San Francisco and North Pacific, that
runs up to Ukiah. I got a brother-in-law in Ukiah. That’s not much of a
wheat country round Ukiah though they DO grow SOME wheat there, come to
think. But I guess it’s too far north. Well, of course there isn’t MUCH.
Perhaps sixty thousand acres in the whole county--if you include barley
and oats. I don’t know; maybe it’s nearer forty thousand. I don’t
remember very well. That’s a good many years ago. I----”

But Annixter, at the end of all patience, turned to Genslinger, cutting
short the old man:

“Oh, rot! Of course the railroad will sell at two-fifty,” he cried.
“We’ve got the contracts.”

“Look to them, then, Mr. Annixter,” retorted Genslinger significantly,
“look to them. Be sure that you are protected.”

Soon after this Genslinger took himself away, and Derrick’s Chinaman
came in to set the table.

“What do you suppose he meant?” asked Broderson, when Genslinger was
gone.

“About this land business?” said Annixter. “Oh, I don’t know. Some tom
fool idea. Haven’t we got their terms printed in black and white in
their circulars? There’s their pledge.”

“Oh, as to pledges,” murmured Broderson, “the railroad is not always TOO
much hindered by those.”

“Where’s Osterman?” demanded Annixter, abruptly changing the subject as
if it were not worth discussion. “Isn’t that goat Osterman coming down
here to-night?”

“You telephoned him, didn’t you, Presley?” inquired Magnus.

Presley had taken Princess Nathalie upon his knee stroking her long,
sleek hair, and the cat, stupefied with beatitude, had closed her eyes
to two fine lines, clawing softly at the corduroy of Presley’s trousers
with alternate paws.

“Yes, sir,” returned Presley. “He said he would be here.”

And as he spoke, young Osterman arrived.

He was a young fellow, but singularly inclined to baldness. His ears,
very red and large, stuck out at right angles from either side of his
head, and his mouth, too, was large--a great horizontal slit beneath
his nose. His cheeks were of a brownish red, the cheek bones a little
salient. His face was that of a comic actor, a singer of songs, a man
never at a loss for an answer, continually striving to make a laugh.
But he took no great interest in ranching and left the management of
his land to his superintendents and foremen, he, himself, living in
Bonneville. He was a poser, a wearer of clothes, forever acting a part,
striving to create an impression, to draw attention to himself. He
was not without a certain energy, but he devoted it to small ends, to
perfecting himself in little accomplishments, continually running after
some new thing, incapable of persisting long in any one course. At one
moment his mania would be fencing; the next, sleight-of-hand tricks;
the next, archery. For upwards of one month he had devoted himself to
learning how to play two banjos simultaneously, then abandoning this
had developed a sudden passion for stamped leather work and had made a
quantity of purses, tennis belts, and hat bands, which he presented to
young ladies of his acquaintance. It was his policy never to make an
enemy. He was liked far better than he was respected. People spoke of
him as “that goat Osterman,” or “that fool Osterman kid,” and invited
him to dinner. He was of the sort who somehow cannot be ignored. If only
because of his clamour he made himself important. If he had one abiding
trait, it was his desire of astonishing people, and in some way,
best known to himself, managed to cause the circulation of the most
extraordinary stories wherein he, himself, was the chief actor. He
was glib, voluble, dexterous, ubiquitous, a teller of funny stories, a
cracker of jokes.

Naturally enough, he was heavily in debt, but carried the burden of it
with perfect nonchalance. The year before S. Behrman had held mortgages
for fully a third of his crop and had squeezed him viciously for
interest. But for all that, Osterman and S. Behrman were continually
seen arm-in-arm on the main street of Bonneville. Osterman was
accustomed to slap S. Behrman on his fat back, declaring:

“You’re a good fellow, old jelly-belly, after all, hey?”

As Osterman entered from the porch, after hanging his cavalry poncho and
dripping hat on the rack outside, Mrs. Derrick appeared in the door that
opened from the dining-room into the glass-roofed hallway just beyond.
Osterman saluted her with effusive cordiality and with ingratiating
blandness.

“I am not going to stay,” she explained, smiling pleasantly at the group
of men, her pretty, wide-open brown eyes, with their look of inquiry and
innocence, glancing from face to face, “I only came to see if you wanted
anything and to say how do you do.”

She began talking to old Broderson, making inquiries as to his wife, who
had been sick the last week, and Osterman turned to the company, shaking
hands all around, keeping up an incessant stream of conversation.

“Hello, boys and girls. Hello, Governor. Sort of a gathering of the
clans to-night. Well, if here isn’t that man Annixter. Hello, Buck. What
do you know? Kind of dusty out to-night.”

At once Annixter began to get red in the face, retiring towards a corner
of the room, standing in an awkward position by the case of stuffed
birds, shambling and confused, while Mrs. Derrick was present, standing
rigidly on both feet, his elbows close to his sides. But he was angry
with Osterman, muttering imprecations to himself, horribly vexed that
the young fellow should call him “Buck” before Magnus’s wife. This goat
Osterman! Hadn’t he any sense, that fool? Couldn’t he ever learn how to
behave before a feemale? Calling him “Buck” like that while Mrs. Derrick
was there. Why a stable-boy would know better; a hired man would have
better manners. All through the dinner that followed Annixter was out of
sorts, sulking in his place, refusing to eat by way of vindicating his
self-respect, resolving to bring Osterman up with a sharp turn if he
called him “Buck” again.

The Chinaman had made a certain kind of plum pudding for dessert, and
Annixter, who remembered other dinners at the Derrick’s, had been saving
himself for this, and had meditated upon it all through the meal. No
doubt, it would restore all his good humour, and he believed his stomach
was so far recovered as to be able to stand it.

But, unfortunately, the pudding was served with a sauce that he
abhorred--a thick, gruel-like, colourless mixture, made from plain water
and sugar. Before he could interfere, the Chinaman had poured a quantity
of it upon his plate.

“Faugh!” exclaimed Annixter. “It makes me sick. Such--such SLOOP. Take
it away. I’ll have mine straight, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s good for your stomach, Buck,” observed young Osterman; “makes it
go down kind of sort of slick; don’t you see? Sloop, hey? That’s a good
name.”

“Look here, don’t you call me Buck. You don’t seem to have any sense,
and, besides, it ISN’T good for my stomach. I know better. What do YOU
know about my stomach, anyhow? Just looking at sloop like that makes me
sick.”

A little while after this the Chinaman cleared away the dessert and
brought in coffee and cigars. The whiskey bottle and the syphon of
soda-water reappeared. The men eased themselves in their places, pushing
back from the table, lighting their cigars, talking of the beginning
of the rains and the prospects of a rise in wheat. Broderson began an
elaborate mental calculation, trying to settle in his mind the exact
date of his visit to Ukiah, and Osterman did sleight-of-hand tricks with
bread pills. But Princess Nathalie, the cat, was uneasy. Annixter was
occupying her own particular chair in which she slept every night. She
could not go to sleep, but spied upon him continually, watching his
every movement with her lambent, yellow eyes, clear as amber.

Then, at length, Magnus, who was at the head of the table, moved in his
place, assuming a certain magisterial attitude. “Well, gentlemen,” he
observed, “I have lost my case against the railroad, the grain-rate
case. Ulsteen decided against me, and now I hear rumours to the effect
that rates for the hauling of grain are to be advanced.”

When Magnus had finished, there was a moment’s silence, each member of
the group maintaining his attitude of attention and interest. It was
Harran who first spoke.

“S. Behrman manipulated the whole affair. There’s a big deal of some
kind in the air, and if there is, we all know who is back of it; S.
Behrman, of course, but who’s back of him? It’s Shelgrim.”

Shelgrim! The name fell squarely in the midst of the conversation,
abrupt, grave, sombre, big with suggestion, pregnant with huge
associations. No one in the group who was not familiar with it; no one,
for that matter, in the county, the State, the whole reach of the West,
the entire Union, that did not entertain convictions as to the man who
carried it; a giant figure in the end-of-the-century finance, a product
of circumstance, an inevitable result of conditions, characteristic,
typical, symbolic of ungovernable forces. In the New Movement, the New
Finance, the reorganisation of capital, the amalgamation of powers,
the consolidation of enormous enterprises--no one individual was more
constantly in the eye of the world; no one was more hated, more dreaded,
no one more compelling of unwilling tribute to his commanding genius, to
the colossal intellect operating the width of an entire continent than
the president and owner of the Pacific and Southwestern.

“I don’t think, however, he has moved yet,” said Magnus.

“The thing for us, then,” exclaimed Osterman, “is to stand from under
before he does.”

“Moved yet!” snorted Annixter. “He’s probably moved so long ago that
we’ve never noticed it.”

“In any case,” hazarded Magnus, “it is scarcely probable that the
deal--whatever it is to be--has been consummated. If we act quickly,
there may be a chance.”

“Act quickly! How?” demanded Annixter. “Good Lord! what can you do?
We’re cinched already. It all amounts to just this: YOU CAN’T BUCK
AGAINST THE RAILROAD. We’ve tried it and tried it, and we are stuck
every time. You, yourself, Derrick, have just lost your grain-rate
case. S. Behrman did you up. Shelgrim owns the courts. He’s got men like
Ulsteen in his pocket. He’s got the Railroad Commission in his
pocket. He’s got the Governor of the State in his pocket. He keeps
a million-dollar lobby at Sacramento every minute of the time the
legislature is in session; he’s got his own men on the floor of the
United States Senate. He has the whole thing organised like an army
corps. What ARE you going to do? He sits in his office in San Francisco
and pulls the strings and we’ve got to dance.”

“But--well--but,” hazarded Broderson, “but there’s the Interstate
Commerce Commission. At least on long-haul rates they----”

“Hoh, yes, the Interstate Commerce Commission,” shouted Annixter,
scornfully, “that’s great, ain’t it? The greatest Punch and Judy; show
on earth. It’s almost as good as the Railroad Commission. There never
was and there never will be a California Railroad Commission not in the
pay of the P. and S. W.”

“It is to the Railroad Commission, nevertheless,” remarked Magnus, “that
the people of the State must look for relief. That is our only hope.
Once elect Commissioners who would be loyal to the people, and the whole
system of excessive rates falls to the ground.”

“Well, why not HAVE a Railroad Commission of our own, then?” suddenly
declared young Osterman.

“Because it can’t be done,” retorted Annixter. “YOU CAN’T BUCK AGAINST
THE RAILROAD and if you could you can’t organise the farmers in the San
Joaquin. We tried it once, and it was enough to turn your stomach. The
railroad quietly bought delegates through S. Behrman and did us up.”

“Well, that’s the game to play,” said Osterman decisively, “buy
delegates.”

“It’s the only game that seems to win,” admitted Harran gloomily. “Or
ever will win,” exclaimed Osterman, a sudden excitement seeming to take
possession of him. His face--the face of a comic actor, with its great
slit of mouth and stiff, red ears--went abruptly pink.

“Look here,” he cried, “this thing is getting desperate. We’ve fought
and fought in the courts and out and we’ve tried agitation and--and all
the rest of it and S. Behrman sacks us every time. Now comes the time
when there’s a prospect of a big crop; we’ve had no rain for two years
and the land has had a long rest. If there is any rain at all this
winter, we’ll have a bonanza year, and just at this very moment when
we’ve got our chance--a chance to pay off our mortgages and get clear of
debt and make a strike--here is Shelgrim making a deal to cinch us and
put up rates. And now here’s the primaries coming off and a new Railroad
Commission going in. That’s why Shelgrim chose this time to make his
deal. If we wait till Shelgrim pulls it off, we’re done for, that’s
flat. I tell you we’re in a fix if we don’t keep an eye open. Things are
getting desperate. Magnus has just said that the key to the whole thing
is the Railroad Commission. Well, why not have a Commission of our own?
Never mind how we get it, let’s get it. If it’s got to be bought, let’s
buy it and put our own men on it and dictate what the rates will be.
Suppose it costs a hundred thousand dollars. Well, we’ll get back more
than that in cheap rates.”

“Mr. Osterman,” said Magnus, fixing the young man with a swift glance,
“Mr. Osterman, you are proposing a scheme of bribery, sir.”

“I am proposing,” repeated Osterman, “a scheme of bribery. Exactly so.”

“And a crazy, wild-eyed scheme at that,” said Annixter gruffly. “Even
supposing you bought a Railroad Commission and got your schedule of low
rates, what happens? The P. and S. W. crowd get out an injunction and
tie you up.”

“They would tie themselves up, too. Hauling at low rates is better than
no hauling at all. The wheat has got to be moved.” “Oh, rot!” cried
Annixter. “Aren’t you ever going to learn any sense? Don’t you know
that cheap transportation would benefit the Liverpool buyers and not us?
Can’t it be FED into you that you can’t buck against the railroad? When
you try to buy a Board of Commissioners don’t you see that you’ll have
to bid against the railroad, bid against a corporation that can chuck
out millions to our thousands? Do you think you can bid against the P.
and S. W.?”

“The railroad don’t need to know we are in the game against them till
we’ve got our men seated.”

“And when you’ve got them seated, what’s to prevent the corporation
buying them right over your head?”

“If we’ve got the right kind of men in they could not be bought that
way,” interposed Harran. “I don’t know but what there’s something in
what Osterman says. We’d have the naming of the Commission and we’d name
honest men.”

Annixter struck the table with his fist in exasperation.

“Honest men!” he shouted; “the kind of men you could get to go into such
a scheme would have to be DIS-honest to begin with.”

Broderson, shifting uneasily in his place, fingering his beard with a
vague, uncertain gesture, spoke again:

“It would be the CHANCE of them--our Commissioners--selling out against
the certainty of Shelgrim doing us up. That is,” he hastened to add,
“ALMOST a certainty; pretty near a certainty.”

“Of course, it would be a chance,” exclaimed Osterman. “But it’s come
to the point where we’ve got to take chances, risk a big stake to make a
big strike, and risk is better than sure failure.”

“I can be no party to a scheme of avowed bribery and corruption, Mr.
Osterman,” declared Magnus, a ring of severity in his voice. “I am
surprised, sir, that you should even broach the subject in my hearing.”

“And,” cried Annixter, “it can’t be done.”

“I don’t know,” muttered Harran, “maybe it just wants a little spark
like this to fire the whole train.”

Magnus glanced at his son in considerable surprise. He had not
expected this of Harran. But so great was his affection for his son, so
accustomed had he become to listening to his advice, to respecting his
opinions, that, for the moment, after the first shock of surprise and
disappointment, he was influenced to give a certain degree of attention
to this new proposition. He in no way countenanced it. At any moment he
was prepared to rise in his place and denounce it and Osterman both. It
was trickery of the most contemptible order, a thing he believed to be
unknown to the old school of politics and statesmanship to which he was
proud to belong; but since Harran, even for one moment, considered it,
he, Magnus, who trusted Harran implicitly, would do likewise--if it was
only to oppose and defeat it in its very beginnings.

And abruptly the discussion began. Gradually Osterman, by dint of his
clamour, his strident reiteration, the plausibility of his glib, ready
assertions, the ease with which he extricated himself when apparently
driven to a corner, completely won over old Broderson to his way of
thinking. Osterman bewildered him with his volubility, the lightning
rapidity with which he leaped from one subject to another, garrulous,
witty, flamboyant, terrifying the old man with pictures of the swift
approach of ruin, the imminence of danger.

Annixter, who led the argument against him--loving argument though he
did--appeared to poor advantage, unable to present his side effectively.
He called Osterman a fool, a goat, a senseless, crazy-headed jackass,
but was unable to refute his assertions. His debate was the clumsy
heaving of brickbats, brutal, direct. He contradicted everything
Osterman said as a matter of principle, made conflicting assertions,
declarations that were absolutely inconsistent, and when Osterman or
Harran used these against him, could only exclaim:

“Well, in a way it’s so, and then again in a way it isn’t.”

But suddenly Osterman discovered a new argument. “If we swing this
deal,” he cried, “we’ve got old jelly-belly Behrman right where we want
him.”

“He’s the man that does us every time,” cried Harran. “If there is dirty
work to be done in which the railroad doesn’t wish to appear, it is
S. Behrman who does it. If the freight rates are to be ‘adjusted’ to
squeeze us a little harder, it is S. Behrman who regulates what we can
stand. If there’s a judge to be bought, it is S. Behrman who does
the bargaining. If there is a jury to be bribed, it is S. Behrman
who handles the money. If there is an election to be jobbed, it is S.
Behrman who manipulates it. It’s Behrman here and Behrman there. It is
Behrman we come against every time we make a move. It is Behrman who has
the grip of us and will never let go till he has squeezed us bone dry.
Why, when I think of it all sometimes I wonder I keep my hands off the
man.”

Osterman got on his feet; leaning across the table, gesturing wildly
with his right hand, his serio-comic face, with its bald forehead
and stiff, red ears, was inflamed with excitement. He took the floor,
creating an impression, attracting all attention to himself, playing to
the gallery, gesticulating, clamourous, full of noise.

“Well, now is your chance to get even,” he vociferated. “It is now or
never. You can take it and save the situation for yourselves and all
California or you can leave it and rot on your own ranches. Buck, I know
you. I know you’re not afraid of anything that wears skin. I know you’ve
got sand all through you, and I know if I showed you how we could put
our deal through and seat a Commission of our own, you wouldn’t hang
back. Governor, you’re a brave man. You know the advantage of prompt and
fearless action. You are not the sort to shrink from taking chances. To
play for big stakes is just your game--to stake a fortune on the turn
of a card. You didn’t get the reputation of being the strongest poker
player in El Dorado County for nothing. Now, here’s the biggest gamble
that ever came your way. If we stand up to it like men with guts in us,
we’ll win out. If we hesitate, we’re lost.”

“I don’t suppose you can help playing the goat, Osterman,” remarked
Annixter, “but what’s your idea? What do you think we can do? I’m not
saying,” he hastened to interpose, “that you’ve anyways convinced me by
all this cackling. I know as well as you that we are in a hole. But I
knew that before I came here to-night. YOU’VE not done anything to make
me change my mind. But just what do you propose? Let’s hear it.”

“Well, I say the first thing to do is to see Disbrow. He’s the political
boss of the Denver, Pueblo, and Mojave road. We will have to get in with
the machine some way and that’s particularly why I want Magnus with us.
He knows politics better than any of us and if we don’t want to get sold
again we will have to have some one that’s in the know to steer us.”

“The only politics I understand, Mr. Osterman,” answered Magnus sternly,
“are honest politics. You must look elsewhere for your political
manager. I refuse to have any part in this matter. If the Railroad
Commission can be nominated legitimately, if your arrangements can be
made without bribery, I am with you to the last iota of my ability.”

“Well, you can’t get what you want without paying for it,” contradicted
Annixter.

Broderson was about to speak when Osterman kicked his foot under the
table. He, himself, held his peace. He was quick to see that if he could
involve Magnus and Annixter in an argument, Annixter, for the mere love
of contention, would oppose the Governor and, without knowing it, would
commit himself to his--Osterman’s--scheme.

This was precisely what happened. In a few moments Annixter was
declaring at top voice his readiness to mortgage the crop of Quien Sabe,
if necessary, for the sake of “busting S. Behrman.” He could see no
great obstacle in the way of controlling the nominating convention so
far as securing the naming of two Railroad Commissioners was concerned.
Two was all they needed. Probably it WOULD cost money. You didn’t get
something for nothing. It would cost them all a good deal more if they
sat like lumps on a log and played tiddledy-winks while Shelgrim sold
out from under them. Then there was this, too: the P. and S. W. were
hard up just then. The shortage on the State’s wheat crop for the last
two years had affected them, too. They were retrenching in expenditures
all along the line. Hadn’t they just cut wages in all departments? There
was this affair of Dyke’s to prove it. The railroad didn’t always act as
a unit, either. There was always a party in it that opposed spending too
much money. He would bet that party was strong just now. He was kind of
sick himself of being kicked by S. Behrman. Hadn’t that pip turned up on
his ranch that very day to bully him about his own line fence? Next he
would be telling him what kind of clothes he ought to wear. Harran had
the right idea. Somebody had got to be busted mighty soon now and he
didn’t propose that it should be he.

“Now you are talking something like sense,” observed Osterman. “I
thought you would see it like that when you got my idea.”

“Your idea, YOUR idea!” cried Annixter. “Why, I’ve had this idea myself
for over three years.”

“What about Disbrow?” asked Harran, hastening to interrupt. “Why do we
want to see Disbrow?”

“Disbrow is the political man for the Denver, Pueblo, and Mojave,”
 answered Osterman, “and you see it’s like this: the Mojave road don’t
run up into the valley at all. Their terminus is way to the south of us,
and they don’t care anything about grain rates through the San Joaquin.
They don’t care how anti-railroad the Commission is, because the
Commission’s rulings can’t affect them. But they divide traffic with the
P. and S. W. in the southern part of the State and they have a good
deal of influence with that road. I want to get the Mojave road, through
Disbrow, to recommend a Commissioner of our choosing to the P. and S. W.
and have the P. and S. W. adopt him as their own.”

“Who, for instance?”

“Darrell, that Los Angeles man--remember?”

“Well, Darrell is no particular friend of Disbrow,” said Annixter. “Why
should Disbrow take him up?”

“PREE-cisely,” cried Osterman. “We make it worth Disbrow’s while to do
it. We go to him and say, ‘Mr. Disbrow, you manage the politics for the
Mojave railroad, and what you say goes with your Board of Directors. We
want you to adopt our candidate for Railroad Commissioner for the third
district. How much do you want for doing it?’ I KNOW we can buy Disbrow.
That gives us one Commissioner. We need not bother about that any
more. In the first district we don’t make any move at all. We let the
political managers of the P. and S. W. nominate whoever they like.
Then we concentrate all our efforts to putting in our man in the second
district. There is where the big fight will come.”

“I see perfectly well what you mean, Mr. Osterman,” observed Magnus,
“but make no mistake, sir, as to my attitude in this business. You may
count me as out of it entirely.”

“Well, suppose we win,” put in Annixter truculently, already
acknowledging himself as involved in the proposed undertaking; “suppose
we win and get low rates for hauling grain. How about you, then? You
count yourself IN then, don’t you? You get all the benefit of lower
rates without sharing any of the risks we take to secure them. No,
nor any of the expense, either. No, you won’t dirty your fingers with
helping us put this deal through, but you won’t be so cursed particular
when it comes to sharing the profits, will you?”

Magnus rose abruptly to his full height, the nostrils of his thin,
hawk-like nose vibrating, his smooth-shaven face paler than ever.

“Stop right where you are, sir,” he exclaimed. “You forget yourself,
Mr. Annixter. Please understand that I tolerate such words as you have
permitted yourself to make use of from no man, not even from my guest. I
shall ask you to apologise.”

In an instant he dominated the entire group, imposing a respect that was
as much fear as admiration. No one made response. For the moment he was
the Master again, the Leader. Like so many delinquent school-boys, the
others cowered before him, ashamed, put to confusion, unable to find
their tongues. In that brief instant of silence following upon Magnus’s
outburst, and while he held them subdued and over-mastered, the fabric
of their scheme of corruption and dishonesty trembled to its base. It
was the last protest of the Old School, rising up there in denunciation
of the new order of things, the statesman opposed to the politician;
honesty, rectitude, uncompromising integrity, prevailing for the last
time against the devious manoeuvring, the evil communications, the
rotten expediency of a corrupted institution.

For a few seconds no one answered. Then, Annixter, moving abruptly and
uneasily in his place, muttered:

“I spoke upon provocation. If you like, we’ll consider it unsaid. I
don’t know what’s going to become of us--go out of business, I presume.”

“I understand Magnus all right,” put in Osterman. “He don’t have to
go into this thing, if it’s against his conscience. That’s all right.
Magnus can stay out if he wants to, but that won’t prevent us going
ahead and seeing what we can do. Only there’s this about it.” He turned
again to Magnus, speaking with every degree of earnestness, every
appearance of conviction. “I did not deny, Governor, from the very start
that this would mean bribery. But you don’t suppose that I like the idea
either. If there was one legitimate hope that was yet left untried,
no matter how forlorn it was, I would try it. But there’s not. It
is literally and soberly true that every means of help--every honest
means--has been attempted. Shelgrim is going to cinch us. Grain rates
are increasing, while, on the other hand, the price of wheat is sagging
lower and lower all the time. If we don’t do something we are ruined.”

Osterman paused for a moment, allowing precisely the right number of
seconds to elapse, then altering and lowering his voice, added:

“I respect the Governor’s principles. I admire them. They do him every
degree of credit.” Then, turning directly to Magnus, he concluded with,
“But I only want you to ask yourself, sir, if, at such a crisis, one
ought to think of oneself, to consider purely personal motives in such a
desperate situation as this? Now, we want you with us, Governor; perhaps
not openly, if you don’t wish it, but tacitly, at least. I won’t ask
you for an answer to-night, but what I do ask of you is to consider this
matter seriously and think over the whole business. Will you do it?”

Osterman ceased definitely to speak, leaning forward across the table,
his eyes fixed on Magnus’s face. There was a silence. Outside, the rain
fell continually with an even, monotonous murmur. In the group of men
around the table no one stirred nor spoke. They looked steadily at
Magnus, who, for the moment, kept his glance fixed thoughtfully upon the
table before him. In another moment he raised his head and looked from
face to face around the group. After all, these were his neighbours,
his friends, men with whom he had been upon the closest terms of
association. In a way they represented what now had come to be his
world. His single swift glance took in the men, one after another.
Annixter, rugged, crude, sitting awkwardly and uncomfortably in his
chair, his unhandsome face, with its outthrust lower lip and deeply
cleft masculine chin, flushed and eager, his yellow hair disordered,
the one tuft on the crown standing stiffly forth like the feather in an
Indian’s scalp lock; Broderson, vaguely combing at his long beard with a
persistent maniacal gesture, distressed, troubled and uneasy; Osterman,
with his comedy face, the face of a music-hall singer, his head bald
and set off by his great red ears, leaning back in his place, softly
cracking the knuckle of a forefinger, and, last of all and close to his
elbow, his son, his support, his confidant and companion, Harran, so
like himself, with his own erect, fine carriage, his thin, beak-like
nose and his blond hair, with its tendency to curl in a forward
direction in front of the ears, young, strong, courageous, full of the
promise of the future years. His blue eyes looked straight into his
father’s with what Magnus could fancy a glance of appeal. Magnus could
see that expression in the faces of the others very plainly. They looked
to him as their natural leader, their chief who was to bring them out
from this abominable trouble which was closing in upon them, and in them
all he saw many types. They--these men around his table on that night
of the first rain of a coming season--seemed to stand in his imagination
for many others--all the farmers, ranchers, and wheat growers of the
great San Joaquin. Their words were the words of a whole community;
their distress, the distress of an entire State, harried beyond the
bounds of endurance, driven to the wall, coerced, exploited, harassed to
the limits of exasperation. “I will think of it,” he said, then hastened
to add, “but I can tell you beforehand that you may expect only a
refusal.”

After Magnus had spoken, there was a prolonged silence. The conference
seemed of itself to have come to an end for that evening. Presley
lighted another cigarette from the butt of the one he had been smoking,
and the cat, Princess Nathalie, disturbed by his movement and by a whiff
of drifting smoke, jumped from his knee to the floor and picking her way
across the room to Annixter, rubbed gently against his legs, her tail
in the air, her back delicately arched. No doubt she thought it time
to settle herself for the night, and as Annixter gave no indication of
vacating his chair, she chose this way of cajoling him into ceding his
place to her. But Annixter was irritated at the Princess’s attentions,
misunderstanding their motive.

“Get out!” he exclaimed, lifting his feet to the rung of the chair.
“Lord love me, but I sure do hate a cat.”

“By the way,” observed Osterman, “I passed Genslinger by the gate as I
came in to-night. Had he been here?”

“Yes, he was here,” said Harran, “and--” but Annixter took the words out
of his mouth.

“He says there’s some talk of the railroad selling us their sections
this winter.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” exclaimed Osterman, interested at once. “Where did
he hear that?”

“Where does a railroad paper get its news? From the General Office, I
suppose.”

“I hope he didn’t get it straight from headquarters that the land was to
be graded at twenty dollars an acre,” murmured Broderson.

“What’s that?” demanded Osterman. “Twenty dollars! Here, put me on,
somebody. What’s all up? What did Genslinger say?”

“Oh, you needn’t get scared,” said Annixter. “Genslinger don’t know,
that’s all. He thinks there was no understanding that the price of the
land should not be advanced when the P. and S. W. came to sell to us.”

“Oh,” muttered Osterman relieved. Magnus, who had gone out into the
office on the other side of the glass-roofed hallway, returned with a
long, yellow envelope in his hand, stuffed with newspaper clippings and
thin, closely printed pamphlets.

“Here is the circular,” he remarked, drawing out one of the pamphlets.
“The conditions of settlement to which the railroad obligated itself are
very explicit.”

He ran over the pages of the circular, then read aloud:

“‘The Company invites settlers to go upon its lands before patents are
issued or the road is completed, and intends in such cases to sell to
them in preference to any other applicants and at a price based upon the
value of the land without improvements,’ and on the other page here,” he
remarked, “they refer to this again. ‘In ascertaining the value of the
lands, any improvements that a settler or any other person may have on
the lands will not be taken into consideration, neither will the price
be increased in consequence thereof.... Settlers are thus insured that
in addition to being accorded the first privilege of purchase, at the
graded price, they will also be protected in their improvements.’
And here,” he commented, “in Section IX. it reads, ‘The lands are not
uniform in price, but are offered at various figures from $2.50 upward
per acre. Usually land covered with tall timber is held at $5.00 per
acre, and that with pine at $10.00. Most is for sale at $2.50 and
$5.00.”

“When you come to read that carefully,” hazarded old Broderson,
“it--it’s not so VERY REASSURING. ‘MOST is for sale at two-fifty an
acre,’ it says. That don’t mean ‘ALL,’ that only means SOME. I wish now
that I had secured a more iron-clad agreement from the P. and S. W. when
I took up its sections on my ranch, and--and Genslinger is in a position
to know the intentions of the railroad. At least, he--he--he is in TOUCH
with them. All newspaper men are. Those, I mean, who are subsidised by
the General Office. But, perhaps, Genslinger isn’t subsidised, I don’t
know. I--I am not sure. Maybe--perhaps”

“Oh, you don’t know and you do know, and maybe and perhaps, and you’re
not so sure,” vociferated Annixter. “How about ignoring the value of our
improvements? Nothing hazy about THAT statement, I guess. It says in so
many words that any improvements we make will not be considered when the
land is appraised and that’s the same thing, isn’t it? The unimproved
land is worth two-fifty an acre; only timber land is worth more and
there’s none too much timber about here.”

“Well, one thing at a time,” said Harran. “The thing for us now is to
get into this primary election and the convention and see if we can push
our men for Railroad Commissioners.”

“Right,” declared Annixter. He rose, stretching his arms above his head.
“I’ve about talked all the wind out of me,” he said. “Think I’ll be
moving along. It’s pretty near midnight.”

But when Magnus’s guests turned their attention to the matter of
returning to their different ranches, they abruptly realised that the
downpour had doubled and trebled in its volume since earlier in the
evening. The fields and roads were veritable seas of viscid mud, the
night absolutely black-dark; assuredly not a night in which to venture
out. Magnus insisted that the three ranchers should put up at Los
Muertos. Osterman accepted at once, Annixter, after an interminable
discussion, allowed himself to be persuaded, in the end accepting as
though granting a favour. Broderson protested that his wife, who was not
well, would expect him to return that night and would, no doubt, fret
if he did not appear. Furthermore, he lived close by, at the junction
of the County and Lower Road. He put a sack over his head and shoulders,
persistently declining Magnus’s offered umbrella and rubber coat, and
hurried away, remarking that he had no foreman on his ranch and had to
be up and about at five the next morning to put his men to work.

“Fool!” muttered Annixter when the old man had gone. “Imagine farming a
ranch the size of his without a foreman.”

Harran showed Osterman and Annixter where they were to sleep, in
adjoining rooms. Magnus soon afterward retired.

Osterman found an excuse for going to bed, but Annixter and Harran
remained in the latter’s room, in a haze of blue tobacco smoke, talking,
talking. But at length, at the end of all argument, Annixter got up,
remarking:

“Well, I’m going to turn in. It’s nearly two o’clock.”

He went to his room, closing the door, and Harran, opening his window to
clear out the tobacco smoke, looked out for a moment across the country
toward the south.

The darkness was profound, impenetrable; the rain fell with an
uninterrupted roar. Near at hand one could hear the sound of dripping
eaves and foliage and the eager, sucking sound of the drinking earth,
and abruptly while Harran stood looking out, one hand upon the upraised
sash, a great puff of the outside air invaded the room, odourous with
the reek of the soaking earth, redolent with fertility, pungent, heavy,
tepid. He closed the window again and sat for a few moments on the edge
of the bed, one shoe in his hand, thoughtful and absorbed, wondering if
his father would involve himself in this new scheme, wondering if, after
all, he wanted him to.

But suddenly he was aware of a commotion, issuing from the direction
of Annixter’s room, and the voice of Annixter himself upraised in
expostulation and exasperation. The door of the room to which Annixter
had been assigned opened with a violent wrench and an angry voice
exclaimed to anybody who would listen:

“Oh, yes, funny, isn’t it? In a way, it’s funny, and then, again, in a
way it isn’t.”

The door banged to so that all the windows of the house rattled in their
frames.

Harran hurried out into the dining-room and there met Presley and his
father, who had been aroused as well by Annixter’s clamour. Osterman was
there, too, his bald head gleaming like a bulb of ivory in the light of
the lamp that Magnus carried.

“What’s all up?” demanded Osterman. “Whatever in the world is the matter
with Buck?”

Confused and terrible sounds came from behind the door of Annixter’s
room. A prolonged monologue of grievance, broken by explosions of wrath
and the vague noise of some one in a furious hurry. All at once and
before Harran had a chance to knock on the door, Annixter flung it open.
His face was blazing with anger, his outthrust lip more prominent than
ever, his wiry, yellow hair in disarray, the tuft on the crown sticking
straight into the air like the upraised hackles of an angry hound.
Evidently he had been dressing himself with the most headlong rapidity;
he had not yet put on his coat and vest, but carried them over his arm,
while with his disengaged hand he kept hitching his suspenders over his
shoulders with a persistent and hypnotic gesture. Without a moment’s
pause he gave vent to his indignation in a torrent of words.

“Ah, yes, in my bed, sloop, aha! I know the man who put it there,” he
went on, glaring at Osterman, “and that man is a PIP. Sloop! Slimy,
disgusting stuff; you heard me say I didn’t like it when the Chink
passed it to me at dinner--and just for that reason you put it in my
bed, and I stick my feet into it when I turn in. Funny, isn’t it? Oh,
yes, too funny for any use. I’d laugh a little louder if I was you.”

“Well, Buck,” protested Harran, as he noticed the hat in Annixter’s
hand, “you’re not going home just for----”

Annixter turned on him with a shout.

“I’ll get plumb out of here,” he trumpeted. “I won’t stay here another
minute.”

He swung into his waistcoat and coat, scrabbling at the buttons in the
violence of his emotions. “And I don’t know but what it will make me
sick again to go out in a night like this. NO, I won’t stay. Some things
are funny, and then, again, there are some things that are not. Ah, yes,
sloop! Well, that’s all right. I can be funny, too, when you come to
that. You don’t get a cent of money out of me. You can do your dirty
bribery in your own dirty way. I won’t come into this scheme at all.
I wash my hands of the whole business. It’s rotten and it’s wild-eyed;
it’s dirt from start to finish; and you’ll all land in State’s prison.
You can count me out.”

“But, Buck, look here, you crazy fool,” cried Harran, “I don’t know who
put that stuff in your bed, but I’m not going; to let you go back to
Quien Sabe in a rain like this.”

“I know who put it in,” clamoured the other, shaking his fists, “and
don’t call me Buck and I’ll do as I please. I WILL go back home. I’ll
get plumb out of here. Sorry I came. Sorry I ever lent myself to such a
disgusting, dishonest, dirty bribery game as this all to-night. I won’t
put a dime into it, no, not a penny.”

He stormed to the door leading out upon the porch, deaf to all reason.
Harran and Presley followed him, trying to dissuade him from going home
at that time of night and in such a storm, but Annixter was not to be
placated. He stamped across to the barn where his horse and buggy had
been stabled, splashing through the puddles under foot, going out of his
way to drench himself, refusing even to allow Presley and Harran to help
him harness the horse.

“What’s the use of making a fool of yourself, Annixter?” remonstrated
Presley, as Annixter backed the horse from the stall. “You act just like
a ten-year-old boy. If Osterman wants to play the goat, why should you
help him out?”

“He’s a PIP,” vociferated Annixter. “You don’t understand, Presley. It
runs in my family to hate anything sticky. It’s--it’s--it’s heredity.
How would you like to get into bed at two in the morning and jam your
feet down into a slimy mess like that? Oh, no. It’s not so funny then.
And you mark my words, Mr. Harran Derrick,” he continued, as he climbed
into the buggy, shaking the whip toward Harran, “this business we talked
over to-night--I’m OUT of it. It’s yellow. It’s too CURSED dishonest.”

He cut the horse across the back with the whip and drove out into the
pelting rain. In a few seconds the sound of his buggy wheels was lost in
the muffled roar of the downpour.

Harran and Presley closed the barn and returned to the house, sheltering
themselves under a tarpaulin carriage cover. Once inside, Harran went to
remonstrate with Osterman, who was still up. Magnus had again retired.
The house had fallen quiet again.

As Presley crossed the dining-room on the way to his own apartment in
the second story of the house, he paused for a moment, looking about
him. In the dull light of the lowered lamps, the redwood panelling of
the room showed a dark crimson as though stained with blood. On the
massive slab of the dining table the half-emptied glasses and bottles
stood about in the confusion in which they had been left, reflecting
themselves deep into the polished wood; the glass doors of the case of
stuffed birds was a subdued shimmer; the many-coloured Navajo blanket
over the couch seemed a mere patch of brown.

Around the table the chairs in which the men had sat throughout the
evening still ranged themselves in a semi-circle, vaguely suggestive of
the conference of the past few hours, with all its possibilities of good
and evil, its significance of a future big with portent. The room was
still. Only on the cushions of the chair that Annixter had occupied, the
cat, Princess Nathalie, at last comfortably settled in her accustomed
place, dozed complacently, her paws tucked under her breast, filling the
deserted room with the subdued murmur of her contented purr.



CHAPTER IV


On the Quien Sabe ranch, in one of its western divisions, near the line
fence that divided it from the Osterman holding, Vanamee was harnessing
the horses to the plough to which he had been assigned two days before,
a stable-boy from the division barn helping him.

Promptly discharged from the employ of the sheep-raisers after the
lamentable accident near the Long Trestle, Vanamee had presented himself
to Harran, asking for employment. The season was beginning; on all
the ranches work was being resumed. The rain had put the ground into
admirable condition for ploughing, and Annixter, Broderson, and Osterman
all had their gangs at work. Thus, Vanamee was vastly surprised to find
Los Muertos idle, the horses still in the barns, the men gathering in
the shade of the bunk-house and eating-house, smoking, dozing, or going
aimlessly about, their arms dangling. The ploughs for which Magnus and
Harran were waiting in a fury of impatience had not yet arrived, and
since the management of Los Muertos had counted upon having these in
hand long before this time, no provision had been made for keeping the
old stock in repair; many of these old ploughs were useless, broken, and
out of order; some had been sold. It could not be said definitely
when the new ploughs would arrive. Harran had decided to wait one week
longer, and then, in case of their non-appearance, to buy a consignment
of the old style of plough from the dealers in Bonneville. He could
afford to lose the money better than he could afford to lose the season.

Failing of work on Los Muertos, Vanamee had gone to Quien Sabe.
Annixter, whom he had spoken to first, had sent him across the ranch
to one of his division superintendents, and this latter, after
assuring himself of Vanamee’s familiarity with horses and his previous
experience--even though somewhat remote--on Los Muertos, had taken him
on as a driver of one of the gang ploughs, then at work on his division.

The evening before, when the foreman had blown his whistle at six
o’clock, the long line of ploughs had halted upon the instant, and the
drivers, unharnessing their teams, had taken them back to the division
barns--leaving the ploughs as they were in the furrows. But an hour
after daylight the next morning the work was resumed. After breakfast,
Vanamee, riding one horse and leading the others, had returned to
the line of ploughs together with the other drivers. Now he was busy
harnessing the team. At the division blacksmith shop--temporarily put
up--he had been obliged to wait while one of his lead horses was shod,
and he had thus been delayed quite five minutes. Nearly all the other
teams were harnessed, the drivers on their seats, waiting for the
foreman’s signal.

“All ready here?” inquired the foreman, driving up to Vanamee’s team in
his buggy.

“All ready, sir,” answered Vanamee, buckling the last strap.

He climbed to his seat, shaking out the reins, and turning about, looked
back along the line, then all around him at the landscape inundated with
the brilliant glow of the early morning.

The day was fine. Since the first rain of the season, there had been no
other. Now the sky was without a cloud, pale blue, delicate, luminous,
scintillating with morning. The great brown earth turned a huge flank to
it, exhaling the moisture of the early dew. The atmosphere, washed clean
of dust and mist, was translucent as crystal. Far off to the east, the
hills on the other side of Broderson Creek stood out against the pallid
saffron of the horizon as flat and as sharply outlined as if pasted on
the sky. The campanile of the ancient Mission of San Juan seemed as fine
as frost work. All about between the horizons, the carpet of the land
unrolled itself to infinity. But now it was no longer parched with heat,
cracked and warped by a merciless sun, powdered with dust. The rain had
done its work; not a clod that was not swollen with fertility, not a
fissure that did not exhale the sense of fecundity. One could not take
a dozen steps upon the ranches without the brusque sensation that
underfoot the land was alive; roused at last from its sleep, palpitating
with the desire of reproduction. Deep down there in the recesses of
the soil, the great heart throbbed once more, thrilling with passion,
vibrating with desire, offering itself to the caress of the plough,
insistent, eager, imperious. Dimly one felt the deep-seated trouble of
the earth, the uneasy agitation of its members, the hidden tumult of
its womb, demanding to be made fruitful, to reproduce, to disengage the
eternal renascent germ of Life that stirred and struggled in its loins.

The ploughs, thirty-five in number, each drawn by its team of ten,
stretched in an interminable line, nearly a quarter of a mile in length,
behind and ahead of Vanamee. They were arranged, as it were, en echelon,
not in file--not one directly behind the other, but each succeeding
plough its own width farther in the field than the one in front of it.
Each of these ploughs held five shears, so that when the entire company
was in motion, one hundred and seventy-five furrows were made at the
same instant. At a distance, the ploughs resembled a great column of
field artillery. Each driver was in his place, his glance alternating
between his horses and the foreman nearest at hand. Other foremen, in
their buggies or buckboards, were at intervals along the line, like
battery lieutenants. Annixter himself, on horseback, in boots and
campaign hat, a cigar in his teeth, overlooked the scene.

The division superintendent, on the opposite side of the line, galloped
past to a position at the head. For a long moment there was a silence. A
sense of preparedness ran from end to end of the column. All things were
ready, each man in his place. The day’s work was about to begin.

Suddenly, from a distance at the head of the line came the shrill
trilling of a whistle. At once the foreman nearest Vanamee repeated it,
at the same time turning down the line, and waving one arm. The signal
was repeated, whistle answering whistle, till the sounds lost themselves
in the distance. At once the line of ploughs lost its immobility, moving
forward, getting slowly under way, the horses straining in the traces. A
prolonged movement rippled from team to team, disengaging in its passage
a multitude of sounds---the click of buckles, the creak of straining
leather, the subdued clash of machinery, the cracking of whips, the deep
breathing of nearly four hundred horses, the abrupt commands and cries
of the drivers, and, last of all, the prolonged, soothing murmur of
the thick brown earth turning steadily from the multitude of advancing
shears.

The ploughing thus commenced, continued. The sun rose higher. Steadily
the hundred iron hands kneaded and furrowed and stroked the brown, humid
earth, the hundred iron teeth bit deep into the Titan’s flesh. Perched
on his seat, the moist living reins slipping and tugging in his hands,
Vanamee, in the midst of this steady confusion of constantly varying
sensation, sight interrupted by sound, sound mingling with sight, on
this swaying, vibrating seat, quivering with the prolonged thrill of the
earth, lapsed to a sort of pleasing numbness, in a sense, hypnotised by
the weaving maze of things in which he found himself involved. To keep
his team at an even, regular gait, maintaining the precise interval,
to run his furrows as closely as possible to those already made by the
plough in front--this for the moment was the entire sum of his duties.
But while one part of his brain, alert and watchful, took cognisance of
these matters, all the greater part was lulled and stupefied with the
long monotony of the affair.

The ploughing, now in full swing, enveloped him in a vague, slow-moving
whirl of things. Underneath him was the jarring, jolting, trembling
machine; not a clod was turned, not an obstacle encountered, that he did
not receive the swift impression of it through all his body, the very
friction of the damp soil, sliding incessantly from the shiny surface of
the shears, seemed to reproduce itself in his finger-tips and along the
back of his head. He heard the horse-hoofs by the myriads crushing down
easily, deeply, into the loam, the prolonged clinking of trace-chains,
the working of the smooth brown flanks in the harness, the clatter of
wooden hames, the champing of bits, the click of iron shoes against
pebbles, the brittle stubble of the surface ground crackling and
snapping as the furrows turned, the sonorous, steady breaths wrenched
from the deep, labouring chests, strap-bound, shining with sweat,
and all along the line the voices of the men talking to the horses.
Everywhere there were visions of glossy brown backs, straining, heaving,
swollen with muscle; harness streaked with specks of froth, broad,
cup-shaped hoofs, heavy with brown loam, men’s faces red with tan, blue
overalls spotted with axle-grease; muscled hands, the knuckles whitened
in their grip on the reins, and through it all the ammoniacal smell of
the horses, the bitter reek of perspiration of beasts and men, the
aroma of warm leather, the scent of dead stubble--and stronger and more
penetrating than everything else, the heavy, enervating odour of the
upturned, living earth.

At intervals, from the tops of one of the rare, low swells of the land,
Vanamee overlooked a wider horizon. On the other divisions of Quien Sabe
the same work was in progress. Occasionally he could see another column
of ploughs in the adjoining division--sometimes so close at hand that
the subdued murmur of its movements reached his ear; sometimes so
distant that it resolved itself into a long, brown streak upon the
grey of the ground. Farther off to the west on the Osterman ranch other
columns came and went, and, once, from the crest of the highest swell on
his division, Vanamee caught a distant glimpse of the Broderson ranch.
There, too, moving specks indicated that the ploughing was under way.
And farther away still, far off there beyond the fine line of the
horizons, over the curve of the globe, the shoulder of the earth, he
knew were other ranches, and beyond these others, and beyond these still
others, the immensities multiplying to infinity.

Everywhere throughout the great San Joaquin, unseen and unheard, a
thousand ploughs up-stirred the land, tens of thousands of shears
clutched deep into the warm, moist soil.

It was the long stroking caress, vigorous, male, powerful, for which the
Earth seemed panting. The heroic embrace of a multitude of iron hands,
gripping deep into the brown, warm flesh of the land that quivered
responsive and passionate under this rude advance, so robust as to be
almost an assault, so violent as to be veritably brutal. There, under
the sun and under the speckless sheen of the sky, the wooing of
the Titan began, the vast primal passion, the two world-forces, the
elemental Male and Female, locked in a colossal embrace, at grapples in
the throes of an infinite desire, at once terrible and divine, knowing
no law, untamed, savage, natural, sublime.

From time to time the gang in which Vanamee worked halted on the signal
from foreman or overseer. The horses came to a standstill, the vague
clamour of the work lapsed away. Then the minutes passed. The whole work
hung suspended. All up and down the line one demanded what had happened.
The division superintendent galloped past, perplexed and anxious. For
the moment, one of the ploughs was out of order, a bolt had slipped,
a lever refused to work, or a machine had become immobilised in heavy
ground, or a horse had lamed himself. Once, even, toward noon, an entire
plough was taken out of the line, so out of gear that a messenger had to
be sent to the division forge to summon the machinist.

Annixter had disappeared. He had ridden farther on to the other
divisions of his ranch, to watch the work in progress there. At twelve
o’clock, according to his orders, all the division superintendents put
themselves in communication with him by means of the telephone wires
that connected each of the division houses, reporting the condition
of the work, the number of acres covered, the prospects of each plough
traversing its daily average of twenty miles.

At half-past twelve, Vanamee and the rest of the drivers ate their
lunch in the field, the tin buckets having been distributed to them that
morning after breakfast. But in the evening, the routine of the previous
day was repeated, and Vanamee, unharnessing his team, riding one horse
and leading the others, returned to the division barns and bunk-house.

It was between six and seven o’clock. The half hundred men of the gang
threw themselves upon the supper the Chinese cooks had set out in the
shed of the eating-house, long as a bowling alley, unpainted, crude, the
seats benches, the table covered with oil cloth. Overhead a half-dozen
kerosene lamps flared and smoked.

The table was taken as if by assault; the clatter of iron knives upon
the tin plates was as the reverberation of hail upon a metal roof. The
ploughmen rinsed their throats with great draughts of wine, and, their
elbows wide, their foreheads flushed, resumed the attack upon the beef
and bread, eating as though they would never have enough. All up and
down the long table, where the kerosene lamps reflected themselves deep
in the oil-cloth cover, one heard the incessant sounds of mastication,
and saw the uninterrupted movement of great jaws. At every moment one
or another of the men demanded a fresh portion of beef, another pint of
wine, another half-loaf of bread. For upwards of an hour the gang ate.
It was no longer a supper. It was a veritable barbecue, a crude and
primitive feasting, barbaric, homeric.

But in all this scene Vanamee saw nothing repulsive. Presley would
have abhorred it--this feeding of the People, this gorging of the human
animal, eager for its meat. Vanamee, simple, uncomplicated, living so
close to nature and the rudimentary life, understood its significance.
He knew very well that within a short half-hour after this meal the
men would throw themselves down in their bunks to sleep without moving,
inert and stupefied with fatigue, till the morning. Work, food, and
sleep, all life reduced to its bare essentials, uncomplex, honest,
healthy. They were strong, these men, with the strength of the soil they
worked, in touch with the essential things, back again to the starting
point of civilisation, coarse, vital, real, and sane.

For a brief moment immediately after the meal, pipes were lit, and
the air grew thick with fragrant tobacco smoke. On a corner of the
dining-room table, a game of poker was begun. One of the drivers, a
Swede, produced an accordion; a group on the steps of the bunk-house
listened, with alternate gravity and shouts of laughter, to the
acknowledged story-teller of the gang. But soon the men began to turn
in, stretching themselves at full length on the horse blankets in the
racklike bunks. The sounds of heavy breathing increased steadily, lights
were put out, and before the afterglow had faded from the sky, the gang
was asleep.

Vanamee, however, remained awake. The night was fine, warm; the sky
silver-grey with starlight. By and by there would be a moon. In the
first watch after the twilight, a faint puff of breeze came up out
of the south. From all around, the heavy penetrating smell of the
new-turned earth exhaled steadily into the darkness. After a while, when
the moon came up, he could see the vast brown breast of the earth turn
toward it. Far off, distant objects came into view: The giant oak tree
at Hooven’s ranch house near the irrigating ditch on Los Muertos, the
skeleton-like tower of the windmill on Annixter’s Home ranch, the clump
of willows along Broderson Creek close to the Long Trestle, and, last of
all, the venerable tower of the Mission of San Juan on the high ground
beyond the creek.

Thitherward, like homing pigeons, Vanamee’s thoughts turned
irresistibly. Near to that tower, just beyond, in the little hollow,
hidden now from his sight, was the Seed ranch where Angele Varian
had lived. Straining his eyes, peering across the intervening levels,
Vanamee fancied he could almost see the line of venerable pear trees
in whose shadow she had been accustomed to wait for him. On many such
a night as this he had crossed the ranches to find her there. His mind
went back to that wonderful time of his life sixteen years before
this, when Angele was alive, when they two were involved in the sweet
intricacies of a love so fine, so pure, so marvellous that it seemed to
them a miracle, a manifestation, a thing veritably divine, put into the
life of them and the hearts of them by God Himself. To that they had
been born. For this love’s sake they had come into the world, and
the mingling of their lives was to be the Perfect Life, the intended,
ordained union of the soul of man with the soul of woman, indissoluble,
harmonious as music, beautiful beyond all thought, a foretaste of
Heaven, a hostage of immortality.

No, he, Vanamee, could never, never forget, never was the edge of his
grief to lose its sharpness, never would the lapse of time blunt the
tooth of his pain. Once more, as he sat there, looking off across the
ranches, his eyes fixed on the ancient campanile of the Mission church,
the anguish that would not die leaped at his throat, tearing at his
heart, shaking him and rending him with a violence as fierce and as
profound as if it all had been but yesterday. The ache returned to his
heart a physical keen pain; his hands gripped tight together, twisting,
interlocked, his eyes filled with tears, his whole body shaken and riven
from head to heel.

He had lost her. God had not meant it, after all. The whole matter had
been a mistake. That vast, wonderful love that had come upon them had
been only the flimsiest mockery. Abruptly Vanamee rose. He knew the
night that was before him. At intervals throughout the course of his
prolonged wanderings, in the desert, on the mesa, deep in the canon,
lost and forgotten on the flanks of unnamed mountains, alone under the
stars and under the moon’s white eye, these hours came to him, his grief
recoiling upon him like the recoil of a vast and terrible engine.
Then he must fight out the night, wrestling with his sorrow, praying
sometimes, incoherent, hardly conscious, asking “Why” of the night and
of the stars.

Such another night had come to him now. Until dawn he knew he must
struggle with his grief, torn with memories, his imagination assaulted
with visions of a vanished happiness. If this paroxysm of sorrow was to
assail him again that night, there was but one place for him to be. He
would go to the Mission--he would see Father Sarria; he would pass the
night in the deep shadow of the aged pear trees in the Mission garden.

He struck out across Quien Sabe, his face, the face of an ascetic, lean,
brown, infinitely sad, set toward the Mission church. In about an hour
he reached and crossed the road that led northward from Guadalajara
toward the Seed ranch, and, a little farther on, forded Broderson Creek
where it ran through one corner of the Mission land. He climbed the
hill and halted, out of breath from his brisk wall, at the end of the
colonnade of the Mission itself.

Until this moment Vanamee had not trusted himself to see the Mission at
night. On the occasion of his first daytime visit with Presley, he had
hurried away even before the twilight had set in, not daring for the
moment to face the crowding phantoms that in his imagination filled the
Mission garden after dark. In the daylight, the place had seemed
strange to him. None of his associations with the old building and its
surroundings were those of sunlight and brightness. Whenever, during his
long sojourns in the wilderness of the Southwest, he had called up the
picture in the eye of his mind, it had always appeared to him in the dim
mystery of moonless nights, the venerable pear trees black with shadow,
the fountain a thing to be heard rather than seen.

But as yet he had not entered the garden. That lay on the other side of
the Mission. Vanamee passed down the colonnade, with its uneven pavement
of worn red bricks, to the last door by the belfry tower, and rang the
little bell by pulling the leather thong that hung from a hole in the
door above the knob.

But the maid-servant, who, after a long interval opened the door,
blinking and confused at being roused from her sleep, told Vanamee that
Sarria was not in his room. Vanamee, however, was known to her as the
priest’s protege and great friend, and she allowed him to enter, telling
him that, no doubt, he would find Sarria in the church itself. The
servant led the way down the cool adobe passage to a larger room that
occupied the entire width of the bottom of the belfry tower, and whence
a flight of aged steps led upward into the dark. At the foot of the
stairs was a door opening into the church. The servant admitted Vanamee,
closing the door behind her.

The interior of the Mission, a great oblong of white-washed adobe with
a flat ceiling, was lighted dimly by the sanctuary lamp that hung from
three long chains just over the chancel rail at the far end of the
church, and by two or three cheap kerosene lamps in brackets of
imitation bronze. All around the walls was the inevitable series of
pictures representing the Stations of the Cross. They were of a
hideous crudity of design and composition, yet were wrought out with an
innocent, unquestioning sincerity that was not without its charm. Each
picture framed alike in gilt, bore its suitable inscription in staring
black letters. “Simon, The Cyrenean, Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross.”
 “Saint Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus.” “Jesus Falls for the Fourth
Time,” and so on. Half-way up the length of the church the pews began,
coffin-like boxes of blackened oak, shining from years of friction, each
with its door; while over them, and built out from the wall, was the
pulpit, with its tarnished gilt sounding-board above it, like the raised
cover of a great hat-box. Between the pews, in the aisle, the violent
vermilion of a strip of ingrain carpet assaulted the eye. Farther on
were the steps to the altar, the chancel rail of worm-riddled oak, the
high altar, with its napery from the bargain counters of a San Francisco
store, the massive silver candlesticks, each as much as one man could
lift, the gift of a dead Spanish queen, and, last, the pictures of the
chancel, the Virgin in a glory, a Christ in agony on the cross, and
St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Mission, the San Juan
Bautista, of the early days, a gaunt grey figure, in skins, two fingers
upraised in the gesture of benediction.

The air of the place was cool and damp, and heavy with the flat, sweet
scent of stale incense smoke. It was of a vault-like stillness, and the
closing of the door behind Vanamee reechoed from corner to corner with a
prolonged reverberation of thunder.

However, Father Sarria was not in the church. Vanamee took a couple of
turns the length of the aisle, looking about into the chapels on either
side of the chancel. But the building was deserted. The priest had been
there recently, nevertheless, for the altar furniture was in disarray,
as though he had been rearranging it but a moment before. On both sides
of the church and half-way up their length, the walls were pierced by
low archways, in which were massive wooden doors, clamped with iron
bolts. One of these doors, on the pulpit side of the church, stood ajar,
and stepping to it and pushing it wide open, Vanamee looked diagonally
across a little patch of vegetables--beets, radishes, and lettuce--to
the rear of the building that had once contained the cloisters, and
through an open window saw Father Sarria diligently polishing the silver
crucifix that usually stood on the high altar. Vanamee did not call
to the priest. Putting a finger to either temple, he fixed his eyes
steadily upon him for a moment as he moved about at his work. In a few
seconds he closed his eyes, but only part way. The pupils contracted;
his forehead lowered to an expression of poignant intensity. Soon
afterward he saw the priest pause abruptly in the act of drawing the
cover over the crucifix, looking about him from side to side. He turned
again to his work, and again came to a stop, perplexed, curious. With
uncertain steps, and evidently wondering why he did so, he came to the
door of the room and opened it, looking out into the night. Vanamee,
hidden in the deep shadow of the archway, did not move, but his eyes
closed, and the intense expression deepened on his face. The priest
hesitated, moved forward a step, turned back, paused again, then came
straight across the garden patch, brusquely colliding with Vanamee,
still motionless in the recess of the archway.

Sarria gave a great start, catching his breath.

“Oh--oh, it’s you. Was it you I heard calling? No, I could not have
heard--I remember now. What a strange power! I am not sure that it is
right to do this thing, Vanamee. I--I HAD to come. I do not know why.
It is a great force--a power--I don’t like it. Vanamee, sometimes it
frightens me.”

Vanamee put his chin in the air.

“If I had wanted to, sir, I could have made you come to me from back
there in the Quien Sabe ranch.”

The priest shook his head.

“It troubles me,” he said, “to think that my own will can count for so
little. Just now I could not resist. If a deep river had been between
us, I must have crossed it. Suppose I had been asleep now?” “It would
have been all the easier,” answered Vanamee. “I understand as little of
these things as you. But I think if you had been asleep, your power of
resistance would have been so much the more weakened.”

“Perhaps I should not have waked. Perhaps I should have come to you in
my sleep.”

“Perhaps.”

Sarria crossed himself. “It is occult,” he hazarded. “No; I do not like
it. Dear fellow,” he put his hand on Vanamee’s shoulder, “don’t--call
me that way again; promise. See,” he held out his hand, “I am all of a
tremble. There, we won’t speak of it further. Wait for me a moment. I
have only to put the cross in its place, and a fresh altar cloth, and
then I am done. To-morrow is the feast of The Holy Cross, and I am
preparing against it. The night is fine. We will smoke a cigar in the
cloister garden.”

A few moments later the two passed out of the door on the other side of
the church, opposite the pulpit, Sarria adjusting a silk skull cap
on his tonsured head. He wore his cassock now, and was far more the
churchman in appearance than when Vanamee and Presley had seen him on a
former occasion.

They were now in the cloister garden. The place was charming. Everywhere
grew clumps of palms and magnolia trees. A grapevine, over a century
old, occupied a trellis in one angle of the walls which surrounded the
garden on two sides. Along the third side was the church itself, while
the fourth was open, the wall having crumbled away, its site marked
only by a line of eight great pear trees, older even than the grapevine,
gnarled, twisted, bearing no fruit. Directly opposite the pear trees,
in the south wall of the garden, was a round, arched portal, whose gate
giving upon the esplanade in front of the Mission was always closed.
Small gravelled walks, well kept, bordered with mignonette, twisted
about among the flower beds, and underneath the magnolia trees. In the
centre was a little fountain in a stone basin green with moss, while
just beyond, between the fountain and the pear trees, stood what was
left of a sun dial, the bronze gnomon, green with the beatings of
the weather, the figures on the half-circle of the dial worn away,
illegible.

But on the other side of the fountain, and directly opposite the door
of the Mission, ranged against the wall, were nine graves--three with
headstones, the rest with slabs. Two of Sarria’s predecessors were
buried here; three of the graves were those of Mission Indians. One was
thought to contain a former alcalde of Guadalajara; two more held the
bodies of De La Cuesta and his young wife (taking with her to the grave
the illusion of her husband’s love), and the last one, the ninth, at
the end of the line, nearest the pear trees, was marked by a little
headstone, the smallest of any, on which, together with the proper
dates--only sixteen years apart--was cut the name “Angele Varian.”

But the quiet, the repose, the isolation of the little cloister garden
was infinitely delicious. It was a tiny corner of the great valley that
stretched in all directions around it--shut off, discreet, romantic, a
garden of dreams, of enchantments, of illusions. Outside there, far
off, the great grim world went clashing through its grooves, but in
here never an echo of the grinding of its wheels entered to jar upon the
subdued modulation of the fountain’s uninterrupted murmur.

Sarria and Vanamee found their way to a stone bench against the side
wall of the Mission, near the door from which they had just issued,
and sat down, Sarria lighting a cigar, Vanamee rolling and smoking
cigarettes in Mexican fashion.

All about them widened the vast calm night. All the stars were out. The
moon was coming up. There was no wind, no sound. The insistent flowing
of the fountain seemed only as the symbol of the passing of time, a
thing that was understood rather than heard, inevitable, prolonged. At
long intervals, a faint breeze, hardly more than a breath, found its way
into the garden over the enclosing walls, and passed overhead, spreading
everywhere the delicious, mingled perfume of magnolia blossoms, of
mignonette, of moss, of grass, and all the calm green life silently
teeming within the enclosure of the walls.

From where he sat, Vanamee, turning his head, could look out underneath
the pear trees to the north. Close at hand, a little valley lay between
the high ground on which the Mission was built, and the line of low
hills just beyond Broderson Creek on the Quien Sabe. In here was the
Seed ranch, which Angele’s people had cultivated, a unique and beautiful
stretch of five hundred acres, planted thick with roses, violets,
lilies, tulips, iris, carnations, tube-roses, poppies, heliotrope--all
manner and description of flowers, five hundred acres of them, solid,
thick, exuberant; blooming and fading, and leaving their seed or slips
to be marketed broadcast all over the United States. This had been the
vocation of Angele’s parents--raising flowers for their seeds. All over
the country the Seed ranch was known. Now it was arid, almost dry, but
when in full flower, toward the middle of summer, the sight of these
half-thousand acres royal with colour--vermilion, azure, flaming
yellow--was a marvel. When an east wind blew, men on the streets of
Bonneville, nearly twelve miles away, could catch the scent of this
valley of flowers, this chaos of perfume.

And into this life of flowers, this world of colour, this atmosphere
oppressive and clogged and cloyed and thickened with sweet odour, Angele
had been born. There she had lived her sixteen years. There she had
died. It was not surprising that Vanamee, with his intense, delicate
sensitiveness to beauty, his almost abnormal capacity for great
happiness, had been drawn to her, had loved her so deeply.

She came to him from out of the flowers, the smell of the roses in her
hair of gold, that hung in two straight plaits on either side of her
face; the reflection of the violets in the profound dark blue of her
eyes, perplexing, heavy-lidded, almond-shaped, oriental; the aroma
and the imperial red of the carnations in her lips, with their almost
Egyptian fulness; the whiteness of the lilies, the perfume of the
lilies, and the lilies’ slender balancing grace in her neck. Her hands
disengaged the odour of the heliotropes. The folds of her dress gave off
the enervating scent of poppies. Her feet were redolent of hyacinths.

For a long time after sitting down upon the bench, neither the priest
nor Vanamee spoke. But after a while Sarria took his cigar from his
lips, saying:

“How still it is! This is a beautiful old garden, peaceful, very quiet.
Some day I shall be buried here. I like to remember that; and you, too,
Vanamee.”

“Quien sabe?”

“Yes, you, too. Where else? No, it is better here, yonder, by the side
of the little girl.”

“I am not able to look forward yet, sir. The things that are to be are
somehow nothing to me at all. For me they amount to nothing.”

“They amount to everything, my boy.”

“Yes, to one part of me, but not to the part of me that belonged to
Angele--the best part. Oh, you don’t know,” he exclaimed with a sudden
movement, “no one can understand. What is it to me when you tell me that
sometime after I shall die too, somewhere, in a vague place you call
Heaven, I shall see her again? Do you think that the idea of that ever
made any one’s sorrow easier to bear? Ever took the edge from any one’s
grief?”

“But you believe that----”

“Oh, believe, believe!” echoed the other. “What do I believe? I don’t
know. I believe, or I don’t believe. I can remember what she WAS, but
I cannot hope what she will be. Hope, after all, is only memory seen
reversed. When I try to see her in another life--whatever you call
it--in Heaven--beyond the grave--this vague place of yours; when I try
to see her there, she comes to my imagination only as what she was,
material, earthly, as I loved her. Imperfect, you say; but that is as
I saw her, and as I saw her, I loved her; and as she WAS, material,
earthly, imperfect, she loved me. It’s that, that I want,” he exclaimed.
“I don’t want her changed. I don’t want her spiritualised, exalted,
glorified, celestial. I want HER. I think it is only this feeling that
has kept me from killing myself. I would rather be unhappy in the
memory of what she actually was, than be happy in the realisation of her
transformed, changed, made celestial. I am only human. Her soul! That
was beautiful, no doubt. But, again, it was something very vague,
intangible, hardly more than a phrase. But the touch of her hand was
real, the sound of her voice was real, the clasp of her arms about my
neck was real. Oh,” he cried, shaken with a sudden wrench of passion,
“give those back to me. Tell your God to give those back to me--the
sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, the clasp of her dear arms,
REAL, REAL, and then you may talk to me of Heaven.”

Sarria shook his head. “But when you meet her again,” he observed, “in
Heaven, you, too, will be changed. You will see her spiritualised, with
spiritual eyes. As she is now, she does not appeal to you. I understand
that. It is because, as you say, you are only human, while she is
divine. But when you come to be like her, as she is now, you will know
her as she really is, not as she seemed to be, because her voice was
sweet, because her hair was pretty, because her hand was warm in yours.
Vanamee, your talk is that of a foolish child. You are like one of
the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Do you remember? Listen now. I can
recall the words, and such words, beautiful and terrible at the same
time, such a majesty. They march like soldiers with trumpets. ‘But some
man will say’--as you have said just now--‘How are the dead raised up?
And with what body do they come? Thou fool! That which thou sowest is
not quickened except it die, and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not
that body that shall be, but bare grain. It may chance of wheat, or of
some other grain. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and
to every seed his own body.... It is sown a natural body; it is raised
a spiritual body.’ It is because you are a natural body that you cannot
understand her, nor wish for her as a spiritual body, but when you are
both spiritual, then you shall know each other as you are--know as you
never knew before. Your grain of wheat is your symbol of immortality.
You bury it in the earth. It dies, and rises again a thousand times more
beautiful. Vanamee, your dear girl was only a grain of humanity that
we have buried here, and the end is not yet. But all this is so old, so
old. The world learned it a thousand years ago, and yet each man that
has ever stood by the open grave of any one he loved must learn it all
over again from the beginning.”

Vanamee was silent for a moment, looking off with unseeing eyes between
the trunks of the pear trees, over the little valley.

“That may all be as you say,” he answered after a while. “I have not
learned it yet, in any case. Now, I only know that I love her--oh, as if
it all were yesterday--and that I am suffering, suffering, always.”

He leaned forward, his head supported on his clenched fists, the
infinite sadness of his face deepening like a shadow, the tears brimming
in his deep-set eyes. A question that he must ask, which involved
the thing that was scarcely to be thought of, occurred to him at this
moment. After hesitating for a long moment, he said:

“I have been away a long time, and I have had no news of this place
since I left. Is there anything to tell, Father? Has any discovery been
made, any suspicion developed, as to--the Other?”

The priest shook his head.

“Not a word, not a whisper. It is a mystery. It always will be.”

Vanamee clasped his head between his clenched fists, rocking himself to
and fro.

“Oh, the terror of it,” he murmured. “The horror of it. And she--think
of it, Sarria, only sixteen, a little girl; so innocent, that she never
knew what wrong meant, pure as a little child is pure, who believed that
all things were good; mature only in her love. And to be struck down
like that, while your God looked down from Heaven and would not take her
part.” All at once he seemed to lose control of himself. One of those
furies of impotent grief and wrath that assailed him from time to time,
blind, insensate, incoherent, suddenly took possession of him. A
torrent of words issued from his lips, and he flung out an arm, the
fist clenched, in a fierce, quick gesture, partly of despair, partly of
defiance, partly of supplication. “No, your God would not take her part.
Where was God’s mercy in that? Where was Heaven’s protection in that?
Where was the loving kindness you preach about? Why did God give her
life if it was to be stamped out? Why did God give her the power of love
if it was to come to nothing? Sarria, listen to me. Why did God make
her so divinely pure if He permitted that abomination? Ha!” he exclaimed
bitterly, “your God! Why, an Apache buck would have been more merciful.
Your God! There is no God. There is only the Devil. The Heaven you pray
to is only a joke, a wretched trick, a delusion. It is only Hell that is
real.”

Sarria caught him by the arm.

“You are a fool and a child,” he exclaimed, “and it is blasphemy that
you are saying. I forbid it. You understand? I forbid it.”

Vanamee turned on him with a sudden cry. “Then, tell your God to give
her back to me!”

Sarria started away from him, his eyes widening in astonishment,
surprised out of all composure by the other’s outburst. Vanamee’s
swarthy face was pale, the sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes were marked
with great black shadows. The priest no longer recognised him. The
face, that face of the ascetic, lean, framed in its long black hair and
pointed beard, was quivering with the excitement of hallucination. It
was the face of the inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, living
close to nature, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the
wilderness, solitary, imaginative, believing in the Vision, having
strange delusions, gifted with strange powers. In a brief second of
thought, Sarria understood. Out into the wilderness, the vast arid
desert of the Southwest, Vanamee had carried his grief. For days, for
weeks, months even, he had been alone, a solitary speck lost in the
immensity of the horizons; continually he was brooding, haunted with his
sorrow, thinking, thinking, often hard put to it for food. The body was
ill-nourished, and the mind, concentrated forever upon one subject, had
recoiled upon itself, had preyed upon the naturally nervous temperament,
till the imagination had become exalted, morbidly active, diseased,
beset with hallucinations, forever in search of the manifestation, of
the miracle. It was small wonder that, bringing a fancy so distorted
back to the scene of a vanished happiness, Vanamee should be racked with
the most violent illusions, beset in the throes of a veritable hysteria.

“Tell your God to give her back to me,” he repeated with fierce
insistence.

It was the pitch of mysticism, the imagination harassed and goaded
beyond the normal round, suddenly flipping from the circumference,
spinning off at a tangent, out into the void, where all things seemed
possible, hurtling through the dark there, groping for the supernatural,
clamouring for the miracle. And it was also the human, natural protest
against the inevitable, the irrevocable; the spasm of revolt under the
sting of death, the rebellion of the soul at the victory of the grave.

“He can give her back to me if He only will,” Vanamee cried. “Sarria,
you must help me. I tell you--I warn you, sir, I can’t last much longer
under it. My head is all wrong with it--I’ve no more hold on my mind.
Something must happen or I shall lose my senses. I am breaking down
under it all, my body and my mind alike. Bring her to me; make God show
her to me. If all tales are true, it would not be the first time. If I
cannot have her, at least let me see her as she was, real, earthly, not
her spirit, her ghost. I want her real self, undefiled again. If this is
dementia, then let me be demented. But help me, you and your God; create
the delusion, do the miracle.”

“Stop!” cried the priest again, shaking him roughly by the shoulder.
“Stop. Be yourself. This is dementia; but I shall NOT let you be
demented. Think of what you are saying. Bring her back to you! Is
that the way of God? I thought you were a man; this is the talk of a
weak-minded girl.”

Vanamee stirred abruptly in his place, drawing a long breath and looking
about him vaguely, as if he came to himself.

“You are right,” he muttered. “I hardly know what I am saying at times.
But there are moments when my whole mind and soul seem to rise up in
rebellion against what has happened; when it seems to me that I am
stronger than death, and that if I only knew how to use the strength
of my will, concentrate my power of thought--volition--that I could--I
don’t know--not call her back--but--something----”

“A diseased and distorted mind is capable of hallucinations, if that is
what you mean,” observed Sarria.

“Perhaps that is what I mean. Perhaps I want only the delusion, after
all.”

Sarria did not reply, and there was a long silence. In the damp south
corners of the walls a frog began to croak at exact intervals. The
little fountain rippled monotonously, and a magnolia flower dropped from
one of the trees, falling straight as a plummet through the motionless
air, and settling upon the gravelled walk with a faint rustling sound.
Otherwise the stillness was profound.

A little later, the priest’s cigar, long since out, slipped from his
fingers to the ground. He began to nod gently. Vanamee touched his arm.

“Asleep, sir?”

The other started, rubbing his eyes.

“Upon my word, I believe I was.”

“Better go to bed, sir. I am not tired. I think I shall sit out here a
little longer.”

“Well, perhaps I would be better off in bed. YOUR bed is always ready
for you here whenever you want to use it.”

“No--I shall go back to Quien Sabe--later. Good-night, sir.”

“Good-night, my boy.”

Vanamee was left alone. For a long time he sat motionless in his place,
his elbows on his knees, his chin propped in his hands. The minutes
passed--then the hours. The moon climbed steadily higher among the
stars. Vanamee rolled and smoked cigarette after cigarette, the blue
haze of smoke hanging motionless above his head, or drifting in slowly
weaving filaments across the open spaces of the garden.

But the influence of the old enclosure, this corner of romance and
mystery, this isolated garden of dreams, savouring of the past, with its
legends, its graves, its crumbling sun dial, its fountain with its rime
of moss, was not to be resisted. Now that the priest had left him, the
same exaltation of spirit that had seized upon Vanamee earlier in the
evening, by degrees grew big again in his mind and imagination. His
sorrow assaulted him like the flagellations of a fine whiplash, and his
love for Angele rose again in his heart, it seemed to him never so deep,
so tender, so infinitely strong. No doubt, it was his familiarity with
the Mission garden, his clear-cut remembrance of it, as it was in the
days when he had met Angele there, tallying now so exactly with the
reality there under his eyes, that brought her to his imagination so
vividly. As yet he dared not trust himself near her grave, but, for the
moment, he rose and, his hands clasped behind him, walked slowly from
point to point amid the tiny gravelled walks, recalling the incidents of
eighteen years ago. On the bench he had quitted he and Angele had often
sat. Here by the crumbling sun dial, he recalled the night when he had
kissed her for the first time. Here, again, by the rim of the fountain,
with its fringe of green, she once had paused, and, baring her arm to
the shoulder, had thrust it deep into the water, and then withdrawing
it, had given it to him to kiss, all wet and cool; and here, at last,
under the shadow of the pear trees they had sat, evening after evening,
looking off over the little valley below them, watching the night build
itself, dome-like, from horizon to zenith.

Brusquely Vanamee turned away from the prospect. The Seed ranch was dark
at this time of the year, and flowerless. Far off toward its centre, he
had caught a brief glimpse of the house where Angele had lived, and a
faint light burning in its window. But he turned from it sharply. The
deep-seated travail of his grief abruptly reached the paroxysm. With
long strides he crossed the garden and reentered the Mission church
itself, plunging into the coolness of its atmosphere as into a bath.
What he searched for he did not know, or, rather, did not define. He
knew only that he was suffering, that a longing for Angele, for some
object around which his great love could enfold itself, was tearing
at his heart with iron teeth. He was ready to be deluded; craved the
hallucination; begged pitifully for the illusion; anything rather than
the empty, tenantless night, the voiceless silence, the vast loneliness
of the overspanning arc of the heavens.

Before the chancel rail of the altar, under the sanctuary lamp, Vanamee
sank upon his knees, his arms folded upon the rail, his head bowed down
upon them. He prayed, with what words he could not say for what he did
not understand--for help, merely, for relief, for an Answer to his cry.

It was upon that, at length, that his disordered mind concentrated
itself, an Answer--he demanded, he implored an Answer. Not a vague
visitation of Grace, not a formless sense of Peace; but an Answer,
something real, even if the reality were fancied, a voice out of the
night, responding to his, a hand in the dark clasping his groping
fingers, a breath, human, warm, fragrant, familiar, like a soft, sweet
caress on his shrunken cheeks. Alone there in the dim half-light of
the decaying Mission, with its crumbling plaster, its naive crudity
of ornament and picture, he wrestled fiercely with his desires--words,
fragments of sentences, inarticulate, incoherent, wrenched from his
tight-shut teeth.

But the Answer was not in the church. Above him, over the high altar,
the Virgin in a glory, with downcast eyes and folded hands, grew vague
and indistinct in the shadow, the colours fading, tarnished by centuries
of incense smoke. The Christ in agony on the Cross was but a lamentable
vision of tormented anatomy, grey flesh, spotted with crimson. The St.
John, the San Juan Bautista, patron saint of the Mission, the gaunt
figure in skins, two fingers upraised in the gesture of benediction,
gazed stolidly out into the half-gloom under the ceiling, ignoring the
human distress that beat itself in vain against the altar rail below,
and Angele remained as before--only a memory, far distant, intangible,
lost.

Vanamee rose, turning his back upon the altar with a vague gesture of
despair. He crossed the church, and issuing from the low-arched door
opposite the pulpit, once more stepped out into the garden. Here, at
least, was reality. The warm, still air descended upon him like a cloak,
grateful, comforting, dispelling the chill that lurked in the damp mould
of plaster and crumbling adobe.

But now he found his way across the garden on the other side of the
fountain, where, ranged against the eastern wall, were nine graves.
Here Angele was buried, in the smallest grave of them all, marked by the
little headstone, with its two dates, only sixteen years apart. To this
spot, at last, he had returned, after the years spent in the desert, the
wilderness--after all the wanderings of the Long Trail. Here, if ever,
he must have a sense of her nearness. Close at hand, a short four feet
under that mound of grass, was the form he had so often held in the
embrace of his arms; the face, the very face he had kissed, that face
with the hair of gold making three-cornered the round white forehead,
the violet-blue eyes, heavy-lidded, with their strange oriental slant
upward toward the temples; the sweet full lips, almost Egyptian in their
fulness--all that strange, perplexing, wonderful beauty, so troublous,
so enchanting, so out of all accepted standards.

He bent down, dropping upon one knee, a hand upon the headstone, and
read again the inscription. Then instinctively his hand left the stone
and rested upon the low mound of turf, touching it with the softness of
a caress; and then, before he was aware of it, he was stretched at full
length upon the earth, beside the grave, his arms about the low mound,
his lips pressed against the grass with which it was covered. The
pent-up grief of nearly twenty years rose again within his heart, and
overflowed, irresistible, violent, passionate. There was no one to
see, no one to hear. Vanamee had no thought of restraint. He no longer
wrestled with his pain--strove against it. There was even a sense of
relief in permitting himself to be overcome. But the reaction from this
outburst was equally violent. His revolt against the inevitable, his
protest against the grave, shook him from head to foot, goaded him
beyond all bounds of reason, hounded him on and into the domain of
hysteria, dementia. Vanamee was no longer master of himself--no longer
knew what he was doing.

At first, he had been content with merely a wild, unreasoned cry to
Heaven that Angele should be restored to him, but the vast egotism that
seems to run through all forms of disordered intelligence gave his
fancy another turn. He forgot God. He no longer reckoned with Heaven. He
arrogated their powers to himself--struggled to be, of his own unaided
might, stronger than death, more powerful than the grave. He had
demanded of Sarria that God should restore Angele to him, but now he
appealed directly to Angele herself. As he lay there, his arms clasped
about her grave, she seemed so near to him that he fancied she MUST
hear. And suddenly, at this moment, his recollection of his strange
compelling power--the same power by which he had called Presley to him
half-way across the Quien Sabe ranch, the same power which had brought
Sarria to his side that very evening--recurred to him. Concentrating his
mind upon the one object with which it had so long been filled, Vanamee,
his eyes closed, his face buried in his arms, exclaimed:

“Come to me--Angele--don’t you hear? Come to me.”

But the Answer was not in the Grave. Below him the voiceless Earth lay
silent, moveless, withholding the secret, jealous of that which it held
so close in its grip, refusing to give up that which had been confided
to its keeping, untouched by the human anguish that above there, on its
surface, clutched with despairing hands at a grave long made. The Earth
that only that morning had been so eager, so responsive to the lightest
summons, so vibrant with Life, now at night, holding death within its
embrace, guarding inviolate the secret of the Grave, was deaf to all
entreaty, refused the Answer, and Angele remained as before, only a
memory, far distant, intangible, lost.

Vanamee lifted his head, looking about him with unseeing eyes, trembling
with the exertion of his vain effort. But he could not as yet allow
himself to despair. Never before had that curious power of attraction
failed him. He felt himself to be so strong in this respect that he
was persuaded if he exerted himself to the limit of his capacity,
something--he could not say what--must come of it. If it was only
a self-delusion, an hallucination, he told himself that he would be
content.

Almost of its own accord, his distorted mind concentrated itself again,
every thought, all the power of his will riveting themselves upon
Angele. As if she were alive, he summoned her to him. His eyes, fixed
upon the name cut into the headstone, contracted, the pupils growing
small, his fists shut tight, his nerves braced rigid.

For a few seconds he stood thus, breathless, expectant, awaiting the
manifestation, the Miracle. Then, without knowing why, hardly conscious
of what was transpiring, he found that his glance was leaving the
headstone, was turning from the grave. Not only this, but his whole
body was following the direction of his eyes. Before he knew it, he was
standing with his back to Angele’s grave, was facing the north, facing
the line of pear trees and the little valley where the Seed ranch lay.
At first, he thought this was because he had allowed his will to weaken,
the concentrated power of his mind to grow slack. And once more turning
toward the grave, he banded all his thoughts together in a consummate
effort, his teeth grinding together, his hands pressed to his forehead.
He forced himself to the notion that Angele was alive, and to this
creature of his imagination he addressed himself:

“Angele!” he cried in a low voice; “Angele, I am calling you--do you
hear? Come to me--come to me now, now.”

Instead of the Answer he demanded, that inexplicable counter-influence
cut across the current of his thought. Strive as he would against it,
he must veer to the north, toward the pear trees. Obeying it, he turned,
and, still wondering, took a step in that direction, then another and
another. The next moment he came abruptly to himself, in the black
shadow of the pear trees themselves, and, opening his eyes, found
himself looking off over the Seed ranch, toward the little house in the
centre where Angele had once lived.

Perplexed, he returned to the grave, once more calling upon the
resources of his will, and abruptly, so soon as these reached a certain
point, the same cross-current set in. He could no longer keep his eyes
upon the headstone, could no longer think of the grave and what it held.
He must face the north; he must be drawn toward the pear trees, and
there left standing in their shadow, looking out aimlessly over the Seed
ranch, wondering, bewildered. Farther than this the influence never
drew him, but up to this point--the line of pear trees--it was not to be
resisted.

For a time the peculiarity of the affair was of more interest to Vanamee
than even his own distress of spirit, and once or twice he repeated the
attempt, almost experimentally, and invariably with the same result: so
soon as he seemed to hold Angele in the grip of his mind, he was moved
to turn about toward the north, and hurry toward the pear trees on the
crest of the hill that over-looked the little valley.

But Vanamee’s unhappiness was too keen this night for him to dwell long
upon the vagaries of his mind. Submitting at length, and abandoning the
grave, he flung himself down in the black shade of the pear trees, his
chin in his hands, and resigned himself finally and definitely to the
inrush of recollection and the exquisite grief of an infinite regret.

To his fancy, she came to him again. He put himself back many years. He
remembered the warm nights of July and August, profoundly still, the
sky encrusted with stars, the little Mission garden exhaling the mingled
perfumes that all through the scorching day had been distilled under
the steady blaze of a summer’s sun. He saw himself as another person,
arriving at this, their rendezvous. All day long she had been in
his mind. All day long he had looked forward to this quiet hour that
belonged to her. It was dark. He could see nothing, but, by and by,
he heard a step, a gentle rustle of the grass on the slope of the hill
pressed under an advancing foot. Then he saw the faint gleam of pallid
gold of her hair, a barely visible glow in the starlight, and heard the
murmur of her breath in the lapse of the over-passing breeze. And then,
in the midst of the gentle perfumes of the garden, the perfumes of the
magnolia flowers, of the mignonette borders, of the crumbling walls,
there expanded a new odour, or the faint mingling of many odours, the
smell of the roses that lingered in her hair, of the lilies that exhaled
from her neck, of the heliotrope that disengaged itself from her hands
and arms, and of the hyacinths with which her little feet were redolent,
And then, suddenly, it was herself--her eyes, heavy-lidded, violet blue,
full of the love of him; her sweet full lips speaking his name; her
hands clasping his hands, his shoulders, his neck--her whole dear body
giving itself into his embrace; her lips against his; her hands holding
his head, drawing his face down to hers.

Vanamee, as he remembered all this, flung out an arm with a cry of pain,
his eyes searching the gloom, all his mind in strenuous mutiny against
the triumph of Death. His glance shot swiftly out across the night,
unconsciously following the direction from which Angele used to come to
him.

“Come to me now,” he exclaimed under his breath, tense and rigid with
the vast futile effort of his will. “Come to me now, now. Don’t you hear
me, Angele? You must, you must come.”

Suddenly Vanamee returned to himself with the abruptness of a blow.
His eyes opened. He half raised himself from the ground. Swiftly his
scattered wits readjusted themselves. Never more sane, never more
himself, he rose to his feet and stood looking off into the night across
the Seed ranch.

“What was it?” he murmured, bewildered.

He looked around him from side to side, as if to get in touch with
reality once more. He looked at his hands, at the rough bark of the pear
tree next which he stood, at the streaked and rain-eroded walls of
the Mission and garden. The exaltation of his mind calmed itself; the
unnatural strain under which he laboured slackened. He became thoroughly
master of himself again, matter-of-fact, practical, keen.

But just so sure as his hands were his own, just so sure as the bark
of the pear tree was rough, the mouldering adobe of the Mission walls
damp--just so sure had Something occurred. It was vague, intangible,
appealing only to some strange, nameless sixth sense, but none the less
perceptible. His mind, his imagination, sent out from him across the
night, across the little valley below him, speeding hither and thither
through the dark, lost, confused, had suddenly paused, hovering, had
found Something. It had not returned to him empty-handed. It had come
back, but now there was a change--mysterious, illusive. There were no
words for this that had transpired. But for the moment, one thing only
was certain. The night was no longer voiceless, the dark was no longer
empty. Far off there, beyond the reach of vision, unlocalised, strange,
a ripple had formed on the still black pool of the night, had formed,
flashed one instant to the stars, then swiftly faded again. The night
shut down once more. There was no sound--nothing stirred.

For the moment, Vanamee stood transfixed, struck rigid in his place,
stupefied, his eyes staring, breathless with utter amazement. Then,
step by step, he shrank back into the deeper shadow, treading with the
infinite precaution of a prowling leopard. A qualm of something very
much like fear seized upon him. But immediately on the heels of this
first impression came the doubt of his own senses. Whatever had happened
had been so ephemeral, so faint, so intangible, that now he wondered
if he had not deceived himself, after all. But the reaction followed.
Surely, there had been Something. And from that moment began for him
the most poignant uncertainty of mind. Gradually he drew back into the
garden, holding his breath, listening to every faintest sound, walking
upon tiptoe. He reached the fountain, and wetting his hands, passed them
across his forehead and eyes. Once more he stood listening. The silence
was profound.

Troubled, disturbed, Vanamee went away, passing out of the garden,
descending the hill. He forded Broderson Creek where it intersected the
road to Guadalajara, and went on across Quien Sabe, walking slowly,
his head bent down, his hands clasped behind his back, thoughtful,
perplexed.



CHAPTER V


At seven o’clock, in the bedroom of his ranch house, in the
white-painted iron bedstead with its blue-grey army blankets and red
counterpane, Annixter was still asleep, his face red, his mouth open,
his stiff yellow hair in wild disorder. On the wooden chair at the
bed-head, stood the kerosene lamp, by the light of which he had been
reading the previous evening. Beside it was a paper bag of dried prunes,
and the limp volume of “Copperfield,” the place marked by a slip of
paper torn from the edge of the bag.

Annixter slept soundly, making great work of the business, unable to
take even his rest gracefully. His eyes were shut so tight that the skin
at their angles was drawn into puckers. Under his pillow, his two
hands were doubled up into fists. At intervals, he gritted his teeth
ferociously, while, from time to time, the abrupt sound of his snoring
dominated the brisk ticking of the alarm clock that hung from the brass
knob of the bed-post, within six inches of his ear.

But immediately after seven, this clock sprung its alarm with the
abruptness of an explosion, and within the second, Annixter had hurled
the bed-clothes from him and flung himself up to a sitting posture on
the edge of the bed, panting and gasping, blinking at the light, rubbing
his head, dazed and bewildered, stupefied at the hideous suddenness with
which he had been wrenched from his sleep.

His first act was to take down the alarm clock and stifle its prolonged
whirring under the pillows and blankets. But when this had been done, he
continued to sit stupidly on the edge of the bed, curling his toes away
from the cold of the floor; his half-shut eyes, heavy with sleep, fixed
and vacant, closing and opening by turns. For upwards of three minutes
he alternately dozed and woke, his head and the whole upper half of his
body sagging abruptly sideways from moment to moment. But at length,
coming more to himself, he straightened up, ran his fingers through his
hair, and with a prodigious yawn, murmured vaguely:

“Oh, Lord! Oh-h, LORD!”

He stretched three or four times, twisting about in his place, curling
and uncurling his toes, muttering from time to time between two yawns:

“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!”

He stared about the room, collecting his thoughts, readjusting himself
for the day’s work.

The room was barren, the walls of tongue-and-groove sheathing--alternate
brown and yellow boards--like the walls of a stable, were adorned with
two or three unframed lithographs, the Christmas “souvenirs” of weekly
periodicals, fastened with great wire nails; a bunch of herbs or
flowers, lamentably withered and grey with dust, was affixed to the
mirror over the black walnut washstand by the window, and a yellowed
photograph of Annixter’s combined harvester--himself and his men in a
group before it--hung close at hand. On the floor, at the bedside and
before the bureau, were two oval rag-carpet rugs. In the corners of
the room were muddy boots, a McClellan saddle, a surveyor’s transit, an
empty coal-hod and a box of iron bolts and nuts. On the wall over the
bed, in a gilt frame, was Annixter’s college diploma, while on the
bureau, amid a litter of hair-brushes, dirty collars, driving gloves,
cigars and the like, stood a broken machine for loading shells.

It was essentially a man’s room, rugged, uncouth, virile, full of the
odours of tobacco, of leather, of rusty iron; the bare floor hollowed by
the grind of hob-nailed boots, the walls marred by the friction of heavy
things of metal. Strangely enough, Annixter’s clothes were disposed
of on the single chair with the precision of an old maid. Thus he had
placed them the night before; the boots set carefully side by side, the
trousers, with the overalls still upon them, neatly folded upon the seat
of the chair, the coat hanging from its back.

The Quien Sabe ranch house was a six-room affair, all on one floor. By
no excess of charity could it have been called a home. Annixter was a
wealthy man; he could have furnished his dwelling with quite as much
elegance as that of Magnus Derrick. As it was, however, he considered
his house merely as a place to eat, to sleep, to change his clothes
in; as a shelter from the rain, an office where business was
transacted--nothing more.

When he was sufficiently awake, Annixter thrust his feet into a pair of
wicker slippers, and shuffled across the office adjoining his bedroom,
to the bathroom just beyond, and stood under the icy shower a few
minutes, his teeth chattering, fulminating oaths at the coldness of the
water. Still shivering, he hurried into his clothes, and, having pushed
the button of the electric bell to announce that he was ready for
breakfast, immediately plunged into the business of the day. While he
was thus occupied, the butcher’s cart from Bonneville drove into
the yard with the day’s supply of meat. This cart also brought the
Bonneville paper and the mail of the previous night. In the bundle of
correspondence that the butcher handed to Annixter that morning, was a
telegram from Osterman, at that time on his second trip to Los Angeles.
It read:


“Flotation of company in this district assured. Have secured services of
desirable party. Am now in position to sell you your share stock, as per
original plan.”


Annixter grunted as he tore the despatch into strips. “Well,” he
muttered, “that part is settled, then.”

He made a little pile of the torn strips on the top of the unlighted
stove, and burned them carefully, scowling down into the flicker of
fire, thoughtful and preoccupied.

He knew very well what Osterman referred to by “Flotation of company,”
 and also who was the “desirable party” he spoke of.

Under protest, as he was particular to declare, and after interminable
argument, Annixter had allowed himself to be reconciled with Osterman,
and to be persuaded to reenter the proposed political “deal.” A
committee had been formed to finance the affair--Osterman, old
Broderson, Annixter himself, and, with reservations, hardly more than
a looker-on, Harran Derrick. Of this committee, Osterman was considered
chairman. Magnus Derrick had formally and definitely refused his
adherence to the scheme. He was trying to steer a middle course. His
position was difficult, anomalous. If freight rates were cut through the
efforts of the members of the committee, he could not very well avoid
taking advantage of the new schedule. He would be the gainer, though
sharing neither the risk nor the expense. But, meanwhile, the days were
passing; the primary elections were drawing nearer. The committee could
not afford to wait, and by way of a beginning, Osterman had gone to Los
Angeles, fortified by a large sum of money--a purse to which Annixter,
Broderson and himself had contributed. He had put himself in touch with
Disbrow, the political man of the Denver, Pueblo and Mojave road, and
had had two interviews with him. The telegram that Annixter received
that morning was to say that Disbrow had been bought over, and would
adopt Parrell as the D., P. and M. candidate for Railroad Commissioner
from the third district.

One of the cooks brought up Annixter’s breakfast that morning, and he
went through it hastily, reading his mail at the same time and glancing
over the pages of the “Mercury,” Genslinger’s paper. The “Mercury,”
 Annixter was persuaded, received a subsidy from the Pacific and
Southwestern Railroad, and was hardly better than the mouthpiece
by which Shelgrim and the General Office spoke to ranchers about
Bonneville.

An editorial in that morning’s issue said:

“It would not be surprising to the well-informed, if the long-deferred
re-grade of the value of the railroad sections included in the Los
Muertos, Quien Sabe, Osterman and Broderson properties was made before
the first of the year. Naturally, the tenants of these lands feel an
interest in the price which the railroad will put upon its holdings,
and it is rumoured they expect the land will be offered to them for
two dollars and fifty cents per acre. It needs no seventh daughter of a
seventh daughter to foresee that these gentlemen will be disappointed.”

“Rot!” vociferated Annixter to himself as he finished. He rolled the
paper into a wad and hurled it from him.

“Rot! rot! What does Genslinger know about it? I stand on my agreement
with the P. and S. W.--from two fifty to five dollars an acre--there
it is in black and white. The road IS obligated. And my improvements! I
made the land valuable by improving it, irrigating it, draining it, and
cultivating it. Talk to ME. I know better.”

The most abiding impression that Genslinger’s editorial made upon him
was, that possibly the “Mercury” was not subsidised by the corporation
after all. If it was; Genslinger would not have been led into making
his mistake as to the value of the land. He would have known that the
railroad was under contract to sell at two dollars and a half an acre,
and not only this, but that when the land was put upon the market, it
was to be offered to the present holders first of all. Annixter called
to mind the explicit terms of the agreement between himself and the
railroad, and dismissed the matter from his mind. He lit a cigar, put on
his hat and went out.

The morning was fine, the air nimble, brisk. On the summit of the
skeleton-like tower of the artesian well, the windmill was turning
steadily in a breeze from the southwest. The water in the irrigating
ditch was well up. There was no cloud in the sky. Far off to the east
and west, the bulwarks of the valley, the Coast Range and the foothills
of the Sierras stood out, pale amethyst against the delicate pink and
white sheen of the horizon. The sunlight was a veritable flood, crystal,
limpid, sparkling, setting a feeling of gayety in the air, stirring up
an effervescence in the blood, a tumult of exuberance in the veins.

But on his way to the barns, Annixter was obliged to pass by the open
door of the dairy-house. Hilma Tree was inside, singing at her work;
her voice of a velvety huskiness, more of the chest than of the throat,
mingling with the liquid dashing of the milk in the vats and churns, and
the clear, sonorous clinking of the cans and pans. Annixter turned into
the dairy-house, pausing on the threshold, looking about him. Hilma
stood bathed from head to foot in the torrent of sunlight that poured in
upon her from the three wide-open windows. She was charming, delicious,
radiant of youth, of health, of well-being. Into her eyes, wide open,
brown, rimmed with their fine, thin line of intense black lashes, the
sun set a diamond flash; the same golden light glowed all around her
thick, moist hair, lambent, beautiful, a sheen of almost metallic
lustre, and reflected itself upon her wet lips, moving with the words
of her singing. The whiteness of her skin under the caress of this hale,
vigorous morning light was dazzling, pure, of a fineness beyond words.
Beneath the sweet modulation of her chin, the reflected light from the
burnished copper vessel she was carrying set a vibration of pale gold.
Overlaying the flush of rose in her cheeks, seen only when she stood
against the sunlight, was a faint sheen of down, a lustrous floss,
delicate as the pollen of a flower, or the impalpable powder of a moth’s
wing. She was moving to and fro about her work, alert, joyous, robust;
and from all the fine, full amplitude of her figure, from her thick
white neck, sloping downward to her shoulders, from the deep, feminine
swell of her breast, the vigorous maturity of her hips, there was
disengaged a vibrant note of gayety, of exuberant animal life, sane,
honest, strong. She wore a skirt of plain blue calico and a shirtwaist
of pink linen, clean, trim; while her sleeves turned back to her
shoulders, showed her large, white arms, wet with milk, redolent and
fragrant with milk, glowing and resplendent in the early morning light.

On the threshold, Annixter took off his hat.

“Good morning, Miss Hilma.”

Hilma, who had set down the copper can on top of the vat, turned about
quickly.

“Oh, GOOD morning, sir;” and, unconsciously, she made a little gesture
of salutation with her hand, raising it part way toward her head, as a
man would have done.

“Well,” began Annixter vaguely, “how are you getting along down here?”

“Oh, very fine. To-day, there is not so much to do. We drew the whey
hours ago, and now we are just done putting the curd to press. I have
been cleaning. See my pans. Wouldn’t they do for mirrors, sir? And the
copper things. I have scrubbed and scrubbed. Oh, you can look into the
tiniest corners, everywhere, you won’t find so much as the littlest
speck of dirt or grease. I love CLEAN things, and this room is my own
particular place. Here I can do just as I please, and that is, to keep
the cement floor, and the vats, and the churns and the separators, and
especially the cans and coppers, clean; clean, and to see that the milk
is pure, oh, so that a little baby could drink it; and to have the air
always sweet, and the sun--oh, lots and lots of sun, morning, noon and
afternoon, so that everything shines. You know, I never see the sun set
that it don’t make me a little sad; yes, always, just a little. Isn’t
it funny? I should want it to be day all the time. And when the day is
gloomy and dark, I am just as sad as if a very good friend of mine had
left me. Would you believe it? Just until within a few years, when I
was a big girl, sixteen and over, mamma had to sit by my bed every night
before I could go to sleep. I was afraid in the dark. Sometimes I am
now. Just imagine, and now I am nineteen--a young lady.”

“You were, hey?” observed Annixter, for the sake of saying something.
“Afraid in the dark? What of--ghosts?”

“N-no; I don’t know what. I wanted the light, I wanted----” She drew
a deep breath, turning towards the window and spreading her pink
finger-tips to the light. “Oh, the SUN. I love the sun. See, put your
hand there--here on the top of the vat--like that. Isn’t it warm? Isn’t
it fine? And don’t you love to see it coming in like that through the
windows, floods of it; and all the little dust in it shining? Where
there is lots of sunlight, I think the people must be very good. It’s
only wicked people that love the dark. And the wicked things are always
done and planned in the dark, I think. Perhaps, too, that’s why I hate
things that are mysterious--things that I can’t see, that happen in the
dark.” She wrinkled her nose with a little expression of aversion. “I
hate a mystery. Maybe that’s why I am afraid in the dark--or was. I
shouldn’t like to think that anything could happen around me that I
couldn’t see or understand or explain.”

She ran on from subject to subject, positively garrulous, talking in her
low-pitched voice of velvety huskiness for the mere enjoyment of putting
her ideas into speech, innocently assuming that they were quite as
interesting to others as to herself. She was yet a great child, ignoring
the fact that she had ever grown up, taking a child’s interest in her
immediate surroundings, direct, straightforward, plain. While speaking,
she continued about her work, rinsing out the cans with a mixture of hot
water and soda, scouring them bright, and piling them in the sunlight on
top of the vat.

Obliquely, and from between his narrowed lids, Annixter scrutinised her
from time to time, more and more won over by her adorable freshness,
her clean, fine youth. The clumsiness that he usually experienced in the
presence of women was wearing off. Hilma Tree’s direct simplicity put
him at his ease. He began to wonder if he dared to kiss Hilma, and if
he did dare, how she would take it. A spark of suspicion flickered up
in his mind. Did not her manner imply, vaguely, an invitation? One
never could tell with feemales. That was why she was talking so much, no
doubt, holding him there, affording the opportunity. Aha! She had best
look out, or he would take her at her word.

“Oh, I had forgotten,” suddenly exclaimed Hilma, “the very thing I
wanted to show you--the new press. You remember I asked for one last
month? This is it. See, this is how it works. Here is where the curds
go; look. And this cover is screwed down like this, and then you work
the lever this way.” She grasped the lever in both hands, throwing her
weight upon it, her smooth, bare arm swelling round and firm with the
effort, one slim foot, in its low shoe set off with the bright, steel
buckle, braced against the wall.

“My, but that takes strength,” she panted, looking up at him and
smiling. “But isn’t it a fine press? Just what we needed.”

“And,” Annixter cleared his throat, “and where do you keep the cheeses
and the butter?” He thought it very likely that these were in the cellar
of the dairy.

“In the cellar,” answered Hilma. “Down here, see?” She raised the flap
of the cellar door at the end of the room. “Would you like to see? Come
down; I’ll show you.”

She went before him down into the cool obscurity underneath, redolent
of new cheese and fresh butter. Annixter followed, a certain excitement
beginning to gain upon him. He was almost sure now that Hilma wanted him
to kiss her. At all events, one could but try. But, as yet, he was not
absolutely sure. Suppose he had been mistaken in her; suppose she should
consider herself insulted and freeze him with an icy stare. Annixter
winced at the very thought of it. Better let the whole business go, and
get to work. He was wasting half the morning. Yet, if she DID want to
give him the opportunity of kissing her, and he failed to take advantage
of it, what a ninny she would think him; she would despise him for being
afraid. He afraid! He, Annixter, afraid of a fool, feemale girl. Why,
he owed it to himself as a man to go as far as he could. He told himself
that that goat Osterman would have kissed Hilma Tree weeks ago. To test
his state of mind, he imagined himself as having decided to kiss her,
after all, and at once was surprised to experience a poignant qualm of
excitement, his heart beating heavily, his breath coming short. At the
same time, his courage remained with him. He was not afraid to try. He
felt a greater respect for himself because of this. His self-assurance
hardened within him, and as Hilma turned to him, asking him to taste
a cut from one of the ripe cheeses, he suddenly stepped close to her,
throwing an arm about her shoulders, advancing his head.

But at the last second, he bungled, hesitated; Hilma shrank from him,
supple as a young reed; Annixter clutched harshly at her arm, and trod
his full weight upon one of her slender feet, his cheek and chin barely
touching the delicate pink lobe of one of her ears, his lips brushing
merely a fold of her shirt waist between neck and shoulder. The thing
was a failure, and at once he realised that nothing had been further
from Hilma’s mind than the idea of his kissing her.

She started back from him abruptly, her hands nervously clasped against
her breast, drawing in her breath sharply and holding it with a little,
tremulous catch of the throat that sent a quivering vibration the length
of her smooth, white neck. Her eyes opened wide with a childlike look,
more of astonishment than anger. She was surprised, out of all measure,
discountenanced, taken all aback, and when she found her breath, gave
voice to a great “Oh” of dismay and distress.

For an instant, Annixter stood awkwardly in his place, ridiculous,
clumsy, murmuring over and over again:

“Well--well--that’s all right--who’s going to hurt you? You needn’t be
afraid--who’s going to hurt you--that’s all right.”

Then, suddenly, with a quick, indefinite gesture of one arm, he
exclaimed:

“Good-bye, I--I’m sorry.”

He turned away, striding up the stairs, crossing the dairy-room, and
regained the open air, raging and furious. He turned toward the barns,
clapping his hat upon his head, muttering the while under his breath:

“Oh, you goat! You beastly fool PIP. Good LORD, what an ass you’ve made
of yourself now!”

Suddenly he resolved to put Hilma Tree out of his thoughts. The matter
was interfering with his work. This kind of thing was sure not earning
any money. He shook himself as though freeing his shoulders of an
irksome burden, and turned his entire attention to the work nearest at
hand.

The prolonged rattle of the shinglers’ hammers upon the roof of the big
barn attracted him, and, crossing over between the ranch house and the
artesian well, he stood for some time absorbed in the contemplation
of the vast building, amused and interested with the confusion of
sounds--the clatter of hammers, the cadenced scrape of saws, and the
rhythmic shuffle of planes--that issued from the gang of carpenters who
were at that moment putting the finishing touches upon the roof and rows
of stalls. A boy and two men were busy hanging the great sliding door at
the south end, while the painters--come down from Bonneville early that
morning--were engaged in adjusting the spray and force engine, by means
of which Annixter had insisted upon painting the vast surfaces of
the barn, condemning the use of brushes and pots for such work as
old-fashioned and out-of-date.

He called to one of the foremen, to ask when the barn would be entirely
finished, and was told that at the end of the week the hay and stock
could be installed.

“And a precious long time you’ve been at it, too,” Annixter declared.

“Well, you know the rain----”

“Oh, rot the rain! I work in the rain. You and your unions make me
sick.”

“But, Mr. Annixter, we couldn’t have begun painting in the rain. The job
would have been spoiled.”

“Hoh, yes, spoiled. That’s all very well. Maybe it would, and then,
again, maybe it wouldn’t.”

But when the foreman had left him, Annixter could not forbear a growl
of satisfaction. It could not be denied that the barn was superb,
monumental even. Almost any one of the other barns in the county could
be swung, bird-cage fashion, inside of it, with room to spare. In every
sense, the barn was precisely what Annixter had hoped of it. In his
pleasure over the success of his idea, even Hilma for the moment was
forgotten.

“And, now,” murmured Annixter, “I’ll give that dance in it. I’ll make
‘em sit up.”

It occurred to him that he had better set about sending out the
invitations for the affair. He was puzzled to decide just how the thing
should be managed, and resolved that it might be as well to consult
Magnus and Mrs. Derrick.

“I want to talk of this telegram of the goat’s with Magnus, anyhow,”
 he said to himself reflectively, “and there’s things I got to do in
Bonneville before the first of the month.”

He turned about on his heel with a last look at the barn, and set off
toward the stable. He had decided to have his horse saddled and ride
over to Bonneville by way of Los Muertos. He would make a day of it,
would see Magnus, Harran, old Broderson and some of the business men of
Bonneville.

A few moments later, he rode out of the barn and the stable-yard, a
fresh cigar between his teeth, his hat slanted over his face against the
rays of the sun, as yet low in the east. He crossed the irrigating ditch
and gained the trail--the short cut over into Los Muertos, by way
of Hooven’s. It led south and west into the low ground overgrown by
grey-green willows by Broderson Creek, at this time of the rainy season
a stream of considerable volume, farther on dipping sharply to pass
underneath the Long Trestle of the railroad. On the other side of the
right of way, Annixter was obliged to open the gate in Derrick’s line
fence. He managed this without dismounting, swearing at the horse
the while, and spurring him continually. But once inside the gate he
cantered forward briskly.

This part of Los Muertos was Hooven’s holding, some five hundred acres
enclosed between the irrigating ditch and Broderson Creek, and half
the way across, Annixter came up with Hooven himself, busily at work
replacing a broken washer in his seeder. Upon one of the horses hitched
to the machine, her hands gripped tightly upon the harness of the
collar, Hilda, his little daughter, with her small, hob-nailed boots
and boy’s canvas overalls, sat, exalted and petrified with ecstasy and
excitement, her eyes wide opened, her hair in a tangle.

“Hello, Bismarck,” said Annixter, drawing up beside him. “What are
YOU doing here? I thought the Governor was going to manage without his
tenants this year.”

“Ach, Meest’r Ennixter,” cried the other, straightening up. “Ach, dat’s
you, eh? Ach, you bedt he doand menege mitout me. Me, I gotta stay.
I talk der straighd talk mit der Governor. I fix ‘em. Ach, you bedt.
Sieben yahr I hef bei der rench ge-stopped; yais, sir. Efery oder
sohn-of-a-guhn bei der plaice ged der sach bud me. Eh? Wat you tink von
dose ting?”

“I think that’s a crazy-looking monkey-wrench you’ve got there,”
 observed Annixter, glancing at the instrument in Hooven’s hand.

“Ach, dot wrainch,” returned Hooven. “Soh! Wail, I tell you dose ting
now whair I got ‘em. Say, you see dot wrainch. Dat’s not Emericen
wrainch at alle. I got ‘em at Gravelotte der day we licked der stuffun
oudt der Frainch, ach, you bedt. Me, I pelong to der Wurtemberg
redgimend, dot dey use to suppord der batterie von der Brince von
Hohenlohe. Alle der day we lay down bei der stomach in der feildt
behindt der batterie, und der schells von der Frainch cennon hef
eggsblode--ach, donnerwetter!--I tink efery schell eggsblode bei der
beckside my neck. Und dat go on der whole day, noddun else, noddun aber
der Frainch schell, b-r-r, b-r-r b-r-r, b-r-AM, und der smoag, und unzer
batterie, dat go off slow, steady, yoost like der glock, eins, zwei,
boom! eins, zwei, boom! yoost like der glock, ofer und ofer again, alle
der day. Den vhen der night come dey say we hev der great victorie made.
I doand know. Vhat do I see von der bettle? Noddun. Den we gedt oop
und maerch und maerch alle night, und in der morgen we hear dose cennon
egain, hell oaf der way, far-off, I doand know vhair. Budt, nef’r mindt.
Bretty qnick, ach, Gott--” his face flamed scarlet, “Ach, du lieber
Gott! Bretty zoon, dere wass der Kaiser, glose bei, und Fritz, Unzer
Fritz. Bei Gott, den I go grazy, und yell, ach, you bedt, der whole
redgimend: ‘Hoch der Kaiser! Hoch der Vaterland!’ Und der dears come
to der eyes, I doand know because vhy, und der mens gry und shaike der
hend, und der whole redgimend maerch off like dat, fairy broudt,
bei Gott, der head oop high, und sing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein.’ Dot wass
Gravelotte.”

“And the monkey-wrench?”

“Ach, I pick ‘um oop vhen der batterie go. Der cennoniers hef forgedt
und leaf ‘um. I carry ‘um in der sack. I tink I use ‘um vhen I gedt home
in der business. I was maker von vagons in Carlsruhe, und I nef’r
gedt home again. Vhen der war hef godt over, I go beck to Ulm und
gedt marriet, und den I gedt demn sick von der armie. Vhen I gedt der
release, I clair oudt, you bedt. I come to Emerica. First, New Yor-ruk;
den Milwaukee; den Sbringfieldt-Illinoy; den Galifornie, und heir I
stay.”

“And the Fatherland? Ever want to go back?”

“Wail, I tell you dose ting, Meest’r Ennixter. Alle-ways, I tink a lot
oaf Shairmany, und der Kaiser, und nef’r I forgedt Gravelotte. Budt,
say, I tell you dose ting. Vhair der wife is, und der kinder--der leedle
girl Hilda--DERE IS DER VATERLAND. Eh? Emerica, dat’s my gountry now,
und dere,” he pointed behind him to the house under the mammoth oak tree
on the Lower Road, “dat’s my home. Dat’s goot enough Vaterland for me.”

Annixter gathered up the reins, about to go on.

“So you like America, do you, Bismarck?” he said. “Who do you vote for?”

“Emerica? I doand know,” returned the other, insistently. “Dat’s my
home yonder. Dat’s my Vaterland. Alle von we Shairmens yoost like dot.
Shairmany, dot’s hell oaf some fine plaice, sure. Budt der Vaterland iss
vhair der home und der wife und kinder iss. Eh? Yes? Voad? Ach, no. Me,
I nef’r voad. I doand bodder der haid mit dose ting. I maig der wheat
grow, und ged der braid fur der wife und Hilda, dot’s all. Dot’s me;
dot’s Bismarck.”

“Good-bye,” commented Annixter, moving off.

Hooven, the washer replaced, turned to his work again, starting up the
horses. The seeder advanced, whirring.

“Ach, Hilda, leedle girl,” he cried, “hold tight bei der shdrap on. Hey
MULE! Hoop! Gedt oop, you.”

Annixter cantered on. In a few moments, he had crossed Broderson Creek
and had entered upon the Home ranch of Los Muertos. Ahead of him, but so
far off that the greater portion of its bulk was below the horizon, he
could see the Derricks’ home, a roof or two between the dull green of
cypress and eucalyptus. Nothing else was in sight. The brown earth,
smooth, unbroken, was as a limitless, mud-coloured ocean. The silence
was profound.

Then, at length, Annixter’s searching eye made out a blur on the horizon
to the northward; the blur concentrated itself to a speck; the speck
grew by steady degrees to a spot, slowly moving, a note of dull colour,
barely darker than the land, but an inky black silhouette as it topped a
low rise of ground and stood for a moment outlined against the pale blue
of the sky. Annixter turned his horse from the road and rode across the
ranch land to meet this new object of interest. As the spot grew larger,
it resolved itself into constituents, a collection of units; its
shape grew irregular, fragmentary. A disintegrated, nebulous confusion
advanced toward Annixter, preceded, as he discovered on nearer approach,
by a medley of faint sounds. Now it was no longer a spot, but a column,
a column that moved, accompanied by spots. As Annixter lessened the
distance, these spots resolved themselves into buggies or men on
horseback that kept pace with the advancing column. There were horses in
the column itself. At first glance, it appeared as if there were nothing
else, a riderless squadron tramping steadily over the upturned plough
land of the ranch. But it drew nearer. The horses were in lines, six
abreast, harnessed to machines. The noise increased, defined itself.
There was a shout or two; occasionally a horse blew through his nostrils
with a prolonged, vibrating snort. The click and clink of metal work was
incessant, the machines throwing off a continual rattle of wheels and
cogs and clashing springs. The column approached nearer; was close at
hand. The noises mingled to a subdued uproar, a bewildering confusion;
the impact of innumerable hoofs was a veritable rumble. Machine after
machine appeared; and Annixter, drawing to one side, remained for
nearly ten minutes watching and interested, while, like an array of
chariots--clattering, jostling, creaking, clashing, an interminable
procession, machine succeeding machine, six-horse team succeeding
six-horse team--bustling, hurried--Magnus Derrick’s thirty-three grain
drills, each with its eight hoes, went clamouring past, like an
advance of military, seeding the ten thousand acres of the great ranch;
fecundating the living soil; implanting deep in the dark womb of the
Earth the germ of life, the sustenance of a whole world, the food of an
entire People.

When the drills had passed, Annixter turned and rode back to the Lower
Road, over the land now thick with seed. He did not wonder that the
seeding on Los Muertos seemed to be hastily conducted. Magnus and Harran
Derrick had not yet been able to make up the time lost at the beginning
of the season, when they had waited so long for the ploughs to arrive.
They had been behindhand all the time. On Annixter’s ranch, the land
had not only been harrowed, as well as seeded, but in some cases,
cross-harrowed as well. The labour of putting in the vast crop was
over. Now there was nothing to do but wait, while the seed silently
germinated; nothing to do but watch for the wheat to come up.

When Annixter reached the ranch house of Los Muertos, under the shade
of the cypress and eucalyptus trees, he found Mrs. Derrick on the porch,
seated in a long wicker chair. She had been washing her hair, and the
light brown locks that yet retained so much of their brightness, were
carefully spread in the sun over the back of her chair. Annixter could
not but remark that, spite of her more than fifty years, Annie Derrick
was yet rather pretty. Her eyes were still those of a young girl, just
touched with an uncertain expression of innocence and inquiry, but as
her glance fell upon him, he found that that expression changed to one
of uneasiness, of distrust, almost of aversion.

The night before this, after Magnus and his wife had gone to bed, they
had lain awake for hours, staring up into the dark, talking, talking.
Magnus had not long been able to keep from his wife the news of the
coalition that was forming against the railroad, nor the fact that this
coalition was determined to gain its ends by any means at its command.
He had told her of Osterman’s scheme of a fraudulent election to seat a
Board of Railroad Commissioners, who should be nominees of the farming
interests. Magnus and his wife had talked this matter over and over
again; and the same discussion, begun immediately after supper the
evening before, had lasted till far into the night.

At once, Annie Derrick had been seized with a sudden terror lest Magnus,
after all, should allow himself to be persuaded; should yield to the
pressure that was every day growing stronger. None better than she knew
the iron integrity of her husband’s character. None better than she
remembered how his dearest ambition, that of political preferment, had
been thwarted by his refusal to truckle, to connive, to compromise with
his ideas of right. Now, at last, there seemed to be a change. Long
continued oppression, petty tyranny, injustice and extortion had driven
him to exasperation. S. Behrman’s insults still rankled. He seemed
nearly ready to countenance Osterman’s scheme. The very fact that he
was willing to talk of it to her so often and at such great length, was
proof positive that it occupied his mind. The pity of it, the tragedy
of it! He, Magnus, the “Governor,” who had been so staunch, so rigidly
upright, so loyal to his convictions, so bitter in his denunciation of
the New Politics, so scathing in his attacks on bribery and corruption
in high places; was it possible that now, at last, he could be
brought to withhold his condemnation of the devious intrigues of the
unscrupulous, going on there under his very eyes? That Magnus should not
command Harran to refrain from all intercourse with the conspirators,
had been a matter of vast surprise to Mrs. Derrick. Time was when Magnus
would have forbidden his son to so much as recognise a dishonourable
man.

But besides all this, Derrick’s wife trembled at the thought of
her husband and son engaging in so desperate a grapple with the
railroad--that great monster, iron-hearted, relentless, infinitely
powerful. Always it had issued triumphant from the fight; always S.
Behrman, the Corporation’s champion, remained upon the field as victor,
placid, unperturbed, unassailable. But now a more terrible struggle than
any hitherto loomed menacing over the rim of the future; money was to be
spent like water; personal reputations were to be hazarded in the issue;
failure meant ruin in all directions, financial ruin, moral ruin,
ruin of prestige, ruin of character. Success, to her mind, was almost
impossible. Annie Derrick feared the railroad. At night, when everything
else was still, the distant roar of passing trains echoed across Los
Muertos, from Guadalajara, from Bonneville, or from the Long Trestle,
straight into her heart. At such moments she saw very plainly the
galloping terror of steam and steel, with its single eye, cyclopean,
red, shooting from horizon to horizon, symbol of a vast power, huge and
terrible; the leviathan with tentacles of steel, to oppose which meant
to be ground to instant destruction beneath the clashing wheels. No,
it was better to submit, to resign oneself to the inevitable. She
obliterated herself, shrinking from the harshness of the world,
striving, with vain hands, to draw her husband back with her.

Just before Annixter’s arrival, she had been sitting, thoughtful, in her
long chair, an open volume of poems turned down upon her lap, her glance
losing itself in the immensity of Los Muertos that, from the edge of
the lawn close by, unrolled itself, gigantic, toward the far, southern
horizon, wrinkled and serrated after the season’s ploughing. The earth,
hitherto grey with dust, was now upturned and brown. As far as the eye
could reach, it was empty of all life, bare, mournful, absolutely still;
and, as she looked, there seemed to her morbid imagination--diseased
and disturbed with long brooding, sick with the monotony of repeated
sensation--to be disengaged from all this immensity, a sense of a vast
oppression, formless, disquieting. The terror of sheer bigness grew
slowly in her mind; loneliness beyond words gradually enveloped her. She
was lost in all these limitless reaches of space. Had she been abandoned
in mid-ocean, in an open boat, her terror could hardly have been
greater. She felt vividly that certain uncongeniality which, when all is
said, forever remains between humanity and the earth which supports it.
She recognised the colossal indifference of nature, not hostile, even
kindly and friendly, so long as the human ant-swarm was submissive,
working with it, hurrying along at its side in the mysterious march
of the centuries. Let, however, the insect rebel, strive to make head
against the power of this nature, and at once it became relentless, a
gigantic engine, a vast power, huge, terrible; a leviathan with a heart
of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing
out the human atom with sound less calm, the agony of destruction
sending never a jar, never the faintest tremour through all that
prodigious mechanism of wheels and cogs.

Such thoughts as these did not take shape distinctly in her mind. She
could not have told herself exactly what it was that disquieted her. She
only received the vague sensation of these things, as it were a breath
of wind upon her face, confused, troublous, an indefinite sense of
hostility in the air.

The sound of hoofs grinding upon the gravel of the driveway brought her
to herself again, and, withdrawing her gaze from the empty plain of
Los Muertos, she saw young Annixter stopping his horse by the carriage
steps. But the sight of him only diverted her mind to the other
trouble. She could not but regard him with aversion. He was one of the
conspirators, was one of the leaders in the battle that impended; no
doubt, he had come to make a fresh attempt to win over Magnus to the
unholy alliance.

However, there was little trace of enmity in her greeting. Her hair was
still spread, like a broad patch of back, and she made that her excuse
for not getting up. In answer to Annixter’s embarrassed inquiry after
Magnus, she sent the Chinese cook to call him from the office; and
Annixter, after tying his horse to the ring driven into the trunk of one
of the eucalyptus trees, came up to the porch, and, taking off his hat,
sat down upon the steps.

“Is Harran anywhere about?” he asked. “I’d like to see Harran, too.”

“No,” said Mrs. Derrick, “Harran went to Bonneville early this morning.”

She glanced toward Annixter nervously, without turning her head, lest
she should disturb her outspread hair.

“What is it you want to see Mr. Derrick about?” she inquired hastily.
“Is it about this plan to elect a Railroad Commission? Magnus does not
approve of it,” she declared with energy. “He told me so last night.”

Annixter moved about awkwardly where he sat, smoothing down with his
hand the one stiff lock of yellow hair that persistently stood up from
his crown like an Indian’s scalp-lock. At once his suspicions were all
aroused. Ah! this feemale woman was trying to get a hold on him, trying
to involve him in a petticoat mess, trying to cajole him. Upon the
instant, he became very crafty; an excess of prudence promptly congealed
his natural impulses. In an actual spasm of caution, he scarcely trusted
himself to speak, terrified lest he should commit himself to something.
He glanced about apprehensively, praying that Magnus might join them
speedily, relieving the tension.

“I came to see about giving a dance in my new barn,” he answered,
scowling into the depths of his hat, as though reading from notes he had
concealed there. “I wanted to ask how I should send out the invites. I
thought of just putting an ad. in the ‘Mercury.’”

But as he spoke, Presley had come up behind Annixter in time to get the
drift of the conversation, and now observed:

“That’s nonsense, Buck. You’re not giving a public ball. You MUST send
out invitations.”

“Hello, Presley, you there?” exclaimed Annixter, turning round. The two
shook hands.

“Send out invitations?” repeated Annixter uneasily. “Why must I?”

“Because that’s the only way to do.”

“It is, is it?” answered Annixter, perplexed and troubled. No other
man of his acquaintance could have so contradicted Annixter without
provoking a quarrel upon the instant. Why the young rancher, irascible,
obstinate, belligerent, should invariably defer to the poet, was an
inconsistency never to be explained. It was with great surprise that
Mrs. Derrick heard him continue:

“Well, I suppose you know what you’re talking about, Pres. Must have
written invites, hey?”

“Of course.”

“Typewritten?”

“Why, what an ass you are, Buck,” observed Presley calmly. “Before
you get through with it, you will probably insult three-fourths of the
people you intend to invite, and have about a hundred quarrels on your
hands, and a lawsuit or two.”

However, before Annixter could reply, Magnus came out on the porch,
erect, grave, freshly shaven. Without realising what he was doing,
Annixter instinctively rose to his feet. It was as though Magnus was a
commander-in-chief of an unseen army, and he a subaltern. There was some
little conversation as to the proposed dance, and then Annixter found an
excuse for drawing the Governor aside. Mrs. Derrick watched the two with
eyes full of poignant anxiety, as they slowly paced the length of the
gravel driveway to the road gate, and stood there, leaning upon it,
talking earnestly; Magnus tall, thin-lipped, impassive, one hand in the
breast of his frock coat, his head bare, his keen, blue eyes fixed upon
Annixter’s face. Annixter came at once to the main point.

“I got a wire from Osterman this morning, Governor, and, well--we’ve got
Disbrow. That means that the Denver, Pueblo and Mojave is back of us.
There’s half the fight won, first off.”

“Osterman bribed him, I suppose,” observed Magnus.

Annixter raised a shoulder vexatiously.

“You’ve got to pay for what you get,” he returned. “You don’t get
something for nothing, I guess. Governor,” he went on, “I don’t see how
you can stay out of this business much longer. You see how it will be.
We’re going to win, and I don’t see how you can feel that it’s right of
you to let us do all the work and stand all the expense. There’s never
been a movement of any importance that went on around you that you
weren’t the leader in it. All Tulare County, all the San Joaquin, for
that matter, knows you. They want a leader, and they are looking to you.
I know how you feel about politics nowadays. But, Governor, standards
have changed since your time; everybody plays the game now as we are
playing it--the most honourable men. You can’t play it any other way,
and, pshaw! if the right wins out in the end, that’s the main thing. We
want you in this thing, and we want you bad. You’ve been chewing on this
affair now a long time. Have you made up your mind? Do you come in? I
tell you what, you’ve got to look at these things in a large way. You’ve
got to judge by results. Well, now, what do you think? Do you come in?”

Magnus’s glance left Annixter’s face, and for an instant sought the
ground. His frown lowered, but now it was in perplexity, rather than in
anger. His mind was troubled, harassed with a thousand dissensions.

But one of Magnus’s strongest instincts, one of his keenest desires,
was to be, if only for a short time, the master. To control men had
ever been his ambition; submission of any kind, his greatest horror. His
energy stirred within him, goaded by the lash of his anger, his sense
of indignity, of insult. Oh for one moment to be able to strike back,
to crush his enemy, to defeat the railroad, hold the Corporation in the
grip of his fist, put down S. Behrman, rehabilitate himself, regain his
self-respect. To be once more powerful, to command, to dominate. His
thin lips pressed themselves together; the nostrils of his prominent
hawk-like nose dilated, his erect, commanding figure stiffened
unconsciously. For a moment, he saw himself controlling the situation,
the foremost figure in his State, feared, respected, thousands of
men beneath him, his ambition at length gratified; his career, once
apparently brought to naught, completed; success a palpable achievement.
What if this were his chance, after all, come at last after all these
years. His chance! The instincts of the old-time gambler, the most
redoubtable poker player of El Dorado County, stirred at the word.
Chance! To know it when it came, to recognise it as it passed fleet as a
wind-flurry, grip at it, catch at it, blind, reckless, staking all upon
the hazard of the issue, that was genius. Was this his Chance? All of
a sudden, it seemed to him that it was. But his honour! His cherished,
lifelong integrity, the unstained purity of his principles? At this late
date, were they to be sacrificed? Could he now go counter to all the
firm built fabric of his character? How, afterward, could he bear to
look Harran and Lyman in the face? And, yet--and, yet--back swung the
pendulum--to neglect his Chance meant failure; a life begun in promise,
and ended in obscurity, perhaps in financial ruin, poverty even. To
seize it meant achievement, fame, influence, prestige, possibly great
wealth.

“I am so sorry to interrupt,” said Mrs. Derrick, as she came up. “I hope
Mr. Annixter will excuse me, but I want Magnus to open the safe for me.
I have lost the combination, and I must have some money. Phelps is going
into town, and I want him to pay some bills for me. Can’t you come right
away, Magnus? Phelps is ready and waiting.”

Annixter struck his heel into the ground with a suppressed oath.
Always these fool feemale women came between him and his plans, mixing
themselves up in his affairs. Magnus had been on the very point of
saying something, perhaps committing himself to some course of action,
and, at precisely the wrong moment, his wife had cut in. The opportunity
was lost. The three returned toward the ranch house; but before saying
good-bye, Annixter had secured from Magnus a promise to the effect that,
before coming to a definite decision in the matter under discussion, he
would talk further with him.

Presley met him at the porch. He was going into town with Phelps, and
proposed to Annixter that he should accompany them.

“I want to go over and see old Broderson,” Annixter objected.

But Presley informed him that Broderson had gone to Bonneville earlier
in the morning. He had seen him go past in his buckboard. The three men
set off, Phelps and Annixter on horseback, Presley on his bicycle.

When they had gone, Mrs. Derrick sought out her husband in the office
of the ranch house. She was at her prettiest that morning, her cheeks
flushed with excitement, her innocent, wide-open eyes almost girlish.
She had fastened her hair, still moist, with a black ribbon tied at the
back of her head, and the soft mass of light brown reached to below her
waist, making her look very young.

“What was it he was saying to you just now,” she exclaimed, as she came
through the gate in the green-painted wire railing of the office. “What
was Mr. Annixter saying? I know. He was trying to get you to join him,
trying to persuade you to be dishonest, wasn’t that it? Tell me, Magnus,
wasn’t that it?”

Magnus nodded.

His wife drew close to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“But you won’t, will you? You won’t listen to him again; you won’t so
much as allow him--anybody--to even suppose you would lend yourself to
bribery? Oh, Magnus, I don’t know what has come over you these last few
weeks. Why, before this, you would have been insulted if any one thought
you would even consider anything like dishonesty. Magnus, it would break
my heart if you joined Mr. Annixter and Mr. Osterman. Why, you couldn’t
be the same man to me afterward; you, who have kept yourself so clean
till now. And the boys; what would Lyman say, and Harran, and every one
who knows you and respects you, if you lowered yourself to be just a
political adventurer!”

For a moment, Derrick leaned his head upon his hand, avoiding her gaze.
At length, he said, drawing a deep breath: “I am troubled, Annie. These
are the evil days. I have much upon my mind.”

“Evil days or not,” she insisted, “promise me this one thing, that you
will not join Mr. Annixter’s scheme.” She had taken his hand in both of
hers and was looking into his face, her pretty eyes full of pleading.

“Promise me,” she repeated; “give me your word. Whatever happens, let me
always be able to be proud of you, as I always have been. Give me your
word. I know you never seriously thought of joining Mr. Annixter, but I
am so nervous and frightened sometimes. Just to relieve my mind, Magnus,
give me your word.”

“Why--you are right,” he answered. “No, I never thought seriously of it.
Only for a moment, I was ambitious to be--I don’t know what--what I
had hoped to be once--well, that is over now. Annie, your husband is a
disappointed man.”

“Give me your word,” she insisted. “We can talk about other things
afterward.”

Again Magnus wavered, about to yield to his better instincts and to the
entreaties of his wife. He began to see how perilously far he had gone
in this business. He was drifting closer to it every hour. Already he
was entangled, already his foot was caught in the mesh that was being
spun. Sharply he recoiled. Again all his instincts of honesty revolted.
No, whatever happened, he would preserve his integrity. His wife was
right. Always she had influenced his better side. At that moment,
Magnus’s repugnance of the proposed political campaign was at its pitch
of intensity. He wondered how he had ever allowed himself to so much
as entertain the idea of joining with the others. Now, he would
wrench free, would, in a single instant of power, clear himself of all
compromising relations. He turned to his wife. Upon his lips trembled
the promise she implored. But suddenly there came to his mind the
recollection of his new-made pledge to Annixter. He had given his word
that before arriving at a decision he would have a last interview with
him. To Magnus, his given word was sacred. Though now he wanted to, he
could not as yet draw back, could not promise his wife that he would
decide to do right. The matter must be delayed a few days longer.

Lamely, he explained this to her. Annie Derrick made but little response
when he had done. She kissed his forehead and went out of the room,
uneasy, depressed, her mind thronging with vague fears, leaving Magnus
before his office desk, his head in his hands, thoughtful, gloomy,
assaulted by forebodings.

Meanwhile, Annixter, Phelps, and Presley continued on their way toward
Bonneville. In a short time they had turned into the County Road by
the great watering-tank, and proceeded onward in the shade of the
interminable line of poplar trees, the wind-break that stretched along
the roadside bordering the Broderson ranch. But as they drew near to
Caraher’s saloon and grocery, about half a mile outside of Bonneville,
they recognised Harran’s horse tied to the railing in front of it.
Annixter left the others and went in to see Harran.

“Harran,” he said, when the two had sat down on either side of one of
the small tables, “you’ve got to make up your mind one way or another
pretty soon. What are you going to do? Are you going to stand by and see
the rest of the Committee spending money by the bucketful in this thing
and keep your hands in your pockets? If we win, you’ll benefit just as
much as the rest of us. I suppose you’ve got some money of your own--you
have, haven’t you? You are your father’s manager, aren’t you?”

Disconcerted at Annixter’s directness, Harran stammered an affirmative,
adding:

“It’s hard to know just what to do. It’s a mean position for me, Buck. I
want to help you others, but I do want to play fair. I don’t know how to
play any other way. I should like to have a line from the Governor as
to how to act, but there’s no getting a word out of him these days. He
seems to want to let me decide for myself.”

“Well, look here,” put in Annixter. “Suppose you keep out of the thing
till it’s all over, and then share and share alike with the Committee on
campaign expenses.”

Harran fell thoughtful, his hands in his pockets, frowning moodily at
the toe of his boot. There was a silence. Then:

“I don’t like to go it blind,” he hazarded. “I’m sort of sharing the
responsibility of what you do, then. I’m a silent partner. And, then--I
don’t want to have any difficulties with the Governor. We’ve always got
along well together. He wouldn’t like it, you know, if I did anything
like that.” “Say,” exclaimed Annixter abruptly, “if the Governor says
he will keep his hands off, and that you can do as you please, will you
come in? For God’s sake, let us ranchers act together for once. Let’s
stand in with each other in ONE fight.”

Without knowing it, Annixter had touched the right spring.

“I don’t know but what you’re right,” Harran murmured vaguely. His
sense of discouragement, that feeling of what’s-the-use, was never more
oppressive. All fair means had been tried. The wheat grower was at last
with his back to the wall. If he chose his own means of fighting, the
responsibility must rest upon his enemies, not on himself.

“It’s the only way to accomplish anything,” he continued, “standing in
with each other... well,... go ahead and see what you can do. If the
Governor is willing, I’ll come in for my share of the campaign fund.”

“That’s some sense,” exclaimed Annixter, shaking him by the hand. “Half
the fight is over already. We’ve got Disbrow you know; and the next
thing is to get hold of some of those rotten San Francisco bosses.
Osterman will----” But Harran interrupted him, making a quick gesture
with his hand.

“Don’t tell me about it,” he said. “I don’t want to know what you and
Osterman are going to do. If I did, I shouldn’t come in.”

Yet, for all this, before they said good-bye Annixter had obtained
Harran’s promise that he would attend the next meeting of the Committee,
when Osterman should return from Los Angeles and make his report. Harran
went on toward Los Muertos. Annixter mounted and rode into Bonneville.

Bonneville was very lively at all times. It was a little city of some
twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, where, as yet, the city hall, the
high school building, and the opera house were objects of civic
pride. It was well governed, beautifully clean, full of the energy and
strenuous young life of a new city. An air of the briskest activity
pervaded its streets and sidewalks. The business portion of the town,
centring about Main Street, was always crowded. Annixter, arriving at
the Post Office, found himself involved in a scene of swiftly
shifting sights and sounds. Saddle horses, farm wagons--the inevitable
Studebakers--buggies grey with the dust of country roads, buckboards
with squashes and grocery packages stowed under the seat, two-wheeled
sulkies and training carts, were hitched to the gnawed railings and
zinc-sheathed telegraph poles along the curb. Here and there, on the
edge of the sidewalk, were bicycles, wedged into bicycle racks painted
with cigar advertisements. Upon the asphalt sidewalk itself, soft and
sticky with the morning’s heat, was a continuous movement. Men with
large stomachs, wearing linen coats but no vests, laboured ponderously
up and down. Girls in lawn skirts, shirt waists, and garden hats, went
to and fro, invariably in couples, coming in and out of the drug store,
the grocery store, and haberdasher’s, or lingering in front of the Post
Office, which was on a corner under the I.O.O.F. hall. Young men, in
shirt sleeves, with brown, wicker cuff-protectors over their forearms,
and pencils behind their ears, bustled in front of the grocery store,
anxious and preoccupied. A very old man, a Mexican, in ragged white
trousers and bare feet, sat on a horse-block in front of the barber
shop, holding a horse by a rope around its neck. A Chinaman went by,
teetering under the weight of his market baskets slung on a pole across
his shoulders. In the neighbourhood of the hotel, the Yosemite House,
travelling salesmen, drummers for jewelry firms of San Francisco,
commercial agents, insurance men, well-dressed, metropolitan, debonair,
stood about cracking jokes, or hurried in and out of the flapping white
doors of the Yosemite barroom. The Yosemite ‘bus and City ‘bus passed
up the street, on the way from the morning train, each with its two or
three passengers. A very narrow wagon, belonging to the Cole & Colemore
Harvester Works, went by, loaded with long strips of iron that made a
horrible din as they jarred over the unevenness of the pavement. The
electric car line, the city’s boast, did a brisk business, its cars
whirring from end to end of the street, with a jangling of bells and
a moaning plaint of gearing. On the stone bulkheads of the grass plat
around the new City Hall, the usual loafers sat, chewing tobacco,
swapping stories. In the park were the inevitable array of nursemaids,
skylarking couples, and ragged little boys. A single policeman, in grey
coat and helmet, friend and acquaintance of every man and woman in the
town, stood by the park entrance, leaning an elbow on the fence post,
twirling his club.

But in the centre of the best business block of the street was a
three-story building of rough brown stone, set off with plate glass
windows and gold-lettered signs. One of these latter read, “Pacific and
Southwestern Railroad, Freight and Passenger Office,” while another much
smaller, beneath the windows of the second story bore the inscription,
“P. and S. W. Land Office.”

Annixter hitched his horse to the iron post in front of this building,
and tramped up to the second floor, letting himself into an office
where a couple of clerks and bookkeepers sat at work behind a high wire
screen. One of these latter recognised him and came forward.

“Hello,” said Annixter abruptly, scowling the while. “Is your boss in?
Is Ruggles in?”

The bookkeeper led Annixter to the private office in an adjoining room,
ushering him through a door, on the frosted glass of which was painted
the name, “Cyrus Blakelee Ruggles.” Inside, a man in a frock coat,
shoestring necktie, and Stetson hat, sat writing at a roller-top desk.
Over this desk was a vast map of the railroad holdings in the country
about Bonneville and Guadalajara, the alternate sections belonging to
the Corporation accurately plotted. Ruggles was cordial in his welcome
of Annixter. He had a way of fiddling with his pencil continually while
he talked, scribbling vague lines and fragments of words and names on
stray bits of paper, and no sooner had Annixter sat down than he had
begun to write, in full-bellied script, ANN ANN all over his blotting
pad.

“I want to see about those lands of mine--I mean of yours--of the
railroad’s,” Annixter commenced at once. “I want to know when I can buy.
I’m sick of fooling along like this.”

“Well, Mr. Annixter,” observed Ruggles, writing a great L before the
ANN, and finishing it off with a flourishing D. “The lands”--he crossed
out one of the N’s and noted the effect with a hasty glance--“the lands
are practically yours. You have an option on them indefinitely, and, as
it is, you don’t have to pay the taxes.”

“Rot your option! I want to own them,” Annixter declared. “What have you
people got to gain by putting off selling them to us. Here this thing
has dragged along for over eight years. When I came in on Quien Sabe,
the understanding was that the lands--your alternate sections--were to
be conveyed to me within a few months.”

“The land had not been patented to us then,” answered Ruggles.

“Well, it has been now, I guess,” retorted Annixter.

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, Mr. Annixter.”

Annixter crossed his legs weariedly.

“Oh, what’s the good of lying, Ruggles? You know better than to talk
that way to me.”

Ruggles’s face flushed on the instant, but he checked his answer and
laughed instead.

“Oh, if you know so much about it--” he observed.

“Well, when are you going to sell to me?”

“I’m only acting for the General Office, Mr. Annixter,” returned
Ruggles. “Whenever the Directors are ready to take that matter up, I’ll
be only too glad to put it through for you.”

“As if you didn’t know. Look here, you’re not talking to old Broderson.
Wake up, Ruggles. What’s all this talk in Genslinger’s rag about the
grading of the value of our lands this winter and an advance in the
price?”

Ruggles spread out his hands with a deprecatory gesture.

“I don’t own the ‘Mercury,’” he said.

“Well, your company does.”

“If it does, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Oh, rot! As if you and Genslinger and S. Behrman didn’t run the whole
show down here. Come on, let’s have it, Ruggles. What does S. Behrman
pay Genslinger for inserting that three-inch ad. of the P. and S. W. in
his paper? Ten thousand a year, hey?”

“Oh, why not a hundred thousand and be done with it?” returned the
other, willing to take it as a joke.

Instead of replying, Annixter drew his check-book from his inside
pocket.

“Let me take that fountain pen of yours,” he said. Holding the book on
his knee he wrote out a check, tore it carefully from the stub, and laid
it on the desk in front of Ruggles.

“What’s this?” asked Ruggles.

“Three-fourths payment for the sections of railroad land included in my
ranch, based on a valuation of two dollars and a half per acre. You can
have the balance in sixty-day notes.”

Ruggles shook his head, drawing hastily back from the check as though it
carried contamination.

“I can’t touch it,” he declared. “I’ve no authority to sell to you yet.”

“I don’t understand you people,” exclaimed Annixter. “I offered to buy
of you the same way four years ago and you sang the same song. Why, it
isn’t business. You lose the interest on your money. Seven per cent. of
that capital for four years--you can figure it out. It’s big money.”

“Well, then, I don’t see why you’re so keen on parting with it. You can
get seven per cent. the same as us.”

“I want to own my own land,” returned Annixter. “I want to feel that
every lump of dirt inside my fence is my personal property. Why, the
very house I live in now--the ranch house--stands on railroad ground.”

“But, you’ve an option”

“I tell you I don’t want your cursed option. I want ownership; and it’s
the same with Magnus Derrick and old Broderson and Osterman and all the
ranchers of the county. We want to own our land, want to feel we can do
as we blame please with it. Suppose I should want to sell Quien Sabe. I
can’t sell it as a whole till I’ve bought of you. I can’t give anybody a
clear title. The land has doubled in value ten times over again since I
came in on it and improved it. It’s worth easily twenty an acre now. But
I can’t take advantage of that rise in value so long as you won’t sell,
so long as I don’t own it. You’re blocking me.”

“But, according to you, the railroad can’t take advantage of the rise in
any case. According to you, you can sell for twenty dollars, but we can
only get two and a half.”

“Who made it worth twenty?” cried Annixter. “I’ve improved it up to
that figure. Genslinger seems to have that idea in his nut, too. Do you
people think you can hold that land, untaxed, for speculative purposes
until it goes up to thirty dollars and then sell out to some one
else--sell it over our heads? You and Genslinger weren’t in office when
those contracts were drawn. You ask your boss, you ask S. Behrman, he
knows. The General Office is pledged to sell to us in preference to any
one else, for two and a half.”

“Well,” observed Ruggles decidedly, tapping the end of his pencil on his
desk and leaning forward to emphasise his words, “we’re not selling NOW.
That’s said and signed, Mr. Annixter.”

“Why not? Come, spit it out. What’s the bunco game this time?”

“Because we’re not ready. Here’s your check.”

“You won’t take it?”

“No.”

“I’ll make it a cash payment, money down--the whole of it--payable to
Cyrus Blakelee Ruggles, for the P. and S. W.”

“No.”

“Third and last time.”

“No.”

“Oh, go to the devil!”

“I don’t like your tone, Mr. Annixter,” returned Ruggles, flushing
angrily. “I don’t give a curse whether you like it or not,” retorted
Annixter, rising and thrusting the check into his pocket, “but never you
mind, Mr. Ruggles, you and S. Behrman and Genslinger and Shelgrim and
the whole gang of thieves of you--you’ll wake this State of California
up some of these days by going just one little bit too far, and there’ll
be an election of Railroad Commissioners of, by, and for the people,
that’ll get a twist of you, my bunco-steering friend--you and your
backers and cappers and swindlers and thimble-riggers, and smash you,
lock, stock, and barrel. That’s my tip to you and be damned to you, Mr.
Cyrus Blackleg Ruggles.”

Annixter stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and
Ruggles, trembling with anger, turned to his desk and to the blotting
pad written all over with the words LANDS, TWENTY DOLLARS, TWO AND A
HALF, OPTION, and, over and over again, with great swelling curves and
flourishes, RAILROAD, RAILROAD, RAILROAD.

But as Annixter passed into the outside office, on the other side of
the wire partition he noted the figure of a man at the counter in
conversation with one of the clerks. There was something familiar to
Annixter’s eye about the man’s heavy built frame, his great shoulders
and massive back, and as he spoke to the clerk in a tremendous, rumbling
voice, Annixter promptly recognised Dyke.

There was a meeting. Annixter liked Dyke, as did every one else in
and about Bonneville. He paused now to shake hands with the discharged
engineer and to ask about his little daughter, Sidney, to whom he knew
Dyke was devotedly attached.

“Smartest little tad in Tulare County,” asserted Dyke. “She’s getting
prettier every day, Mr. Annixter. THERE’S a little tad that was just
born to be a lady. Can recite the whole of ‘Snow Bound’ without ever
stopping. You don’t believe that, maybe, hey? Well, it’s true. She’ll be
just old enough to enter the Seminary up at Marysville next winter, and
if my hop business pays two per cent. on the investment, there’s where
she’s going to go.”

“How’s it coming on?” inquired Annixter.

“The hop ranch? Prime. I’ve about got the land in shape, and I’ve
engaged a foreman who knows all about hops. I’ve been in luck. Everybody
will go into the business next year when they see hops go to a dollar,
and they’ll overstock the market and bust the price. But I’m going to
get the cream of it now. I say two per cent. Why, Lord love you, it
will pay a good deal more than that. It’s got to. It’s cost more than
I figured to start the thing, so, perhaps, I may have to borrow
somewheres; but then on such a sure game as this--and I do want to make
something out of that little tad of mine.”

“Through here?” inquired Annixter, making ready to move off.

“In just a minute,” answered Dyke. “Wait for me and I’ll walk down the
street with you.”

Annixter grumbled that he was in a hurry, but waited, nevertheless,
while Dyke again approached the clerk.

“I shall want some empty cars of you people this fall,” he explained.
“I’m a hop-raiser now, and I just want to make sure what your rates on
hops are. I’ve been told, but I want to make sure. Savvy?” There was a
long delay while the clerk consulted the tariff schedules, and Annixter
fretted impatiently. Dyke, growing uneasy, leaned heavily on his elbows,
watching the clerk anxiously. If the tariff was exorbitant, he saw his
plans brought to naught, his money jeopardised, the little tad, Sidney,
deprived of her education. He began to blame himself that he had not
long before determined definitely what the railroad would charge for
moving his hops. He told himself he was not much of a business man; that
he managed carelessly.

“Two cents,” suddenly announced the clerk with a certain surly
indifference.

“Two cents a pound?”

“Yes, two cents a pound--that’s in car-load lots, of course. I won’t
give you that rate on smaller consignments.”

“Yes, car-load lots, of course... two cents. Well, all right.”

He turned away with a great sigh of relief.

“He sure did have me scared for a minute,” he said to Annixter, as the
two went down to the street, “fiddling and fussing so long. Two cents
is all right, though. Seems fair to me. That fiddling of his was all
put on. I know ‘em, these railroad heelers. He knew I was a discharged
employee first off, and he played the game just to make me seem small
because I had to ask favours of him. I don’t suppose the General Office
tips its slavees off to act like swine, but there’s the feeling through
the whole herd of them. ‘Ye got to come to us. We let ye live only so
long as we choose, and what are ye going to do about it? If ye don’t
like it, git out.’”

Annixter and the engineer descended to the street and had a drink at the
Yosemite bar, and Annixter went into the General Store while Dyke
bought a little pair of red slippers for Sidney. Before the salesman had
wrapped them up, Dyke slipped a dime into the toe of each with a wink at
Annixter.

“Let the little tad find ‘em there,” he said behind his hand in a hoarse
whisper. “That’ll be one on Sid.”

“Where to now?” demanded Annixter as they regained the street. “I’m
going down to the Post Office and then pull out for the ranch. Going my
way?”

Dyke hesitated in some confusion, tugging at the ends of his fine blonde
beard.

“No, no. I guess I’ll leave you here. I’ve got--got other things to do
up the street. So long.”

The two separated, and Annixter hurried through the crowd to the Post
Office, but the mail that had come in on that morning’s train was
unusually heavy. It was nearly half an hour before it was distributed.
Naturally enough, Annixter placed all the blame of the delay upon the
railroad, and delivered himself of some pointed remarks in the midst of
the waiting crowd. He was irritated to the last degree when he finally
emerged upon the sidewalk again, cramming his mail into his pockets. One
cause of his bad temper was the fact that in the bundle of Quien Sabe
letters was one to Hilma Tree in a man’s handwriting.

“Huh!” Annixter had growled to himself, “that pip Delaney. Seems now
that I’m to act as go-between for ‘em. Well, maybe that feemale girl
gets this letter, and then, again, maybe she don’t.”

But suddenly his attention was diverted. Directly opposite the Post
Office, upon the corner of the street, stood quite the best business
building of which Bonneville could boast. It was built of Colusa
granite, very solid, ornate, imposing. Upon the heavy plate of the
window of its main floor, in gold and red letters, one read the words:
“Loan and Savings Bank of Tulare County.” It was of this bank that S.
Behrman was president. At the street entrance of the building was a
curved sign of polished brass, fixed upon the angle of the masonry; this
sign bore the name, “S. Behrman,” and under it in smaller letters were
the words, “Real Estate, Mortgages.”

As Annixter’s glance fell upon this building, he was surprised to see
Dyke standing upon the curb in front of it, apparently reading from a
newspaper that he held in his hand. But Annixter promptly discovered
that he was not reading at all. From time to time the former engineer
shot a swift glance out of the corner of his eye up and down the street.
Annixter jumped at a conclusion. An idea suddenly occurred to him. Dyke
was watching to see if he was observed--was waiting an opportunity when
no one who knew him should be in sight. Annixter stepped back a little,
getting a telegraph pole somewhat between him and the other. Very
interested, he watched what was going on. Pretty soon Dyke thrust
the paper into his pocket and sauntered slowly to the windows of a
stationery store, next the street entrance of S. Behrman’s offices. For
a few seconds he stood there, his back turned, seemingly absorbed in
the display, but eyeing the street narrowly nevertheless; then he turned
around, gave a last look about and stepped swiftly into the doorway
by the great brass sign. He disappeared. Annixter came from behind the
telegraph pole with a flush of actual shame upon his face. There had
been something so slinking, so mean, in the movements and manner of this
great, burly honest fellow of an engineer, that he could not help but
feel ashamed for him. Circumstances were such that a simple business
transaction was to Dyke almost culpable, a degradation, a thing to be
concealed.

“Borrowing money of S. Behrman,” commented Annixter, “mortgaging your
little homestead to the railroad, putting your neck in the halter. Poor
fool! The pity of it. Good Lord, your hops must pay you big, now, old
man.”

Annixter lunched at the Yosemite Hotel, and then later on, toward the
middle of the afternoon, rode out of the town at a canter by the way
of the Upper Road that paralleled the railroad tracks and that ran
diametrically straight between Bonneville and Guadalajara. About
half-way between the two places he overtook Father Sarria trudging back
to San Juan, his long cassock powdered with dust. He had a wicker crate
in one hand, and in the other, in a small square valise, the materials
for the Holy Sacrament. Since early morning the priest had covered
nearly fifteen miles on foot, in order to administer Extreme Unction to
a moribund good-for-nothing, a greaser, half Indian, half Portuguese,
who lived in a remote corner of Osterman’s stock range, at the head of
a canon there. But he had returned by way of Bonneville to get a crate
that had come for him from San Diego. He had been notified of its
arrival the day before.

Annixter pulled up and passed the time of day with the priest.

“I don’t often get up your way,” he said, slowing down his horse to
accommodate Sarria’s deliberate plodding. Sarria wiped the perspiration
from his smooth, shiny face.

“You? Well, with you it is different,” he answered. “But there are a
great many Catholics in the county--some on your ranch. And so few come
to the Mission. At High Mass on Sundays, there are a few--Mexicans and
Spaniards from Guadalajara mostly; but weekdays, for matins, vespers,
and the like, I often say the offices to an empty church--‘the voice
of one crying in the wilderness.’ You Americans are not good churchmen.
Sundays you sleep--you read the newspapers.”

“Well, there’s Vanamee,” observed Annixter. “I suppose he’s there early
and late.”

Sarria made a sharp movement of interest.

“Ah, Vanamee--a strange lad; a wonderful character, for all that. If
there were only more like him. I am troubled about him. You know I am a
very owl at night. I come and go about the Mission at all hours. Within
the week, three times I have seen Vanamee in the little garden by the
Mission, and at the dead of night. He had come without asking for me. He
did not see me. It was strange. Once, when I had got up at dawn to ring
for early matins, I saw him stealing away out of the garden. He must
have been there all the night. He is acting queerly. He is pale; his
cheeks are more sunken than ever. There is something wrong with him. I
can’t make it out. It is a mystery. Suppose you ask him?”

“Not I. I’ve enough to bother myself about. Vanamee is crazy in the
head. Some morning he will turn up missing again, and drop out of sight
for another three years. Best let him alone, Sarria. He’s a crank. How
is that greaser of yours up on Osterman’s stock range?”

“Ah, the poor fellow--the poor fellow,” returned the other, the tears
coming to his eyes. “He died this morning--as you might say, in my arms,
painfully, but in the faith, in the faith. A good fellow.”

“A lazy, cattle-stealing, knife-in-his-boot Dago.”

“You misjudge him. A really good fellow on better acquaintance.”

Annixter grunted scornfully. Sarria’s kindness and good-will toward the
most outrageous reprobates of the ranches was proverbial. He practically
supported some half-dozen families that lived in forgotten cabins, lost
and all but inaccessible, in the far corners of stock range and
canyon. This particular greaser was the laziest, the dirtiest, the most
worthless of the lot. But in Sarria’s mind, the lout was an object of
affection, sincere, unquestioning. Thrice a week the priest, with a
basket of provisions--cold ham, a bottle of wine, olives, loaves of
bread, even a chicken or two--toiled over the interminable stretch of
country between the Mission and his cabin. Of late, during the rascal’s
sickness, these visits had been almost daily. Hardly once did the priest
leave the bedside that he did not slip a half-dollar into the palm of
his wife or oldest daughter. And this was but one case out of many.

His kindliness toward animals was the same. A horde of mange-corroded
curs lived off his bounty, wolfish, ungrateful, often marking him with
their teeth, yet never knowing the meaning of a harsh word. A burro,
over-fed, lazy, incorrigible, browsed on the hill back of the Mission,
obstinately refusing to be harnessed to Sarria’s little cart, squealing
and biting whenever the attempt was made; and the priest suffered him,
submitting to his humour, inventing excuses for him, alleging that the
burro was foundered, or was in need of shoes, or was feeble from extreme
age. The two peacocks, magnificent, proud, cold-hearted, resenting all
familiarity, he served with the timorous, apologetic affection of a
queen’s lady-in-waiting, resigned to their disdain, happy if only they
condescended to enjoy the grain he spread for them.

At the Long Trestle, Annixter and the priest left the road and took the
trail that crossed Broderson Creek by the clumps of grey-green willows
and led across Quien Sabe to the ranch house, and to the Mission farther
on. They were obliged to proceed in single file here, and Annixter,
who had allowed the priest to go in front, promptly took notice of the
wicker basket he carried. Upon his inquiry, Sarria became confused. “It
was a basket that he had had sent down to him from the city.”

“Well, I know--but what’s in it?”

“Why--I’m sure--ah, poultry--a chicken or two.”

“Fancy breed?”

“Yes, yes, that’s it, a fancy breed.” At the ranch house, where they
arrived toward five o’clock, Annixter insisted that the priest should
stop long enough for a glass of sherry. Sarria left the basket and his
small black valise at the foot of the porch steps, and sat down in a
rocker on the porch itself, fanning himself with his broad-brimmed hat,
and shaking the dust from his cassock. Annixter brought out the decanter
of sherry and glasses, and the two drank to each other’s health.

But as the priest set down his glass, wiping his lips with a murmur of
satisfaction, the decrepit Irish setter that had attached himself
to Annixter’s house came out from underneath the porch, and nosed
vigorously about the wicker basket. He upset it. The little peg holding
down the cover slipped, the basket fell sideways, opening as it fell,
and a cock, his head enclosed in a little chamois bag such as are used
for gold watches, struggled blindly out into the open air. A second,
similarly hooded, followed. The pair, stupefied in their headgear, stood
rigid and bewildered in their tracks, clucking uneasily. Their tails
were closely sheared. Their legs, thickly muscled, and extraordinarily
long, were furnished with enormous cruel-looking spurs. The breed
was unmistakable. Annixter looked once at the pair, then shouted with
laughter.

“‘Poultry’--‘a chicken or two’--‘fancy breed’--ho! yes, I should think
so. Game cocks! Fighting cocks! Oh, you old rat! You’ll be a dry nurse
to a burro, and keep a hospital for infirm puppies, but you will fight
game cocks. Oh, Lord! Why, Sarria, this is as good a grind as I ever
heard. There’s the Spanish cropping out, after all.”

Speechless with chagrin, the priest bundled the cocks into the basket
and catching up the valise, took himself abruptly away, almost running
till he had put himself out of hearing of Annixter’s raillery. And even
ten minutes later, when Annixter, still chuckling, stood upon the porch
steps, he saw the priest, far in the distance, climbing the slope of
the high ground, in the direction of the Mission, still hurrying on at
a great pace, his cassock flapping behind him, his head bent; to
Annixter’s notion the very picture of discomfiture and confusion.

As Annixter turned about to reenter the house, he found himself almost
face to face with Hilma Tree. She was just going in at the doorway, and
a great flame of the sunset, shooting in under the eaves of the porch,
enveloped her from her head, with its thick, moist hair that hung low
over her neck, to her slim feet, setting a golden flash in the little
steel buckles of her low shoes. She had come to set the table for
Annixter’s supper. Taken all aback by the suddenness of the encounter,
Annixter ejaculated an abrupt and senseless, “Excuse me.” But Hilma,
without raising her eyes, passed on unmoved into the dining-room,
leaving Annixter trying to find his breath, and fumbling with the brim
of his hat, that he was surprised to find he had taken from his head.
Resolutely, and taking a quick advantage of his opportunity, he followed
her into the dining-room.

“I see that dog has turned up,” he announced with brisk cheerfulness.
“That Irish setter I was asking about.”

Hilma, a swift, pink flush deepening the delicate rose of her cheeks,
did not reply, except by nodding her head. She flung the table-cloth out
from under her arms across the table, spreading it smooth, with quick
little caresses of her hands. There was a moment’s silence. Then
Annixter said:

“Here’s a letter for you.” He laid it down on the table near her, and
Hilma picked it up. “And see here, Miss Hilma,” Annixter continued,
“about that--this morning--I suppose you think I am a first-class
mucker. If it will do any good to apologise, why, I will. I want to be
friends with you. I made a bad mistake, and started in the wrong way.
I don’t know much about women people. I want you to forget about
that--this morning, and not think I am a galoot and a mucker. Will you
do it? Will you be friends with me?”

Hilma set the plate and coffee cup by Annixter’s place before answering,
and Annixter repeated his question. Then she drew a deep, quick breath,
the flush in her cheeks returning.

“I think it was--it was so wrong of you,” she murmured. “Oh! you don’t
know how it hurt me. I cried--oh, for an hour.”

“Well, that’s just it,” returned Annixter vaguely, moving his head
uneasily. “I didn’t know what kind of a girl you were--I mean, I made
a mistake. I thought it didn’t make much difference. I thought all
feemales were about alike.”

“I hope you know now,” murmured Hilma ruefully. “I’ve paid enough to
have you find out. I cried--you don’t know. Why, it hurt me worse than
anything I can remember. I hope you know now.” “Well, I do know now,” he
exclaimed.

“It wasn’t so much that you tried to do--what you did,” answered Hilma,
the single deep swell from her waist to her throat rising and falling in
her emotion. “It was that you thought that you could--that anybody could
that wanted to--that I held myself so cheap. Oh!” she cried, with a
sudden sobbing catch in her throat, “I never can forget it, and you
don’t know what it means to a girl.”

“Well, that’s just what I do want,” he repeated. “I want you to forget
it and have us be good friends.”

In his embarrassment, Annixter could think of no other words. He kept
reiterating again and again during the pauses of the conversation:

“I want you to forget it. Will you? Will you forget it--that--this
morning, and have us be good friends?”

He could see that her trouble was keen. He was astonished that the
matter should be so grave in her estimation. After all, what was it that
a girl should be kissed? But he wanted to regain his lost ground.

“Will you forget it, Miss Hilma? I want you to like me.”

She took a clean napkin from the sideboard drawer and laid it down by
the plate.

“I--I do want you to like me,” persisted Annixter. “I want you to forget
all about this business and like me.”

Hilma was silent. Annixter saw the tears in her eyes.

“How about that? Will you forget it? Will you--will--will you LIKE me?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“No what? You won’t like me? Is that it?”

Hilma, blinking at the napkin through her tears, nodded to say, Yes,
that was it. Annixter hesitated a moment, frowning, harassed and
perplexed.

“You don’t like me at all, hey?”

At length Hilma found her speech. In her low voice, lower and more
velvety than ever, she said:

“No--I don’t like you at all.”

Then, as the tears suddenly overpowered her, she dashed a hand across
her eyes, and ran from the room and out of doors.

Annixter stood for a moment thoughtful, his protruding lower lip thrust
out, his hands in his pocket.

“I suppose she’ll quit now,” he muttered. “Suppose she’ll leave the
ranch--if she hates me like that. Well, she can go--that’s all--she can
go. Fool feemale girl,” he muttered between his teeth, “petticoat mess.”
 He was about to sit down to his supper when his eye fell upon the
Irish setter, on his haunches in the doorway. There was an expectant,
ingratiating look on the dog’s face. No doubt, he suspected it was time
for eating.

“Get out--YOU!” roared Annixter in a tempest of wrath.

The dog slunk back, his tail shut down close, his ears drooping, but
instead of running away, he lay down and rolled supinely upon his back,
the very image of submission, tame, abject, disgusting. It was the one
thing to drive Annixter to a fury. He kicked the dog off the porch in
a rolling explosion of oaths, and flung himself down to his seat before
the table, fuming and panting.

“Damn the dog and the girl and the whole rotten business--and now,” he
exclaimed, as a sudden fancied qualm arose in his stomach, “now, it’s
all made me sick. Might have known it. Oh, it only lacked that to wind
up the whole day. Let her go, I don’t care, and the sooner the better.”

He countermanded the supper and went to bed before it was dark, lighting
his lamp, on the chair near the head of the bed, and opening his
“Copperfield” at the place marked by the strip of paper torn from the
bag of prunes. For upward of an hour he read the novel, methodically
swallowing one prune every time he reached the bottom of a page. About
nine o’clock he blew out the lamp and, punching up his pillow, settled
himself for the night.

Then, as his mind relaxed in that strange, hypnotic condition that
comes just before sleep, a series of pictures of the day’s doings passed
before his imagination like the roll of a kinetoscope.

First, it was Hilma Tree, as he had seen her in the
dairy-house--charming, delicious, radiant of youth, her thick, white
neck with its pale amber shadows under the chin; her wide, open eyes
rimmed with fine, black lashes; the deep swell of her breast and hips,
the delicate, lustrous floss on her cheek, impalpable as the pollen of
a flower. He saw her standing there in the scintillating light of the
morning, her smooth arms wet with milk, redolent and fragrant of milk,
her whole, desirable figure moving in the golden glory of the sun,
steeped in a lambent flame, saturated with it, glowing with it, joyous
as the dawn itself.

Then it was Los Muertos and Hooven, the sordid little Dutchman, grimed
with the soil he worked in, yet vividly remembering a period of military
glory, exciting himself with recollections of Gravelotte and the
Kaiser, but contented now in the country of his adoption, defining the
Fatherland as the place where wife and children lived. Then came the
ranch house of Los Muertos, under the grove of cypress and eucalyptus,
with its smooth, gravelled driveway and well-groomed lawns; Mrs. Derrick
with her wide-opened eyes, that so easily took on a look of uneasiness,
of innocence, of anxious inquiry, her face still pretty, her brown hair
that still retained so much of its brightness spread over her chair
back, drying in the sun; Magnus, erect as an officer of cavalry,
smooth-shaven, grey, thin-lipped, imposing, with his hawk-like nose and
forward-curling grey hair; Presley with his dark face, delicate mouth
and sensitive, loose lips, in corduroys and laced boots, smoking
cigarettes--an interesting figure, suggestive of a mixed origin, morbid,
excitable, melancholy, brooding upon things that had no names. Then
it was Bonneville, with the gayety and confusion of Main Street,
the whirring electric cars, the zinc-sheathed telegraph poles, the
buckboards with squashes stowed under the seats; Ruggles in frock coat,
Stetson hat and shoe-string necktie, writing abstractedly upon his
blotting pad; Dyke, the engineer, big-boned. Powerful, deep-voiced,
good-natured, with his fine blonde beard and massive arms, rehearsing
the praises of his little daughter Sidney, guided only by the one
ambition that she should be educated at a seminary, slipping a dime into
the toe of her diminutive slipper, then, later, overwhelmed with shame,
slinking into S. Behrman’s office to mortgage his homestead to the
heeler of the corporation that had discharged him. By suggestion,
Annixter saw S. Behrman, too, fat, with a vast stomach, the check and
neck meeting to form a great, tremulous jowl, the roll of fat over his
collar, sprinkled with sparse, stiff hairs; saw his brown, round-topped
hat of varnished straw, the linen vest stamped with innumerable
interlocked horseshoes, the heavy watch chain, clinking against the
pearl vest buttons; invariably placid, unruffled, never losing his
temper, serene, unassailable, enthroned.

Then, at the end of all, it was the ranch again, seen in a last brief
glance before he had gone to bed; the fecundated earth, calm at last,
nursing the emplanted germ of life, ruddy with the sunset, the horizons
purple, the small clamour of the day lapsing into quiet, the great,
still twilight, building itself, dome-like, toward the zenith. The barn
fowls were roosting in the trees near the stable, the horses crunching
their fodder in the stalls, the day’s work ceasing by slow degrees; and
the priest, the Spanish churchman, Father Sarria, relic of a departed
regime, kindly, benign, believing in all goodness, a lover of his
fellows and of dumb animals, yet, for all that, hurrying away in
confusion and discomfiture, carrying in one hand the vessels of the Holy
Communion and in the other a basket of game cocks.



CHAPTER VI


It was high noon, and the rays of the sun, that hung poised directly
overhead in an intolerable white glory, fell straight as plummets upon
the roofs and streets of Guadalajara. The adobe walls and sparse brick
sidewalks of the drowsing town radiated the heat in an oily, quivering
shimmer. The leaves of the eucalyptus trees around the Plaza drooped
motionless, limp and relaxed under the scorching, searching blaze.
The shadows of these trees had shrunk to their smallest circumference,
contracting close about the trunks. The shade had dwindled to the
breadth of a mere line. The sun was everywhere. The heat exhaling
from brick and plaster and metal met the heat that steadily descended
blanketwise and smothering, from the pale, scorched sky. Only the
lizards--they lived in chinks of the crumbling adobe and in interstices
of the sidewalk--remained without, motionless, as if stuffed, their eyes
closed to mere slits, basking, stupefied with heat. At long intervals
the prolonged drone of an insect developed out of the silence, vibrated
a moment in a soothing, somnolent, long note, then trailed slowly into
the quiet again. Somewhere in the interior of one of the ‘dobe houses a
guitar snored and hummed sleepily. On the roof of the hotel a group of
pigeons cooed incessantly with subdued, liquid murmurs, very plaintive;
a cat, perfectly white, with a pink nose and thin, pink lips, dozed
complacently on a fence rail, full in the sun. In a corner of the Plaza
three hens wallowed in the baking hot dust their wings fluttering,
clucking comfortably.

And this was all. A Sunday repose prevailed the whole moribund town,
peaceful, profound. A certain pleasing numbness, a sense of grateful
enervation exhaled from the scorching plaster. There was no movement, no
sound of human business. The faint hum of the insect, the intermittent
murmur of the guitar, the mellow complainings of the pigeons, the
prolonged purr of the white cat, the contented clucking of the
hens--all these noises mingled together to form a faint, drowsy bourdon,
prolonged, stupefying, suggestive of an infinite quiet, of a calm,
complacent life, centuries old, lapsing gradually to its end under the
gorgeous loneliness of a cloudless, pale blue sky and the steady fire of
an interminable sun.

In Solotari’s Spanish-Mexican restaurant, Vanamee and Presley sat
opposite each other at one of the tables near the door, a bottle of
white wine, tortillas, and an earthen pot of frijoles between them. They
were the sole occupants of the place. It was the day that Annixter had
chosen for his barn-dance and, in consequence, Quien Sabe was in fete
and work suspended. Presley and Vanamee had arranged to spend the day in
each other’s company, lunching at Solotari’s and taking a long tramp in
the afternoon. For the moment they sat back in their chairs, their meal
all but finished. Solotari brought black coffee and a small carafe of
mescal, and retiring to a corner of the room, went to sleep.

All through the meal Presley had been wondering over a certain change he
observed in his friend. He looked at him again.

Vanamee’s lean, spare face was of an olive pallor. His long, black hair,
such as one sees in the saints and evangelists of the pre-Raphaelite
artists, hung over his ears. Presley again remarked his pointed beard,
black and fine, growing from the hollow cheeks. He looked at his face,
a face like that of a young seer, like a half-inspired shepherd of
the Hebraic legends, a dweller in the wilderness, gifted with strange
powers. He was dressed as when Presley had first met him, herding his
sheep, in brown canvas overalls, thrust into top boots; grey flannel
shirt, open at the throat, showing the breast ruddy with tan; the waist
encircled with a cartridge belt, empty of cartridges.

But now, as Presley took more careful note of him, he was surprised to
observe a certain new look in Vanamee’s deep-set eyes. He remembered now
that all through the morning Vanamee had been singularly reserved.
He was continually drifting into reveries, abstracted, distrait.
Indubitably, something of moment had happened.

At length Vanamee spoke. Leaning back in his chair, his thumbs in his
belt, his bearded chin upon his breast, his voice was the even monotone
of one speaking in his sleep.

He told Presley in a few words what had happened during the first
night he had spent in the garden of the old Mission, of the Answer,
half-fancied, half-real, that had come to him.

“To no other person but you would I speak of this,” he said, “but you,
I think, will understand--will be sympathetic, at least, and I feel the
need of unburdening myself of it to some one. At first I would not trust
my own senses. I was sure I had deceived myself, but on a second
night it happened again. Then I was afraid--or no, not afraid, but
disturbed--oh, shaken to my very heart’s core. I resolved to go no
further in the matter, never again to put it to test. For a long time I
stayed away from the Mission, occupying myself with my work, keeping
it out of my mind. But the temptation was too strong. One night I found
myself there again, under the black shadow of the pear trees calling for
Angele, summoning her from out the dark, from out the night. This time
the Answer was prompt, unmistakable. I cannot explain to you what it
was, nor how it came to me, for there was no sound. I saw absolutely
nothing but the empty night. There was no moon. But somewhere off there
over the little valley, far off, the darkness was troubled; that ME
that went out upon my thought--out from the Mission garden, out over the
valley, calling for her, searching for her, found, I don’t know what,
but found a resting place--a companion. Three times since then I have
gone to the Mission garden at night. Last night was the third time.”

He paused, his eyes shining with excitement. Presley leaned forward
toward him, motionless with intense absorption.

“Well--and last night,” he prompted.

Vanamee stirred in his seat, his glance fell, he drummed an instant upon
the table.

“Last night,” he answered, “there was--there was a change. The Answer
was--” he drew a deep breath--“nearer.”

“You are sure?”

The other smiled with absolute certainty.

“It was not that I found the Answer sooner, easier. I could not be
mistaken. No, that which has troubled the darkness, that which has
entered into the empty night--is coming nearer to me--physically nearer,
actually nearer.”

His voice sank again. His face like the face of younger prophets, the
seers, took on a half-inspired expression. He looked vaguely before him
with unseeing eyes.

“Suppose,” he murmured, “suppose I stand there under the pear trees
at night and call her again and again, and each time the Answer comes
nearer and nearer and I wait until at last one night, the supreme night
of all, she--she----”

Suddenly the tension broke. With a sharp cry and a violent uncertain
gesture of the hand Vanamee came to himself.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “what is it? Do I dare? What does it mean? There are
times when it appals me and there are times when it thrills me with
a sweetness and a happiness that I have not known since she died. The
vagueness of it! How can I explain it to you, this that happens when I
call to her across the night--that faint, far-off, unseen tremble in the
darkness, that intangible, scarcely perceptible stir. Something neither
heard nor seen, appealing to a sixth sense only. Listen, it is something
like this: On Quien Sabe, all last week, we have been seeding the earth.
The grain is there now under the earth buried in the dark, in the black
stillness, under the clods. Can you imagine the first--the very first
little quiver of life that the grain of wheat must feel after it is
sown, when it answers to the call of the sun, down there in the dark of
the earth, blind, deaf; the very first stir from the inert, long, long
before any physical change has occurred,--long before the microscope
could discover the slightest change,--when the shell first tightens with
the first faint premonition of life? Well, it is something as illusive
as that.” He paused again, dreaming, lost in a reverie, then, just above
a whisper, murmured:

“‘That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die,’... and she,
Angele... died.”

“You could not have been mistaken?” said Presley. “You were sure that
there was something? Imagination can do so much and the influence of the
surroundings was strong. How impossible it would be that anything SHOULD
happen. And you say you heard nothing, saw nothing.”

“I believe,” answered Vanamee, “in a sixth sense, or, rather, a whole
system of other unnamed senses beyond the reach of our understanding.
People who live much alone and close to nature experience the sensation
of it. Perhaps it is something fundamental that we share with plants and
animals. The same thing that sends the birds south long before the first
colds, the same thing that makes the grain of wheat struggle up to meet
the sun. And this sense never deceives. You may see wrong, hear wrong,
but once touch this sixth sense and it acts with absolute fidelity, you
are certain. No, I hear nothing in the Mission garden. I see nothing,
nothing touches me, but I am CERTAIN for all that.”

Presley hesitated for a moment, then he asked:

“Shall you go back to the garden again? Make the test again?” “I don’t
know.”

“Strange enough,” commented Presley, wondering.

Vanamee sank back in his chair, his eyes growing vacant again:

“Strange enough,” he murmured.

There was a long silence. Neither spoke nor moved. There, in that
moribund, ancient town, wrapped in its siesta, flagellated with heat,
deserted, ignored, baking in a noon-day silence, these two strange men,
the one a poet by nature, the other by training, both out of tune with
their world, dreamers, introspective, morbid, lost and unfamiliar at
that end-of-the-century time, searching for a sign, groping and baffled
amidst the perplexing obscurity of the Delusion, sat over empty wine
glasses, silent with the pervading silence that surrounded them, hearing
only the cooing of doves and the drone of bees, the quiet so profound,
that at length they could plainly distinguish at intervals the puffing
and coughing of a locomotive switching cars in the station yard of
Bonneville.

It was, no doubt, this jarring sound that at length roused Presley from
his lethargy. The two friends rose; Solotari very sleepily came forward;
they paid for the luncheon, and stepping out into the heat and glare of
the streets of the town, passed on through it and took the road that led
northward across a corner of Dyke’s hop fields. They were bound for the
hills in the northeastern corner of Quien Sabe. It was the same walk
which Presley had taken on the previous occasion when he had first met
Vanamee herding the sheep. This encompassing detour around the whole
country-side was a favorite pastime of his and he was anxious that
Vanamee should share his pleasure in it.

But soon after leaving Guadalajara, they found themselves upon the land
that Dyke had bought and upon which he was to raise his famous crop of
hops. Dyke’s house was close at hand, a very pleasant little cottage,
painted white, with green blinds and deep porches, while near it and yet
in process of construction, were two great storehouses and a drying and
curing house, where the hops were to be stored and treated. All about
were evidences that the former engineer had already been hard at
work. The ground had been put in readiness to receive the crop and a
bewildering, innumerable multitude of poles, connected with a maze of
wire and twine, had been set out. Farther on at a turn of the road, they
came upon Dyke himself, driving a farm wagon loaded with more poles.
He was in his shirt sleeves, his massive, hairy arms bare to the elbow,
glistening with sweat, red with heat. In his bell-like, rumbling voice,
he was calling to his foreman and a boy at work in stringing the poles
together. At sight of Presley and Vanamee he hailed them jovially,
addressing them as “boys,” and insisting that they should get into the
wagon with him and drive to the house for a glass of beer. His mother
had only the day before returned from Marysville, where she had been
looking up a seminary for the little tad. She would be delighted to see
the two boys; besides, Vanamee must see how the little tad had grown
since he last set eyes on her; wouldn’t know her for the same little
girl; and the beer had been on ice since morning. Presley and Vanamee
could not well refuse.

They climbed into the wagon and jolted over the uneven ground through
the bare forest of hop-poles to the house. Inside they found Mrs.
Dyke, an old lady with a very gentle face, who wore a cap and a very
old-fashioned gown with hoop skirts, dusting the what-not in a corner of
the parlor. The two men were presented and the beer was had from off the
ice.

“Mother,” said Dyke, as he wiped the froth from his great blond beard,
“ain’t Sid anywheres about? I want Mr. Vanamee to see how she has grown.
Smartest little tad in Tulare County, boys. Can recite the whole of
‘Snow Bound,’ end to end, without skipping or looking at the book. Maybe
you don’t believe that. Mother, ain’t I right--without skipping a line,
hey?”

Mrs. Dyke nodded to say that it was so, but explained that Sidney was
in Guadalajara. In putting on her new slippers for the first time the
morning before, she had found a dime in the toe of one of them and had
had the whole house by the ears ever since till she could spend it.

“Was it for licorice to make her licorice water?” inquired Dyke gravely.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Dyke. “I made her tell me what she was going to get
before she went, and it was licorice.”

Dyke, though his mother protested that he was foolish and that Presley
and Vanamee had no great interest in “young ones,” insisted upon showing
the visitors Sidney’s copy-books. They were monuments of laborious,
elaborate neatness, the trite moralities and ready-made aphorisms of the
philanthropists and publicists, repeated from page to page with wearying
insistence. “I, too, am an American Citizen. S. D.,” “As the Twig is
Bent the Tree is Inclined,” “Truth Crushed to Earth Will Rise Again,”
 “As for Me, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,” and last of all, a
strange intrusion amongst the mild, well-worn phrases, two legends. “My
motto--Public Control of Public Franchises,” and “The P. and S. W. is
an Enemy of the State.”

“I see,” commented Presley, “you mean the little tad to understand ‘the
situation’ early.”

“I told him he was foolish to give that to Sid to copy,” said Mrs.
Dyke, with indulgent remonstrance. “What can she understand of public
franchises?”

“Never mind,” observed Dyke, “she’ll remember it when she grows up and
when the seminary people have rubbed her up a bit, and then she’ll
begin to ask questions and understand. And don’t you make any mistake,
mother,” he went on, “about the little tad not knowing who her dad’s
enemies are. What do you think, boys? Listen, here. Precious little I’ve
ever told her of the railroad or how I was turned off, but the other
day I was working down by the fence next the railroad tracks and Sid was
there. She’d brought her doll rags down and she was playing house behind
a pile of hop poles. Well, along comes a through freight--mixed train
from Missouri points and a string of empties from New Orleans,--and when
it had passed, what do you suppose the tad did? SHE didn’t know I was
watching her. She goes to the fence and spits a little spit after the
caboose and puts out her little head and, if you’ll believe me, HISSES
at the train; and mother says she does that same every time she sees a
train go by, and never crosses the tracks that she don’t spit her little
spit on ‘em. What do you THINK of THAT?”

“But I correct her every time,” protested Mrs. Dyke seriously. “Where
she picked up the trick of hissing I don’t know. No, it’s not funny. It
seems dreadful to see a little girl who’s as sweet and gentle as can
be in every other way, so venomous. She says the other little girls at
school and the boys, too, are all the same way. Oh, dear,” she sighed,
“why will the General Office be so unkind and unjust? Why, I couldn’t
be happy, with all the money in the world, if I thought that even one
little child hated me--hated me so that it would spit and hiss at me.
And it’s not one child, it’s all of them, so Sidney says; and think of
all the grown people who hate the road, women and men, the whole county,
the whole State, thousands and thousands of people. Don’t the managers
and the directors of the road ever think of that? Don’t they ever think
of all the hate that surrounds them, everywhere, everywhere, and the
good people that just grit their teeth when the name of the road is
mentioned? Why do they want to make the people hate them? No,” she
murmured, the tears starting to her eyes, “No, I tell you, Mr. Presley,
the men who own the railroad are wicked, bad-hearted men who don’t care
how much the poor people suffer, so long as the road makes its eighteen
million a year. They don’t care whether the people hate them or love
them, just so long as they are afraid of them. It’s not right and God
will punish them sooner or later.”

A little after this the two young men took themselves away, Dyke
obligingly carrying them in the wagon as far as the gate that opened
into the Quien Sabe ranch. On the way, Presley referred to what Mrs.
Dyke had said and led Dyke, himself, to speak of the P. and S. W.

“Well,” Dyke said, “it’s like this, Mr. Presley. I, personally, haven’t
got the right to kick. With you wheat-growing people I guess it’s
different, but hops, you see, don’t count for much in the State. It’s
such a little business that the road don’t want to bother themselves to
tax it. It’s the wheat growers that the road cinches. The rates on hops
ARE FAIR. I’ve got to admit that; I was in to Bonneville a while ago to
find out. It’s two cents a pound, and Lord love you, that’s reasonable
enough to suit any man. No,” he concluded, “I’m on the way to make money
now. The road sacking me as they did was, maybe, a good thing for me,
after all. It came just at the right time. I had a bit of money put by
and here was the chance to go into hops with the certainty that hops
would quadruple and quintuple in price inside the year. No, it was my
chance, and though they didn’t mean it by a long chalk, the railroad
people did me a good turn when they gave me my time--and the tad’ll
enter the seminary next fall.”

About a quarter of an hour after they had said goodbye to the one-time
engineer, Presley and Vanamee, tramping briskly along the road that led
northward through Quien Sabe, arrived at Annixter’s ranch house. At once
they were aware of a vast and unwonted bustle that revolved about the
place. They stopped a few moments looking on, amused and interested in
what was going forward.

The colossal barn was finished. Its freshly white-washed sides glared
intolerably in the sun, but its interior was as yet innocent of paint
and through the yawning vent of the sliding doors came a delicious
odour of new, fresh wood and shavings. A crowd of men--Annixter’s farm
hands--were swarming all about it. Some were balanced on the topmost
rounds of ladders, hanging festoons of Japanese lanterns from tree
to tree, and all across the front of the barn itself. Mrs. Tree, her
daughter Hilma and another woman were inside the barn cutting into long
strips bolt after bolt of red, white and blue cambric and directing
how these strips should be draped from the ceiling and on the walls;
everywhere resounded the tapping of tack hammers. A farm wagon drove
up loaded to overflowing with evergreens and with great bundles of
palm leaves, and these were immediately seized upon and affixed as
supplementary decorations to the tri-coloured cambric upon the inside
walls of the barn. Two of the larger evergreen trees were placed on
either side the barn door and their tops bent over to form an arch. In
the middle of this arch it was proposed to hang a mammoth pasteboard
escutcheon with gold letters, spelling the word WELCOME. Piles of
chairs, rented from I.O.O.F. hall in Bonneville, heaped themselves in
an apparently hopeless entanglement on the ground; while at the far
extremity of the barn a couple of carpenters clattered about the
impromptu staging which was to accommodate the band.

There was a strenuous gayety in the air; everybody was in the best of
spirits. Notes of laughter continually interrupted the conversation
on every hand. At every moment a group of men involved themselves in
uproarious horse-play. They passed oblique jokes behind their hands
to each other--grossly veiled double-meanings meant for the women--and
bellowed with laughter thereat, stamping on the ground. The relations
between the sexes grew more intimate, the women and girls pushing the
young fellows away from their sides with vigorous thrusts of their
elbows. It was passed from group to group that Adela Vacca, a division
superintendent’s wife, had lost her garter; the daughter of the foreman
of the Home ranch was kissed behind the door of the dairy-house.

Annixter, in execrable temper, appeared from time to time, hatless, his
stiff yellow hair in wild disorder. He hurried between the barn and the
ranch house, carrying now a wickered demijohn, now a case of wine, now
a basket of lemons and pineapples. Besides general supervision, he had
elected to assume the responsibility of composing the punch--something
stiff, by jingo, a punch that would raise you right out of your boots; a
regular hairlifter.

The harness room of the barn he had set apart for: himself and
intimates. He had brought a long table down from the house and upon
it had set out boxes of cigars, bottles of whiskey and of beer and
the great china bowls for the punch. It would be no fault of his, he
declared, if half the number of his men friends were not uproarious
before they left. His barn dance would be the talk of all Tulare County
for years to come. For this one day he had resolved to put all thoughts
of business out of his head. For the matter of that, things were going
well enough. Osterman was back from Los Angeles with a favourable
report as to his affair with Disbrow and Darrell. There had been another
meeting of the committee. Harran Derrick had attended. Though he had
taken no part in the discussion, Annixter was satisfied. The Governor
had consented to allow Harran to “come in,” if he so desired, and
Harran had pledged himself to share one-sixth of the campaign expenses,
providing these did not exceed a certain figure.

As Annixter came to the door of the barn to shout abuse at the
distraught Chinese cook who was cutting up lemons in the kitchen, he
caught sight of Presley and Vanamee and hailed them.

“Hello, Pres,” he called. “Come over here and see how she looks;” he
indicated the barn with a movement of his head. “Well, we’re getting
ready for you tonight,” he went on as the two friends came up. “But
how we are going to get straightened out by eight o’clock I don’t know.
Would you believe that pip Caraher is short of lemons--at this last
minute and I told him I’d want three cases of ‘em as much as a month
ago, and here, just when I want a good lively saddle horse to get around
on, somebody hikes the buckskin out the corral. STOLE her, by jingo.
I’ll have the law on that thief if it breaks me--and a sixty-dollar
saddle ‘n’ head-stall gone with her; and only about half the number of
Jap lanterns that I ordered have shown up and not candles enough for
those. It’s enough to make a dog sick. There’s nothing done that you
don’t do yourself, unless you stand over these loafers with a club. I’m
sick of the whole business--and I’ve lost my hat; wish to God I’d never
dreamed of givin’ this rotten fool dance. Clutter the whole place up
with a lot of feemales. I sure did lose my presence of mind when I got
THAT idea.”

Then, ignoring the fact that it was he, himself, who had called the
young men to him, he added:

“Well, this is my busy day. Sorry I can’t stop and talk to you longer.”

He shouted a last imprecation at the Chinaman and turned back into the
barn. Presley and Vanamee went on, but Annixter, as he crossed the floor
of the barn, all but collided with Hilma Tree, who came out from one of
the stalls, a box of candles in her arms.

Gasping out an apology, Annixter reentered the harness room, closing the
door behind him, and forgetting all the responsibility of the moment,
lit a cigar and sat down in one of the hired chairs, his hands in his
pockets, his feet on the table, frowning thoughtfully through the blue
smoke.

Annixter was at last driven to confess to himself that he could not get
the thought of Hilma Tree out of his mind. Finally she had “got a hold
on him.” The thing that of all others he most dreaded had happened. A
feemale girl had got a hold on him, and now there was no longer for him
any such thing as peace of mind. The idea of the young woman was with
him continually. He went to bed with it; he got up with it. At every
moment of the day he was pestered with it. It interfered with his work,
got mixed up in his business. What a miserable confession for a man to
make; a fine way to waste his time. Was it possible that only the other
day he had stood in front of the music store in Bonneville and seriously
considered making Hilma a present of a music-box? Even now, the very
thought of it made him flush with shame, and this after she had told
him plainly that she did not like him. He was running after her--he,
Annixter! He ripped out a furious oath, striking the table with his boot
heel. Again and again he had resolved to put the whole affair from out
his mind. Once he had been able to do so, but of late it was becoming
harder and harder with every successive day. He had only to close his
eyes to see her as plain as if she stood before him; he saw her in a
glory of sunlight that set a fine tinted lustre of pale carnation and
gold on the silken sheen of her white skin, her hair sparkled with it,
her thick, strong neck, sloping to her shoulders with beautiful, full
curves, seemed to radiate the light; her eyes, brown, wide, innocent
in expression, disclosing the full disc of the pupil upon the slightest
provocation, flashed in this sunlight like diamonds.

Annixter was all bewildered. With the exception of the timid little
creature in the glove-cleaning establishment in Sacramento, he had had
no acquaintance with any woman. His world was harsh, crude, a world of
men only--men who were to be combatted, opposed--his hand was against
nearly every one of them. Women he distrusted with the instinctive
distrust of the overgrown schoolboy. Now, at length, a young woman had
come into his life. Promptly he was struck with discomfiture, annoyed
almost beyond endurance, harassed, bedevilled, excited, made angry and
exasperated. He was suspicious of the woman, yet desired her, totally
ignorant of how to approach her, hating the sex, yet drawn to the
individual, confusing the two emotions, sometimes even hating Hilma as
a result of this confusion, but at all times disturbed, vexed, irritated
beyond power of expression.

At length, Annixter cast his cigar from him and plunged again into the
work of the day. The afternoon wore to evening, to the accompaniment
of wearying and clamorous endeavour. In some unexplained fashion,
the labour of putting the great barn in readiness for the dance was
accomplished; the last bolt of cambric was hung in place from the
rafters. The last evergreen tree was nailed to the joists of the
walls; the last lantern hung, the last nail driven into the musicians’
platform. The sun set. There was a great scurry to have supper and
dress. Annixter, last of all the other workers, left the barn in the
dusk of twilight. He was alone; he had a saw under one arm, a bag of
tools was in his hand. He was in his shirt sleeves and carried his coat
over his shoulder; a hammer was thrust into one of his hip pockets. He
was in execrable temper. The day’s work had fagged him out. He had not
been able to find his hat.

“And the buckskin with sixty dollars’ worth of saddle gone, too,” he
groaned. “Oh, ain’t it sweet?”

At his house, Mrs. Tree had set out a cold supper for him, the
inevitable dish of prunes serving as dessert. After supper Annixter
bathed and dressed. He decided at the last moment to wear his usual
town-going suit, a sack suit of black, made by a Bonneville tailor. But
his hat was gone. There were other hats he might have worn, but because
this particular one was lost he fretted about it all through his
dressing and then decided to have one more look around the barn for it.

For over a quarter of an hour he pottered about the barn, going from
stall to stall, rummaging the harness room and feed room, all to no
purpose. At last he came out again upon the main floor, definitely
giving up the search, looking about him to see if everything was in
order.

The festoons of Japanese lanterns in and around the barn were not yet
lighted, but some half-dozen lamps, with great, tin reflectors, that
hung against the walls, were burning low. A dull half light pervaded the
vast interior, hollow, echoing, leaving the corners and roof thick with
impenetrable black shadows. The barn faced the west and through the open
sliding doors was streaming a single bright bar from the after-glow,
incongruous and out of all harmony with the dull flare of the kerosene
lamps.

As Annixter glanced about him, he saw a figure step briskly out of the
shadows of one corner of the building, pause for the fraction of one
instant in the bar of light, then, at sight of him, dart back again.
There was a sound of hurried footsteps.

Annixter, with recollections of the stolen buckskin in his mind, cried
out sharply:

“Who’s there?”

There was no answer. In a second his pistol was in his hand.

“Who’s there? Quick, speak up or I’ll shoot.”

“No, no, no, don’t shoot,” cried an answering voice. “Oh, be careful.
It’s I--Hilma Tree.”

Annixter slid the pistol into his pocket with a great qualm of
apprehension. He came forward and met Hilma in the doorway.

“Good Lord,” he murmured, “that sure did give me a start. If I HAD
shot----”

Hilma stood abashed and confused before him. She was dressed in a white
organdie frock of the most rigorous simplicity and wore neither flower
nor ornament. The severity of her dress made her look even larger than
usual, and even as it was her eyes were on a level with Annixter’s.
There was a certain fascination in the contradiction of stature and
character of Hilma--a great girl, half-child as yet, but tall as a man
for all that.

There was a moment’s awkward silence, then Hilma explained:

“I--I came back to look for my hat. I thought I left it here this
afternoon.”

“And I was looking for my hat,” cried Annixter. “Funny enough, hey?”

They laughed at this as heartily as children might have done. The
constraint of the situation was a little relaxed and Annixter, with
sudden directness, glanced sharply at the young woman and demanded:

“Well, Miss Hilma, hate me as much as ever?”

“Oh, no, sir,” she answered, “I never said I hated you.”

“Well,--dislike me, then; I know you said that.”

“I--I disliked what you did--TRIED to do. It made me angry and it hurt
me. I shouldn’t have said what I did that time, but it was your fault.”

“You mean you shouldn’t have said you didn’t like me?” asked Annixter.
“Why?”

“Well, well,--I don’t--I don’t DISlike anybody,” admitted Hilma.

“Then I can take it that you don’t dislike ME? Is that it?”

“I don’t dislike anybody,” persisted Hilma.

“Well, I asked you more than that, didn’t I?” queried Annixter uneasily.
“I asked you to like me, remember, the other day. I’m asking you that
again, now. I want you to like me.”

Hilma lifted her eyes inquiringly to his. In her words was an
unmistakable ring of absolute sincerity. Innocently she inquired:

“Why?”

Annixter was struck speechless. In the face of such candour, such
perfect ingenuousness, he was at a loss for any words.

“Well--well,” he stammered, “well--I don’t know,” he suddenly burst out.
“That is,” he went on, groping for his wits, “I can’t quite say why.”
 The idea of a colossal lie occurred to him, a thing actually royal.

“I like to have the people who are around me like me,” he declared.
“I--I like to be popular, understand? Yes, that’s it,” he continued,
more reassured. “I don’t like the idea of any one disliking me. That’s
the way I am. It’s my nature.”

“Oh, then,” returned Hilma, “you needn’t bother. No, I don’t dislike
you.”

“Well, that’s good,” declared Annixter judicially. “That’s good. But
hold on,” he interrupted, “I’m forgetting. It’s not enough to not
dislike me. I want you to like me. How about THAT?”

Hilma paused for a moment, glancing vaguely out of the doorway toward
the lighted window of the dairy-house, her head tilted.

“I don’t know that I ever thought about that,” she said.

“Well, think about it now,” insisted Annixter.

“But I never thought about liking anybody particularly,” she observed.
“It’s because I like everybody, don’t you see?”

“Well, you’ve got to like some people more than other people,” hazarded
Annixter, “and I want to be one of those ‘some people,’ savvy? Good
Lord, I don’t know how to say these fool things. I talk like a galoot
when I get talking to feemale girls and I can’t lay my tongue to
anything that sounds right. It isn’t my nature. And look here, I lied
when I said I liked to have people like me--to be popular. Rot! I don’t
care a curse about people’s opinions of me. But there’s a few
people that are more to me than most others--that chap Presley, for
instance--and those people I DO want to have like me. What they think
counts. Pshaw! I know I’ve got enemies; piles of them. I could name you
half a dozen men right now that are naturally itching to take a shot at
me. How about this ranch? Don’t I know, can’t I hear the men growling
oaths under their breath after I’ve gone by? And in business ways, too,”
 he went on, speaking half to himself, “in Bonneville and all over the
county there’s not a man of them wouldn’t howl for joy if they got a
chance to down Buck Annixter. Think I care? Why, I LIKE it. I run my
ranch to suit myself and I play my game my own way. I’m a ‘driver,’
I know it, and a ‘bully,’ too. Oh, I know what they call me--‘a brute
beast, with a twist in my temper that would rile up a new-born lamb,’
and I’m ‘crusty’ and ‘pig-headed’ and ‘obstinate.’ They say all that,
but they’ve got to say, too, that I’m cleverer than any man-jack in the
running. There’s nobody can get ahead of me.” His eyes snapped. “Let ‘em
grind their teeth. They can’t ‘down’ me. When I shut my fist there’s
not one of them can open it. No, not with a CHISEL.” He turned to Hilma
again. “Well, when a man’s hated as much as that, it stands to reason,
don’t it, Miss Hilma, that the few friends he has got he wants to keep?
I’m not such an entire swine to the people that know me best--that
jackass, Presley, for instance. I’d put my hand in the fire to do him
a real service. Sometimes I get kind of lonesome; wonder if you would
understand? It’s my fault, but there’s not a horse about the place that
don’t lay his ears back when I get on him; there’s not a dog don’t put
his tail between his legs as soon as I come near him. The cayuse isn’t
foaled yet here on Quien Sabe that can throw me, nor the dog whelped
that would dare show his teeth at me. I kick that Irish setter every
time I see him--but wonder what I’d do, though, if he didn’t slink so
much, if he wagged his tail and was glad to see me? So it all comes to
this: I’d like to have you--well, sort of feel that I was a good friend
of yours and like me because of it.”

The flame in the lamp on the wall in front of Hilma stretched upward
tall and thin and began to smoke. She went over to where the lamp hung
and, standing on tip-toe, lowered the wick. As she reached her hand
up, Annixter noted how the sombre, lurid red of the lamp made a warm
reflection on her smooth, round arm.

“Do you understand?” he queried.

“Yes, why, yes,” she answered, turning around. “It’s very good of you to
want to be a friend of mine. I didn’t think so, though, when you tried
to kiss me. But maybe it’s all right since you’ve explained things. You
see I’m different from you. I like everybody to like me and I like to
like everybody. It makes one so much happier. You wouldn’t believe it,
but you ought to try it, sir, just to see. It’s so good to be good to
people and to have people good to you. And everybody has always been
so good to me. Mamma and papa, of course, and Billy, the stableman, and
Montalegre, the Portugee foreman, and the Chinese cook, even, and Mr.
Delaney--only he went away--and Mrs. Vacca and her little----”

“Delaney, hey?” demanded Annixter abruptly. “You and he were pretty good
friends, were you?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “He was just as GOOD to me. Every day in the
summer time he used to ride over to the Seed ranch back of the Mission
and bring me a great armful of flowers, the prettiest things, and I used
to pretend to pay him for them with dollars made of cheese that I cut
out of the cheese with a biscuit cutter. It was such fun. We were the
best of friends.”

“There’s another lamp smoking,” growled Annixter. “Turn it down, will
you?--and see that somebody sweeps this floor here. It’s all littered up
with pine needles. I’ve got a lot to do. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

Annixter returned to the ranch house, his teeth clenched, enraged, his
face flushed.

“Ah,” he muttered, “Delaney, hey? Throwing it up to me that I fired
him.” His teeth gripped together more fiercely than ever. “The best
of friends, hey? By God, I’ll have that girl yet. I’ll show that
cow-puncher. Ain’t I her employer, her boss? I’ll show her--and Delaney,
too. It would be easy enough--and then Delaney can have her--if he wants
her--after me.”

An evil light flashing from under his scowl, spread over his face. The
male instincts of possession, unreasoned, treacherous, oblique, came
twisting to the surface. All the lower nature of the man, ignorant of
women, racked at one and the same time with enmity and desire, roused
itself like a hideous and abominable beast. And at the same moment,
Hilma returned to her house, humming to herself as she walked, her white
dress glowing with a shimmer of faint saffron light in the last ray of
the after-glow.

A little after half-past seven, the first carry-all, bearing the
druggist of Bonneville and his women-folk, arrived in front of the new
barn. Immediately afterward an express wagon loaded down with a
swarming family of Spanish-Mexicans, gorgeous in red and yellow colours,
followed. Billy, the stableman, and his assistant took charge of the
teams, unchecking the horses and hitching them to a fence back of the
barn. Then Caraher, the saloon-keeper, in “derby” hat, “Prince Albert”
 coat, pointed yellow shoes and inevitable red necktie, drove into the
yard on his buckboard, the delayed box of lemons under the seat. It
looked as if the whole array of invited guests was to arrive in one
unbroken procession, but for a long half-hour nobody else appeared.
Annixter and Caraher withdrew to the harness room and promptly involved
themselves in a wrangle as to the make-up of the famous punch. From time
to time their voices could be heard uplifted in clamorous argument.

“Two quarts and a half and a cupful of chartreuse.”

“Rot, rot, I know better. Champagne straight and a dash of brandy.”

The druggist’s wife and sister retired to the feed room, where a bureau
with a swinging mirror had been placed for the convenience of the women.
The druggist stood awkwardly outside the door of the feed room, his coat
collar turned up against the draughts that drifted through the barn, his
face troubled, debating anxiously as to the propriety of putting on his
gloves. The Spanish-Mexican family, a father, mother and five children
and sister-in-law, sat rigid on the edges of the hired chairs, silent,
constrained, their eyes lowered, their elbows in at their sides,
glancing furtively from under their eyebrows at the decorations or
watching with intense absorption young Vacca, son of one of the division
superintendents, who wore a checked coat and white thread gloves and
who paced up and down the length of the barn, frowning, very important,
whittling a wax candle over the floor to make it slippery for dancing.

The musicians arrived, the City Band of Bonneville--Annixter having
managed to offend the leader of the “Dirigo” Club orchestra, at the very
last moment, to such a point that he had refused his services. These
members of the City Band repaired at once to their platform in the
corner. At every instant they laughed uproariously among themselves,
joshing one of their number, a Frenchman, whom they called “Skeezicks.”
 Their hilarity reverberated in a hollow, metallic roll among the rafters
overhead. The druggist observed to young Vacca as he passed by that he
thought them pretty fresh, just the same.

“I’m busy, I’m very busy,” returned the young man, continuing on his
way, still frowning and paring the stump of candle.

“Two quarts ‘n’ a half. Two quarts ‘n’ a half.”

“Ah, yes, in a way, that’s so; and then, again, in a way, it ISN’T. I
know better.”

All along one side of the barn were a row of stalls, fourteen of them,
clean as yet, redolent of new cut wood, the sawdust still in the cracks
of the flooring. Deliberately the druggist went from one to the other,
pausing contemplatively before each. He returned down the line and again
took up his position by the door of the feed room, nodding his head
judicially, as if satisfied. He decided to put on his gloves.

By now it was quite dark. Outside, between the barn and the ranch houses
one could see a group of men on step-ladders lighting the festoons of
Japanese lanterns. In the darkness, only their faces appeared here and
there, high above the ground, seen in a haze of red, strange, grotesque.
Gradually as the multitude of lanterns were lit, the light spread.
The grass underfoot looked like green excelsior. Another group of men
invaded the barn itself, lighting the lamps and lanterns there. Soon
the whole place was gleaming with points of light. Young Vacca, who had
disappeared, returned with his pockets full of wax candles. He resumed
his whittling, refusing to answer any questions, vociferating that he
was busy.

Outside there was a sound of hoofs and voices. More guests had arrived.
The druggist, seized with confusion, terrified lest he had put on his
gloves too soon, thrust his hands into his pockets. It was Cutter,
Magnus Derrick’s division superintendent, who came, bringing his wife
and her two girl cousins. They had come fifteen miles by the trail from
the far distant division house on “Four” of Los Muertos and had ridden
on horseback instead of driving. Mrs. Cutter could be heard declaring
that she was nearly dead and felt more like going to bed than dancing.
The two girl cousins, in dresses of dotted Swiss over blue sateen, were
doing their utmost to pacify her. She could be heard protesting from
moment to moment. One distinguished the phrases “straight to my bed,”
 “back nearly broken in two,” “never wanted to come in the first place.”
 The druggist, observing Cutter take a pair of gloves from Mrs. Cutter’s
reticule, drew his hands from his pockets.

But abruptly there was an interruption. In the musicians’ corner
a scuffle broke out. A chair was overturned. There was a noise of
imprecations mingled with shouts of derision. Skeezicks, the Frenchman,
had turned upon the joshers.

“Ah, no,” he was heard to exclaim, “at the end of the end it is too
much. Kind of a bad canary--we will go to see about that. Aha, let him
close up his face before I demolish it with a good stroke of the fist.”

The men who were lighting the lanterns were obliged to intervene before
he could be placated.

Hooven and his wife and daughters arrived. Minna was carrying little
Hilda, already asleep, in her arms. Minna looked very pretty, striking
even, with her black hair, pale face, very red lips and greenish-blue
eyes. She was dressed in what had been Mrs. Hooven’s wedding gown, a
cheap affair of “farmer’s satin.” Mrs. Hooven had pendent earrings
of imitation jet in her ears. Hooven was wearing an old frock coat of
Magnus Derrick’s, the sleeves too long, the shoulders absurdly too wide.
He and Cutter at once entered into an excited conversation as to the
ownership of a certain steer.

“Why, the brand----”

“Ach, Gott, der brendt,” Hooven clasped his head, “ach, der brendt, dot
maks me laugh some laughs. Dot’s goot--der brendt--doand I see um--shoor
der boole mit der bleck star bei der vore-head in der middle oaf. Any
someones you esk tell you dot is mein boole. You esk any someones. Der
brendt? To hell mit der brendt. You aindt got some memorie aboudt does
ting I guess nodt.”

“Please step aside, gentlemen,” said young Vacca, who was still making
the rounds of the floor.

Hooven whirled about. “Eh? What den,” he exclaimed, still excited,
willing to be angry at any one for the moment. “Doand you push soh, you.
I tink berhapz you doand OWN dose barn, hey?”

“I’m busy, I’m very busy.” The young man pushed by with grave
preoccupation.

“Two quarts ‘n’ a half. Two quarts ‘n’ a half.”

“I know better. That’s all rot.”

But the barn was filling up rapidly. At every moment there was a rattle
of a newly arrived vehicle from outside. Guest after guest appeared
in the doorway, singly or in couples, or in families, or in garrulous
parties of five and six. Now it was Phelps and his mother from Los
Muertos, now a foreman from Broderson’s with his family, now a gayly
apparelled clerk from a Bonneville store, solitary and bewildered,
looking for a place to put his hat, now a couple of Spanish-Mexican
girls from Guadalajara with coquettish effects of black and yellow about
their dress, now a group of Osterman’s tenants, Portuguese, swarthy,
with plastered hair and curled mustaches, redolent of cheap perfumes.
Sarria arrived, his smooth, shiny face glistening with perspiration. He
wore a new cassock and carried his broad-brimmed hat under his arm. His
appearance made quite a stir. He passed from group to group, urbane,
affable, shaking hands right and left; he assumed a set smile of
amiability which never left his face the whole evening.

But abruptly there was a veritable sensation. From out the little crowd
that persistently huddled about the doorway came Osterman. He wore
a dress-suit with a white waistcoat and patent leather pumps--what
a wonder! A little qualm of excitement spread around the barn. One
exchanged nudges of the elbow with one’s neighbour, whispering earnestly
behind the hand. What astonishing clothes! Catch on to the coat-tails!
It was a masquerade costume, maybe; that goat Osterman was such a
josher, one never could tell what he would do next.

The musicians began to tune up. From their corner came a medley of
mellow sounds, the subdued chirps of the violins, the dull bourdon of
the bass viol, the liquid gurgling of the flageolet and the deep-toned
snarl of the big horn, with now and then a rasping stridulating of the
snare drum. A sense of gayety began to spread throughout the assembly.
At every moment the crowd increased. The aroma of new-sawn timber
and sawdust began to be mingled with the feminine odour of sachet and
flowers. There was a babel of talk in the air--male baritone and soprano
chatter--varied by an occasional note of laughter and the swish of
stiffly starched petticoats. On the row of chairs that went around three
sides of the wall groups began to settle themselves. For a long time
the guests huddled close to the doorway; the lower end of the floor
was crowded! the upper end deserted; but by degrees the lines of white
muslin and pink and blue sateen extended, dotted with the darker figures
of men in black suits. The conversation grew louder as the timidity of
the early moments wore off. Groups at a distance called back and forth;
conversations were carried on at top voice. Once, even a whole party
hurried across the floor from one side of the barn to the other.

Annixter emerged from the harness room, his face red with wrangling. He
took a position to the right of the door, shaking hands with newcomers,
inviting them over and over again to cut loose and whoop it along. Into
the ears of his more intimate male acquaintances he dropped a word as
to punch and cigars in the harness room later on, winking with vast
intelligence. Ranchers from remoter parts of the country appeared:
Garnett, from the Ruby rancho, Keast, from the ranch of the same name,
Gethings, of the San Pablo, Chattern, of the Bonanza, and others and
still others, a score of them--elderly men, for the most part, bearded,
slow of speech, deliberate, dressed in broadcloth. Old Broderson, who
entered with his wife on his arm, fell in with this type, and with them
came a certain Dabney, of whom nothing but his name was known, a silent
old man, who made no friends, whom nobody knew or spoke to, who was seen
only upon such occasions as this, coming from no one knew where, going,
no one cared to inquire whither.

Between eight and half-past, Magnus Derrick and his family were seen.
Magnus’s entry caused no little impression. Some said: “There’s the
Governor,” and called their companions’ attention to the thin,
erect figure, commanding, imposing, dominating all in his immediate
neighbourhood. Harran came with him, wearing a cut-away suit of black.
He was undeniably handsome, young and fresh looking, his cheeks highly
coloured, quite the finest looking of all the younger men; blond,
strong, with that certain courtliness of manner that had always made him
liked. He took his mother upon his arm and conducted her to a seat by
the side of Mrs. Broderson.

Annie Derrick was very pretty that evening. She was dressed in a grey
silk gown with a collar of pink velvet. Her light brown hair that yet
retained so much of its brightness was transfixed by a high, shell comb,
very Spanish. But the look of uneasiness in her large eyes--the eyes of
a young girl--was deepening every day. The expression of innocence
and inquiry which they so easily assumed, was disturbed by a faint
suggestion of aversion, almost of terror. She settled herself in her
place, in the corner of the hall, in the rear rank of chairs, a little
frightened by the glare of lights, the hum of talk and the shifting
crowd, glad to be out of the way, to attract no attention, willing to
obliterate herself.

All at once Annixter, who had just shaken hands with Dyke, his mother
and the little tad, moved abruptly in his place, drawing in his breath
sharply. The crowd around the great, wide-open main door of the barn had
somewhat thinned out and in the few groups that still remained there he
had suddenly recognised Mr. and Mrs. Tree and Hilma, making their way
towards some empty seats near the entrance of the feed room.

In the dusky light of the barn earlier in the evening, Annixter had not
been able to see Hilma plainly. Now, however, as she passed before his
eyes in the glittering radiance of the lamps and lanterns, he caught
his breath in astonishment. Never had she appeared more beautiful in his
eyes. It did not seem possible that this was the same girl whom he saw
every day in and around the ranch house and dairy, the girl of simple
calico frocks and plain shirt waists, who brought him his dinner, who
made up his bed. Now he could not take his eyes from her. Hilma, for
the first time, was wearing her hair done high upon her head. The thick,
sweet-smelling masses, bitumen brown in the shadows, corruscated like
golden filaments in the light. Her organdie frock was long, longer than
any she had yet worn. It left a little of her neck and breast bare and
all of her arm.

Annixter muttered an exclamation. Such arms! How did she manage to
keep them hid on ordinary occasions. Big at the shoulder, tapering with
delicious modulations to the elbow and wrist, overlaid with a delicate,
gleaming lustre. As often as she turned her head the movement sent
a slow undulation over her neck and shoulders, the pale amber-tinted
shadows under her chin, coming and going over the creamy whiteness of
the skin like the changing moire of silk. The pretty rose colour of
her cheek had deepened to a pale carnation. Annixter, his hands clasped
behind him, stood watching.

In a few moments Hilma was surrounded by a group of young men,
clamouring for dances. They came from all corners of the barn, leaving
the other girls precipitately, almost rudely. There could be little
doubt as to who was to be the belle of the occasion. Hilma’s little
triumph was immediate, complete. Annixter could hear her voice from time
to time, its usual velvety huskiness vibrating to a note of exuberant
gayety.

All at once the orchestra swung off into a march--the Grand March. There
was a great rush to secure “partners.” Young Vacca, still going the
rounds, was pushed to one side. The gayly apparelled clerk from the
Bonneville store lost his head in the confusion. He could not find
his “partner.” He roamed wildly about the barn, bewildered, his eyes
rolling. He resolved to prepare an elaborate programme card on the
back of an old envelope. Rapidly the line was formed, Hilma and Harran
Derrick in the lead, Annixter having obstinately refused to engage
in either march, set or dance the whole evening. Soon the confused
shuffling of feet settled to a measured cadence; the orchestra blared
and wailed, the snare drum, rolling at exact intervals, the cornet
marking the time. It was half-past eight o’clock.

Annixter drew a long breath:

“Good,” he muttered, “the thing is under way at last.”

Singularly enough, Osterman also refused to dance. The week before
he had returned from Los Angeles, bursting with the importance of his
mission. He had been successful. He had Disbrow “in his pocket.” He
was impatient to pose before the others of the committee as a skilful
political agent, a manipulator. He forgot his attitude of the early part
of the evening when he had drawn attention to himself with his wonderful
clothes. Now his comic actor’s face, with its brownish-red cheeks,
protuberant ears and horizontal slit of a mouth, was overcast
with gravity. His bald forehead was seamed with the wrinkles of
responsibility. He drew Annixter into one of the empty stalls and began
an elaborate explanation, glib, voluble, interminable, going over again
in detail what he had reported to the committee in outline.

“I managed--I schemed--I kept dark--I lay low----”

But Annixter refused to listen.

“Oh, rot your schemes. There’s a punch in the harness room that will
make the hair grow on the top of your head in the place where the hair
ought to grow. Come on, we’ll round up some of the boys and walk into
it.”

They edged their way around the hall outside “The Grand March,” toward
the harness room, picking up on their way Caraher, Dyke, Hooven and old
Broderson. Once in the harness room, Annixter shot the bolt.

“That affair outside,” he observed, “will take care of itself, but
here’s a little orphan child that gets lonesome without company.”

Annixter began ladling the punch, filling the glasses.

Osterman proposed a toast to Quien Sabe and the Biggest Barn. Their
elbows crooked in silence. Old Broderson set down his glass, wiping his
long beard and remarking:

“That--that certainly is very--very agreeable. I remember a punch I
drank on Christmas day in ‘83, or no, it was ‘84--anyhow, that punch--it
was in Ukiah--‘TWAS ‘83--” He wandered on aimlessly, unable to stop
his flow of speech, losing himself in details, involving his talk in a
hopeless maze of trivialities to which nobody paid any attention.

“I don’t drink myself,” observed Dyke, “but just a taste of that with
a lot of water wouldn’t be bad for the little tad. She’d think it was
lemonade.” He was about to mix a glass for Sidney, but thought better of
it at the last moment.

“It’s the chartreuse that’s lacking,” commented Caraher, lowering at
Annixter. The other flared up on the instant.

“Rot, rot. I know better. In some punches it goes; and then, again, in
others it don’t.”

But it was left to Hooven to launch the successful phrase:

“Gesundheit,” he exclaimed, holding out his second glass. After
drinking, he replaced it on the table with a long breath. “Ach Gott!”
 he cried, “dat poonsch, say I tink dot poonsch mek some demn goot
vertilizer, hey?”

Fertiliser! The others roared with laughter.

“Good eye, Bismarck,” commented Annixter. The name had a great success.
Thereafter throughout the evening the punch was invariably spoken of as
the “Fertiliser.” Osterman, having spilt the bottom of a glassful on
the floor, pretended that he saw shoots of grain coming up on the spot.
Suddenly he turned upon old Broderson. “I’m bald, ain’t I? Want to know
how I lost my hair? Promise you won’t ask a single other question and
I’ll tell you. Promise your word of honour.”

“Eh? What--wh--I--I don’t understand. Your hair? Yes, I’ll promise. How
did you lose it?”

“It was bit off.”

The other gazed at him stupefied; his jaw dropped. The company shouted,
and old Broderson, believing he had somehow accomplished a witticism,
chuckled in his beard, wagging his head. But suddenly he fell grave,
struck with an idea. He demanded:

“Yes--I know--but--but what bit it off?”

“Ah,” vociferated Osterman, “that’s JUST what you promised not to ask.”

The company doubled up with hilarity. Caraher leaned against the door,
holding his sides, but Hooven, all abroad, unable to follow, gazed from
face to face with a vacant grin, thinking it was still a question of his
famous phrase.

“Vertilizer, hey? Dots some fine joke, hey? You bedt.”

What with the noise of their talk and laughter, it was some time before
Dyke, first of all, heard a persistent knocking on the bolted door. He
called Annixter’s attention to the sound. Cursing the intruder, Annixter
unbolted and opened the door. But at once his manner changed.

“Hello. It’s Presley. Come in, come in, Pres.”

There was a shout of welcome from the others. A spirit of effusive
cordiality had begun to dominate the gathering. Annixter caught sight of
Vanamee back of Presley, and waiving for the moment the distinction of
employer and employee, insisted that both the friends should come in.

“Any friend of Pres is my friend,” he declared.

But when the two had entered and had exchanged greetings, Presley drew
Annixter aside.

“Vanamee and I have just come from Bonneville,” he explained. “We saw
Delaney there. He’s got the buckskin, and he’s full of bad whiskey and
dago-red. You should see him; he’s wearing all his cow-punching outfit,
hair trousers, sombrero, spurs and all the rest of it, and he has
strapped himself to a big revolver. He says he wasn’t invited to your
barn dance but that he’s coming over to shoot up the place. He says you
promised to show him off Quien Sabe at the toe of your boot and that
he’s going to give you the chance to-night!” “Ah,” commented Annixter,
nodding his head, “he is, is he?”

Presley was disappointed. Knowing Annixter’s irascibility, he had
expected to produce a more dramatic effect. He began to explain the
danger of the business. Delaney had once knifed a greaser in the
Panamint country. He was known as a “bad” man. But Annixter refused to
be drawn.

“All right,” he said, “that’s all right. Don’t tell anybody else. You
might scare the girls off. Get in and drink.”

Outside the dancing was by this time in full swing. The orchestra
was playing a polka. Young Vacca, now at his fiftieth wax candle, had
brought the floor to the slippery surface of glass. The druggist was
dancing with one of the Spanish-Mexican girls with the solemnity of an
automaton, turning about and about, always in the same direction, his
eyes glassy, his teeth set. Hilma Tree was dancing for the second time
with Harran Derrick. She danced with infinite grace. Her cheeks were
bright red, her eyes half-closed, and through her parted lips she drew
from time to time a long, tremulous breath of pure delight. The music,
the weaving colours, the heat of the air, by now a little oppressive,
the monotony of repeated sensation, even the pain of physical fatigue
had exalted all her senses. She was in a dreamy lethargy of happiness.
It was her “first ball.” She could have danced without stopping until
morning. Minna Hooven and Cutter were “promenading.” Mrs. Hooven, with
little Hilda already asleep on her knees, never took her eyes from
her daughter’s gown. As often as Minna passed near her she vented an
energetic “pst! pst!” The metal tip of a white draw string was showing
from underneath the waist of Minna’s dress. Mrs. Hooven was on the point
of tears.

The solitary gayly apparelled clerk from Bonneville was in a fever of
agitation. He had lost his elaborate programme card. Bewildered, beside
himself with trepidation, he hurried about the room, jostled by the
dancing couples, tripping over the feet of those who were seated;
he peered distressfully under the chairs and about the floor, asking
anxious questions.

Magnus Derrick, the centre of a listening circle of ranchers--Garnett
from the Ruby rancho, Keast from the ranch of the same name, Gethings
and Chattern of the San Pablo and Bonanza--stood near the great open
doorway of the barn, discussing the possibility of a shortage in the
world’s wheat crop for the next year.

Abruptly the orchestra ceased playing with a roll of the snare drum, a
flourish of the cornet and a prolonged growl of the bass viol. The
dance broke up, the couples hurrying to their seats, leaving the gayly
apparelled clerk suddenly isolated in the middle of the floor, rolling
his eyes. The druggist released the Spanish-Mexican girl with mechanical
precision out amidst the crowd of dancers. He bowed, dropping his chin
upon his cravat; throughout the dance neither had hazarded a word.
The girl found her way alone to a chair, but the druggist, sick from
continually revolving in the same direction, walked unsteadily toward
the wall. All at once the barn reeled around him; he fell down. There
was a great laugh, but he scrambled to his feet and disappeared abruptly
out into the night through the doorway of the barn, deathly pale, his
hand upon his stomach.

Dabney, the old man whom nobody knew, approached the group of ranchers
around Magnus Derrick and stood, a little removed, listening gravely
to what the governor was saying, his chin sunk in his collar, silent,
offering no opinions.

But the leader of the orchestra, with a great gesture of his violin bow,
cried out:

“All take partners for the lancers and promenade around the hall!”

However, there was a delay. A little crowd formed around the musicians’
platform; voices were raised; there was a commotion. Skeezicks, who
played the big horn, accused the cornet and the snare-drum of stealing
his cold lunch. At intervals he could be heard expostulating:

“Ah, no! at the end of the end! Render me the sausages, you, or less I
break your throat! Aha! I know you. You are going to play me there a
bad farce. My sausages and the pork sandwich, else I go away from this
place!”

He made an exaggerated show of replacing his big horn in its case, but
the by-standers raised a great protest. The sandwiches and one sausage
were produced; the other had disappeared. In the end Skeezichs allowed
himself to be appeased. The dance was resumed.

Half an hour later the gathering in the harness room was considerably
reinforced. It was the corner of the barn toward which the male guests
naturally gravitated. Harran Derrick, who only cared to dance with Hilma
Tree, was admitted. Garnett from the Ruby rancho and Gethings from
the San Pablo, came in a little afterwards. A fourth bowl of punch was
mixed, Annixter and Caraher clamouring into each other’s face as to its
ingredients. Cigars were lighted. Soon the air of the room became blue
with an acrid haze of smoke. It was very warm. Ranged in their chairs
around the side of the room, the guests emptied glass after glass.

Vanamee alone refused to drink. He sat a little to one side,
disassociating himself from what was going forward, watching the others
calmly, a little contemptuously, a cigarette in his fingers.

Hooven, after drinking his third glass, however, was afflicted with a
great sadness; his breast heaved with immense sighs. He asserted that he
was “obbressed;” Cutter had taken his steer. He retired to a corner and
seated himself in a heap on his chair, his heels on the rungs, wiping
the tears from his eyes, refusing to be comforted. Old Broderson
startled Annixter, who sat next to him, out of all measure by suddenly
winking at him with infinite craftiness.

“When I was a lad in Ukiah,” he whispered hoarsely, “I was a devil of a
fellow with the girls; but Lordy!” he nudged him slyly, “I wouldn’t have
it known!”

Of those who were drinking, Annixter alone retained all his wits. Though
keeping pace with the others, glass for glass, the punch left him solid
upon his feet, clear-headed. The tough, cross-grained fibre of him
seemed proof against alcohol. Never in his life had he been drunk. He
prided himself upon his power of resistance. It was his nature.

“Say!” exclaimed old Broderson, gravely addressing the company, pulling
at his beard uneasily--“say! I--I--listen! I’m a devil of a fellow with
the girls.” He wagged his head doggedly, shutting his eyes in a knowing
fashion. “Yes, sir, I am. There was a young lady in Ukiah--that was
when I was a lad of seventeen. We used to meet in the cemetery in the
afternoons. I was to go away to school at Sacramento, and the afternoon
I left we met in the cemetery and we stayed so long I almost missed the
train. Her name was Celestine.”

There was a pause. The others waited for the rest of the story.

“And afterwards?” prompted Annixter.

“Afterwards? Nothing afterwards. I never saw her again. Her name was
Celestine.”

The company raised a chorus of derision, and Osterman cried ironically:

“Say! THAT’S a pretty good one! Tell us another.”

The old man laughed with the rest, believing he had made another hit. He
called Osterman to him, whispering in his ear:

“Sh! Look here! Some night you and I will go up to San Francisco--hey?
We’ll go skylarking. We’ll be gay. Oh, I’m a--a--a rare old BUCK, I am!
I ain’t too old. You’ll see.”

Annixter gave over the making of the fifth bowl of punch to Osterman,
who affirmed that he had a recipe for a “fertiliser” from Solotari
that would take the plating off the ladle. He left him wrangling with
Caraher, who still persisted in adding chartreuse, and stepped out into
the dance to see how things were getting on.

It was the interval between two dances. In and around a stall at the
farther end of the floor, where lemonade was being served, was a great
throng of young men. Others hurried across the floor singly or by twos
and threes, gingerly carrying overflowing glasses to their “partners,”
 sitting in long rows of white and blue and pink against the opposite
wall, their mothers and older sisters in a second dark-clothed rank
behind them. A babel of talk was in the air, mingled with gusts of
laughter. Everybody seemed having a good time. In the increasing heat
the decorations of evergreen trees and festoons threw off a pungent
aroma that suggested a Sunday-school Christmas festival. In the other
stalls, lower down the barn, the young men had brought chairs, and in
these deep recesses the most desperate love-making was in progress, the
young man, his hair neatly parted, leaning with great solicitation over
the girl, his “partner” for the moment, fanning her conscientiously, his
arm carefully laid along the back of her chair.

By the doorway, Annixter met Sarria, who had stepped out to smoke a fat,
black cigar. The set smile of amiability was still fixed on the priest’s
smooth, shiny face; the cigar ashes had left grey streaks on the front
of his cassock. He avoided Annixter, fearing, no doubt, an allusion
to his game cocks, and took up his position back of the second rank of
chairs by the musicians’ stand, beaming encouragingly upon every one who
caught his eye.

Annixter was saluted right and left as he slowly went the round of the
floor. At every moment he had to pause to shake hands and to listen to
congratulations upon the size of his barn and the success of his dance.
But he was distrait, his thoughts elsewhere; he did not attempt to
hide his impatience when some of the young men tried to engage him in
conversation, asking him to be introduced to their sisters, or their
friends’ sisters. He sent them about their business harshly, abominably
rude, leaving a wake of angry disturbance behind him, sowing the seeds
of future quarrels and renewed unpopularity. He was looking for Hilma
Tree.

When at last he came unexpectedly upon her, standing near where Mrs.
Tree was seated, some half-dozen young men hovering uneasily in her
neighbourhood, all his audacity was suddenly stricken from him; his
gruffness, his overbearing insolence vanished with an abruptness that
left him cold. His old-time confusion and embarrassment returned to him.
Instead of speaking to her as he intended, he affected not to see her,
but passed by, his head in the air, pretending a sudden interest in a
Japanese lantern that was about to catch fire.

But he had had a single distinct glimpse of her, definite, precise,
and this glimpse was enough. Hilma had changed. The change was
subtle, evanescent, hard to define, but not the less unmistakable. The
excitement, the enchanting delight, the delicious disturbance of “the
first ball,” had produced its result. Perhaps there had only been this
lacking. It was hard to say, but for that brief instant of time Annixter
was looking at Hilma, the woman. She was no longer the young girl upon
whom he might look down, to whom he might condescend, whose little,
infantile graces were to be considered with amused toleration.

When Annixter returned to the harness room, he let himself into a
clamour of masculine hilarity. Osterman had, indeed, made a marvellous
“fertiliser,” whiskey for the most part, diluted with champagne and
lemon juice. The first round of this drink had been welcomed with
a salvo of cheers. Hooven, recovering his spirits under its violent
stimulation, spoke of “heving ut oudt mit Cudder, bei Gott,” while
Osterman, standing on a chair at the end of the room, shouted for a
“few moments quiet, gentlemen,” so that he might tell a certain story
he knew. But, abruptly, Annixter discovered that the liquors--the
champagne, whiskey, brandy, and the like--were running low. This would
never do. He felt that he would stand disgraced if it could be
said afterward that he had not provided sufficient drink at his
entertainment. He slipped out, unobserved, and, finding two of his ranch
hands near the doorway, sent them down to the ranch house to bring up
all the cases of “stuff” they found there.

However, when this matter had been attended to, Annixter did not
immediately return to the harness room. On the floor of the barn a
square dance was under way, the leader of the City Band calling the
figures. Young Vacca indefatigably continued the rounds of the barn,
paring candle after candle, possessed with this single idea of duty,
pushing the dancers out of his way, refusing to admit that the floor was
yet sufficiently slippery. The druggist had returned indoors, and leaned
dejected and melancholy against the wall near the doorway, unable to
dance, his evening’s enjoyment spoiled. The gayly apparelled clerk from
Bonneville had just involved himself in a deplorable incident. In a
search for his handkerchief, which he had lost while trying to find his
programme card, he had inadvertently wandered into the feed room, set
apart as the ladies’ dressing room, at the moment when Mrs. Hooven,
having removed the waist of Minna’s dress, was relacing her corsets.
There was a tremendous scene. The clerk was ejected forcibly, Mrs.
Hooven filling all the neighbourhood with shrill expostulation. A young
man, Minna’s “partner,” who stood near the feed room door, waiting for
her to come out, had invited the clerk, with elaborate sarcasm, to step
outside for a moment; and the clerk, breathless, stupefied, hustled from
hand to hand, remained petrified, with staring eyes, turning about and
about, looking wildly from face to face, speechless, witless, wondering
what had happened.

But the square dance was over. The City Band was just beginning to play
a waltz. Annixter assuring himself that everything was going all right,
was picking his way across the floor, when he came upon Hilma Tree quite
alone, and looking anxiously among the crowd of dancers.

“Having a good time, Miss Hilma?” he demanded, pausing for a moment.

“Oh, am I, JUST!” she exclaimed. “The best time--but I don’t know what
has become of my partner. See! I’m left all alone--the only time this
whole evening,” she added proudly. “Have you seen him--my partner, sir?
I forget his name. I only met him this evening, and I’ve met SO many
I can’t begin to remember half of them. He was a young man from
Bonneville--a clerk, I think, because I remember seeing him in a store
there, and he wore the prettiest clothes!”

“I guess he got lost in the shuffle,” observed Annixter. Suddenly an
idea occurred to him. He took his resolution in both hands. He clenched
his teeth.

“Say! look here, Miss Hilma. What’s the matter with you and I stealing
this one for ourselves? I don’t mean to dance. I don’t propose to make
a jumping-jack of myself for some galoot to give me the laugh, but we’ll
walk around. Will you? What do you say?”

Hilma consented.

“I’m not so VERY sorry I missed my dance with that--that--little clerk,”
 she said guiltily. “I suppose that’s very bad of me, isn’t it?”

Annixter fulminated a vigorous protest.

“I AM so warm!” murmured Hilma, fanning herself with her handkerchief;
“and, oh! SUCH a good time as I have had! I was so afraid that I would
be a wall-flower and sit up by mamma and papa the whole evening; and
as it is, I have had every single dance, and even some dances I had to
split. Oh-h!” she breathed, glancing lovingly around the barn, noting
again the festoons of tri-coloured cambric, the Japanese lanterns,
flaring lamps, and “decorations” of evergreen; “oh-h! it’s all so
lovely, just like a fairy story; and to think that it can’t last but for
one little evening, and that to-morrow morning one must wake up to the
every-day things again!”

“Well,” observed Annixter doggedly, unwilling that she should forget
whom she ought to thank, “I did my best, and my best is as good as
another man’s, I guess.”

Hilma overwhelmed him with a burst of gratitude which he gruffly
pretended to deprecate. Oh, that was all right. It hadn’t cost him much.
He liked to see people having a good time himself, and the crowd did
seem to be enjoying themselves. What did SHE think? Did things look
lively enough? And how about herself--was she enjoying it?

Stupidly Annixter drove the question home again, at his wits’ end as to
how to make conversation. Hilma protested volubly she would never forget
this night, adding:

“Dance! Oh, you don’t know how I love it! I didn’t know myself. I could
dance all night and never stop once!”

Annixter was smitten with uneasiness. No doubt this “promenading” was
not at all to her taste. Wondering what kind of a spectacle he was about
to make of himself, he exclaimed:

“Want to dance now?”

“Oh, yes!” she returned.

They paused in their walk, and Hilma, facing him, gave herself into
his arms. Annixter shut his teeth, the perspiration starting from his
forehead. For five years he had abandoned dancing. Never in his best
days had it been one of his accomplishments.

They hesitated a moment, waiting to catch the time from the musicians.
Another couple bore down upon them at precisely the wrong moment,
jostling them out of step. Annixter swore under his breath. His arm
still about the young woman, he pulled her over to one corner.

“Now,” he muttered, “we’ll try again.”

A second time, listening to the one-two-three, one-two-three cadence of
the musicians, they endeavoured to get under way. Annixter waited the
fraction of a second too long and stepped on Hilma’s foot. On the third
attempt, having worked out of the corner, a pair of dancers bumped into
them once more, and as they were recovering themselves another couple
caromed violently against Annixter so that he all but lost his footing.
He was in a rage. Hilma, very embarrassed, was trying not to laugh, and
thus they found themselves, out in the middle of the floor, continually
jostled from their position, holding clumsily to each other, stammering
excuses into one another’s faces, when Delaney arrived.

He came with the suddenness of an explosion. There was a commotion by
the doorway, a rolling burst of oaths, a furious stamping of hoofs, a
wild scramble of the dancers to either side of the room, and there he
was. He had ridden the buckskin at a gallop straight through the doorway
and out into the middle of the floor of the barn.

Once well inside, Delaney hauled up on the cruel spade-bit, at the same
time driving home the spurs, and the buckskin, without halting in her
gait, rose into the air upon her hind feet, and coming down again with a
thunder of iron hoofs upon the hollow floor, lashed out with both heels
simultaneously, her back arched, her head between her knees. It was the
running buck, and had not Delaney been the hardest buster in the county,
would have flung him headlong like a sack of sand. But he eased off the
bit, gripping the mare’s flanks with his knees, and the buckskin, having
long since known her master, came to hand quivering, the bloody spume
dripping from the bit upon the slippery floor.

Delaney had arrayed himself with painful elaboration, determined to
look the part, bent upon creating the impression, resolved that his
appearance at least should justify his reputation of being “bad.”
 Nothing was lacking--neither the campaign hat with upturned brim, nor
the dotted blue handkerchief knotted behind the neck, nor the heavy
gauntlets stitched with red, nor--this above all--the bear-skin
“chaparejos,” the hair trousers of the mountain cowboy, the pistol
holster low on the thigh. But for the moment this holster was empty,
and in his right hand, the hammer at full cock, the chamber loaded,
the puncher flourished his teaser, an army Colt’s, the lamplight dully
reflected in the dark blue steel.

In a second of time the dance was a bedlam. The musicians stopped with a
discord, and the middle of the crowded floor bared itself instantly. It
was like sand blown from off a rock; the throng of guests, carried by an
impulse that was not to be resisted, bore back against the sides of
the barn, overturning chairs, tripping upon each other, falling down,
scrambling to their feet again, stepping over one another, getting
behind each other, diving under chairs, flattening themselves against
the wall--a wild, clamouring pell-mell, blind, deaf, panic-stricken;
a confused tangle of waving arms, torn muslin, crushed flowers, pale
faces, tangled legs, that swept in all directions back from the centre
of the floor, leaving Annixter and Hilma, alone, deserted, their arms
about each other, face to face with Delaney, mad with alcohol, bursting
with remembered insult, bent on evil, reckless of results.

After the first scramble for safety, the crowd fell quiet for the
fraction of an instant, glued to the walls, afraid to stir, struck dumb
and motionless with surprise and terror, and in the instant’s silence
that followed Annixter, his eyes on Delaney, muttered rapidly to Hilma:

“Get back, get away to one side. The fool MIGHT shoot.”

There was a second’s respite afforded while Delaney occupied himself
in quieting the buckskin, and in that second of time, at this moment of
crisis, the wonderful thing occurred. Hilma, turning from Delaney, her
hands clasped on Annixter’s arm, her eyes meeting his, exclaimed:

“You, too!”

And that was all; but to Annixter it was a revelation. Never more alive
to his surroundings, never more observant, he suddenly understood. For
the briefest lapse of time he and Hilma looked deep into each other’s
eyes, and from that moment on, Annixter knew that Hilma cared.

The whole matter was brief as the snapping of a finger. Two words and
a glance and all was done. But as though nothing had occurred, Annixter
pushed Hilma from him, repeating harshly:

“Get back, I tell you. Don’t you see he’s got a gun? Haven’t I enough on
my hands without you?”

He loosed her clasp and his eyes once more on Delaney, moved diagonally
backwards toward the side of the barn, pushing Hilma from him. In
the end he thrust her away so sharply that she gave back with a long
stagger; somebody caught her arm and drew her in, leaving Annixter alone
once more in the middle of the floor, his hands in his coat pockets,
watchful, alert, facing his enemy.

But the cow-puncher was not ready to come to grapples yet. Fearless,
his wits gambolling under the lash of the alcohol, he wished to make the
most of the occasion, maintaining the suspense, playing for the gallery.
By touches of the hand and knee he kept the buckskin in continual,
nervous movement, her hoofs clattering, snorting, tossing her head,
while he, himself, addressing himself to Annixter, poured out a torrent
of invective.

“Well, strike me blind if it ain’t old Buck Annixter! He was going to
show me off Quien Sabe at the toe of his boot, was he? Well, here’s
your chance,--with the ladies to see you do it. Gives a dance, does
he, high-falutin’ hoe-down in his barn and forgets to invite his old
broncho-bustin’ friend. But his friend don’t forget him; no, he don’t.
He remembers little things, does his broncho-bustin’ friend. Likes to
see a dance hisself on occasion, his friend does. Comes anyhow, trustin’
his welcome will be hearty; just to see old Buck Annixter dance, just to
show Buck Annixter’s friends how Buck can dance--dance all by hisself, a
little hen-on-a-hot-plate dance when his broncho-bustin’ friend asks
him so polite. A little dance for the ladies, Buck. This feature of
the entertainment is alone worth the price of admission. Tune up, Buck.
Attention now! I’ll give you the key.”

He “fanned” his revolver, spinning it about his index finger by the
trigger-guard with incredible swiftness, the twirling weapon a mere blur
of blue steel in his hand. Suddenly and without any apparent cessation
of the movement, he fired, and a little splinter of wood flipped into
the air at Annixter’s feet.

“Time!” he shouted, while the buckskin reared to the report. “Hold
on--wait a minute. This place is too light to suit. That big light
yonder is in my eyes. Look out, I’m going to throw lead.”

A second shot put out the lamp over the musicians’ stand. The assembled
guests shrieked, a frantic, shrinking quiver ran through the crowd like
the huddling of frightened rabbits in their pen.

Annixter hardly moved. He stood some thirty paces from the buster,
his hands still in his coat pockets, his eyes glistening, watchful.
Excitable and turbulent in trifling matters, when actual bodily danger
threatened he was of an abnormal quiet.

“I’m watching you,” cried the other. “Don’t make any mistake about that.
Keep your hands in your COAT pockets, if you’d like to live a little
longer, understand? And don’t let me see you make a move toward your hip
or your friends will be asked to identify you at the morgue to-morrow
morning. When I’m bad, I’m called the Undertaker’s Friend, so I am, and
I’m that bad to-night that I’m scared of myself. They’ll have to revise
the census returns before I’m done with this place. Come on, now, I’m
getting tired waiting. I come to see a dance.”

“Hand over that horse, Delaney,” said Annixter, without raising his
voice, “and clear out.”

The other affected to be overwhelmed with infinite astonishment, his
eyes staring. He peered down from the saddle.

“Wh-a-a-t!” he exclaimed; “wh-a-a-t did you say? Why, I guess you must
be looking for trouble; that’s what I guess.”

“There’s where you’re wrong, m’son,” muttered Annixter, partly to
Delaney, partly to himself. “If I was looking for trouble there wouldn’t
be any guess-work about it.”

With the words he began firing. Delaney had hardly entered the barn
before Annixter’s plan had been formed. Long since his revolver was
in the pocket of his coat, and he fired now through the coat itself,
without withdrawing his hands.

Until that moment Annixter had not been sure of himself. There was
no doubt that for the first few moments of the affair he would
have welcomed with joy any reasonable excuse for getting out of the
situation. But the sound of his own revolver gave him confidence. He
whipped it from his pocket and fired again.

Abruptly the duel began, report following report, spurts of pale blue
smoke jetting like the darts of short spears between the two men,
expanding to a haze and drifting overhead in wavering strata. It was
quite probable that no thought of killing each other suggested itself to
either Annixter or Delaney. Both fired without aiming very deliberately.
To empty their revolvers and avoid being hit was the desire common to
both. They no longer vituperated each other. The revolvers spoke for
them.

Long after, Annixter could recall this moment. For years he could
with but little effort reconstruct the scene--the densely packed crowd
flattened against the sides of the barn, the festoons of lanterns, the
mingled smell of evergreens, new wood, sachets, and powder smoke;
the vague clamour of distress and terror that rose from the throng of
guests, the squealing of the buckskin, the uneven explosions of the
revolvers, the reverberation of trampling hoofs, a brief glimpse of
Harran Derrick’s excited face at the door of the harness room, and
in the open space in the centre of the floor, himself and Delaney,
manoeuvring swiftly in a cloud of smoke.

Annixter’s revolver contained but six cartridges. Already it seemed to
him as if he had fired twenty times. Without doubt the next shot was
his last. Then what? He peered through the blue haze that with every
discharge thickened between him and the buster. For his own safety
he must “place” at least one shot. Delaney’s chest and shoulders rose
suddenly above the smoke close upon him as the distraught buckskin
reared again. Annixter, for the first time during the fight, took
definite aim, but before he could draw the trigger there was a great
shout and he was aware of the buckskin, the bridle trailing, the saddle
empty, plunging headlong across the floor, crashing into the line of
chairs. Delaney was scrambling off the floor. There was blood on the
buster’s wrist and he no longer carried his revolver. Suddenly he turned
and ran. The crowd parted right and left before him as he made toward
the doorway. He disappeared.

Twenty men promptly sprang to the buckskin’s head, but she broke away,
and wild with terror, bewildered, blind, insensate, charged into the
corner of the barn by the musicians’ stand. She brought up against the
wall with cruel force and with impact of a sack of stones; her head was
cut. She turned and charged again, bull-like, the blood streaming from
her forehead. The crowd, shrieking, melted before her rush. An old
man was thrown down and trampled. The buckskin trod upon the dragging
bridle, somersaulted into a confusion of chairs in one corner, and came
down with a terrific clatter in a wild disorder of kicking hoofs and
splintered wood. But a crowd of men fell upon her, tugging at the bit,
sitting on her head, shouting, gesticulating. For five minutes she
struggled and fought; then, by degrees, she recovered herself, drawing
great sobbing breaths at long intervals that all but burst the girths,
rolling her eyes in bewildered, supplicating fashion, trembling in every
muscle, and starting and shrinking now and then like a young girl in
hysterics. At last she lay quiet. The men allowed her to struggle to her
feet. The saddle was removed and she was led to one of the empty stalls,
where she remained the rest of the evening, her head low, her pasterns
quivering, turning her head apprehensively from time to time, showing
the white of one eye and at long intervals heaving a single prolonged
sigh.

And an hour later the dance was progressing as evenly as though nothing
in the least extraordinary had occurred. The incident was closed--that
abrupt swoop of terror and impending death dropping down there from out
the darkness, cutting abruptly athwart the gayety of the moment, come
and gone with the swiftness of a thunderclap. Many of the women had gone
home, taking their men with them; but the great bulk of the crowd still
remained, seeing no reason why the episode should interfere with the
evening’s enjoyment, resolved to hold the ground for mere bravado, if
for nothing else. Delaney would not come back, of that everybody was
persuaded, and in case he should, there was not found wanting fully half
a hundred young men who would give him a dressing down, by jingo! They
had been too surprised to act when Delaney had first appeared, and
before they knew where they were at, the buster had cleared out. In
another minute, just another second, they would have shown him--yes,
sir, by jingo!--ah, you bet!

On all sides the reminiscences began to circulate. At least one man in
every three had been involved in a gun fight at some time of his life.
“Ah, you ought to have seen in Yuba County one time--” “Why, in Butte
County in the early days--” “Pshaw! this to-night wasn’t anything! Why,
once in a saloon in Arizona when I was there--” and so on, over and over
again. Osterman solemnly asserted that he had seen a greaser sawn in two
in a Nevada sawmill. Old Broderson had witnessed a Vigilante lynching in
‘55 on California Street in San Francisco. Dyke recalled how once in his
engineering days he had run over a drunk at a street crossing. Gethings
of the San Pablo had taken a shot at a highwayman. Hooven had bayonetted
a French Chasseur at Sedan. An old Spanish-Mexican, a centenarian from
Guadalajara, remembered Fremont’s stand on a mountain top in San Benito
County. The druggist had fired at a burglar trying to break into
his store one New Year’s eve. Young Vacca had seen a dog shot in
Guadalajara. Father Sarria had more than once administered the
sacraments to Portuguese desperadoes dying of gunshot wounds. Even the
women recalled terrible scenes. Mrs. Cutter recounted to an interested
group how she had seen a claim jumped in Placer County in 1851, when
three men were shot, falling in a fusillade of rifle shots, and expiring
later upon the floor of her kitchen while she looked on. Mrs. Dyke
had been in a stage hold-up, when the shotgun messenger was murdered.
Stories by the hundreds went the round of the company. The air was
surcharged with blood, dying groans, the reek of powder smoke, the crack
of rifles. All the legends of ‘49, the violent, wild life of the early
days, were recalled to view, defiling before them there in an endless
procession under the glare of paper lanterns and kerosene lamps.

But the affair had aroused a combative spirit amongst the men of the
assembly. Instantly a spirit of aggression, of truculence, swelled up
underneath waistcoats and starched shirt bosoms. More than one offender
was promptly asked to “step outside.” It was like young bucks excited
by an encounter of stags, lowering their horns upon the slightest
provocation, showing off before the does and fawns. Old quarrels were
remembered. One sought laboriously for slights and insults, veiled in
ordinary conversation. The sense of personal honour became refined to
a delicate, fine point. Upon the slightest pretext there was a haughty
drawing up of the figure, a twisting of the lips into a smile of scorn.
Caraher spoke of shooting S. Behrman on sight before the end of the
week. Twice it became necessary to separate Hooven and Cutter, renewing
their quarrel as to the ownership of the steer. All at once Minna
Hooven’s “partner” fell upon the gayly apparelled clerk from
Bonneville, pummelling him with his fists, hustling him out of the hall,
vociferating that Miss Hooven had been grossly insulted. It took three
men to extricate the clerk from his clutches, dazed, gasping, his collar
unfastened and sticking up into his face, his eyes staring wildly into
the faces of the crowd.

But Annixter, bursting with pride, his chest thrown out, his chin in
the air, reigned enthroned in a circle of adulation. He was the Hero. To
shake him by the hand was an honour to be struggled for. One clapped
him on the back with solemn nods of approval. “There’s the BOY for you;”
 “There was nerve for you;” “What’s the matter with Annixter?” “How about
THAT for sand, and how was THAT for a SHOT?” “Why, Apache Kid couldn’t
have bettered that.” “Cool enough.” “Took a steady eye and a sure hand
to make a shot like that.” “There was a shot that would be told about in
Tulare County fifty years to come.”

Annixter had refrained from replying, all ears to this conversation,
wondering just what had happened. He knew only that Delaney had run,
leaving his revolver and a spatter of blood behind him. By degrees,
however, he ascertained that his last shot but one had struck Delaney’s
pistol hand, shattering it and knocking the revolver from his grip. He
was overwhelmed with astonishment. Why, after the shooting began he
had not so much as seen Delaney with any degree of plainness. The whole
affair was a whirl.

“Well, where did YOU learn to shoot THAT way?” some one in the crowd
demanded. Annixter moved his shoulders with a gesture of vast unconcern.

“Oh,” he observed carelessly, “it’s not my SHOOTING that ever worried
ME, m’son.”

The crowd gaped with delight. There was a great wagging of heads.

“Well, I guess not.”

“No, sir, not much.”

“Ah, no, you bet not.”

When the women pressed around him, shaking his hands, declaring that
he had saved their daughters’ lives, Annixter assumed a pose of superb
deprecation, the modest self-obliteration of the chevalier. He delivered
himself of a remembered phrase, very elegant, refined. It was Lancelot
after the tournament, Bayard receiving felicitations after the battle.

“Oh, don’t say anything about it,” he murmured. “I only did what any man
would have done in my place.”

To restore completely the equanimity of the company, he announced
supper. This he had calculated as a tremendous surprise. It was to have
been served at mid-night, but the irruption of Delaney had dislocated
the order of events, and the tables were brought in an hour ahead of
time. They were arranged around three sides of the barn and were loaded
down with cold roasts of beef, cold chickens and cold ducks, mountains
of sandwiches, pitchers of milk and lemonade, entire cheeses, bowls
of olives, plates of oranges and nuts. The advent of this supper was
received with a volley of applause. The musicians played a quick step.
The company threw themselves upon the food with a great scraping of
chairs and a vast rustle of muslins, tarletans, and organdies; soon
the clatter of dishes was a veritable uproar. The tables were taken by
assault. One ate whatever was nearest at hand, some even beginning with
oranges and nuts and ending with beef and chicken. At the end the paper
caps were brought on, together with the ice cream. All up and down the
tables the pulled “crackers” snapped continually like the discharge of
innumerable tiny rifles.

The caps of tissue paper were put on--“Phrygian Bonnets,” “Magicians’
Caps,” “Liberty Caps;” the young girls looked across the table at their
vis-a-vis with bursts of laughter and vigorous clapping of the hands.

The harness room crowd had a table to themselves, at the head of which
sat Annixter and at the foot Harran. The gun fight had sobered
Presley thoroughly. He sat by the side of Vanamee, who ate but little,
preferring rather to watch the scene with calm observation, a little
contemptuous when the uproar around the table was too boisterous,
savouring of intoxication. Osterman rolled bullets of bread and shot
them with astonishing force up and down the table, but the others--Dyke,
old Broderson, Caraher, Harran Derrick, Hooven, Cutter, Garnett of the
Ruby rancho, Keast from the ranch of the same name, Gethings of the San
Pablo, and Chattern of the Bonanza--occupied themselves with eating as
much as they could before the supper gave out. At a corner of the table,
speechless, unobserved, ignored, sat Dabney, of whom nothing was known
but his name, the silent old man who made no friends. He ate and drank
quietly, dipping his sandwich in his lemonade.

Osterman ate all the olives he could lay his hands on, a score of them,
fifty of them, a hundred of them. He touched no crumb of anything else.
Old Broderson stared at him, his jaw fallen. Osterman declared he had
once eaten a thousand on a bet. The men called each others’ attention to
him. Delighted to create a sensation, Osterman persevered. The contents
of an entire bowl disappeared in his huge, reptilian slit of a mouth.
His cheeks of brownish red were extended, his bald forehead glistened.
Colics seized upon him. His stomach revolted. It was all one with him.
He was satisfied, contented. He was astonishing the people.

“Once I swallowed a tree toad.” he told old Broderson, “by mistake.
I was eating grapes, and the beggar lived in me three weeks. In rainy
weather he would sing. You don’t believe that,” he vociferated. “Haven’t
I got the toad at home now in a bottle of alcohol.”

And the old man, never doubting, his eyes starting, wagged his head in
amazement.

“Oh, yes,” cried Caraher, the length of the table, “that’s a pretty good
one. Tell us another.”

“That reminds me of a story,” hazarded old Broderson uncertainly; “once
when I was a lad in Ukiah, fifty years.”

“Oh, yes,” cried half a dozen voices, “THAT’S a pretty good one. Tell us
another.”

“Eh--wh--what?” murmured Broderson, looking about him. “I--I don’t know.
It was Ukiah. You--you--you mix me all up.”

As soon as supper was over, the floor was cleared again. The guests
clamoured for a Virginia reel. The last quarter of the evening, the time
of the most riotous fun, was beginning. The young men caught the
girls who sat next to them. The orchestra dashed off into a rollicking
movement. The two lines were formed. In a second of time the dance
was under way again; the guests still wearing the Phrygian bonnets and
liberty caps of pink and blue tissue paper.

But the group of men once more adjourned to the harness room. Fresh
boxes of cigars were opened; the seventh bowl of fertiliser was mixed.
Osterman poured the dregs of a glass of it upon his bald head, declaring
that he could feel the hair beginning to grow.

But suddenly old Broderson rose to his feet.

“Aha,” he cackled, “I’M going to have a dance, I am. Think I’m too
old? I’ll show you young fellows. I’m a regular old ROOSTER when I get
started.”

He marched out into the barn, the others following, holding their sides.
He found an aged Mexican woman by the door and hustled her, all confused
and giggling, into the Virginia reel, then at its height. Every one
crowded around to see. Old Broderson stepped off with the alacrity of a
colt, snapping his fingers, slapping his thigh, his mouth widening in
an excited grin. The entire company of the guests shouted. The City Band
redoubled their efforts; and the old man, losing his head, breathless,
gasping, dislocated his stiff joints in his efforts. He became
possessed, bowing, scraping, advancing, retreating, wagging his beard,
cutting pigeons’ wings, distraught with the music, the clamour, the
applause, the effects of the fertiliser.

Annixter shouted:

“Nice eye, Santa Claus.”

But Annixter’s attention wandered. He searched for Hilma Tree, having
still in mind the look in her eyes at that swift moment of danger. He
had not seen her since then. At last he caught sight of her. She was not
dancing, but, instead, was sitting with her “partner” at the end of the
barn near her father and mother, her eyes wide, a serious expression on
her face, her thoughts, no doubt, elsewhere. Annixter was about to go to
her when he was interrupted by a cry.

Old Broderson, in the midst of a double shuffle, had clapped his hand
to his side with a gasp, which he followed by a whoop of anguish. He
had got a stitch or had started a twinge somewhere. With a gesture
of resignation, he drew himself laboriously out of the dance, limping
abominably, one leg dragging. He was heard asking for his wife. Old Mrs.
Broderson took him in charge. She jawed him for making an exhibition of
himself, scolding as though he were a ten-year-old.

“Well, I want to know!” she exclaimed, as he hobbled off, dejected and
melancholy, leaning upon her arm, “thought he had to dance, indeed! What
next? A gay old grandpa, this. He’d better be thinking of his coffin.”

It was almost midnight. The dance drew towards its close in a storm
of jubilation. The perspiring musicians toiled like galley slaves; the
guests singing as they danced.

The group of men reassembled in the harness room. Even Magnus Derrick
condescended to enter and drink a toast. Presley and Vanamee, still
holding themselves aloof, looked on, Vanamee more and more disgusted.
Dabney, standing to one side, overlooked and forgotten, continued to
sip steadily at his glass, solemn, reserved. Garnett of the Ruby rancho,
Keast from the ranch of the same name, Gethings of the San Pablo, and
Chattern of the Bonanza, leaned back in their chairs, their waist-coats
unbuttoned, their legs spread wide, laughing--they could not tell why.
Other ranchers, men whom Annixter had never seen, appeared in the room,
wheat growers from places as far distant as Goshen and Pixley; young men
and old, proprietors of veritable principalities, hundreds of thousands
of acres of wheat lands, a dozen of them, a score of them; men who were
strangers to each other, but who made it a point to shake hands with
Magnus Derrick, the “prominent man” of the valley. Old Broderson, whom
every one had believed had gone home, returned, though much sobered, and
took his place, refusing, however, to drink another spoonful.

Soon the entire number of Annixter’s guests found themselves in two
companies, the dancers on the floor of the barn, frolicking through the
last figures of the Virginia reel and the boisterous gathering of men in
the harness room, downing the last quarts of fertiliser. Both assemblies
had been increased. Even the older people had joined in the dance, while
nearly every one of the men who did not dance had found their way into
the harness room. The two groups rivalled each other in their noise. Out
on the floor of the barn was a very whirlwind of gayety, a tempest of
laughter, hand-clapping and cries of amusement. In the harness room
the confused shouting and singing, the stamping of heavy feet, set a
quivering reverberation in the oil of the kerosene lamps, the flame of
the candles in the Japanese lanterns flaring and swaying in the gusts
of hilarity. At intervals, between the two, one heard the music, the
wailing of the violins, the vigorous snarling of the cornet, and the
harsh, incessant rasping of the snare drum.

And at times all these various sounds mingled in a single vague
note, huge, clamorous, that rose up into the night from the colossal,
reverberating compass of the barn and sent its echoes far off across the
unbroken levels of the surrounding ranches, stretching out to infinity
under the clouded sky, calm, mysterious, still.

Annixter, the punch bowl clasped in his arms, was pouring out the last
spoonful of liquor into Caraher’s glass when he was aware that some one
was pulling at the sleeve of his coat. He set down the punch bowl.

“Well, where did YOU come from?” he demanded.

It was a messenger from Bonneville, the uniformed boy that the telephone
company employed to carry messages. He had just arrived from town on his
bicycle, out of breath and panting.

“Message for you, sir. Will you sign?”

He held the book to Annixter, who signed the receipt, wondering.

The boy departed, leaving a thick envelope of yellow paper in Annixter’s
hands, the address typewritten, the word “Urgent” written in blue pencil
in one corner.

Annixter tore it open. The envelope contained other sealed envelopes,
some eight or ten of them, addressed to Magnus Derrick, Osterman,
Broderson, Garnett, Keast, Gethings, Chattern, Dabney, and to Annixter
himself.

Still puzzled, Annixter distributed the envelopes, muttering to himself:

“What’s up now?”

The incident had attracted attention. A comparative quiet followed, the
guests following the letters with their eyes as they were passed around
the table. They fancied that Annixter had arranged a surprise.

Magnus Derrick, who sat next to Annixter, was the first to receive his
letter. With a word of excuse he opened it.

“Read it, read it, Governor,” shouted a half-dozen voices. “No secrets,
you know. Everything above board here to-night.”

Magnus cast a glance at the contents of the letter, then rose to his
feet and read:


     Magnus Derrick,
         Bonneville, Tulare Co., Cal.


     Dear Sir:

     By regrade of October 1st, the value of the railroad land you
     occupy, included in your ranch of Los Muertos, has been fixed at
     $27.00 per acre.  The land is now for sale at that price to any
     one.

                           Yours, etc.,
                   CYRUS BLAKELEE RUGGLES,
                           Land Agent, P. and S. W. R. R.

                   S. BEHRMAN,
                           Local Agent, P. and S. W. R. R.

In the midst of the profound silence that followed, Osterman was heard
to exclaim grimly:

“THAT’S a pretty good one. Tell us another.”

But for a long moment this was the only remark.

The silence widened, broken only by the sound of torn paper as Annixter,
Osterman, old Broderson, Garnett, Keast, Gethings, Chattern, and Dabney
opened and read their letters. They were all to the same effect, almost
word for word like the Governor’s. Only the figures and the proper names
varied. In some cases the price per acre was twenty-two dollars. In
Annixter’s case it was thirty.

“And--and the company promised to sell to me, to--to all of us,” gasped
old Broderson, “at TWO DOLLARS AND A HALF an acre.”

It was not alone the ranchers immediately around Bonneville who would
be plundered by this move on the part of the Railroad. The “alternate
section” system applied throughout all the San Joaquin. By striking at
the Bonneville ranchers a terrible precedent was established. Of
the crowd of guests in the harness room alone, nearly every man was
affected, every man menaced with ruin. All of a million acres was
suddenly involved.

Then suddenly the tempest burst. A dozen men were on their feet in an
instant, their teeth set, their fists clenched, their faces purple with
rage. Oaths, curses, maledictions exploded like the firing of successive
mines. Voices quivered with wrath, hands flung upward, the fingers
hooked, prehensile, trembled with anger. The sense of wrongs, the
injustices, the oppression, extortion, and pillage of twenty years
suddenly culminated and found voice in a raucous howl of execration.
For a second there was nothing articulate in that cry of savage
exasperation, nothing even intelligent. It was the human animal hounded
to its corner, exploited, harried to its last stand, at bay, ferocious,
terrible, turning at last with bared teeth and upraised claws to meet
the death grapple. It was the hideous squealing of the tormented brute,
its back to the wall, defending its lair, its mate and its whelps, ready
to bite, to rend, to trample, to batter out the life of The Enemy in a
primeval, bestial welter of blood and fury.

The roar subsided to intermittent clamour, in the pauses of which the
sounds of music and dancing made themselves audible once more.

“S. Behrman again,” vociferated Harran Derrick.

“Chose his moment well,” muttered Annixter. “Hits his hardest when we’re
all rounded up having a good time.”

“Gentlemen, this is ruin.”

“What’s to be done now?”

“FIGHT! My God! do you think we are going to stand this? Do you think we
CAN?”

The uproar swelled again. The clearer the assembly of ranchers
understood the significance of this move on the part of the Railroad,
the more terrible it appeared, the more flagrant, the more intolerable.
Was it possible, was it within the bounds of imagination that this
tyranny should be contemplated? But they knew--past years had driven
home the lesson--the implacable, iron monster with whom they had to
deal, and again and again the sense of outrage and oppression lashed
them to their feet, their mouths wide with curses, their fists clenched
tight, their throats hoarse with shouting.

“Fight! How fight? What ARE you going to do?”

“If there’s a law in this land”

“If there is, it is in Shelgrim’s pocket. Who owns the courts in
California? Ain’t it Shelgrim?”

“God damn him.”

“Well, how long are you going to stand it? How long before you’ll settle
up accounts with six inches of plugged gas-pipe?”

“And our contracts, the solemn pledges of the corporation to sell to us
first of all----”

“And now the land is for sale to anybody.”

“Why, it is a question of my home. Am I to be turned out? Why, I have
put eight thousand dollars into improving this land.”

“And I six thousand, and now that I have, the Railroad grabs it.”

“And the system of irrigating ditches that Derrick and I have been
laying out. There’s thousands of dollars in that!”

“I’ll fight this out till I’ve spent every cent of my money.”

“Where? In the courts that the company owns?”

“Think I am going to give in to this? Think I am to get off my land? By
God, gentlemen, law or no law, railroad or no railroad, I--WILL--NOT.”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I.”

“This is the last. Legal means first; if those fail--the shotgun.”

“They can kill me. They can shoot me down, but I’ll die--die fighting
for my home--before I’ll give in to this.”

At length Annixter made himself heard:

“All out of the room but the ranch owners,” he shouted. “Hooven,
Caraher, Dyke, you’ll have to clear out. This is a family affair.
Presley, you and your friend can remain.”

Reluctantly the others filed through the door. There remained in the
harness room--besides Vanamee and Presley--Magnus Derrick, Annixter, old
Broderson Harran, Garnett from the Ruby rancho, Keast from the ranch of
the same name, Gethings of the San Pablo, Chattern of the Bonanza, about
a score of others, ranchers from various parts of the county, and, last
of all, Dabney, ignored, silent, to whom nobody spoke and who, as yet,
had not uttered a word. But the men who had been asked to leave the
harness room spread the news throughout the barn. It was repeated from
lip to lip. One by one the guests dropped out of the dance. Groups were
formed. By swift degrees the gayety lapsed away. The Virginia reel
broke up. The musicians ceased playing, and in the place of the noisy,
effervescent revelry of the previous half hour, a subdued murmur filled
all the barn, a mingling of whispers, lowered voices, the coming and
going of light footsteps, the uneasy shifting of positions, while from
behind the closed doors of the harness room came a prolonged, sullen
hum of anger and strenuous debate. The dance came to an abrupt end.
The guests, unwilling to go as yet, stunned, distressed, stood clumsily
about, their eyes vague, their hands swinging at their sides, looking
stupidly into each others’ faces. A sense of impending calamity,
oppressive, foreboding, gloomy, passed through the air overhead in the
night, a long shiver of anguish and of terror, mysterious, despairing.

In the harness room, however, the excitement continued unchecked. One
rancher after another delivered himself of a torrent of furious words.
There was no order, merely the frenzied outcry of blind fury. One spirit
alone was common to all--resistance at whatever cost and to whatever
lengths.

Suddenly Osterman leaped to his feet, his bald head gleaming in the
lamp-light, his red ears distended, a flood of words filling his great,
horizontal slit of a mouth, his comic actor’s face flaming. Like the
hero of a melodrama, he took stage with a great sweeping gesture.

“ORGANISATION,” he shouted, “that must be our watch-word. The curse
of the ranchers is that they fritter away their strength. Now, we must
stand together, now, NOW. Here’s the crisis, here’s the moment. Shall we
meet it? I CALL FOR THE LEAGUE. Not next week, not to-morrow, not in the
morning, but now, now, now, this very moment, before we go out of that
door. Every one of us here to join it, to form the beginnings of a vast
organisation, banded together to death, if needs be, for the protection
of our rights and homes. Are you ready? Is it now or never? I call for
the League.”

Instantly there was a shout. With an actor’s instinct, Osterman had
spoken at the precise psychological moment. He carried the others off
their feet, glib, dexterous, voluble. Just what was meant by the League
the others did not know, but it was something, a vague engine, a machine
with which to fight. Osterman had not done speaking before the room rang
with outcries, the crowd of men shouting, for what they did not know.

“The League! The League!”

“Now, to-night, this moment; sign our names before we leave.”

“He’s right. Organisation! The League!”

“We have a committee at work already,” Osterman vociferated. “I am a
member, and also Mr. Broderson, Mr. Annixter, and Mr. Harran Derrick.
What our aims are we will explain to you later. Let this committee
be the nucleus of the League--temporarily, at least. Trust us. We are
working for you and with you. Let this committee be merged into the
larger committee of the League, and for President of the League”--he
paused the fraction of a second--“for President there can be but one
name mentioned, one man to whom we all must look as leader--Magnus
Derrick.”

The Governor’s name was received with a storm of cheers. The harness
room reechoed with shouts of:

“Derrick! Derrick!”

“Magnus for President!”

“Derrick, our natural leader.”

“Derrick, Derrick, Derrick for President.”

Magnus rose to his feet. He made no gesture. Erect as a cavalry officer,
tall, thin, commanding, he dominated the crowd in an instant. There was
a moment’s hush. “Gentlemen,” he said, “if organisation is a good word,
moderation is a better one. The matter is too grave for haste. I would
suggest that we each and severally return to our respective homes for
the night, sleep over what has happened, and convene again to-morrow,
when we are calmer and can approach this affair in a more judicious
mood. As for the honour with which you would inform me, I must affirm
that that, too, is a matter for grave deliberation. This League is but
a name as yet. To accept control of an organisation whose principles are
not yet fixed is a heavy responsibility. I shrink from it--”

But he was allowed to proceed no farther. A storm of protest developed.
There were shouts of:

“No, no. The League to-night and Derrick for President.”

“We have been moderate too long.”

“The League first, principles afterward.”

“We can’t wait,” declared Osterman. “Many of us cannot attend a meeting
to-morrow. Our business affairs would prevent it. Now we are all
together. I propose a temporary chairman and secretary be named and
a ballot be taken. But first the League. Let us draw up a set of
resolutions to stand together, for the defence of our homes, to death,
if needs be, and each man present affix his signature thereto.”

He subsided amidst vigorous applause. The next quarter of an hour was
a vague confusion, every one talking at once, conversations going on
in low tones in various corners of the room. Ink, pens, and a sheaf of
foolscap were brought from the ranch house. A set of resolutions was
draughted, having the force of a pledge, organising the League of
Defence. Annixter was the first to sign. Others followed, only a few
holding back, refusing to join till they had thought the matter over.
The roll grew; the paper circulated about the table; each signature was
welcomed by a salvo of cheers. At length, it reached Harran Derrick, who
signed amid tremendous uproar. He released the pen only to shake a score
of hands.

“Now, Magnus Derrick.”

“Gentlemen,” began the Governor, once more rising, “I beg of you to
allow me further consideration. Gentlemen--”

He was interrupted by renewed shouting.

“No, no, now or never. Sign, join the League.”

“Don’t leave us. We look to you to help.”

But presently the excited throng that turned their faces towards the
Governor were aware of a new face at his elbow. The door of the harness
room had been left unbolted and Mrs. Derrick, unable to endure the
heart-breaking suspense of waiting outside, had gathered up all her
courage and had come into the room. Trembling, she clung to Magnus’s
arm, her pretty light-brown hair in disarray, her large young girl’s
eyes wide with terror and distrust. What was about to happen she did not
understand, but these men were clamouring for Magnus to pledge himself
to something, to some terrible course of action, some ruthless,
unscrupulous battle to the death with the iron-hearted monster of
steel and steam. Nerved with a coward’s intrepidity, she, who so easily
obliterated herself, had found her way into the midst of this frantic
crowd, into this hot, close room, reeking of alcohol and tobacco smoke,
into this atmosphere surcharged with hatred and curses. She seized her
husband’s arm imploring, distraught with terror.

“No, no,” she murmured; “no, don’t sign.”

She was the feather caught in the whirlwind. En masse, the crowd surged
toward the erect figure of the Governor, the pen in one hand, his wife’s
fingers in the other, the roll of signatures before him. The clamour
was deafening; the excitement culminated brusquely. Half a hundred
hands stretched toward him; thirty voices, at top pitch, implored,
expostulated, urged, almost commanded. The reverberation of the shouting
was as the plunge of a cataract.

It was the uprising of The People; the thunder of the outbreak of
revolt; the mob demanding to be led, aroused at last, imperious,
resistless, overwhelming. It was the blind fury of insurrection, the
brute, many-tongued, red-eyed, bellowing for guidance, baring its teeth,
unsheathing its claws, imposing its will with the abrupt, resistless
pressure of the relaxed piston, inexorable, knowing no pity.

“No, no,” implored Annie Derrick. “No, Magnus, don’t sign.”

“He must,” declared Harran, shouting in her ear to make himself heard,
“he must. Don’t you understand?”

Again the crowd surged forward, roaring. Mrs. Derrick was swept back,
pushed to one side. Her husband no longer belonged to her. She paid the
penalty for being the wife of a great man. The world, like a colossal
iron wedge, crushed itself between. She was thrust to the wall. The
throng of men, stamping, surrounded Magnus; she could no longer see him,
but, terror-struck, she listened. There was a moment’s lull, then a vast
thunder of savage jubilation. Magnus had signed.

Harran found his mother leaning against the wall, her hands shut over
her ears; her eyes, dilated with fear, brimming with tears. He led her
from the harness room to the outer room, where Mrs. Tree and Hilma took
charge of her, and then, impatient, refusing to answer the hundreds of
anxious questions that assailed him, hurried back to the harness room.
Already the balloting was in progress, Osterman acting as temporary
chairman on the very first ballot he was made secretary of the League
pro tem., and Magnus unanimously chosen for its President. An executive
committee was formed, which was to meet the next day at the Los Muertos
ranch house.

It was half-past one o’clock. In the barn outside the greater number of
the guests had departed. Long since the musicians had disappeared. There
only remained the families of the ranch owners involved in the meeting
in the harness room. These huddled in isolated groups in corners of the
garish, echoing barn, the women in their wraps, the young men with
their coat collars turned up against the draughts that once more made
themselves felt.

For a long half hour the loud hum of eager conversation continued to
issue from behind the door of the harness room. Then, at length, there
was a prolonged scraping of chairs. The session was over. The men came
out in groups, searching for their families.

At once the homeward movement began. Every one was worn out. Some of the
ranchers’ daughters had gone to sleep against their mothers’ shoulders.

Billy, the stableman, and his assistant were awakened, and the teams
were hitched up. The stable yard was full of a maze of swinging lanterns
and buggy lamps. The horses fretted, champing the bits; the carry-alls
creaked with the straining of leather and springs as they received their
loads. At every instant one heard the rattle of wheels as vehicle after
vehicle disappeared in the night.

A fine, drizzling rain was falling, and the lamps began to show dim in a
vague haze of orange light.

Magnus Derrick was the last to go. At the doorway of the barn he found
Annixter, the roll of names--which it had been decided he was to keep
in his safe for the moment--under his arm. Silently the two shook hands.
Magnus departed. The grind of the wheels of his carry-all grated sharply
on the gravel of the driveway in front of the ranch house, then, with
a hollow roll across a little plank bridge, gained the roadway. For a
moment the beat of the horses’ hoofs made itself heard on the roadway.
It ceased. Suddenly there was a great silence.

Annixter, in the doorway of the great barn, stood looking about him
for a moment, alone, thoughtful. The barn was empty. That astonishing
evening had come to an end. The whirl of things and people, the crowd
of dancers, Delaney, the gun fight, Hilma Tree, her eyes fixed on him
in mute confession, the rabble in the harness room, the news of the
regrade, the fierce outburst of wrath, the hasty organising of the
League, all went spinning confusedly through his recollection. But he
was exhausted. Time enough in the morning to think it all over. By now
it was raining sharply. He put the roll of names into his inside pocket,
threw a sack over his head and shoulders, and went down to the ranch
house.

But in the harness room, lighted by the glittering lanterns and flaring
lamps, in the midst of overturned chairs, spilled liquor, cigar stumps,
and broken glasses, Vanamee and Presley still remained talking, talking.
At length, they rose, and came out upon the floor of the barn and stood
for a moment looking about them.

Billy, the stableman, was going the rounds of the walls, putting out
light after light. By degrees, the vast interior was growing dim. Upon
the roof overhead the rain drummed incessantly, the eaves dripping.
The floor was littered with pine needles, bits of orange peel, ends and
fragments of torn organdies and muslins and bits of tissue paper from
the “Phrygian Bonnets” and “Liberty Caps.” The buckskin mare in the
stall, dozing on three legs, changed position with a long sigh. The
sweat stiffening the hair upon her back and loins, as it dried, gave off
a penetrating, ammoniacal odour that mingled with the stale perfume of
sachet and wilted flowers.

Presley and Vanamee stood looking at the deserted barn. There was a long
silence. Then Presley said:

“Well... what do you think of it all?”

“I think,” answered Vanamee slowly, “I think that there was a dance in
Brussels the night before Waterloo.”



BOOK II



CHAPTER I


In his office at San Francisco, seated before a massive desk of polished
redwood, very ornate, Lyman Derrick sat dictating letters to his
typewriter, on a certain morning early in the spring of the year.
The subdued monotone of his voice proceeded evenly from sentence to
sentence, regular, precise, businesslike.

“I have the honour to acknowledge herewith your favour of the 14th
instant, and in reply would state----”

“Please find enclosed draft upon New Orleans to be applied as per our
understanding----”

“In answer to your favour No. 1107, referring to the case of the City
and County of San Francisco against Excelsior Warehouse & Storage Co., I
would say----”

His voice continued, expressionless, measured, distinct. While he spoke,
he swung slowly back and forth in his leather swivel chair, his elbows
resting on the arms, his pop eyes fixed vaguely upon the calendar on
the opposite wall, winking at intervals when he paused, searching for a
word.

“That’s all for the present,” he said at length.

Without reply, the typewriter rose and withdrew, thrusting her pencil
into the coil of her hair, closing the door behind her, softly,
discreetly.

When she had gone, Lyman rose, stretching himself putting up three
fingers to hide his yawn. To further loosen his muscles, he took a
couple of turns the length of he room, noting with satisfaction its fine
appointments, the padded red carpet, the dull olive green tint of the
walls, the few choice engravings--portraits of Marshall, Taney, Field,
and a coloured lithograph--excellently done--of the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado--the deep-seated leather chairs, the large and crowded bookcase
(topped with a bust of James Lick, and a huge greenish globe), the waste
basket of woven coloured grass, made by Navajo Indians, the massive
silver inkstand on the desk, the elaborate filing cabinet, complete in
every particular, and the shelves of tin boxes, padlocked, impressive,
grave, bearing the names of clients, cases and estates.

He was between thirty-one and thirty-five years of age. Unlike Harran,
he resembled his mother, but he was much darker than Annie Derrick
and his eyes were much fuller, the eyeball protruding, giving him a
pop-eyed, foreign expression, quite unusual and unexpected. His hair was
black, and he wore a small, tight, pointed mustache, which he was in the
habit of pushing delicately upward from the corners of his lips with the
ball of his thumb, the little finger extended. As often as he made this
gesture, he prefaced it with a little twisting gesture of the forearm in
order to bring his cuff into view, and, in fact, this movement by itself
was habitual.

He was dressed carefully, his trousers creased, a pink rose in his
lapel. His shoes were of patent leather, his cutaway coat was of very
rough black cheviot, his double-breasted waistcoat of tan covered cloth
with buttons of smoked pearl. An Ascot scarf--a great puff of heavy
black silk--was at his neck, the knot transfixed by a tiny golden pin
set off with an opal and four small diamonds.

At one end of the room were two great windows of plate glass, and
pausing at length before one of these, Lyman selected a cigarette from
his curved box of oxydized silver, lit it and stood looking down and
out, willing to be idle for a moment, amused and interested in the view.

His office was on the tenth floor of the EXCHANGE BUILDING, a beautiful,
tower-like affair of white stone, that stood on the corner of Market
Street near its intersection with Kearney, the most imposing office
building of the city.

Below him the city swarmed tumultuous through its grooves, the
cable-cars starting and stopping with a gay jangling of bells and a
strident whirring of jostled glass windows. Drays and carts clattered
over the cobbles, and an incessant shuffling of thousands of feet rose
from the pavement. Around Lotta’s fountain the baskets of the flower
sellers, crammed with chrysanthemums, violets, pinks, roses, lilies,
hyacinths, set a brisk note of colour in the grey of the street.

But to Lyman’s notion the general impression of this centre of the
city’s life was not one of strenuous business activity. It was a
continuous interest in small things, a people ever willing to be amused
at trifles, refusing to consider serious matters--good-natured,
allowing themselves to be imposed upon, taking life easily--generous,
companionable, enthusiastic; living, as it were, from day to day, in a
place where the luxuries of life were had without effort; in a city that
offered to consideration the restlessness of a New York, without its
earnestness; the serenity of a Naples, without its languor; the romance
of a Seville, without its picturesqueness.

As Lyman turned from the window, about to resume his work, the office
boy appeared at the door.

“The man from the lithograph company, sir,” announced the boy.

“Well, what does he want?” demanded Lyman, adding, however, upon the
instant: “Show him in.”

A young man entered, carrying a great bundle, which he deposited on a
chair, with a gasp of relief, exclaiming, all out of breath:

“From the Standard Lithograph Company.”

“What is?”

“Don’t know,” replied the other. “Maps, I guess.”

“I don’t want any maps. Who sent them? I guess you’re mistaken.” Lyman
tore the cover from the top of the package, drawing out one of a great
many huge sheets of white paper, folded eight times. Suddenly, he
uttered an exclamation:

“Ah, I see. They ARE maps. But these should not have come here. They are
to go to the regular office for distribution.” He wrote a new direction
on the label of the package: “Take them to that address,” he went on.
“I’ll keep this one here. The others go to that address. If you see Mr.
Darrell, tell him that Mr. Derrick--you get the name--Mr. Derrick may
not be able to get around this afternoon, but to go ahead with any
business just the same.”

The young man departed with the package and Lyman, spreading out the map
upon the table, remained for some time studying it thoughtfully.

It was a commissioner’s official railway map of the State of California,
completed to March 30th of that year. Upon it the different railways
of the State were accurately plotted in various colours, blue, green,
yellow. However, the blue, the yellow, and the green were but brief
traceries, very short, isolated, unimportant. At a little distance
these could hardly be seen. The whole map was gridironed by a vast,
complicated network of red lines marked P. and S. W. R. R. These
centralised at San Francisco and thence ramified and spread north, east,
and south, to every quarter of the State. From Coles, in the topmost
corner of the map, to Yuma in the lowest, from Reno on one side to San
Francisco on the other, ran the plexus of red, a veritable system of
blood circulation, complicated, dividing, and reuniting, branching,
splitting, extending, throwing out feelers, off-shoots, tap roots,
feeders--diminutive little blood suckers that shot out from the main
jugular and went twisting up into some remote county, laying hold
upon some forgotten village or town, involving it in one of a myriad
branching coils, one of a hundred tentacles, drawing it, as it were,
toward that centre from which all this system sprang.

The map was white, and it seemed as if all the colour which should have
gone to vivify the various counties, towns, and cities marked upon
it had been absorbed by that huge, sprawling organism, with its ruddy
arteries converging to a central point. It was as though the State had
been sucked white and colourless, and against this pallid background the
red arteries of the monster stood out, swollen with life-blood, reaching
out to infinity, gorged to bursting; an excrescence, a gigantic parasite
fattening upon the life-blood of an entire commonwealth.

However, in an upper corner of the map appeared the names of the three
new commissioners: Jones McNish for the first district, Lyman Derrick
for the second, and James Darrell for the third.

Nominated in the Democratic State convention in the fall of the
preceding year, Lyman, backed by the coteries of San Francisco bosses
in the pay of his father’s political committee of ranchers, had been
elected together with Darrell, the candidate of the Pueblo and Mojave
road, and McNish, the avowed candidate of the Pacific and Southwestern.
Darrell was rabidly against the P. and S. W., McNish rabidly for it.
Lyman was supposed to be the conservative member of the board, the
ranchers’ candidate, it was true, and faithful to their interests, but
a calm man, deliberative, swayed by no such violent emotions as his
colleagues.

Osterman’s dexterity had at last succeeded in entangling Magnus
inextricably in the new politics. The famous League, organised in
the heat of passion the night of Annixter’s barn dance, had been
consolidated all through the winter months. Its executive committee, of
which Magnus was chairman, had been, through Osterman’s manipulation,
merged into the old committee composed of Broderson, Annixter, and
himself. Promptly thereat he had resigned the chairmanship of this
committee, thus leaving Magnus at its head. Precisely as Osterman had
planned, Magnus was now one of them. The new committee accordingly had
two objects in view: to resist the attempted grabbing of their lands by
the Railroad, and to push forward their own secret scheme of electing a
board of railroad commissioners who should regulate wheat rates so as
to favour the ranchers of the San Joaquin. The land cases were promptly
taken to the courts and the new grading--fixing the price of the lands
at twenty and thirty dollars an acre instead of two--bitterly and
stubbornly fought. But delays occurred, the process of the law was
interminable, and in the intervals the committee addressed itself to the
work of seating the “Ranchers’ Commission,” as the projected Board of
Commissioners came to be called.

It was Harran who first suggested that his brother, Lyman, be put
forward as the candidate for this district. At once the proposition had
a great success. Lyman seemed made for the place. While allied by every
tie of blood to the ranching interests, he had never been identified
with them. He was city-bred. The Railroad would not be over-suspicious
of him. He was a good lawyer, a good business man, keen, clear-headed,
far-sighted, had already some practical knowledge of politics, having
served a term as assistant district attorney, and even at the present
moment occupying the position of sheriff’s attorney. More than all, he
was the son of Magnus Derrick; he could be relied upon, could be trusted
implicitly to remain loyal to the ranchers’ cause.

The campaign for Railroad Commissioner had been very interesting. At
the very outset Magnus’s committee found itself involved in corrupt
politics. The primaries had to be captured at all costs and by any
means, and when the convention assembled it was found necessary to buy
outright the votes of certain delegates. The campaign fund raised by
contributions from Magnus, Annixter, Broderson, and Osterman was drawn
upon to the extent of five thousand dollars.

Only the committee knew of this corruption. The League, ignoring
ways and means, supposed as a matter of course that the campaign was
honorably conducted.

For a whole week after the consummation of this part of the deal, Magnus
had kept to his house, refusing to be seen, alleging that he was
ill, which was not far from the truth. The shame of the business, the
loathing of what he had done, were to him things unspeakable. He could
no longer look Harran in the face. He began a course of deception
with his wife. More than once, he had resolved to break with the whole
affair, resigning his position, allowing the others to proceed without
him. But now it was too late. He was pledged. He had joined the League.
He was its chief, and his defection might mean its disintegration at the
very time when it needed all its strength to fight the land cases. More
than a mere deal in bad politics was involved. There was the land grab.
His withdrawal from an unholy cause would mean the weakening, perhaps
the collapse, of another cause that he believed to be righteous as truth
itself. He was hopelessly caught in the mesh. Wrong seemed indissolubly
knitted into the texture of Right. He was blinded, dizzied, overwhelmed,
caught in the current of events, and hurried along he knew not where. He
resigned himself.

In the end, and after much ostentatious opposition on the part of the
railroad heelers, Lyman was nominated and subsequently elected.

When this consummation was reached Magnus, Osterman, Broderson, and
Annixter stared at each other. Their wildest hopes had not dared to fix
themselves upon so easy a victory as this. It was not believable that
the corporation would allow itself to be fooled so easily, would rush
open-eyed into the trap. How had it happened?

Osterman, however, threw his hat into the air with wild whoops of
delight. Old Broderson permitted himself a feeble cheer. Even Magnus
beamed satisfaction. The other members of the League, present at the
time, shook hands all around and spoke of opening a few bottles on the
strength of the occasion. Annixter alone was recalcitrant.

“It’s too easy,” he declared. “No, I’m not satisfied. Where’s Shelgrim
in all this? Why don’t he show his hand, damn his soul? The thing is
yellow, I tell you. There’s a big fish in these waters somewheres. I
don’t know his name, and I don’t know his game, but he’s moving round
off and on, just out of sight. If you think you’ve netted him, I DON’T,
that’s all I’ve got to say.”

But he was jeered down as a croaker. There was the Commission. He
couldn’t get around that, could he? There was Darrell and Lyman Derrick,
both pledged to the ranches. Good Lord, he was never satisfied. He’d be
obstinate till the very last gun was fired. Why, if he got drowned in a
river he’d float upstream just to be contrary.

In the course of time, the new board was seated. For the first few
months of its term, it was occupied in clearing up the business left
over by the old board and in the completion of the railway map. But
now, the decks were cleared. It was about to address itself to the
consideration of a revision of the tariff for the carriage of grain
between the San Joaquin Valley and tide-water.

Both Lyman and Darrell were pledged to an average ten per cent. cut of
the grain rates throughout the entire State.

The typewriter returned with the letters for Lyman to sign, and he put
away the map and took up his morning’s routine of business, wondering,
the while, what would become of his practice during the time he was
involved in the business of the Ranchers’ Railroad Commission.

But towards noon, at the moment when Lyman was drawing off a glass of
mineral water from the siphon that stood at his elbow, there was an
interruption. Some one rapped vigorously upon the door, which was
immediately after opened, and Magnus and Harran came in, followed by
Presley.

“Hello, hello!” cried Lyman, jumping up, extending his hands, “why,
here’s a surprise. I didn’t expect you all till to-night. Come in, come
in and sit down. Have a glass of sizz-water, Governor.”

The others explained that they had come up from Bonneville the night
before, as the Executive Committee of the League had received a despatch
from the lawyers it had retained to fight the Railroad, that the judge
of the court in San Francisco, where the test cases were being tried,
might be expected to hand down his decision the next day.

Very soon after the announcement of the new grading of the ranchers’
lands, the corporation had offered, through S. Behrman, to lease the
disputed lands to the ranchers at a nominal figure. The offer had been
angrily rejected, and the Railroad had put up the lands for sale at
Ruggles’s office in Bonneville. At the exorbitant price named, buyers
promptly appeared--dummy buyers, beyond shadow of doubt, acting either
for the Railroad or for S. Behrman--men hitherto unknown in the county,
men without property, without money, adventurers, heelers. Prominent
among them, and bidding for the railroad’s holdings included on
Annixter’s ranch, was Delaney.

The farce of deeding the corporation’s sections to these fictitious
purchasers was solemnly gone through with at Ruggles’s office, the
Railroad guaranteeing them possession. The League refused to allow the
supposed buyers to come upon the land, and the Railroad, faithful to
its pledge in the matter of guaranteeing its dummies possession, at once
began suits in ejectment in the district court in Visalia, the county
seat.

It was the preliminary skirmish, the reconnaisance in force, the
combatants feeling each other’s strength, willing to proceed with
caution, postponing the actual death-grip for a while till each had
strengthened its position and organised its forces.

During the time the cases were on trial at Visalia, S. Behrman was much
in evidence in and about the courts. The trial itself, after tedious
preliminaries, was brief. The ranchers lost. The test cases were
immediately carried up to the United States Circuit Court in San
Francisco. At the moment the decision of this court was pending.

“Why, this is news,” exclaimed Lyman, in response to the Governor’s
announcement; “I did not expect them to be so prompt. I was in court
only last week and there seemed to be no end of business ahead. I
suppose you are very anxious?”

Magnus nodded. He had seated himself in one of Lyman’s deep chairs, his
grey top-hat, with its wide brim, on the floor beside him. His coat of
black broad-cloth that had been tightly packed in his valise, was yet
wrinkled and creased; his trousers were strapped under his high boots.
As he spoke, he stroked the bridge of his hawklike nose with his bent
forefinger.

Leaning-back in his chair, he watched his two sons with secret delight.
To his eye, both were perfect specimens of their class, intelligent,
well-looking, resourceful. He was intensely proud of them. He was never
happier, never more nearly jovial, never more erect, more military, more
alert, and buoyant than when in the company of his two sons. He honestly
believed that no finer examples of young manhood existed throughout the
entire nation.

“I think we should win in this court,” Harran observed, watching the
bubbles break in his glass. “The investigation has been much more
complete than in the Visalia trial. Our case this time is too good. It
has made too much talk. The court would not dare render a decision for
the Railroad. Why, there’s the agreement in black and white--and the
circulars the Railroad issued. How CAN one get around those?”

“Well, well, we shall know in a few hours now,” remarked Magnus.

“Oh,” exclaimed Lyman, surprised, “it is for this morning, then. Why
aren’t you at the court?”

“It seemed undignified, boy,” answered the Governor. “We shall know soon
enough.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Harran abruptly, “when I think of what is
involved. Why, Lyman, it’s our home, the ranch house itself, nearly all
Los Muertos, practically our whole fortune, and just now when there is
promise of an enormous crop of wheat. And it is not only us. There are
over half a million acres of the San Joaquin involved. In some cases of
the smaller ranches, it is the confiscation of the whole of the
rancher’s land. If this thing goes through, it will absolutely beggar
nearly a hundred men. Broderson wouldn’t have a thousand acres to his
name. Why, it’s monstrous.”

“But the corporations offered to lease these lands,” remarked Lyman.
“Are any of the ranchers taking up that offer--or are any of them buying
outright?”

“Buying! At the new figure!” exclaimed Harran, “at twenty and thirty an
acre! Why, there’s not one in ten that CAN. They are land-poor. And as
for leasing--leasing land they virtually own--no, there’s precious few
are doing that, thank God! That would be acknowledging the railroad’s
ownership right away--forfeiting their rights for good. None of the
LEAGUERS are doing it, I know. That would be the rankest treachery.”

He paused for a moment, drinking the rest of the mineral water, then
interrupting Lyman, who was about to speak to Presley, drawing him into
the conversation through politeness, said: “Matters are just romping
right along to a crisis these days. It’s a make or break for the wheat
growers of the State now, no mistake. Here are the land cases and the
new grain tariff drawing to a head at about the same time. If we win our
land cases, there’s your new freight rates to be applied, and then all
is beer and skittles. Won’t the San Joaquin go wild if we pull it off,
and I believe we will.”

“How we wheat growers are exploited and trapped and deceived at
every turn,” observed Magnus sadly. “The courts, the capitalists, the
railroads, each of them in turn hoodwinks us into some new and wonderful
scheme, only to betray us in the end. Well,” he added, turning to Lyman,
“one thing at least we can depend on. We will cut their grain rates for
them, eh, Lyman?”

Lyman crossed his legs and settled himself in his office chair.

“I have wanted to have a talk with you about that, sir,” he said. “Yes,
we will cut the rates--an average 10 per cent. cut throughout the
State, as we are pledged. But I am going to warn you, Governor, and you,
Harran; don’t expect too much at first. The man who, even after twenty
years’ training in the operation of railroads, can draw an equitable,
smoothly working schedule of freight rates between shipping point and
common point, is capable of governing the United States. What with main
lines, and leased lines, and points of transfer, and the laws governing
common carriers, and the rulings of the Inter-State Commerce Commission,
the whole matter has become so confused that Vanderbilt himself couldn’t
straighten it out. And how can it be expected that railroad commissions
who are chosen--well, let’s be frank--as ours was, for instance, from
out a number of men who don’t know the difference between a switching
charge and a differential rate, are going to regulate the whole business
in six months’ time? Cut rates; yes, any fool can do that; any fool can
write one dollar instead of two, but if you cut too low by a fraction of
one per cent. and if the railroad can get out an injunction, tie you
up and show that your new rate prevents the road being operated at a
profit, how are you any better off?”

“Your conscientiousness does you credit, Lyman,” said the Governor. “I
respect you for it, my son. I know you will be fair to the railroad.
That is all we want. Fairness to the corporation is fairness to the
farmer, and we won’t expect you to readjust the whole matter out of
hand. Take your time. We can afford to wait.”

“And suppose the next commission is a railroad board, and reverses all
our figures?”

The one-time mining king, the most redoubtable poker player of Calaveras
County, permitted himself a momentary twinkle of his eyes.

“By then it will be too late. We will, all of us, have made our fortunes
by then.”

The remark left Presley astonished out of all measure He never could
accustom himself to these strange lapses in the Governor’s character.
Magnus was by nature a public man, judicious, deliberate, standing firm
for principle, yet upon rare occasion, by some such remark as this, he
would betray the presence of a sub-nature of recklessness, inconsistent,
all at variance with his creeds and tenets.

At the very bottom, when all was said and done, Magnus remained the
Forty-niner. Deep down in his heart the spirit of the Adventurer yet
persisted. “We will all of us have made fortunes by then.” That was it
precisely. “After us the deluge.” For all his public spirit, for all his
championship of justice and truth, his respect for law, Magnus remained
the gambler, willing to play for colossal stakes, to hazard a fortune on
the chance of winning a million. It was the true California spirit
that found expression through him, the spirit of the West, unwilling to
occupy itself with details, refusing to wait, to be patient, to achieve
by legitimate plodding; the miner’s instinct of wealth acquired in a
single night prevailed, in spite of all. It was in this frame of mind
that Magnus and the multitude of other ranchers of whom he was a type,
farmed their ranches. They had no love for their land. They were not
attached to the soil. They worked their ranches as a quarter of a
century before they had worked their mines. To husband the resources of
their marvellous San Joaquin, they considered niggardly, petty, Hebraic.
To get all there was out of the land, to squeeze it dry, to exhaust it,
seemed their policy. When, at last, the land worn out, would refuse to
yield, they would invest their money in something else; by then, they
would all have made fortunes. They did not care. “After us the deluge.”

Lyman, however, was obviously uneasy, willing to change the subject. He
rose to his feet, pulling down his cuffs.

“By the way,” he observed, “I want you three to lunch with me to-day
at my club. It is close by. You can wait there for news of the court’s
decision as well as anywhere else, and I should like to show you the
place. I have just joined.”

At the club, when the four men were seated at a small table in the round
window of the main room, Lyman’s popularity with all classes was very
apparent. Hardly a man entered that did not call out a salutation to
him, some even coming over to shake his hand. He seemed to be every
man’s friend, and to all he seemed equally genial. His affability, even
to those whom he disliked, was unfailing.

“See that fellow yonder,” he said to Magnus, indicating a certain
middle-aged man, flamboyantly dressed, who wore his hair long, who
was afflicted with sore eyes, and the collar of whose velvet coat was
sprinkled with dandruff, “that’s Hartrath, the artist, a man absolutely
devoid of even the commonest decency. How he got in here is a mystery to
me.”

Yet, when this Hartrath came across to say “How do you do” to Lyman,
Lyman was as eager in his cordiality as his warmest friend could have
expected.

“Why the devil are you so chummy with him, then?” observed Harran when
Hartrath had gone away.

Lyman’s explanation was vague. The truth of the matter was, that
Magnus’s oldest son was consumed by inordinate ambition. Political
preferment was his dream, and to the realisation of this dream
popularity was an essential. Every man who could vote, blackguard or
gentleman, was to be conciliated, if possible. He made it his study to
become known throughout the entire community--to put influential men
under obligations to himself. He never forgot a name or a face. With
everybody he was the hail-fellow-well-met. His ambition was not trivial.
In his disregard for small things, he resembled his father. Municipal
office had no attraction for him. His goal was higher. He had planned
his life twenty years ahead. Already Sheriff’s Attorney, Assistant
District Attorney and Railroad Commissioner, he could, if he desired,
attain the office of District Attorney itself. Just now, it was a
question with him whether or not it would be politic to fill this
office. Would it advance or sidetrack him in the career he had outlined
for himself? Lyman wanted to be something better than District Attorney,
better than Mayor, than State Senator, or even than member of the United
States Congress. He wanted to be, in fact, what his father was only in
name--to succeed where Magnus had failed. He wanted to be governor
of the State. He had put his teeth together, and, deaf to all other
considerations, blind to all other issues, he worked with the infinite
slowness, the unshakable tenacity of the coral insect to this one end.

After luncheon was over, Lyman ordered cigars and liqueurs, and with
the three others returned to the main room of the club. However, their
former place in the round window was occupied. A middle-aged man,
with iron grey hair and moustache, who wore a frock coat and a white
waistcoat, and in some indefinable manner suggested a retired naval
officer, was sitting at their table smoking a long, thin cigar. At sight
of him, Presley became animated. He uttered a mild exclamation:

“Why, isn’t that Mr. Cedarquist?”

“Cedarquist?” repeated Lyman Derrick. “I know him well. Yes, of course,
it is,” he continued. “Governor, you must know him. He is one of our
representative men. You would enjoy talking to him. He was the head of
the big Atlas Iron Works. They have shut down recently, you know.
Not failed exactly, but just ceased to be a paying investment, and
Cedarquist closed them out. He has other interests, though. He’s a rich
man--a capitalist.”

Lyman brought the group up to the gentleman in question and introduced
them. “Mr. Magnus Derrick, of course,” observed Cedarquist, as he took
the Governor’s hand. “I’ve known you by repute for some time, sir. This
is a great pleasure, I assure you.” Then, turning to Presley, he added:
“Hello, Pres, my boy. How is the great, the very great Poem getting on?”

“It’s not getting on at all, sir,” answered Presley, in some
embarrassment, as they all sat down. “In fact, I’ve about given up the
idea. There’s so much interest in what you might call ‘living issues’
down at Los Muertos now, that I’m getting further and further from it
every day.”

“I should say as much,” remarked the manufacturer, turning towards
Magnus. “I’m watching your fight with Shelgrim, Mr. Derrick, with every
degree of interest.” He raised his drink of whiskey and soda. “Here’s
success to you.”

As he replaced his glass, the artist Hartrath joined the group
uninvited. As a pretext, he engaged Lyman in conversation. Lyman, he
believed, was a man with a “pull” at the City Hall. In connection with a
projected Million-Dollar Fair and Flower Festival, which at that moment
was the talk of the city, certain statues were to be erected, and
Hartrath bespoke Lyman’s influence to further the pretensions of a
sculptor friend of his, who wished to be Art Director of the affair. In
the matter of this Fair and Flower Festival, Hartrath was not lacking in
enthusiasm. He addressed the others with extravagant gestures, blinking
his inflamed eyelids.

“A million dollars,” he exclaimed. “Hey! think of that. Why, do you know
that we have five hundred thousand practically pledged already? Talk
about public spirit, gentlemen, this is the most public-spirited city
on the continent. And the money is not thrown away. We will have Eastern
visitors here by the thousands--capitalists--men with money to invest.
The million we spend on our fair will be money in our pockets. Ah, you
should see how the women of this city are taking hold of the matter.
They are giving all kinds of little entertainments, teas, ‘Olde Tyme
Singing Skules,’ amateur theatricals, gingerbread fetes, all for the
benefit of the fund, and the business men, too--pouring out their money
like water. It is splendid, splendid, to see a community so patriotic.”

The manufacturer, Cedarquist, fixed the artist with a glance of
melancholy interest.

“And how much,” he remarked, “will they contribute--your gingerbread
women and public-spirited capitalists, towards the blowing up of the
ruins of the Atlas Iron Works?”

“Blowing up? I don’t understand,” murmured the artist, surprised. “When
you get your Eastern capitalists out here with your Million-Dollar
Fair,” continued Cedarquist, “you don’t propose, do you, to let them see
a Million-Dollar Iron Foundry standing idle, because of the indifference
of San Francisco business men? They might ask pertinent questions,
your capitalists, and we should have to answer that our business men
preferred to invest their money in corner lots and government bonds,
rather than to back up a legitimate, industrial enterprise. We don’t
want fairs. We want active furnaces. We don’t want public statues, and
fountains, and park extensions and gingerbread fetes. We want business
enterprise. Isn’t it like us? Isn’t it like us?” he exclaimed sadly.
“What a melancholy comment! San Francisco! It is not a city--it is a
Midway Plaisance. California likes to be fooled. Do you suppose Shelgrim
could convert the whole San Joaquin Valley into his back yard otherwise?
Indifference to public affairs--absolute indifference, it stamps us all.
Our State is the very paradise of fakirs. You and your Million-Dollar
Fair!” He turned to Hartrath with a quiet smile. “It is just such men
as you, Mr. Hartrath, that are the ruin of us. You organise a sham of
tinsel and pasteboard, put on fool’s cap and bells, beat a gong at a
street corner, and the crowd cheers you and drops nickels into your hat.
Your ginger-bread fete; yes, I saw it in full blast the other night on
the grounds of one of your women’s places on Sutter Street. I was on my
way home from the last board meeting of the Atlas Company. A gingerbread
fete, my God! and the Atlas plant shutting down for want of financial
backing. A million dollars spent to attract the Eastern investor, in
order to show him an abandoned rolling mill, wherein the only activity
is the sale of remnant material and scrap steel.”

Lyman, however, interfered. The situation was becoming strained. He
tried to conciliate the three men--the artist, the manufacturer, and the
farmer, the warring elements. But Hartrath, unwilling to face the enmity
that he felt accumulating against him, took himself away. A picture of
his--“A Study of the Contra Costa Foot-hills”--was to be raffled in the
club rooms for the benefit of the Fair. He, himself, was in charge of
the matter. He disappeared.

Cedarquist looked after him with contemplative interest. Then, turning
to Magnus, excused himself for the acridity of his words.

“He’s no worse than many others, and the people of this State and city
are, after all, only a little more addle-headed than other Americans.”
 It was his favourite topic. Sure of the interest of his hearers, he
unburdened himself.

“If I were to name the one crying evil of American life, Mr. Derrick,”
 he continued, “it would be the indifference of the better people to
public affairs. It is so in all our great centres. There are other great
trusts, God knows, in the United States besides our own dear P. and S.
W. Railroad. Every State has its own grievance. If it is not a railroad
trust, it is a sugar trust, or an oil trust, or an industrial trust,
that exploits the People, BECAUSE THE PEOPLE ALLOW IT. The indifference
of the People is the opportunity of the despot. It is as true as that
the whole is greater than the part, and the maxim is so old that it is
trite--it is laughable. It is neglected and disused for the sake of
some new ingenious and complicated theory, some wonderful scheme of
reorganisation, but the fact remains, nevertheless, simple, fundamental,
everlasting. The People have but to say ‘No,’ and not the strongest
tyranny, political, religious, or financial, that was ever organised,
could survive one week.”

The others, absorbed, attentive, approved, nodding their heads in
silence as the manufacturer finished.

“That’s one reason, Mr. Derrick,” the other resumed after a moment, “why
I have been so glad to meet you. You and your League are trying to say
‘No’ to the trust. I hope you will succeed. If your example will rally
the People to your cause, you will. Otherwise--” he shook his head.

“One stage of the fight is to be passed this very day,” observed Magnus.
“My sons and myself are expecting hourly news from the City Hall, a
decision in our case is pending.”

“We are both of us fighters, it seems, Mr. Derrick,” said Cedarquist.
“Each with his particular enemy. We are well met, indeed, the farmer and
the manufacturer, both in the same grist between the two millstones
of the lethargy of the Public and the aggression of the Trust, the two
great evils of modern America. Pres, my boy, there is your epic poem
ready to hand.”

But Cedarquist was full of another idea. Rarely did so favourable an
opportunity present itself for explaining his theories, his ambitions.
Addressing himself to Magnus, he continued:

“Fortunately for myself, the Atlas Company was not my only investment.
I have other interests. The building of ships--steel sailing ships--has
been an ambition of mine,--for this purpose, Mr. Derrick, to carry
American wheat. For years, I have studied this question of American
wheat, and at last, I have arrived at a theory. Let me explain. At
present, all our California wheat goes to Liverpool, and from that port
is distributed over the world. But a change is coming. I am sure of it.
You young men,” he turned to Presley, Lyman, and Harran, “will live to
see it. Our century is about done. The great word of this nineteenth
century has been Production. The great word of the twentieth century
will be--listen to me, you youngsters--Markets. As a market for our
Production--or let me take a concrete example--as a market for our
WHEAT, Europe is played out. Population in Europe is not increasing fast
enough to keep up with the rapidity of our production. In some cases,
as in France, the population is stationary. WE, however, have gone on
producing wheat at a tremendous rate.

“The result is over-production. We supply more than Europe can eat, and
down go the prices. The remedy is NOT in the curtailing of our wheat
areas, but in this, we MUST HAVE NEW MARKETS, GREATER MARKETS. For years
we have been sending our wheat from East to West, from California to
Europe. But the time will come when we must send it from West to East.
We must march with the course of empire, not against it. I mean, we
must look to China. Rice in China is losing its nutritive quality. The
Asiatics, though, must be fed; if not on rice, then on wheat. Why, Mr.
Derrick, if only one-half the population of China ate a half ounce of
flour per man per day all the wheat areas in California could not feed
them. Ah, if I could only hammer that into the brains of every rancher
of the San Joaquin, yes, and of every owner of every bonanza farm in
Dakota and Minnesota. Send your wheat to China; handle it yourselves;
do away with the middleman; break up the Chicago wheat pits and elevator
rings and mixing houses. When in feeding China you have decreased the
European shipments, the effect is instantaneous. Prices go up in Europe
without having the least effect upon the prices in China. We hold the
key, we have the wheat,--infinitely more than we ourselves can eat.
Asia and Europe must look to America to be fed. What fatuous neglect of
opportunity to continue to deluge Europe with our surplus food when the
East trembles upon the verge of starvation!”

The two men, Cedarquist and Magnus, continued the conversation a little
further. The manufacturer’s idea was new to the Governor. He was greatly
interested. He withdrew from the conversation. Thoughtful, he leaned
back in his place, stroking the bridge of his beak-like nose with a
crooked forefinger.

Cedarquist turned to Harran and began asking details as to the
conditions of the wheat growers of the San Joaquin. Lyman still
maintained an attitude of polite aloofness, yawning occasionally behind
three fingers, and Presley was left to the company of his own thoughts.

There had been a day when the affairs and grievances of the farmers of
his acquaintance--Magnus, Annixter, Osterman, and old Broderson--had
filled him only with disgust. His mind full of a great, vague epic poem
of the West, he had kept himself apart, disdainful of what he chose to
consider their petty squabbles. But the scene in Annixter’s harness room
had thrilled and uplifted him. He was palpitating with excitement all
through the succeeding months. He abandoned the idea of an epic poem. In
six months he had not written a single verse. Day after day he trembled
with excitement as the relations between the Trust and League became
more and more strained. He saw the matter in its true light. It was
typical. It was the world-old war between Freedom and Tyranny, and at
times his hatred of the railroad shook him like a crisp and withered
reed, while the languid indifference of the people of the State to the
quarrel filled him with a blind exasperation.

But, as he had once explained to Vanamee, he must find expression. He
felt that he would suffocate otherwise. He had begun to keep a journal.
As the inclination spurred him, he wrote down his thoughts and ideas in
this, sometimes every day, sometimes only three or four times a month.
Also he flung aside his books of poems--Milton, Tennyson, Browning, even
Homer--and addressed himself to Mill, Malthus, Young, Poushkin, Henry
George, Schopenhauer. He attacked the subject of Social Inequality with
unbounded enthusiasm. He devoured, rather than read, and emerged from
the affair, his mind a confused jumble of conflicting notions, sick with
over-effort, raging against injustice and oppression, and with not one
sane suggestion as to remedy or redress.

The butt of his cigarette scorched his fingers and roused him from his
brooding. In the act of lighting another, he glanced across the room
and was surprised to see two very prettily dressed young women in the
company of an older gentleman, in a long frock coat, standing before
Hartrath’s painting, examining it, their heads upon one side.

Presley uttered a murmur of surprise. He, himself, was a member of the
club, and the presence of women within its doors, except on special
occasions, was not tolerated. He turned to Lyman Derrick for an
explanation, but this other had also seen the women and abruptly
exclaimed:

“I declare, I had forgotten about it. Why, this is Ladies’ Day, of
course.”

“Why, yes,” interposed Cedarquist, glancing at the women over his
shoulder. “Didn’t you know? They let ‘em in twice a year, you remember,
and this is a double occasion. They are going to raffle Hartrath’s
picture,--for the benefit of the Gingerbread Fair. Why, you are not
up to date, Lyman. This is a sacred and religious rite,--an important
public event.”

“Of course, of course,” murmured Lyman. He found means to survey Harran
and Magnus. Certainly, neither his father nor his brother were dressed
for the function that impended. He had been stupid. Magnus invariably
attracted attention, and now with his trousers strapped under his boots,
his wrinkled frock coat--Lyman twisted his cuffs into sight with an
impatient, nervous movement of his wrists, glancing a second time at
his brother’s pink face, forward curling, yellow hair and clothes of
a country cut. But there was no help for it. He wondered what were the
club regulations in the matter of bringing in visitors on Ladies’ Day.
“Sure enough, Ladies’ Day,” he remarked, “I am very glad you struck it,
Governor. We can sit right where we are. I guess this is as good a place
as any to see the crowd. It’s a good chance to see all the big guns of
the city. Do you expect your people here, Mr. Cedarquist?”

“My wife may come, and my daughters,” said the manufacturer.

“Ah,” murmured Presley, “so much the better. I was going to give myself
the pleasure of calling upon your daughters, Mr. Cedarquist, this
afternoon.”

“You can save your carfare, Pres,” said Cedarquist, “you will see them
here.”

No doubt, the invitations for the occasion had appointed one o’clock as
the time, for between that hour and two, the guests arrived in an almost
unbroken stream. From their point of vantage in the round window of the
main room, Magnus, his two sons, and Presley looked on very interested.
Cedarquist had excused himself, affirming that he must look out for his
women folk.

Of every ten of the arrivals, seven, at least, were ladies. They
entered the room--this unfamiliar masculine haunt, where their husbands,
brothers, and sons spent so much of their time--with a certain show of
hesitancy and little, nervous, oblique glances, moving their heads from
side to side like a file of hens venturing into a strange barn. They
came in groups, ushered by a single member of the club, doing the
honours with effusive bows and polite gestures, indicating the various
objects of interest, pictures, busts, and the like, that decorated the
room.

Fresh from his recollections of Bonneville, Guadalajara, and the dance
in Annixter’s barn, Presley was astonished at the beauty of these women
and the elegance of their toilettes. The crowd thickened rapidly. A
murmur of conversation arose, subdued, gracious, mingled with the soft
rustle of silk, grenadines, velvet. The scent of delicate perfumes
spread in the air, Violet de Parme, Peau d’Espagne. Colours of the most
harmonious blends appeared and disappeared at intervals in the slowly
moving press, touches of lavender-tinted velvets, pale violet crepes and
cream-coloured appliqued laces.

There seemed to be no need of introductions. Everybody appeared to
be acquainted. There was no awkwardness, no constraint. The assembly
disengaged an impression of refined pleasure. On every hand, innumerable
dialogues seemed to go forward easily and naturally, without break or
interruption, witty, engaging, the couple never at a loss for repartee.
A third party was gracefully included, then a fourth. Little groups were
formed,--groups that divided themselves, or melted into other groups,
or disintegrated again into isolated pairs, or lost themselves in
the background of the mass,--all without friction, without
embarrassment,--the whole affair going forward of itself, decorous,
tactful, well-bred.

At a distance, and not too loud, a stringed orchestra sent up a pleasing
hum. Waiters, with brass buttons on their full dress coats, went from
group to group, silent, unobtrusive, serving salads and ices.

But the focus of the assembly was the little space before Hartrath’s
painting. It was called “A Study of the Contra Costa Foothills,” and
was set in a frame of natural redwood, the bark still adhering. It was
conspicuously displayed on an easel at the right of the entrance to the
main room of the club, and was very large. In the foreground, and to
the left, under the shade of a live-oak, stood a couple of reddish cows,
knee-deep in a patch of yellow poppies, while in the right-hand corner,
to balance the composition, was placed a girl in a pink dress and white
sunbonnet, in which the shadows were indicated by broad dashes of pale
blue paint. The ladies and young girls examined the production with
little murmurs of admiration, hazarding remembered phrases,
searching for the exact balance between generous praise and critical
discrimination, expressing their opinions in the mild technicalities of
the Art Books and painting classes. They spoke of atmospheric effects,
of middle distance, of “chiaro-oscuro,” of fore-shortening, of the
decomposition of light, of the subordination of individuality to
fidelity of interpretation.

One tall girl, with hair almost white in its blondness, having observed
that the handling of the masses reminded her strongly of Corot, her
companion, who carried a gold lorgnette by a chain around her neck,
answered:

“Ah! Millet, perhaps, but not Corot.”

This verdict had an immediate success. It was passed from group to
group. It seemed to imply a delicate distinction that carried conviction
at once. It was decided formally that the reddish brown cows in the
picture were reminiscent of Daubigny, and that the handling of the
masses was altogether Millet, but that the general effect was not quite
Corot.

Presley, curious to see the painting that was the subject of so much
discussion, had left the group in the round window, and stood close by
Hartrath, craning his head over the shoulders of the crowd, trying to
catch a glimpse of the reddish cows, the milk-maid and the blue painted
foothills. He was suddenly aware of Cedarquist’s voice in his ear, and,
turning about, found himself face to face with the manufacturer, his
wife and his two daughters.

There was a meeting. Salutations were exchanged, Presley shaking hands
all around, expressing his delight at seeing his old friends once more,
for he had known the family from his boyhood, Mrs. Cedarquist being his
aunt. Mrs. Cedarquist and her two daughters declared that the air of Los
Muertos must certainly have done him a world of good. He was stouter,
there could be no doubt of it. A little pale, perhaps. He was fatiguing
himself with his writing, no doubt. Ah, he must take care. Health was
everything, after all. Had he been writing any more verse? Every month
they scanned the magazines, looking for his name.

Mrs. Cedarquist was a fashionable woman, the president or chairman of
a score of clubs. She was forever running after fads, appearing
continually in the society wherein she moved with new and astounding
proteges--fakirs whom she unearthed no one knew where, discovering them
long in advance of her companions. Now it was a Russian Countess, with
dirty finger nails, who travelled throughout America and borrowed money;
now an Aesthete who possessed a wonderful collection of topaz gems, who
submitted decorative schemes for the interior arrangement of houses and
who “received” in Mrs. Cedarquist’s drawing-rooms dressed in a white
velvet cassock; now a widow of some Mohammedan of Bengal or Rajputana,
who had a blue spot in the middle of her forehead and who solicited
contributions for her sisters in affliction; now a certain bearded poet,
recently back from the Klondike; now a decayed musician who had been
ejected from a young ladies’ musical conservatory of Europe because
of certain surprising pamphlets on free love, and who had come to San
Francisco to introduce the community to the music of Brahms; now a
Japanese youth who wore spectacles and a grey flannel shirt and who,
at intervals, delivered himself of the most astonishing poems, vague,
unrhymed, unmetrical lucubrations, incoherent, bizarre; now a Christian
Scientist, a lean, grey woman, whose creed was neither Christian nor
scientific; now a university professor, with the bristling beard of
an anarchist chief-of-section, and a roaring, guttural voice, whose
intenseness left him gasping and apoplectic; now a civilised Cherokee
with a mission; now a female elocutionist, whose forte was Byron’s Songs
of Greece; now a high caste Chinaman; now a miniature painter; now a
tenor, a pianiste, a mandolin player, a missionary, a drawing master,
a virtuoso, a collector, an Armenian, a botanist with a new flower, a
critic with a new theory, a doctor with a new treatment.

And all these people had a veritable mania for declamation and fancy
dress. The Russian Countess gave talks on the prisons of Siberia,
wearing the headdress and pinchbeck ornaments of a Slav bride; the
Aesthete, in his white cassock, gave readings on obscure questions
of art and ethics. The widow of India, in the costume of her caste,
described the social life of her people at home. The bearded poet,
perspiring in furs and boots of reindeer skin, declaimed verses of his
own composition about the wild life of the Alaskan mining camps. The
Japanese youth, in the silk robes of the Samurai two-sworded nobles,
read from his own works--“The flat-bordered earth, nailed down at night,
rusting under the darkness,” “The brave, upright rains that came down
like errands from iron-bodied yore-time.” The Christian Scientist, in
funereal, impressive black, discussed the contra-will and pan-psychic
hylozoism. The university professor put on a full dress suit and lisle
thread gloves at three in the afternoon and before literary clubs and
circles bellowed extracts from Goethe and Schiler in the German, shaking
his fists, purple with vehemence. The Cherokee, arrayed in fringed
buckskin and blue beads, rented from a costumer, intoned folk songs of
his people in the vernacular. The elocutionist in cheese-cloth toga and
tin bracelets, rendered “The Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho
loved and sung.” The Chinaman, in the robes of a mandarin, lectured
on Confucius. The Armenian, in fez and baggy trousers, spoke of the
Unspeakable Turk. The mandolin player, dressed like a bull fighter, held
musical conversaziones, interpreting the peasant songs of Andalusia.

It was the Fake, the eternal, irrepressible Sham; glib, nimble,
ubiquitous, tricked out in all the paraphernalia of imposture, an
endless defile of charlatans that passed interminably before the gaze of
the city, marshalled by “lady presidents,” exploited by clubs of women,
by literary societies, reading circles, and culture organisations. The
attention the Fake received, the time devoted to it, the money which it
absorbed, were incredible. It was all one that impostor after impostor
was exposed; it was all one that the clubs, the circles, the societies
were proved beyond doubt to have been swindled. The more the Philistine
press of the city railed and guyed, the more the women rallied to
the defence of their protege of the hour. That their favourite was
persecuted, was to them a veritable rapture. Promptly they invested the
apostle of culture with the glamour of a martyr.

The fakirs worked the community as shell-game tricksters work a county
fair, departing with bursting pocket-books, passing on the word to the
next in line, assured that the place was not worked out, knowing well
that there was enough for all.

More frequently the public of the city, unable to think of more than one
thing at one time, prostrated itself at the feet of a single apostle,
but at other moments, such as the present, when a Flower Festival or a
Million-Dollar Fair aroused enthusiasm in all quarters, the occasion
was one of gala for the entire Fake. The decayed professors, virtuosi,
litterateurs, and artists thronged to the place en masse. Their clamour
filled all the air. On every hand one heard the scraping of violins,
the tinkling of mandolins, the suave accents of “art talks,” the
incoherencies of poets, the declamation of elocutionists, the
inarticulate wanderings of the Japanese, the confused mutterings of the
Cherokee, the guttural bellowing of the German university professor, all
in the name of the Million-Dollar Fair. Money to the extent of hundreds
of thousands was set in motion.

Mrs. Cedarquist was busy from morning until night. One after another,
she was introduced to newly arrived fakirs. To each poet, to each
litterateur, to each professor she addressed the same question:

“How long have you known you had this power?”

She spent her days in one quiver of excitement and jubilation. She
was “in the movement.” The people of the city were awakening to a
Realisation of the Beautiful, to a sense of the higher needs of life.
This was Art, this was Literature, this was Culture and Refinement. The
Renaissance had appeared in the West.

She was a short, rather stout, red-faced, very much over-dressed little
woman of some fifty years. She was rich in her own name, even before
her marriage, being a relative of Shelgrim himself and on familiar terms
with the great financier and his family. Her husband, while deploring
the policy of the railroad, saw no good reason for quarrelling with
Shelgrim, and on more than one occasion had dined at his house. On this
occasion, delighted that she had come upon a “minor poet,” she insisted
upon presenting him to Hartrath.

“You two should have so much in common,” she explained.

Presley shook the flaccid hand of the artist, murmuring
conventionalities, while Mrs. Cedarquist hastened to say:

“I am sure you know Mr. Presley’s verse, Mr. Hartrath. You should,
believe me. You two have much in common. I can see so much that is alike
in your modes of interpreting nature. In Mr. Presley’s sonnet, ‘The
Better Part,’ there is the same note as in your picture, the same
sincerity of tone, the same subtlety of touch, the same nuances,--ah.”

“Oh, my dear Madame,” murmured the artist, interrupting Presley’s
impatient retort; “I am a mere bungler. You don’t mean quite that, I am
sure. I am too sensitive. It is my cross. Beauty,” he closed his sore
eyes with a little expression of pain, “beauty unmans me.”

But Mrs. Cedarquist was not listening. Her eyes were fixed on the
artist’s luxuriant hair, a thick and glossy mane, that all but covered
his coat collar.

“Leonine!” she murmured-- “leonine! Like Samson of old.”

However, abruptly bestirring herself, she exclaimed a second later:

“But I must run away. I am selling tickets for you this afternoon, Mr.
Hartrath. I am having such success. Twenty-five already. Mr. Presley,
you will take two chances, I am sure, and, oh, by the way, I have such
good news. You know I am one of the lady members of the subscription
committee for our Fair, and you know we approached Mr. Shelgrim for a
donation to help along. Oh, such a liberal patron, a real Lorenzo di’
Medici. In the name of the Pacific and Southwestern he has subscribed,
think of it, five thousand dollars; and yet they will talk of the
meanness of the railroad.”

“Possibly it is to his interest,” murmured Presley. “The fairs and
festivals bring people to the city over his railroad.”

But the others turned on him, expostulating.

“Ah, you Philistine,” declared Mrs. Cedarquist. “And this from YOU!,
Presley; to attribute such base motives----”

“If the poets become materialised, Mr. Presley,” declared Hartrath,
“what can we say to the people?”

“And Shelgrim encourages your million-dollar fairs and fetes,” said a
voice at Presley’s elbow, “because it is throwing dust in the people’s
eyes.”

The group turned about and saw Cedarquist, who had come up unobserved
in time to catch the drift of the talk. But he spoke without bitterness;
there was even a good-humoured twinkle in his eyes.

“Yes,” he continued, smiling, “our dear Shelgrim promotes your fairs,
not only as Pres says, because it is money in his pocket, but because
it amuses the people, distracts their attention from the doings of his
railroad. When Beatrice was a baby and had little colics, I used to
jingle my keys in front of her nose, and it took her attention from the
pain in her tummy; so Shelgrim.”

The others laughed good-humouredly, protesting, nevertheless, and Mrs.
Cedarquist shook her finger in warning at the artist and exclaimed:

“The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!”

“By the way,” observed Hartrath, willing to change the subject, “I hear
you are on the Famine Relief Committee. Does your work progress?”

“Oh, most famously, I assure you,” she said. “Such a movement as we
have started. Those poor creatures. The photographs of them are simply
dreadful. I had the committee to luncheon the other day and we passed
them around. We are getting subscriptions from all over the State, and
Mr. Cedarquist is to arrange for the ship.”

The Relief Committee in question was one of a great number that had been
formed in California--and all over the Union, for the matter of that--to
provide relief for the victims of a great famine in Central India. The
whole world had been struck with horror at the reports of suffering
and mortality in the affected districts, and had hastened to send aid.
Certain women of San Francisco, with Mrs. Cedarquist at their head, had
organised a number of committees, but the manufacturer’s wife turned the
meetings of these committees into social affairs--luncheons, teas, where
one discussed the ways and means of assisting the starving Asiatics over
teacups and plates of salad.

Shortly afterward a mild commotion spread throughout the assemblage of
the club’s guests. The drawing of the numbers in the raffle was about to
be made. Hartrath, in a flurry of agitation, excused himself. Cedarquist
took Presley by the arm.

“Pres, let’s get out of this,” he said. “Come into the wine room and I
will shake you for a glass of sherry.”

They had some difficulty in extricating themselves. The main room where
the drawing was to take place suddenly became densely thronged. All the
guests pressed eagerly about the table near the picture, upon which one
of the hall boys had just placed a ballot box containing the numbers.
The ladies, holding their tickets in their hands, pushed forward. A
staccato chatter of excited murmurs arose. “What became of Harran and
Lyman and the Governor?” inquired Presley.

Lyman had disappeared, alleging a business engagement, but Magnus and
his younger son had retired to the library of the club on the floor
above. It was almost deserted. They were deep in earnest conversation.

“Harran,” said the Governor, with decision, “there is a deal, there, in
what Cedarquist says. Our wheat to China, hey, boy?”

“It is certainly worth thinking of, sir.”

“It appeals to me, boy; it appeals to me. It’s big and there’s a fortune
in it. Big chances mean big returns; and I know--your old father isn’t a
back number yet, Harran--I may not have so wide an outlook as our friend
Cedarquist, but I am quick to see my chance. Boy, the whole East is
opening, disintegrating before the Anglo-Saxon. It is time that bread
stuffs, as well, should make markets for themselves in the Orient. Just
at this moment, too, when Lyman will scale down freight rates so we can
haul to tidewater at little cost.”

Magnus paused again, his frown beetling, and in the silence the
excited murmur from the main room of the club, the soprano chatter of a
multitude of women, found its way to the deserted library.

“I believe it’s worth looking into, Governor,” asserted Harran.

Magnus rose, and, his hands behind him, paced the floor of the library
a couple of times, his imagination all stimulated and vivid. The
great gambler perceived his Chance, the kaleidoscopic shifting of
circumstances that made a Situation. It had come silently, unexpectedly.
He had not seen its approach. Abruptly he woke one morning to see the
combination realised. But also he saw a vision. A sudden and abrupt
revolution in the Wheat. A new world of markets discovered, the matter
as important as the discovery of America. The torrent of wheat was to be
diverted, flowing back upon itself in a sudden, colossal eddy, stranding
the middleman, the ENTRE-PRENEUR, the elevator-and mixing-house men
dry and despairing, their occupation gone. He saw the farmer suddenly
emancipated, the world’s food no longer at the mercy of the speculator,
thousands upon thousands of men set free of the grip of Trust and ring
and monopoly acting for themselves, selling their own wheat, organising
into one gigantic trust, themselves, sending their agents to all the
entry ports of China. Himself, Annixter, Broderson and Osterman would
pool their issues. He would convince them of the magnificence of the new
movement. They would be its pioneers. Harran would be sent to Hong Kong
to represent the four. They would charter--probably buy--a ship, perhaps
one of Cedarquist’s, American built, the nation’s flag at the peak, and
the sailing of that ship, gorged with the crops from Broderson’s and
Osterman’s ranches, from Quien Sabe and Los Muertos, would be like the
sailing of the caravels from Palos. It would mark a new era; it would
make an epoch.

With this vision still expanding before the eye of his mind, Magnus,
with Harran at his elbow, prepared to depart.

They descended to the lower floor and involved themselves for a moment
in the throng of fashionables that blocked the hallway and the entrance
to the main room, where the numbers of the raffle were being drawn. Near
the head of the stairs they encountered Presley and Cedarquist, who had
just come out of the wine room.

Magnus, still on fire with the new idea, pressed a few questions upon
the manufacturer before bidding him good-bye. He wished to talk further
upon the great subject, interested as to details, but Cedarquist was
vague in his replies. He was no farmer, he hardly knew wheat when he saw
it, only he knew the trend of the world’s affairs; he felt them to be
setting inevitably eastward.

However, his very vagueness was a further inspiration to the Governor.
He swept details aside. He saw only the grand coup, the huge results,
the East conquered, the march of empire rolling westward, finally
arriving at its starting point, the vague, mysterious Orient.

He saw his wheat, like the crest of an advancing billow, crossing the
Pacific, bursting upon Asia, flooding the Orient in a golden torrent. It
was the new era. He had lived to see the death of the old and the birth
of the new; first the mine, now the ranch; first gold, now wheat. Once
again he became the pioneer, hardy, brilliant, taking colossal chances,
blazing the way, grasping a fortune--a million in a single day. All the
bigness of his nature leaped up again within him. At the magnitude of
the inspiration he felt young again, indomitable, the leader at last,
king of his fellows, wresting from fortune at this eleventh hour, before
his old age, the place of high command which so long had been denied
him. At last he could achieve.

Abruptly Magnus was aware that some one had spoken his name. He looked
about and saw behind him, at a little distance, two gentlemen, strangers
to him. They had withdrawn from the crowd into a little recess.
Evidently having no women to look after, they had lost interest in the
afternoon’s affair. Magnus realised that they had not seen him. One of
them was reading aloud to his companion from an evening edition of that
day’s newspaper. It was in the course of this reading that Magnus caught
the sound of his name. He paused, listening, and Presley, Harran and
Cedarquist followed his example. Soon they all understood. They were
listening to the report of the judge’s decision, for which Magnus was
waiting--the decision in the case of the League vs. the Railroad. For
the moment, the polite clamour of the raffle hushed itself--the winning
number was being drawn. The guests held their breath, and in the ensuing
silence Magnus and the others heard these words distinctly:

“.... It follows that the title to the lands in question is in the
plaintiff--the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad, and the defendants
have no title, and their possession is wrongful. There must be findings
and judgment for the plaintiff, and it is so ordered.”

In spite of himself, Magnus paled. Harran shut his teeth with an oath.
Their exaltation of the previous moment collapsed like a pyramid of
cards. The vision of the new movement of the wheat, the conquest of the
East, the invasion of the Orient, seemed only the flimsiest mockery.
With a brusque wrench, they were snatched back to reality. Between
them and the vision, between the fecund San Joaquin, reeking with
fruitfulness, and the millions of Asia crowding toward the verge of
starvation, lay the iron-hearted monster of steel and steam, implacable,
insatiable, huge--its entrails gorged with the life blood that it
sucked from an entire commonwealth, its ever hungry maw glutted with the
harvests that should have fed the famished bellies of the whole world of
the Orient.

But abruptly, while the four men stood there, gazing into each other’s
faces, a vigorous hand-clapping broke out. The raffle of Hartrath’s
picture was over, and as Presley turned about he saw Mrs. Cedarquist
and her two daughters signalling eagerly to the manufacturer, unable to
reach him because of the intervening crowd. Then Mrs. Cedarquist raised
her voice and cried:

“I’ve won. I’ve won.”

Unnoticed, and with but a brief word to Cedarquist, Magnus and Harran
went down the marble steps leading to the street door, silent, Harran’s
arm tight around his father’s shoulder.

At once the orchestra struck into a lively air. A renewed murmur of
conversation broke out, and Cedarquist, as he said good-bye to Presley,
looked first at the retreating figures of the ranchers, then at the
gayly dressed throng of beautiful women and debonair young men, and
indicating the whole scene with a single gesture, said, smiling sadly as
he spoke:

“Not a city, Presley, not a city, but a Midway Plaisance.”



CHAPTER II


Underneath the Long Trestle where Broderson Creek cut the line of the
railroad and the Upper Road, the ground was low and covered with a
second growth of grey green willows. Along the borders of the creek were
occasional marshy spots, and now and then Hilma Tree came here to gather
water-cresses, which she made into salads.

The place was picturesque, secluded, an oasis of green shade in all the
limitless, flat monotony of the surrounding wheat lands. The creek had
eroded deep into the little gully, and no matter how hot it was on the
baking, shimmering levels of the ranches above, down here one always
found one’s self enveloped in an odorous, moist coolness. From time to
time, the incessant murmur of the creek, pouring over and around the
larger stones, was interrupted by the thunder of trains roaring out
upon the trestle overhead, passing on with the furious gallop of their
hundreds of iron wheels, leaving in the air a taint of hot oil, acrid
smoke, and reek of escaping steam.

On a certain afternoon, in the spring of the year, Hilma was returning
to Quien Sabe from Hooven’s by the trail that led from Los Muertos to
Annixter’s ranch houses, under the trestle. She had spent the afternoon
with Minna Hooven, who, for the time being, was kept indoors because of
a wrenched ankle. As Hilma descended into the gravel flats and thickets
of willows underneath the trestle, she decided that she would gather
some cresses for her supper that night. She found a spot around the base
of one of the supports of the trestle where the cresses grew thickest,
and plucked a couple of handfuls, washing them in the creek and pinning
them up in her handkerchief. It made a little, round, cold bundle, and
Hilma, warm from her walk, found a delicious enjoyment in pressing the
damp ball of it to her cheeks and neck.

For all the change that Annixter had noted in her upon the occasion of
the barn dance, Hilma remained in many things a young child. She was
never at loss for enjoyment, and could always amuse herself when left
alone. Just now, she chose to drink from the creek, lying prone on the
ground, her face half-buried in the water, and this, not because she was
thirsty, but because it was a new way to drink. She imagined herself a
belated traveller, a poor girl, an outcast, quenching her thirst at the
wayside brook, her little packet of cresses doing duty for a bundle of
clothes. Night was coming on. Perhaps it would storm. She had nowhere to
go. She would apply at a hut for shelter.

Abruptly, the temptation to dabble her feet in the creek presented
itself to her. Always she had liked to play in the water. What a delight
now to take off her shoes and stockings and wade out into the shallows
near the bank! She had worn low shoes that afternoon, and the dust of
the trail had filtered in above the edges. At times, she felt the grit
and grey sand on the soles of her feet, and the sensation had set
her teeth on edge. What a delicious alternative the cold, clean water
suggested, and how easy it would be to do as she pleased just then, if
only she were a little girl. In the end, it was stupid to be grown up.

Sitting upon the bank, one finger tucked into the heel of her shoe,
Hilma hesitated. Suppose a train should come! She fancied she could see
the engineer leaning from the cab with a great grin on his face, or the
brakeman shouting gibes at her from the platform. Abruptly she blushed
scarlet. The blood throbbed in her temples. Her heart beat. Since the
famous evening of the barn dance, Annixter had spoken to her but twice.
Hilma no longer looked after the ranch house these days. The thought of
setting foot within Annixter’s dining-room and bed-room terrified her,
and in the end her mother had taken over that part of her work. Of the
two meetings with the master of Quien Sabe, one had been a mere exchange
of good mornings as the two happened to meet over by the artesian well;
the other, more complicated, had occurred in the dairy-house again,
Annixter, pretending to look over the new cheese press, asking about
details of her work. When this had happened on that previous occasion,
ending with Annixter’s attempt to kiss her, Hilma had been talkative
enough, chattering on from one subject to another, never at a loss for a
theme. But this last time was a veritable ordeal. No sooner had
Annixter appeared than her heart leaped and quivered like that of the
hound-harried doe. Her speech failed her. Throughout the whole brief
interview she had been miserably tongue-tied, stammering monosyllables,
confused, horribly awkward, and when Annixter had gone away, she had
fled to her little room, and bolting the door, had flung herself face
downward on the bed and wept as though her heart were breaking, she did
not know why.

That Annixter had been overwhelmed with business all through the winter
was an inexpressible relief to Hilma. His affairs took him away from the
ranch continually. He was absent sometimes for weeks, making trips
to San Francisco, or to Sacramento, or to Bonneville. Perhaps he was
forgetting her, overlooking her; and while, at first, she told herself
that she asked nothing better, the idea of it began to occupy her mind.
She began to wonder if it was really so.

She knew his trouble. Everybody did. The news of the sudden forward
movement of the Railroad’s forces, inaugurating the campaign, had flared
white-hot and blazing all over the country side. To Hilma’s notion,
Annixter’s attitude was heroic beyond all expression. His courage in
facing the Railroad, as he had faced Delaney in the barn, seemed to her
the pitch of sublimity. She refused to see any auxiliaries aiding him in
his fight. To her imagination, the great League, which all the ranchers
were joining, was a mere form. Single-handed, Annixter fronted the
monster. But for him the corporation would gobble Quien Sabe, as a
whale would a minnow. He was a hero who stood between them all and
destruction. He was a protector of her family. He was her champion.
She began to mention him in her prayers every night, adding a further
petition to the effect that he would become a good man, and that he
should not swear so much, and that he should never meet Delaney again.

However, as Hilma still debated the idea of bathing her feet in the
creek, a train did actually thunder past overhead--the regular evening
Overland,--the through express, that never stopped between Bakersfield
and Fresno. It stormed by with a deafening clamour, and a swirl of
smoke, in a long succession of way-coaches, and chocolate coloured
Pullmans, grimy with the dust of the great deserts of the Southwest.
The quivering of the trestle’s supports set a tremble in the ground
underfoot. The thunder of wheels drowned all sound of the flowing of the
creek, and also the noise of the buckskin mare’s hoofs descending from
the trail upon the gravel about the creek, so that Hilma, turning about
after the passage of the train, saw Annixter close at hand, with the
abruptness of a vision.

He was looking at her, smiling as he rarely did, the firm line of his
out-thrust lower lip relaxed good-humouredly. He had taken off his
campaign hat to her, and though his stiff, yellow hair was twisted
into a bristling mop, the little persistent tuft on the crown, usually
defiantly erect as an Apache’s scalp-lock, was nowhere in sight.

“Hello, it’s you, is it, Miss Hilma?” he exclaimed, getting down from
the buckskin, and allowing her to drink.

Hilma nodded, scrambling to her feet, dusting her skirt with nervous
pats of both hands.

Annixter sat down on a great rock close by and, the loop of the bridle
over his arm, lit a cigar, and began to talk. He complained of the heat
of the day, the bad condition of the Lower Road, over which he had come
on his way from a committee meeting of the League at Los Muertos; of
the slowness of the work on the irrigating ditch, and, as a matter of
course, of the general hard times.

“Miss Hilma,” he said abruptly, “never you marry a ranchman. He’s never
out of trouble.”

Hilma gasped, her eyes widening till the full round of the pupil was
disclosed. Instantly, a certain, inexplicable guiltiness overpowered her
with incredible confusion. Her hands trembled as she pressed the bundle
of cresses into a hard ball between her palms.

Annixter continued to talk. He was disturbed and excited himself at
this unexpected meeting. Never through all the past winter months of
strenuous activity, the fever of political campaigns, the harrowing
delays and ultimate defeat in one law court after another, had he
forgotten the look in Hilma’s face as he stood with one arm around
her on the floor of his barn, in peril of his life from the buster’s
revolver. That dumb confession of Hilma’s wide-open eyes had been enough
for him. Yet, somehow, he never had had a chance to act upon it. During
the short period when he could be on his ranch Hilma had always managed
to avoid him. Once, even, she had spent a month, about Christmas time,
with her mother’s father, who kept a hotel in San Francisco.

Now, to-day, however, he had her all to himself. He would put an end
to the situation that troubled him, and vexed him, day after day,
month after month. Beyond question, the moment had come for something
definite, he could not say precisely what. Readjusting his cigar between
his teeth, he resumed his speech. It suited his humour to take the girl
into his confidence, following an instinct which warned him that this
would bring about a certain closeness of their relations, a certain
intimacy.

“What do you think of this row, anyways, Miss Hilma,--this railroad
fuss in general? Think Shelgrim and his rushers are going to jump Quien
Sabe--are going to run us off the ranch?”

“Oh, no, sir,” protested Hilma, still breathless. “Oh, no, indeed not.”

“Well, what then?”

Hilma made a little uncertain movement of ignorance.

“I don’t know what.”

“Well, the League agreed to-day that if the test cases were lost in
the Supreme Court--you know we’ve appealed to the Supreme Court, at
Washington--we’d fight.”

“Fight?”

“Yes, fight.”

“Fight like--like you and Mr. Delaney that time with--oh, dear--with
guns?”

“I don’t know,” grumbled Annixter vaguely. “What do YOU think?”

Hilma’s low-pitched, almost husky voice trembled a little as she
replied, “Fighting--with guns--that’s so terrible. Oh, those revolvers
in the barn! I can hear them yet. Every shot seemed like the explosion
of tons of powder.”

“Shall we clear out, then? Shall we let Delaney have possession, and S.
Behrman, and all that lot? Shall we give in to them?”

“Never, never,” she exclaimed, her great eyes flashing.

“YOU wouldn’t like to be turned out of your home, would you, Miss Hilma,
because Quien Sabe is your home isn’t it? You’ve lived here ever since
you were as big as a minute. You wouldn’t like to have S. Behrman and
the rest of ‘em turn you out?”

“N-no,” she murmured. “No, I shouldn’t like that. There’s mamma and----”

“Well, do you think for one second I’m going to let ‘em?” cried
Annixter, his teeth tightening on his cigar. “You stay right where
you are. I’ll take care of you, right enough. Look here,” he demanded
abruptly, “you’ve no use for that roaring lush, Delaney, have you?”
 “I think he is a wicked man,” she declared. “I know the Railroad has
pretended to sell him part of the ranch, and he lets Mr. S. Behrman and
Mr. Ruggles just use him.”

“Right. I thought you wouldn’t be keen on him.”

There was a long pause. The buckskin began blowing among the pebbles,
nosing for grass, and Annixter shifted his cigar to the other corner of
his mouth.

“Pretty place,” he muttered, looking around him. Then he added: “Miss
Hilma, see here, I want to have a kind of talk with you, if you don’t
mind. I don’t know just how to say these sort of things, and if I get
all balled up as I go along, you just set it down to the fact that I’ve
never had any experience in dealing with feemale girls; understand? You
see, ever since the barn dance--yes, and long before then--I’ve been
thinking a lot about you. Straight, I have, and I guess you know it.
You’re about the only girl that I ever knew well, and I guess,” he
declared deliberately, “you’re about the only one I want to know.
It’s my nature. You didn’t say anything that time when we stood there
together and Delaney was playing the fool, but, somehow, I got the idea
that you didn’t want Delaney to do for me one little bit; that if he’d
got me then you would have been sorrier than if he’d got any one else.
Well, I felt just that way about you. I would rather have had him shoot
any other girl in the room than you; yes, or in the whole State. Why, if
anything should happen to you, Miss Hilma--well, I wouldn’t care to go
on with anything. S. Behrman could jump Quien Sabe, and welcome. And
Delaney could shoot me full of holes whenever he got good and ready.
I’d quit. I’d lay right down. I wouldn’t care a whoop about anything any
more. You are the only girl for me in the whole world. I didn’t think so
at first. I didn’t want to. But seeing you around every day, and seeing
how pretty you were, and how clever, and hearing your voice and all,
why, it just got all inside of me somehow, and now I can’t think of
anything else. I hate to go to San Francisco, or Sacramento, or Visalia,
or even Bonneville, for only a day, just because you aren’t there, in
any of those places, and I just rush what I’ve got to do so as I can
get back here. While you were away that Christmas time, why, I was as
lonesome as--oh, you don’t know anything about it. I just scratched off
the days on the calendar every night, one by one, till you got back.
And it just comes to this, I want you with me all the time. I want you
should have a home that’s my home, too. I want to take care of you, and
have you all for myself, you understand. What do you say?”

Hilma, standing up before him, retied a knot in her handkerchief bundle
with elaborate precaution, blinking at it through her tears.

“What do you say, Miss Hilma?” Annixter repeated. “How about that? What
do you say?”

Just above a whisper, Hilma murmured:

“I--I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what? Don’t you think we could hit it off together?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know we could, Hilma. I don’t mean to scare you. What are you crying
for?” “I don’t know.”

Annixter got up, cast away his cigar, and dropping the buckskin’s
bridle, came and stood beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. Hilma
did not move, and he felt her trembling. She still plucked at the knot
of the handkerchief. “I can’t do without you, little girl,” Annixter
continued, “and I want you. I want you bad. I don’t get much fun out of
life ever. It, sure, isn’t my nature, I guess. I’m a hard man. Everybody
is trying to down me, and now I’m up against the Railroad. I’m fighting
‘em all, Hilma, night and day, lock, stock, and barrel, and I’m fighting
now for my home, my land, everything I have in the world. If I win out,
I want somebody to be glad with me. If I don’t--I want somebody to be
sorry for me, sorry with me,--and that somebody is you. I am dog-tired
of going it alone. I want some one to back me up. I want to feel you
alongside of me, to give me a touch of the shoulder now and then. I’m
tired of fighting for THINGS--land, property, money. I want to fight for
some PERSON--somebody beside myself. Understand? want to feel that it
isn’t all selfishness--that there are other interests than mine in the
game--that there’s some one dependent on me, and that’s thinking of me
as I’m thinking of them--some one I can come home to at night and put my
arm around--like this, and have her put her two arms around me--like--”
 He paused a second, and once again, as it had been in that moment
of imminent peril, when he stood with his arm around her, their eyes
met,--“put her two arms around me,” prompted Annixter, half smiling,
“like--like what, Hilma?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like what, Hilma?” he insisted.

“Like--like this?” she questioned. With a movement of infinite
tenderness and affection she slid her arms around his neck, still crying
a little.

The sensation of her warm body in his embrace, the feeling of her
smooth, round arm, through the thinness of her sleeve, pressing against
his cheek, thrilled Annixter with a delight such as he had never known.
He bent his head and kissed her upon the nape of her neck, where the
delicate amber tint melted into the thick, sweet smelling mass of her
dark brown hair. She shivered a little, holding him closer, ashamed
as yet to look up. Without speech, they stood there for a long minute,
holding each other close. Then Hilma pulled away from him, mopping her
tear-stained cheeks with the little moist ball of her handkerchief.

“What do you say? Is it a go?” demanded Annixter jovially.

“I thought I hated you all the time,” she said, and the velvety
huskiness of her voice never sounded so sweet to him.

“And I thought it was that crockery smashing goat of a lout of a
cow-puncher.”

“Delaney? The idea! Oh, dear! I think it must always have been you.”

“Since when, Hilma?” he asked, putting his arm around her. “Ah, but it
is good to have you, my girl,” he exclaimed, delighted beyond words that
she permitted this freedom. “Since when? Tell us all about it.”

“Oh, since always. It was ever so long before I came to think of
you--to, well, to think about--I mean to remember--oh, you know what I
mean. But when I did, oh, THEN!”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know--I haven’t thought--that way long enough to know.”

“But you said you thought it must have been me always.”

“I know; but that was different--oh, I’m all mixed up. I’m so nervous
and trembly now. Oh,” she cried suddenly, her face overcast with a look
of earnestness and great seriousness, both her hands catching at his
wrist, “Oh, you WILL be good to me, now, won’t you? I’m only a little,
little child in so many ways, and I’ve given myself to you, all in a
minute, and I can’t go back of it now, and it’s for always. I don’t know
how it happened or why. Sometimes I think I didn’t wish it, but now it’s
done, and I am glad and happy. But NOW if you weren’t good to me--oh,
think of how it would be with me. You are strong, and big, and rich, and
I am only a servant of yours, a little nobody, but I’ve given all I had
to you--myself--and you must be so good to me now. Always remember
that. Be good to me and be gentle and kind to me in LITTLE things,--in
everything, or you will break my heart.”

Annixter took her in his arms. He was speechless. No words that he had
at his command seemed adequate. All he could say was:

“That’s all right, little girl. Don’t you be frightened. I’ll take care
of you. That’s all right, that’s all right.”

For a long time they sat there under the shade of the great trestle,
their arms about each other, speaking only at intervals. An hour passed.
The buckskin, finding no feed to her taste, took the trail stablewards,
the bridle dragging. Annixter let her go. Rather than to take his arm
from around Hilma’s waist he would have lost his whole stable. At last,
however, he bestirred himself and began to talk. He thought it time to
formulate some plan of action.

“Well, now, Hilma, what are we going to do?”

“Do?” she repeated. “Why, must we do anything? Oh, isn’t this enough?”

“There’s better ahead,” he went on. “I want to fix you up somewhere
where you can have a bit of a home all to yourself. Let’s see;
Bonneville wouldn’t do. There’s always a lot of yaps about there
that know us, and they would begin to cackle first off. How about San
Francisco. We might go up next week and have a look around. I would find
rooms you could take somewheres, and we would fix ‘em up as lovely as
how-do-you-do.”

“Oh, but why go away from Quien Sabe?” she protested. “And, then, so
soon, too. Why must we have a wedding trip, now that you are so busy?
Wouldn’t it be better--oh, I tell you, we could go to Monterey after
we were married, for a little week, where mamma’s people live, and then
come back here to the ranch house and settle right down where we are and
let me keep house for you. I wouldn’t even want a single servant.”

Annixter heard and his face grew troubled.

“Hum,” he said, “I see.”

He gathered up a handful of pebbles and began snapping them carefully
into the creek. He fell thoughtful. Here was a phase of the affair he
had not planned in the least. He had supposed all the time that Hilma
took his meaning. His old suspicion that she was trying to get a hold on
him stirred again for a moment. There was no good of such talk as
that. Always these feemale girls seemed crazy to get married, bent on
complicating the situation.

“Isn’t that best?” said Hilma, glancing at him.

“I don’t know,” he muttered gloomily.

“Well, then, let’s not. Let’s come right back to Quien Sabe without
going to Monterey. Anything that you want I want.”

“I hadn’t thought of it in just that way,” he observed.

“In what way, then?”

“Can’t we--can’t we wait about this marrying business?”

“That’s just it,” she said gayly. “I said it was too soon. There would
be so much to do between whiles. Why not say at the end of the summer?”

“Say what?”

“Our marriage, I mean.”

“Why get married, then? What’s the good of all that fuss about it? I
don’t go anything upon a minister puddling round in my affairs. What’s
the difference, anyhow? We understand each other. Isn’t that enough?
Pshaw, Hilma, I’M no marrying man.”

She looked at him a moment, bewildered, then slowly she took his
meaning. She rose to her feet, her eyes wide, her face paling with
terror. He did not look at her, but he could hear the catch in her
throat.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, with a long, deep breath, and again “Oh!” the back
of her hand against her lips.

It was a quick gasp of a veritable physical anguish. Her eyes brimmed
over. Annixter rose, looking at her.

“Well?” he said, awkwardly, “Well?”

Hilma leaped back from him with an instinctive recoil of her whole
being, throwing out her hands in a gesture of defence, fearing she knew
not what. There was as yet no sense of insult in her mind, no outraged
modesty. She was only terrified. It was as though searching for wild
flowers she had come suddenly upon a snake.

She stood for an instant, spellbound, her eyes wide, her bosom swelling;
then, all at once, turned and fled, darting across the plank that
served for a foot bridge over the creek, gaining the opposite bank and
disappearing with a brisk rustle of underbrush, such as might have been
made by the flight of a frightened fawn.

Abruptly Annixter found himself alone. For a moment he did not move,
then he picked up his campaign hat, carefully creased its limp crown and
put it on his head and stood for a moment, looking vaguely at the ground
on both sides of him. He went away without uttering a word, without
change of countenance, his hands in his pockets, his feet taking great
strides along the trail in the direction of the ranch house.

He had no sight of Hilma again that evening, and the next morning he
was up early and did not breakfast at the ranch house. Business of the
League called him to Bonneville to confer with Magnus and the firm of
lawyers retained by the League to fight the land-grabbing cases. An
appeal was to be taken to the Supreme Court at Washington, and it was to
be settled that day which of the cases involved should be considered as
test cases.

Instead of driving or riding into Bonneville, as he usually did,
Annixter took an early morning train, the Bakersfield-Fresno local at
Guadalajara, and went to Bonneville by rail, arriving there at twenty
minutes after seven and breakfasting by appointment with Magnus Derrick
and Osterman at the Yosemite House, on Main Street.

The conference of the committee with the lawyers took place in a front
room of the Yosemite, one of the latter bringing with him his clerk, who
made a stenographic report of the proceedings and took carbon copies
of all letters written. The conference was long and complicated, the
business transacted of the utmost moment, and it was not until two
o’clock that Annixter found himself at liberty.

However, as he and Magnus descended into the lobby of the hotel, they
were aware of an excited and interested group collected about the swing
doors that opened from the lobby of the Yosemite into the bar of the
same name. Dyke was there--even at a distance they could hear the
reverberation of his deep-toned voice, uplifted in wrath and furious
expostulation. Magnus and Annixter joined the group wondering, and all
at once fell full upon the first scene of a drama.

That same morning Dyke’s mother had awakened him according to his
instructions at daybreak. A consignment of his hop poles from the north
had arrived at the freight office of the P. and S. W. in Bonneville, and
he was to drive in on his farm wagon and bring them out. He would have a
busy day.

“Hello, hello,” he said, as his mother pulled his ear to arouse him;
“morning, mamma.”

“It’s time,” she said, “after five already. Your breakfast is on the
stove.”

He took her hand and kissed it with great affection. He loved his mother
devotedly, quite as much as he did the little tad. In their little
cottage, in the forest of green hops that surrounded them on every hand,
the three led a joyous and secluded life, contented, industrious, happy,
asking nothing better. Dyke, himself, was a big-hearted, jovial man who
spread an atmosphere of good-humour wherever he went. In the evenings he
played with Sidney like a big boy, an older brother, lying on the bed,
or the sofa, taking her in his arms. Between them they had invented a
great game. The ex-engineer, his boots removed, his huge legs in the
air, hoisted the little tad on the soles of his stockinged feet like a
circus acrobat, dandling her there, pretending he was about to let
her fall. Sidney, choking with delight, held on nervously, with little
screams and chirps of excitement, while he shifted her gingerly from one
foot to another, and thence, the final act, the great gallery play, to
the palm of one great hand. At this point Mrs. Dyke was called in, both
father and daughter, children both, crying out that she was to come in
and look, look. She arrived out of breath from the kitchen, the potato
masher in her hand. “Such children,” she murmured, shaking her head at
them, amused for all that, tucking the potato masher under her arm and
clapping her hands. In the end, it was part of the game that Sidney
should tumble down upon Dyke, whereat he invariably vented a great
bellow as if in pain, declaring that his ribs were broken. Gasping, his
eyes shut, he pretended to be in the extreme of dissolution--perhaps
he was dying. Sidney, always a little uncertain, amused but distressed,
shook him nervously, tugging at his beard, pushing open his eyelid with
one finger, imploring him not to frighten her, to wake up and be good.

On this occasion, while yet he was half-dressed, Dyke tiptoed into his
mother’s room to look at Sidney fast asleep in her little iron cot, her
arm under her head, her lips parted. With infinite precaution he kissed
her twice, and then finding one little stocking, hung with its mate very
neatly over the back of a chair, dropped into it a dime, rolled up in a
wad of paper. He winked all to himself and went out again, closing the
door with exaggerated carefulness.

He breakfasted alone, Mrs. Dyke pouring his coffee and handing him his
plate of ham and eggs, and half an hour later took himself off in his
springless, skeleton wagon, humming a tune behind his beard and cracking
the whip over the backs of his staid and solid farm horses.

The morning was fine, the sun just coming up. He left Guadalajara,
sleeping and lifeless, on his left, and going across lots, over an
angle of Quien Sabe, came out upon the Upper Road, a mile below the
Long Trestle. He was in great spirits, looking about him over the brown
fields, ruddy with the dawn. Almost directly in front of him, but far
off, the gilded dome of the court-house at Bonneville was glinting
radiant in the first rays of the sun, while a few miles distant,
toward the north, the venerable campanile of the Mission San Juan stood
silhouetted in purplish black against the flaming east. As he proceeded,
the great farm horses jogging forward, placid, deliberate, the country
side waked to another day. Crossing the irrigating ditch further on, he
met a gang of Portuguese, with picks and shovels over their shoulders,
just going to work. Hooven, already abroad, shouted him a “Goot mornun”
 from behind the fence of Los Muertos. Far off, toward the southwest,
in the bare expanse of the open fields, where a clump of eucalyptus
and cypress trees set a dark green note, a thin stream of smoke rose
straight into the air from the kitchen of Derrick’s ranch houses.

But a mile or so beyond the Long Trestle he was surprised to see Magnus
Derrick’s protege, the one-time shepherd, Vanamee, coming across Quien
Sabe, by a trail from one of Annixter’s division houses. Without knowing
exactly why, Dyke received the impression that the young man had not
been in bed all of that night.

As the two approached each other, Dyke eyed the young fellow. He was
distrustful of Vanamee, having the country-bred suspicion of any person
he could not understand. Vanamee was, beyond doubt, no part of the life
of ranch and country town. He was an alien, a vagabond, a strange fellow
who came and went in mysterious fashion, making no friends, keeping
to himself. Why did he never wear a hat, why indulge in a fine,
black, pointed beard, when either a round beard or a mustache was the
invariable custom? Why did he not cut his hair? Above all, why did he
prowl about so much at night? As the two passed each other, Dyke, for
all his good-nature, was a little blunt in his greeting and looked back
at the ex-shepherd over his shoulder.

Dyke was right in his suspicion. Vanamee’s bed had not been disturbed
for three nights. On the Monday of that week he had passed the entire
night in the garden of the Mission, overlooking the Seed ranch, in the
little valley. Tuesday evening had found him miles away from that
spot, in a deep arroyo in the Sierra foothills to the eastward, while
Wednesday he had slept in an abandoned ‘dobe on Osterman’s stock range,
twenty miles from his resting place of the night before.

The fact of the matter was that the old restlessness had once more
seized upon Vanamee. Something began tugging at him; the spur of some
unseen rider touched his flank. The instinct of the wanderer woke and
moved. For some time now he had been a part of the Los Muertos staff. On
Quien Sabe, as on the other ranches, the slack season was at hand. While
waiting for the wheat to come up no one was doing much of anything.
Vanamee had come over to Los Muertos and spent most of his days on
horseback, riding the range, rounding up and watching the cattle in the
fourth division of the ranch. But if the vagabond instinct now roused
itself in the strange fellow’s nature, a counter influence had also set
in. More and more Vanamee frequented the Mission garden after nightfall,
sometimes remaining there till the dawn began to whiten, lying prone on
the ground, his chin on his folded arms, his eyes searching the darkness
over the little valley of the Seed ranch, watching, watching. As the
days went by, he became more reticent than ever. Presley often came to
find him on the stock range, a lonely figure in the great wilderness
of bare, green hillsides, but Vanamee no longer took him into his
confidence. Father Sarria alone heard his strange stories.

Dyke drove on toward Bonneville, thinking over the whole matter. He
knew, as every one did in that part of the country, the legend of
Vanamee and Angele, the romance of the Mission garden, the mystery
of the Other, Vanamee’s flight to the deserts of the southwest, his
periodic returns, his strange, reticent, solitary character, but, like
many another of the country people, he accounted for Vanamee by a short
and easy method. No doubt, the fellow’s wits were turned. That was the
long and short of it.

The ex-engineer reached the Post Office in Bonneville towards eleven
o’clock, but he did not at once present his notice of the arrival of
his consignment at Ruggles’s office. It entertained him to indulge in an
hour’s lounging about the streets. It was seldom he got into town, and
when he did he permitted himself the luxury of enjoying his evident
popularity. He met friends everywhere, in the Post Office, in the drug
store, in the barber shop and around the court-house. With each one he
held a moment’s conversation; almost invariably this ended in the same
way:

“Come on ‘n have a drink.”

“Well, I don’t care if I do.”

And the friends proceeded to the Yosemite bar, pledging each other with
punctilious ceremony. Dyke, however, was a strictly temperate man.
His life on the engine had trained him well. Alcohol he never touched,
drinking instead ginger ale, sarsaparilla-and-iron--soft drinks.

At the drug store, which also kept a stock of miscellaneous stationery,
his eye was caught by a “transparent slate,” a child’s toy, where upon
a little pane of frosted glass one could trace with considerable
elaboration outline figures of cows, ploughs, bunches of fruit and even
rural water mills that were printed on slips of paper underneath.

“Now, there’s an idea, Jim,” he observed to the boy behind the
soda-water fountain; “I know a little tad that would just about jump out
of her skin for that. Think I’ll have to take it with me.”

“How’s Sidney getting along?” the other asked, while wrapping up the
package.

Dyke’s enthusiasm had made of his little girl a celebrity throughout
Bonneville.

The ex-engineer promptly became voluble, assertive, doggedly emphatic.

“Smartest little tad in all Tulare County, and more fun! A regular whole
show in herself.”

“And the hops?” inquired the other.

“Bully,” declared Dyke, with the good-natured man’s readiness to talk of
his private affairs to any one who would listen. “Bully. I’m dead sure
of a bonanza crop by now. The rain came JUST right. I actually don’t
know as I can store the crop in those barns I built, it’s going to be so
big. That foreman of mine was a daisy. Jim, I’m going to make money in
that deal. After I’ve paid off the mortgage--you know I had to mortgage,
yes, crop and homestead both, but I can pay it off and all the interest
to boot, lovely,--well, and as I was saying, after all expenses are paid
off I’ll clear big money, m’ son. Yes, sir. I KNEW there was boodle in
hops. You know the crop is contracted for already. Sure, the foreman
managed that. He’s a daisy. Chap in San Francisco will take it all and
at the advanced price. I wanted to hang on, to see if it wouldn’t go to
six cents, but the foreman said, ‘No, that’s good enough.’ So I signed.
Ain’t it bully, hey?”

“Then what’ll you do?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ll have a lay-off for a month or so and take the
little tad and mother up and show ‘em the city--‘Frisco--until it’s
time for the schools to open, and then we’ll put Sid in the seminary at
Marysville. Catch on?”

“I suppose you’ll stay right by hops now?”

“Right you are, m’son. I know a good thing when I see it. There’s plenty
others going into hops next season. I set ‘em the example. Wouldn’t be
surprised if it came to be a regular industry hereabouts. I’m planning
ahead for next year already. I can let the foreman go, now that I’ve
learned the game myself, and I think I’ll buy a piece of land off Quien
Sabe and get a bigger crop, and build a couple more barns, and, by
George, in about five years time I’ll have things humming. I’m going to
make MONEY, Jim.”

He emerged once more into the street and went up the block leisurely,
planting his feet squarely. He fancied that he could feel he was
considered of more importance nowadays. He was no longer a subordinate,
an employee. He was his own man, a proprietor, an owner of land,
furthering a successful enterprise. No one had helped him; he had
followed no one’s lead. He had struck out unaided for himself, and his
success was due solely to his own intelligence, industry, and foresight.
He squared his great shoulders till the blue gingham of his jumper all
but cracked. Of late, his great blond beard had grown and the work in
the sun had made his face very red. Under the visor of his cap--relic of
his engineering days--his blue eyes twinkled with vast good-nature. He
felt that he made a fine figure as he went by a group of young girls in
lawns and muslins and garden hats on their way to the Post Office. He
wondered if they looked after him, wondered if they had heard that he
was in a fair way to become a rich man.

But the chronometer in the window of the jewelry store warned him that
time was passing. He turned about, and, crossing the street, took his
way to Ruggles’s office, which was the freight as well as the land
office of the P. and S. W. Railroad.

As he stood for a moment at the counter in front of the wire partition,
waiting for the clerk to make out the order for the freight agent at the
depot, Dyke was surprised to see a familiar figure in conference with
Ruggles himself, by a desk inside the railing.

The figure was that of a middle-aged man, fat, with a great stomach,
which he stroked from time to time. As he turned about, addressing a
remark to the clerk, Dyke recognised S. Behrman. The banker, railroad
agent, and political manipulator seemed to the ex-engineer’s eyes to be
more gross than ever. His smooth-shaven jowl stood out big and tremulous
on either side of his face; the roll of fat on the nape of his neck,
sprinkled with sparse, stiff hairs, bulged out with greater prominence.
His great stomach, covered with a light brown linen vest, stamped with
innumerable interlocked horseshoes, protruded far in advance, enormous,
aggressive. He wore his inevitable round-topped hat of stiff brown
straw, varnished so bright that it reflected the light of the office
windows like a helmet, and even from where he stood Dyke could hear his
loud breathing and the clink of the hollow links of his watch chain upon
the vest buttons of imitation pearl, as his stomach rose and fell.

Dyke looked at him with attention. There was the enemy, the
representative of the Trust with which Derrick’s League was locking
horns. The great struggle had begun to invest the combatants with
interest. Daily, almost hourly, Dyke was in touch with the ranchers,
the wheat-growers. He heard their denunciations, their growls of
exasperation and defiance. Here was the other side--this placid, fat
man, with a stiff straw hat and linen vest, who never lost his
temper, who smiled affably upon his enemies, giving them good advice,
commiserating with them in one defeat after another, never ruffled,
never excited, sure of his power, conscious that back of him was the
Machine, the colossal force, the inexhaustible coffers of a mighty
organisation, vomiting millions to the League’s thousands.

The League was clamorous, ubiquitous, its objects known to every urchin
on the streets, but the Trust was silent, its ways inscrutable, the
public saw only results. It worked on in the dark, calm, disciplined,
irresistible. Abruptly Dyke received the impression of the multitudinous
ramifications of the colossus. Under his feet the ground seemed mined;
down there below him in the dark the huge tentacles went silently
twisting and advancing, spreading out in every direction, sapping the
strength of all opposition, quiet, gradual, biding the time to reach up
and out and grip with a sudden unleashing of gigantic strength.

“I’ll be wanting some cars of you people before the summer is out,”
 observed Dyke to the clerk as he folded up and put away the order that
the other had handed him. He remembered perfectly well that he had
arranged the matter of transporting his crop some months before, but
his role of proprietor amused him and he liked to busy himself again and
again with the details of his undertaking.

“I suppose,” he added, “you’ll be able to give ‘em to me. There’ll be
a big wheat crop to move this year and I don’t want to be caught in any
car famine.”

“Oh, you’ll get your cars,” murmured the other.

“I’ll be the means of bringing business your way,” Dyke went on; “I’ve
done so well with my hops that there are a lot of others going into
the business next season. Suppose,” he continued, struck with an
idea, “suppose we went into some sort of pool, a sort of shippers’
organisation, could you give us special rates, cheaper rates--say a cent
and a half?”

The other looked up.

“A cent and a half! Say FOUR cents and a half and maybe I’ll talk
business with you.”

“Four cents and a half,” returned Dyke, “I don’t see it. Why, the
regular rate is only two cents.”

“No, it isn’t,” answered the clerk, looking him gravely in the eye,
“it’s five cents.”

“Well, there’s where you are wrong, m’son,” Dyke retorted, genially.
“You look it up. You’ll find the freight on hops from Bonneville
to ‘Frisco is two cents a pound for car load lots. You told me that
yourself last fall.”

“That was last fall,” observed the clerk. There was a silence. Dyke shot
a glance of suspicion at the other. Then, reassured, he remarked:

“You look it up. You’ll see I’m right.”

S. Behrman came forward and shook hands politely with the ex-engineer.

“Anything I can do for you, Mr. Dyke?”

Dyke explained. When he had done speaking, the clerk turned to S.
Behrman and observed, respectfully:

“Our regular rate on hops is five cents.”

“Yes,” answered S. Behrman, pausing to reflect; “yes, Mr. Dyke, that’s
right--five cents.”

The clerk brought forward a folder of yellow paper and handed it
to Dyke. It was inscribed at the top “Tariff Schedule No. 8,” and
underneath these words, in brackets, was a smaller inscription,
“SUPERSEDES NO. 7 OF AUG. 1”

“See for yourself,” said S. Behrman. He indicated an item under the head
of “Miscellany.”

“The following rates for carriage of hops in car load lots,” read Dyke,
“take effect June 1, and will remain in force until superseded by a
later tariff. Those quoted beyond Stockton are subject to changes in
traffic arrangements with carriers by water from that point.”

In the list that was printed below, Dyke saw that the rate for hops
between Bonneville or Guadalajara and San Francisco was five cents.

For a moment Dyke was confused. Then swiftly the matter became clear in
his mind. The Railroad had raised the freight on hops from two cents to
five.

All his calculations as to a profit on his little investment he had
based on a freight rate of two cents a pound. He was under contract to
deliver his crop. He could not draw back. The new rate ate up every cent
of his gains. He stood there ruined.

“Why, what do you mean?” he burst out. “You promised me a rate of two
cents and I went ahead with my business with that understanding. What do
you mean?”

S. Behrman and the clerk watched him from the other side of the counter.

“The rate is five cents,” declared the clerk doggedly.

“Well, that ruins me,” shouted Dyke. “Do you understand? I won’t make
fifty cents. MAKE! Why, I will OWE,--I’ll be--be--That ruins me, do you
understand?”

The other, raised a shoulder.

“We don’t force you to ship. You can do as you like. The rate is five
cents.”

“Well--but--damn you, I’m under contract to deliver. What am I going to
do? Why, you told me--you promised me a two-cent rate.”

“I don’t remember it,” said the clerk. “I don’t know anything about
that. But I know this; I know that hops have gone up. I know the German
crop was a failure and that the crop in New York wasn’t worth the
hauling. Hops have gone up to nearly a dollar. You don’t suppose we
don’t know that, do you, Mr. Dyke?”

“What’s the price of hops got to do with you?”

“It’s got THIS to do with us,” returned the other with a sudden
aggressiveness, “that the freight rate has gone up to meet the price.
We’re not doing business for our health. My orders are to raise your
rate to five cents, and I think you are getting off easy.”

Dyke stared in blank astonishment. For the moment, the audacity of
the affair was what most appealed to him. He forgot its personal
application.

“Good Lord,” he murmured, “good Lord! What will you people do next? Look
here. What’s your basis of applying freight rates, anyhow?” he suddenly
vociferated with furious sarcasm. “What’s your rule? What are you guided
by?”

But at the words, S. Behrman, who had kept silent during the heat of the
discussion, leaned abruptly forward. For the only time in his knowledge,
Dyke saw his face inflamed with anger and with the enmity and contempt
of all this farming element with whom he was contending.

“Yes, what’s your rule? What’s your basis?” demanded Dyke, turning
swiftly to him.

S. Behrman emphasised each word of his reply with a tap of one
forefinger on the counter before him:

“All--the--traffic--will--bear.”

The ex-engineer stepped back a pace, his fingers on the ledge of the
counter, to steady himself. He felt himself grow pale, his heart became
a mere leaden weight in his chest, inert, refusing to beat.

In a second the whole affair, in all its bearings, went speeding before
the eye of his imagination like the rapid unrolling of a panorama. Every
cent of his earnings was sunk in this hop business of his. More than
that, he had borrowed money to carry it on, certain of success--borrowed
of S. Behrman, offering his crop and his little home as security. Once
he failed to meet his obligations, S. Behrman would foreclose. Not only
would the Railroad devour every morsel of his profits, but also it would
take from him his home; at a blow he would be left penniless and without
a home. What would then become of his mother--and what would become
of the little tad? She, whom he had been planning to educate like a
veritable lady. For all that year he had talked of his ambition for his
little daughter to every one he met. All Bonneville knew of it. What
a mark for gibes he had made of himself. The workingman turned farmer!
What a target for jeers--he who had fancied he could elude the Railroad!
He remembered he had once said the great Trust had overlooked his little
enterprise, disdaining to plunder such small fry. He should have known
better than that. How had he ever imagined the Road would permit him to
make any money?

Anger was not in him yet; no rousing of the blind, white-hot wrath that
leaps to the attack with prehensile fingers, moved him. The blow merely
crushed, staggered, confused.

He stepped aside to give place to a coatless man in a pink shirt, who
entered, carrying in his hands an automatic door-closing apparatus.

“Where does this go?” inquired the man.

Dyke sat down for a moment on a seat that had been removed from a
worn-out railway car to do duty in Ruggles’s office. On the back of a
yellow envelope he made some vague figures with a stump of blue pencil,
multiplying, subtracting, perplexing himself with many errors.

S. Behrman, the clerk, and the man with the door-closing apparatus
involved themselves in a long argument, gazing intently at the top panel
of the door. The man who had come to fix the apparatus was unwilling to
guarantee it, unless a sign was put on the outside of the door, warning
incomers that the door was self-closing. This sign would cost fifteen
cents extra.

“But you didn’t say anything about this when the thing was ordered,”
 declared S. Behrman. “No, I won’t pay it, my friend. It’s an
overcharge.”

“You needn’t think,” observed the clerk, “that just because you are
dealing with the Railroad you are going to work us.”

Genslinger came in, accompanied by Delaney. S. Behrman and the
clerk, abruptly dismissing the man with the door-closing machine, put
themselves behind the counter and engaged in conversation with these
two. Genslinger introduced Delaney. The buster had a string of horses he
was shipping southward. No doubt he had come to make arrangements with
the Railroad in the matter of stock cars. The conference of the four men
was amicable in the extreme.

Dyke, studying the figures on the back of the envelope, came forward
again. Absorbed only in his own distress, he ignored the editor and the
cow-puncher.

“Say,” he hazarded, “how about this? I make out----

“We’ve told you what our rates are, Mr. Dyke,” exclaimed the clerk
angrily. “That’s all the arrangement we will make. Take it or leave it.”
 He turned again to Genslinger, giving the ex-engineer his back.

Dyke moved away and stood for a moment in the centre of the room,
staring at the figures on the envelope.

“I don’t see,” he muttered, “just what I’m going to do. No, I don’t see
what I’m going to do at all.”

Ruggles came in, bringing with him two other men in whom Dyke recognised
dummy buyers of the Los Muertos and Osterman ranchos. They brushed by
him, jostling his elbow, and as he went out of the door he heard them
exchange jovial greetings with Delaney, Genslinger, and S. Behrman.

Dyke went down the stairs to the street and proceeded onward aimlessly
in the direction of the Yosemite House, fingering the yellow envelope
and looking vacantly at the sidewalk.

There was a stoop to his massive shoulders. His great arms dangled
loosely at his sides, the palms of his hands open.

As he went along, a certain feeling of shame touched him. Surely his
predicament must be apparent to every passer-by. No doubt, every one
recognised the unsuccessful man in the very way he slouched along. The
young girls in lawns, muslins, and garden hats, returning from the Post
Office, their hands full of letters, must surely see in him the type of
the failure, the bankrupt.

Then brusquely his tardy rage flamed up. By God, NO, it was not his
fault; he had made no mistake. His energy, industry, and foresight had
been sound. He had been merely the object of a colossal trick, a sordid
injustice, a victim of the insatiate greed of the monster, caught and
choked by one of those millions of tentacles suddenly reaching up from
below, from out the dark beneath his feet, coiling around his throat,
throttling him, strangling him, sucking his blood. For a moment he
thought of the courts, but instantly laughed at the idea. What court was
immune from the power of the monster? Ah, the rage of helplessness, the
fury of impotence! No help, no hope,--ruined in a brief instant--he a
veritable giant, built of great sinews, powerful, in the full tide of
his manhood, having all his health, all his wits. How could he now
face his home? How could he tell his mother of this catastrophe?
And Sidney--the little tad; how could he explain to her this
wretchedness--how soften her disappointment? How keep the tears from
out her eyes--how keep alive her confidence in him--her faith in his
resources?

Bitter, fierce, ominous, his wrath loomed up in his heart. His fists
gripped tight together, his teeth clenched. Oh, for a moment to have
his hand upon the throat of S. Behrman, wringing the breath from him,
wrenching out the red life of him--staining the street with the blood
sucked from the veins of the People!

To the first friend that he met, Dyke told the tale of the tragedy,
and to the next, and to the next. The affair went from mouth to mouth,
spreading with electrical swiftness, overpassing and running ahead of
Dyke himself, so that by the time he reached the lobby of the Yosemite
House, he found his story awaiting him. A group formed about him. In
his immediate vicinity business for the instant was suspended. The group
swelled. One after another of his friends added themselves to it. Magnus
Derrick joined it, and Annixter. Again and again, Dyke recounted the
matter, beginning with the time when he was discharged from the same
corporation’s service for refusing to accept an unfair wage. His voice
quivered with exasperation; his heavy frame shook with rage; his eyes
were injected, bloodshot; his face flamed vermilion, while his deep
bass rumbled throughout the running comments of his auditors like the
thunderous reverberation of diapason.

From all points of view, the story was discussed by those who listened
to him, now in the heat of excitement, now calmly, judicially. One
verdict, however, prevailed. It was voiced by Annixter: “You’re stuck.
You can roar till you’re black in the face, but you can’t buck against
the Railroad. There’s nothing to be done.” “You can shoot the ruffian,
you can shoot S. Behrman,” clamoured one of the group. “Yes, sir; by the
Lord, you can shoot him.”

“Poor fool,” commented Annixter, turning away.

Nothing to be done. No, there was nothing to be done--not one thing.
Dyke, at last alone and driving his team out of the town, turned
the business confusedly over in his mind from end to end. Advice,
suggestion, even offers of financial aid had been showered upon him from
all directions. Friends were not wanting who heatedly presented to his
consideration all manner of ingenious plans, wonderful devices. They
were worthless. The tentacle held fast. He was stuck.

By degrees, as his wagon carried him farther out into the country, and
open empty fields, his anger lapsed, and the numbness of bewilderment
returned. He could not look one hour ahead into the future; could
formulate no plans even for the next day. He did not know what to do. He
was stuck.

With the limpness and inertia of a sack of sand, the reins slipping
loosely in his dangling fingers, his eyes fixed, staring between the
horses’ heads, he allowed himself to be carried aimlessly along. He
resigned himself. What did he care? What was the use of going on? He was
stuck.

The team he was driving had once belonged to the Los Muertos stables and
unguided as the horses were, they took the county road towards Derrick’s
ranch house. Dyke, all abroad, was unaware of the fact till, drawn
by the smell of water, the horses halted by the trough in front of
Caraher’s saloon.

The ex-engineer dismounted, looking about him, realising where he was.
So much the worse; it did not matter. Now that he had come so far it was
as short to go home by this route as to return on his tracks. Slowly he
unchecked the horses and stood at their heads, watching them drink.

“I don’t see,” he muttered, “just what I am going to do.”

Caraher appeared at the door of his place, his red face, red beard, and
flaming cravat standing sharply out from the shadow of the doorway. He
called a welcome to Dyke.

“Hello, Captain.”

Dyke looked up, nodding his head listlessly.

“Hello, Caraher,” he answered.

“Well,” continued the saloonkeeper, coming forward a step, “what’s the
news in town?”

Dyke told him. Caraher’s red face suddenly took on a darker colour. The
red glint in his eyes shot from under his eyebrows. Furious, he vented a
rolling explosion of oaths.

“And now it’s your turn,” he vociferated. “They ain’t after only the big
wheat-growers, the rich men. By God, they’ll even pick the poor man’s
pocket. Oh, they’ll get their bellies full some day. It can’t last
forever. They’ll wake up the wrong kind of man some morning, the man
that’s got guts in him, that will hit back when he’s kicked and that
will talk to ‘em with a torch in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the
other.” He raised his clenched fists in the air. “So help me, God,”
 he cried, “when I think it all over I go crazy, I see red. Oh, if the
people only knew their strength. Oh, if I could wake ‘em up. There’s not
only Shelgrim, but there’s others. All the magnates, all the butchers,
all the blood-suckers, by the thousands. Their day will come, by God, it
will.”

By now, the ex-engineer and the bar-keeper had retired to the saloon
back of the grocery to talk over the details of this new outrage. Dyke,
still a little dazed, sat down by one of the tables, preoccupied, saying
but little, and Caraher as a matter of course set the whiskey bottle at
his elbow.

It happened that at this same moment, Presley, returning to Los Muertos
from Bonneville, his pockets full of mail, stopped in at the grocery to
buy some black lead for his bicycle. In the saloon, on the other side
of the narrow partition, he overheard the conversation between Dyke and
Caraher. The door was open. He caught every word distinctly.

“Tell us all about it, Dyke,” urged Caraher.

For the fiftieth time Dyke told the story. Already it had crystallised
into a certain form. He used the same phrases with each repetition, the
same sentences, the same words. In his mind it became set. Thus he would
tell it to any one who would listen from now on, week after week, year
after year, all the rest of his life--“And I based my calculations on a
two-cent rate. So soon as they saw I was to make money they doubled
the tariff--all the traffic would bear--and I mortgaged to S.
Behrman--ruined me with a turn of the hand--stuck, cinched, and not one
thing to be done.”

As he talked, he drank glass after glass of whiskey, and the honest
rage, the open, above-board fury of his mind coagulated, thickened, and
sunk to a dull, evil hatred, a wicked, oblique malevolence. Caraher,
sure now of winning a disciple, replenished his glass.

“Do you blame us now,” he cried, “us others, the Reds? Ah, yes, it’s
all very well for your middle class to preach moderation. I could do it,
too. You could do it, too, if your belly was fed, if your property
was safe, if your wife had not been murdered if your children were not
starving. Easy enough then to preach law-abiding methods, legal redress,
and all such rot. But how about US?” he vociferated. “Ah, yes, I’m a
loud-mouthed rum-seller, ain’t I? I’m a wild-eyed striker, ain’t I?
I’m a blood-thirsty anarchist, ain’t I? Wait till you’ve seen your
wife brought home to you with the face you used to kiss smashed in by a
horse’s hoof--killed by the Trust, as it happened to me. Then talk about
moderation! And you, Dyke, black-listed engineer, discharged employee,
ruined agriculturist, wait till you see your little tad and your mother
turned out of doors when S. Behrman forecloses. Wait till you see ‘em
getting thin and white, and till you hear your little girl ask you why
you all don’t eat a little more and that she wants her dinner and you
can’t give it to her. Wait till you see--at the same time that
your family is dying for lack of bread--a hundred thousand acres of
wheat--millions of bushels of food--grabbed and gobbled by the Railroad
Trust, and then talk of moderation. That talk is just what the Trust
wants to hear. It ain’t frightened of that. There’s one thing only it
does listen to, one thing it is frightened of--the people with dynamite
in their hands,--six inches of plugged gaspipe. THAT talks.”

Dyke did not reply. He filled another pony of whiskey and drank it in
two gulps. His frown had lowered to a scowl, his face was a dark red,
his head had sunk, bull-like, between his massive shoulders; without
winking he gazed long and with troubled eyes at his knotted, muscular
hands, lying open on the table before him, idle, their occupation gone.

Presley forgot his black lead. He listened to Caraher. Through the open
door he caught a glimpse of Dyke’s back, broad, muscled, bowed down, the
great shoulders stooping.

The whole drama of the doubled freight rate leaped salient and distinct
in the eye of his mind. And this was but one instance, an isolated case.
Because he was near at hand he happened to see it. How many others were
there, the length and breadth of the State? Constantly this sort of
thing must occur--little industries choked out in their very beginnings,
the air full of the death rattles of little enterprises, expiring
unobserved in far-off counties, up in canyons and arroyos of the
foothills, forgotten by every one but the monster who was daunted by the
magnitude of no business, however great, who overlooked no opportunity
of plunder, however petty, who with one tentacle grabbed a hundred
thousand acres of wheat, and with another pilfered a pocketful of
growing hops.

He went away without a word, his head bent, his hands clutched tightly
on the cork grips of the handle bars of his bicycle. His lips were
white. In his heart a blind demon of revolt raged tumultuous, shrieking
blasphemies.

At Los Muertos, Presley overtook Annixter. As he guided his wheel up the
driveway to Derrick’s ranch house, he saw the master of Quien Sabe and
Harran in conversation on the steps of the porch. Magnus stood in the
doorway, talking to his wife.

Occupied with the press of business and involved in the final conference
with the League’s lawyers on the eve of the latter’s departure for
Washington, Annixter had missed the train that was to take him back to
Guadalajara and Quien Sabe. Accordingly, he had accepted the Governor’s
invitation to return with him on his buck-board to Los Muertos, and
before leaving Bonneville had telephoned to his ranch to have young
Vacca bring the buckskin, by way of the Lower Road, to meet him at
Los Muertos. He found her waiting there for him, but before going on,
delayed a few moments to tell Harran of Dyke’s affair.

“I wonder what he will do now?” observed Harran when his first outburst
of indignation had subsided.

“Nothing,” declared Annixter. “He’s stuck.”

“That eats up every cent of Dyke’s earnings,” Harran went on. “He has
been ten years saving them. Oh, I told him to make sure of the Railroad
when he first spoke to me about growing hops.”

“I’ve just seen him,” said Presley, as he joined the others. “He was at
Caraher’s. I only saw his back. He was drinking at a table and his back
was towards me. But the man looked broken--absolutely crushed. It is
terrible, terrible.”

“He was at Caraher’s, was he?” demanded Annixter.

“Yes.”

“Drinking, hey?”

“I think so. Yes, I saw a bottle.”

“Drinking at Caraher’s,” exclaimed Annixter, rancorously; “I can see HIS
finish.”

There was a silence. It seemed as if nothing more was to be said. They
paused, looking thoughtfully on the ground.

In silence, grim, bitter, infinitely sad, the three men as if at that
moment actually standing in the bar-room of Caraher’s roadside saloon,
contemplated the slow sinking, the inevitable collapse and submerging
of one of their companions, the wreck of a career, the ruin of an
individual; an honest man, strong, fearless, upright, struck down by a
colossal power, perverted by an evil influence, go reeling to his ruin.

“I see his finish,” repeated Annixter. “Exit Dyke, and score another
tally for S. Behrman, Shelgrim and Co.”

He moved away impatiently, loosening the tie-rope with which the
buckskin was fastened. He swung himself up.

“God for us all,” he declared as he rode away, “and the devil take the
hindmost. Good-bye, I’m going home. I still have one a little longer.”

He galloped away along the Lower Road, in the direction of Quien Sabe,
emerging from the grove of cypress and eucalyptus about the ranch house,
and coming out upon the bare brown plain of the wheat land, stretching
away from him in apparent barrenness on either hand.

It was late in the day, already his shadow was long upon the padded dust
of the road in front of him. On ahead, a long ways off, and a little to
the north, the venerable campanile of the Mission San Juan was glinting
radiant in the last rays of the sun, while behind him, towards the
north and west, the gilded dome of the courthouse at Bonneville stood
silhouetted in purplish black against the flaming west. Annixter spurred
the buck-skin forward. He feared he might be late to his supper. He
wondered if it would be brought to him by Hilma.

Hilma! The name struck across in his brain with a pleasant, glowing
tremour. All through that day of activity, of strenuous business, the
minute and cautious planning of the final campaign in the great war of
the League and the Trust, the idea of her and the recollection of her
had been the undercurrent of his thoughts. At last he was alone. He
could put all other things behind him and occupy himself solely with
her.

In that glory of the day’s end, in that chaos of sunshine, he saw her
again. Unimaginative, crude, direct, his fancy, nevertheless, placed
her before him, steeped in sunshine, saturated with glorious light,
brilliant, radiant, alluring. He saw the sweet simplicity of her
carriage, the statuesque evenness of the contours of her figure, the
single, deep swell of her bosom, the solid masses of her hair. He
remembered the small contradictory suggestions of feminine daintiness he
had so often remarked about her, her slim, narrow feet, the little steel
buckles of her low shoes, the knot of black ribbon she had begun to wear
of late on the back of her head, and he heard her voice, low-pitched,
velvety, a sweet, murmuring huskiness that seemed to come more from her
chest than from her throat.

The buckskin’s hoofs clattered upon the gravelly flats of Broderson’s
Creek underneath the Long Trestle. Annixter’s mind went back to the
scene of the previous evening, when he had come upon her at this place.
He set his teeth with anger and disappointment. Why had she not been
able to understand? What was the matter with these women, always set
upon this marrying notion? Was it not enough that he wanted her more
than any other girl he knew and that she wanted him? She had said as
much. Did she think she was going to be mistress of Quien Sabe? Ah, that
was it. She was after his property, was for marrying him because of his
money. His unconquerable suspicion of the woman, his innate distrust
of the feminine element would not be done away with. What fathomless
duplicity was hers, that she could appear so innocent. It was almost
unbelievable; in fact, was it believable?

For the first time doubt assailed him. Suppose Hilma was indeed all
that she appeared to be. Suppose it was not with her a question of his
property, after all; it was a poor time to think of marrying him for his
property when all Quien Sabe hung in the issue of the next few months.
Suppose she had been sincere. But he caught himself up. Was he to be
fooled by a feemale girl at this late date? He, Buck Annixter, crafty,
hard-headed, a man of affairs? Not much. Whatever transpired he would
remain the master.

He reached Quien Sabe in this frame of mind. But at this hour, Annixter,
for all his resolutions, could no longer control his thoughts. As he
stripped the saddle from the buckskin and led her to the watering trough
by the stable corral, his heart was beating thick at the very notion
of being near Hilma again. It was growing dark, but covertly he glanced
here and there out of the corners of his eyes to see if she was anywhere
about. Annixter--how, he could not tell--had become possessed of the
idea that Hilma would not inform her parents of what had passed between
them the previous evening under the Long Trestle. He had no idea that
matters were at an end between himself and the young woman. He must
apologise, he saw that clearly enough, must eat crow, as he told
himself. Well, he would eat crow. He was not afraid of her any longer,
now that she had made her confession to him. He would see her as soon as
possible and get this business straightened out, and begin again from a
new starting point. What he wanted with Hilma, Annixter did not define
clearly in his mind. At one time he had known perfectly well what he
wanted. Now, the goal of his desires had become vague. He could not say
exactly what it was. He preferred that things should go forward without
much idea of consequences; if consequences came, they would do so
naturally enough, and of themselves; all that he positively knew was
that Hilma occupied his thoughts morning, noon, and night; that he was
happy when he was with her, and miserable when away from her.

The Chinese cook served his supper in silence. Annixter ate and drank
and lighted a cigar, and after his meal sat on the porch of his house,
smoking and enjoying the twilight. The evening was beautiful, warm, the
sky one powder of stars. From the direction of the stables he heard one
of the Portuguese hands picking a guitar.

But he wanted to see Hilma. The idea of going to bed without at least a
glimpse of her became distasteful to him. Annixter got up and descending
from the porch began to walk aimlessly about between the ranch
buildings, with eye and ear alert. Possibly he might meet her
somewheres.

The Trees’ little house, toward which inevitably Annixter directed
his steps, was dark. Had they all gone to bed so soon? He made a
wide circuit about it, listening, but heard no sound. The door of the
dairy-house stood ajar. He pushed it open, and stepped into the odorous
darkness of its interior. The pans and deep cans of polished metal
glowed faintly from the corners and from the walls. The smell of new
cheese was pungent in his nostrils. Everything was quiet. There was
nobody there. He went out again, closing the door, and stood for a
moment in the space between the dairy-house and the new barn, uncertain
as to what he should do next.

As he waited there, his foreman came out of the men’s bunk house, on the
other side of the kitchens, and crossed over toward the barn. “Hello,
Billy,” muttered Annixter as he passed.

“Oh, good evening, Mr. Annixter,” said the other, pausing in front of
him. “I didn’t know you were back. By the way,” he added, speaking as
though the matter was already known to Annixter, “I see old man Tree and
his family have left us. Are they going to be gone long? Have they left
for good?”

“What’s that?” Annixter exclaimed. “When did they go? Did all of them
go, all three?”

“Why, I thought you knew. Sure, they all left on the afternoon train for
San Francisco. Cleared out in a hurry--took all their trunks. Yes, all
three went--the young lady, too. They gave me notice early this morning.
They ain’t ought to have done that. I don’t know who I’m to get to run
the dairy on such short notice. Do you know any one, Mr. Annixter?”

“Well, why in hell did you let them go?” vociferated Annixter. “Why
didn’t you keep them here till I got back? Why didn’t you find out if
they were going for good? I can’t be everywhere. What do I feed you for
if it ain’t to look after things I can’t attend to?”

He turned on his heel and strode away straight before him, not caring
where he was going. He tramped out from the group of ranch buildings;
holding on over the open reach of his ranch, his teeth set, his heels
digging furiously into the ground. The minutes passed. He walked on
swiftly, muttering to himself from time to time.

“Gone, by the Lord. Gone, by the Lord. By the Lord Harry, she’s cleared
out.”

As yet his head was empty of all thought. He could not steady his wits
to consider this new turn of affairs. He did not even try.

“Gone, by the Lord,” he exclaimed. “By the Lord, she’s cleared out.”

He found the irrigating ditch, and the beaten path made by the ditch
tenders that bordered it, and followed it some five minutes; then struck
off at right angles over the rugged surface of the ranch land, to where
a great white stone jutted from the ground. There he sat down, and
leaning forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked out vaguely
into the night, his thoughts swiftly readjusting themselves.

He was alone. The silence of the night, the infinite repose of the
flat, bare earth--two immensities--widened around and above him like
illimitable seas. A grey half-light, mysterious, grave, flooded downward
from the stars.

Annixter was in torment. Now, there could be no longer any doubt--now it
was Hilma or nothing. Once out of his reach, once lost to him, and the
recollection of her assailed him with unconquerable vehemence. Much as
she had occupied his mind, he had never realised till now how vast had
been the place she had filled in his life. He had told her as much, but
even then he did not believe it.

Suddenly, a bitter rage against himself overwhelmed him as he thought of
the hurt he had given her the previous evening. He should have managed
differently. How, he did not know, but the sense of the outrage he had
put upon her abruptly recoiled against him with cruel force. Now, he was
sorry for it, infinitely sorry, passionately sorry. He had hurt her.
He had brought the tears to her eyes. He had so flagrantly insulted her
that she could no longer bear to breathe the same air with him. She had
told her parents all. She had left Quien Sabe--had left him for good,
at the very moment when he believed he had won her. Brute, beast that he
was, he had driven her away.

An hour went by; then two, then four, then six. Annixter still sat in
his place, groping and battling in a confusion of spirit, the like of
which he had never felt before. He did not know what was the matter with
him. He could not find his way out of the dark and out of the turmoil
that wheeled around him. He had had no experience with women. There was
no precedent to guide him. How was he to get out of this? What was the
clew that would set everything straight again?

That he would give Hilma up, never once entered his head. Have her he
would. She had given herself to him. Everything should have been easy
after that, and instead, here he was alone in the night, wrestling with
himself, in deeper trouble than ever, and Hilma farther than ever away
from him.

It was true, he might have Hilma, even now, if he was willing to marry
her. But marriage, to his mind, had been always a vague, most remote
possibility, almost as vague and as remote as his death,--a thing that
happened to some men, but that would surely never occur to him, or, if
it did, it would be after long years had passed, when he was older, more
settled, more mature--an event that belonged to the period of his middle
life, distant as yet.

He had never faced the question of his marriage. He had kept it at an
immense distance from him. It had never been a part of his order of
things. He was not a marrying man.

But Hilma was an ever-present reality, as near to him as his right hand.
Marriage was a formless, far distant abstraction. Hilma a tangible,
imminent fact. Before he could think of the two as one; before he could
consider the idea of marriage, side by side with the idea of Hilma,
measureless distances had to be traversed, things as disassociated in
his mind as fire and water, had to be fused together; and between the
two he was torn as if upon a rack.

Slowly, by imperceptible degrees, the imagination, unused, unwilling
machine, began to work. The brain’s activity lapsed proportionately.
He began to think less, and feel more. In that rugged composition,
confused, dark, harsh, a furrow had been driven deep, a little seed
planted, a little seed at first weak, forgotten, lost in the lower dark
places of his character.

But as the intellect moved slower, its functions growing numb, the
idea of self dwindled. Annixter no longer considered himself; no longer
considered the notion of marriage from the point of view of his own
comfort, his own wishes, his own advantage. He realised that in his
newfound desire to make her happy, he was sincere. There was something
in that idea, after all. To make some one happy--how about that now? It
was worth thinking of.

Far away, low down in the east, a dim belt, a grey light began to whiten
over the horizon. The tower of the Mission stood black against it. The
dawn was coming. The baffling obscurity of the night was passing. Hidden
things were coming into view.

Annixter, his eyes half-closed, his chin upon his fist, allowed his
imagination full play. How would it be if he should take Hilma into
his life, this beautiful young girl, pure as he now knew her to be;
innocent, noble with the inborn nobility of dawning womanhood? An
overwhelming sense of his own unworthiness suddenly bore down upon him
with crushing force, as he thought of this. He had gone about the
whole affair wrongly. He had been mistaken from the very first. She was
infinitely above him. He did not want--he should not desire to be the
master. It was she, his servant, poor, simple, lowly even, who should
condescend to him.

Abruptly there was presented to his mind’s eye a picture of the years to
come, if he now should follow his best, his highest, his most unselfish
impulse. He saw Hilma, his own, for better or for worse, for richer or
for poorer, all barriers down between them, he giving himself to her as
freely, as nobly, as she had given herself to him. By a supreme effort,
not of the will, but of the emotion, he fought his way across that
vast gulf that for a time had gaped between Hilma and the idea of his
marriage. Instantly, like the swift blending of beautiful colours, like
the harmony of beautiful chords of music, the two ideas melted into one,
and in that moment into his harsh, unlovely world a new idea was born.
Annixter stood suddenly upright, a mighty tenderness, a gentleness
of spirit, such as he had never conceived of, in his heart strained,
swelled, and in a moment seemed to burst. Out of the dark furrows of
his soul, up from the deep rugged recesses of his being, something rose,
expanding. He opened his arms wide. An immense happiness overpowered
him. Actual tears came to his eyes. Without knowing why, he was not
ashamed of it. This poor, crude fellow, harsh, hard, narrow, with his
unlovely nature, his fierce truculency, his selfishness, his obstinacy,
abruptly knew that all the sweetness of life, all the great vivifying
eternal force of humanity had burst into life within him.

The little seed, long since planted, gathering strength quietly, had at
last germinated.

Then as the realisation of this hardened into certainty, in the growing
light of the new day that had just dawned for him, Annixter uttered a
cry. Now at length, he knew the meaning of it all.

“Why--I--I, I LOVE her,” he cried. Never until then had it occurred to
him. Never until then, in all his thoughts of Hilma, had that great word
passed his lips.

It was a Memnonian cry, the greeting of the hard, harsh image of man,
rough-hewn, flinty, granitic, uttering a note of joy, acclaiming the new
risen sun.

By now it was almost day. The east glowed opalescent. All about him
Annixter saw the land inundated with light. But there was a change.
Overnight something had occurred. In his perturbation the change seemed
to him, at first, elusive, almost fanciful, unreal. But now as the light
spread, he looked again at the gigantic scroll of ranch lands unrolled
before him from edge to edge of the horizon. The change was not
fanciful. The change was real. The earth was no longer bare. The land
was no longer barren,--no longer empty, no longer dull brown. All at
once Annixter shouted aloud.

There it was, the Wheat, the Wheat! The little seed long planted,
germinating in the deep, dark furrows of the soil, straining, swelling,
suddenly in one night had burst upward to the light. The wheat had
come up. It was there before him, around him, everywhere, illimitable,
immeasurable. The winter brownness of the ground was overlaid with a
little shimmer of green. The promise of the sowing was being fulfilled.
The earth, the loyal mother, who never failed, who never disappointed,
was keeping her faith again. Once more the strength of nations was
renewed. Once more the force of the world was revivified. Once more
the Titan, benignant, calm, stirred and woke, and the morning abruptly
blazed into glory upon the spectacle of a man whose heart leaped
exuberant with the love of a woman, and an exulting earth gleaming
transcendent with the radiant magnificence of an inviolable pledge.



CHAPTER III


Presley’s room in the ranch house of Los Muertos was in the second story
of the building. It was a corner room; one of its windows facing the
south, the other the east. Its appointments were of the simplest. In
one angle was the small white painted iron bed, covered with a white
counterpane. The walls were hung with a white paper figured with knots
of pale green leaves, very gay and bright. There was a straw matting
on the floor. White muslin half-curtains hung in the windows, upon
the sills of which certain plants bearing pink waxen flowers of which
Presley did not know the name, grew in oblong green boxes. The walls
were unadorned, save by two pictures, one a reproduction of the “Reading
from Homer,” the other a charcoal drawing of the Mission of San Juan de
Guadalajara, which Presley had made himself. By the east window stood
the plainest of deal tables, innocent of any cloth or covering, such as
might have been used in a kitchen. It was Presley’s work table, and was
invariably littered with papers, half-finished manuscripts, drafts of
poems, notebooks, pens, half-smoked cigarettes, and the like. Near at
hand, upon a shelf, were his books. There were but two chairs in the
room--the straight backed wooden chair, that stood in front of the
table, angular, upright, and in which it was impossible to take one’s
ease, and the long comfortable wicker steamer chair, stretching its
length in front of the south window. Presley was immensely fond of
this room. It amused and interested him to maintain its air of rigorous
simplicity and freshness. He abhorred cluttered bric-a-brac and
meaningless objets d’art. Once in so often he submitted his room to a
vigorous inspection; setting it to rights, removing everything but the
essentials, the few ornaments which, in a way, were part of his life.

His writing had by this time undergone a complete change. The notes for
his great Song of the West, the epic poem he once had hoped to write
he had flung aside, together with all the abortive attempts at its
beginning. Also he had torn up a great quantity of “fugitive” verses,
preserving only a certain half-finished poem, that he called “The
Toilers.” This poem was a comment upon the social fabric, and had been
inspired by the sight of a painting he had seen in Cedarquist’s art
gallery. He had written all but the last verse.

On the day that he had overheard the conversation between Dyke and
Caraher, in the latter’s saloon, which had acquainted him with the
monstrous injustice of the increased tariff, Presley had returned to Los
Muertos, white and trembling, roused to a pitch of exaltation, the like
of which he had never known in all his life. His wrath was little short
of even Caraher’s. He too “saw red”; a mighty spirit of revolt heaved
tumultuous within him. It did not seem possible that this outrage could
go on much longer. The oppression was incredible; the plain story of
it set down in truthful statement of fact would not be believed by the
outside world.

He went up to his little room and paced the floor with clenched fists
and burning face, till at last, the repression of his contending
thoughts all but suffocated him, and he flung himself before his table
and began to write. For a time, his pen seemed to travel of itself;
words came to him without searching, shaping themselves into
phrases,--the phrases building themselves up to great, forcible
sentences, full of eloquence, of fire, of passion. As his prose grew
more exalted, it passed easily into the domain of poetry. Soon the
cadence of his paragraphs settled to an ordered beat and rhythm, and in
the end Presley had thrust aside his journal and was once more writing
verse.

He picked up his incomplete poem of “The Toilers,” read it hastily a
couple of times to catch its swing, then the Idea of the last verse--the
Idea for which he so long had sought in vain--abruptly springing to his
brain, wrote it off without so much as replenishing his pen with ink.
He added still another verse, bringing the poem to a definite close,
resuming its entire conception, and ending with a single majestic
thought, simple, noble, dignified, absolutely convincing.

Presley laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair, with the
certainty that for one moment he had touched untrod heights. His hands
were cold, his head on fire, his heart leaping tumultuous in his breast.

Now at last, he had achieved. He saw why he had never grasped the
inspiration for his vast, vague, IMPERSONAL Song of the West. At the
time when he sought for it, his convictions had not been aroused; he
had not then cared for the People. His sympathies had not been touched.
Small wonder that he had missed it. Now he was of the People; he had
been stirred to his lowest depths. His earnestness was almost a frenzy.
He BELIEVED, and so to him all things were possible at once.

Then the artist in him reasserted itself. He became more interested in
his poem, as such, than in the cause that had inspired it. He went over
it again, retouching it carefully, changing a word here and there, and
improving its rhythm. For the moment, he forgot the People, forgot his
rage, his agitation of the previous hour, he remembered only that he had
written a great poem.

Then doubt intruded. After all, was it so great? Did not its sublimity
overpass a little the bounds of the ridiculous? Had he seen true? Had he
failed again? He re-read the poem carefully; and it seemed all at once
to lose force.

By now, Presley could not tell whether what he had written was true
poetry or doggerel. He distrusted profoundly his own judgment. He must
have the opinion of some one else, some one competent to judge. He could
not wait; to-morrow would not do. He must know to a certainty before he
could rest that night.

He made a careful copy of what he had written, and putting on his hat
and laced boots, went down stairs and out upon the lawn, crossing over
to the stables. He found Phelps there, washing down the buckboard.

“Do you know where Vanamee is to-day?” he asked the latter. Phelps put
his chin in the air.

“Ask me something easy,” he responded. “He might be at Guadalajara, or
he might be up at Osterman’s, or he might be a hundred miles away from
either place. I know where he ought to be, Mr. Presley, but that ain’t
saying where the crazy gesabe is. He OUGHT to be range-riding over east
of Four, at the head waters of Mission Creek.”

“I’ll try for him there, at all events,” answered Presley. “If you see
Harran when he comes in, tell him I may not be back in time for supper.”

Presley found the pony in the corral, cinched the saddle upon him, and
went off over the Lower Road, going eastward at a brisk canter.

At Hooven’s he called a “How do you do” to Minna, whom he saw lying in a
slat hammock under the mammoth live oak, her foot in bandages; and
then galloped on over the bridge across the irrigating ditch, wondering
vaguely what would become of such a pretty girl as Minna, and if in
the end she would marry the Portuguese foreman in charge of the
ditching-gang. He told himself that he hoped she would, and that
speedily. There was no lack of comment as to Minna Hooven about the
ranches. Certainly she was a good girl, but she was seen at all hours
here and there about Bonneville and Guadalajara, skylarking with the
Portuguese farm hands of Quien Sabe and Los Muertos. She was very
pretty; the men made fools of themselves over her. Presley hoped they
would not end by making a fool of her.

Just beyond the irrigating ditch, Presley left the Lower Road, and
following a trail that branched off southeasterly from this point, held
on across the Fourth Division of the ranch, keeping the Mission Creek
on his left. A few miles farther on, he went through a gate in a barbed
wire fence, and at once engaged himself in a system of little arroyos
and low rolling hills, that steadily lifted and increased in size as
he proceeded. This higher ground was the advance guard of the Sierra
foothills, and served as the stock range for Los Muertos. The hills were
huge rolling hummocks of bare ground, covered only by wild oats. At
long intervals, were isolated live oaks. In the canyons and arroyos, the
chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets. The ground
was honey-combed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were
everywhere. Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one
growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect. High
overhead, a hawk or two swung at anchor, and once, with a startling rush
of wings, a covey of quail flushed from the brush at the side of the
trail.

On the hillsides, in thinly scattered groups were the cattle, grazing
deliberately, working slowly toward the water-holes for their evening
drink, the horses keeping to themselves, the colts nuzzling at their
mothers’ bellies, whisking their tails, stamping their unshod feet. But
once in a remoter field, solitary, magnificent, enormous, the short hair
curling tight upon his forehead, his small red eyes twinkling, his vast
neck heavy with muscles, Presley came upon the monarch, the king,
the great Durham bull, maintaining his lonely state, unapproachable,
austere.

Presley found the one-time shepherd by a water-hole, in a far distant
corner of the range. He had made his simple camp for the night. His
blue-grey army blanket lay spread under a live oak, his horse grazed
near at hand. He himself sat on his heels before a little fire of
dead manzanita roots, cooking his coffee and bacon. Never had Presley
conceived so keen an impression of loneliness as his crouching figure
presented. The bald, bare landscape widened about him to infinity.
Vanamee was a spot in it all, a tiny dot, a single atom of human
organisation, floating endlessly on the ocean of an illimitable nature.

The two friends ate together, and Vanamee, having snared a brace of
quails, dressed and then roasted them on a sharpened stick. After
eating, they drank great refreshing draughts from the water-hole. Then,
at length, Presley having lit his cigarette, and Vanamee his pipe, the
former said:

“Vanamee, I have been writing again.”

Vanamee turned his lean ascetic face toward him, his black eyes fixed
attentively.

“I know,” he said, “your journal.”

“No, this is a poem. You remember, I told you about it once. ‘The
Toilers,’ I called it.”

“Oh, verse! Well, I am glad you have gone back to it. It is your natural
vehicle.”

“You remember the poem?” asked Presley. “It was unfinished.”

“Yes, I remember it. There was better promise in it than anything you
ever wrote. Now, I suppose, you have finished it.”

Without reply, Presley brought it from out the breast pocket of his
shooting coat. The moment seemed propitious. The stillness of the vast,
bare hills was profound. The sun was setting in a cloudless brazier of
red light; a golden dust pervaded all the landscape. Presley read his
poem aloud. When he had finished, his friend looked at him.

“What have you been doing lately?” he demanded. Presley, wondering, told
of his various comings and goings.

“I don’t mean that,” returned the other. “Something has happened to you,
something has aroused you. I am right, am I not? Yes, I thought so. In
this poem of yours, you have not been trying to make a sounding piece of
literature. You wrote it under tremendous stress. Its very imperfections
show that. It is better than a mere rhyme. It is an Utterance--a
Message. It is Truth. You have come back to the primal heart of things,
and you have seen clearly. Yes, it is a great poem.”

“Thank you,” exclaimed Presley fervidly. “I had begun to mistrust
myself.”

“Now,” observed Vanamee, “I presume you will rush it into print. To have
formulated a great thought, simply to have accomplished, is not enough.”

“I think I am sincere,” objected Presley. “If it is good it will do good
to others. You said yourself it was a Message. If it has any value, I do
not think it would be right to keep it back from even a very small and
most indifferent public.”

“Don’t publish it in the magazines at all events,” Vanamee answered.
“Your inspiration has come FROM the People. Then let it go straight TO
the People--not the literary readers of the monthly periodicals, the
rich, who would only be indirectly interested. If you must publish it,
let it be in the daily press. Don’t interrupt. I know what you will say.
It will be that the daily press is common, is vulgar, is undignified;
and I tell you that such a poem as this of yours, called as it is, ‘The
Toilers,’ must be read BY the Toilers. It MUST BE common; it must be
vulgarised. You must not stand upon your dignity with the People, if you
are to reach them.”

“That is true, I suppose,” Presley admitted, “but I can’t get rid of the
idea that it would be throwing my poem away. The great magazine gives me
such--a--background; gives me such weight.”

“Gives YOU such weight, gives you such background. Is it YOURSELF you
think of? You helper of the helpless. Is that your sincerity? You must
sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of
admitted success. It is your POEM, your MESSAGE, that must
prevail,--not YOU, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of
self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the
tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem,
but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer
writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the
proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of
the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale of his book.”

But Presley would hear no further.

“No,” he cried, “I know I am sincere, and to prove it to you, I will
publish my poem, as you say, in the daily press, and I will accept no
money for it.”

They talked on for about an hour, while the evening wore away. Presley
very soon noticed that Vanamee was again preoccupied. More than ever
of late, his silence, his brooding had increased. By and by he rose
abruptly, turning his head to the north, in the direction of the Mission
church of San Juan. “I think,” he said to Presley, “that I must be
going.”

“Going? Where to at this time of night?”

“Off there.” Vanamee made an uncertain gesture toward the north.
“Good-bye,” and without another word he disappeared in the grey of the
twilight. Presley was left alone wondering. He found his horse, and,
tightening the girths, mounted and rode home under the sheen of the
stars, thoughtful, his head bowed. Before he went to bed that night
he sent “The Toilers” to the Sunday Editor of a daily newspaper in San
Francisco.

Upon leaving Presley, Vanamee, his thumbs hooked into his empty
cartridge belt, strode swiftly down from the hills of the Los Muertos
stock-range and on through the silent town of Guadalajara. His lean,
swarthy face, with its hollow cheeks, fine, black, pointed beard,
and sad eyes, was set to the northward. As was his custom, he was
bareheaded, and the rapidity of his stride made a breeze in his long,
black hair. He knew where he was going. He knew what he must live
through that night.

Again, the deathless grief that never slept leaped out of the shadows,
and fastened upon his shoulders. It was scourging him back to that scene
of a vanished happiness, a dead romance, a perished idyl,--the Mission
garden in the shade of the venerable pear trees.

But, besides this, other influences tugged at his heart. There was a
mystery in the garden. In that spot the night was not always empty, the
darkness not always silent. Something far off stirred and listened to
his cry, at times drawing nearer to him. At first this presence had
been a matter for terror; but of late, as he felt it gradually drawing
nearer, the terror had at long intervals given place to a feeling of an
almost ineffable sweetness. But distrusting his own senses, unwilling
to submit himself to such torturing, uncertain happiness, averse to the
terrible confusion of spirit that followed upon a night spent in the
garden, Vanamee had tried to keep away from the place. However, when the
sorrow of his life reassailed him, and the thoughts and recollections of
Angele brought the ache into his heart, and the tears to his eyes, the
temptation to return to the garden invariably gripped him close. There
were times when he could not resist. Of themselves, his footsteps turned
in that direction. It was almost as if he himself had been called.

Guadalajara was silent, dark. Not even in Solotari’s was there a light.
The town was asleep. Only the inevitable guitar hummed from an unseen
‘dobe. Vanamee pushed on. The smell of the fields and open country, and
a distant scent of flowers that he knew well, came to his nostrils,
as he emerged from the town by way of the road that led on towards the
Mission through Quien Sabe. On either side of him lay the brown earth,
silently nurturing the implanted seed. Two days before it had rained
copiously, and the soil, still moist, disengaged a pungent aroma of
fecundity.

Vanamee, following the road, passed through the collection of buildings
of Annixter’s home ranch. Everything slept. At intervals, the aer-motor
on the artesian well creaked audibly, as it turned in a languid breeze
from the northeast. A cat, hunting field-mice, crept from the shadow
of the gigantic barn and paused uncertainly in the open, the tip of
her tail twitching. From within the barn itself came the sound of the
friction of a heavy body and a stir of hoofs, as one of the dozing cows
lay down with a long breath.

Vanamee left the ranch house behind him and proceeded on his way. Beyond
him, to the right of the road, he could make out the higher ground in
the Mission enclosure, and the watching tower of the Mission itself. The
minutes passed. He went steadily forward. Then abruptly he paused, his
head in the air, eye and ear alert. To that strange sixth sense of his,
responsive as the leaves of the sensitive plant, had suddenly come the
impression of a human being near at hand. He had neither seen nor
heard, but for all that he stopped an instant in his tracks; then, the
sensation confirmed, went on again with slow steps, advancing warily.

At last, his swiftly roving eyes lighted upon an object, just darker
than the grey-brown of the night-ridden land. It was at some distance
from the roadside. Vanamee approached it cautiously, leaving the road,
treading carefully upon the moist clods of earth underfoot. Twenty paces
distant, he halted.

Annixter was there, seated upon a round, white rock, his back towards
him. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his
hands. He did not move. Silent, motionless, he gazed out upon the flat,
sombre land.

It was the night wherein the master of Quien Sabe wrought out his
salvation, struggling with Self from dusk to dawn. At the moment when
Vanamee came upon him, the turmoil within him had only begun. The
heart of the man had not yet wakened. The night was young, the dawn far
distant, and all around him the fields of upturned clods lay bare and
brown, empty of all life, unbroken by a single green shoot.

For a moment, the life-circles of these two men, of so widely differing
characters, touched each other, there in the silence of the night under
the stars. Then silently Vanamee withdrew, going on his way, wondering
at the trouble that, like himself, drove this hardheaded man of affairs,
untroubled by dreams, out into the night to brood over an empty land.

Then speedily he forgot all else. The material world drew off from him.
Reality dwindled to a point and vanished like the vanishing of a star
at moonrise. Earthly things dissolved and disappeared, as a strange,
unnamed essence flowed in upon him. A new atmosphere for him pervaded
his surroundings. He entered the world of the Vision, of the Legend, of
the Miracle, where all things were possible. He stood at the gate of the
Mission garden.

Above him rose the ancient tower of the Mission church. Through the
arches at its summit, where swung the Spanish queen’s bells, he saw the
slow-burning stars. The silent bats, with flickering wings, threw their
dancing shadows on the pallid surface of the venerable facade.

Not the faintest chirring of a cricket broke the silence. The bees were
asleep. In the grasses, in the trees, deep in the calix of punka flower
and magnolia bloom, the gnats, the caterpillars, the beetles, all the
microscopic, multitudinous life of the daytime drowsed and dozed. Not
even the minute scuffling of a lizard over the warm, worn pavement of
the colonnade disturbed the infinite repose, the profound stillness.
Only within the garden, the intermittent trickling of the fountain made
itself heard, flowing steadily, marking off the lapse of seconds,
the progress of hours, the cycle of years, the inevitable march of
centuries. At one time, the doorway before which Vanamee now stood had
been hermetically closed. But he, himself, had long since changed that.
He stood before it for a moment, steeping himself in the mystery and
romance of the place, then raising he latch, pushed open the gate,
entered, and closed it softly behind him. He was in the cloister garden.

The stars were out, strewn thick and close in the deep blue of the sky,
the milky way glowing like a silver veil. Ursa Major wheeled gigantic
in the north. The great nebula in Orion was a whorl of shimmering star
dust. Venus flamed a lambent disk of pale saffron, low over the horizon.
From edge to edge of the world marched the constellations, like the
progress of emperors, and from the innumerable glory of their courses a
mysterious sheen of diaphanous light disengaged itself, expanding over
all the earth, serene, infinite, majestic.

The little garden revealed itself but dimly beneath the brooding light,
only half emerging from the shadow. The polished surfaces of the leaves
of the pear trees winked faintly back the reflected light as the trees
just stirred in the uncertain breeze. A blurred shield of silver marked
the ripples of the fountain. Under the flood of dull blue lustre, the
gravelled walks lay vague amid the grasses, like webs of white satin
on the bed of a lake. Against the eastern wall the headstones of the
graves, an indistinct procession of grey cowls ranged themselves.

Vanamee crossed the garden, pausing to kiss the turf upon Angele’s
grave. Then he approached the line of pear trees, and laid himself down
in their shadow, his chin propped upon his hands, his eyes wandering
over the expanse of the little valley that stretched away from the foot
of the hill upon which the Mission was built.

Once again he summoned the Vision. Once again he conjured up the
Illusion. Once again, tortured with doubt, racked with a deathless
grief, he craved an Answer of the night. Once again, mystic that he
was, he sent his mind out from him across the enchanted sea of the
Supernatural. Hope, of what he did not know, roused up within him.
Surely, on such a night as this, the hallucination must define itself.
Surely, the Manifestation must be vouchsafed.

His eyes closed, his will girding itself to a supreme effort, his senses
exalted to a state of pleasing numbness, he called upon Angele to come
to him, his voiceless cry penetrating far out into that sea of faint,
ephemeral light that floated tideless over the little valley beneath
him. Then motionless, prone upon the ground, he waited.

Months had passed since that first night when, at length, an Answer had
come to Vanamee. At first, startled out of all composure, troubled and
stirred to his lowest depths, because of the very thing for which he
sought, he resolved never again to put his strange powers to the test.
But for all that, he had come a second night to the garden, and a third,
and a fourth. At last, his visits were habitual. Night after night
he was there, surrendering himself to the influences of the place,
gradually convinced that something did actually answer when he called.
His faith increased as the winter grew into spring. As the spring
advanced and the nights became shorter, it crystallised into certainty.
Would he have her again, his love, long dead? Would she come to him once
more out of the grave, out of the night? He could not tell; he could
only hope. All that he knew was that his cry found an answer, that his
outstretched hands, groping in the darkness, met the touch of other
fingers. Patiently he waited. The nights became warmer as the spring
drew on. The stars shone clearer. The nights seemed brighter. For nearly
a month after the occasion of his first answer nothing new occurred.
Some nights it failed him entirely; upon others it was faint, illusive.

Then, at last, the most subtle, the barest of perceptible changes began.
His groping mind far-off there, wandering like a lost bird over the
valley, touched upon some thing again, touched and held it and this
time drew it a single step closer to him. His heart beating, the blood
surging in his temples, he watched with the eyes of his imagination,
this gradual approach. What was coming to him? Who was coming to him?
Shrouded in the obscurity of the night, whose was the face now turned
towards his? Whose the footsteps that with such infinite slowness drew
nearer to where he waited? He did not dare to say.

His mind went back many years to that time before the tragedy of
Angele’s death, before the mystery of the Other. He waited then as he
waited now. But then he had not waited in vain. Then, as now, he had
seemed to feel her approach, seemed to feel her drawing nearer and
nearer to their rendezvous. Now, what would happen? He did not know. He
waited. He waited, hoping all things. He waited, believing all things.
He waited, enduring all things. He trusted in the Vision.

Meanwhile, as spring advanced, the flowers in the Seed ranch began
to come to life. Over the five hundred acres whereon the flowers were
planted, the widening growth of vines and bushes spread like the waves
of a green sea. Then, timidly, colours of the faintest tints began to
appear. Under the moonlight, Vanamee saw them expanding, delicate
pink, faint blue, tenderest variations of lavender and yellow, white
shimmering with reflections of gold, all subdued and pallid in the
moonlight.

By degrees, the night became impregnated with the perfume of the
flowers. Illusive at first, evanescent as filaments of gossamer; then
as the buds opened, emphasising itself, breathing deeper, stronger. An
exquisite mingling of many odours passed continually over the Mission,
from the garden of the Seed ranch, meeting and blending with the aroma
of its magnolia buds and punka blossoms.

As the colours of the flowers of the Seed ranch deepened, and as their
odours penetrated deeper and more distinctly, as the starlight of each
succeeding night grew brighter and the air became warmer, the illusion
defined itself. By imperceptible degrees, as Vanamee waited under the
shadows of the pear trees, the Answer grew nearer and nearer. He saw
nothing but the distant glimmer of the flowers. He heard nothing but
the drip of the fountain. Nothing moved about him but the invisible,
slow-passing breaths of perfume; yet he felt the approach of the Vision.

It came first to about the middle of the Seed ranch itself, some half
a mile away, where the violets grew; shrinking, timid flowers, hiding
close to the ground. Then it passed forward beyond the violets, and drew
nearer and stood amid the mignonette, hardier blooms that dared
look heavenward from out the leaves. A few nights later it left the
mignonette behind, and advanced into the beds of white iris that pushed
more boldly forth from the earth, their waxen petals claiming the
attention. It advanced then a long step into the proud, challenging
beauty of the carnations and roses; and at last, after many nights,
Vanamee felt that it paused, as if trembling at its hardihood, full
in the superb glory of the royal lilies themselves, that grew on the
extreme border of the Seed ranch nearest to him. After this, there was
a certain long wait. Then, upon a dark midnight, it advanced again.
Vanamee could scarcely repress a cry. Now, the illusion emerged from the
flowers. It stood, not distant, but unseen, almost at the base of the
hill upon whose crest he waited, in a depression of the ground where the
shadows lay thickest. It was nearly within earshot.

The nights passed. The spring grew warmer. In the daytime intermittent
rains freshened all the earth. The flowers of the Seed ranch grew
rapidly. Bud after bud burst forth, while those already opened expanded
to full maturity. The colour of the Seed ranch deepened.

One night, after hours of waiting, Vanamee felt upon his cheek the touch
of a prolonged puff of warm wind, breathing across the little valley
from out the east. It reached the Mission garden and stirred the
branches of the pear trees. It seemed veritably to be compounded of
the very essence of the flowers. Never had the aroma been so sweet, so
pervasive. It passed and faded, leaving in its wake an absolute silence.
Then, at length, the silence of the night, that silence to which Vanamee
had so long appealed, was broken by a tiny sound. Alert, half-risen from
the ground, he listened; for now, at length, he heard something. The
sound repeated itself. It came from near at hand, from the thick shadow
at the foot of the hill. What it was, he could not tell, but it did not
belong to a single one of the infinite similar noises of the place with
which he was so familiar. It was neither the rustle of a leaf, the snap
of a parted twig, the drone of an insect, the dropping of a magnolia
blossom. It was a vibration merely, faint, elusive, impossible of
definition; a minute notch in the fine, keen edge of stillness.

Again the nights passed. The summer stars became brighter. The warmth
increased. The flowers of the Seed ranch grew still more. The five
hundred acres of the ranch were carpeted with them.

At length, upon a certain midnight, a new light began to spread in
the sky. The thin scimitar of the moon rose, veiled and dim behind the
earth-mists. The light increased. Distant objects, until now hidden,
came into view, and as the radiance brightened, Vanamee, looking down
upon the little valley, saw a spectacle of incomparable beauty. All the
buds of the Seed ranch had opened. The faint tints of the flowers had
deepened, had asserted themselves. They challenged the eye. Pink became
a royal red. Blue rose into purple. Yellow flamed into orange. Orange
glowed golden and brilliant. The earth disappeared under great bands and
fields of resplendent colour. Then, at length, the moon abruptly soared
zenithward from out the veiling mist, passing from one filmy haze to
another. For a moment there was a gleam of a golden light, and Vanamee,
his eyes searching the shade at the foot of the hill, felt his heart
suddenly leap, and then hang poised, refusing to beat. In that instant
of passing light, something had caught his eye. Something that moved,
down there, half in and half out of the shadow, at the hill’s foot.
It had come and gone in an instant. The haze once more screened the
moonlight. The shade again engulfed the vision. What was it he had seen?
He did not know. So brief had been that movement, the drowsy brain had
not been quick enough to interpret the cipher message of the eye. Now
it was gone. But something had been there. He had seen it. Was it the
lifting of a strand of hair, the wave of a white hand, the flutter of a
garment’s edge? He could not tell, but it did not belong to any of those
sights which he had seen so often in that place. It was neither the
glancing of a moth’s wing, the nodding of a wind-touched blossom, nor
the noiseless flitting of a bat. It was a gleam merely, faint, elusive,
impossible of definition, an intangible agitation, in the vast, dim blur
of the darkness.

And that was all. Until now no single real thing had occurred, nothing
that Vanamee could reduce to terms of actuality, nothing he could put
into words. The manifestation, when not recognisable to that strange
sixth sense of his, appealed only to the most refined, the most delicate
perception of eye and ear. It was all ephemeral, filmy, dreamy, the
mystic forming of the Vision--the invisible developing a concrete
nucleus, the starlight coagulating, the radiance of the flowers
thickening to something actual; perfume, the most delicious fragrance,
becoming a tangible presence.

But into that garden the serpent intruded. Though cradled in the slow
rhythm of the dream, lulled by this beauty of a summer’s night, heavy
with the scent of flowers, the silence broken only by a rippling
fountain, the darkness illuminated by a world of radiant blossoms,
Vanamee could not forget the tragedy of the Other; that terror of many
years ago,--that prowler of the night, that strange, fearful figure with
the unseen face, swooping in there from out the darkness, gone in
an instant, yet leaving behind the trail and trace of death and of
pollution.

Never had Vanamee seen this more clearly than when leaving Presley on
the stock range of Los Muertos, he had come across to the Mission garden
by way of the Quien Sabe ranch.

It was the same night in which Annixter out-watched the stars, coming,
at last, to himself.

As the hours passed, the two men, far apart, ignoring each other, waited
for the Manifestation,--Annixter on the ranch, Vanamee in the garden.

Prone upon his face, under the pear trees, his forehead buried in the
hollow of his arm, Vanamee lay motionless. For the last time, raising
his head, he sent his voiceless cry out into the night across the
multi-coloured levels of the little valley, calling upon the miracle,
summoning the darkness to give Angele back to him, resigning himself to
the hallucination. He bowed his head upon his arm again and waited. The
minutes passed. The fountain dripped steadily. Over the hills a haze of
saffron light foretold the rising of the full moon. Nothing stirred. The
silence was profound.

Then, abruptly, Vanamee’s right hand shut tight upon his wrist.
There--there it was. It began again, his invocation was answered. Far
off there, the ripple formed again upon the still, black pool of
the night. No sound, no sight; vibration merely, appreciable by some
sublimated faculty of the mind as yet unnamed. Rigid, his nerves taut,
motionless, prone on the ground, he waited.

It advanced with infinite slowness. Now it passed through the beds of
violets, now through the mignonette. A moment later, and he knew it
stood among the white iris. Then it left those behind. It was in the
splendour of the red roses and carnations. It passed like a moving star
into the superb abundance, the imperial opulence of the royal lilies.
It was advancing slowly, but there was no pause. He held his breath, not
daring to raise his head. It passed beyond the limits of the Seed ranch,
and entered the shade at the foot of the hill below him. Would it come
farther than this? Here it had always stopped hitherto, stopped for a
moment, and then, in spite of his efforts, had slipped from his grasp
and faded back into the night. But now he wondered if he had been
willing to put forth his utmost strength, after all. Had there not
always been an element of dread in the thought of beholding the mystery
face to face? Had he not even allowed the Vision to dissolve, the Answer
to recede into the obscurity whence it came?

But never a night had been so beautiful as this. It was the full period
of the spring. The air was a veritable caress. The infinite repose
of the little garden, sleeping under the night, was delicious beyond
expression. It was a tiny corner of the world, shut off, discreet,
distilling romance, a garden of dreams, of enchantments.

Below, in the little valley, the resplendent colourations of the million
flowers, roses, lilies, hyacinths, carnations, violets, glowed like
incandescence in the golden light of the rising moon. The air was thick
with the perfume, heavy with it, clogged with it. The sweetness
filled the very mouth. The throat choked with it. Overhead wheeled the
illimitable procession of the constellations. Underfoot, the earth was
asleep. The very flowers were dreaming. A cathedral hush overlay all
the land, and a sense of benediction brooded low,--a divine kindliness
manifesting itself in beauty, in peace, in absolute repose.

It was a time for visions. It was the hour when dreams come true, and
lying deep in the grasses beneath the pear trees, Vanamee, dizzied with
mysticism, reaching up and out toward the supernatural, felt, as it
were, his mind begin to rise upward from out his body. He passed into a
state of being the like of which he had not known before. He felt that
his imagination was reshaping itself, preparing to receive an impression
never experienced until now. His body felt light to him, then it
dwindled, vanished. He saw with new eyes, heard with new ears, felt with
a new heart.

“Come to me,” he murmured.

Then slowly he felt the advance of the Vision. It was approaching. Every
instant it drew gradually nearer. At last, he was to see. It had left
the shadow at the base of the hill; it was on the hill itself. Slowly,
steadily, it ascended the slope; just below him there, he heard a faint
stirring. The grasses rustled under the touch of a foot. The leaves
of the bushes murmured, as a hand brushed against them; a slender twig
creaked. The sounds of approach were more distinct. They came nearer.
They reached the top of the hill. They were within whispering distance.

Vanamee, trembling, kept his head buried in his arm. The sounds, at
length, paused definitely. The Vision could come no nearer. He raised
his head and looked. The moon had risen. Its great shield of gold
stood over the eastern horizon. Within six feet of Vanamee, clear and
distinct, against the disk of the moon, stood the figure of a young
girl. She was dressed in a gown of scarlet silk, with flowing sleeves,
such as Japanese wear, embroidered with flowers and figures of
birds worked in gold threads. On either side of her face, making
three-cornered her round, white forehead, hung the soft masses of her
hair of gold. Her hands hung limply at her sides. But from between her
parted lips--lips of almost an Egyptian fulness--her breath came slow
and regular, and her eyes, heavy lidded, slanting upwards toward the
temples, perplexing, oriental, were closed. She was asleep.

From out this life of flowers, this world of colour, this atmosphere
oppressive with perfume, this darkness clogged and cloyed, and thickened
with sweet odours, she came to him. She came to him from out of the
flowers, the smell of the roses in her hair of gold, the aroma and the
imperial red of the carnations in her lips, the whiteness of the lilies,
the perfume of the lilies, and the lilies’ slender, balancing grace in
her neck. Her hands disengaged the scent of the heliotrope. The folds of
her scarlet gown gave off the enervating smell of poppies. Her feet were
redolent of hyacinth. She stood before him, a Vision realised--a dream
come true. She emerged from out the invisible. He beheld her, a figure
of gold and pale vermilion, redolent of perfume, poised motionless in
the faint saffron sheen of the new-risen moon. She, a creation of sleep,
was herself asleep. She, a dream, was herself dreaming.

Called forth from out the darkness, from the grip of the earth, the
embrace of the grave, from out the memory of corruption, she rose into
light and life, divinely pure. Across that white forehead was no smudge,
no trace of an earthly pollution--no mark of a terrestrial dishonour.
He saw in her the same beauty of untainted innocence he had known in his
youth. Years had made no difference with her. She was still young.
It was the old purity that returned, the deathless beauty, the
ever-renascent life, the eternal consecrated and immortal youth. For a
few seconds, she stood there before him, and he, upon the ground at her
feet, looked up at her, spellbound. Then, slowly she withdrew. Still
asleep, her eyelids closed, she turned from him, descending the slope.
She was gone.

Vanamee started up, coming, as it were, to himself, looking wildly about
him. Sarria was there.

“I saw her,” said the priest. “It was Angele, the little girl, your
Angele’s daughter. She is like her mother.”

But Vanamee scarcely heard. He walked as if in a trance, pushing by
Sarria, going forth from the garden. Angele or Angele’s daughter, it was
all one with him. It was She. Death was overcome. The grave vanquished.
Life, ever-renewed, alone existed. Time was naught; change was naught;
all things were immortal but evil; all things eternal but grief.

Suddenly, the dawn came; the east burned roseate toward the zenith.
Vanamee walked on, he knew not where. The dawn grew brighter. At length,
he paused upon the crest of a hill overlooking the ranchos, and cast his
eye below him to the southward. Then, suddenly flinging up his arms, he
uttered a great cry.

There it was. The Wheat! The Wheat! In the night it had come up. It was
there, everywhere, from margin to margin of the horizon. The earth, long
empty, teemed with green life. Once more the pendulum of the seasons
swung in its mighty arc, from death back to life. Life out of death,
eternity rising from out dissolution. There was the lesson. Angele was
not the symbol, but the PROOF of immortality. The seed dying, rotting
and corrupting in the earth; rising again in life unconquerable, and
in immaculate purity,--Angele dying as she gave birth to her little
daughter, life springing from her death,--the pure, unconquerable,
coming forth from the defiled. Why had he not had the knowledge of God?
Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. So the
seed had died. So died Angele. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest
not that body that shall be, but bare grain. It may chance of wheat, or
of some other grain. The wheat called forth from out the darkness,
from out the grip of the earth, of the grave, from out corruption,
rose triumphant into light and life. So Angele, so life, so also the
resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption. It is raised in
incorruption. It is sown in dishonour. It is raised in glory. It is sown
in weakness. It is raised in power. Death was swallowed up in Victory.

The sun rose. The night was over. The glory of the terrestrial was one,
and the glory of the celestial was another. Then, as the glory of sun
banished the lesser glory of moon and stars, Vanamee, from his mountain
top, beholding the eternal green life of the growing Wheat, bursting its
bonds, and in his heart exulting in his triumph over the grave, flung
out his arms with a mighty shout:

“Oh, Death, where is thy sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory?”



CHAPTER IV


Presley’s Socialistic poem, “The Toilers,” had an enormous success. The
editor of the Sunday supplement of the San Francisco paper to which
it was sent, printed it in Gothic type, with a scare-head title so
decorative as to be almost illegible, and furthermore caused the poem to
be illustrated by one of the paper’s staff artists in a most impressive
fashion. The whole affair occupied an entire page. Thus advertised, the
poem attracted attention. It was promptly copied in New York, Boston,
and Chicago papers. It was discussed, attacked, defended, eulogised,
ridiculed. It was praised with the most fulsome adulation; assailed with
the most violent condemnation. Editorials were written upon it. Special
articles, in literary pamphlets, dissected its rhetoric and prosody.
The phrases were quoted,--were used as texts for revolutionary sermons,
reactionary speeches. It was parodied; it was distorted so as to read as
an advertisement for patented cereals and infants’ foods. Finally,
the editor of an enterprising monthly magazine reprinted the poem,
supplementing it by a photograph and biography of Presley himself.

Presley was stunned, bewildered. He began to wonder at himself. Was
he actually the “greatest American poet since Bryant”? He had had no
thought of fame while composing “The Toilers.” He had only been moved
to his heart’s foundations,--thoroughly in earnest, seeing clearly,--and
had addressed himself to the poem’s composition in a happy moment when
words came easily to him, and the elaboration of fine sentences was not
difficult. Was it thus fame was achieved? For a while he was tempted
to cross the continent and go to New York and there come unto his own,
enjoying the triumph that awaited him. But soon he denied himself this
cheap reward. Now he was too much in earnest. He wanted to help his
People, the community in which he lived--the little world of the San
Joaquin, at grapples with the Railroad. The struggle had found its poet.
He told himself that his place was here. Only the words of the manager
of a lecture bureau troubled him for a moment. To range the entire
nation, telling all his countrymen of the drama that was working itself
out on this fringe of the continent, this ignored and distant Pacific
Coast, rousing their interest and stirring them up to action--appealed
to him. It might do great good. To devote himself to “the Cause,”
 accepting no penny of remuneration; to give his life to loosing the grip
of the iron-hearted monster of steel and steam would be beyond question
heroic. Other States than California had their grievances. All over the
country the family of cyclops was growing. He would declare himself the
champion of the People in their opposition to the Trust. He would be an
apostle, a prophet, a martyr of Freedom.

But Presley was essentially a dreamer, not a man of affairs. He
hesitated to act at this precise psychological moment, striking while
the iron was yet hot, and while he hesitated, other affairs near at hand
began to absorb his attention.

One night, about an hour after he had gone to bed, he was awakened by
the sound of voices on the porch of the ranch house, and, descending,
found Mrs. Dyke there with Sidney. The ex-engineer’s mother was talking
to Magnus and Harran, and crying as she talked. It seemed that Dyke was
missing. He had gone into town early that afternoon with the wagon and
team, and was to have been home for supper. By now it was ten o’clock
and there was no news of him. Mrs. Dyke told how she first had gone
to Quien Sabe, intending to telephone from there to Bonneville, but
Annixter was in San Francisco, and in his absence the house was
locked up, and the over-seer, who had a duplicate key, was himself
in Bonneville. She had telegraphed three times from Guadalajara to
Bonneville for news of her son, but without result. Then, at last,
tortured with anxiety, she had gone to Hooven’s, taking Sidney with her,
and had prevailed upon “Bismarck” to hitch up and drive her across Los
Muertos to the Governor’s, to beg him to telephone into Bonneville, to
know what had become of Dyke.

While Harran rang up Central in town, Mrs. Dyke told Presley and Magnus
of the lamentable change in Dyke.

“They have broken my son’s spirit, Mr. Derrick,” she said. “If you were
only there to see. Hour after hour, he sits on the porch with his hands
lying open in his lap, looking at them without a word. He won’t look
me in the face any more, and he don’t sleep. Night after night, he has
walked the floor until morning. And he will go on that way for days
together, very silent, without a word, and sitting still in his chair,
and then, all of a sudden, he will break out--oh, Mr. Derrick, it is
terrible--into an awful rage, cursing, swearing, grinding his teeth,
his hands clenched over his head, stamping so that the house shakes, and
saying that if S. Behrman don’t give him back his money, he will kill
him with his two hands. But that isn’t the worst, Mr. Derrick. He goes
to Mr. Caraher’s saloon now, and stays there for hours, and listens
to Mr. Caraher. There is something on my son’s mind; I know there
is--something that he and Mr. Caraher have talked over together, and
I can’t find out what it is. Mr. Caraher is a bad man, and my son has
fallen under his influence.” The tears filled her eyes. Bravely, she
turned to hide them, turning away to take Sidney in her arms, putting
her head upon the little girl’s shoulder.

“I--I haven’t broken down before, Mr. Derrick,” she said, “but after we
have been so happy in our little house, just us three--and the future
seemed so bright--oh, God will punish the gentlemen who own the railroad
for being so hard and cruel.”

Harran came out on the porch, from the telephone, and she interrupted
herself, fixing her eyes eagerly upon him.

“I think it is all right, Mrs. Dyke,” he said, reassuringly. “We know
where he is, I believe. You and the little tad stay here, and Hooven and
I will go after him.”

About two hours later, Harran brought Dyke back to Los Muertos in
Hooven’s wagon. He had found him at Caraher’s saloon, very drunk.

There was nothing maudlin about Dyke’s drunkenness. In him the alcohol
merely roused the spirit of evil, vengeful, reckless.

As the wagon passed out from under the eucalyptus trees about the ranch
house, taking Mrs. Dyke, Sidney, and the one-time engineer back to the
hop ranch, Presley leaning from his window heard the latter remark:

“Caraher is right. There is only one thing they listen to, and that’s
dynamite.”

The following day Presley drove Magnus over to Guadalajara to take the
train for San Francisco. But after he had said good-bye to the Governor,
he was moved to go on to the hop ranch to see the condition of affairs
in that quarter. He returned to Los Muertos overwhelmed with sadness and
trembling with anger. The hop ranch that he had last seen in the full
tide of prosperity was almost a ruin. Work had evidently been abandoned
long since. Weeds were already choking the vines. Everywhere the poles
sagged and drooped. Many had even fallen, dragging the vines with them,
spreading them over the ground in an inextricable tangle of dead
leaves, decaying tendrils, and snarled string. The fence was broken;
the unfinished storehouse, which never was to see completion, was a
lamentable spectacle of gaping doors and windows--a melancholy skeleton.
Last of all, Presley had caught a glimpse of Dyke himself, seated in
his rocking chair on the porch, his beard and hair unkempt, motionless,
looking with vague eyes upon his hands that lay palm upwards and idle in
his lap.

Magnus on his way to San Francisco was joined at Bonneville by Osterman.
Upon seating himself in front of the master of Los Muertos in the
smoking-car of the train, this latter, pushing back his hat and
smoothing his bald head, observed:

“Governor, you look all frazeled out. Anything wrong these days?”

The other answered in the negative, but, for all that, Osterman was
right. The Governor had aged suddenly. His former erectness was
gone, the broad shoulders stooped a little, the strong lines of his
thin-lipped mouth were relaxed, and his hand, as it clasped over the
yellowed ivory knob of his cane, had an unwonted tremulousness not
hitherto noticeable. But the change in Magnus was more than physical.
At last, in the full tide of power, President of the League, known and
talked of in every county of the State, leader in a great struggle,
consulted, deferred to as the “Prominent Man,” at length attaining that
position, so long and vainly sought for, he yet found no pleasure in
his triumph, and little but bitterness in life. His success had come by
devious methods, had been reached by obscure means.

He was a briber. He could never forget that. To further his ends,
disinterested, public-spirited, even philanthropic as those were, he
had connived with knavery, he, the politician of the old school, of such
rigorous integrity, who had abandoned a “career” rather than compromise
with honesty. At this eleventh hour, involved and entrapped in the
fine-spun web of a new order of things, bewildered by Osterman’s
dexterity, by his volubility and glibness, goaded and harassed beyond
the point of reason by the aggression of the Trust he fought, he had at
last failed. He had fallen he had given a bribe. He had thought that,
after all, this would make but little difference with him. The affair
was known only to Osterman, Broderson, and Annixter; they would not
judge him, being themselves involved. He could still preserve a bold
front; could still hold his head high. As time went on the affair would
lose its point.

But this was not so. Some subtle element of his character had forsaken
him. He felt it. He knew it. Some certain stiffness that had given him
all his rigidity, that had lent force to his authority, weight to his
dominance, temper to his fine, inflexible hardness, was diminishing
day by day. In the decisions which he, as President of the League, was
called upon to make so often, he now hesitated. He could no longer
be arrogant, masterful, acting upon his own judgment, independent of
opinion. He began to consult his lieutenants, asking their advice,
distrusting his own opinions. He made mistakes, blunders, and when those
were brought to his notice, took refuge in bluster. He knew it to be
bluster--knew that sooner or later his subordinates would recognise it
as such. How long could he maintain his position? So only he could keep
his grip upon the lever of control till the battle was over, all would
be well. If not, he would fall, and, once fallen, he knew that now,
briber that he was, he would never rise again.

He was on his way at this moment to the city to consult with Lyman as
to a certain issue of the contest between the Railroad and the ranchers,
which, of late, had been brought to his notice.

When appeal had been taken to the Supreme Court by the League’s
Executive Committee, certain test cases had been chosen, which should
represent all the lands in question. Neither Magnus nor Annixter had
so appealed, believing, of course, that their cases were covered by the
test cases on trial at Washington. Magnus had here blundered again, and
the League’s agents in San Francisco had written to warn him that the
Railroad might be able to take advantage of a technicality, and by
pretending that neither Quien Sabe nor Los Muertos were included in the
appeal, attempt to put its dummy buyers in possession of the two ranches
before the Supreme Court handed down its decision. The ninety days
allowed for taking this appeal were nearly at an end and after then the
Railroad could act. Osterman and Magnus at once decided to go up to the
city, there joining Annixter (who had been absent from Quien Sabe for
the last ten days), and talk the matter over with Lyman. Lyman, because
of his position as Commissioner, might be cognisant of the Railroad’s
plans, and, at the same time, could give sound legal advice as to what
was to be done should the new rumour prove true.

“Say,” remarked Osterman, as the train pulled out of the Bonneville
station, and the two men settled themselves for the long journey, “say
Governor, what’s all up with Buck Annixter these days? He’s got a bean
about something, sure.”

“I had not noticed,” answered Magnus. “Mr. Annixter has been away
some time lately. I cannot imagine what should keep him so long in San
Francisco.”

“That’s it,” said Osterman, winking. “Have three guesses. Guess right
and you get a cigar. I guess g-i-r-l spells Hilma Tree. And a little
while ago she quit Quien Sabe and hiked out to ‘Frisco. So did Buck.
Do I draw the cigar? It’s up to you.” “I have noticed her,” observed
Magnus. “A fine figure of a woman. She would make some man a good wife.”

“Hoh! Wife! Buck Annixter marry! Not much. He’s gone a-girling at last,
old Buck! It’s as funny as twins. Have to josh him about it when I see
him, sure.”

But when Osterman and Magnus at last fell in with Annixter in the
vestibule of the Lick House, on Montgomery Street, nothing could be got
out of him. He was in an execrable humour. When Magnus had broached the
subject of business, he had declared that all business could go to pot,
and when Osterman, his tongue in his cheek, had permitted himself a
most distant allusion to a feemale girl, Annixter had cursed him for a
“busy-face” so vociferously and tersely, that even Osterman was cowed.

“Well,” insinuated Osterman, “what are you dallying ‘round ‘Frisco so
much for?”

“Cat fur, to make kitten-breeches,” retorted Annixter with oracular
vagueness.

Two weeks before this time, Annixter had come up to the city and
had gone at once to a certain hotel on Bush Street, behind the First
National Bank, that he knew was kept by a family connection of the
Trees. In his conjecture that Hilma and her parents would stop here, he
was right. Their names were on the register. Ignoring custom, Annixter
marched straight up to their rooms, and before he was well aware of it,
was “eating crow” before old man Tree.

Hilma and her mother were out at the time. Later on, Mrs. Tree returned
alone, leaving Hilma to spend the day with one of her cousins who lived
far out on Stanyan Street in a little house facing the park.

Between Annixter and Hilma’s parents, a reconciliation had been
effected, Annixter convincing them both of his sincerity in wishing to
make Hilma his wife. Hilma, however, refused to see him. As soon as
she knew he had followed her to San Francisco she had been unwilling
to return to the hotel and had arranged with her cousin to spend an
indefinite time at her house.

She was wretchedly unhappy during all this time; would not set foot out
of doors, and cried herself to sleep night after night. She detested the
city. Already she was miserably homesick for the ranch. She remembered
the days she had spent in the little dairy-house, happy in her work,
making butter and cheese; skimming the great pans of milk, scouring the
copper vessels and vats, plunging her arms, elbow deep, into the white
curds; coming and going in that atmosphere of freshness, cleanliness,
and sunlight, gay, singing, supremely happy just because the sun shone.
She remembered her long walks toward the Mission late in the afternoons,
her excursions for cresses underneath the Long Trestle, the crowing of
the cocks, the distant whistle of the passing trains, the faint sounding
of the Angelus. She recalled with infinite longing the solitary expanse
of the ranches, the level reaches between the horizons, full of light
and silence; the heat at noon, the cloudless iridescence of the sunrise
and sunset. She had been so happy in that life! Now, all those days were
passed. This crude, raw city, with its crowding houses all of wood
and tin, its blotting fogs, its uproarious trade winds, disturbed and
saddened her. There was no outlook for the future.

At length, one day, about a week after Annixter’s arrival in the city,
she was prevailed upon to go for a walk in the park. She went alone,
putting on for the first time the little hat of black straw with its
puff of white silk her mother had bought for her, a pink shirtwaist, her
belt of imitation alligator skin, her new skirt of brown cloth, and her
low shoes, set off with their little steel buckles.

She found a tiny summer house, built in Japanese fashion, around a
diminutive pond, and sat there for a while, her hands folded in her lap,
amused with watching the goldfish, wishing--she knew not what.

Without any warning, Annixter sat down beside her. She was too
frightened to move. She looked at him with wide eyes that began to fill
with tears.

“Oh,” she said, at last, “oh--I didn’t know.”

“Well,” exclaimed Annixter, “here you are at last. I’ve been watching
that blamed house till I was afraid the policeman would move me on. By
the Lord,” he suddenly cried, “you’re pale. You--you, Hilma, do you feel
well?”

“Yes--I am well,” she faltered.

“No, you’re not,” he declared. “I know better. You are coming back to
Quien Sabe with me. This place don’t agree with you. Hilma, what’s
all the matter? Why haven’t you let me see you all this time? Do you
know--how things are with me? Your mother told you, didn’t she? Do you
know how sorry I am? Do you know that I see now that I made the mistake
of my life there, that time, under the Long Trestle? I found it out the
night after you went away. I sat all night on a stone out on the ranch
somewhere and I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’ve been a
different man since then. I see things all different now. Why, I’ve only
begun to live since then. I know what love means now, and instead of
being ashamed of it, I’m proud of it. If I never was to see you again I
would be glad I’d lived through that night, just the same. I just woke
up that night. I’d been absolutely and completely selfish up to the
moment I realised I really loved you, and now, whether you’ll let me
marry you or not, I mean to live--I don’t know, in a different way. I’ve
GOT to live different. I--well--oh, I can’t make you understand, but
just loving you has changed my life all around. It’s made it easier
to do the straight, clean thing. I want to do it, it’s fun doing it.
Remember, once I said I was proud of being a hard man, a driver, of
being glad that people hated me and were afraid of me? Well, since I’ve
loved you I’m ashamed of it all. I don’t want to be hard any more, and
nobody is going to hate me if I can help it. I’m happy and I want other
people so. I love you,” he suddenly exclaimed; “I love you, and if you
will forgive me, and if you will come down to such a beast as I am,
I want to be to you the best a man can be to a woman, Hilma. Do you
understand, little girl? I want to be your husband.”

Hilma looked at the goldfishes through her tears.

“Have you got anything to say to me, Hilma?” he asked, after a while.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she murmured.

“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “I’ve followed you ‘way up here to hear it.
I’ve waited around in these beastly, draughty picnic grounds for over a
week to hear it. You know what I want to hear, Hilma.”

“Well--I forgive you,” she hazarded.

“That will do for a starter,” he answered. “But that’s not IT.”

“Then, I don’t know what.”

“Shall I say it for you?”

She hesitated a long minute, then:

“You mightn’t say it right,” she replied.

“Trust me for that. Shall I say it for you, Hilma?”

“I don’t know what you’ll say.”

“I’ll say what you are thinking of. Shall I say it?”

There was a very long pause. A goldfish rose to the surface of the
little pond, with a sharp, rippling sound. The fog drifted overhead.
There was nobody about.

“No,” said Hilma, at length. “I--I--I can say it for myself. I--” All
at once she turned to him and put her arms around his neck. “Oh, DO you
love me?” she cried. “Is it really true? Do you mean every word of it?
And you are sorry and you WILL be good to me if I will be your wife? You
will be my dear, dear husband?”

The tears sprang to Annixter’s eyes. He took her in his arms and held
her there for a moment. Never in his life had he felt so unworthy, so
undeserving of this clean, pure girl who forgave him and trusted his
spoken word and believed him to be the good man he could only wish to
be. She was so far above him, so exalted, so noble that he should have
bowed his forehead to her feet, and instead, she took him in her arms,
believing him to be good, to be her equal. He could think of no words
to say. The tears overflowed his eyes and ran down upon his cheeks. She
drew away from him and held him a second at arm’s length, looking at
him, and he saw that she, too, had been crying.

“I think,” he said, “we are a couple of softies.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “I want to cry and want you to cry, too. Oh,
dear, I haven’t a handkerchief.”

“Here, take mine.”

They wiped each other’s eyes like two children and for a long time sat
in the deserted little Japanese pleasure house, their arms about each
other, talking, talking, talking.

On the following Saturday they were married in an uptown Presbyterian
church, and spent the week of their honeymoon at a small, family hotel
on Sutter Street. As a matter of course, they saw the sights of the city
together. They made the inevitable bridal trip to the Cliff House and
spent an afternoon in the grewsome and made-to-order beauties of
Sutro’s Gardens; they went through Chinatown, the Palace Hotel, the
park museum--where Hilma resolutely refused to believe in the Egyptian
mummy--and they drove out in a hired hack to the Presidio and the Golden
Gate.

On the sixth day of their excursions, Hilma abruptly declared they had
had enough of “playing out,” and must be serious and get to work.

This work was nothing less than the buying of the furniture and
appointments for the rejuvenated ranch house at Quien Sabe, where they
were to live. Annixter had telegraphed to his overseer to have the
building repainted, replastered, and reshingled and to empty the rooms
of everything but the telephone and safe. He also sent instructions to
have the dimensions of each room noted down and the result forwarded
to him. It was the arrival of these memoranda that had roused Hilma to
action.

Then ensued a most delicious week. Armed with formidable lists, written
by Annixter on hotel envelopes, they two descended upon the department
stores of the city, the carpet stores, the furniture stores. Right and
left they bought and bargained, sending each consignment as soon as
purchased to Quien Sabe. Nearly an entire car load of carpets, curtains,
kitchen furniture, pictures, fixtures, lamps, straw matting, chairs, and
the like were sent down to the ranch, Annixter making a point that their
new home should be entirely equipped by San Francisco dealers.

The furnishings of the bedroom and sitting-room were left to the very
last. For the former, Hilma bought a “set” of pure white enamel, three
chairs, a washstand and bureau, a marvellous bargain of thirty dollars,
discovered by wonderful accident at a “Friday Sale.” The bed was a
piece by itself, bought elsewhere, but none the less a wonder. It was of
brass, very brave and gay, and actually boasted a canopy! They bought
it complete, just as it stood in the window of the department store and
Hilma was in an ecstasy over its crisp, clean, muslin curtains, spread,
and shams. Never was there such a bed, the luxury of a princess, such a
bed as she had dreamed about her whole life.

Next the appointments of the sitting-room occupied her--since Annixter,
himself, bewildered by this astonishing display, unable to offer a
single suggestion himself, merely approved of all she bought. In the
sitting-room was to be a beautiful blue and white paper, cool straw
matting, set off with white wool rugs, a stand of flowers in the window,
a globe of goldfish, rocking chairs, a sewing machine, and a great,
round centre table of yellow oak whereon should stand a lamp covered
with a deep shade of crinkly red tissue paper. On the walls were to hang
several pictures--lovely affairs, photographs from life, all properly
tinted--of choir boys in robes, with beautiful eyes; pensive young girls
in pink gowns, with flowing yellow hair, drooping over golden harps; a
coloured reproduction of “Rouget de Lisle, Singing the Marseillaise,”
 and two “pieces” of wood carving, representing a quail and a wild duck,
hung by one leg in the midst of game bags and powder horns,--quite
masterpieces, both.

At last everything had been bought, all arrangements made, Hilma’s
trunks packed with her new dresses, and the tickets to Bonneville
bought.

“We’ll go by the Overland, by Jingo,” declared Annixter across the
table to his wife, at their last meal in the hotel where they had been
stopping; “no way trains or locals for us, hey?”

“But we reach Bonneville at SUCH an hour,” protested Hilma. “Five in the
morning!”

“Never mind,” he declared, “we’ll go home in PULLMAN’S, Hilma. I’m not
going to have any of those slobs in Bonneville say I didn’t know how to
do the thing in style, and we’ll have Vacca meet us with the team. No,
sir, it is Pullman’s or nothing. When it comes to buying furniture, I
don’t shine, perhaps, but I know what’s due my wife.”

He was obdurate, and late one afternoon the couple boarded the
Transcontinental (the crack Overland Flyer of the Pacific and
Southwestern) at the Oakland mole. Only Hilma’s parents were there to
say good-bye. Annixter knew that Magnus and Osterman were in the city,
but he had laid his plans to elude them. Magnus, he could trust to be
dignified, but that goat Osterman, one could never tell what he would do
next. He did not propose to start his journey home in a shower of rice.
Annixter marched down the line of cars, his hands encumbered with wicker
telescope baskets, satchels, and valises, his tickets in his mouth, his
hat on wrong side foremost, Hilma and her parents hurrying on behind
him, trying to keep up. Annixter was in a turmoil of nerves lest
something should go wrong; catching a train was always for him a little
crisis. He rushed ahead so furiously that when he had found his Pullman
he had lost his party. He set down his valises to mark the place and
charged back along the platform, waving his arms.

“Come on,” he cried, when, at length, he espied the others. “We’ve no
more time.”

He shouldered and urged them forward to where he had set his valises,
only to find one of them gone. Instantly he raised an outcry. Aha, a
fine way to treat passengers! There was P. and S. W. management for
you. He would, by the Lord, he would--but the porter appeared in the
vestibule of the car to placate him. He had already taken his valises
inside.

Annixter would not permit Hilma’s parents to board the car, declaring
that the train might pull out any moment. So he and his wife, following
the porter down the narrow passage by the stateroom, took their places
and, raising the window, leaned out to say good-bye to Mr. and Mrs.
Tree. These latter would not return to Quien Sabe. Old man Tree had
found a business chance awaiting him in the matter of supplying his
relative’s hotel with dairy products. But Bonneville was not too far
from San Francisco; the separation was by no means final.

The porters began taking up the steps that stood by the vestibule of
each sleeping-car.

“Well, have a good time, daughter,” observed her father; “and come up to
see us whenever you can.”

From beyond the enclosure of the depot’s reverberating roof came the
measured clang of a bell.

“I guess we’re off,” cried Annixter. “Good-bye, Mrs. Tree.”

“Remember your promise, Hilma,” her mother hastened to exclaim, “to
write every Sunday afternoon.”

There came a prolonged creaking and groan of straining wood and iron
work, all along the length of the train. They all began to cry their
good-byes at once. The train stirred, moved forward, and gathering slow
headway, rolled slowly out into the sunlight. Hilma leaned out of the
window and as long as she could keep her mother in sight waved her
handkerchief. Then at length she sat back in her seat and looked at her
husband.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” echoed Annixter, “happy?” for the tears rose in her eyes.

She nodded energetically, smiling at him bravely.

“You look a little pale,” he declared, frowning uneasily; “feel well?”

“Pretty well.”

Promptly he was seized with uneasiness. “But not ALL well, hey? Is that
it?”

It was true that Hilma had felt a faint tremour of seasickness on the
ferry-boat coming from the city to the Oakland mole. No doubt a little
nausea yet remained with her. But Annixter refused to accept this
explanation. He was distressed beyond expression.

“Now you’re going to be sick,” he cried anxiously.

“No, no,” she protested, “not a bit.”

“But you said you didn’t feel very well. Where is it you feel sick?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sick. Oh, dear me, why will you bother?”

“Headache?”

“Not the least.”

“You feel tired, then. That’s it. No wonder, the way rushed you ‘round
to-day.”

“Dear, I’m NOT tired, and I’m NOT sick, and I’m all RIGHT.”

“No, no; I can tell. I think we’d best have the berth made up and you
lie down.”

“That would be perfectly ridiculous.”

“Well, where is it you feel sick? Show me; put your hand on the place.
Want to eat something?”

With elaborate minuteness, he cross-questioned her, refusing to let the
subject drop, protesting that she had dark circles under her eyes; that
she had grown thinner.

“Wonder if there’s a doctor on board,” he murmured, looking uncertainly
about the car. “Let me see your tongue. I know--a little whiskey is what
you want, that and some pru----”

“No, no, NO,” she exclaimed. “I’m as well as I ever was in all my life.
Look at me. Now, tell me, do l look likee a sick lady?”

He scrutinised her face distressfully.

“Now, don’t I look the picture of health?” she challenged.

“In a way you do,” he began, “and then again----”

Hilma beat a tattoo with her heels upon the floor, shutting her
fists, the thumbs tucked inside. She closed her eyes, shaking her head
energetically.

“I won’t listen, I won’t listen, I won’t listen,” she cried.

“But, just the same----”

“Gibble--gibble--gibble,” she mocked. “I won’t Listen, I won’t listen.”
 She put a hand over his mouth. “Look, here’s the dining-car waiter, and
the first call for supper, and your wife is hungry.”

They went forward and had supper in the diner, while the long train, now
out upon the main line, settled itself to its pace, the prolonged, even
gallop that it would hold for the better part of the week, spinning out
the miles as a cotton spinner spins thread.

It was already dark when Antioch was left behind. Abruptly the sunset
appeared to wheel in the sky and readjusted itself to the right of the
track behind Mount Diablo, here visible almost to its base. The train
had turned southward. Neroly was passed, then Brentwood, then Byron.
In the gathering dusk, mountains began to build themselves up on either
hand, far off, blocking the horizon. The train shot forward, roaring.
Between the mountains the land lay level, cut up into farms, ranches.
These continually grew larger; growing wheat began to appear, billowing
in the wind of the train’s passage. The mountains grew higher, the
land richer, and by the time the moon rose, the train was well into the
northernmost limits of the valley of the San Joaquin.

Annixter had engaged an entire section, and after he and his wife went
to bed had the porter close the upper berth. Hilma sat up in bed to
say her prayers, both hands over her face, and then kissing Annixter
good-night, went to sleep with the directness of a little child, holding
his hand in both her own.

Annixter, who never could sleep on the train, dozed and tossed and
fretted for hours, consulting his watch and time-table whenever there
was a stop; twice he rose to get a drink of ice water, and between
whiles was forever sitting up in the narrow berth, stretching himself
and yawning, murmuring with uncertain relevance:

“Oh, Lord! Oh-h-h LORD!”

There were some dozen other passengers in the car--a lady with three
children, a group of school-teachers, a couple of drummers, a stout
gentleman with whiskers, and a well-dressed young man in a plaid
travelling cap, whom Annixter had observed before supper time reading
Daudet’s “Tartarin” in the French.

But by nine o’clock, all these people were in their berths.
Occasionally, above the rhythmic rumble of the wheels, Annixter could
hear one of the lady’s children fidgeting and complaining. The stout
gentleman snored monotonously in two notes, one a rasping bass, the
other a prolonged treble. At intervals, a brakeman or the passenger
conductor pushed down the aisle, between the curtains, his red and
white lamp over his arm. Looking out into the car Annixter saw in an end
section where the berths had not been made up, the porter, in his white
duck coat, dozing, his mouth wide open, his head on his shoulder.

The hours passed. Midnight came and went. Annixter, checking off the
stations, noted their passage of Modesto, Merced, and Madeira. Then,
after another broken nap, he lost count. He wondered where they were.
Had they reached Fresno yet? Raising the window curtain, he made a shade
with both hands on either side of his face and looked out. The night was
thick, dark, clouded over. A fine rain was falling, leaving horizontal
streaks on the glass of the outside window. Only the faintest grey blur
indicated the sky. Everything else was impenetrable blackness.

“I think sure we must have passed Fresno,” he muttered. He looked at his
watch. It was about half-past three. “If we have passed Fresno,” he said
to himself, “I’d better wake the little girl pretty soon. She’ll need
about an hour to dress. Better find out for sure.”

He drew on his trousers and shoes, got into his coat, and stepped out
into the aisle. In the seat that had been occupied by the porter,
the Pullman conductor, his cash box and car-schedules before him, was
checking up his berths, a blue pencil behind his ear.

“What’s the next stop, Captain?” inquired Annixter, coming up. “Have we
reached Fresno yet?”

“Just passed it,” the other responded, looking at Annixter over his
spectacles.

“What’s the next stop?”

“Goshen. We will be there in about forty-five minutes.”

“Fair black night, isn’t it?”

“Black as a pocket. Let’s see, you’re the party in upper and lower 9.”

Annixter caught at the back of the nearest seat, just in time to prevent
a fall, and the conductor’s cash box was shunted off the surface of the
plush seat and came clanking to the floor. The Pintsch lights overhead
vibrated with blinding rapidity in the long, sliding jar that ran
through the train from end to end, and the momentum of its speed
suddenly decreasing, all but pitched the conductor from his seat. A
hideous ear-splitting rasp made itself heard from the clamped-down
Westinghouse gear underneath, and Annixter knew that the wheels had
ceased to revolve and that the train was sliding forward upon the
motionless flanges.

“Hello, hello,” he exclaimed, “what’s all up now?”

“Emergency brakes,” declared the conductor, catching up his cash box and
thrusting his papers and tickets into it. “Nothing much; probably a cow
on the track.”

He disappeared, carrying his lantern with him.

But the other passengers, all but the stout gentleman, were awake; heads
were thrust from out the curtains, and Annixter, hurrying back to Hilma,
was assailed by all manner of questions.

“What was that?”

“Anything wrong?”

“What’s up, anyways?”

Hilma was just waking as Annixter pushed the curtain aside.

“Oh, I was so frightened. What’s the matter, dear?” she exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Only the emergency brakes. Just a cow on
the track, I guess. Don’t get scared. It isn’t anything.”

But with a final shriek of the Westinghouse appliance, the train came to
a definite halt.

At once the silence was absolute. The ears, still numb with the
long-continued roar of wheels and clashing iron, at first refused to
register correctly the smaller noises of the surroundings. Voices came
from the other end of the car, strange and unfamiliar, as though heard
at a great distance across the water. The stillness of the night outside
was so profound that the rain, dripping from the car roof upon the
road-bed underneath, was as distinct as the ticking of a clock.

“Well, we’ve sure stopped,” observed one of the drummers.

“What is it?” asked Hilma again. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“Sure,” said Annixter. Outside, underneath their window, they heard the
sound of hurried footsteps crushing into the clinkers by the side of the
ties. They passed on, and Annixter heard some one in the distance shout:

“Yes, on the other side.”

Then the door at the end of their car opened and a brakeman with a red
beard ran down the aisle and out upon the platform in front. The forward
door closed. Everything was quiet again. In the stillness the fat
gentleman’s snores made themselves heard once more.

The minutes passed; nothing stirred. There was no sound but the dripping
rain. The line of cars lay immobilised and inert under the night. One of
the drummers, having stepped outside on the platform for a look around,
returned, saying:

“There sure isn’t any station anywheres about and no siding. Bet you
they have had an accident of some kind.”

“Ask the porter.”

“I did. He don’t know.”

“Maybe they stopped to take on wood or water, or something.”

“Well, they wouldn’t use the emergency brakes for that, would they? Why,
this train stopped almost in her own length. Pretty near slung me out
the berth. Those were the emergency brakes. I heard some one say so.”

From far out towards the front of the train, near the locomotive,
came the sharp, incisive report of a revolver; then two more almost
simultaneously; then, after a long interval, a fourth.

“Say, that’s SHOOTING. By God, boys, they’re shooting. Say, this is a
hold-up.”

Instantly a white-hot excitement flared from end to end of the
car. Incredibly sinister, heard thus in the night, and in the rain,
mysterious, fearful, those four pistol shots started confusion from out
the sense of security like a frightened rabbit hunted from her burrow.
Wide-eyed, the passengers of the car looked into each other’s faces. It
had come to them at last, this, they had so often read about. Now they
were to see the real thing, now they were to face actuality, face this
danger of the night, leaping in from out the blackness of the roadside,
masked, armed, ready to kill. They were facing it now. They were held
up.

Hilma said nothing, only catching Annixter’s hand, looking squarely into
his eyes.

“Steady, little girl,” he said. “They can’t hurt you. I won’t leave you.
By the Lord,” he suddenly exclaimed, his excitement getting the better
of him for a moment. “By the Lord, it’s a hold-up.”

The school-teachers were in the aisle of the car, in night gown,
wrapper, and dressing sack, huddled together like sheep, holding on to
each other, looking to the men, silently appealing for protection. Two
of them were weeping, white to the lips.

“Oh, oh, oh, it’s terrible. Oh, if they only won’t hurt me.”

But the lady with the children looked out from her berth, smiled
reassuringly, and said:

“I’m not a bit frightened. They won’t do anything to us if we keep
quiet. I’ve my watch and jewelry all ready for them in my little black
bag, see?”

She exhibited it to the passengers. Her children were all awake. They
were quiet, looking about them with eager faces, interested and amused
at this surprise. In his berth, the fat gentleman with whiskers snored
profoundly.

“Say, I’m going out there,” suddenly declared one of the drummers,
flourishing a pocket revolver.

His friend caught his arm.

“Don’t make a fool of yourself, Max,” he said.

“They won’t come near us,” observed the well-dressed young man; “they
are after the Wells-Fargo box and the registered mail. You won’t do any
good out there.”

But the other loudly protested. No; he was going out. He didn’t propose
to be buncoed without a fight. He wasn’t any coward.

“Well, you don’t go, that’s all,” said his friend, angrily. “There’s
women and children in this car. You ain’t going to draw the fire here.”

“Well, that’s to be thought of,” said the other, allowing himself to be
pacified, but still holding his pistol.

“Don’t let him open that window,” cried Annixter sharply from his place
by Hilma’s side, for the drummer had made as if to open the sash in one
of the sections that had not been made up.

“Sure, that’s right,” said the others. “Don’t open any windows. Keep
your head in. You’ll get us all shot if you aren’t careful.”

However, the drummer had got the window up and had leaned out before the
others could interfere and draw him away.

“Say, by jove,” he shouted, as he turned back to the car, “our engine’s
gone. We’re standing on a curve and you can see the end of the train.
She’s gone, I tell you. Well, look for yourself.”

In spite of their precautions, one after another, his friends looked
out. Sure enough, the train was without a locomotive.

“They’ve done it so we can’t get away,” vociferated the drummer with
the pistol. “Now, by jiminy-Christmas, they’ll come through the cars and
stand us up. They’ll be in here in a minute. LORD! WHAT WAS THAT?”

From far away up the track, apparently some half-mile ahead of the
train, came the sound of a heavy explosion. The windows of the car
vibrated with it.

“Shooting again.”

“That isn’t shooting,” exclaimed Annixter. “They’ve pulled the express
and mail car on ahead with the engine and now they are dynamiting her
open.”

“That must be it. Yes, sure, that’s just what they are doing.”

The forward door of the car opened and closed and the school-teachers
shrieked and cowered. The drummer with the revolver faced about, his
eyes bulging. However, it was only the train conductor, hatless, his
lantern in his hand. He was soaked with rain. He appeared in the aisle.

“Is there a doctor in this car?” he asked.

Promptly the passengers surrounded him, voluble with questions. But he
was in a bad temper.

“I don’t know anything more than you,” he shouted angrily. “It was a
hold-up. I guess you know that, don’t you? Well, what more do you want
to know? I ain’t got time to fool around. They cut off our express car
and have cracked it open, and they shot one of our train crew, that’s
all, and I want a doctor.”

“Did they shoot him--kill him, do you mean?”

“Is he hurt bad?”

“Did the men get away?”

“Oh, shut up, will you all?” exclaimed the conductor.

“What do I know? Is there a DOCTOR in this car, that’s what I want to
know?”

The well-dressed young man stepped forward.

“I’m a doctor,” he said. “Well, come along then,” returned the
conductor, in a surly voice, “and the passengers in this car,” he added,
turning back at the door and nodding his head menacingly, “will go back
to bed and STAY there. It’s all over and there’s nothing to see.”

He went out, followed by the young doctor.

Then ensued an interminable period of silence. The entire train seemed
deserted. Helpless, bereft of its engine, a huge, decapitated monster it
lay, half-way around a curve, rained upon, abandoned.

There was more fear in this last condition of affairs, more terror
in the idea of this prolonged line of sleepers, with their nickelled
fittings, their plate glass, their upholstery, vestibules, and the like,
loaded down with people, lost and forgotten in the night and the rain,
than there had been when the actual danger threatened.

What was to become of them now? Who was there to help them? Their engine
was gone; they were helpless. What next was to happen?

Nobody came near the car. Even the porter had disappeared. The wait
seemed endless, and the persistent snoring of the whiskered gentleman
rasped the nerves like the scrape of a file.

“Well, how long are we going to stick here now?” began one of the
drummers. “Wonder if they hurt the engine with their dynamite?”

“Oh, I know they will come through the car and rob us,” wailed the
school-teachers.

The lady with the little children went back to bed, and Annixter,
assured that the trouble was over, did likewise. But nobody slept. From
berth to berth came the sound of suppressed voices talking it all over,
formulating conjectures. Certain points seemed to be settled upon, no
one knew how, as indisputable. The highwaymen had been four in number
and had stopped the train by pulling the bell cord. A brakeman had
attempted to interfere and had been shot. The robbers had been on the
train all the way from San Francisco. The drummer named Max remembered
to have seen four “suspicious-looking characters” in the smoking-car
at Lathrop, and had intended to speak to the conductor about them. This
drummer had been in a hold-up before, and told the story of it over and
over again.

At last, after what seemed to have been an hour’s delay, and when the
dawn had already begun to show in the east, the locomotive backed on to
the train again with a reverberating jar that ran from car to car. At
the jolting, the school-teachers screamed in chorus, and the whiskered
gentleman stopped snoring and thrust his head from his curtains,
blinking at the Pintsch lights. It appeared that he was an Englishman.

“I say,” he asked of the drummer named Max, “I say, my friend, what
place is this?”

The others roared with derision.

“We were HELD UP, sir, that’s what we were. We were held up and you
slept through it all. You missed the show of your life.”

The gentleman fixed the group with a prolonged gaze. He said never a
word, but little by little he was convinced that the drummers told the
truth. All at once he grew wrathful, his face purpling. He withdrew his
head angrily, buttoning his curtains together in a fury. The cause of
his rage was inexplicable, but they could hear him resettling himself
upon his pillows with exasperated movements of his head and shoulders.
In a few moments the deep bass and shrill treble of his snoring once
more sounded through the car.

At last the train got under way again, with useless warning blasts of
the engine’s whistle. In a few moments it was tearing away through
the dawn at a wonderful speed, rocking around curves, roaring across
culverts, making up time.

And all the rest of that strange night the passengers, sitting up in
their unmade beds, in the swaying car, lighted by a strange mingling of
pallid dawn and trembling Pintsch lights, rushing at break-neck speed
through the misty rain, were oppressed by a vision of figures of terror,
far behind them in the night they had left, masked, armed, galloping
toward the mountains pistol in hand, the booty bound to the saddle
bow, galloping, galloping on, sending a thrill of fear through all the
country side.

The young doctor returned. He sat down in the smoking-room, lighting a
cigarette, and Annixter and the drummers pressed around him to know the
story of the whole affair.

“The man is dead,” he declared, “the brakeman. He was shot through the
lungs twice. They think the fellow got away with about five thousand in
gold coin.”

“The fellow? Wasn’t there four of them?”

“No; only one. And say, let me tell you, he had his nerve with him. It
seems he was on the roof of the express car all the time, and going as
fast as we were, he jumped from the roof of the car down on to the coal
on the engine’s tender, and crawled over that and held up the men in the
cab with his gun, took their guns from ‘em and made ‘em stop the train.
Even ordered ‘em to use the emergency gear, seems he knew all about it.
Then he went back and uncoupled the express car himself.

“While he was doing this, a brakeman--you remember that brakeman that
came through here once or twice--had a red mustache.”

“THAT chap?” “Sure. Well, as soon as the train stopped, this brakeman
guessed something was wrong and ran up, saw the fellow cutting off the
express car and took a couple of shots at him, and the fireman says
the fellow didn’t even take his hand off the coupling-pin; just turned
around as cool as how-do-you-do and NAILED the brakeman right there.
They weren’t five feet apart when they began shooting. The brakeman had
come on him unexpected, had no idea he was so close.”

“And the express messenger, all this time?”

“Well, he did his best. Jumped out with his repeating shot-gun, but the
fellow had him covered before he could turn round. Held him up and took
his gun away from him. Say, you know I call that nerve, just the same.
One man standing up a whole train-load, like that. Then, as soon as he’d
cut the express car off, he made the engineer run her up the track about
half a mile to a road crossing, WHERE HE HAD A HORSE TIED. What do you
think of that? Didn’t he have it all figured out close? And when he got
there, he dynamited the safe and got the Wells-Fargo box. He took five
thousand in gold coin; the messenger says it was railroad money that the
company were sending down to Bakersfield to pay off with. It was in a
bag. He never touched the registered mail, nor a whole wad of greenbacks
that were in the safe, but just took the coin, got on his horse, and lit
out. The engineer says he went to the east’ard.”

“He got away, did he?”

“Yes, but they think they’ll get him. He wore a kind of mask, but the
brakeman recognised him positively. We got his ante-mortem statement.
The brakeman said the fellow had a grudge against the road. He was a
discharged employee, and lives near Bonneville.”

“Dyke, by the Lord!” exclaimed Annixter.

“That’s the name,” said the young doctor.

When the train arrived at Bonneville, forty minutes behind time, it
landed Annixter and Hilma in the midst of the very thing they most
wished to avoid--an enormous crowd. The news that the Overland had been
held up thirty miles south of Fresno, a brakeman killed and the safe
looted, and that Dyke alone was responsible for the night’s work,
had been wired on ahead from Fowler, the train conductor throwing the
despatch to the station agent from the flying train.

Before the train had come to a standstill under the arched roof of the
Bonneville depot, it was all but taken by assault. Annixter, with Hilma
on his arm, had almost to fight his way out of the car. The depot was
black with people. S. Behrman was there, Delaney, Cyrus Ruggles, the
town marshal, the mayor. Genslinger, his hat on the back of his
head, ranged the train from cab to rear-lights, note-book in hand,
interviewing, questioning, collecting facts for his extra. As Annixter
descended finally to the platform, the editor, alert as a black-and-tan
terrier, his thin, osseous hands quivering with eagerness, his brown,
dry face working with excitement, caught his elbow.

“Can I have your version of the affair, Mr. Annixter?”

Annixter turned on him abruptly.

“Yes!” he exclaimed fiercely. “You and your gang drove Dyke from his job
because he wouldn’t work for starvation wages. Then you raised freight
rates on him and robbed him of all he had. You ruined him and drove him
to fill himself up with Caraher’s whiskey. He’s only taken back what you
plundered him of, and now you’re going to hound him over the State,
hunt him down like a wild animal, and bring him to the gallows at San
Quentin. That’s my version of the affair, Mister Genslinger, but it’s
worth your subsidy from the P. and S. W. to print it.”

There was a murmur of approval from the crowd that stood around, and
Genslinger, with an angry shrug of one shoulder, took himself away.

At length, Annixter brought Hilma through the crowd to where young Vacca
was waiting with the team. However, they could not at once start for
the ranch, Annixter wishing to ask some questions at the freight office
about a final consignment of chairs. It was nearly eleven o’clock before
they could start home. But to gain the Upper Road to Quien Sabe, it was
necessary to traverse all of Main Street, running through the heart of
Bonneville.

The entire town seemed to be upon the sidewalks. By now the rain was
over and the sun shining. The story of the hold-up--the work of a man
whom every one knew and liked--was in every mouth. How had Dyke come to
do it? Who would have believed it of him? Think of his poor mother
and the little tad. Well, after all, he was not so much to blame; the
railroad people had brought it on themselves. But he had shot a man
to death. Ah, that was a serious business. Good-natured, big,
broad-shouldered, jovial Dyke, the man they knew, with whom they had
shaken hands only yesterday, yes, and drank with him. He had shot a man,
killed him, had stood there in the dark and in the rain while they
were asleep in their beds, and had killed a man. Now where was he?
Instinctively eyes were turned eastward, over the tops of the houses,
or down vistas of side streets to where the foot-hills of the mountains
rose dim and vast over the edge of the valley. He was in amongst them;
somewhere, in all that pile of blue crests and purple canyons he was
hidden away. Now for weeks of searching, false alarms, clews, trailings,
watchings, all the thrill and heart-bursting excitement of a man-hunt.
Would he get away? Hardly a man on the sidewalks of the town that day
who did not hope for it.

As Annixter’s team trotted through the central portion of the town,
young Vacca pointed to a denser and larger crowd around the rear
entrance of the City Hall. Fully twenty saddle horses were tied to
the iron rail underneath the scant, half-grown trees near by, and as
Annixter and Hilma drove by, the crowd parted and a dozen men with
revolvers on their hips pushed their way to the curbstone, and, mounting
their horses, rode away at a gallop.

“It’s the posse,” said young Vacca.

Outside the town limits the ground was level. There was nothing to
obstruct the view, and to the north, in the direction of Osterman’s
ranch, Vacca made out another party of horsemen, galloping eastward, and
beyond these still another.

“There’re the other posses,” he announced. “That further one is Archie
Moore’s. He’s the sheriff. He came down from Visalia on a special engine
this morning.”

When the team turned into the driveway to the ranch house, Hilma uttered
a little cry, clasping her hands joyfully. The house was one glitter
of new white paint, the driveway had been freshly gravelled, the
flower-beds replenished. Mrs. Vacca and her daughter, who had been busy
putting on the finishing touches, came to the door to welcome them.

“What’s this case here?” asked Annixter, when, after helping his wife
from the carry-all, his eye fell upon a wooden box of some three by five
feet that stood on the porch and bore the red Wells-Fargo label.

“It came here last night, addressed to you, sir,” exclaimed Mrs. Vacca.
“We were sure it wasn’t any of your furniture, so we didn’t open it.”

“Oh, maybe it’s a wedding present,” exclaimed Hilma, her eyes sparkling.

“Well, maybe it is,” returned her husband. “Here, m’ son, help me in
with this.”

Annixter and young Vacca bore the case into the sitting-room of the
house, and Annixter, hammer in hand, attacked it vigorously. Vacca
discreetly withdrew on signal from his mother, closing the door after
him. Annixter and his wife were left alone.

“Oh, hurry, hurry,” cried Hilma, dancing around him.

“I want to see what it is. Who do you suppose could have sent it to us?
And so heavy, too. What do you think it can be?”

Annixter put the claw of the hammer underneath the edge of the board top
and wrenched with all his might. The boards had been clamped together by
a transverse bar and the whole top of the box came away in one piece.
A layer of excelsior was disclosed, and on it a letter addressed by
typewriter to Annixter. It bore the trade-mark of a business firm of Los
Angeles. Annixter glanced at this and promptly caught it up before Hilma
could see, with an exclamation of intelligence.

“Oh, I know what this is,” he observed, carelessly trying to restrain
her busy hands. “It isn’t anything. Just some machinery. Let it go.”
 But already she had pulled away the excelsior. Underneath, in temporary
racks, were two dozen Winchester repeating rifles.

“Why--what--what--” murmured Hilma blankly.

“Well, I told you not to mind,” said Annixter. “It isn’t anything. Let’s
look through the rooms.”

“But you said you knew what it was,” she protested, bewildered. “You
wanted to make believe it was machinery. Are you keeping anything from
me? Tell me what it all means. Oh, why are you getting--these?”

She caught his arm, looking with intense eagerness into his face. She
half understood already. Annixter saw that.

“Well,” he said, lamely, “YOU know--it may not come to anything at all,
but you know--well, this League of ours--suppose the Railroad tries to
jump Quien Sabe or Los Muertos or any of the other ranches--we made up
our minds--the Leaguers have--that we wouldn’t let it. That’s all.”

“And I thought,” cried Hilma, drawing back fearfully from the case of
rifles, “and I thought it was a wedding present.”

And that was their home-coming, the end of their bridal trip. Through
the terror of the night, echoing with pistol shots, through that scene
of robbery and murder, into this atmosphere of alarms, a man-hunt
organising, armed horsemen silhouetted against the horizons, cases of
rifles where wedding presents should have been, Annixter brought his
young wife to be mistress of a home he might at any moment be called
upon to defend with his life.

The days passed. Soon a week had gone by. Magnus Derrick and Osterman
returned from the city without any definite idea as to the Corporation’s
plans. Lyman had been reticent. He knew nothing as to the progress of
the land cases in Washington. There was no news. The Executive Committee
of the League held a perfunctory meeting at Los Muertos at which nothing
but routine business was transacted. A scheme put forward by Osterman
for a conference with the railroad managers fell through because of the
refusal of the company to treat with the ranchers upon any other basis
than that of the new grading. It was impossible to learn whether or not
the company considered Los Muertos, Quien Sabe, and the ranches around
Bonneville covered by the test cases then on appeal.

Meanwhile there was no decrease in the excitement that Dyke’s hold-up
had set loose over all the county. Day after day it was the one topic of
conversation, at street corners, at cross-roads, over dinner tables, in
office, bank, and store. S. Behrman placarded the town with a notice
of $500.00 reward for the ex-engineer’s capture, dead or alive, and the
express company supplemented this by another offer of an equal amount.
The country was thick with parties of horsemen, armed with rifles
and revolvers, recruited from Visalia, Goshen, and the few railroad
sympathisers around Bonneville and Guadlajara. One after another of
these returned, empty-handed, covered with dust and mud, their horses
exhausted, to be met and passed by fresh posses starting out to continue
the pursuit. The sheriff of Santa Clara County sent down his bloodhounds
from San Jose--small, harmless-looking dogs, with a terrific bay--to
help in the chase. Reporters from the San Francisco papers appeared,
interviewing every one, sometimes even accompanying the searching bands.
Horse hoofs clattered over the roads at night; bells were rung, the
“Mercury” issued extra after extra; the bloodhounds bayed, gun butts
clashed on the asphalt pavements of Bonneville; accidental discharges of
revolvers brought the whole town into the street; farm hands called
to each other across the fences of ranch-divisions--in a word, the
country-side was in an uproar.

And all to no effect. The hoof-marks of Dyke’s horse had been traced in
the mud of the road to within a quarter of a mile of the foot-hills and
there irretrievably lost. Three days after the hold-up, a sheep-herder
was found who had seen the highwayman on a ridge in the higher
mountains, to the northeast of Taurusa. And that was absolutely all.
Rumours were thick, promising clews were discovered, new trails taken
up, but nothing transpired to bring the pursuers and pursued any closer
together. Then, after ten days of strain, public interest began to flag.
It was believed that Dyke had succeeded in getting away. If this was
true, he had gone to the southward, after gaining the mountains, and
it would be his intention to work out of the range somewhere near the
southern part of the San Joaquin, near Bakersfield. Thus, the sheriffs,
marshals, and deputies decided. They had hunted too many criminals in
these mountains before not to know the usual courses taken. In time,
Dyke MUST come out of the mountains to get water and provisions. But
this time passed, and from not one of the watched points came any word
of his appearance. At last the posses began to disband. Little by little
the pursuit was given up.

Only S. Behrman persisted. He had made up his mind to bring Dyke in. He
succeeded in arousing the same degree of determination in Delaney--by
now, a trusted aide of the Railroad--and of his own cousin, a real
estate broker, named Christian, who knew the mountains and had once been
marshal of Visalia in the old stock-raising days. These two went into
the Sierras, accompanied by two hired deputies, and carrying with them a
month’s provisions and two of the bloodhounds loaned by the Santa Clara
sheriff.

On a certain Sunday, a few days after the departure of Christian and
Delaney, Annixter, who had been reading “David Copperfield” in his
hammock on the porch of the ranch house, put down the book and went to
find Hilma, who was helping Louisa Vacca set the table for dinner. He
found her in the dining-room, her hands full of the gold-bordered china
plates, only used on special occasions and which Louisa was forbidden to
touch.

His wife was more than ordinarily pretty that day. She wore a dress of
flowered organdie over pink sateen with pink ribbons about her waist and
neck, and on her slim feet the low shoes she always affected, with their
smart, bright buckles. Her thick, brown, sweet-smelling hair was
heaped high upon her head and set off with a bow of black velvet, and
underneath the shadow of its coils, her wide-open eyes, rimmed with
the thin, black line of her lashes, shone continually, reflecting
the sunlight. Marriage had only accentuated the beautiful maturity of
Hilma’s figure--now no longer precocious--defining the single, deep
swell from her throat to her waist, the strong, fine amplitude of her
hips, the sweet feminine undulation of her neck and shoulders. Her
cheeks were pink with health, and her large round arms carried the
piled-up dishes with never a tremour. Annixter, observant enough where
his wife was concerned noted how the reflection of the white china set a
glow of pale light underneath her chin.

“Hilma,” he said, “I’ve been wondering lately about things. We’re so
blamed happy ourselves it won’t do for us to forget about other people
who are down, will it? Might change our luck. And I’m just likely to
forget that way, too. It’s my nature.”

His wife looked up at him joyfully. Here was the new Annixter,
certainly.

“In all this hullabaloo about Dyke,” he went on “there’s some one nobody
ain’t thought about at all. That’s MRS. Dyke--and the little tad. I
wouldn’t be surprised if they were in a hole over there. What do you
say we drive over to the hop ranch after dinner and see if she wants
anything?”

Hilma put down the plates and came around the table and kissed him
without a word.

As soon as their dinner was over, Annixter had the carry-all hitched
up, and, dispensing with young Vacca, drove over to the hop ranch with
Hilma.

Hilma could not keep back the tears as they passed through the
lamentable desolation of the withered, brown vines, symbols of perished
hopes and abandoned effort, and Annixter swore between his teeth.

Though the wheels of the carry-all grated loudly on the roadway in front
of the house, nobody came to the door nor looked from the windows. The
place seemed tenantless, infinitely lonely, infinitely sad. Annixter
tied the team, and with Hilma approached the wide-open door, scuffling
and tramping on the porch to attract attention. Nobody stirred. A Sunday
stillness pervaded the place. Outside, the withered hop-leaves rustled
like dry paper in the breeze. The quiet was ominous. They peered into
the front room from the doorway, Hilma holding her husband’s hand. Mrs.
Dyke was there. She sat at the table in the middle of the room, her
head, with its white hair, down upon her arm. A clutter of unwashed
dishes were strewed over the red and white tablecloth. The unkempt room,
once a marvel of neatness, had not been cleaned for days. Newspapers,
Genslinger’s extras and copies of San Francisco and Los Angeles dailies
were scattered all over the room. On the table itself were crumpled
yellow telegrams, a dozen of them, a score of them, blowing about in the
draught from the door. And in the midst of all this disarray, surrounded
by the published accounts of her son’s crime, the telegraphed answers
to her pitiful appeals for tidings fluttering about her head, the
highwayman’s mother, worn out, abandoned and forgotten, slept through
the stillness of the Sunday afternoon.

Neither Hilma nor Annixter ever forgot their interview with Mrs. Dyke
that day. Suddenly waking, she had caught sight of Annixter, and at once
exclaimed eagerly:

“Is there any news?”

For a long time afterwards nothing could be got from her. She was numb
to all other issues than the one question of Dyke’s capture. She did not
answer their questions nor reply to their offers of assistance. Hilma
and Annixter conferred together without lowering their voices, at her
very elbow, while she looked vacantly at the floor, drawing one hand
over the other in a persistent, maniacal gesture. From time to time she
would start suddenly from her chair, her eyes wide, and as if all at
once realising Annixter’s presence, would cry out:

“Is there any news?”

“Where is Sidney, Mrs. Dyke?” asked Hilma for the fourth time. “Is she
well? Is she taken care of?”

“Here’s the last telegram,” said Mrs. Dyke, in a loud, monotonous voice.
“See, it says there is no news. He didn’t do it,” she moaned, rocking
herself back and forth, drawing one hand over the other, “he didn’t do
it, he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it. I don’t know where he is.”

When at last she came to herself, it was with a flood of tears. Hilma
put her arms around the poor, old woman, as she bowed herself again upon
the table, sobbing and weeping.

“Oh, my son, my son,” she cried, “my own boy, my only son! If I could
have died for you to have prevented this. I remember him when he was
little. Such a splendid little fellow, so brave, so loving, with never
an unkind thought, never a mean action. So it was all his life. We were
never apart. It was always ‘dear little son,’ and ‘dear mammy’ between
us--never once was he unkind, and he loved me and was the gentlest
son to me. And he was a GOOD man. He is now, he is now. They don’t
understand him. They are not even sure that he did this. He never
meant it. They don’t know my son. Why, he wouldn’t have hurt a kitten.
Everybody loved him. He was driven to it. They hounded him down, they
wouldn’t let him alone. He was not right in his mind. They hounded him
to it,” she cried fiercely, “they hounded him to it. They drove him and
goaded him till he couldn’t stand it any longer, and now they mean to
kill him for turning on them. They are hunting him with dogs; night
after night I have stood on the porch and heard the dogs baying far off.
They are tracking my boy with dogs like a wild animal. May God never
forgive them.” She rose to her feet, terrible, her white hair unbound.
“May God punish them as they deserve, may they never prosper--on my
knees I shall pray for it every night--may their money be a curse to
them, may their sons, their first-born, only sons, be taken from them in
their youth.”

But Hilma interrupted, begging her to be silent, to be quiet. The tears
came again then and the choking sobs. Hilma took her in her arms.

“Oh, my little boy, my little boy,” she cried. “My only son, all that I
had, to have come to this! He was not right in his mind or he would have
known it would break my heart. Oh, my son, my son, if I could have died
for you.”

Sidney came in, clinging to her dress, weeping, imploring her not to
cry, protesting that they never could catch her papa, that he would come
back soon. Hilma took them both, the little child and the broken-down
old woman, in the great embrace of her strong arms, and they all three
sobbed together.

Annixter stood on the porch outside, his back turned, looking straight
before him into the wilderness of dead vines, his teeth shut hard, his
lower lip thrust out.

“I hope S. Behrman is satisfied with all this,” he muttered. “I hope he
is satisfied now, damn his soul!”

All at once an idea occurred to him. He turned about and reentered the
room.

“Mrs Dyke,” he began, “I want you and Sidney to come over and live at
Quien Sabe. I know--you can’t make me believe that the reporters and
officers and officious busy-faces that pretend to offer help just so as
they can satisfy their curiosity aren’t nagging you to death. I want you
to let me take care of you and the little tad till all this trouble of
yours is over with. There’s plenty of place for you. You can have the
house my wife’s people used to live in. You’ve got to look these things
in the face. What are you going to do to get along? You must be very
short of money. S. Behrman will foreclose on you and take the whole
place in a little while, now. I want you to let me help you, let Hilma
and me be good friends to you. It would be a privilege.”

Mrs. Dyke tried bravely to assume her pride, insisting that she could
manage, but her spirit was broken. The whole affair ended unexpectedly,
with Annixter and Hilma bringing Dyke’s mother and little girl back to
Quien Sabe in the carry-all.

Mrs. Dyke would not take with her a stick of furniture nor a single
ornament. It would only serve to remind her of a vanished happiness. She
packed a few clothes of her own and Sidney’s in a little trunk, Hilma
helping her, and Annixter stowed the trunk under the carry-all’s back
seat. Mrs. Dyke turned the key in the door of the house and Annixter
helped her to her seat beside his wife. They drove through the sear,
brown hop vines. At the angle of the road Mrs. Dyke turned around and
looked back at the ruin of the hop ranch, the roof of the house just
showing above the trees. She never saw it again.

As soon as Annixter and Hilma were alone, after their return to Quien
Sabe--Mrs. Dyke and Sidney having been installed in the Trees’ old
house--Hilma threw her arms around her husband’s neck.

“Fine,” she exclaimed, “oh, it was fine of you, dear to think of them
and to be so good to them. My husband is such a GOOD man. So unselfish.
You wouldn’t have thought of being kind to Mrs. Dyke and Sidney a little
while ago. You wouldn’t have thought of them at all. But you did now,
and it’s just because you love me true, isn’t it? Isn’t it? And because
it’s made you a better man. I’m so proud and glad to think it’s so. It
is so, isn’t it? Just because you love me true.”

“You bet it is, Hilma,” he told her.

As Hilma and Annixter were sitting down to the supper which they found
waiting for them, Louisa Vacca came to the door of the dining-room
to say that Harran Derrick had telephoned over from Los Muertos for
Annixter, and had left word for him to ring up Los Muertos as soon as he
came in.

“He said it was important,” added Louisa Vacca.

“Maybe they have news from Washington,” suggested Hilma.

Annixter would not wait to have supper, but telephoned to Los Muertos
at once. Magnus answered the call. There was a special meeting of the
Executive Committee of the League summoned for the next day, he told
Annixter. It was for the purpose of considering the new grain tariff
prepared by the Railroad Commissioners. Lyman had written that the
schedule of this tariff had just been issued, that he had not been able
to construct it precisely according to the wheat-growers’ wishes,
and that he, himself, would come down to Los Muertos and explain its
apparent discrepancies. Magnus said Lyman would be present at the
session.

Annixter, curious for details, forbore, nevertheless, to question. The
connection from Los Muertos to Quien Sabe was made through Bonneville,
and in those troublesome times no one could be trusted. It could not
be known who would overhear conversations carried on over the lines.
He assured Magnus that he would be on hand. The time for the Committee
meeting had been set for seven o’clock in the evening, in order to
accommodate Lyman, who wrote that he would be down on the evening train,
but would be compelled, by pressure of business, to return to the city
early the next morning.

At the time appointed, the men composing the Committee gathered about
the table in the dining-room of the Los Muertos ranch house. It was
almost a reproduction of the scene of the famous evening when Osterman
had proposed the plan of the Ranchers’ Railroad Commission. Magnus
Derrick sat at the head of the table, in his buttoned frock coat.
Whiskey bottles and siphons of soda-water were within easy reach.
Presley, who by now was considered the confidential friend of every
member of the Committee, lounged as before on the sofa, smoking
cigarettes, the cat Nathalie on his knee. Besides Magnus and Annixter,
Osterman was present, and old Broderson and Harran; Garnet from the
Ruby Rancho and Gethings of the San Pablo, who were also members of the
Executive Committee, were on hand, preoccupied, bearded men, smoking
black cigars, and, last of all, Dabney, the silent old man, of whom
little was known but his name, and who had been made a member of the
Committee, nobody could tell why.

“My son Lyman should be here, gentlemen, within at least ten minutes.
I have sent my team to meet him at Bonneville,” explained Magnus, as he
called the meeting to order. “The Secretary will call the roll.”

Osterman called the roll, and, to fill in the time, read over the
minutes of the previous meeting. The treasurer was making his report as
to the funds at the disposal of the League when Lyman arrived.

Magnus and Harran went forward to meet him, and the Committee rather
awkwardly rose and remained standing while the three exchanged
greetings, the members, some of whom had never seen their commissioner,
eyeing him out of the corners of their eyes.

Lyman was dressed with his usual correctness. His cravat was of the
latest fashion, his clothes of careful design and unimpeachable fit. His
shoes, of patent leather, reflected the lamplight, and he carried a
drab overcoat over his arm. Before being introduced to the Committee, he
excused himself a moment and ran to see his mother, who waited for him
in the adjoining sitting-room. But in a few moments he returned, asking
pardon for the delay.

He was all affability; his protruding eyes, that gave such an unusual,
foreign appearance to his very dark face, radiated geniality. He was
evidently anxious to please, to produce a good impression upon the
grave, clumsy farmers before whom he stood. But at the same time,
Presley, watching him from his place on the sofa, could imagine that he
was rather nervous. He was too nimble in his cordiality, and the little
gestures he made in bringing his cuffs into view and in touching the
ends of his tight, black mustache with the ball of his thumb were
repeated with unnecessary frequency.

“Mr. Broderson, my son, Lyman, my eldest son. Mr. Annixter, my son,
Lyman.”

The Governor introduced him to the ranchers, proud of Lyman’s good
looks, his correct dress, his ease of manner. Lyman shook hands all
around, keeping up a flow of small talk, finding a new phrase for each
member, complimenting Osterman, whom he already knew, upon his talent
for organisation, recalling a mutual acquaintance to the mind of old
Broderson. At length, however, he sat down at the end of the table,
opposite his brother. There was a silence.

Magnus rose to recapitulate the reasons for the extra session of the
Committee, stating again that the Board of Railway Commissioners which
they--the ranchers--had succeeded in seating had at length issued the
new schedule of reduced rates, and that Mr. Derrick had been obliging
enough to offer to come down to Los Muertos in person to acquaint the
wheat-growers of the San Joaquin with the new rates for the carriage of
their grain.

But Lyman very politely protested, addressing his father punctiliously
as “Mr. Chairman,” and the other ranchers as “Gentlemen of the Executive
Committee of the League.” He had no wish, he said, to disarrange the
regular proceedings of the Committee. Would it not be preferable to
defer the reading of his report till “new business” was called for?
In the meanwhile, let the Committee proceed with its usual work. He
understood the necessarily delicate nature of this work, and would be
pleased to withdraw till the proper time arrived for him to speak.

“Good deal of backing and filling about the reading of a column of
figures,” muttered Annixter to the man at his elbow.

Lyman “awaited the Committee’s decision.” He sat down, touching the ends
of his mustache.

“Oh, play ball,” growled Annixter.

Gethings rose to say that as the meeting had been called solely for the
purpose of hearing and considering the new grain tariff, he was of the
opinion that routine business could be dispensed with and the schedule
read at once. It was so ordered.

Lyman rose and made a long speech. Voluble as Osterman himself, he,
nevertheless, had at his command a vast number of ready-made phrases,
the staples of a political speaker, the stock in trade of the commercial
lawyer, which rolled off his tongue with the most persuasive fluency.
By degrees, in the course of his speech, he began to insinuate the idea
that the wheat-growers had never expected to settle their difficulties
with the Railroad by the work of a single commission; that they
had counted upon a long, continued campaign of many years, railway
commission succeeding railway commission, before the desired low rates
should be secured; that the present Board of Commissioners was only the
beginning and that too great results were not expected from them. All
this he contrived to mention casually, in the talk, as if it were a
foregone conclusion, a matter understood by all.

As the speech continued, the eyes of the ranchers around the table were
fixed with growing attention upon this well-dressed, city-bred young
man, who spoke so fluently and who told them of their own intentions. A
feeling of perplexity began to spread, and the first taint of distrust
invaded their minds.

“But the good work has been most auspiciously inaugurated,” continued
Lyman. “Reforms so sweeping as the one contemplated cannot be
accomplished in a single night. Great things grow slowly, benefits to
be permanent must accrue gradually. Yet, in spite of all this, your
commissioners have done much. Already the phalanx of the enemy
is pierced, already his armour is dinted. Pledged as were your
commissioners to an average ten per cent. reduction in rates for the
carriage of grain by the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad, we have
rigidly adhered to the demands of our constituency, we have obeyed the
People. The main problem has not yet been completely solved; that is
for later, when we shall have gathered sufficient strength to attack the
enemy in his very stronghold; BUT AN AVERAGE TEN PER CENT. CUT HAS BEEN
MADE ALL OVER THE STATE. We have made a great advance, have taken a
great step forward, and if the work is carried ahead, upon the lines
laid down by the present commissioners and their constituents, there
is every reason to believe that within a very few years equitable and
stable rates for the shipment of grain from the San Joaquin Valley to
Stockton, Port Costa, and tidewater will be permanently imposed.”

“Well, hold on,” exclaimed Annixter, out of order and ignoring the
Governor’s reproof, “hasn’t your commission reduced grain rates in the
San Joaquin?”

“We have reduced grain rates by ten per cent. all over the State,”
 rejoined Lyman. “Here are copies of the new schedule.”

He drew them from his valise and passed them around the table.

“You see,” he observed, “the rate between Mayfield and Oakland, for
instance, has been reduced by twenty-five cents a ton.”

“Yes--but--but--” said old Broderson, “it is rather unusual, isn’t it,
for wheat in that district to be sent to Oakland?” “Why, look here,”
 exclaimed Annixter, looking up from the schedule, “where is there any
reduction in rates in the San Joaquin--from Bonneville and Guadalajara,
for instance? I don’t see as you’ve made any reduction at all. Is this
right? Did you give me the right schedule?”

“Of course, ALL the points in the State could not be covered at once,”
 returned Lyman. “We never expected, you know, that we could cut rates in
the San Joaquin the very first move; that is for later. But you will see
we made very material reductions on shipments from the upper Sacramento
Valley; also the rate from Ione to Marysville has been reduced eighty
cents a ton.”

“Why, rot,” cried Annixter, “no one ever ships wheat that way.”

“The Salinas rate,” continued Lyman, “has been lowered seventy-five
cents; the St. Helena rate fifty cents, and please notice the very
drastic cut from Red Bluff, north, along the Oregon route, to the Oregon
State Line.”

“Where not a carload of wheat is shipped in a year,” commented Gethings
of the San Pablo.

“Oh, you will find yourself mistaken there, Mr. Gethings,” returned
Lyman courteously. “And for the matter of that, a low rate would
stimulate wheat-production in that district.”

The order of the meeting was broken up, neglected; Magnus did not even
pretend to preside. In the growing excitement over the inexplicable
schedule, routine was not thought of. Every one spoke at will.

“Why, Lyman,” demanded Magnus, looking across the table to his son, “is
this schedule correct? You have not cut rates in the San Joaquin at all.
We--these gentlemen here and myself, we are no better off than we were
before we secured your election as commissioner.”

“We were pledged to make an average ten per cent. cut, sir----” “It IS
an average ten per cent. cut,” cried Osterman. “Oh, yes, that’s plain.
It’s an average ten per cent. cut all right, but you’ve made it by
cutting grain rates between points where practically no grain is
shipped. We, the wheat-growers in the San Joaquin, where all the wheat
is grown, are right where we were before. The Railroad won’t lose a
nickel. By Jingo, boys,” he glanced around the table, “I’d like to know
what this means.”

“The Railroad, if you come to that,” returned Lyman, “has already lodged
a protest against the new rate.”

Annixter uttered a derisive shout.

“A protest! That’s good, that is. When the P. and S. W. objects to rates
it don’t ‘protest,’ m’ son. The first you hear from Mr. Shelgrim is
an injunction from the courts preventing the order for new rates from
taking effect. By the Lord,” he cried angrily, leaping to his feet, “I
would like to know what all this means, too. Why didn’t you reduce our
grain rates? What did we elect you for?”

“Yes, what did we elect you for?” demanded Osterman and Gethings, also
getting to their feet.

“Order, order, gentlemen,” cried Magnus, remembering the duties of his
office and rapping his knuckles on the table. “This meeting has been
allowed to degenerate too far already.”

“You elected us,” declared Lyman doggedly, “to make an average ten
per cent. cut on grain rates. We have done it. Only because you don’t
benefit at once, you object. It makes a difference whose ox is gored, it
seems.”

“Lyman!”

It was Magnus who spoke. He had drawn himself to his full six feet. His
eyes were flashing direct into his son’s. His voice rang with severity.

“Lyman, what does this mean?”

The other spread out his hands.

“As you see, sir. We have done our best. I warned you not to expect too
much. I told you that this question of transportation was difficult.
You would not wish to put rates so low that the action would amount to
confiscation of property.”

“Why did you not lower rates in the valley of the San Joaquin?”

“That was not a PROMINENT issue in the affair,” responded Lyman,
carefully emphasising his words. “I understand, of course, it was to
be approached IN TIME. The main point was AN AVERAGE TEN PER CENT.
REDUCTION. Rates WILL be lowered in the San Joaquin. The ranchers around
Bonneville will be able to ship to Port Costa at equitable rates, but so
radical a measure as that cannot be put through in a turn of the hand.
We must study----”

“You KNEW the San Joaquin rate was an issue,” shouted Annixter, shaking
his finger across the table. “What do we men who backed you care about
rates up in Del Norte and Siskiyou Counties? Not a whoop in hell. It was
the San Joaquin rate we were fighting for, and we elected you to reduce
that. You didn’t do it and you don’t intend to, and, by the Lord Harry,
I want to know why.”

“You’ll know, sir--” began Lyman.

“Well, I’ll tell you why,” vociferated Osterman. “I’ll tell you why.
It’s because we have been sold out. It’s because the P. and S. W. have
had their spoon in this boiling. It’s because our commissioners have
betrayed us. It’s because we’re a set of damn fool farmers and have been
cinched again.”

Lyman paled under his dark skin at the direct attack. He evidently had
not expected this so soon. For the fraction of one instant he lost his
poise. He strove to speak, but caught his breath, stammering.

“What have you to say, then?” cried Harran, who, until now, had not
spoken.

“I have this to say,” answered Lyman, making head as best he might,
“that this is no proper spirit in which to discuss business. The
Commission has fulfilled its obligations. It has adjusted rates to
the best of its ability. We have been at work for two months on the
preparation of this schedule----”

“That’s a lie,” shouted Annixter, his face scarlet; “that’s a lie. That
schedule was drawn in the offices of the Pacific and Southwestern and
you know it. It’s a scheme of rates made for the Railroad and by the
Railroad and you were bought over to put your name to it.”

There was a concerted outburst at the words. All the men in the room
were on their feet, gesticulating and vociferating.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” cried Magnus, “are we schoolboys, are we
ruffians of the street?”

“We’re a set of fool farmers and we’ve been betrayed,” cried Osterman.

“Well, what have you to say? What have you to say?” persisted Harran,
leaning across the table toward his brother. “For God’s sake, Lyman,
you’ve got SOME explanation.”

“You’ve misunderstood,” protested Lyman, white and trembling. “You’ve
misunderstood. You’ve expected too much. Next year,--next year,--soon
now, the Commission will take up the--the Commission will consider the
San Joaquin rate. We’ve done our best, that is all.”

“Have you, sir?” demanded Magnus.

The Governor’s head was in a whirl; a sensation, almost of faintness,
had seized upon him. Was it possible? Was it possible?

“Have you done your best?” For a second he compelled Lyman’s eye.
The glances of father and son met, and, in spite of his best efforts,
Lyman’s eyes wavered. He began to protest once more, explaining the
matter over again from the beginning. But Magnus did not listen. In
that brief lapse of time he was convinced that the terrible thing had
happened, that the unbelievable had come to pass. It was in the air.
Between father and son, in some subtle fashion, the truth that was a
lie stood suddenly revealed. But even then Magnus would not receive it.
Lyman do this! His son, his eldest son, descend to this! Once more and
for the last time he turned to him and in his voice there was that ring
that compelled silence.

“Lyman,” he said, “I adjure you--I--I demand of you as you are my son
and an honourable man, explain yourself. What is there behind all this?
It is no longer as Chairman of the Committee I speak to you, you a
member of the Railroad Commission. It is your father who speaks, and I
address you as my son. Do you understand the gravity of this crisis;
do you realise the responsibility of your position; do you not see the
importance of this moment? Explain yourself.”

“There is nothing to explain.”

“You have not reduced rates in the San Joaquin? You have not reduced
rates between Bonneville and tidewater?”

“I repeat, sir, what I said before. An average ten per cent. cut----”

“Lyman, answer me, yes or no. Have you reduced the Bonneville rate?”

“It could not be done so soon. Give us time. We----”

“Yes or no! By God, sir, do you dare equivocate with me? Yes or no; have
you reduced the Bonneville rate?”

“No.”

“And answer ME,” shouted Harran, leaning far across the table, “answer
ME. Were you paid by the Railroad to leave the San Joaquin rate
untouched?”

Lyman, whiter than ever, turned furious upon his brother.

“Don’t you dare put that question to me again.”

“No, I won’t,” cried Harran, “because I’ll TELL you to your villain’s
face that you WERE paid to do it.”

On the instant the clamour burst forth afresh. Still on their feet, the
ranchers had, little by little, worked around the table, Magnus alone
keeping his place. The others were in a group before Lyman, crowding
him, as it were, to the wall, shouting into his face with menacing
gestures. The truth that was a lie, the certainty of a trust betrayed, a
pledge ruthlessly broken, was plain to every one of them.

“By the Lord! men have been shot for less than this,” cried Osterman.
“You’ve sold us out, you, and if you ever bring that dago face of yours
on a level with mine again, I’ll slap it.”

“Keep your hands off,” exclaimed Lyman quickly, the aggressiveness of
the cornered rat flaming up within him. “No violence. Don’t you go too
far.”

“How much were you paid? How much were you paid?” vociferated Harran.

“Yes, yes, what was your price?” cried the others. They were beside
themselves with anger; their words came harsh from between their set
teeth; their gestures were made with their fists clenched.

“You know the Commission acted in good faith,” retorted Lyman. “You know
that all was fair and above board.”

“Liar,” shouted Annixter; “liar, bribe-eater. You were bought and paid
for,” and with the words his arm seemed almost of itself to leap out
from his shoulder. Lyman received the blow squarely in the face and the
force of it sent him staggering backwards toward the wall. He tripped
over his valise and fell half way, his back supported against the closed
door of the room. Magnus sprang forward. His son had been struck, and
the instincts of a father rose up in instant protest; rose for a moment,
then forever died away in his heart. He checked the words that flashed
to his mind. He lowered his upraised arm. No, he had but one son.
The poor, staggering creature with the fine clothes, white face, and
blood-streaked lips was no longer his. A blow could not dishonour him
more than he had dishonoured himself.

But Gethings, the older man, intervened, pulling Annixter back, crying:

“Stop, this won’t do. Not before his father.”

“I am no father to this man, gentlemen,” exclaimed Magnus. “From now on,
I have but one son. You, sir,” he turned to Lyman, “you, sir, leave my
house.”

Lyman, his handkerchief to his lips, his smart cravat in disarray,
caught up his hat and coat. He was shaking with fury, his protruding
eyes were blood-shot. He swung open the door.

“Ruffians,” he shouted from the threshold, “ruffians, bullies. Do your
own dirty business yourselves after this. I’m done with you. How is it,
all of a sudden you talk about honour? How is it that all at once you’re
so clean and straight? You weren’t so particular at Sacramento just
before the nominations. How was the Board elected? I’m a bribe-eater,
am I? Is it any worse than GIVING a bribe? Ask Magnus Derrick what he
thinks about that. Ask him how much he paid the Democratic bosses at
Sacramento to swing the convention.”

He went out, slamming the door.

Presley followed. The whole affair made him sick at heart, filled him
with infinite disgust, infinite weariness. He wished to get away from it
all. He left the dining-room and the excited, clamouring men behind him
and stepped out on the porch of the ranch house, closing the door behind
him. Lyman was nowhere in sight. Presley was alone. It was late, and
after the lamp-heated air of the dining-room, the coolness of the night
was delicious, and its vast silence, after the noise and fury of the
committee meeting, descended from the stars like a benediction. Presley
stepped to the edge of the porch, looking off to southward.

And there before him, mile after mile, illimitable, covering the earth
from horizon to horizon, lay the Wheat. The growth, now many days old,
was already high from the ground. There it lay, a vast, silent ocean,
shimmering a pallid green under the moon and under the stars; a mighty
force, the strength of nations, the life of the world. There in the
night, under the dome of the sky, it was growing steadily. To Presley’s
mind, the scene in the room he had just left dwindled to paltry
insignificance before this sight. Ah, yes, the Wheat--it was over this
that the Railroad, the ranchers, the traitor false to his trust, all
the members of an obscure conspiracy, were wrangling. As if human
agency could affect this colossal power! What were these heated, tiny
squabbles, this feverish, small bustle of mankind, this minute swarming
of the human insect, to the great, majestic, silent ocean of the Wheat
itself! Indifferent, gigantic, resistless, it moved in its appointed
grooves. Men, Liliputians, gnats in the sunshine, buzzed impudently in
their tiny battles, were born, lived through their little day, died, and
were forgotten; while the Wheat, wrapped in Nirvanic calm, grew steadily
under the night, alone with the stars and with God.



CHAPTER V.


Jack-rabbits were a pest that year and Presley occasionally found
amusement in hunting them with Harran’s half-dozen greyhounds, following
the chase on horseback. One day, between two and three months after
Lyman s visit to Los Muertos, as he was returning toward the ranch house
from a distant and lonely quarter of Los Muertos, he came unexpectedly
upon a strange sight.

Some twenty men, Annixter’s and Osterman’s tenants, and small ranchers
from east of Guadalajara--all members of the League--were going through
the manual of arms under Harran Derrick’s supervision. They were all
equipped with new Winchester rifles. Harran carried one of these himself
and with it he illustrated the various commands he gave. As soon as one
of the men under his supervision became more than usually proficient, he
was told off to instruct a file of the more backward. After the manual
of arms, Harran gave the command to take distance as skirmishers, and
when the line had opened out so that some half-dozen feet intervened
between each man, an advance was made across the field, the men stooping
low and snapping the hammers of their rifles at an imaginary enemy.

The League had its agents in San Francisco, who watched the movements
of the Railroad as closely as was possible, and some time before this,
Annixter had received word that the Marshal and his deputies were coming
down to Bonneville to put the dummy buyers of his ranch in possession.
The report proved to be but the first of many false alarms, but it
had stimulated the League to unusual activity, and some three or four
hundred men were furnished with arms and from time to time were drilled
in secret.

Among themselves, the ranchers said that if the Railroad managers did
not believe they were terribly in earnest in the stand they had taken,
they were making a fatal mistake.

Harran reasserted this statement to Presley on the way home to the
ranch house that same day. Harran had caught up with him by the time he
reached the Lower Road, and the two jogged homeward through the miles of
standing wheat.

“They may jump the ranch, Pres,” he said, “if they try hard enough, but
they will never do it while I am alive. By the way,” he added, “you know
we served notices yesterday upon S. Behrman and Cy. Ruggles to quit the
country. Of course, they won’t do it, but they won’t be able to say they
didn’t have warning.”

About an hour later, the two reached the ranch house, but as Harran rode
up the driveway, he uttered an exclamation.

“Hello,” he said, “something is up. That’s Genslinger’s buckboard.”

In fact, the editor’s team was tied underneath the shade of a giant
eucalyptus tree near by. Harran, uneasy under this unexpected visit of
the enemy’s friend, dismounted without stabling his horse, and went at
once to the dining-room, where visitors were invariably received. But
the dining-room was empty, and his mother told him that Magnus and
the editor were in the “office.” Magnus had said they were not to be
disturbed.

Earlier in the afternoon, the editor had driven up to the porch and had
asked Mrs. Derrick, whom he found reading a book of poems on the porch,
if he could see Magnus. At the time, the Governor had gone with Phelps
to inspect the condition of the young wheat on Hooven’s holding, but
within half an hour he returned, and Genslinger had asked him for a “few
moments’ talk in private.”

The two went into the “office,” Magnus locking the door behind him.
“Very complete you are here, Governor,” observed the editor in his
alert, jerky manner, his black, bead-like eyes twinkling around the room
from behind his glasses. “Telephone, safe, ticker, account-books--well,
that’s progress, isn’t it? Only way to manage a big ranch these days.
But the day of the big ranch is over. As the land appreciates in value,
the temptation to sell off small holdings will be too strong. And then
the small holding can be cultivated to better advantage. I shall have an
editorial on that some day.”

“The cost of maintaining a number of small holdings,” said Magnus,
indifferently, “is, of course, greater than if they were all under one
management.”

“That may be, that may be,” rejoined the other.

There was a long pause. Genslinger leaned back in his chair and rubbed
a knee. Magnus, standing erect in front of the safe, waited for him to
speak.

“This is an unfortunate business, Governor,” began the editor, “this
misunderstanding between the ranchers and the Railroad. I wish it could
be adjusted. HERE are two industries that MUST be in harmony with one
another, or we all go to pot.”

“I should prefer not to be interviewed on the subject, Mr. Genslinger,”
 said Magnus.

“Oh, no, oh, no. Lord love you, Governor, I don’t want to interview you.
We all know how you stand.”

Again there was a long silence. Magnus wondered what this little man,
usually so garrulous, could want of him. At length, Genslinger began
again. He did not look at Magnus, except at long intervals.

“About the present Railroad Commission,” he remarked. “That was an
interesting campaign you conducted in Sacramento and San Francisco.”

Magnus held his peace, his hands shut tight. Did Genslinger know of
Lyman’s disgrace? Was it for this he had come? Would the story of it be
the leading article in to-morrow’s Mercury?

“An interesting campaign,” repeated Genslinger, slowly; “a very
interesting campaign. I watched it with every degree of interest. I saw
its every phase, Mr. Derrick.”

“The campaign was not without its interest,” admitted Magnus.

“Yes,” said Genslinger, still more deliberately, “and some phases of it
were--more interesting than others, as, for instance, let us say the
way in which you--personally--secured the votes of certain chairmen of
delegations--NEED I particularise further? Yes, those men--the way
you got their votes. Now, THAT I should say, Mr. Derrick, was the most
interesting move in the whole game--to you. Hm, curious,” he murmured,
musingly. “Let’s see. You deposited two one-thousand dollar bills and
four five-hundred dollar bills in a box--three hundred and eight was
the number--in a box in the Safety Deposit Vaults in San Francisco, and
then--let’s see, you gave a key to this box to each of the gentlemen
in question, and after the election the box was empty. Now, I call that
interesting--curious, because it’s a new, safe, and highly ingenious
method of bribery. How did you happen to think of it, Governor?”

“Do you know what you are doing, sir?” Magnus burst forth. “Do you know
what you are insinuating, here, in my own house?”

“Why, Governor,” returned the editor, blandly, “I’m not INSINUATING
anything. I’m talking about what I KNOW.”

“It’s a lie.”

Genslinger rubbed his chin reflectively.

“Well,” he answered, “you can have a chance to prove it before the Grand
Jury, if you want to.”

“My character is known all over the State,” blustered Magnus. “My
politics are pure politics. My----”

“No one needs a better reputation for pure politics than the man who
sets out to be a briber,” interrupted Genslinger, “and I might as well
tell you, Governor, that you can’t shout me down. I can put my hand
on the two chairmen you bought before it’s dark to-day. I’ve had their
depositions in my safe for the last six weeks. We could make the arrests
to-morrow, if we wanted. Governor, you sure did a risky thing when you
went into that Sacramento fight, an awful risky thing. Some men can
afford to have bribery charges preferred against them, and it don’t hurt
one little bit, but YOU--Lord, it would BUST you, Governor, bust you
dead. I know all about the whole shananigan business from A to Z, and
if you don’t believe it--here,” he drew a long strip of paper from his
pocket, “here’s a galley proof of the story.”

Magnus took it in his hands. There, under his eyes, scare-headed,
double-leaded, the more important clauses printed in bold type, was the
detailed account of the “deal” Magnus had made with the two delegates.
It was pitiless, remorseless, bald. Every statement was substantiated,
every statistic verified with Genslinger’s meticulous love for
exactness. Besides all that, it had the ring of truth. It was exposure,
ruin, absolute annihilation.

“That’s about correct, isn’t it?” commented Genslinger, as Derrick
finished reading. Magnus did not reply. “I think it is correct enough,”
 the editor continued. “But I thought it would only be fair to you to let
you see it before it was published.”

The one thought uppermost in Derrick’s mind, his one impulse of the
moment was, at whatever cost, to preserve his dignity, not to allow
this man to exult in the sight of one quiver of weakness, one trace of
defeat, one suggestion of humiliation. By an effort that put all his
iron rigidity to the test, he forced himself to look straight into
Genslinger’s eyes.

“I congratulate you,” he observed, handing back the proof, “upon your
journalistic enterprise. Your paper will sell to-morrow.” “Oh, I
don’t know as I want to publish this story,” remarked the editor,
indifferently, putting away the galley. “I’m just like that. The fun
for me is running a good story to earth, but once I’ve got it, I lose
interest. And, then, I wouldn’t like to see you--holding the position
you do, President of the League and a leading man of the county--I
wouldn’t like to see a story like this smash you over. It’s worth
more to you to keep it out of print than for me to put it in. I’ve got
nothing much to gain but a few extra editions, but you--Lord, you would
lose everything. Your committee was in the deal right enough. But your
League, all the San Joaquin Valley, everybody in the State believes the
commissioners were fairly elected.”

“Your story,” suddenly exclaimed Magnus, struck with an idea, “will
be thoroughly discredited just so soon as the new grain tariff is
published. I have means of knowing that the San Joaquin rate--the issue
upon which the board was elected--is not to be touched. Is it likely the
ranchers would secure the election of a board that plays them false?”

“Oh, we know all about that,” answered Genslinger, smiling. “You thought
you were electing Lyman easily. You thought you had got the Railroad to
walk right into your trap. You didn’t understand how you could pull off
your deal so easily. Why, Governor, LYMAN WAS PLEDGED TO THE RAILROAD
TWO YEARS AGO. He was THE ONE PARTICULAR man the corporation wanted for
commissioner. And your people elected him--saved the Railroad all the
trouble of campaigning for him. And you can’t make any counter charge
of bribery there. No, sir, the corporation don’t use such amateurish
methods as that. Confidentially and between us two, all that the
Railroad has done for Lyman, in order to attach him to their interests,
is to promise to back him politically in the next campaign for Governor.
It’s too bad,” he continued, dropping his voice, and changing his
position. “It really is too bad to see good men trying to bunt a stone
wall over with their bare heads. You couldn’t have won at any stage of
the game. I wish I could have talked to you and your friends before you
went into that Sacramento fight. I could have told you then how little
chance you had. When will you people realise that you can’t buck against
the Railroad? Why, Magnus, it’s like me going out in a paper boat and
shooting peas at a battleship.”

“Is that all you wished to see me about, Mr. Genslinger?” remarked
Magnus, bestirring himself. “I am rather occupied to-day.” “Well,”
 returned the other, “you know what the publication of this article would
mean for you.” He paused again, took off his glasses, breathed on them,
polished the lenses with his handkerchief and readjusted them on his
nose. “I’ve been thinking, Governor,” he began again, with renewed
alertness, and quite irrelevantly, “of enlarging the scope of the
‘Mercury.’ You see, I’m midway between the two big centres of the State,
San Francisco and Los Angeles, and I want to extend the ‘Mercury’s’
sphere of influence as far up and down the valley as I can. I want to
illustrate the paper. You see, if I had a photo-engraving plant of
my own, I could do a good deal of outside jobbing as well, and the
investment would pay ten per cent. But it takes money to make money.
I wouldn’t want to put in any dinky, one-horse affair. I want a good
plant. I’ve been figuring out the business. Besides the plant, there
would be the expense of a high grade paper. Can’t print half-tones on
anything but coated paper, and that COSTS. Well, what with this and with
that and running expenses till the thing began to pay, it would cost
me about ten thousand dollars, and I was wondering if, perhaps, you
couldn’t see your way clear to accommodating me.”

“Ten thousand?”

“Yes. Say five thousand down, and the balance within sixty days.”

Magnus, for the moment blind to what Genslinger had in mind, turned on
him in astonishment.

“Why, man, what security could you give me for such an amount?”

“Well, to tell the truth,” answered the editor, “I hadn’t thought much
about securities. In fact, I believed you would see how greatly it was
to your advantage to talk business with me. You see, I’m not going to
print this article about you, Governor, and I’m not going to let it get
out so as any one else can print it, and it seems to me that one good
turn deserves another. You understand?”

Magnus understood. An overwhelming desire suddenly took possession of
him to grip this blackmailer by the throat, to strangle him where he
stood; or, if not, at least to turn upon him with that old-time terrible
anger, before which whole conventions had once cowered. But in the same
moment the Governor realised this was not to be. Only its righteousness
had made his wrath terrible; only the justice of his anger had made him
feared. Now the foundation was gone from under his feet; he had knocked
it away himself. Three times feeble was he whose quarrel was unjust.
Before this country editor, this paid speaker of the Railroad, he stood,
convicted. The man had him at his mercy. The detected briber could not
resent an insult. Genslinger rose, smoothing his hat.

“Well,” he said, “of course, you want time to think it over, and you
can’t raise money like that on short notice. I’ll wait till Friday noon
of this week. We begin to set Saturday’s paper at about four, Friday
afternoon, and the forms are locked about two in the morning. I hope,”
 he added, turning back at the door of the room, “that you won’t find
anything disagreeable in your Saturday morning ‘Mercury,’ Mr. Derrick.”

He went out, closing the door behind him, and in a moment, Magnus heard
the wheels of his buckboard grating on the driveway.

The following morning brought a letter to Magnus from Gethings, of the
San Pueblo ranch, which was situated very close to Visalia. The letter
was to the effect that all around Visalia, upon the ranches affected by
the regrade of the Railroad, men were arming and drilling, and that the
strength of the League in that quarter was undoubted. “But to refer,”
 continued the letter, “to a most painful recollection. You will, no
doubt, remember that, at the close of our last committee meeting,
specific charges were made as to fraud in the nomination and election
of one of our commissioners, emanating, most unfortunately, from the
commissioner himself. These charges, my dear Mr. Derrick, were directed
at yourself. How the secrets of the committee have been noised about,
I cannot understand. You may be, of course, assured of my own
unquestioning confidence and loyalty. However, I regret exceedingly
to state not only that the rumour of the charges referred to above is
spreading in this district, but that also they are made use of by the
enemies of the League. It is to be deplored that some of the Leaguers
themselves--you know, we number in our ranks many small farmers,
ignorant Portuguese and foreigners--have listened to these stories
and have permitted a feeling of uneasiness to develop among them. Even
though it were admitted that fraudulent means had been employed in the
elections, which, of course, I personally do not admit, I do not think
it would make very much difference in the confidence which the vast
majority of the Leaguers repose in their chiefs. Yet we have so insisted
upon the probity of our position as opposed to Railroad chicanery,
that I believe it advisable to quell this distant suspicion at once; to
publish a denial of these rumoured charges would only be to give them
too much importance. However, can you not write me a letter, stating
exactly how the campaign was conducted, and the commission nominated and
elected? I could show this to some of the more disaffected, and it would
serve to allay all suspicion on the instant. I think it would be well
to write as though the initiative came, not from me, but from yourself,
ignoring this present letter. I offer this only as a suggestion, and
will confidently endorse any decision you may arrive at.”

The letter closed with renewed protestations of confidence.

Magnus was alone when he read this. He put it carefully away in the
filing cabinet in his office, and wiped the sweat from his forehead and
face. He stood for one moment, his hands rigid at his sides, his fists
clinched.

“This is piling up,” he muttered, looking blankly at the opposite wall.
“My God, this is piling up. What am I to do?”

Ah, the bitterness of unavailing regret, the anguish of compromise with
conscience, the remorse of a bad deed done in a moment of excitement.
Ah, the humiliation of detection, the degradation of being caught,
caught like a schoolboy pilfering his fellows’ desks, and, worse
than all, worse than all, the consciousness of lost self-respect, the
knowledge of a prestige vanishing, a dignity impaired, knowledge that
the grip which held a multitude in check was trembling, that control
was wavering, that command was being weakened. Then the little tricks
to deceive the crowd, the little subterfuges, the little pretences that
kept up appearances, the lies, the bluster, the pose, the strut, the
gasconade, where once was iron authority; the turning of the head so
as not to see that which could not be prevented; the suspicion of
suspicion, the haunting fear of the Man on the Street, the uneasiness
of the direct glance, the questioning as to motives--why had this been
said, what was meant by that word, that gesture, that glance?

Wednesday passed, and Thursday. Magnus kept to himself, seeing no
visitors, avoiding even his family. How to break through the mesh of the
net, how to regain the old position, how to prevent discovery? If there
were only some way, some vast, superhuman effort by which he could rise
in his old strength once more, crushing Lyman with one hand, Genslinger
with the other, and for one more moment, the last, to stand supreme
again, indomitable, the leader; then go to his death, triumphant at the
end, his memory untarnished, his fame undimmed. But the plague-spot
was in himself, knitted forever into the fabric of his being. Though
Genslinger should be silenced, though Lyman should be crushed, though
even the League should overcome the Railroad, though he should be the
acknowledged leader of a resplendent victory, yet the plague-spot
would remain. There was no success for him now. However conspicuous
the outward achievement, he, he himself, Magnus Derrick, had failed,
miserably and irredeemably.

Petty, material complications intruded, sordid considerations. Even if
Genslinger was to be paid, where was the money to come from? His legal
battles with the Railroad, extending now over a period of many years,
had cost him dear; his plan of sowing all of Los Muertos to wheat,
discharging the tenants, had proved expensive, the campaign resulting
in Lyman’s election had drawn heavily upon his account. All along he
had been relying upon a “bonanza crop” to reimburse him. It was not
believable that the Railroad would “jump” Los Muertos, but if this
should happen, he would be left without resources. Ten thousand dollars!
Could he raise the amount? Possibly. But to pay it out to a blackmailer!
To be held up thus in road-agent fashion, without a single means of
redress! Would it not cripple him financially? Genslinger could do
his worst. He, Magnus, would brave it out. Was not his character above
suspicion?

Was it? This letter of Gethings’s. Already the murmur of uneasiness
made itself heard. Was this not the thin edge of the wedge? How the
publication of Genslinger’s story would drive it home! How the spark of
suspicion would flare into the blaze of open accusation! There would be
investigations. Investigation! There was terror in the word. He could
not stand investigation. Magnus groaned aloud, covering his head with
his clasped hands. Briber, corrupter of government, ballot-box stuffer,
descending to the level of back-room politicians, of bar-room heelers,
he, Magnus Derrick, statesman of the old school, Roman in his iron
integrity, abandoning a career rather than enter the “new politics,”
 had, in one moment of weakness, hazarding all, even honour, on a single
stake, taking great chances to achieve great results, swept away the
work of a lifetime.

Gambler that he was, he had at last chanced his highest stake, his
personal honour, in the greatest game of his life, and had lost.

It was Presley’s morbidly keen observation that first noticed the
evidence of a new trouble in the Governor’s face and manner. Presley was
sure that Lyman’s defection had not so upset him. The morning after the
committee meeting, Magnus had called Harran and Annie Derrick into the
office, and, after telling his wife of Lyman’s betrayal, had forbidden
either of them to mention his name again. His attitude towards his
prodigal son was that of stern, unrelenting resentment. But now, Presley
could not fail to detect traces of a more deep-seated travail. Something
was in the wind, the times were troublous. What next was about to
happen? What fresh calamity impended?

One morning, toward the very end of the week, Presley woke early in his
small, white-painted iron bed. He hastened to get up and dress. There
was much to be done that day. Until late the night before, he had
been at work on a collection of some of his verses, gathered from the
magazines in which they had first appeared. Presley had received a
liberal offer for the publication of these verses in book form. “The
Toilers” was to be included in this book, and, indeed, was to give it
its name--“The Toilers and Other Poems.” Thus it was that, until the
previous midnight, he had been preparing the collection for publication,
revising, annotating, arranging. The book was to be sent off that
morning.

But also Presley had received a typewritten note from Annixter, inviting
him to Quien Sabe that same day. Annixter explained that it was Hilma’s
birthday, and that he had planned a picnic on the high ground of his
ranch, at the headwaters of Broderson Creek. They were to go in the
carry-all, Hilma, Presley, Mrs. Dyke, Sidney, and himself, and were to
make a day of it. They would leave Quien Sabe at ten in the morning.
Presley had at once resolved to go. He was immensely fond of
Annixter--more so than ever since his marriage with Hilma and the
astonishing transformation of his character. Hilma, as well, was
delightful as Mrs. Annixter; and Mrs. Dyke and the little tad had always
been his friends. He would have a good time.

But nobody was to go into Bonneville that morning with the mail, and if
he wished to send his manuscript, he would have to take it in himself.
He had resolved to do this, getting an early start, and going on
horseback to Quien Sabe, by way of Bonneville.

It was barely six o’clock when Presley sat down to his coffee and eggs
in the dining-room of Los Muertos. The day promised to be hot, and
for the first time, Presley had put on a new khaki riding suit, very
English-looking, though in place of the regulation top-boots, he wore
his laced knee-boots, with a great spur on the left heel. Harran joined
him at breakfast, in his working clothes of blue canvas. He was bound
for the irrigating ditch to see how the work was getting on there.

“How is the wheat looking?” asked Presley.

“Bully,” answered the other, stirring his coffee. “The Governor has had
his usual luck. Practically, every acre of the ranch was sown to
wheat, and everywhere the stand is good. I was over on Two, day before
yesterday, and if nothing happens, I believe it will go thirty sacks
to the acre there. Cutter reports that there are spots on Four where we
will get forty-two or three. Hooven, too, brought up some wonderful fine
ears for me to look at. The grains were just beginning to show. Some of
the ears carried twenty grains. That means nearly forty bushels of wheat
to every acre. I call it a bonanza year.”

“Have you got any mail?” said Presley, rising. “I’m going into town.”

Harran shook his head, and took himself away, and Presley went down to
the stable-corral to get his pony.

As he rode out of the stable-yard and passed by the ranch house, on
the driveway, he was surprised to see Magnus on the lowest step of the
porch.

“Good morning, Governor,” called Presley. “Aren’t you up pretty early?”

“Good morning, Pres, my boy.” The Governor came forward and, putting his
hand on the pony’s withers, walked along by his side.

“Going to town, Pres?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. Can I do anything for you, Governor?”

Magnus drew a sealed envelope from his pocket.

“I wish you would drop in at the office of the Mercury for me,” he said,
“and see Mr. Genslinger personally, and give him this envelope. It is a
package of papers, but they involve a considerable sum of money, and
you must be careful of them. A few years ago, when our enmity was not so
strong, Mr. Genslinger and I had some business dealings with each
other. I thought it as well just now, considering that we are so openly
opposed, to terminate the whole affair, and break off relations. We came
to a settlement a few days ago. These are the final papers. They must be
given to him in person, Presley. You understand.”

Presley cantered on, turning into the county road and holding northward
by the mammoth watering tank and Broderson’s popular windbreak. As he
passed Caraher’s, he saw the saloon-keeper in the doorway of his place,
and waved him a salutation which the other returned.

By degrees, Presley had come to consider Caraher in a more favourable
light. He found, to his immense astonishment, that Caraher knew
something of Mill and Bakounin, not, however, from their books, but
from extracts and quotations from their writings, reprinted in the
anarchistic journals to which he subscribed. More than once, the two had
held long conversations, and from Caraher’s own lips, Presley heard
the terrible story of the death of his wife, who had been accidentally
killed by Pinkertons during a “demonstration” of strikers. It invested
the saloon-keeper, in Presley’s imagination, with all the dignity of the
tragedy. He could not blame Caraher for being a “red.” He even wondered
how it was the saloon-keeper had not put his theories into practice, and
adjusted his ancient wrong with his “six inches of plugged gas-pipe.”
 Presley began to conceive of the man as a “character.”

“You wait, Mr. Presley,” the saloon-keeper had once said, when Presley
had protested against his radical ideas. “You don’t know the Railroad
yet. Watch it and its doings long enough, and you’ll come over to my way
of thinking, too.”

It was about half-past seven when Presley reached Bonneville. The
business part of the town was as yet hardly astir; he despatched his
manuscript, and then hurried to the office of the “Mercury.” Genslinger,
as he feared, had not yet put in appearance, but the janitor of the
building gave Presley the address of the editor’s residence, and it was
there he found him in the act of sitting down to breakfast. Presley was
hardly courteous to the little man, and abruptly refused his offer of a
drink. He delivered Magnus’s envelope to him and departed.

It had occurred to him that it would not do to present himself at Quien
Sabe on Hilma’s birthday, empty-handed, and, on leaving Genslinger’s
house, he turned his pony’s head toward the business part of the town
again pulling up in front of the jeweller’s, just as the clerk was
taking down the shutters.

At the jeweller’s, he purchased a little brooch for Hilma and at the
cigar stand in the lobby of the Yosemite House, a box of superfine
cigars, which, when it was too late, he realised that the master
of Quien Sabe would never smoke, holding, as he did, with defiant
inconsistency, to miserable weeds, black, bitter, and flagrantly
doctored, which he bought, three for a nickel, at Guadalajara.

Presley arrived at Quien Sabe nearly half an hour behind the appointed
time; but, as he had expected, the party were in no way ready to start.
The carry-all, its horses covered with white fly-nets, stood under a
tree near the house, young Vacca dozing on the seat. Hilma and Sidney,
the latter exuberant with a gayety that all but brought the tears to
Presley’s eyes, were making sandwiches on the back porch. Mrs. Dyke was
nowhere to be seen, and Annixter was shaving himself in his bedroom.

This latter put a half-lathered face out of the window as Presley
cantered through the gate, and waved his razor with a beckoning motion.

“Come on in, Pres,” he cried. “Nobody’s ready yet. You’re hours ahead of
time.”

Presley came into the bedroom, his huge spur clinking on the straw
matting. Annixter was without coat, vest or collar, his blue silk
suspenders hung in loops over either hip, his hair was disordered, the
crown lock stiffer than ever.

“Glad to see you, old boy,” he announced, as Presley came in. “No, don’t
shake hands, I’m all lather. Here, find a chair, will you? I won’t be
long.”

“I thought you said ten o’clock,” observed Presley, sitting down on the
edge of the bed.

“Well, I did, but----”

“But, then again, in a way, you didn’t, hey?” his friend interrupted.

Annixter grunted good-humouredly, and turned to strop his razor. Presley
looked with suspicious disfavour at his suspenders.

“Why is it,” he observed, “that as soon as a man is about to get
married, he buys himself pale blue suspenders, silk ones? Think of it.
You, Buck Annixter, with sky-blue, silk suspenders. It ought to be a
strap and a nail.”

“Old fool,” observed Annixter, whose repartee was the heaving of brick
bats. “Say,” he continued, holding the razor from his face, and jerking
his head over his shoulder, while he looked at Presley’s reflection
in his mirror; “say, look around. Isn’t this a nifty little room? We
refitted the whole house, you know. Notice she’s all painted?”

“I have been looking around,” answered Presley, sweeping the room with a
series of glances. He forebore criticism. Annixter was so boyishly proud
of the effect that it would have been unkind to have undeceived him.
Presley looked at the marvellous, department-store bed of brass, with
its brave, gay canopy; the mill-made wash-stand, with its pitcher and
bowl of blinding red and green china, the straw-framed lithographs of
symbolic female figures against the multi-coloured, new wall-paper; the
inadequate spindle chairs of white and gold; the sphere of tissue paper
hanging from the gas fixture, and the plumes of pampas grass tacked
to the wall at artistic angles, and overhanging two astonishing oil
paintings, in dazzling golden frames.

“Say, how about those paintings, Pres?” inquired Annixter a little
uneasily. “I don’t know whether they’re good or not. They were painted
by a three-fingered Chinaman in Monterey, and I got the lot for thirty
dollars, frames thrown in. Why, I think the frames alone are worth
thirty dollars.”

“Well, so do I,” declared Presley. He hastened to change the subject.

“Buck,” he said, “I hear you’ve brought Mrs. Dyke and Sidney to live
with you. You know, I think that’s rather white of you.”

“Oh, rot, Pres,” muttered Annixter, turning abruptly to his shaving.

“And you can’t fool me, either, old man,” Presley continued. “You’re
giving this picnic as much for Mrs. Dyke and the little tad as you are
for your wife, just to cheer them up a bit.”

“Oh, pshaw, you make me sick.”

“Well, that’s the right thing to do, Buck, and I’m as glad for your sake
as I am for theirs. There was a time when you would have let them all go
to grass, and never so much as thought of them. I don’t want to seem to
be officious, but you’ve changed for the better, old man, and I guess
I know why. She--” Presley caught his friend’s eye, and added gravely,
“She’s a good woman, Buck.”

Annixter turned around abruptly, his face flushing under its lather.

“Pres,” he exclaimed, “she’s made a man of me. I was a machine before,
and if another man, or woman, or child got in my way, I rode ‘em down,
and I never DREAMED of anybody else but myself. But as soon as I woke up
to the fact that I really loved her, why, it was glory hallelujah all in
a minute, and, in a way, I kind of loved everybody then, and wanted to
be everybody’s friend. And I began to see that a fellow can’t live
FOR himself any more than he can live BY himself. He’s got to think of
others. If he’s got brains, he’s got to think for the poor ducks that
haven’t ‘em, and not give ‘em a boot in the backsides because they
happen to be stupid; and if he’s got money, he’s got to help those that
are busted, and if he’s got a house, he’s got to think of those that
ain’t got anywhere to go. I’ve got a whole lot of ideas since I began
to love Hilma, and just as soon as I can, I’m going to get in and HELP
people, and I’m going to keep to that idea the rest of my natural life.
That ain’t much of a religion, but it’s the best I’ve got, and Henry
Ward Beecher couldn’t do any more than that. And it’s all come about
because of Hilma, and because we cared for each other.”

Presley jumped up, and caught Annixter about the shoulders with one
arm, gripping his hand hard. This absurd figure, with dangling silk
suspenders, lathered chin, and tearful eyes, seemed to be suddenly
invested with true nobility. Beside this blundering struggle to do
right, to help his fellows, Presley’s own vague schemes, glittering
systems of reconstruction, collapsed to ruin, and he himself, with all
his refinement, with all his poetry, culture, and education, stood, a
bungler at the world’s workbench.

“You’re all RIGHT, old man,” he exclaimed, unable to think of anything
adequate. “You’re all right. That’s the way to talk, and here, by the
way, I brought you a box of cigars.”

Annixter stared as Presley laid the box on the edge of the washstand.

“Old fool,” he remarked, “what in hell did you do that for?”

“Oh, just for fun.”

“I suppose they’re rotten stinkodoras, or you wouldn’t give ‘em away.”

“This cringing gratitude--” Presley began.

“Shut up,” shouted Annixter, and the incident was closed.

Annixter resumed his shaving, and Presley lit a cigarette.

“Any news from Washington?” he queried.

“Nothing that’s any good,” grunted Annixter. “Hello,” he added, raising
his head, “there’s somebody in a hurry for sure.”

The noise of a horse galloping so fast that the hoof-beats sounded in
one uninterrupted rattle, abruptly made itself heard. The noise was
coming from the direction of the road that led from the Mission to Quien
Sabe. With incredible swiftness, the hoof-beats drew nearer. There was
that in their sound which brought Presley to his feet. Annixter threw
open the window.

“Runaway,” exclaimed Presley.

Annixter, with thoughts of the Railroad, and the “Jumping” of the ranch,
flung his hand to his hip pocket.

“What is it, Vacca?” he cried.

Young Vacca, turning in his seat in the carryall, was looking up the
road. All at once, he jumped from his place, and dashed towards the
window. “Dyke,” he shouted. “Dyke, it’s Dyke.”

While the words were yet in his mouth, the sound of the hoof-beats rose
to a roar, and a great, bell-toned voice shouted:

“Annixter, Annixter, Annixter!”

It was Dyke’s voice, and the next instant he shot into view in the open
square in front of the house.

“Oh, my God!” cried Presley.

The ex-engineer threw the horse on its haunches, springing from the
saddle; and, as he did so, the beast collapsed, shuddering, to the
ground. Annixter sprang from the window, and ran forward, Presley
following.

There was Dyke, hatless, his pistol in his hand, a gaunt terrible figure
the beard immeasurably long, the cheeks fallen in, the eyes sunken. His
clothes ripped and torn by weeks of flight and hiding in the chaparral,
were ragged beyond words, the boots were shreds of leather, bloody to
the ankle with furious spurring.

“Annixter,” he shouted, and again, rolling his sunken eyes, “Annixter,
Annixter!”

“Here, here,” cried Annixter.

The other turned, levelling his pistol.

“Give me a horse, give me a horse, quick, do you hear? Give me a horse,
or I’ll shoot.”

“Steady, steady. That won’t do. You know me, Dyke. We’re friends here.”

The other lowered his weapon.

“I know, I know,” he panted. “I’d forgotten. I’m unstrung, Mr. Annixter,
and I’m running for my life. They’re not ten minutes behind me.”

“Come on, come on,” shouted Annixter, dashing stablewards, his
suspenders flying.

“Here’s a horse.”

“Mine?” exclaimed Presley. “He wouldn’t carry you a mile.”

Annixter was already far ahead, trumpeting orders.

“The buckskin,” he yelled. “Get her out, Billy. Where’s the stable-man?
Get out that buckskin. Get out that saddle.”

Then followed minutes of furious haste, Presley, Annixter, Billy the
stable-man, and Dyke himself, darting hither and thither about the
yellow mare, buckling, strapping, cinching, their lips pale, their
fingers trembling with excitement.

“Want anything to eat?” Annixter’s head was under the saddle flap as he
tore at the cinch. “Want anything to eat? Want any money? Want a gun?”

“Water,” returned Dyke. “They’ve watched every spring. I’m killed with
thirst.”

“There’s the hydrant. Quick now.”

“I got as far as the Kern River, but they turned me back,” he said
between breaths as he drank.

“Don’t stop to talk.”

“My mother, and the little tad----”

“I’m taking care of them. They’re stopping with me.”

Here?

“You won’t see ‘em; by the Lord, you won’t. You’ll get away. Where’s
that back cinch strap, BILLY? God damn it, are you going to let him be
shot before he can get away? Now, Dyke, up you go. She’ll kill herself
running before they can catch you.”

“God bless you, Annixter. Where’s the little tad? Is she well, Annixter,
and the mother? Tell them----”

“Yes, yes, yes. All clear, Pres? Let her have her own gait, Dyke.
You’re on the best horse in the county now. Let go her head, Billy. Now,
Dyke,--shake hands? You bet I will. That’s all right. Yes, God bless
you. Let her go. You’re OFF.”

Answering the goad of the spur, and already quivering with the
excitement of the men who surrounded her, the buckskin cleared the
stable-corral in two leaps; then, gathering her legs under her, her head
low, her neck stretched out, swung into the road from out the driveway
disappearing in a blur of dust.

With the agility of a monkey, young Vacca swung himself into the
framework of the artesian well, clambering aloft to its very top. He
swept the country with a glance.

“Well?” demanded Annixter from the ground. The others cocked their heads
to listen.

“I see him; I see him!” shouted Vacca. “He’s going like the devil. He’s
headed for Guadalajara.”

“Look back, up the road, toward the Mission. Anything there?”

The answer came down in a shout of apprehension.

“There’s a party of men. Three or four--on horse-back. There’s dogs with
‘em. They’re coming this way. Oh, I can hear the dogs. And, say, oh,
say, there’s another party coming down the Lower Road, going towards
Guadalajara, too. They got guns. I can see the shine of the barrels.
And, oh, Lord, say, there’s three more men on horses coming down on
the jump from the hills on the Los Muertos stock range. They’re making
towards Guadalajara. And I can hear the courthouse bell in Bonneville
ringing. Say, the whole county is up.”

As young Vacca slid down to the ground, two small black-and-tan hounds,
with flapping ears and lolling tongues, loped into view on the road in
front of the house. They were grey with dust, their noses were to the
ground. At the gate where Dyke had turned into the ranch house
grounds, they halted in confusion a moment. One started to follow the
highwayman’s trail towards the stable corral, but the other, quartering
over the road with lightning swiftness, suddenly picked up the new
scent leading on towards Guadalajara. He tossed his head in the air, and
Presley abruptly shut his hands over his ears.

Ah, that terrible cry! deep-toned, reverberating like the bourdon of a
great bell. It was the trackers exulting on the trail of the pursued,
the prolonged, raucous howl, eager, ominous, vibrating with the alarm of
the tocsin, sullen with the heavy muffling note of death. But close upon
the bay of the hounds, came the gallop of horses. Five men, their eyes
upon the hounds, their rifles across their pommels, their horses reeking
and black with sweat, swept by in a storm of dust, glinting hoofs, and
streaming manes.

“That was Delaney’s gang,” exclaimed Annixter. “I saw him.”

“The other was that chap Christian,” said Vacca, “S. Behrman’s cousin.
He had two deputies with him; and the chap in the white slouch hat was
the sheriff from Visalia.”

“By the Lord, they aren’t far behind,” declared Annixter.

As the men turned towards the house again they saw Hilma and Mrs. Dyke
in the doorway of the little house where the latter lived. They were
looking out, bewildered, ignorant of what had happened. But on the
porch of the Ranch house itself, alone, forgotten in the excitement,
Sidney--the little tad--stood, with pale face and serious, wide-open
eyes. She had seen everything, and had understood. She said nothing. Her
head inclined towards the roadway, she listened to the faint and distant
baying of the dogs.

Dyke thundered across the railway tracks by the depot at Guadalajara not
five minutes ahead of his pursuers. Luck seemed to have deserted him.
The station, usually so quiet, was now occupied by the crew of a freight
train that lay on the down track; while on the up line, near at hand and
headed in the same direction, was a detached locomotive, whose engineer
and fireman recognized him, he was sure, as the buckskin leaped across
the rails.

He had had no time to formulate a plan since that morning, when,
tortured with thirst, he had ventured near the spring at the headwaters
of Broderson Creek, on Quien Sabe, and had all but fallen into the hands
of the posse that had been watching for that very move. It was useless
now to regret that he had tried to foil pursuit by turning back on
his tracks to regain the mountains east of Bonneville. Now Delaney was
almost on him. To distance that posse, was the only thing to be thought
of now. It was no longer a question of hiding till pursuit should flag;
they had driven him out from the shelter of the mountains, down into
this populous countryside, where an enemy might be met with at every
turn of the road. Now it was life or death. He would either escape or be
killed. He knew very well that he would never allow himself to be taken
alive. But he had no mind to be killed--to turn and fight--till escape
was blocked. His one thought was to leave pursuit behind.

Weeks of flight had sharpened Dyke’s every sense. As he turned into the
Upper Road beyond Guadalajara, he saw the three men galloping down from
Derrick’s stock range, making for the road ahead of him. They would cut
him off there. He swung the buckskin about. He must take the Lower
Road across Los Muertos from Guadalajara, and he must reach it before
Delaney’s dogs and posse. Back he galloped, the buckskin measuring her
length with every leap. Once more the station came in sight. Rising in
his stirrups, he looked across the fields in the direction of the Lower
Road. There was a cloud of dust there. From a wagon? No, horses on
the run, and their riders were armed! He could catch the flash of gun
barrels. They were all closing in on him, converging on Guadalajara by
every available road. The Upper Road west of Guadalajara led straight to
Bonneville. That way was impossible. Was he in a trap? Had the time for
fighting come at last?

But as Dyke neared the depot at Guadalajara, his eye fell upon the
detached locomotive that lay quietly steaming on the up line, and with
a thrill of exultation, he remembered that he was an engineer born and
bred. Delaney’s dogs were already to be heard, and the roll of hoofs on
the Lower Road was dinning in his ears, as he leaped from the buckskin
before the depot. The train crew scattered like frightened sheep before
him, but Dyke ignored them. His pistol was in his hand as, once more on
foot, he sprang toward the lone engine.

“Out of the cab,” he shouted. “Both of you. Quick, or I’ll kill you
both.”

The two men tumbled from the iron apron of the tender as Dyke swung
himself up, dropping his pistol on the floor of the cab and reaching
with the old instinct for the familiar levers. The great compound hissed
and trembled as the steam was released, and the huge drivers stirred,
turning slowly on the tracks. But there was a shout. Delaney’s posse,
dogs and men, swung into view at the turn of the road, their figures
leaning over as they took the curve at full speed. Dyke threw everything
wide open and caught up his revolver. From behind came the challenge of
a Winchester. The party on the Lower Road were even closer than Delaney.
They had seen his manoeuvre, and the first shot of the fight shivered
the cab windows above the engineer’s head.

But spinning futilely at first, the drivers of the engine at last caught
the rails. The engine moved, advanced, travelled past the depot and
the freight train, and gathering speed, rolled out on the track beyond.
Smoke, black and boiling, shot skyward from the stack; not a joint that
did not shudder with the mighty strain of the steam; but the great iron
brute--one of Baldwin’s newest and best--came to call, obedient and
docile as soon as ever the great pulsing heart of it felt a master hand
upon its levers. It gathered its speed, bracing its steel muscles, its
thews of iron, and roared out upon the open track, filling the air with
the rasp of its tempest-breath, blotting the sunshine with the belch
of its hot, thick smoke. Already it was lessening in the distance, when
Delaney, Christian, and the sheriff of Visalia dashed up to the station.

The posse had seen everything.

“Stuck. Curse the luck!” vociferated the cow-Puncher.

But the sheriff was already out of the saddle and into the telegraph
office.

“There’s a derailing switch between here and Pixley, isn’t there?” he
cried.

“Yes.”

“Wire ahead to open it. We’ll derail him there. Come on;” he turned to
Delaney and the others. They sprang into the cab of the locomotive that
was attached to the freight train.

“Name of the State of California,” shouted the sheriff to the bewildered
engineer. “Cut off from your train.”

The sheriff was a man to be obeyed without hesitating. Time was not
allowed the crew of the freight train for debating as to the right or
the wrong of requisitioning the engine, and before anyone thought of the
safety or danger of the affair, the freight engine was already flying
out upon the down line, hot in pursuit of Dyke, now far ahead upon the
up track.

“I remember perfectly well there’s a derailing switch between here and
Pixley,” shouted the sheriff above the roar of the locomotive. “They use
it in case they have to derail runaway engines. It runs right off into
the country. We’ll pile him up there. Ready with your guns, boys.”

“If we should meet another train coming up on this track----” protested
the frightened engineer.

“Then we’d jump or be smashed. Hi! look! There he is.” As the freight
engine rounded a curve, Dyke’s engine came into view, shooting on some
quarter of a mile ahead of them, wreathed in whirling smoke.

“The switch ain’t much further on,” clamoured the engineer. “You can see
Pixley now.”

Dyke, his hand on the grip of the valve that controlled the steam, his
head out of the cab window, thundered on. He was back in his old place
again; once more he was the engineer; once more he felt the engine
quiver under him; the familiar noises were in his ears; the familiar
buffeting of the wind surged, roaring at his face; the familiar odours
of hot steam and smoke reeked in his nostrils, and on either side of
him, parallel panoramas, the two halves of the landscape sliced, as it
were, in two by the clashing wheels of his engine, streamed by in green
and brown blurs.

He found himself settling to the old position on the cab seat, leaning
on his elbow from the window, one hand on the controller. All at once,
the instinct of the pursuit that of late had become so strong within
him, prompted him to shoot a glance behind. He saw the other engine on
the down line, plunging after him, rocking from side to side with the
fury of its gallop. Not yet had he shaken the trackers from his heels;
not yet was he out of the reach of danger. He set his teeth and,
throwing open the fire-door, stoked vigorously for a few moments. The
indicator of the steam gauge rose; his speed increased; a glance at
the telegraph poles told him he was doing his fifty miles an hour. The
freight engine behind him was never built for that pace. Barring the
terrible risk of accident, his chances were good.

But suddenly--the engineer dominating the highway-man--he shut off his
steam and threw back his brake to the extreme notch. Directly ahead
of him rose a semaphore, placed at a point where evidently a derailing
switch branched from the line. The semaphore’s arm was dropped over the
track, setting the danger signal that showed the switch was open.

In an instant, Dyke saw the trick. They had meant to smash him here;
had been clever enough, quick-witted enough to open the switch, but had
forgotten the automatic semaphore that worked simultaneously with the
movement of the rails. To go forward was certain destruction. Dyke
reversed. There was nothing for it but to go back. With a wrench and a
spasm of all its metal fibres, the great compound braced itself, sliding
with rigid wheels along the rails. Then, as Dyke applied the reverse,
it drew back from the greater danger, returning towards the less.
Inevitably now the two engines, one on the up, the other on the down
line, must meet and pass each other.

Dyke released the levers, reaching for his revolver. The engineer once
more became the highwayman, in peril of his life. Now, beyond all doubt,
the time for fighting was at hand.

The party in the heavy freight engine, that lumbered after in pursuit,
their eyes fixed on the smudge of smoke on ahead that marked the path of
the fugitive, suddenly raised a shout.

“He’s stopped. He’s broke down. Watch, now, and see if he jumps off.”

“Broke NOTHING. HE’S COMING BACK. Ready, now, he’s got to pass us.”

The engineer applied the brakes, but the heavy freight locomotive, far
less mobile than Dyke’s flyer, was slow to obey. The smudge on the rails
ahead grew swiftly larger.

“He’s coming. He’s coming--look out, there’s a shot. He’s shooting
already.”

A bright, white sliver of wood leaped into the air from the sooty window
sill of the cab.

“Fire on him! Fire on him!”

While the engines were yet two hundred yards apart, the duel began, shot
answering shot, the sharp staccato reports punctuating the thunder of
wheels and the clamour of steam.

Then the ground trembled and rocked; a roar as of heavy ordnance
developed with the abruptness of an explosion. The two engines passed
each other, the men firing the while, emptying their revolvers,
shattering wood, shivering glass, the bullets clanging against the metal
work as they struck and struck and struck. The men leaned from the
cabs towards each other, frantic with excitement, shouting curses, the
engines rocking, the steam roaring; confusion whirling in the scene
like the whirl of a witch’s dance, the white clouds of steam, the black
eddies from the smokestack, the blue wreaths from the hot mouths of
revolvers, swirling together in a blinding maze of vapour, spinning
around them, dazing them, dizzying them, while the head rang with
hideous clamour and the body twitched and trembled with the leap and jar
of the tumult of machinery.

Roaring, clamouring, reeking with the smell of powder and hot oil,
spitting death, resistless, huge, furious, an abrupt vision of chaos,
faces, rage-distorted, peering through smoke, hands gripping outward
from sudden darkness, prehensile, malevolent; terrible as thunder, swift
as lightning, the two engines met and passed.

“He’s hit,” cried Delaney. “I know I hit him. He can’t go far now. After
him again. He won’t dare go through Bonneville.”

It was true. Dyke had stood between cab and tender throughout all the
duel, exposed, reckless, thinking only of attack and not of defence, and
a bullet from one of the pistols had grazed his hip. How serious was the
wound he did not know, but he had no thought of giving up. He tore back
through the depot at Guadalajara in a storm of bullets, and, clinging to
the broken window ledge of his cab, was carried towards Bonneville, on
over the Long Trestle and Broderson Creek and through the open country
between the two ranches of Los Muertos and Quien Sabe.

But to go on to Bonneville meant certain death. Before, as well as
behind him, the roads were now blocked. Once more he thought of the
mountains. He resolved to abandon the engine and make another final
attempt to get into the shelter of the hills in the northernmost corner
of Quien Sabe. He set his teeth. He would not give in. There was one
more fight left in him yet. Now to try the final hope.

He slowed the engine down, and, reloading his revolver, jumped from the
platform to the road. He looked about him, listening. All around him
widened an ocean of wheat. There was no one in sight.

The released engine, alone, unattended, drew slowly away from him,
jolting ponderously over the rail joints. As he watched it go, a certain
indefinite sense of abandonment, even in that moment, came over Dyke.
His last friend, that also had been his first, was leaving him. He
remembered that day, long ago, when he had opened the throttle of his
first machine. To-day, it was leaving him alone, his last friend turning
against him. Slowly it was going back towards Bonneville, to the shops
of the Railroad, the camp of the enemy, that enemy that had ruined
him and wrecked him. For the last time in his life, he had been the
engineer. Now, once more, he became the highwayman, the outlaw against
whom all hands were raised, the fugitive skulking in the mountains,
listening for the cry of dogs.

But he would not give in. They had not broken him yet. Never, while he
could fight, would he allow S. Behrman the triumph of his capture.

He found his wound was not bad. He plunged into the wheat on Quien Sabe,
making northward for a division house that rose with its surrounding
trees out of the wheat like an island. He reached it, the blood
squelching in his shoes. But the sight of two men, Portuguese
farm-hands, staring at him from an angle of the barn, abruptly roused
him to action. He sprang forward with peremptory commands, demanding a
horse.

At Guadalajara, Delaney and the sheriff descended from the freight
engine.

“Horses now,” declared the sheriff. “He won’t go into Bonneville, that’s
certain. He’ll leave the engine between here and there, and strike off
into the country. We’ll follow after him now in the saddle. Soon as he
leaves his engine, HE’S on foot. We’ve as good as got him now.”

Their horses, including even the buckskin mare that Dyke had ridden,
were still at the station. The party swung themselves up, Delaney
exclaiming, “Here’s MY mount,” as he bestrode the buckskin.

At Guadalajara, the two bloodhounds were picked up again. Urging the
jaded horses to a gallop, the party set off along the Upper Road,
keeping a sharp lookout to right and left for traces of Dyke’s
abandonment of the engine.

Three miles beyond the Long Trestle, they found S. Behrman holding his
saddle horse by the bridle, and looking attentively at a trail that had
been broken through the standing wheat on Quien Sabe. The party drew
rein.

“The engine passed me on the tracks further up, and empty,” said S.
Behrman. “Boys, I think he left her here.”

But before anyone could answer, the bloodhounds gave tongue again, as
they picked up the scent.

“That’s him,” cried S. Behrman. “Get on, boys.”

They dashed forward, following the hounds. S. Behrman laboriously
climbed to his saddle, panting, perspiring, mopping the roll of fat over
his coat collar, and turned in after them, trotting along far in the
rear, his great stomach and tremulous jowl shaking with the horse’s
gait.

“What a day,” he murmured. “What a day.”

Dyke’s trail was fresh, and was followed as easily as if made on
new-fallen snow. In a short time, the posse swept into the open
space around the division house. The two Portuguese were still there,
wide-eyed, terribly excited.

Yes, yes, Dyke had been there not half an hour since, had held them up,
taken a horse and galloped to the northeast, towards the foothills at
the headwaters of Broderson Creek.

On again, at full gallop, through the young wheat, trampling it under
the flying hoofs; the hounds hot on the scent, baying continually; the
men, on fresh mounts, secured at the division house, bending forward in
their saddles, spurring relentlessly. S. Behrman jolted along far in the
rear.

And even then, harried through an open country, where there was no place
to hide, it was a matter of amazement how long a chase the highwayman
led them. Fences were passed; fences whose barbed wire had been slashed
apart by the fugitive’s knife. The ground rose under foot; the hills
were at hand; still the pursuit held on. The sun, long past the
meridian, began to turn earthward. Would night come on before they were
up with him?

“Look! Look! There he is! Quick, there he goes!”

High on the bare slope of the nearest hill, all the posse, looking in
the direction of Delaney’s gesture, saw the figure of a horseman emerge
from an arroyo, filled with chaparral, and struggle at a labouring
gallop straight up the slope. Suddenly, every member of the party
shouted aloud. The horse had fallen, pitching the rider from the saddle.
The man rose to his feet, caught at the bridle, missed it and the horse
dashed on alone. The man, pausing for a second looked around, saw the
chase drawing nearer, then, turning back, disappeared in the chaparral.
Delaney raised a great whoop.

“We’ve got you now.” Into the slopes and valleys of the hills dashed
the band of horsemen, the trail now so fresh that it could be easily
discerned by all. On and on it led them, a furious, wild scramble
straight up the slopes. The minutes went by. The dry bed of a rivulet
was passed; then another fence; then a tangle of manzanita; a meadow of
wild oats, full of agitated cattle; then an arroyo, thick with chaparral
and scrub oaks, and then, without warning, the pistol shots ripped out
and ran from rider to rider with the rapidity of a gatling discharge,
and one of the deputies bent forward in the saddle, both hands to his
face, the blood jetting from between his fingers.

Dyke was there, at bay at last, his back against a bank of rock, the
roots of a fallen tree serving him as a rampart, his revolver smoking in
his hand.

“You’re under arrest, Dyke,” cried the sheriff. “It’s not the least use
to fight. The whole country is up.”

Dyke fired again, the shot splintering the foreleg of the horse the
sheriff rode.

The posse, four men all told--the wounded deputy having crawled out
of the fight after Dyke’s first shot--fell back after the preliminary
fusillade, dismounted, and took shelter behind rocks and trees. On that
rugged ground, fighting from the saddle was impracticable. Dyke, in the
meanwhile, held his fire, for he knew that, once his pistol was empty,
he would never be allowed time to reload.

“Dyke,” called the sheriff again, “for the last time, I summon you to
surrender.”

Dyke did not reply. The sheriff, Delaney, and the man named Christian
conferred together in a low voice. Then Delaney and Christian left
the others, making a wide detour up the sides of the arroyo, to gain a
position to the left and somewhat to the rear of Dyke.

But it was at this moment that S. Behrman arrived. It could not be said
whether it was courage or carelessness that brought the Railroad’s agent
within reach of Dyke’s revolver. Possibly he was really a brave man;
possibly occupied with keeping an uncertain seat upon the back of his
labouring, scrambling horse, he had not noticed that he was so close
upon that scene of battle. He certainly did not observe the posse lying
upon the ground behind sheltering rocks and trees, and before anyone
could call a warning, he had ridden out into the open, within thirty
paces of Dyke’s intrenchment.

Dyke saw. There was the arch-enemy; the man of all men whom he most
hated; the man who had ruined him, who had exasperated him and driven
him to crime, and who had instigated tireless pursuit through all those
past terrible weeks. Suddenly, inviting death, he leaped up and forward;
he had forgotten all else, all other considerations, at the sight of
this man. He would die, gladly, so only that S. Behrman died before him.

“I’ve got YOU, anyway,” he shouted, as he ran forward.

The muzzle of the weapon was not ten feet from S. Behrman’s huge stomach
as Dyke drew the trigger. Had the cartridge exploded, death, certain and
swift, would have followed, but at this, of all moments, the revolver
missed fire.

S. Behrman, with an unexpected agility, leaped from the saddle, and,
keeping his horse between him and Dyke, ran, dodging and ducking, from
tree to tree. His first shot a failure, Dyke fired again and again at
his enemy, emptying his revolver, reckless of consequences. His every
shot went wild, and before he could draw his knife, the whole posse was
upon him.

Without concerted plans, obeying no signal but the promptings of the
impulse that snatched, unerring, at opportunity--the men, Delaney and
Christian from one side, the sheriff and the deputy from the other,
rushed in. They did not fire. It was Dyke alive they wanted. One of them
had a riata snatched from a saddle-pommel, and with this they tried to
bind him.

The fight was four to one--four men with law on their side, to one
wounded freebooter, half-starved, exhausted by days and nights of
pursuit, worn down with loss of sleep, thirst, privation, and the
grinding, nerve-racking consciousness of an ever-present peril.

They swarmed upon him from all sides, gripping at his legs, at his
arms, his throat, his head, striking, clutching, kicking, falling to
the ground, rolling over and over, now under, now above, now staggering
forward, now toppling back. Still Dyke fought. Through that scrambling,
struggling group, through that maze of twisting bodies, twining arms,
straining legs, S. Behrman saw him from moment to moment, his face
flaming, his eyes bloodshot, his hair matted with sweat. Now he was
down, pinned under, two men across his legs, and now half-way up again,
struggling to one knee. Then upright again, with half his enemies
hanging on his back. His colossal strength seemed doubled; when his
arms were held, he fought bull-like with his head. A score of times, it
seemed as if they were about to secure him finally and irrevocably, and
then he would free an arm, a leg, a shoulder, and the group that, for
the fraction of an instant, had settled, locked and rigid, on its prey,
would break up again as he flung a man from him, reeling and bloody, and
he himself twisting, squirming, dodging, his great fists working like
pistons, backed away, dragging and carrying the others with him.

More than once, he loosened almost every grip, and for an instant stood
nearly free, panting, rolling his eyes, his clothes torn from his body,
bleeding, dripping with sweat, a terrible figure, nearly free. The
sheriff, under his breath, uttered an exclamation:

“By God, he’ll get away yet.”

S. Behrman watched the fight complacently.

“That all may show obstinacy,” he commented, “but it don’t show common
sense.”

Yet, however Dyke might throw off the clutches and fettering embraces
that encircled him, however he might disintegrate and scatter the band
of foes that heaped themselves upon him, however he might gain one
instant of comparative liberty, some one of his assailants always hung,
doggedly, blindly to an arm, a leg, or a foot, and the others, drawing a
second’s breath, closed in again, implacable, unconquerable, ferocious,
like hounds upon a wolf.

At length, two of the men managed to bring Dyke’s wrists close enough
together to allow the sheriff to snap the handcuffs on. Even then, Dyke,
clasping his hands, and using the handcuffs themselves as a weapon,
knocked down Delaney by the crushing impact of the steel bracelets upon
the cow-puncher’s forehead. But he could no longer protect himself from
attacks from behind, and the riata was finally passed around his body,
pinioning his arms to his sides. After this it was useless to resist.

The wounded deputy sat with his back to a rock, holding his broken jaw
in both hands. The sheriff’s horse, with its splintered foreleg, would
have to be shot. Delaney’s head was cut from temple to cheekbone. The
right wrist of the sheriff was all but dislocated. The other deputy was
so exhausted he had to be helped to his horse. But Dyke was taken.

He himself had suddenly lapsed into semi-unconsciousness, unable to
walk. They sat him on the buckskin, S. Behrman supporting him, the
sheriff, on foot, leading the horse by the bridle. The little procession
formed, and descended from the hills, turning in the direction of
Bonneville. A special train, one car and an engine, would be made up
there, and the highwayman would sleep in the Visalia jail that night.

Delaney and S. Behrman found themselves in the rear of the cavalcade as
it moved off. The cow-puncher turned to his chief:

“Well, captain,” he said, still panting, as he bound up his forehead;
“well--we GOT him.”



CHAPTER VI


Osterman cut his wheat that summer before any of the other ranchers,
and as soon as his harvest was over organized a jack-rabbit drive.
Like Annixter’s barn-dance, it was to be an event in which all the
country-side should take part. The drive was to begin on the most
western division of the Osterman ranch, whence it would proceed towards
the southeast, crossing into the northern part of Quien Sabe--on which
Annixter had sown no wheat--and ending in the hills at the headwaters of
Broderson Creek, where a barbecue was to be held.

Early on the morning of the day of the drive, as Harran and Presley were
saddling their horses before the stables on Los Muertos, the foreman,
Phelps, remarked:

“I was into town last night, and I hear that Christian has been after
Ruggles early and late to have him put him in possession here on Los
Muertos, and Delaney is doing the same for Quien Sabe.”

It was this man Christian, the real estate broker, and cousin of S.
Behrman, one of the main actors in the drama of Dyke’s capture, who
had come forward as a purchaser of Los Muertos when the Railroad had
regraded its holdings on the ranches around Bonneville.

“He claims, of course,” Phelps went on, “that when he bought Los Muertos
of the Railroad he was guaranteed possession, and he wants the place in
time for the harvest.”

“That’s almost as thin,” muttered Harran as he thrust the bit into his
horse’s mouth, “as Delaney buying Annixter’s Home ranch. That slice
of Quien Sabe, according to the Railroad’s grading, is worth about ten
thousand dollars; yes, even fifteen, and I don’t believe Delaney is
worth the price of a good horse. Why, those people don’t even try to
preserve appearances. Where would Christian find the money to buy Los
Muertos? There’s no one man in all Bonneville rich enough to do it.
Damned rascals! as if we didn’t see that Christian and Delaney are
S. Behrman’s right and left hands. Well, he’ll get ‘em cut off,” he
cried with sudden fierceness, “if he comes too near the machine.”

“How is it, Harran,” asked Presley as the two young men rode out of the
stable yard, “how is it the Railroad gang can do anything before the
Supreme Court hands down a decision?”

“Well, you know how they talk,” growled Harran. “They have claimed that
the cases taken up to the Supreme Court were not test cases as WE claim
they ARE, and that because neither Annixter nor the Governor appealed,
they’ve lost their cases by default. It’s the rottenest kind of sharp
practice, but it won’t do any good. The League is too strong. They won’t
dare move on us yet awhile. Why, Pres, the moment they’d try to jump
any of these ranches around here, they would have six hundred rifles
cracking at them as quick as how-do-you-do. Why, it would take a
regiment of U. S. soldiers to put any one of us off our land. No, sir;
they know the League means business this time.”

As Presley and Harran trotted on along the county road they continually
passed or overtook other horsemen, or buggies, carry-alls, buck-boards
or even farm wagons, going in the same direction. These were full of the
farming people from all the country round about Bonneville, on their way
to the rabbit drive--the same people seen at the barn-dance--in their
Sunday finest, the girls in muslin frocks and garden hats, the men with
linen dusters over their black clothes; the older women in prints
and dotted calicoes. Many of these latter had already taken off their
bonnets--the day was very hot--and pinning them in newspapers, stowed
them under the seats. They tucked their handkerchiefs into the collars
of their dresses, or knotted them about their fat necks, to keep out
the dust. From the axle trees of the vehicles swung carefully covered
buckets of galvanised iron, in which the lunch was packed. The
younger children, the boys with great frilled collars, the girls with
ill-fitting shoes cramping their feet, leaned from the sides of buggy
and carry-all, eating bananas and “macaroons,” staring about with
ox-like stolidity. Tied to the axles, the dogs followed the horses’
hoofs with lolling tongues coated with dust.

The California summer lay blanket-wise and smothering over all the
land. The hills, bone-dry, were browned and parched. The grasses and
wild-oats, sear and yellow, snapped like glass filaments under foot. The
roads, the bordering fences, even the lower leaves and branches of the
trees, were thick and grey with dust. All colour had been burned from
the landscape, except in the irrigated patches, that in the waste of
brown and dull yellow glowed like oases.

The wheat, now close to its maturity, had turned from pale yellow to
golden yellow, and from that to brown. Like a gigantic carpet, it spread
itself over all the land. There was nothing else to be seen but the
limitless sea of wheat as far as the eye could reach, dry, rustling,
crisp and harsh in the rare breaths of hot wind out of the southeast.
As Harran and Presley went along the county road, the number of vehicles
and riders increased. They overtook and passed Hooven and his family
in the former’s farm wagon, a saddled horse tied to the back board. The
little Dutchman, wearing the old frock coat of Magnus Derrick, and a
new broad-brimmed straw hat, sat on the front seat with Mrs. Hooven. The
little girl Hilda, and the older daughter Minna, were behind them on a
board laid across the sides of the wagon. Presley and Harran stopped to
shake hands. “Say,” cried Hooven, exhibiting an old, but extremely well
kept, rifle, “say, bei Gott, me, I tek some schatz at dose rebbit, you
bedt. Ven he hef shtop to run und sit oop soh, bei der hind laigs on, I
oop mit der guhn und--bing! I cetch um.”

“The marshals won’t allow you to shoot, Bismarck,” observed Presley,
looking at Minna.

Hooven doubled up with merriment.

“Ho! dot’s hell of some fine joak. Me, I’M ONE OAF DOSE MAIRSCHELL
MINE-SELLUF,” he roared with delight, beating his knee. To his notion,
the joke was irresistible. All day long, he could be heard repeating it.
“Und Mist’r Praicelie, he say, ‘Dose mairschell woand led you schoot,
Bismarck,’ und ME, ach Gott, ME, aindt I mine-selluf one oaf dose
mairschell?”

As the two friends rode on, Presley had in his mind the image of Minna
Hooven, very pretty in a clean gown of pink gingham, a cheap straw
sailor hat from a Bonneville store on her blue black hair. He remembered
her very pale face, very red lips and eyes of greenish blue,--a pretty
girl certainly, always trailing a group of men behind her. Her love
affairs were the talk of all Los Muertos.

“I hope that Hooven girl won’t go to the bad,” Presley said to Harran.

“Oh, she’s all right,” the other answered. “There’s nothing vicious
about Minna, and I guess she’ll marry that foreman on the ditch gang,
right enough.”

“Well, as a matter of course, she’s a good girl,” Presley hastened
to reply, “only she’s too pretty for a poor girl, and too sure of her
prettiness besides. That’s the kind,” he continued, “who would find it
pretty easy to go wrong if they lived in a city.”

Around Caraher’s was a veritable throng. Saddle horses and buggies by
the score were clustered underneath the shed or hitched to the railings
in front of the watering trough. Three of Broderson’s Portuguese tenants
and a couple of workmen from the railroad shops in Bonneville were on
the porch, already very drunk.

Continually, young men, singly or in groups, came from the door-way,
wiping their lips with sidelong gestures of the hand. The whole place
exhaled the febrile bustle of the saloon on a holiday morning.

The procession of teams streamed on through Bonneville, reenforced
at every street corner. Along the Upper Road from Quien Sabe and
Guadalajara came fresh auxiliaries, Spanish-Mexicans from the town
itself,--swarthy young men on capering horses, dark-eyed girls and
matrons, in red and black and yellow, more Portuguese in brand-new
overalls, smoking long thin cigars. Even Father Sarria appeared.

“Look,” said Presley, “there goes Annixter and Hilma. He’s got his
buckskin back.” The master of Quien Sabe, in top laced boots and
campaign hat, a cigar in his teeth, followed along beside the carry-all.
Hilma and Mrs. Derrick were on the back seat, young Vacca driving.
Harran and Presley bowed, taking off their hats.

“Hello, hello, Pres,” cried Annixter, over the heads of the intervening
crowd, standing up in his stirrups and waving a hand, “Great day! What a
mob, hey? Say when this thing is over and everybody starts to walk into
the barbecue, come and have lunch with us. I’ll look for you, you and
Harran. Hello, Harran, where’s the Governor?”

“He didn’t come to-day,” Harran shouted back, as the crowd carried him
further away from Annixter. “Left him and old Broderson at Los Muertos.”

The throng emerged into the open country again, spreading out upon the
Osterman ranch. From all directions could be seen horses and buggies
driving across the stubble, converging upon the rendezvous. Osterman’s
Ranch house was left to the eastward; the army of the guests hurrying
forward--for it began to be late--to where around a flag pole, flying
a red flag, a vast crowd of buggies and horses was already forming. The
marshals began to appear. Hooven, descending from the farm wagon, pinned
his white badge to his hat brim and mounted his horse. Osterman, in
marvellous riding clothes of English pattern, galloped up and down upon
his best thoroughbred, cracking jokes with everybody, chaffing, joshing,
his great mouth distended in a perpetual grin of amiability.

“Stop here, stop here,” he vociferated, dashing along in front of
Presley and Harran, waving his crop. The procession came to a halt,
the horses’ heads pointing eastward. The line began to be formed. The
marshals perspiring, shouting, fretting, galloping about, urging this
one forward, ordering this one back, ranged the thousands of conveyances
and cavaliers in a long line, shaped like a wide open crescent. Its
wings, under the command of lieutenants, were slightly advanced. Far out
before its centre Osterman took his place, delighted beyond expression
at his conspicuousness, posing for the gallery, making his horse dance.

“Wail, aindt dey gowun to gommence den bretty soohn,” exclaimed Mrs.
Hooven, who had taken her husband’s place on the forward seat of the
wagon.

“I never was so warm,” murmured Minna, fanning herself with her hat. All
seemed in readiness. For miles over the flat expanse of stubble, curved
the interminable lines of horses and vehicles. At a guess, nearly five
thousand people were present. The drive was one of the largest ever
held. But no start was made; immobilized, the vast crescent stuck
motionless under the blazing sun. Here and there could be heard voices
uplifted in jocular remonstrance.

“Oh, I say, get a move on, somebody.”

“ALL aboard.”

“Say, I’ll take root here pretty soon.”

Some took malicious pleasure in starting false alarms.

“Ah, HERE we go.”

“Off, at last.”

“We’re off.”

Invariably these jokes fooled some one in the line. An old man, or some
old woman, nervous, hard of hearing, always gathered up the reins and
started off, only to be hustled and ordered back into the line by the
nearest marshal. This manoeuvre never failed to produce its effect of
hilarity upon those near at hand. Everybody laughed at the blunderer,
the joker jeering audibly.

“Hey, come back here.”

“Oh, he’s easy.”

“Don’t be in a hurry, Grandpa.”

“Say, you want to drive all the rabbits yourself.”

Later on, a certain group of these fellows started a huge “josh.”

“Say, that’s what we’re waiting for, the ‘do-funny.’”

“The do-funny?”

“Sure, you can’t drive rabbits without the ‘do-funny.’”

“What’s the do-funny?”

“Oh, say, she don’t know what the do-funny is. We can’t start without
it, sure. Pete went back to get it.”

“Oh, you’re joking me, there’s no such thing.”

“Well, aren’t we WAITING for it?”

“Oh, look, look,” cried some women in a covered rig. “See, they are
starting already ‘way over there.”

In fact, it did appear as if the far extremity of the line was in
motion. Dust rose in the air above it.

“They ARE starting. Why don’t we start?”

“No, they’ve stopped. False alarm.”

“They’ve not, either. Why don’t we move?”

But as one or two began to move off, the nearest marshal shouted
wrathfully:

“Get back there, get back there.”

“Well, they’ve started over there.”

“Get back, I tell you.”

“Where’s the ‘do-funny?’”

“Say, we’re going to miss it all. They’ve all started over there.”

A lieutenant came galloping along in front of the line, shouting:

“Here, what’s the matter here? Why don’t you start?”

There was a great shout. Everybody simultaneously uttered a prolonged
“Oh-h.”

“We’re off.”

“Here we go for sure this time.”

“Remember to keep the alignment,” roared the lieutenant. “Don’t go too
fast.”

And the marshals, rushing here and there on their sweating horses to
points where the line bulged forward, shouted, waving their arms: “Not
too fast, not too fast....Keep back here....Here, keep closer together
here. Do you want to let all the rabbits run back between you?”

A great confused sound rose into the air,--the creaking of axles, the
jolt of iron tires over the dry clods, the click of brittle stubble
under the horses’ hoofs, the barking of dogs, the shouts of conversation
and laughter.

The entire line, horses, buggies, wagons, gigs, dogs, men and boys on
foot, and armed with clubs, moved slowly across the fields, sending up
a cloud of white dust, that hung above the scene like smoke. A brisk
gaiety was in the air. Everyone was in the best of humor, calling
from team to team, laughing, skylarking, joshing. Garnett, of the
Ruby Rancho, and Gethings, of the San Pablo, both on horseback, found
themselves side by side. Ignoring the drive and the spirit of the
occasion, they kept up a prolonged and serious conversation on an
expected rise in the price of wheat. Dabney, also on horseback, followed
them, listening attentively to every word, but hazarding no remark.

Mrs. Derrick and Hilma sat in the back seat of the carry-all, behind
young Vacca. Mrs. Derrick, a little disturbed by such a great concourse
of people, frightened at the idea of the killing of so many rabbits,
drew back in her place, her young-girl eyes troubled and filled with
a vague distress. Hilma, very much excited, leaned from the carry-all,
anxious to see everything, watching for rabbits, asking innumerable
questions of Annixter, who rode at her side.

The change that had been progressing in Hilma, ever since the night of
the famous barn-dance, now seemed to be approaching its climax; first
the girl, then the woman, last of all the Mother. Conscious dignity, a
new element in her character, developed. The shrinking, the timidity of
the girl just awakening to the consciousness of sex, passed away from
her. The confusion, the troublous complexity of the woman, a mystery
even to herself, disappeared. Motherhood dawned, the old simplicity
of her maiden days came back to her. It was no longer a simplicity of
ignorance, but of supreme knowledge, the simplicity of the perfect, the
simplicity of greatness. She looked the world fearlessly in the eyes.
At last, the confusion of her ideas, like frightened birds, re-settling,
adjusted itself, and she emerged from the trouble calm, serene,
entering into her divine right, like a queen into the rule of a realm of
perpetual peace.

And with this, with the knowledge that the crown hung poised above
her head, there came upon Hilma a gentleness infinitely beautiful,
infinitely pathetic; a sweetness that touched all who came near her
with the softness of a caress. She moved surrounded by an invisible
atmosphere of Love. Love was in her wide-opened brown eyes, Love--the
dim reflection of that descending crown poised over her head--radiated
in a faint lustre from her dark, thick hair. Around her beautiful neck,
sloping to her shoulders with full, graceful curves, Love lay encircled
like a necklace--Love that was beyond words, sweet, breathed from
her parted lips. From her white, large arms downward to her pink
finger-tips--Love, an invisible electric fluid, disengaged itself,
subtle, alluring. In the velvety huskiness of her voice, Love vibrated
like a note of unknown music.

Annixter, her uncouth, rugged husband, living in this influence of a
wife, who was also a mother, at all hours touched to the quick by this
sense of nobility, of gentleness and of love, the instincts of a father
already clutching and tugging at his heart, was trembling on the verge
of a mighty transformation. The hardness and inhumanity of the man was
fast breaking up. One night, returning late to the Ranch house, after
a compulsory visit to the city, he had come upon Hilma asleep. He had
never forgotten that night. A realization of his boundless happiness in
this love he gave and received, the thought that Hilma TRUSTED him, a
knowledge of his own unworthiness, a vast and humble thankfulness that
his God had chosen him of all men for this great joy, had brought him
to his knees for the first time in all his troubled, restless life
of combat and aggression. He prayed, he knew not what,--vague words,
wordless thoughts, resolving fiercely to do right, to make some return
for God’s gift thus placed within his hands.

Where once Annixter had thought only of himself, he now thought only of
Hilma. The time when this thought of another should broaden and widen
into thought of OTHERS, was yet to come; but already it had expanded to
include the unborn child--already, as in the case of Mrs. Dyke, it had
broadened to enfold another child and another mother bound to him by no
ties other than those of humanity and pity. In time, starting from this
point it would reach out more and more till it should take in all men
and all women, and the intolerant selfish man, while retaining all
of his native strength, should become tolerant and generous, kind and
forgiving.

For the moment, however, the two natures struggled within him. A fight
was to be fought, one more, the last, the fiercest, the attack of the
enemy who menaced his very home and hearth, was to be resisted. Then,
peace attained, arrested development would once more proceed.

Hilma looked from the carry-all, scanning the open plain in front of the
advancing line of the drive.

“Where are the rabbits?” she asked of Annixter. “I don’t see any at
all.”

“They are way ahead of us yet,” he said. “Here, take the glasses.”

He passed her his field glasses, and she adjusted them.

“Oh, yes,” she cried, “I see. I can see five or six, but oh, so far
off.”

“The beggars run ‘way ahead, at first.”

“I should say so. See them run,--little specks. Every now and then they
sit up, their ears straight up, in the air.”

“Here, look, Hilma, there goes one close by.”

From out of the ground apparently, some twenty yards distant, a
great jack sprang into view, bounding away with tremendous leaps, his
black-tipped ears erect. He disappeared, his grey body losing itself
against the grey of the ground.

“Oh, a big fellow.”

“Hi, yonder’s another.”

“Yes, yes, oh, look at him run.” From off the surface of the ground,
at first apparently empty of all life, and seemingly unable to afford
hiding place for so much as a field-mouse, jack-rabbits started up at
every moment as the line went forward. At first, they appeared singly
and at long intervals; then in twos and threes, as the drive continued
to advance. They leaped across the plain, and stopped in the distance,
sitting up with straight ears, then ran on again, were joined by others;
sank down flush to the soil--their ears flattened; started up again,
ran to the side, turned back once more, darted away with incredible
swiftness, and were lost to view only to be replaced by a score of
others.

Gradually, the number of jacks to be seen over the expanse of stubble in
front of the line of teams increased. Their antics were infinite. No two
acted precisely alike. Some lay stubbornly close in a little depression
between two clods, till the horses’ hoofs were all but upon them,
then sprang out from their hiding-place at the last second. Others ran
forward but a few yards at a time, refusing to take flight, scenting a
greater danger before them than behind. Still others, forced up at the
last moment, doubled with lightning alacrity in their tracks, turning
back to scuttle between the teams, taking desperate chances. As often as
this occurred, it was the signal for a great uproar.

“Don’t let him get through; don t let him get through.”

“Look out for him, there he goes.”

Horns were blown, bells rung, tin pans clamorously beaten. Either the
jack escaped, or confused by the noise, darted back again, fleeing
away as if his life depended on the issue of the instant. Once even, a
bewildered rabbit jumped fair into Mrs. Derrick’s lap as she sat in the
carry-all, and was out again like a flash.

“Poor frightened thing,” she exclaimed; and for a long time afterward,
she retained upon her knees the sensation of the four little paws
quivering with excitement, and the feel of the trembling furry body,
with its wildly beating heart, pressed against her own.

By noon the number of rabbits discernible by Annixter’s field glasses
on ahead was far into the thousands. What seemed to be ground resolved
itself, when seen through the glasses, into a maze of small, moving
bodies, leaping, ducking, doubling, running back and forth--a wilderness
of agitated ears, white tails and twinkling legs. The outside wings of
the curved line of vehicles began to draw in a little; Osterman’s ranch
was left behind, the drive continued on over Quien Sabe.

As the day advanced, the rabbits, singularly enough, became less wild.
When flushed, they no longer ran so far nor so fast, limping off instead
a few feet at a time, and crouching down, their ears close upon their
backs. Thus it was, that by degrees the teams began to close up on the
main herd. At every instant the numbers increased. It was no longer
thousands, it was tens of thousands. The earth was alive with rabbits.

Denser and denser grew the throng. In all directions nothing was to be
seen but the loose mass of the moving jacks. The horns of the crescent
of teams began to contract. Far off the corral came into sight. The
disintegrated mass of rabbits commenced, as it were, to solidify, to
coagulate. At first, each jack was some three feet distant from his
nearest neighbor, but this space diminished to two feet, then to one,
then to but a few inches. The rabbits began leaping over one another.

Then the strange scene defined itself. It was no longer a herd covering
the earth. It was a sea, whipped into confusion, tossing incessantly,
leaping, falling, agitated by unseen forces. At times the unexpected
tameness of the rabbits all at once vanished. Throughout certain
portions of the herd eddies of terror abruptly burst forth. A panic
spread; then there would ensue a blind, wild rushing together of
thousands of crowded bodies, and a furious scrambling over backs,
till the scuffing thud of innumerable feet over the earth rose to a
reverberating murmur as of distant thunder, here and there pierced by
the strange, wild cry of the rabbit in distress.

The line of vehicles was halted. To go forward now meant to trample
the rabbits under foot. The drive came to a standstill while the herd
entered the corral. This took time, for the rabbits were by now too
crowded to run. However, like an opened sluice-gate, the extending
flanks of the entrance of the corral slowly engulfed the herd. The mass,
packed tight as ever, by degrees diminished, precisely as a pool of
water when a dam is opened. The last stragglers went in with a rush, and
the gate was dropped.

“Come, just have a lock in here,” called Annixter.

Hilma, descending from the carry-all and joined by Presley and Harran,
approached and looked over the high board fence.

“Oh, did you ever see anything like that?” she exclaimed.

The corral, a really large enclosure, had proved all too small for
the number of rabbits collected by the drive. Inside it was a living,
moving, leaping, breathing, twisting mass. The rabbits were packed two,
three, and four feet deep. They were in constant movement; those beneath
struggling to the top, those on top sinking and disappearing below
their fellows. All wildness, all fear of man, seemed to have entirely
disappeared. Men and boys reaching over the sides of the corral, picked
up a jack in each hand, holding them by the ears, while two reporters
from San Francisco papers took photographs of the scene. The noise made
by the tens of thousands of moving bodies was as the noise of wind in a
forest, while from the hot and sweating mass there rose a strange odor,
penetrating, ammoniacal, savouring of wild life.

On signal, the killing began. Dogs that had been brought there for that
purpose when let into the corral refused, as had been half expected,
to do the work. They snuffed curiously at the pile, then backed off,
disturbed, perplexed. But the men and boys--Portuguese for the most
part--were more eager. Annixter drew Hilma away, and, indeed, most of
the people set about the barbecue at once.

In the corral, however, the killing went forward. Armed with a club in
each hand, the young fellows from Guadalajara and Bonneville, and the
farm boys from the ranches, leaped over the rails of the corral. They
walked unsteadily upon the myriad of crowding bodies underfoot, or, as
space was cleared, sank almost waist deep into the mass that leaped and
squirmed about them. Blindly, furiously, they struck and struck. The
Anglo-Saxon spectators round about drew back in disgust, but the hot,
degenerated blood of Portuguese, Mexican, and mixed Spaniard boiled up
in excitement at this wholesale slaughter.

But only a few of the participants of the drive cared to look on. All
the guests betook themselves some quarter of a mile farther on into the
hills.

The picnic and barbecue were to be held around the spring where
Broderson Creek took its rise. Already two entire beeves were roasting
there; teams were hitched, saddles removed, and men, women, and
children, a great throng, spread out under the shade of the live oaks. A
vast confused clamour rose in the air, a babel of talk, a clatter of
tin plates, of knives and forks. Bottles were uncorked, napkins and
oil-cloths spread over the ground. The men lit pipes and cigars, the
women seized the occasion to nurse their babies.

Osterman, ubiquitous as ever, resplendent in his boots and English
riding breeches, moved about between the groups, keeping up an endless
flow of talk, cracking jokes, winking, nudging, gesturing, putting his
tongue in his cheek, never at a loss for a reply, playing the goat.

“That josher, Osterman, always at his monkey-shines, but a good fellow
for all that; brainy too. Nothing stuck up about him either, like Magnus
Derrick.”

“Everything all right, Buck?” inquired Osterman, coming up to where
Annixter, Hilma and Mrs. Derrick were sitting down to their lunch.

“Yes, yes, everything right. But we’ve no cork-screw.”

“No screw-cork--no scare-crow? Here you are,” and he drew from his
pocket a silver-plated jack-knife with a cork-screw attachment. Harran
and Presley came up, bearing between them a great smoking, roasted
portion of beef just off the fire. Hilma hastened to put forward a huge
china platter.

Osterman had a joke to crack with the two boys, a joke that was rather
broad, but as he turned about, the words almost on his lips, his glance
fell upon Hilma herself, whom he had not seen for more than two months.

She had handed Presley the platter, and was now sitting with her back
against the tree, between two boles of the roots. The position was a
little elevated and the supporting roots on either side of her were
like the arms of a great chair--a chair of state. She sat thus, as on
a throne, raised above the rest, the radiance of the unseen crown of
motherhood glowing from her forehead, the beauty of the perfect woman
surrounding her like a glory.

And the josh died away on Osterman’s lips, and unconsciously and swiftly
he bared his head. Something was passing there in the air about him that
he did not understand, something, however, that imposed reverence and
profound respect. For the first time in his life, embarrassment seized
upon him, upon this joker, this wearer of clothes, this teller of funny
stories, with his large, red ears, bald head and comic actor’s face. He
stammered confusedly and took himself away, for the moment abstracted,
serious, lost in thought.

By now everyone was eating. It was the feeding of the People, elemental,
gross, a great appeasing of appetite, an enormous quenching of thirst.
Quarters of beef, roasts, ribs, shoulders, haunches were consumed,
loaves of bread by the thousands disappeared, whole barrels of wine went
down the dry and dusty throats of the multitude. Conversation lagged
while the People ate, while hunger was appeased. Everybody had their
fill. One ate for the sake of eating, resolved that there should be
nothing left, considering it a matter of pride to exhibit a clean plate.

After dinner, preparations were made for games. On a flat plateau at the
top of one of the hills the contestants were to strive. There was to be
a footrace of young girls under seventeen, a fat men’s race, the younger
fellows were to put the shot, to compete in the running broad jump, and
the standing high jump, in the hop, skip, and step and in wrestling.

Presley was delighted with it all. It was Homeric, this feasting, this
vast consuming of meat and bread and wine, followed now by games of
strength. An epic simplicity and directness, an honest Anglo-Saxon mirth
and innocence, commended it. Crude it was; coarse it was, but no
taint of viciousness was here. These people were good people, kindly,
benignant even, always readier to give than to receive, always more
willing to help than to be helped. They were good stock. Of such was the
backbone of the nation--sturdy Americans everyone of them. Where else
in the world round were such strong, honest men, such strong, beautiful
women?

Annixter, Harran, and Presley climbed to the level plateau where the
games were to be held, to lay out the courses, and mark the distances.
It was the very place where once Presley had loved to lounge entire
afternoons, reading his books of poems, smoking and dozing. From this
high point one dominated the entire valley to the south and west. The
view was superb. The three men paused for a moment on the crest of the
hill to consider it.

Young Vacca came running and panting up the hill after them, calling for
Annixter.

“Well, well, what is it?”

“Mr. Osterman’s looking for you, sir, you and Mr. Harran. Vanamee,
that cow-boy over at Derrick’s, has just come from the Governor with a
message. I guess it’s important.”

“Hello, what’s up now?” muttered Annixter, as they turned back.

They found Osterman saddling his horse in furious haste. Near-by him was
Vanamee holding by the bridle an animal that was one lather of sweat.
A few of the picnickers were turning their heads curiously in that
direction. Evidently something of moment was in the wind.

“What’s all up?” demanded Annixter, as he and Harran, followed by
Presley, drew near.

“There’s hell to pay,” exclaimed Osterman under his breath. “Read that.
Vanamee just brought it.”

He handed Annixter a sheet of note paper, and turned again to the
cinching of his saddle.

“We’ve got to be quick,” he cried. “They’ve stolen a march on us.”

Annixter read the note, Harran and Presley looking over his shoulder.

“Ah, it’s them, is it,” exclaimed Annixter.

Harran set his teeth. “Now for it,” he exclaimed. “They’ve been to your
place already, Mr. Annixter,” said Vanamee. “I passed by it on my way
up. They have put Delaney in possession, and have set all your furniture
out in the road.”

Annixter turned about, his lips white. Already Presley and Harran had
run to their horses.

“Vacca,” cried Annixter, “where’s Vacca? Put the saddle on the buckskin,
QUICK. Osterman, get as many of the League as are here together at THIS
spot, understand. I’ll be back in a minute. I must tell Hilma this.”

Hooven ran up as Annixter disappeared. His little eyes were blazing, he
was dragging his horse with him.

“Say, dose fellers come, hey? Me, I’m alretty, see I hev der guhn.”

“They’ve jumped the ranch, little girl,” said Annixter, putting one arm
around Hilma. “They’re in our house now. I’m off. Go to Derrick’s and
wait for me there.”

She put her arms around his neck.

“You’re going?” she demanded.

“I must. Don’t be frightened. It will be all right. Go to Derrick’s
and--good-bye.”

She said never a word. She looked once long into his eyes, then kissed
him on the mouth.

Meanwhile, the news had spread. The multitude rose to its feet. Women
and men, with pale faces, looked at each other speechless, or broke
forth into inarticulate exclamations. A strange, unfamiliar murmur took
the place of the tumultuous gaiety of the previous moments. A sense of
dread, of confusion, of impending terror weighed heavily in the air.
What was now to happen?

When Annixter got back to Osterman, he found a number of the Leaguers
already assembled. They were all mounted. Hooven was there and Harran,
and besides these, Garnett of the Ruby ranch and Gethings of the San
Pablo, Phelps the foreman of Los Muertos, and, last of all, Dabney,
silent as ever, speaking to no one. Presley came riding up.

“Best keep out of this, Pres,” cried Annixter.

“Are we ready?” exclaimed Gethings.

“Ready, ready, we’re all here.”

“ALL. Is this all of us?” cried Annixter. “Where are the six hundred men
who were going to rise when this happened?”

They had wavered, these other Leaguers. Now, when the actual crisis
impended, they were smitten with confusion. Ah, no, they were not going
to stand up and be shot at just to save Derrick’s land. They were
not armed. What did Annixter and Osterman take them for? No, sir; the
Railroad had stolen a march on them. After all his big talk Derrick had
allowed them to be taken by surprise. The only thing to do was to call
a meeting of the Executive Committee. That was the only thing. As for
going down there with no weapons in their hands, NO, sir. That was
asking a little TOO much. “Come on, then, boys,” shouted Osterman,
turning his back on the others. “The Governor says to meet him at
Hooven’s. We’ll make for the Long Trestle and strike the trail to
Hooven’s there.”

They set off. It was a terrible ride. Twice during the scrambling
descent from the hills, Presley’s pony fell beneath him. Annixter, on
his buckskin, and Osterman, on his thoroughbred, good horsemen both,
led the others, setting a terrific pace. The hills were left behind.
Broderson Creek was crossed and on the levels of Quien Sabe, straight
through the standing wheat, the nine horses, flogged and spurred,
stretched out to their utmost. Their passage through the wheat sounded
like the rip and tear of a gigantic web of cloth. The landscape on
either hand resolved itself into a long blur. Tears came to the eyes,
flying pebbles, clods of earth, grains of wheat flung up in the flight,
stung the face like shot. Osterman’s thoroughbred took the second
crossing of Broderson’s Creek in a single leap. Down under the Long
Trestle tore the cavalcade in a shower of mud and gravel; up again on
the further bank, the horses blowing like steam engines; on into the
trail to Hooven’s, single file now, Presley’s pony lagging, Hooven’s
horse bleeding at the eyes, the buckskin, game as a fighting cock,
catching her second wind, far in the lead now, distancing even the
English thoroughbred that Osterman rode.

At last Hooven’s unpainted house, beneath the enormous live oak tree,
came in sight. Across the Lower Road, breaking through fences and into
the yard around the house, thundered the Leaguers. Magnus was waiting
for them.

The riders dismounted, hardly less exhausted than their horses.

“Why, where’s all the men?” Annixter demanded of Magnus.

“Broderson is here and Cutter,” replied the Governor, “no one else. I
thought YOU would bring more men with you.”

“There are only nine of us.”

“And the six hundred Leaguers who were going to rise when this
happened!” exclaimed Garnett, bitterly.

“Rot the League,” cried Annixter. “It’s gone to pot--went to pieces at
the first touch.”

“We have been taken by surprise, gentlemen, after all,” said Magnus.
“Totally off our guard. But there are eleven of us. It is enough.”

“Well, what’s the game? Has the marshal come? How many men are with
him?”

“The United States marshal from San Francisco,” explained Magnus, “came
down early this morning and stopped at Guadalajara. We learned it all
through our friends in Bonneville about an hour ago. They telephoned
me and Mr. Broderson. S. Behrman met him and provided about a dozen
deputies. Delaney, Ruggles, and Christian joined them at Guadalajara.
They left Guadalajara, going towards Mr. Annixter’s ranch house on Quien
Sabe. They are serving the writs in ejectment and putting the dummy
buyers in possession. They are armed. S. Behrman is with them.”

“Where are they now?”

“Cutter is watching them from the Long Trestle. They returned to
Guadalajara. They are there now.”

“Well,” observed Gethings, “From Guadalajara they can only go to two
places. Either they will take the Upper Road and go on to Osterman’s
next, or they will take the Lower Road to Mr. Derrick’s.”

“That is as I supposed,” said Magnus. “That is why I wanted you to come
here. From Hooven’s, here, we can watch both roads simultaneously.”

“Is anybody on the lookout on the Upper Road?”

“Cutter. He is on the Long Trestle.”

“Say,” observed Hooven, the instincts of the old-time soldier stirring
him, “say, dose feller pretty demn schmart, I tink. We got to put some
picket way oudt bei der Lower Roadt alzoh, und he tek dose glassus
Mist’r Ennixt’r got bei um. Say, look at dose irregation ditsch.
Dot ditsch he run righd across BOTH dose road, hey? Dat’s some fine
entrenchment, you bedt. We fighd um from dose ditsch.”

In fact, the dry irrigating ditch was a natural trench, admirably suited
to the purpose, crossing both roads as Hooven pointed out and barring
approach from Guadalajara to all the ranches save Annixter’s--which had
already been seized.

Gethings departed to join Cutter on the Long Trestle, while Phelps and
Harran, taking Annixter’s field glasses with them, and mounting their
horses, went out towards Guadalajara on the Lower Road to watch for the
marshal’s approach from that direction.

After the outposts had left them, the party in Hooven’s cottage looked
to their weapons. Long since, every member of the League had been in
the habit of carrying his revolver with him. They were all armed and, in
addition, Hooven had his rifle. Presley alone carried no weapon.

The main room of Hooven’s house, in which the Leaguers were now
assembled, was barren, poverty-stricken, but tolerably clean. An old
clock ticked vociferously on a shelf. In one corner was a bed, with a
patched, faded quilt. In the centre of the room, straddling over the
bare floor, stood a pine table. Around this the men gathered, two or
three occupying chairs, Annixter sitting sideways on the table, the rest
standing.

“I believe, gentlemen,” said Magnus, “that we can go through this day
without bloodshed. I believe not one shot need be fired. The Railroad
will not force the issue, will not bring about actual fighting. When
the marshal realises that we are thoroughly in earnest, thoroughly
determined, I am convinced that he will withdraw.”

There were murmurs of assent.

“Look here,” said Annixter, “if this thing can by any means be settled
peaceably, I say let’s do it, so long as we don’t give in.”

The others stared. Was this Annixter who spoke--the Hotspur of the
League, the quarrelsome, irascible fellow who loved and sought a
quarrel? Was it Annixter, who now had been the first and only one
of them all to suffer, whose ranch had been seized, whose household
possessions had been flung out into the road?

“When you come right down to it,” he continued, “killing a man, no
matter what he’s done to you, is a serious business. I propose we make
one more attempt to stave this thing off. Let’s see if we can’t get to
talk with the marshal himself; at any rate, warn him of the danger of
going any further. Boys, let’s not fire the first shot. What do you
say?”

The others agreed unanimously and promptly; and old Broderson, tugging
uneasily at his long beard, added:

“No--no--no violence, no UNNECESSARY violence, that is. I should hate
to have innocent blood on my hands--that is, if it IS innocent. I don’t
know, that S. Behrman--ah, he is a--a--surely he had innocent blood on
HIS head. That Dyke affair, terrible, terrible; but then Dyke WAS in the
wrong--driven to it, though; the Railroad did drive him to it. I want to
be fair and just to everybody.”

“There’s a team coming up the road from Los Muertos,” announced Presley
from the door.

“Fair and just to everybody,” murmured old Broderson, wagging his head,
frowning perplexedly. “I don’t want to--to--to harm anybody unless they
harm me.”

“Is the team going towards Guadalajara?” enquired Garnett, getting up
and coming to the door.

“Yes, it’s a Portuguese, one of the garden truck men.”

“We must turn him back,” declared Osterman. “He can’t go through here.
We don’t want him to take any news on to the marshal and S. Behrman.”

“I’ll turn him back,” said Presley.

He rode out towards the market cart, and the others, watching from
the road in front of Hooven’s, saw him halt it. An excited interview
followed. They could hear the Portuguese expostulating volubly, but in
the end he turned back.

“Martial law on Los Muertos, isn’t it?” observed Osterman. “Steady all,”
 he exclaimed as he turned about, “here comes Harran.”

Harran rode up at a gallop. The others surrounded him.

“I saw them,” he cried. “They are coming this way. S. Behrman and
Ruggles are in a two-horse buggy. All the others are on horseback. There
are eleven of them. Christian and Delaney are with them. Those two have
rifles. I left Hooven watching them.”

“Better call in Gethings and Cutter right away,” said Annixter. “We’ll
need all our men.”

“I’ll call them in,” Presley volunteered at once. “Can I have the
buckskin? My pony is about done up.”

He departed at a brisk gallop, but on the way met Gethings and Cutter
returning. They, too, from their elevated position, had observed the
marshal’s party leaving Guadalajara by the Lower Road. Presley told them
of the decision of the Leaguers not to fire until fired upon.

“All right,” said Gethings. “But if it comes to a gun-fight, that means
it’s all up with at least one of us. Delaney never misses his man.”

When they reached Hooven’s again, they found that the Leaguers had
already taken their position in the ditch. The plank bridge across it
had been torn up. Magnus, two long revolvers lying on the embankment
in front of him, was in the middle, Harran at his side. On either side,
some five feet intervening between each man, stood the other Leaguers,
their revolvers ready. Dabney, the silent old man, had taken off his
coat.

“Take your places between Mr. Osterman and Mr. Broderson,” said Magnus,
as the three men rode up. “Presley,” he added, “I forbid you to take any
part in this affair.”

“Yes, keep him out of it,” cried Annixter from his position at the
extreme end of the line. “Go back to Hooven’s house, Pres, and look
after the horses,” he added. “This is no business of yours. And keep
the road behind us clear. Don’t let ANY ONE come near, not ANY ONE,
understand?”

Presley withdrew, leading the buckskin and the horses that Gethings and
Cutter had ridden. He fastened them under the great live oak and then
came out and stood in the road in front of the house to watch what was
going on.

In the ditch, shoulder deep, the Leaguers, ready, watchful, waited in
silence, their eyes fixed on the white shimmer of the road leading to
Guadalajara.

“Where’s Hooven?” enquired Cutter.

“I don’t know,” Osterman replied. “He was out watching the Lower Road
with Harran Derrick. Oh, Harran,” he called, “isn’t Hooven coming in?”

“I don’t know what he is waiting for,” answered Harran. “He was to have
come in just after me. He thought maybe the marshal’s party might make a
feint in this direction, then go around by the Upper Road, after all. He
wanted to watch them a little longer. But he ought to be here now.”

“Think he’ll take a shot at them on his own account?”

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe they took him prisoner.”

“Well, that’s to be thought of, too.”

Suddenly there was a cry. Around the bend of the road in front of them
came a cloud of dust. From it emerged a horse’s head.

“Hello, hello, there’s something.”

“Remember, we are not to fire first.”

“Perhaps that’s Hooven; I can’t see. Is it? There only seems to be one
horse.”

“Too much dust for one horse.”

Annixter, who had taken his field glasses from Harran, adjusted them to
his eyes.

“That’s not them,” he announced presently, “nor Hooven either. That’s
a cart.” Then after another moment, he added, “The butcher’s cart from
Guadalajara.”

The tension was relaxed. The men drew long breaths, settling back in
their places.

“Do we let him go on, Governor?”

“The bridge is down. He can’t go by and we must not let him go back. We
shall have to detain him and question him. I wonder the marshal let him
pass.”

The cart approached at a lively trot.

“Anybody else in that cart, Mr. Annixter?” asked Magnus. “Look
carefully. It may be a ruse. It is strange the marshal should have let
him pass.”

The Leaguers roused themselves again. Osterman laid his hand on his
revolver.

“No,” called Annixter, in another instant, “no, there’s only one man in
it.”

The cart came up, and Cutter and Phelps, clambering from the ditch,
stopped it as it arrived in front of the party.

“Hey--what--what?” exclaimed the young butcher, pulling up. “Is that
bridge broke?”

But at the idea of being held, the boy protested at top voice, badly
frightened, bewildered, not knowing what was to happen next.

“No, no, I got my meat to deliver. Say, you let me go. Say, I ain’t got
nothing to do with you.”

He tugged at the reins, trying to turn the cart about. Cutter, with his
jack-knife, parted the reins just back of the bit.

“You’ll stay where you are, m’ son, for a while. We’re not going to hurt
you. But you are not going back to town till we say so. Did you pass
anybody on the road out of town?”

In reply to the Leaguers’ questions, the young butcher at last told
them he had passed a two-horse buggy and a lot of men on horseback just
beyond the railroad tracks. They were headed for Los Muertos.

“That’s them, all right,” muttered Annixter. “They’re coming by this
road, sure.”

The butcher’s horse and cart were led to one side of the road, and the
horse tied to the fence with one of the severed lines. The butcher,
himself, was passed over to Presley, who locked him in Hooven’s barn.

“Well, what the devil,” demanded Osterman, “has become of Bismarck?”

In fact, the butcher had seen nothing of Hooven. The minutes were
passing, and still he failed to appear.

“What’s he up to, anyways?”

“Bet you what you like, they caught him. Just like that crazy Dutchman
to get excited and go too near. You can always depend on Hooven to lose
his head.”

Five minutes passed, then ten. The road towards Guadalajara lay empty,
baking and white under the sun.

“Well, the marshal and S. Behrman don’t seem to be in any hurry,
either.”

“Shall I go forward and reconnoitre, Governor?” asked Harran.

But Dabney, who stood next to Annixter, touched him on the shoulder and,
without speaking, pointed down the road. Annixter looked, then suddenly
cried out:

“Here comes Hooven.”

The German galloped into sight, around the turn of the road, his rifle
laid across his saddle. He came on rapidly, pulled up, and dismounted at
the ditch.

“Dey’re commen,” he cried, trembling with excitement. “I watch um long
dime bei der side oaf der roadt in der busches. Dey shtop bei der gate
oder side der relroadt trecks and talk long dime mit one n’udder. Den
dey gome on. Dey’re gowun sure do zum monkey-doodle pizeness. Me, I see
Gritschun put der kertridges in his guhn. I tink dey gowun to gome MY
blace first. Dey gowun to try put me off, tek my home, bei Gott.”

“All right, get down in here and keep quiet, Hooven. Don’t fire
unless----”

“Here they are.”

A half-dozen voices uttered the cry at once.

There could be no mistake this time. A buggy, drawn by two horses, came
into view around the curve of the road. Three riders accompanied it,
and behind these, seen at intervals in a cloud of dust were
two--three--five--six others.

This, then, was S. Behrman with the United States marshal and his posse.
The event that had been so long in preparation, the event which it had
been said would never come to pass, the last trial of strength, the last
fight between the Trust and the People, the direct, brutal grapple of
armed men, the law defied, the Government ignored, behold, here it was
close at hand.

Osterman cocked his revolver, and in the profound silence that had
fallen upon the scene, the click was plainly audible from end to end of
the line.

“Remember our agreement, gentlemen,” cried Magnus, in a warning voice.
“Mr. Osterman, I must ask you to let down the hammer of your weapon.”

No one answered. In absolute quiet, standing motionless in their places,
the Leaguers watched the approach of the marshal.

Five minutes passed. The riders came on steadily. They drew nearer.
The grind of the buggy wheels in the grit and dust of the road, and the
prolonged clatter of the horses’ feet began to make itself heard. The
Leaguers could distinguish the faces of their enemies.

In the buggy were S. Behrman and Cyrus Ruggles, the latter driving.
A tall man in a frock coat and slouched hat--the marshal, beyond
question--rode at the left of the buggy; Delaney, carrying a Winchester,
at the right. Christian, the real estate broker, S. Behrman’s cousin,
also with a rifle, could be made out just behind the marshal. Back of
these, riding well up, was a group of horsemen, indistinguishable in the
dust raised by the buggy’s wheels.

Steadily the distance between the Leaguers and the posse diminished.

“Don’t let them get too close, Governor,” whispered Harran.

When S. Behrman’s buggy was about one hundred yards distant from the
irrigating ditch, Magnus sprang out upon the road, leaving his revolvers
behind him. He beckoned Garnett and Gethings to follow, and the three
ranchers, who, with the exception of Broderson, were the oldest men
present, advanced, without arms, to meet the marshal.

Magnus cried aloud:

“Halt where you are.”

From their places in the ditch, Annixter, Osterman, Dabney, Harran,
Hooven, Broderson, Cutter, and Phelps, their hands laid upon their
revolvers, watched silently, alert, keen, ready for anything.

At the Governor’s words, they saw Ruggles pull sharply on the reins. The
buggy came to a standstill, the riders doing likewise. Magnus approached
the marshal, still followed by Garnett and Gethings, and began to speak.
His voice was audible to the men in the ditch, but his words could not
be made out. They heard the marshal reply quietly enough and the two
shook hands. Delaney came around from the side of the buggy, his horse
standing before the team across the road. He leaned from the saddle,
listening to what was being said, but made no remark. From time to time,
S. Behrman and Ruggles, from their seats in the buggy, interposed a
sentence or two into the conversation, but at first, so far as the
Leaguers could discern, neither Magnus nor the marshal paid them any
attention. They saw, however, that the latter repeatedly shook his head
and once they heard him exclaim in a loud voice:

“I only know my duty, Mr. Derrick.”

Then Gethings turned about, and seeing Delaney close at hand, addressed
an unheard remark to him. The cow-puncher replied curtly and the words
seemed to anger Gethings. He made a gesture, pointing back to the
ditch, showing the intrenched Leaguers to the posse. Delaney appeared
to communicate the news that the Leaguers were on hand and prepared to
resist, to the other members of the party. They all looked toward the
ditch and plainly saw the ranchers there, standing to their arms.

But meanwhile Ruggles had addressed himself more directly to Magnus, and
between the two an angry discussion was going forward. Once even Harran
heard his father exclaim:

“The statement is a lie and no one knows it better than yourself.”

“Here,” growled Annixter to Dabney, who stood next him in the ditch,
“those fellows are getting too close. Look at them edging up. Don’t
Magnus see that?”

The other members of the marshal’s force had come forward from their
places behind the buggy and were spread out across the road. Some of
them were gathered about Magnus, Garnett, and Gethings; and some were
talking together, looking and pointing towards the ditch. Whether acting
upon signal or not, the Leaguers in the ditch could not tell, but it
was certain that one or two of the posse had moved considerably forward.
Besides this, Delaney had now placed his horse between Magnus and the
ditch, and two others riding up from the rear had followed his example.
The posse surrounded the three ranchers, and by now, everybody was
talking at once.

“Look here,” Harran called to Annixter, “this won’t do. I don’t like the
looks of this thing. They all seem to be edging up, and before we know
it they may take the Governor and the other men prisoners.”

“They ought to come back,” declared Annixter.

“Somebody ought to tell them that those fellows are creeping up.”

By now, the angry argument between the Governor and Ruggles had become
more heated than ever. Their voices were raised; now and then they made
furious gestures.

“They ought to come back,” cried Osterman. “We couldn’t shoot now if
anything should happen, for fear of hitting them.”

“Well, it sounds as though something were going to happen pretty soon.”

They could hear Gethings and Delaney wrangling furiously; another deputy
joined in.

“I’m going to call the Governor back,” exclaimed Annixter, suddenly
clambering out of the ditch. “No, no,” cried Osterman, “keep in the
ditch. They can’t drive us out if we keep here.”

Hooven and Harran, who had instinctively followed Annixter, hesitated
at Osterman’s words and the three halted irresolutely on the road before
the ditch, their weapons in their hands.

“Governor,” shouted Harran, “come on back. You can’t do anything.”

Still the wrangle continued, and one of the deputies, advancing a little
from out the group, cried out:

“Keep back there! Keep back there, you!”

“Go to hell, will you?” shouted Harran on the instant. “You’re on my
land.”

“Oh, come back here, Harran,” called Osterman. “That ain’t going to do
any good.”

“There--listen,” suddenly exclaimed Harran. “The Governor is calling us.
Come on; I’m going.”

Osterman got out of the ditch and came forward, catching Harran by the
arm and pulling him back.

“He didn’t call. Don’t get excited. You’ll ruin everything. Get back
into the ditch again.”

But Cutter, Phelps, and the old man Dabney, misunderstanding what
was happening, and seeing Osterman leave the ditch, had followed his
example. All the Leaguers were now out of the ditch, and a little way
down the road, Hooven, Osterman, Annixter, and Harran in front, Dabney,
Phelps, and Cutter coming up from behind.

“Keep back, you,” cried the deputy again.

In the group around S. Behrman’s buggy, Gethings and Delaney were yet
quarrelling, and the angry debate between Magnus, Garnett, and the
marshal still continued.

Till this moment, the real estate broker, Christian, had taken no part
in the argument, but had kept himself in the rear of the buggy. Now,
however, he pushed forward. There was but little room for him to pass,
and, as he rode by the buggy, his horse scraped his flank against the
hub of the wheel. The animal recoiled sharply, and, striking against
Garnett, threw him to the ground. Delaney’s horse stood between the
buggy and the Leaguers gathered on the road in front of the ditch; the
incident, indistinctly seen by them, was misinterpreted.

Garnett had not yet risen when Hooven raised a great shout:

“HOCH, DER KAISER! HOCH, DER VATERLAND!”

With the words, he dropped to one knee, and sighting his rifle
carefully, fired into the group of men around the buggy.

Instantly the revolvers and rifles seemed to go off of themselves. Both
sides, deputies and Leaguers, opened fire simultaneously. At first, it
was nothing but a confused roar of explosions; then the roar lapsed to
an irregular, quick succession of reports, shot leaping after shot;
then a moment’s silence, and, last of all, regular as clock-ticks, three
shots at exact intervals. Then stillness.

Delaney, shot through the stomach, slid down from his horse, and, on
his hands and knees, crawled from the road into the standing wheat.
Christian fell backward from the saddle toward the buggy, and hung
suspended in that position, his head and shoulders on the wheel, one
stiff leg still across his saddle. Hooven, in attempting to rise from
his kneeling position, received a rifle ball squarely in the throat, and
rolled forward upon his face. Old Broderson, crying out, “Oh, they’ve
shot me, boys,” staggered sideways, his head bent, his hands rigid at
his sides, and fell into the ditch. Osterman, blood running from his
mouth and nose, turned about and walked back. Presley helped him across
the irrigating ditch and Osterman laid himself down, his head on his
folded arms. Harran Derrick dropped where he stood, turning over on his
face, and lay motionless, groaning terribly, a pool of blood forming
under his stomach. The old man Dabney, silent as ever, received his
death, speechless. He fell to his knees, got up again, fell once more,
and died without a word. Annixter, instantly killed, fell his length
to the ground, and lay without movement, just as he had fallen, one arm
across his face.



CHAPTER VII


On their way to Derrick’s ranch house, Hilma and Mrs. Derrick heard the
sounds of distant firing.

“Stop!” cried Hilma, laying her hand upon young Vacca’s arm. “Stop the
horses. Listen, what was that?”

The carry-all came to a halt and from far away across the rustling wheat
came the faint rattle of rifles and revolvers.

“Say,” cried Vacca, rolling his eyes, “oh, say, they’re fighting over
there.”

Mrs. Derrick put her hands over her face.

“Fighting,” she cried, “oh, oh, it’s terrible. Magnus is there--and
Harran.”

“Where do you think it is?” demanded Hilma. “That’s over toward
Hooven’s.”

“I’m going. Turn back. Drive to Hooven’s, quick.”

“Better not, Mrs. Annixter,” protested the young man. “Mr. Annixter said
we were to go to Derrick’s. Better keep away from Hooven’s if there’s
trouble there. We wouldn’t get there till it’s all over, anyhow.”

“Yes, yes, let’s go home,” cried Mrs. Derrick, “I’m afraid. Oh, Hilma,
I’m afraid.”

“Come with me to Hooven’s then.”

“There, where they are fighting? Oh, I couldn’t. I--I can’t. It would be
all over before we got there as Vacca says.”

“Sure,” repeated young Vacca.

“Drive to Hooven’s,” commanded Hilma. “If you won’t, I’ll walk there.”
 She threw off the lap-robes, preparing to descend. “And you,” she
exclaimed, turning to Mrs. Derrick, “how CAN you--when Harran and your
husband may be--may--are in danger.”

Grumbling, Vacca turned the carry-all about and drove across the open
fields till he reached the road to Guadalajara, just below the Mission.

“Hurry!” cried Hilma.

The horses started forward under the touch of the whip. The ranch houses
of Quien Sabe came in sight.

“Do you want to stop at the house?” inquired Vacca over his shoulder.

“No, no; oh, go faster--make the horses run.”

They dashed through the houses of the Home ranch.

“Oh, oh,” cried Hilma suddenly, “look, look there. Look what they have
done.”

Vacca pulled the horses up, for the road in front of Annixter’s house
was blocked.

A vast, confused heap of household effects was there--chairs, sofas,
pictures, fixtures, lamps. Hilma’s little home had been gutted;
everything had been taken from it and ruthlessly flung out upon the
road, everything that she and her husband had bought during that
wonderful week after their marriage. Here was the white enamelled “set”
 of the bedroom furniture, the three chairs, wash-stand and bureau,--the
bureau drawers falling out, spilling their contents into the dust; there
were the white wool rugs of the sitting-room, the flower stand, with its
pots all broken, its flowers wilting; the cracked goldfish globe, the
fishes already dead; the rocking chair, the sewing machine, the great
round table of yellow oak, the lamp with its deep shade of crinkly
red tissue paper, the pretty tinted photographs that had hung on the
wall--the choir boys with beautiful eyes, the pensive young girls in
pink gowns--the pieces of wood carving that represented quails and
ducks, and, last of all, its curtains of crisp, clean muslin, cruelly
torn and crushed--the bed, the wonderful canopied bed so brave and gay,
of which Hilma had been so proud, thrust out there into the common road,
torn from its place, from the discreet intimacy of her bridal chamber,
violated, profaned, flung out into the dust and garish sunshine for all
men to stare at, a mockery and a shame.

To Hilma it was as though something of herself, of her person, had been
thus exposed and degraded; all that she held sacred pilloried, gibbeted,
and exhibited to the world’s derision. Tears of anguish sprang to her
eyes, a red flame of outraged modesty overspread her face.

“Oh,” she cried, a sob catching her throat, “oh, how could they do it?”
 But other fears intruded; other greater terrors impended.

“Go on,” she cried to Vacca, “go on quickly.”

But Vacca would go no further. He had seen what had escaped Hilma’s
attention, two men, deputies, no doubt, on the porch of the ranch house.
They held possession there, and the evidence of the presence of the
enemy in this raid upon Quien Sabe had daunted him.

“No, SIR,” he declared, getting out of the carry-all, “I ain’t going to
take you anywhere where you’re liable to get hurt. Besides, the road’s
blocked by all this stuff. You can’t get the team by.”

Hilma sprang from the carry-all.

“Come,” she said to Mrs. Derrick.

The older woman, trembling, hesitating, faint with dread, obeyed, and
Hilma, picking her way through and around the wreck of her home, set off
by the trail towards the Long Trestle and Hooven’s.

When she arrived, she found the road in front of the German’s house,
and, indeed, all the surrounding yard, crowded with people. An
overturned buggy lay on the side of the road in the distance, its horses
in a tangle of harness, held by two or three men. She saw Caraher’s
buckboard under the live oak and near it a second buggy which she
recognised as belonging to a doctor in Guadalajara.

“Oh, what has happened; oh, what has happened?” moaned Mrs. Derrick.

“Come,” repeated Hilma. The young girl took her by the hand and together
they pushed their way through the crowd of men and women and entered the
yard.

The throng gave way before the two women, parting to right and left
without a word.

“Presley,” cried Mrs. Derrick, as she caught sight of him in the doorway
of the house, “oh, Presley, what has happened? Is Harran safe? Is Magnus
safe? Where are they?”

“Don’t go in, Mrs. Derrick,” said Presley, coming forward, “don’t go
in.”

“Where is my husband?” demanded Hilma.

Presley turned away and steadied himself against the jamb of the door.

Hilma, leaving Mrs. Derrick, entered the house. The front room was full
of men. She was dimly conscious of Cyrus Ruggles and S. Behrman, both
deadly pale, talking earnestly and in whispers to Cutter and Phelps.
There was a strange, acrid odour of an unfamiliar drug in the air.
On the table before her was a satchel, surgical instruments, rolls of
bandages, and a blue, oblong paper box full of cotton. But above the
hushed noises of voices and footsteps, one terrible sound made itself
heard--the prolonged, rasping sound of breathing, half choked, laboured,
agonised.

“Where is my husband?” she cried. She pushed the men aside. She saw
Magnus, bareheaded, three or four men lying on the floor, one half
naked, his body swathed in white bandages; the doctor in shirt sleeves,
on one knee beside a figure of a man stretched out beside him.

Garnett turned a white face to her.

“Where is my husband?”

The other did not reply, but stepped aside and Hilma saw the dead body
of her husband lying upon the bed. She did not cry out. She said no
word. She went to the bed, and sitting upon it, took Annixter’s head
in her lap, holding it gently between her hands. Thereafter she did
not move, but sat holding her dead husband’s head in her lap, looking
vaguely about from face to face of those in the room, while, without
a sob, without a cry, the great tears filled her wide-opened eyes and
rolled slowly down upon her cheeks.

On hearing that his wife was outside, Magnus came quickly forward. She
threw herself into his arms.

“Tell me, tell me,” she cried, “is Harran--is----”

“We don’t know yet,” he answered. “Oh, Annie----”

Then suddenly the Governor checked himself. He, the indomitable, could
not break down now.

“The doctor is with him,” he said; “we are doing all we can. Try and be
brave, Annie. There is always hope. This is a terrible day’s work. God
forgive us all.”

She pressed forward, but he held her back.

“No, don’t see him now. Go into the next room. Garnett, take care of
her.”

But she would not be denied. She pushed by Magnus, and, breaking
through the group that surrounded her son, sank on her knees beside him,
moaning, in compassion and terror.

Harran lay straight and rigid upon the floor, his head propped by a
pillow, his coat that had been taken off spread over his chest. One leg
of his trousers was soaked through and through with blood. His eyes were
half-closed, and with the regularity of a machine, the eyeballs twitched
and twitched. His face was so white that it made his yellow hair look
brown, while from his opened mouth, there issued that loud and terrible
sound of guttering, rasping, laboured breathing that gagged and choked
and gurgled with every inhalation.

“Oh, Harrie, Harrie,” called Mrs. Derrick, catching at one of his hands.

The doctor shook his head.

“He is unconscious, Mrs. Derrick.”

“Where was he--where is--the--the----”

“Through the lungs.”

“Will he get well? Tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Derrick.”

She had all but fainted, and the old rancher, Garnett, half-carrying,
half-leading her, took her to the one adjoining room--Minna Hooven’s
bedchamber. Dazed, numb with fear, she sat down on the edge of the bed,
rocking herself back and forth, murmuring:

“Harrie, Harrie, oh, my son, my little boy.”

In the outside room, Presley came and went, doing what he could to be of
service, sick with horror, trembling from head to foot.

The surviving members of both Leaguers and deputies--the warring
factions of the Railroad and the People--mingled together now with no
thought of hostility. Presley helped the doctor to cover Christian’s
body. S. Behrman and Ruggles held bowls of water while Osterman was
attended to. The horror of that dreadful business had driven all other
considerations from the mind. The sworn foes of the last hour had no
thought of anything but to care for those whom, in their fury, they had
shot down. The marshal, abandoning for that day the attempt to serve the
writs, departed for San Francisco.

The bodies had been brought in from the road where they fell. Annixter’s
corpse had been laid upon the bed; those of Dabney and Hooven,
whose wounds had all been in the face and head, were covered with a
tablecloth. Upon the floor, places were made for the others. Cutter
and Ruggles rode into Guadalajara to bring out the doctor there, and to
telephone to Bonneville for others.

Osterman had not at any time since the shooting, lost consciousness.
He lay upon the floor of Hooven’s house, bare to the waist, bandages
of adhesive tape reeved about his abdomen and shoulder. His eyes were
half-closed. Presley, who looked after him, pending the arrival of a
hack from Bonneville that was to take him home, knew that he was in
agony.

But this poser, this silly fellow, this cracker of jokes, whom no one
had ever taken very seriously, at the last redeemed himself. When at
length, the doctor had arrived, he had, for the first time, opened his
eyes.

“I can wait,” he said. “Take Harran first.” And when at length, his turn
had come, and while the sweat rolled from his forehead as the doctor
began probing for the bullet, he had reached out his free arm and taken
Presley’s hand in his, gripping it harder and harder, as the probe
entered the wound. His breath came short through his nostrils; his face,
the face of a comic actor, with its high cheek bones, bald forehead,
and salient ears, grew paler and paler, his great slit of a mouth shut
tight, but he uttered no groan.

When the worst anguish was over and he could find breath to speak, his
first words had been:

“Were any of the others badly hurt?”

As Presley stood by the door of the house after bringing in a pail of
water for the doctor, he was aware of a party of men who had struck
off from the road on the other side of the irrigating ditch and were
advancing cautiously into the field of wheat. He wondered what it meant
and Cutter, coming up at that moment, Presley asked him if he knew.

“It’s Delaney,” said Cutter. “It seems that when he was shot he crawled
off into the wheat. They are looking for him there.”

Presley had forgotten all about the buster and had only a vague
recollection of seeing him slide from his horse at the beginning of the
fight. Anxious to know what had become of him, he hurried up and joined
the party of searchers.

“We better look out,” said one of the young men, “how we go fooling
around in here. If he’s alive yet he’s just as liable as not to think
we’re after him and take a shot at us.”

“I guess there ain’t much fight left in him,” another answered. “Look at
the wheat here.”

“Lord! He’s bled like a stuck pig.”

“Here’s his hat,” abruptly exclaimed the leader of the party. “He can’t
be far off. Let’s call him.”

They called repeatedly without getting any answer, then proceeded
cautiously. All at once the men in advance stopped so suddenly that
those following carromed against them. There was an outburst of
exclamation.

“Here he is!”

“Good Lord! Sure, that’s him.”

“Poor fellow, poor fellow.”

The cow-puncher lay on his back, deep in the wheat, his knees drawn up,
his eyes wide open, his lips brown. Rigidly gripped in one hand was his
empty revolver.

The men, farm hands from the neighbouring ranches, young fellows from
Guadalajara, drew back in instinctive repulsion. One at length ventured
near, peering down into the face.

“Is he dead?” inquired those in the rear.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, put your hand on his heart.” “No! I--I don’t want to.”

“What you afraid of?”

“Well, I just don’t want to touch him, that’s all. It’s bad luck. YOU
feel his heart.”

“You can’t always tell by that.”

“How can you tell, then? Pshaw, you fellows make me sick. Here, let me
get there. I’ll do it.”

There was a long pause, as the other bent down and laid his hand on the
cow-puncher’s breast.

“Well?”

“I can’t tell. Sometimes I think I feel it beat and sometimes I don’t. I
never saw a dead man before.”

“Well, you can’t tell by the heart.”

“What’s the good of talking so blame much. Dead or not, let’s carry him
back to the house.”

Two or three ran back to the road for planks from the broken bridge.
When they returned with these a litter was improvised, and throwing
their coats over the body, the party carried it back to the road. The
doctor was summoned and declared the cow-puncher to have been dead over
half an hour.

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed one of the group.

“Well, I never said he wasn’t dead,” protested the other. “I only said
you couldn’t always tell by whether his heart beat or not.”

But all at once there was a commotion. The wagon containing Mrs. Hooven,
Minna, and little Hilda drove up.

“Eh, den, my men,” cried Mrs. Hooven, wildly interrogating the faces of
the crowd. “Whadt has happun? Sey, den, dose vellers, hev dey hurdt my
men, eh, whadt?”

She sprang from the wagon, followed by Minna with Hilda in her arms. The
crowd bore back as they advanced, staring at them in silence.

“Eh, whadt has happun, whadt has happun?” wailed Mrs. Hooven, as she
hurried on, her two hands out before her, the fingers spread wide. “Eh,
Hooven, eh, my men, are you alle righdt?”

She burst into the house. Hooven’s body had been removed to an adjoining
room, the bedroom of the house, and to this room Mrs. Hooven--Minna
still at her heels--proceeded, guided by an instinct born of the
occasion. Those in the outside room, saying no word, made way for them.
They entered, closing the door behind them, and through all the rest
of that terrible day, no sound nor sight of them was had by those who
crowded into and about that house of death. Of all the main actors of
the tragedy of the fight in the ditch, they remained the least noted,
obtruded themselves the least upon the world’s observation. They were,
for the moment, forgotten.

But by now Hooven’s house was the centre of an enormous crowd. A vast
concourse of people from Bonneville, from Guadalajara, from the ranches,
swelled by the thousands who had that morning participated in the rabbit
drive, surged about the place; men and women, young boys, young girls,
farm hands, villagers, townspeople, ranchers, railroad employees,
Mexicans, Spaniards, Portuguese. Presley, returning from the search for
Delaney’s body, had to fight his way to the house again.

And from all this multitude there rose an indefinable murmur. As
yet, there was no menace in it, no anger. It was confusion merely,
bewilderment, the first long-drawn “oh!” that greets the news of some
great tragedy. The people had taken no thought as yet. Curiosity was
their dominant impulse. Every one wanted to see what had been done;
failing that, to hear of it, and failing that, to be near the scene of
the affair. The crowd of people packed the road in front of the house
for nearly a quarter of a mile in either direction. They balanced
themselves upon the lower strands of the barbed wire fence in their
effort to see over each others’ shoulders; they stood on the seats of
their carts, buggies, and farm wagons, a few even upon the saddles of
their riding horses. They crowded, pushed, struggled, surged forward and
back without knowing why, converging incessantly upon Hooven’s house.

When, at length, Presley got to the gate, he found a carry-all drawn up
before it. Between the gate and the door of the house a lane had been
formed, and as he paused there a moment, a group of Leaguers, among
whom were Garnett and Gethings, came slowly from the door carrying
old Broderson in their arms. The doctor, bareheaded and in his shirt
sleeves, squinting in the sunlight, attended them, repeating at every
step:

“Slow, slow, take it easy, gentlemen.”

Old Broderson was unconscious. His face was not pale, no bandages could
be seen. With infinite precautions, the men bore him to the carry-all
and deposited him on the back seat; the rain flaps were let down on one
side to shut off the gaze of the multitude.

But at this point a moment of confusion ensued. Presley, because of half
a dozen people who stood in his way, could not see what was going on.
There were exclamations, hurried movements. The doctor uttered a sharp
command and a man ran back to the house returning on the instant with
the doctor’s satchel. By this time, Presley was close to the wheels of
the carry-all and could see the doctor inside the vehicle bending over
old Broderson.

“Here it is, here it is,” exclaimed the man who had been sent to the
house.

“I won’t need it,” answered the doctor, “he’s dying now.”

At the words a great hush widened throughout the throng near at hand.
Some men took off their hats.

“Stand back,” protested the doctor quietly, “stand back, good people,
please.”

The crowd bore back a little. In the silence, a woman began to sob. The
seconds passed, then a minute. The horses of the carry-all shifted their
feet and whisked their tails, driving off the flies. At length, the
doctor got down from the carry-all, letting down the rain-flaps on that
side as well.

“Will somebody go home with the body?” he asked. Gethings stepped
forward and took his place by the driver. The carry-all drove away.

Presley reentered the house. During his absence it had been cleared of
all but one or two of the Leaguers, who had taken part in the fight.
Hilma still sat on the bed with Annixter’s head in her lap. S. Behrman,
Ruggles, and all the railroad party had gone. Osterman had been taken
away in a hack and the tablecloth over Dabney’s body replaced with
a sheet. But still unabated, agonised, raucous, came the sounds of
Harran’s breathing. Everything possible had already been done. For the
moment it was out of the question to attempt to move him. His mother and
father were at his side, Magnus, with a face of stone, his look fixed on
those persistently twitching eyes, Annie Derrick crouching at her son’s
side, one of his hands in hers, fanning his face continually with the
crumpled sheet of an old newspaper.

Presley on tip-toes joined the group, looking on attentively. One of the
surgeons who had been called from Bonneville stood close by, watching
Harran’s face, his arms folded.

“How is he?” Presley whispered.

“He won’t live,” the other responded.

By degrees the choke and gurgle of the breathing became more irregular
and the lids closed over the twitching eyes. All at once the breath
ceased. Magnus shot an inquiring glance at the surgeon.

“He is dead, Mr. Derrick,” the surgeon replied.

Annie Derrick, with a cry that rang through all the house, stretched
herself over the body of her son, her head upon his breast, and the
Governor’s great shoulders bowed never to rise again.

“God help me and forgive me,” he groaned.

Presley rushed from the house, beside himself with grief, with horror,
with pity, and with mad, insensate rage. On the porch outside Caraher
met him.

“Is he--is he--” began the saloon-keeper.

“Yes, he’s dead,” cried Presley. “They’re all dead, murdered, shot down,
dead, dead, all of them. Whose turn is next?”

“That’s the way they killed my wife, Presley.”

“Caraher,” cried Presley, “give me your hand. I’ve been wrong all the
time. The League is wrong. All the world is wrong. You are the only one
of us all who is right. I’m with you from now on. BY GOD, I TOO, I’M A
RED!”

In course of time, a farm wagon from Bonneville arrived at Hooven’s. The
bodies of Annixter and Harran were placed in it, and it drove down the
Lower Road towards the Los Muertos ranch houses.

The bodies of Delaney and Christian had already been carried to
Guadalajara and thence taken by train to Bonneville.

Hilma followed the farm wagon in the Derricks’ carry-all, with Magnus
and his wife. During all that ride none of them spoke a word. It had
been arranged that, since Quien Sabe was in the hands of the Railroad,
Hilma should come to Los Muertos. To that place also Annixter’s body was
carried.

Later on in the day, when it was almost evening, the undertaker’s black
wagon passed the Derricks’ Home ranch on its way from Hooven’s and
turned into the county road towards Bonneville. The initial excitement
of the affair of the irrigating ditch had died down; the crowd long
since had dispersed. By the time the wagon passed Caraher’s saloon, the
sun had set. Night was coming on.

And the black wagon went on through the darkness, unattended, ignored,
solitary, carrying the dead body of Dabney, the silent old man of whom
nothing was known but his name, who made no friends, whom nobody knew or
spoke to, who had come from no one knew whence and who went no one knew
whither.

Towards midnight of that same day, Mrs. Dyke was awakened by the sounds
of groaning in the room next to hers. Magnus Derrick was not so
occupied by Harran’s death that he could not think of others who were in
distress, and when he had heard that Mrs. Dyke and Sidney, like Hilma,
had been turned out of Quien Sabe, he had thrown open Los Muertos to
them.

“Though,” he warned them, “it is precarious hospitality at the best.”

Until late, Mrs. Dyke had sat up with Hilma, comforting her as best she
could, rocking her to and fro in her arms, crying with her, trying to
quiet her, for once having given way to her grief, Hilma wept with a
terrible anguish and a violence that racked her from head to foot, and
at last, worn out, a little child again, had sobbed herself to sleep in
the older woman’s arms, and as a little child, Mrs. Dyke had put her to
bed and had retired herself.

Aroused a few hours later by the sounds of a distress that was physical,
as well as mental, Mrs. Dyke hurried into Hilma’s room, carrying the
lamp with her. Mrs. Dyke needed no enlightenment. She woke Presley and
besought him to telephone to Bonneville at once, summoning a doctor.
That night Hilma in great pain suffered a miscarriage.

Presley did not close his eyes once during the night; he did not even
remove his clothes. Long after the doctor had departed and that house
of tragedy had quieted down, he still remained in his place by the open
window of his little room, looking off across the leagues of growing
wheat, watching the slow kindling of the dawn. Horror weighed
intolerably upon him. Monstrous things, huge, terrible, whose names he
knew only too well, whirled at a gallop through his imagination, or rose
spectral and grisly before the eyes of his mind. Harran dead, Annixter
dead, Broderson dead, Osterman, perhaps, even at that moment dying.
Why, these men had made up his world. Annixter had been his best friend,
Harran, his almost daily companion; Broderson and Osterman were familiar
to him as brothers. They were all his associates, his good friends, the
group was his environment, belonging to his daily life. And he, standing
there in the dust of the road by the irrigating ditch, had seen them
shot. He found himself suddenly at his table, the candle burning at
his elbow, his journal before him, writing swiftly, the desire for
expression, the craving for outlet to the thoughts that clamoured
tumultuous at his brain, never more insistent, more imperious. Thus he
wrote:

“Dabney dead, Hooven dead, Harran dead, Annixter dead, Broderson dead,
Osterman dying, S. Behrman alive, successful; the Railroad in possession
of Quien Sabe. I saw them shot. Not twelve hours since I stood there at
the irrigating ditch. Ah, that terrible moment of horror and confusion!
powder smoke--flashing pistol barrels--blood stains--rearing horses--men
staggering to their death--Christian in a horrible posture, one rigid
leg high in the air across his saddle--Broderson falling sideways into
the ditch--Osterman laying himself down, his head on his arms, as if
tired, tired out. These things, I have seen them. The picture of this
day’s work is from henceforth part of my mind, part of ME. They have
done it, S. Behrman and the owners of the railroad have done it, while
all the world looked on, while the people of these United States looked
on. Oh, come now and try your theories upon us, us of the ranchos, us,
who have suffered, us, who KNOW. Oh, talk to US now of the ‘rights
of Capital,’ talk to US of the Trust, talk to US of the ‘equilibrium
between the classes.’ Try your ingenious ideas upon us. WE KNOW. I
cannot tell whether or not your theories are excellent. I do not know if
your ideas are plausible. I do not know how practical is your scheme of
society. I do not know if the Railroad has a right to our lands, but I
DO know that Harran is dead, that Annixter is dead, that Broderson is
dead, that Hooven is dead, that Osterman is dying, and that S. Behrman
is alive, successful, triumphant; that he has ridden into possession of
a principality over the dead bodies of five men shot down by his hired
associates.

“I can see the outcome. The Railroad will prevail. The Trust will
overpower us. Here in this corner of a great nation, here, on the edge
of the continent, here, in this valley of the West, far from the great
centres, isolated, remote, lost, the great iron hand crushes life from
us, crushes liberty and the pursuit of happiness from us, and our little
struggles, our moment’s convulsion of death agony causes not one jar in
the vast, clashing machinery of the nation’s life; a fleck of grit in
the wheels, perhaps, a grain of sand in the cogs--the momentary creak
of the axle is the mother’s wail of bereavement, the wife’s cry of
anguish--and the great wheel turns, spinning smooth again, even again,
and the tiny impediment of a second, scarce noticed, is forgotten. Make
the people believe that the faint tremour in their great engine is a
menace to its function? What a folly to think of it. Tell them of the
danger and they will laugh at you. Tell them, five years from now,
the story of the fight between the League of the San Joaquin and the
Railroad and it will not be believed. What! a pitched battle between
Farmer and Railroad, a battle that cost the lives of seven men?
Impossible, it could not have happened. Your story is fiction--is
exaggerated.

“Yet it is Lexington--God help us, God enlighten us, God rouse us from
our lethargy--it is Lexington; farmers with guns in their hands fighting
for Liberty. Is our State of California the only one that has its
ancient and hereditary foe? Are there no other Trusts between the oceans
than this of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad? Ask yourselves, you
of the Middle West, ask yourselves, you of the North, ask yourselves,
you of the East, ask yourselves, you of the South--ask yourselves, every
citizen of every State from Maine to Mexico, from the Dakotas to the
Carolinas, have you not the monster in your boundaries? If it is not a
Trust of transportation, it is only another head of the same Hydra.
Is not our death struggle typical? Is it not one of many, is it
not symbolical of the great and terrible conflict that is going on
everywhere in these United States? Ah, you people, blind, bound,
tricked, betrayed, can you not see it? Can you not see how the monsters
have plundered your treasures and holding them in the grip of their
iron claws, dole them out to you only at the price of your blood, at the
price of the lives of your wives and your little children? You give your
babies to Moloch for the loaf of bread you have kneaded yourselves.
You offer your starved wives to Juggernaut for the iron nail you have
yourselves compounded.”

He spent the night over his journal, writing down such thoughts as
these or walking the floor from wall to wall, or, seized at times with
unreasoning horror and blind rage, flinging himself face downward upon
his bed, vowing with inarticulate cries that neither S. Behrman nor
Shelgrim should ever live to consummate their triumph.

Morning came and with it the daily papers and news. Presley did not even
glance at the “Mercury.” Bonneville published two other daily journals
that professed to voice the will and reflect the temper of the people
and these he read eagerly.

Osterman was yet alive and there were chances of his recovery. The
League--some three hundred of its members had gathered at Bonneville
over night and were patrolling the streets and, still resolved to
keep the peace, were even guarding the railroad shops and buildings.
Furthermore, the Leaguers had issued manifestoes, urging all citizens
to preserve law and order, yet summoning an indignation meeting to be
convened that afternoon at the City Opera House.

It appeared from the newspapers that those who obstructed the marshal
in the discharge of his duty could be proceeded against by the District
Attorney on information or by bringing the matter before the Grand Jury.
But the Grand Jury was not at that time in session, and it was known
that there were no funds in the marshal’s office to pay expenses for the
summoning of jurors or the serving of processes. S. Behrman and Ruggles
in interviews stated that the Railroad withdrew entirely from the fight;
the matter now, according to them, was between the Leaguers and the
United States Government; they washed their hands of the whole business.
The ranchers could settle with Washington. But it seemed that Congress
had recently forbade the use of troops for civil purposes; the whole
matter of the League-Railroad contest was evidently for the moment to be
left in status quo.

But to Presley’s mind the most important piece of news that morning was
the report of the action of the Railroad upon hearing of the battle.

Instantly Bonneville had been isolated. Not a single local train was
running, not one of the through trains made any halt at the station. The
mails were not moved. Further than this, by some arrangement difficult
to understand, the telegraph operators at Bonneville and Guadalajara,
acting under orders, refused to receive any telegrams except those
emanating from railway officials. The story of the fight, the story
creating the first impression, was to be told to San Francisco and the
outside world by S. Behrman, Ruggles, and the local P. and S. W. agents.

An hour before breakfast, the undertakers arrived and took charge of the
bodies of Harran and Annixter. Presley saw neither Hilma, Magnus, nor
Mrs. Derrick. The doctor came to look after Hilma. He breakfasted with
Mrs. Dyke and Presley, and from him Presley learned that Hilma would
recover both from the shock of her husband’s death and from her
miscarriage of the previous night.

“She ought to have her mother with her,” said the physician. “She does
nothing but call for her or beg to be allowed to go to her. I have tried
to get a wire through to Mrs. Tree, but the company will not take it,
and even if I could get word to her, how could she get down here? There
are no trains.”

But Presley found that it was impossible for him to stay at Los Muertos
that day. Gloom and the shadow of tragedy brooded heavy over the place.
A great silence pervaded everything, a silence broken only by the
subdued coming and going of the undertaker and his assistants. When
Presley, having resolved to go into Bonneville, came out through the
doorway of the house, he found the undertaker tying a long strip of
crape to the bell-handle.

Presley saddled his pony and rode into town. By this time, after long
hours of continued reflection upon one subject, a sombre brooding
malevolence, a deep-seated desire of revenge, had grown big within his
mind. The first numbness had passed off; familiarity with what had been
done had blunted the edge of horror, and now the impulse of retaliation
prevailed. At first, the sullen anger of defeat, the sense of outrage,
had only smouldered, but the more he brooded, the fiercer flamed his
rage. Sudden paroxysms of wrath gripped him by the throat; abrupt
outbursts of fury injected his eyes with blood. He ground his teeth, his
mouth filled with curses, his hands clenched till they grew white and
bloodless. Was the Railroad to triumph then in the end? After all those
months of preparation, after all those grandiloquent resolutions, after
all the arrogant presumption of the League! The League! what a farce;
what had it amounted to when the crisis came? Was the Trust to crush
them all so easily? Was S. Behrman to swallow Los Muertos? S. Behrman!
Presley saw him plainly, huge, rotund, white; saw his jowl tremulous and
obese, the roll of fat over his collar sprinkled with sparse hairs, the
great stomach with its brown linen vest and heavy watch chain of hollow
links, clinking against the buttons of imitation pearl. And this man was
to crush Magnus Derrick--had already stamped the life from such men as
Harran and Annixter. This man, in the name of the Trust, was to grab Los
Muertos as he had grabbed Quien Sabe, and after Los Muertos, Broderson’s
ranch, then Osterman’s, then others, and still others, the whole valley,
the whole State.

Presley beat his forehead with his clenched fist as he rode on.

“No,” he cried, “no, kill him, kill him, kill him with my hands.”

The idea of it put him beside himself. Oh, to sink his fingers deep into
the white, fat throat of the man, to clutch like iron into the great
puffed jowl of him, to wrench out the life, to batter it out, strangle
it out, to pay him back for the long years of extortion and oppression,
to square accounts for bribed jurors, bought judges, corrupted
legislatures, to have justice for the trick of the Ranchers’ Railroad
Commission, the charlatanism of the “ten per cent. cut,” the ruin of
Dyke, the seizure of Quien Sabe, the murder of Harran, the assassination
of Annixter!

It was in such mood that he reached Caraher’s. The saloon-keeper had
just opened his place and was standing in his doorway, smoking his pipe.
Presley dismounted and went in and the two had a long talk.

When, three hours later, Presley came out of the saloon and rode
on towards Bonneville, his face was very pale, his lips shut tight,
resolute, determined. His manner was that of a man whose mind is made
up. The hour for the mass meeting at the Opera House had been set for
one o’clock, but long before noon the street in front of the building
and, in fact, all the streets in its vicinity, were packed from side to
side with a shifting, struggling, surging, and excited multitude. There
were few women in the throng, but hardly a single male inhabitant of
either Bonneville or Guadalajara was absent. Men had even come from
Visalia and Pixley. It was no longer the crowd of curiosity seekers that
had thronged around Hooven’s place by the irrigating ditch; the People
were no longer confused, bewildered. A full realisation of just what had
been done the day before was clear now in the minds of all. Business was
suspended; nearly all the stores were closed. Since early morning the
members of the League had put in an appearance and rode from point to
point, their rifles across their saddle pommels. Then, by ten o’clock,
the streets had begun to fill up, the groups on the corners grew
and merged into one another; pedestrians, unable to find room on
the sidewalks, took to the streets. Hourly the crowd increased till
shoulders touched and elbows, till free circulation became impeded, then
congested, then impossible. The crowd, a solid mass, was wedged tight
from store front to store front. And from all this throng, this single
unit, this living, breathing organism--the People--there rose a droning,
terrible note. It was not yet the wild, fierce clamour of riot and
insurrection, shrill, high pitched; but it was a beginning, the growl of
the awakened brute, feeling the iron in its flank, heaving up its head
with bared teeth, the throat vibrating to the long, indrawn snarl of
wrath.

Thus the forenoon passed, while the people, their bulk growing hourly
vaster, kept to the streets, moving slowly backward and forward,
oscillating in the grooves of the thoroughfares, the steady, low-pitched
growl rising continually into the hot, still air.

Then, at length, about twelve o’clock, the movement of the throng
assumed definite direction. It set towards the Opera House. Presley, who
had left his pony at the City livery stable, found himself caught in
the current and carried slowly forward in its direction. His arms were
pinioned to his sides by the press, the crush against his body was all
but rib-cracking, he could hardly draw his breath. All around him rose
and fell wave after wave of faces, hundreds upon hundreds, thousands
upon thousands, red, lowering, sullen. All were set in one direction and
slowly, slowly they advanced, crowding closer, till they almost touched
one another. For reasons that were inexplicable, great, tumultuous
heavings, like ground-swells of an incoming tide, surged over and
through the multitude. At times, Presley, lifted from his feet, was
swept back, back, back, with the crowd, till the entrance of the Opera
House was half a block away; then, the returning billow beat back again
and swung him along, gasping, staggering, clutching, till he was landed
once more in the vortex of frantic action in front of the foyer. Here
the waves were shorter, quicker, the crushing pressure on all sides of
his body left him without strength to utter the cry that rose to his
lips; then, suddenly the whole mass of struggling, stamping,
fighting, writhing men about him seemed, as it were, to rise, to lift,
multitudinous, swelling, gigantic. A mighty rush dashed Presley forward
in its leap. There was a moment’s whirl of confused sights, congested
faces, opened mouths, bloodshot eyes, clutching hands; a moment’s
outburst of furious sound, shouts, cheers, oaths; a moment’s jam wherein
Presley veritably believed his ribs must snap like pipestems and he
was carried, dazed, breathless, helpless, an atom on the crest of
a storm-driven wave, up the steps of the Opera House, on into the
vestibule, through the doors, and at last into the auditorium of the
house itself.

There was a mad rush for places; men disdaining the aisle, stepped
from one orchestra chair to another, striding over the backs of seats,
leaving the print of dusty feet upon the red plush cushions. In a
twinkling the house was filled from stage to topmost gallery. The
aisles were packed solid, even on the edge of the stage itself men were
sitting, a black fringe on either side of the footlights.

The curtain was up, disclosing a half-set scene,--the flats, leaning at
perilous angles,--that represented some sort of terrace, the pavement,
alternate squares of black and white marble, while red, white, and
yellow flowers were represented as growing from urns and vases. A long,
double row of chairs stretched across the scene from wing to wing,
flanking a table covered with a red cloth, on which was set a pitcher of
water and a speaker’s gavel.

Promptly these chairs were filled up with members of the League,
the audience cheering as certain well-known figures made their
appearance--Garnett of the Ruby ranch, Gethings of the San Pablo, Keast
of the ranch of the same name, Chattern of the Bonanza, elderly men,
bearded, slow of speech, deliberate.

Garnett opened the meeting; his speech was plain, straightforward,
matter-of-fact. He simply told what had happened. He announced that
certain resolutions were to be drawn up. He introduced the next speaker.

This one pleaded for moderation. He was conservative. All along he had
opposed the idea of armed resistance except as the very last resort.
He “deplored” the terrible affair of yesterday. He begged the people
to wait in patience, to attempt no more violence. He informed them that
armed guards of the League were, at that moment, patrolling Los Muertos,
Broderson’s, and Osterman’s. It was well known that the United States
marshal confessed himself powerless to serve the writs. There would be
no more bloodshed.

“We have had,” he continued, “bloodshed enough, and I want to say right
here that I am not so sure but what yesterday’s terrible affair might
have been avoided. A gentleman whom we all esteem, who from the first
has been our recognised leader, is, at this moment, mourning the loss of
a young son, killed before his eyes. God knows that I sympathise, as do
we all, in the affliction of our President. I am sorry for him. My heart
goes out to him in this hour of distress, but, at the same time, the
position of the League must be defined. We owe it to ourselves, we owe
it to the people of this county. The League armed for the very purpose
of preserving the peace, not of breaking it. We believed that with six
hundred armed and drilled men at our disposal, ready to muster at a
moment’s call, we could so overawe any attempt to expel us from our
lands that such an attempt would not be made until the cases pending
before the Supreme Court had been decided. If when the enemy appeared in
our midst yesterday they had been met by six hundred rifles, it is not
conceivable that the issue would have been forced. No fight would have
ensued, and to-day we would not have to mourn the deaths of four of our
fellow-citizens. A mistake has been made and we of the League must not
be held responsible.”

The speaker sat down amidst loud applause from the Leaguers and less
pronounced demonstrations on the part of the audience.

A second Leaguer took his place, a tall, clumsy man, half-rancher,
half-politician.

“I want to second what my colleague has just said,” he began. “This
matter of resisting the marshal when he tried to put the Railroad
dummies in possession on the ranches around here, was all talked over
in the committee meetings of the League long ago. It never was our
intention to fire a single shot. No such absolute authority as was
assumed yesterday was delegated to anybody. Our esteemed President is
all right, but we all know that he is a man who loves authority and who
likes to go his own gait without accounting to anybody. We--the rest of
us Leaguers--never were informed as to what was going on. We supposed,
of course, that watch was being kept on the Railroad so as we wouldn’t
be taken by surprise as we were yesterday. And it seems no watch was
kept at all, or if there was, it was mighty ineffective. Our idea was to
forestall any movement on the part of the Railroad and then when we
knew the marshal was coming down, to call a meeting of our Executive
Committee and decide as to what should be done. We ought to have had
time to call out the whole League. Instead of that, what happens? While
we’re all off chasing rabbits, the Railroad is allowed to steal a march
on us and when it is too late, a handful of Leaguers is got together and
a fight is precipitated and our men killed. I’M sorry for our President,
too. No one is more so, but I want to put myself on record as believing
he did a hasty and inconsiderate thing. If he had managed right, he
could have had six hundred men to oppose the Railroad and there would
not have been any gun fight or any killing. He DIDN’T manage right and
there WAS a killing and I don’t see as how the League ought to be
held responsible. The idea of the League, the whole reason why it
was organised, was to protect ALL the ranches of this valley from the
Railroad, and it looks to me as if the lives of our fellow-citizens
had been sacrificed, not in defending ALL of our ranches, but just in
defence of one of them--Los Muertos--the one that Mr. Derrick owns.”

The speaker had no more than regained his seat when a man was seen
pushing his way from the back of the stage towards Garnett. He handed
the rancher a note, at the same time whispering in his ear. Garnett read
the note, then came forward to the edge of the stage, holding up his
hand. When the audience had fallen silent he said:

“I have just received sad news. Our friend and fellow-citizen, Mr.
Osterman, died this morning between eleven and twelve o’clock.”

Instantly there was a roar. Every man in the building rose to his feet,
shouting, gesticulating. The roar increased, the Opera House trembled
to it, the gas jets in the lighted chandeliers vibrated to it. It was a
raucous howl of execration, a bellow of rage, inarticulate, deafening.

A tornado of confusion swept whirling from wall to wall and the madness
of the moment seized irresistibly upon Presley. He forgot himself; he no
longer was master of his emotions or his impulses. All at once he found
himself upon the stage, facing the audience, flaming with excitement,
his imagination on fire, his arms uplifted in fierce, wild gestures,
words leaping to his mind in a torrent that could not be withheld.

“One more dead,” he cried, “one more. Harran dead, Annixter dead,
Broderson dead, Dabney dead, Osterman dead, Hooven dead; shot down,
killed, killed in the defence of their homes, killed in the defence of
their rights, killed for the sake of liberty. How long must it go on?
How long must we suffer? Where is the end; what is the end? How long
must the iron-hearted monster feed on our life’s blood? How long must
this terror of steam and steel ride upon our necks? Will you never be
satisfied, will you never relent, you, our masters, you, our lords,
you, our kings, you, our task-masters, you, our Pharoahs. Will you never
listen to that command ‘LET MY PEOPLE GO’? Oh, that cry ringing down the
ages. Hear it, hear it. It is the voice of the Lord God speaking in his
prophets. Hear it, hear it--‘Let My people go!’ Rameses heard it in his
pylons at Thebes, Caesar heard it on the Palatine, the Bourbon Louis
heard it at Versailles, Charles Stuart heard it at Whitehall, the white
Czar heard it in the Kremlin,--‘LET MY PEOPLE GO.’ It is the cry of the
nations, the great voice of the centuries; everywhere it is raised. The
voice of God is the voice of the People. The people cry out ‘Let us, the
People, God’s people, go.’ You, our masters, you, our kings, you, our
tyrants, don’t you hear us? Don’t you hear God speaking in us? Will you
never let us go? How long at length will you abuse our patience? How
long will you drive us? How long will you harass us? Will nothing daunt
you? Does nothing check you? Do you not know that to ignore our cry
too long is to wake the Red Terror? Rameses refused to listen to it
and perished miserably. Caesar refused to listen and was stabbed in
the Senate House. The Bourbon Louis refused to listen and died on the
guillotine; Charles Stuart refused to listen and died on the block; the
white Czar refused to listen and was blown up in his own capital. Will
you let it come to that? Will you drive us to it? We who boast of our
land of freedom, we who live in the country of liberty? Go on as you
have begun and it WILL come to that. Turn a deaf ear to that cry of ‘Let
My people go’ too long and another cry will be raised, that you cannot
choose but hear, a cry that you cannot shut out. It will be the cry of
the man on the street, the ‘a la Bastille’ that wakes the Red Terror and
unleashes Revolution. Harassed, plundered, exasperated, desperate, the
people will turn at last as they have turned so many, many times before.
You, our lords, you, our task-masters, you, our kings; you have caught
your Samson, you have made his strength your own. You have shorn
his head; you have put out his eyes; you have set him to turn your
millstones, to grind the grist for your mills; you have made him a shame
and a mock. Take care, oh, as you love your lives, take care, lest some
day calling upon the Lord his God he reach not out his arms for the
pillars of your temples.”

The audience, at first bewildered, confused by this unexpected
invective, suddenly took fire at his last words. There was a roar of
applause; then, more significant than mere vociferation, Presley’s
listeners, as he began to speak again, grew suddenly silent. His next
sentences were uttered in the midst of a profound stillness.

“They own us, these task-masters of ours; they own our homes, they own
our legislatures. We cannot escape from them. There is no redress. We
are told we can defeat them by the ballot-box. They own the ballot-box.
We are told that we must look to the courts for redress; they own the
courts. We know them for what they are,--ruffians in politics, ruffians
in finance, ruffians in law, ruffians in trade, bribers, swindlers, and
tricksters. No outrage too great to daunt them, no petty larceny too
small to shame them; despoiling a government treasury of a million
dollars, yet picking the pockets of a farm hand of the price of a loaf
of bread.

“They swindle a nation of a hundred million and call it Financiering;
they levy a blackmail and call it Commerce; they corrupt a legislature
and call it Politics; they bribe a judge and call it Law; they hire
blacklegs to carry out their plans and call it Organisation; they
prostitute the honour of a State and call it Competition.

“And this is America. We fought Lexington to free ourselves; we fought
Gettysburg to free others. Yet the yoke remains; we have only shifted it
to the other shoulder. We talk of liberty--oh, the farce of it, oh,
the folly of it! We tell ourselves and teach our children that we have
achieved liberty, that we no longer need fight for it. Why, the fight is
just beginning and so long as our conception of liberty remains as it is
to-day, it will continue.

“For we conceive of Liberty in the statues we raise to her as a
beautiful woman, crowned, victorious, in bright armour and white robes,
a light in her uplifted hand--a serene, calm, conquering goddess. Oh,
the farce of it, oh, the folly of it! Liberty is NOT a crowned goddess,
beautiful, in spotless garments, victorious, supreme. Liberty is the Man
In the Street, a terrible figure, rushing through powder smoke, fouled
with the mud and ordure of the gutter, bloody, rampant, brutal, yelling
curses, in one hand a smoking rifle, in the other, a blazing torch.

“Freedom is NOT given free to any who ask; Liberty is not born of the
gods. She is a child of the People, born in the very height and heat of
battle, born from death, stained with blood, grimed with powder. And she
grows to be not a goddess, but a Fury, a fearful figure, slaying friend
and foe alike, raging, insatiable, merciless, the Red Terror.”

Presley ceased speaking. Weak, shaking, scarcely knowing what he was
about, he descended from the stage. A prolonged explosion of applause
followed, the Opera House roaring to the roof, men cheering, stamping,
waving their hats. But it was not intelligent applause. Instinctively as
he made his way out, Presley knew that, after all, he had not once held
the hearts of his audience. He had talked as he would have written; for
all his scorn of literature, he had been literary. The men who listened
to him, ranchers, country people, store-keepers, attentive though they
were, were not once sympathetic. Vaguely they had felt that here was
something which other men--more educated--would possibly consider
eloquent. They applauded vociferously but perfunctorily, in order to
appear to understand.

Presley, for all his love of the people, saw clearly for one moment
that he was an outsider to their minds. He had not helped them nor their
cause in the least; he never would.

Disappointed, bewildered, ashamed, he made his way slowly from the Opera
House and stood on the steps outside, thoughtful, his head bent.

He had failed, thus he told himself. In that moment of crisis, that at
the time he believed had been an inspiration, he had failed. The people
would not consider him, would not believe that he could do them service.
Then suddenly he seemed to remember. The resolute set of his lips
returned once more. Pushing his way through the crowded streets, he went
on towards the stable where he had left his pony.

Meanwhile, in the Opera House, a great commotion had occurred. Magnus
Derrick had appeared.

Only a sense of enormous responsibility, of gravest duty could have
prevailed upon Magnus to have left his house and the dead body of his
son that day. But he was the President of the League, and never since
its organisation had a meeting of such importance as this one been held.
He had been in command at the irrigating ditch the day before. It was
he who had gathered the handful of Leaguers together. It was he who must
bear the responsibility of the fight.

When he had entered the Opera House, making his way down the central
aisle towards the stage, a loud disturbance had broken out, partly
applause, partly a meaningless uproar. Many had pressed forward to shake
his hand, but others were not found wanting who, formerly his staunch
supporters, now scenting opposition in the air, held back, hesitating,
afraid to compromise themselves by adhering to the fortunes of a man
whose actions might be discredited by the very organisation of which he
was the head.

Declining to take the chair of presiding officer which Garnett offered
him, the Governor withdrew to an angle of the stage, where he was joined
by Keast.

This one, still unalterably devoted to Magnus, acquainted him briefly
with the tenor of the speeches that had been made.

“I am ashamed of them, Governor,” he protested indignantly, “to lose
their nerve now! To fail you now! it makes my blood boil. If you had
succeeded yesterday, if all had gone well, do you think we would have
heard of any talk of ‘assumption of authority,’ or ‘acting without
advice and consent’? As if there was any time to call a meeting of the
Executive Committee. If you hadn’t acted as you did, the whole county
would have been grabbed by the Railroad. Get up, Governor, and bring ‘em
all up standing. Just tear ‘em all to pieces, show ‘em that you are the
head, the boss. That’s what they need. That killing yesterday has shaken
the nerve clean out of them.”

For the instant the Governor was taken all aback. What, his lieutenants
were failing him? What, he was to be questioned, interpolated upon
yesterday’s “irrepressible conflict”? Had disaffection appeared in
the ranks of the League--at this, of all moments? He put from him his
terrible grief. The cause was in danger. At the instant he was the
President of the League only, the chief, the master. A royal anger
surged within him, a wide, towering scorn of opposition. He would
crush this disaffection in its incipiency, would vindicate himself and
strengthen the cause at one and the same time. He stepped forward and
stood in the speaker’s place, turning partly toward the audience, partly
toward the assembled Leaguers.

“Gentlemen of the League,” he began, “citizens of Bonneville”

But at once the silence in which the Governor had begun to speak was
broken by a shout. It was as though his words had furnished a signal. In
a certain quarter of the gallery, directly opposite, a man arose, and in
a voice partly of derision, partly of defiance, cried out:

“How about the bribery of those two delegates at Sacramento? Tell us
about that. That’s what we want to hear about.”

A great confusion broke out. The first cry was repeated not only by
the original speaker, but by a whole group of which he was but a part.
Others in the audience, however, seeing in the disturbance only the
clamour of a few Railroad supporters, attempted to howl them down,
hissing vigorously and exclaiming:

“Put ‘em out, put ‘em out.”

“Order, order,” called Garnett, pounding with his gavel. The whole Opera
House was in an uproar.

But the interruption of the Governor’s speech was evidently not
unpremeditated. It began to look like a deliberate and planned attack.
Persistently, doggedly, the group in the gallery vociferated: “Tell us
how you bribed the delegates at Sacramento. Before you throw mud at the
Railroad, let’s see if you are clean yourself.”

“Put ‘em out, put ‘em out.”

“Briber, briber--Magnus Derrick, unconvicted briber! Put him out.”

Keast, beside himself with anger, pushed down the aisle underneath where
the recalcitrant group had its place and, shaking his fist, called up at
them:

“You were paid to break up this meeting. If you have anything to
say; you will be afforded the opportunity, but if you do not let the
gentleman proceed, the police will be called upon to put you out.”

But at this, the man who had raised the first shout leaned over the
balcony rail, and, his face flaming with wrath, shouted:

“YAH! talk to me of your police. Look out we don’t call on them first
to arrest your President for bribery. You and your howl about law and
justice and corruption! Here”--he turned to the audience--“read about
him, read the story of how the Sacramento convention was bought by
Magnus Derrick, President of the San Joaquin League. Here’s the facts
printed and proved.”

With the words, he stooped down and from under his seat dragged forth a
great package of extra editions of the “Bonneville Mercury,” not an hour
off the presses. Other equally large bundles of the paper appeared in
the hands of the surrounding group. The strings were cut and in handfuls
and armfuls the papers were flung out over the heads of the audience
underneath. The air was full of the flutter of the newly printed sheets.
They swarmed over the rim of the gallery like clouds of monstrous,
winged insects, settled upon the heads and into the hands of the
audience, were passed swiftly from man to man, and within five minutes
of the first outbreak every one in the Opera House had read Genslinger’s
detailed and substantiated account of Magnus Derrick’s “deal” with the
political bosses of the Sacramento convention.

Genslinger, after pocketing the Governor’s hush money, had “sold him
out.”

Keast, one quiver of indignation, made his way back upon the stage. The
Leaguers were in wild confusion. Half the assembly of them were on their
feet, bewildered, shouting vaguely. From proscenium wall to foyer, the
Opera House was a tumult of noise. The gleam of the thousands of the
“Mercury” extras was like the flash of white caps on a troubled sea.

Keast faced the audience.

“Liars,” he shouted, striving with all the power of his voice to
dominate the clamour, “liars and slanderers. Your paper is the paid
organ of the corporation. You have not one shadow of proof to back you
up. Do you choose this, of all times, to heap your calumny upon the head
of an honourable gentleman, already prostrated by your murder of his
son? Proofs--we demand your proofs!”

“We’ve got the very assemblymen themselves,” came back the answering
shout. “Let Derrick speak. Where is he hiding? If this is a lie, let him
deny it. Let HIM DISPROVE the charge.” “Derrick, Derrick,” thundered the
Opera House.

Keast wheeled about. Where was Magnus? He was not in sight upon the
stage. He had disappeared. Crowding through the throng of Leaguers,
Keast got from off the stage into the wings. Here the crowd was no less
dense. Nearly every one had a copy of the “Mercury.” It was being read
aloud to groups here and there, and once Keast overheard the words,
“Say, I wonder if this is true, after all?”

“Well, and even if it was,” cried Keast, turning upon the speaker,
“we should be the last ones to kick. In any case, it was done for our
benefit. It elected the Ranchers’ Commission.”

“A lot of benefit we got out of the Ranchers’ Commission,” retorted the
other.

“And then,” protested a third speaker, “that ain’t the way to do--if he
DID do it--bribing legislatures. Why, we were bucking against corrupt
politics. We couldn’t afford to be corrupt.”

Keast turned away with a gesture of impatience. He pushed his way
farther on. At last, opening a small door in a hallway back of the
stage, he came upon Magnus.

The room was tiny. It was a dressing-room. Only two nights before it
had been used by the leading actress of a comic opera troupe which
had played for three nights at Bonneville. A tattered sofa and limping
toilet table occupied a third of the space. The air was heavy with the
smell of stale grease paint, ointments, and sachet. Faded photographs
of young women in tights and gauzes ornamented the mirror and the walls.
Underneath the sofa was an old pair of corsets. The spangled skirt of a
pink dress, turned inside out, hung against the wall.

And in the midst of such environment, surrounded by an excited group
of men who gesticulated and shouted in his very face, pale, alert,
agitated, his thin lips pressed tightly together, stood Magnus Derrick.

“Here,” cried Keast, as he entered, closing the door behind him,
“where’s the Governor? Here, Magnus, I’ve been looking for you. The
crowd has gone wild out there. You’ve got to talk ‘em down. Come out
there and give those blacklegs the lie. They are saying you are hiding.”

But before Magnus could reply, Garnett turned to Keast.

“Well, that’s what we want him to do, and he won’t do it.”

“Yes, yes,” cried the half-dozen men who crowded around Magnus, “yes,
that’s what we want him to do.”

Keast turned to Magnus.

“Why, what’s all this, Governor?” he exclaimed. “You’ve got to answer
that. Hey? why don’t you give ‘em the lie?”

“I--I,” Magnus loosened the collar about his throat “it is a lie. I will
not stoop--I would not--would be--it would be beneath my--my--it would
be beneath me.”

Keast stared in amazement. Was this the Great Man the Leader,
indomitable, of Roman integrity, of Roman valour, before whose voice
whole conventions had quailed? Was it possible he was AFRAID to face
those hired villifiers?

“Well, how about this?” demanded Garnett suddenly. “It is a lie, isn’t
it? That Commission was elected honestly, wasn’t it?”

“How dare you, sir!” Magnus burst out. “How dare you question me--call
me to account! Please understand, sir, that I tolerate----”

“Oh, quit it!” cried a voice from the group. “You can’t scare us,
Derrick. That sort of talk was well enough once, but it don’t go any
more. We want a yes or no answer.”

It was gone--that old-time power of mastery, that faculty of command.
The ground crumbled beneath his feet. Long since it had been, by his own
hand, undermined. Authority was gone. Why keep up this miserable sham
any longer? Could they not read the lie in his face, in his voice? What
a folly to maintain the wretched pretence! He had failed. He was ruined.
Harran was gone. His ranch would soon go; his money was gone. Lyman
was worse than dead. His own honour had been prostituted. Gone, gone,
everything he held dear, gone, lost, and swept away in that fierce
struggle. And suddenly and all in a moment the last remaining shells
of the fabric of his being, the sham that had stood already wonderfully
long, cracked and collapsed.

“Was the Commission honestly elected?” insisted Garnett. “Were the
delegates--did you bribe the delegates?”

“We were obliged to shut our eyes to means,” faltered Magnus. “There
was no other way to--” Then suddenly and with the last dregs of his
resolution, he concluded with: “Yes, I gave them two thousand dollars
each.”

“Oh, hell! Oh, my God!” exclaimed Keast, sitting swiftly down upon the
ragged sofa.

There was a long silence. A sense of poignant embarrassment descended
upon those present. No one knew what to say or where to look. Garnett,
with a laboured attempt at nonchalance, murmured:

“I see. Well, that’s what I was trying to get at. Yes, I see.”

“Well,” said Gethings at length, bestirring himself, “I guess I’LL go
home.”

There was a movement. The group broke up, the men making for the door.
One by one they went out. The last to go was Keast. He came up to Magnus
and shook the Governor’s limp hand.

“Good-bye, Governor,” he said. “I’ll see you again pretty soon. Don’t
let this discourage you. They’ll come around all right after a while. So
long.”

He went out, shutting the door.

And seated in the one chair of the room, Magnus Derrick remained a long
time, looking at his face in the cracked mirror that for so many years
had reflected the painted faces of soubrettes, in this atmosphere of
stale perfume and mouldy rice powder.

It had come--his fall, his ruin. After so many years of integrity and
honest battle, his life had ended here--in an actress’s dressing-room,
deserted by his friends, his son murdered, his dishonesty known, an old
man, broken, discarded, discredited, and abandoned. Before nightfall of
that day, Bonneville was further excited by an astonishing bit of news.
S. Behrman lived in a detached house at some distance from the town,
surrounded by a grove of live oak and eucalyptus trees. At a little
after half-past six, as he was sitting down to his supper, a bomb was
thrown through the window of his dining-room, exploding near the doorway
leading into the hall. The room was wrecked and nearly every window
of the house shattered. By a miracle, S. Behrman, himself, remained
untouched.



CHAPTER VIII


On a certain afternoon in the early part of July, about a month after
the fight at the irrigating ditch and the mass meeting at Bonneville,
Cedarquist, at the moment opening his mail in his office in San
Francisco, was genuinely surprised to receive a visit from Presley.

“Well, upon my word, Pres,” exclaimed the manufacturer, as the young man
came in through the door that the office boy held open for him, “upon
my word, have you been sick? Sit down, my boy. Have a glass of sherry. I
always keep a bottle here.”

Presley accepted the wine and sank into the depths of a great leather
chair near by.

“Sick?” he answered. “Yes, I have been sick. I’m sick now. I’m gone to
pieces, sir.”

His manner was the extreme of listlessness--the listlessness of great
fatigue. “Well, well,” observed the other. “I’m right sorry to hear
that. What’s the trouble, Pres?”

“Oh, nerves mostly, I suppose, and my head, and insomnia, and
weakness, a general collapse all along the line, the doctor tells
me. ‘Over-cerebration,’ he says; ‘over-excitement.’ I fancy I rather
narrowly missed brain fever.”

“Well, I can easily suppose it,” answered Cedarquist gravely, “after all
you have been through.”

Presley closed his eyes--they were sunken in circles of dark brown
flesh--and pressed a thin hand to the back of his head.

“It is a nightmare,” he murmured. “A frightful nightmare, and it’s not
over yet. You have heard of it all only through the newspaper reports.
But down there, at Bonneville, at Los Muertos--oh, you can have no idea
of it, of the misery caused by the defeat of the ranchers and by this
decision of the Supreme Court that dispossesses them all. We had gone on
hoping to the last that we would win there. We had thought that in the
Supreme Court of the United States, at least, we could find justice. And
the news of its decision was the worst, last blow of all. For Magnus it
was the last--positively the very last.”

“Poor, poor Derrick,” murmured Cedarquist. “Tell me about him, Pres. How
does he take it? What is he going to do?”

“It beggars him, sir. He sunk a great deal more than any of us believed
in his ranch, when he resolved to turn off most of the tenants and farm
the ranch himself. Then the fight he made against the Railroad in the
Courts and the political campaign he went into, to get Lyman on
the Railroad Commission, took more of it. The money that Genslinger
blackmailed him of, it seems, was about all he had left. He had been
gambling--you know the Governor--on another bonanza crop this year to
recoup him. Well, the bonanza came right enough--just in time for S.
Behrman and the Railroad to grab it. Magnus is ruined.”

“What a tragedy! what a tragedy!” murmured the other. “Lyman turning
rascal, Harran killed, and now this; and all within so short a time--all
at the SAME time, you might almost say.”

“If it had only killed him,” continued Presley; “but that is the worst
of it.”

“How the worst?”

“I’m afraid, honestly, I’m afraid it is going to turn his wits,
sir. It’s broken him; oh, you should see him, you should see him. A
shambling, stooping, trembling old man, in his dotage already. He sits
all day in the dining-room, turning over papers, sorting them, tying
them up, opening them again, forgetting them--all fumbling and mumbling
and confused. And at table sometimes he forgets to eat. And, listen,
you know, from the house we can hear the trains whistling for the Long
Trestle. As often as that happens the Governor seems to be--oh, I don’t
know, frightened. He will sink his head between his shoulders, as though
he were dodging something, and he won’t fetch a long breath again till
the train is out of hearing. He seems to have conceived an abject,
unreasoned terror of the Railroad.”

“But he will have to leave Los Muertos now, of course?”

“Yes, they will all have to leave. They have a fortnight more. The few
tenants that were still on Los Muertos are leaving. That is one thing
that brings me to the city. The family of one of the men who was
killed--Hooven was his name--have come to the city to find work. I
think they are liable to be in great distress, unless they have been
wonderfully lucky, and I am trying to find them in order to look after
them.”

“You need looking after yourself, Pres.”

“Oh, once away from Bonneville and the sight of the ruin there, I’m
better. But I intend to go away. And that makes me think, I came to ask
you if you could help me. If you would let me take passage on one of
your wheat ships. The Doctor says an ocean voyage would set me up.”

“Why, certainly, Pres,” declared Cedarquist. “But I’m sorry you’ll have
to go. We expected to have you down in the country with us this winter.”

Presley shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I must go. Even if I had all
my health, I could not bring myself to stay in California just now. If
you can introduce me to one of your captains--”

“With pleasure. When do you want to go? You may have to wait a few
weeks. Our first ship won’t clear till the end of the month.”

“That would do very well. Thank you, sir.”

But Cedarquist was still interested in the land troubles of the
Bonneville farmers, and took the first occasion to ask:

“So, the Railroad are in possession on most of the ranches?” “On all
of them,” returned Presley. “The League went all to pieces, so soon as
Magnus was forced to resign. The old story--they got quarrelling among
themselves. Somebody started a compromise party, and upon that issue
a new president was elected. Then there were defections. The Railroad
offered to lease the lands in question to the ranchers--the ranchers
who owned them,” he exclaimed bitterly, “and because the terms were
nominal--almost nothing--plenty of the men took the chance of saving
themselves. And, of course, once signing the lease, they acknowledged
the Railroad’s title. But the road would not lease to Magnus. S. Behrman
takes over Los Muertos in a few weeks now.”

“No doubt, the road made over their title in the property to him,”
 observed Cedarquist, “as a reward of his services.”

“No doubt,” murmured Presley wearily. He rose to go.

“By the way,” said Cedarquist, “what have you on hand for, let us say,
Friday evening? Won’t you dine with us then? The girls are going to the
country Monday of next week, and you probably won’t see them again for
some time if you take that ocean voyage of yours.”

“I’m afraid I shall be very poor company, sir,” hazarded Presley.
“There’s no ‘go,’ no life in me at all these days. I am like a clock
with a broken spring.”

“Not broken, Pres, my boy;” urged the other, “only run down. Try and see
if we can’t wind you up a bit. Say that we can expect you. We dine at
seven.”

“Thank you, sir. Till Friday at seven, then.”

Regaining the street, Presley sent his valise to his club (where he had
engaged a room) by a messenger boy, and boarded a Castro Street car.
Before leaving Bonneville, he had ascertained, by strenuous enquiry,
Mrs. Hooven’s address in the city, and thitherward he now directed his
steps.

When Presley had told Cedarquist that he was ill, that he was jaded,
worn out, he had only told half the truth. Exhausted he was, nerveless,
weak, but this apathy was still invaded from time to time with fierce
incursions of a spirit of unrest and revolt, reactions, momentary
returns of the blind, undirected energy that at one time had prompted
him to a vast desire to acquit himself of some terrible deed of
readjustment, just what, he could not say, some terrifying martyrdom,
some awe-inspiring immolation, consummate, incisive, conclusive. He
fancied himself to be fired with the purblind, mistaken heroism of the
anarchist, hurling his victim to destruction with full knowledge that
the catastrophe shall sweep him also into the vortex it creates.

But his constitutional irresoluteness obstructed his path continually;
brain-sick, weak of will, emotional, timid even, he temporised,
procrastinated, brooded; came to decisions in the dark hours of the
night, only to abandon them in the morning.

Once only he had ACTED. And at this moment, as he was carried through
the windy, squalid streets, he trembled at the remembrance of it. The
horror of “what might have been” incompatible with the vengeance
whose minister he fancied he was, oppressed him. The scene perpetually
reconstructed itself in his imagination. He saw himself under the shade
of the encompassing trees and shrubbery, creeping on his belly toward
the house, in the suburbs of Bonneville, watching his chances, seizing
opportunities, spying upon the lighted windows where the raised curtains
afforded a view of the interior. Then had come the appearance in the
glare of the gas of the figure of the man for whom he waited. He saw
himself rise and run forward. He remembered the feel and weight in his
hand of Caraher’s bomb--the six inches of plugged gas pipe. His upraised
arm shot forward. There was a shiver of smashed window-panes, then--a
void--a red whirl of confusion, the air rent, the ground rocking,
himself flung headlong, flung off the spinning circumference of things
out into a place of terror and vacancy and darkness. And then after a
long time the return of reason, the consciousness that his feet were set
upon the road to Los Muertos, and that he was fleeing terror-stricken,
gasping, all but insane with hysteria. Then the never-to-be-forgotten
night that ensued, when he descended into the pit, horrified at what
he supposed he had done, at one moment ridden with remorse, at another
raging against his own feebleness, his lack of courage, his wretched,
vacillating spirit. But morning had come, and with it the knowledge that
he had failed, and the baser assurance that he was not even remotely
suspected. His own escape had been no less miraculous than that of his
enemy, and he had fallen on his knees in inarticulate prayer, weeping,
pouring out his thanks to God for the deliverance from the gulf to the
very brink of which his feet had been drawn.

After this, however, there had come to Presley a deep-rooted suspicion
that he was--of all human beings, the most wretched--a failure.
Everything to which he had set his mind failed--his great epic, his
efforts to help the people who surrounded him, even his attempted
destruction of the enemy, all these had come to nothing. Girding his
shattered strength together, he resolved upon one last attempt to live
up to the best that was in him, and to that end had set himself to lift
out of the despair into which they had been thrust, the bereaved family
of the German, Hooven.

After all was over, and Hooven, together with the seven others who had
fallen at the irrigating ditch, was buried in the Bonneville cemetery,
Mrs. Hooven, asking no one’s aid or advice, and taking with her Minna
and little Hilda, had gone to San Francisco--had gone to find work,
abandoning Los Muertos and her home forever. Presley only learned of the
departure of the family after fifteen days had elapsed.

At once, however, the suspicion forced itself upon him that Mrs.
Hooven--and Minna, too for the matter of that--country-bred, ignorant of
city ways, might easily come to grief in the hard, huge struggle of city
life. This suspicion had swiftly hardened to a conviction, acting at
last upon which Presley had followed them to San Francisco, bent upon
finding and assisting them.

The house to which Presley was led by the address in his memorandum book
was a cheap but fairly decent hotel near the power house of the Castro
Street cable. He inquired for Mrs. Hooven.

The landlady recollected the Hoovens perfectly.

“German woman, with a little girl-baby, and an older daughter, sure.
The older daughter was main pretty. Sure I remember them, but they ain’t
here no more. They left a week ago. I had to ask them for their room.
As it was, they owed a week’s room-rent. Mister, I can’t afford----”

“Well, do you know where they went? Did you hear what address they had
their trunk expressed to?”

“Ah, yes, their trunk,” vociferated the woman, clapping her hands to her
hips, her face purpling. “Their trunk, ah, sure. I got their trunk, and
what are you going to do about it? I’m holding it till I get my money.
What have you got to say about it? Let’s hear it.”

Presley turned away with a gesture of discouragement, his heart sinking.
On the street corner he stood for a long time, frowning in trouble and
perplexity. His suspicions had been only too well founded. So long ago
as a week, the Hoovens had exhausted all their little store of money.
For seven days now they had been without resources, unless, indeed, work
had been found; “and what,” he asked himself, “what work in God’s name
could they find to do here in the city?”

Seven days! He quailed at the thought of it. Seven days without money,
knowing not a soul in all that swarming city. Ignorant of city life as
both Minna and her mother were, would they even realise that there were
institutions built and generously endowed for just such as they? He
knew them to have their share of pride, the dogged sullen pride of the
peasant; even if they knew of charitable organisations, would they,
could they bring themselves to apply there? A poignant anxiety thrust
itself sharply into Presley’s heart. Where were they now? Where had they
slept last night? Where breakfasted this morning? Had there even been
any breakfast this morning? Had there even been any bed last night?
Lost, and forgotten in the plexus of the city’s life, what had befallen
them? Towards what fate was the ebb tide of the streets drifting them?

Was this to be still another theme wrought out by iron hands upon the
old, the world-old, world-wide keynote? How far were the consequences
of that dreadful day’s work at the irrigating ditch to reach? To what
length was the tentacle of the monster to extend?

Presley returned toward the central, the business quarter of the city,
alternately formulating and dismissing from his mind plan after plan
for the finding and aiding of Mrs. Hooven and her daughters. He reached
Montgomery Street, and turned toward his club, his imagination once more
reviewing all the causes and circumstances of the great battle of which
for the last eighteen months he had been witness.

All at once he paused, his eye caught by a sign affixed to the wall just
inside the street entrance of a huge office building, and smitten with
an idea, stood for an instant motionless, upon the sidewalk, his eyes
wide, his fists shut tight.

The building contained the General Office of the Pacific and
Southwestern Railroad. Large though it was, it nevertheless, was not
pretentious, and during his visits to the city, Presley must have passed
it, unheeding, many times.

But for all that it was the stronghold of the enemy--the centre of all
that vast ramifying system of arteries that drained the life-blood
of the State; the nucleus of the web in which so many lives, so many
fortunes, so many destinies had been enmeshed. From this place--so he
told himself--had emanated that policy of extortion, oppression and
injustice that little by little had shouldered the ranchers from their
rights, till, their backs to the wall, exasperated and despairing they
had turned and fought and died. From here had come the orders to S.
Behrman, to Cyrus Ruggles and to Genslinger, the orders that had brought
Dyke to a prison, that had killed Annixter, that had ruined Magnus, that
had corrupted Lyman. Here was the keep of the castle, and here, behind
one of those many windows, in one of those many offices, his hand upon
the levers of his mighty engine, sat the master, Shelgrim himself.

Instantly, upon the realisation of this fact an ungovernable desire
seized upon Presley, an inordinate curiosity. Why not see, face to face,
the man whose power was so vast, whose will was so resistless, whose
potency for evil so limitless, the man who for so long and so
hopelessly they had all been fighting. By reputation he knew him to
be approachable; why should he not then approach him? Presley took his
resolution in both hands. If he failed to act upon this impulse, he knew
he would never act at all. His heart beating, his breath coming short,
he entered the building, and in a few moments found himself seated in an
ante-room, his eyes fixed with hypnotic intensity upon the frosted pane
of an adjoining door, whereon in gold letters was inscribed the word,
“PRESIDENT.”

In the end, Presley had been surprised to find that Shelgrim was still
in. It was already very late, after six o’clock, and the other offices
in the building were in the act of closing. Many of them were already
deserted. At every instant, through the open door of the ante-room,
he caught a glimpse of clerks, office boys, book-keepers, and other
employees hurrying towards the stairs and elevators, quitting business
for the day. Shelgrim, it seemed, still remained at his desk, knowing no
fatigue, requiring no leisure.

“What time does Mr. Shelgrim usually go home?” inquired Presley of the
young man who sat ruling forms at the table in the ante-room.

“Anywhere between half-past six and seven,” the other answered, adding,
“Very often he comes back in the evening.”

And the man was seventy years old. Presley could not repress a murmur of
astonishment. Not only mentally, then, was the President of the P. and
S. W. a giant. Seventy years of age and still at his post, holding there
with the energy, with a concentration of purpose that would have wrecked
the health and impaired the mind of many men in the prime of their
manhood.

But the next instant Presley set his teeth.

“It is an ogre’s vitality,” he said to himself. “Just so is the
man-eating tiger strong. The man should have energy who has sucked the
life-blood from an entire People.”

A little electric bell on the wall near at hand trilled a warning. The
young man who was ruling forms laid down his pen, and opening the
door of the President’s office, thrust in his head, then after a word
exchanged with the unseen occupant of the room, he swung the door wide,
saying to Presley:

“Mr. Shelgrim will see you, sir.”

Presley entered a large, well lighted, but singularly barren office. A
well-worn carpet was on the floor, two steel engravings hung against the
wall, an extra chair or two stood near a large, plain, littered table.
That was absolutely all, unless he excepted the corner wash-stand,
on which was set a pitcher of ice water, covered with a clean, stiff
napkin. A man, evidently some sort of manager’s assistant, stood at the
end of the table, leaning on the back of one of the chairs. Shelgrim
himself sat at the table.

He was large, almost to massiveness. An iron-grey beard and a mustache
that completely hid the mouth covered the lower part of his face. His
eyes were a pale blue, and a little watery; here and there upon his face
were moth spots. But the enormous breadth of the shoulders was what, at
first, most vividly forced itself upon Presley’s notice. Never had
he seen a broader man; the neck, however, seemed in a manner to have
settled into the shoulders, and furthermore they were humped and
rounded, as if to bear great responsibilities, and great abuse.

At the moment he was wearing a silk skull-cap, pushed to one side and
a little awry, a frock coat of broadcloth, with long sleeves, and a
waistcoat from the lower buttons of which the cloth was worn and, upon
the edges, rubbed away, showing the metal underneath. At the top this
waistcoat was unbuttoned and in the shirt front disclosed were two pearl
studs.

Presley, uninvited, unnoticed apparently, sat down. The assistant
manager was in the act of making a report. His voice was not lowered,
and Presley heard every word that was spoken.

The report proved interesting. It concerned a book-keeper in the
office of the auditor of disbursements. It seems he was at most times
thoroughly reliable, hard-working, industrious, ambitious. But at long
intervals the vice of drunkenness seized upon the man and for three days
rode him like a hag. Not only during the period of this intemperance,
but for the few days immediately following, the man was useless, his
work untrustworthy. He was a family man and earnestly strove to rid
himself of his habit; he was, when sober, valuable. In consideration of
these facts, he had been pardoned again and again.

“You remember, Mr. Shelgrim,” observed the manager, “that you have more
than once interfered in his behalf, when we were disposed to let him go.
I don’t think we can do anything with him, sir. He promises to reform
continually, but it is the same old story. This last time we saw nothing
of him for four days. Honestly, Mr. Shelgrim, I think we ought to let
Tentell out. We can’t afford to keep him. He is really losing us too
much money. Here’s the order ready now, if you care to let it go.”

There was a pause. Presley all attention, listened breathlessly. The
assistant manager laid before his President the typewritten order in
question. The silence lengthened; in the hall outside, the wrought-iron
door of the elevator cage slid to with a clash. Shelgrim did not look at
the order. He turned his swivel chair about and faced the windows behind
him, looking out with unseeing eyes. At last he spoke:

“Tentell has a family, wife and three children. How much do we pay him?”

“One hundred and thirty.”

“Let’s double that, or say two hundred and fifty. Let’s see how that
will do.”

“Why--of course--if you say so, but really, Mr. Shelgrim”

“Well, we’ll try that, anyhow.”

Presley had not time to readjust his perspective to this new point of
view of the President of the P. and S. W. before the assistant manager
had withdrawn. Shelgrim wrote a few memoranda on his calendar pad, and
signed a couple of letters before turning his attention to Presley. At
last, he looked up and fixed the young man with a direct, grave glance.
He did not smile. It was some time before he spoke. At last, he said:

“Well, sir.”

Presley advanced and took a chair nearer at hand. Shelgrim turned and
from his desk picked up and consulted Presley’s card. Presley observed
that he read without the use of glasses.

“You,” he said, again facing about, “you are the young man who wrote the
poem called ‘The Toilers.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“It seems to have made a great deal of talk. I’ve read it, and I’ve seen
the picture in Cedarquist’s house, the picture you took the idea from.”

Presley, his senses never more alive, observed that, curiously enough,
Shelgrim did not move his body. His arms moved, and his head, but
the great bulk of the man remained immobile in its place, and as the
interview proceeded and this peculiarity emphasised itself, Presley
began to conceive the odd idea that Shelgrim had, as it were, placed his
body in the chair to rest, while his head and brain and hands went
on working independently. A saucer of shelled filberts stood near his
elbow, and from time to time he picked up one of these in a great thumb
and forefinger and put it between his teeth.

“I’ve seen the picture called ‘The Toilers,’” continued Shelgrim, “and
of the two, I like the picture better than the poem.”

“The picture is by a master,” Presley hastened to interpose.

“And for that reason,” said Shelgrim, “it leaves nothing more to be
said. You might just as well have kept quiet. There’s only one best way
to say anything. And what has made the picture of ‘The Toilers’ great is
that the artist said in it the BEST that could be said on the subject.”

“I had never looked at it in just that light,” observed Presley. He
was confused, all at sea, embarrassed. What he had expected to find in
Shelgrim, he could not have exactly said. But he had been prepared
to come upon an ogre, a brute, a terrible man of blood and iron, and
instead had discovered a sentimentalist and an art critic. No standards
of measurement in his mental equipment would apply to the actual man,
and it began to dawn upon him that possibly it was not because these
standards were different in kind, but that they were lamentably
deficient in size. He began to see that here was the man not only great,
but large; many-sided, of vast sympathies, who understood with equal
intelligence, the human nature in an habitual drunkard, the ethics of
a masterpiece of painting, and the financiering and operation of ten
thousand miles of railroad.

“I had never looked at it in just that light,” repeated Presley. “There
is a great deal in what you say.”

“If I am to listen,” continued Shelgrim, “to that kind of talk, I prefer
to listen to it first hand. I would rather listen to what the great
French painter has to say, than to what YOU have to say about what he
has already said.”

His speech, loud and emphatic at first, when the idea of what he had to
say was fresh in his mind, lapsed and lowered itself at the end of his
sentences as though he had already abandoned and lost interest in that
thought, so that the concluding words were indistinct, beneath the grey
beard and mustache. Also at times there was the faintest suggestion of a
lisp.

“I wrote that poem,” hazarded Presley, “at a time when I was terribly
upset. I live,” he concluded, “or did live on the Los Muertos ranch in
Tulare County--Magnus Derrick’s ranch.”

“The Railroad’s ranch LEASED to Mr. Derrick,” observed Shelgrim.

Presley spread out his hands with a helpless, resigned gesture.

“And,” continued the President of the P. and S. W. with grave intensity,
looking at Presley keenly, “I suppose you believe I am a grand old
rascal.”

“I believe,” answered Presley, “I am persuaded----” He hesitated,
searching for his words.

“Believe this, young man,” exclaimed Shelgrim, laying a thick powerful
forefinger on the table to emphasise his words, “try to believe this--to
begin with--THAT RAILROADS BUILD THEMSELVES. Where there is a demand
sooner or later there will be a supply. Mr. Derrick, does he grow his
wheat? The Wheat grows itself. What does he count for? Does he supply
the force? What do I count for? Do I build the Railroad? You are dealing
with forces, young man, when you speak of Wheat and the Railroads, not
with men. There is the Wheat, the supply. It must be carried to feed
the People. There is the demand. The Wheat is one force, the Railroad,
another, and there is the law that governs them--supply and demand. Men
have only little to do in the whole business. Complications may arise,
conditions that bear hard on the individual--crush him maybe--BUT THE
WHEAT WILL BE CARRIED TO FEED THE PEOPLE as inevitably as it will grow.
If you want to fasten the blame of the affair at Los Muertos on any one
person, you will make a mistake. Blame conditions, not men.”

“But--but,” faltered Presley, “you are the head, you control the road.”

“You are a very young man. Control the road! Can I stop it? I can
go into bankruptcy if you like. But otherwise if I run my road, as a
business proposition, I can do nothing. I can not control it. It is
a force born out of certain conditions, and I--no man--can stop it or
control it. Can your Mr. Derrick stop the Wheat growing? He can burn his
crop, or he can give it away, or sell it for a cent a bushel--just as I
could go into bankruptcy--but otherwise his Wheat must grow. Can any one
stop the Wheat? Well, then no more can I stop the Road.”

Presley regained the street stupefied, his brain in a whirl. This new
idea, this new conception dumfounded him. Somehow, he could not deny
it. It rang with the clear reverberation of truth. Was no one, then, to
blame for the horror at the irrigating ditch? Forces, conditions,
laws of supply and demand--were these then the enemies, after all? Not
enemies; there was no malevolence in Nature. Colossal indifference
only, a vast trend toward appointed goals. Nature was, then, a gigantic
engine, a vast cyclopean power, huge, terrible, a leviathan with a heart
of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing
out the human atom standing in its way, with nirvanic calm, the agony of
destruction sending never a jar, never the faintest tremour through all
that prodigious mechanism of wheels and cogs. He went to his club and
ate his supper alone, in gloomy agitation. He was sombre, brooding, lost
in a dark maze of gloomy reflections. However, just as he was rising
from the table an incident occurred that for the moment roused him and
sharply diverted his mind.

His table had been placed near a window and as he was sipping his
after-dinner coffee, he happened to glance across the street. His eye
was at once caught by the sight of a familiar figure. Was it Minna
Hooven? The figure turned the street corner and was lost to sight; but
it had been strangely like. On the moment, Presley had risen from the
table and, clapping on his hat, had hurried into the streets, where the
lamps were already beginning to shine.

But search though he would, Presley could not again come upon the young
woman, in whom he fancied he had seen the daughter of the unfortunate
German. At last, he gave up the hunt, and returning to his club--at this
hour almost deserted--smoked a few cigarettes, vainly attempted to
read from a volume of essays in the library, and at last, nervous,
distraught, exhausted, retired to his bed.

But none the less, Presley had not been mistaken. The girl whom he had
tried to follow had been indeed Minna Hooven.

When Minna, a week before this time, had returned to the lodging house
on Castro Street, after a day’s unsuccessful effort to find employment,
and was told that her mother and Hilda had gone, she was struck
speechless with surprise and dismay. She had never before been in any
town larger than Bonneville, and now knew not which way to turn nor how
to account for the disappearance of her mother and little Hilda. That
the landlady was on the point of turning them out, she understood, but
it had been agreed that the family should be allowed to stay yet one
more day, in the hope that Minna would find work. Of this she reminded
the land-lady. But this latter at once launched upon her such a torrent
of vituperation, that the girl was frightened to speechless submission.

“Oh, oh,” she faltered, “I know. I am sorry. I know we owe you money,
but where did my mother go? I only want to find her.”

“Oh, I ain’t going to be bothered,” shrilled the other. “How do I know?”

The truth of the matter was that Mrs. Hooven, afraid to stay in the
vicinity of the house, after her eviction, and threatened with arrest by
the landlady if she persisted in hanging around, had left with the
woman a note scrawled on an old blotter, to be given to Minna when
she returned. This the landlady had lost. To cover her confusion, she
affected a vast indignation, and a turbulent, irascible demeanour.

“I ain’t going to be bothered with such cattle as you,” she vociferated
in Minna’s face. “I don’t know where your folks is. Me, I only have
dealings with honest people. I ain’t got a word to say so long as the
rent is paid. But when I’m soldiered out of a week’s lodging, then I’m
done. You get right along now. I don’t know you. I ain’t going to have
my place get a bad name by having any South of Market Street chippies
hanging around. You get along, or I’ll call an officer.”

Minna sought the street, her head in a whirl. It was about five o’clock.
In her pocket was thirty-five cents, all she had in the world. What now?

All at once, the Terror of the City, that blind, unreasoned fear that
only the outcast knows, swooped upon her, and clutched her vulture-wise,
by the throat.

Her first few days’ experience in the matter of finding employment, had
taught her just what she might expect from this new world upon which she
had been thrown. What was to become of her? What was she to do, where
was she to go? Unanswerable, grim questions, and now she no longer had
herself to fear for. Her mother and the baby, little Hilda, both of them
equally unable to look after themselves, what was to become of them,
where were they gone? Lost, lost, all of them, herself as well. But she
rallied herself, as she walked along. The idea of her starving, of her
mother and Hilda starving, was out of all reason. Of course, it would
not come to that, of course not. It was not thus that starvation came.
Something would happen, of course, it would--in time. But meanwhile,
meanwhile, how to get through this approaching night, and the next few
days. That was the thing to think of just now.

The suddenness of it all was what most unnerved her. During all the
nineteen years of her life, she had never known what it meant to shift
for herself. Her father had always sufficed for the family; he had taken
care of her, then, all of a sudden, her father had been killed, her
mother snatched from her. Then all of a sudden there was no help
anywhere. Then all of a sudden a terrible voice demanded of her, “Now
just what can you do to keep yourself alive?” Life faced her; she looked
the huge stone image squarely in the lustreless eyes.

It was nearly twilight. Minna, for the sake of avoiding observation--for
it seemed to her that now a thousand prying glances followed
her--assumed a matter-of-fact demeanour, and began to walk briskly
toward the business quarter of the town.

She was dressed neatly enough, in a blue cloth skirt with a blue plush
belt, fairly decent shoes, once her mother’s, a pink shirt waist, and
jacket and a straw sailor. She was, in an unusual fashion, pretty. Even
her troubles had not dimmed the bright light of her pale, greenish-blue
eyes, nor faded the astonishing redness of her lips, nor hollowed her
strangely white face. Her blue-black hair was trim. She carried her
well-shaped, well-rounded figure erectly. Even in her distress, she
observed that men looked keenly at her, and sometimes after her as she
went along. But this she noted with a dim sub-conscious faculty. The
real Minna, harassed, terrified, lashed with a thousand anxieties, kept
murmuring under her breath:

“What shall I do, what shall I do, oh, what shall I do, now?”

After an interminable walk, she gained Kearney Street, and held it till
the well-lighted, well-kept neighbourhood of the shopping district
gave place to the vice-crowded saloons and concert halls of the Barbary
Coast. She turned aside in avoidance of this, only to plunge into the
purlieus of Chinatown, whence only she emerged, panic-stricken and out
of breath, after a half hour of never-to-be-forgotten terrors, and at a
time when it had grown quite dark.

On the corner of California and Dupont streets, she stood a long moment,
pondering.

“I MUST do something,” she said to herself. “I must do SOMETHING.” She
was tired out by now, and the idea occurred to her to enter the Catholic
church in whose shadow she stood, and sit down and rest. This she did.
The evening service was just being concluded. But long after the priests
and altar boys had departed from the chancel, Minna still sat in the
dim, echoing interior, confronting her desperate situation as best she
might.

Two or three hours later, the sexton woke her. The church was being
closed; she must leave. Once more, chilled with the sharp night air,
numb with long sitting in the same attitude, still oppressed with
drowsiness, confused, frightened, Minna found herself on the pavement.
She began to be hungry, and, at length, yielding to the demand that
every moment grew more imperious, bought and eagerly devoured a
five-cent bag of fruit. Then, once more she took up the round of
walking.

At length, in an obscure street that branched from Kearney Street, near
the corner of the Plaza, she came upon an illuminated sign, bearing the
inscription, “Beds for the Night, 15 and 25 cents.”

Fifteen cents! Could she afford it? It would leave her with only that
much more, that much between herself and a state of privation of which
she dared not think; and, besides, the forbidding look of the building
frightened her. It was dark, gloomy, dirty, a place suggestive of
obscure crimes and hidden terrors. For twenty minutes or half an hour,
she hesitated, walking twice and three times around the block. At last,
she made up her mind. Exhaustion such as she had never known, weighed
like lead upon her shoulders and dragged at her heels. She must sleep.
She could not walk the streets all night. She entered the door-way under
the sign, and found her way up a filthy flight of stairs. At the top, a
man in a blue checked “jumper” was filling a lamp behind a high desk. To
him Minna applied.

“I should like,” she faltered, “to have a room--a bed for the night. One
of those for fifteen cents will be good enough, I think.”

“Well, this place is only for men,” said the man, looking up from the
lamp.

“Oh,” said Minna, “oh--I--I didn’t know.”

She looked at him stupidly, and he, with equal stupidity, returned the
gaze. Thus, for a long moment, they held each other’s eyes.

“I--I didn’t know,” repeated Minna.

“Yes, it’s for men,” repeated the other. She slowly descended the
stairs, and once more came out upon the streets.

And upon those streets that, as the hours advanced, grew more and more
deserted, more and more silent, more and more oppressive with the
sense of the bitter hardness of life towards those who have no means of
living, Minna Hooven spent the first night of her struggle to keep
her head above the ebb-tide of the city’s sea, into which she had been
plunged.

Morning came, and with it renewed hunger. At this time, she had found
her way uptown again, and towards ten o’clock was sitting upon a bench
in a little park full of nurse-maids and children. A group of the maids
drew their baby-buggies to Minna’s bench, and sat down, continuing a
conversation they had already begun. Minna listened. A friend of one of
the maids had suddenly thrown up her position, leaving her “madame” in
what would appear to have been deserved embarrassment.

“Oh,” said Minna, breaking in, and lying with sudden unwonted fluency,
“I am a nurse-girl. I am out of a place. Do you think I could get that
one?”

The group turned and fixed her--so evidently a country girl--with a
supercilious indifference.

“Well, you might try,” said one of them. “Got good references?”

“References?” repeated Minna blankly. She did not know what this meant.

“Oh, Mrs. Field ain’t the kind to stick about references,” spoke up the
other, “she’s that soft. Why, anybody could work her.”

“I’ll go there,” said Minna. “Have you the address?” It was told to her.

“Lorin,” she murmured. “Is that out of town?”

“Well, it’s across the Bay.”

“Across the Bay.”

“Um. You’re from the country, ain’t you?”

“Yes. How--how do I get there? Is it far?”

“Well, you take the ferry at the foot of Market Street, and then the
train on the other side. No, it ain’t very far. Just ask any one down
there. They’ll tell you.”

It was a chance; but Minna, after walking down to the ferry slips, found
that the round trip would cost her twenty cents. If the journey
proved fruitless, only a dime would stand between her and the end
of everything. But it was a chance; the only one that had, as yet,
presented itself. She made the trip.

And upon the street-railway cars, upon the ferryboats, on the
locomotives and way-coaches of the local trains, she was reminded of
her father’s death, and of the giant power that had reduced her to her
present straits, by the letters, P. and S. W. R. R. To her mind, they
occurred everywhere. She seemed to see them in every direction. She
fancied herself surrounded upon every hand by the long arms of the
monster.

Minute after minute, her hunger gnawed at her. She could not keep
her mind from it. As she sat on the boat, she found herself curiously
scanning the faces of the passengers, wondering how long since such
a one had breakfasted, how long before this other should sit down to
lunch.

When Minna descended from the train, at Lorin on the other side of the
Bay, she found that the place was one of those suburban towns, not yet
become fashionable, such as may be seen beyond the outskirts of any
large American city. All along the line of the railroad thereabouts,
houses, small villas--contractors’ ventures--were scattered, the
advantages of suburban lots and sites for homes being proclaimed in
seven-foot letters upon mammoth bill-boards close to the right of
way. Without much trouble, Minna found the house to which she had been
directed, a pretty little cottage, set back from the street and shaded
by palms, live oaks, and the inevitable eucalyptus. Her heart warmed at
the sight of it. Oh, to find a little niche for herself here, a home,
a refuge from those horrible city streets, from the rat of famine, with
its relentless tooth. How she would work, how strenuously she would
endeavour to please, how patient of rebuke she would be, how faithful,
how conscientious. Nor were her pretensions altogether false; upon her,
while at home, had devolved almost continually the care of the baby
Hilda, her little sister. She knew the wants and needs of children.

Her heart beating, her breath failing, she rang the bell set squarely in
the middle of the front door.

The lady of the house herself, an elderly lady, with pleasant, kindly
face, opened the door. Minna stated her errand.

“But I have already engaged a girl,” she said.

“Oh,” murmured Minna, striving with all her might to maintain
appearances. “Oh--I thought perhaps--” She turned away.

“I’m sorry,” said the lady. Then she added, “Would you care to look
after so many as three little children, and help around in light
housework between whiles?”

“Yes, ma’am.” “Because my sister--she lives in North Berkeley, above
here--she’s looking far a girl. Have you had lots of experience? Got
good references?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, I’ll give you the address. She lives up in North Berkeley.”

She turned back into the house a moment, and returned, handing Minna a
card.

“That’s where she lives--careful not to BLOT it, child, the ink’s wet
yet--you had better see her.”

“Is it far? Could I walk there?”

“My, no; you better take the electric cars, about six blocks above
here.”

When Minna arrived in North Berkeley, she had no money left. By a cruel
mistake, she had taken a car going in the wrong direction, and though
her error was rectified easily enough, it had cost her her last
five-cent piece. She was now to try her last hope. Promptly it crumbled
away. Like the former, this place had been already filled, and Minna
left the door of the house with the certainty that her chance had
come to naught, and that now she entered into the last struggle with
life--the death struggle--shorn of her last pitiful defence, her last
safeguard, her last penny.

As she once more resumed her interminable walk, she realised she
was weak, faint; and she knew that it was the weakness of complete
exhaustion, and the faintness of approaching starvation. Was this the
end coming on? Terror of death aroused her.

“I MUST, I MUST do something, oh, anything. I must have something to
eat.”

At this late hour, the idea of pawning her little jacket occurred to
her, but now she was far away from the city and its pawnshops, and there
was no getting back.

She walked on. An hour passed. She lost her sense of direction, became
confused, knew not where she was going, turned corners and went up
by-streets without knowing why, anything to keep moving, for she fancied
that so soon as she stood still, the rat in the pit of her stomach
gnawed more eagerly.

At last, she entered what seemed to be, if not a park, at least
some sort of public enclosure. There were many trees; the place was
beautiful; well-kept roads and walks led sinuously and invitingly
underneath the shade. Through the trees upon the other side of a wide
expanse of turf, brown and sear under the summer sun, she caught a
glimpse of tall buildings and a flagstaff. The whole place had a vaguely
public, educational appearance, and Minna guessed, from certain notices
affixed to the trees, warning the public against the picking of flowers,
that she had found her way into the grounds of the State University. She
went on a little further. The path she was following led her, at length,
into a grove of gigantic live oaks, whose lower branches all but swept
the ground. Here the grass was green, the few flowers in bloom, the
shade very thick. A more lovely spot she had seldom seen. Near at hand
was a bench, built around the trunk of the largest live oak, and here,
at length, weak from hunger, exhausted to the limits of her endurance,
despairing, abandoned, Minna Hooven sat down to enquire of herself what
next she could do.

But once seated, the demands of the animal--so she could believe--became
more clamorous, more insistent. To eat, to rest, to be safely housed
against another night, above all else, these were the things she craved;
and the craving within her grew so mighty that she crisped her poor,
starved hands into little fists, in an agony of desire, while the tears
ran from her eyes, and the sobs rose thick from her breast and struggled
and strangled in her aching throat.

But in a few moments Minna was aware that a woman, apparently of some
thirty years of age, had twice passed along the walk in front of the
bench where she sat, and now, as she took more notice of her, she
remembered that she had seen her on the ferry-boat coming over from the
city.

The woman was gowned in silk, tightly corseted, and wore a hat of rather
ostentatious smartness. Minna became convinced that the person was
watching her, but before she had a chance to act upon this conviction
she was surprised out of all countenance by the stranger coming up to
where she sat and speaking to her.

“Here is a coincidence,” exclaimed the new-comer, as she sat down;
“surely you are the young girl who sat opposite me on the boat. Strange
I should come across you again. I’ve had you in mind ever since.”

On this nearer view Minna observed that the woman’s face bore
rather more than a trace of enamel and that the atmosphere about was
impregnated with sachet. She was not otherwise conspicuous, but there
was a certain hardness about her mouth and a certain droop of fatigue
in her eyelids which, combined with an indefinite self-confidence of
manner, held Minna’s attention.

“Do you know,” continued the woman, “I believe you are in trouble. I
thought so when I saw you on the boat, and I think so now. Are you? Are
you in trouble? You’re from the country, ain’t you?”

Minna, glad to find a sympathiser, even in this chance acquaintance,
admitted that she was in distress; that she had become separated from
her mother, and that she was indeed from the country.

“I’ve been trying to find a situation,” she hazarded in conclusion,
“but I don’t seem to succeed. I’ve never been in a city before, except
Bonneville.”

“Well, it IS a coincidence,” said the other. “I know I wasn’t drawn to
you for nothing. I am looking for just such a young girl as you. You
see, I live alone a good deal and I’ve been wanting to find a nice,
bright, sociable girl who will be a sort of COMPANION to me. Understand?
And there’s something about you that I like. I took to you the moment I
saw you on the boat. Now shall we talk this over?”

Towards the end of the week, one afternoon, as Presley was returning
from his club, he came suddenly face to face with Minna upon a street
corner.

“Ah,” he cried, coming toward her joyfully. “Upon my word, I had almost
given you up. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I was afraid you
might not be getting along, and I wanted to see if there was anything
I could do. How are your mother and Hilda? Where are you stopping? Have
you got a good place?”

“I don’t know where mamma is,” answered Minna. “We got separated, and I
never have been able to find her again.”

Meanwhile, Presley had been taking in with a quick eye the details of
Minna’s silk dress, with its garniture of lace, its edging of velvet,
its silver belt-buckle. Her hair was arranged in a new way and on her
head was a wide hat with a flare to one side, set off with a gilt buckle
and a puff of bright blue plush. He glanced at her sharply.

“Well, but--but how are you getting on?” he demanded.

Minna laughed scornfully.

“I?” she cried. “Oh, I’VE gone to hell. It was either that or
starvation.”

Presley regained his room at the club, white and trembling. Worse than
the worst he had feared had happened. He had not been soon enough to
help. He had failed again. A superstitious fear assailed him that he
was, in a manner, marked; that he was foredoomed to fail. Minna had
come--had been driven to this; and he, acting too late upon his tardy
resolve, had not been able to prevent it. Were the horrors, then, never
to end? Was the grisly spectre of consequence to forever dance in his
vision? Were the results, the far-reaching results of that battle at
the irrigating ditch to cross his path forever? When would the affair
be terminated, the incident closed? Where was that spot to which the
tentacle of the monster could not reach?

By now, he was sick with the dread of it all. He wanted to get away, to
be free from that endless misery, so that he might not see what he
could no longer help. Cowardly he now knew himself to be. He thought of
himself only with loathing.

Bitterly self-contemptuous that he could bring himself to a
participation in such trivialities, he began to dress to keep his
engagement to dine with the Cedarquists.

He arrived at the house nearly half an hour late, but before he could
take off his overcoat, Mrs. Cedarquist appeared in the doorway of the
drawing-room at the end of the hall. She was dressed as if to go out.

“My DEAR Presley,” she exclaimed, her stout, over-dressed body bustling
toward him with a great rustle of silk. “I never was so glad. You poor,
dear poet, you are thin as a ghost. You need a better dinner than I can
give you, and that is just what you are to have.”

“Have I blundered?” Presley hastened to exclaim. “Did not Mr. Cedarquist
mention Friday evening?”

“No, no, no,” she cried; “it was he who blundered. YOU blundering in
a social amenity! Preposterous! No; Mr. Cedarquist forgot that we were
dining out ourselves to-night, and when he told me he had asked you
here for the same evening, I fell upon the man, my dear, I did actually,
tooth and nail. But I wouldn’t hear of his wiring you. I just dropped
a note to our hostess, asking if I could not bring you, and when I told
her who you WERE, she received the idea with, oh, empressement. So,
there it is, all settled. Cedarquist and the girls are gone on ahead,
and you are to take the old lady like a dear, dear poet. I believe I
hear the carriage. Allons! En voiture!”

Once settled in the cool gloom of the coupe, odorous of leather and
upholstery, Mrs. Cedarquist exclaimed:

“And I’ve never told you who you were to dine with; oh, a personage,
really. Fancy, you will be in the camp of your dearest foes. You are
to dine with the Gerard people, one of the Vice-Presidents of your bete
noir, the P. and S. W. Railroad.”

Presley started, his fists clenching so abruptly as to all but split his
white gloves. He was not conscious of what he said in reply, and Mrs.
Cedarquist was so taken up with her own endless stream of talk that she
did not observe his confusion.

“Their daughter Honora is going to Europe next week; her mother is to
take her, and Mrs. Gerard is to have just a few people to dinner--very
informal, you know--ourselves, you and, oh, I don’t know, two or three
others. Have you ever seen Honora? The prettiest little thing, and
will she be rich? Millions, I would not dare say how many. Tiens. Nous
voici.”

The coupe drew up to the curb, and Presley followed Mrs. Cedarquist up
the steps to the massive doors of the great house. In a confused daze,
he allowed one of the footmen to relieve him of his hat and coat; in a
daze he rejoined Mrs. Cedarquist in a room with a glass roof, hung with
pictures, the art gallery, no doubt, and in a daze heard their names
announced at the entrance of another room, the doors of which were hung
with thick, blue curtains.

He entered, collecting his wits for the introductions and presentations
that he foresaw impended.

The room was very large, and of excessive loftiness. Flat, rectagonal
pillars of a rose-tinted, variegated marble, rose from the floor almost
flush with the walls, finishing off at the top with gilded capitals of
a Corinthian design, which supported the ceiling. The ceiling itself,
instead of joining the walls at right angles, curved to meet them, a
device that produced a sort of dome-like effect. This ceiling was a maze
of golden involutions in very high relief, that adjusted themselves to
form a massive framing for a great picture, nymphs and goddesses, white
doves, golden chariots and the like, all wreathed about with clouds and
garlands of roses. Between the pillars around the sides of the room
were hangings of silk, the design--of a Louis Quinze type--of beautiful
simplicity and faultless taste. The fireplace was a marvel. It reached
from floor to ceiling; the lower parts, black marble, carved into
crouching Atlases, with great muscles that upbore the superstructure.
The design of this latter, of a kind of purple marble, shot through
with white veinings, was in the same style as the design of the
silk hangings. In its midst was a bronze escutcheon, bearing an
undecipherable monogram and a Latin motto. Andirons of brass, nearly six
feet high, flanked the hearthstone.

The windows of the room were heavily draped in sombre brocade and ecru
lace, in which the initials of the family were very beautifully worked.
But directly opposite the fireplace, an extra window, lighted from
the adjoining conservatory, threw a wonderful, rich light into the
apartment. It was a Gothic window of stained glass, very large, the
centre figures being armed warriors, Parsifal and Lohengrin; the one
with a banner, the other with a swan. The effect was exquisite, the
window a veritable masterpiece, glowing, flaming, and burning with a
hundred tints and colours--opalescent, purple, wine-red, clouded pinks,
royal blues, saffrons, violets so dark as to be almost black.

Under foot, the carpet had all the softness of texture of grass; skins
(one of them of an enormous polar bear) and rugs of silk velvet were
spread upon the floor. A Renaissance cabinet of ebony, many feet taller
than Presley’s head, and inlaid with ivory and silver, occupied one
corner of the room, while in its centre stood a vast table of Flemish
oak, black, heavy as iron, massive. A faint odour of sandalwood
pervaded the air. From the conservatory near-by, came the splashing of
a fountain. A row of electric bulbs let into the frieze of the walls
between the golden capitals, and burning dimly behind hemispheres of
clouded glass, threw a subdued light over the whole scene.

Mrs. Gerard came forward.

“This is Mr. Presley, of course, our new poet of whom we are all so
proud. I was so afraid you would be unable to come. You have given me a
real pleasure in allowing me to welcome you here.”

The footman appeared at her elbow.

“Dinner is served, madame,” he announced.

*****

When Mrs. Hooven had left the boarding-house on Castro Street, she
had taken up a position on a neighbouring corner, to wait for Minna’s
reappearance. Little Hilda, at this time hardly more than six years of
age, was with her, holding to her hand.

Mrs. Hooven was by no means an old woman, but hard work had aged her.
She no longer had any claim to good looks. She no longer took much
interest in her personal appearance. At the time of her eviction
from the Castro Street boarding-house, she wore a faded black bonnet,
garnished with faded artificial flowers of dirty pink. A plaid shawl
was about her shoulders. But this day of misfortune had set Mrs. Hooven
adrift in even worse condition than her daughter. Her purse, containing
a miserable handful of dimes and nickels, was in her trunk, and her
trunk was in the hands of the landlady. Minna had been allowed such
reprieve as her thirty-five cents would purchase. The destitution of
Mrs. Hooven and her little girl had begun from the very moment of her
eviction.

While she waited for Minna, watching every street car and every
approaching pedestrian, a policeman appeared, asked what she did, and,
receiving no satisfactory reply, promptly moved her on.

Minna had had little assurance in facing the life struggle of the city.
Mrs. Hooven had absolutely none. In her, grief, distress, the pinch of
poverty, and, above all, the nameless fear of the turbulent, fierce life
of the streets, had produced a numbness, an embruted, sodden, silent,
speechless condition of dazed mind, and clogged, unintelligent speech.
She was dumb, bewildered, stupid, animated but by a single impulse. She
clung to life, and to the life of her little daughter Hilda, with the
blind tenacity of purpose of a drowning cat.

Thus, when ordered to move on by the officer, she had silently obeyed,
not even attempting to explain her situation. She walked away to the
next street-crossing. Then, in a few moments returned, taking up her
place on the corner near the boarding-house, spying upon the approaching
cable cars, peeping anxiously down the length of the sidewalks.

Once more, the officer ordered her away, and once more, unprotesting,
she complied. But when for the third time the policeman found her on
the forbidden spot, he had lost his temper. This time when Mrs. Hooven
departed, he had followed her, and when, bewildered, persistent, she had
attempted to turn back, he caught her by the shoulder.

“Do you want to get arrested, hey?” he demanded. “Do you want me to lock
you up? Say, do you, speak up?”

The ominous words at length reached Mrs. Hooven’s comprehension.
Arrested! She was to be arrested. The countrywoman’s fear of the Jail
nipped and bit eagerly at her unwilling heels. She hurried off, thinking
to return to her post after the policeman should have gone away. But
when, at length, turning back, she tried to find the boarding-house, she
suddenly discovered that she was on an unfamiliar street. Unwittingly,
no doubt, she had turned a corner. She could not retrace her steps. She
and Hilda were lost.

“Mammy, I’m tired,” Hilda complained.

Her mother picked her up.

“Mammy, where’re we gowun, mammy?”

Where, indeed? Stupefied, Mrs. Hooven looked about her at the endless
blocks of buildings, the endless procession of vehicles in the streets,
the endless march of pedestrians on the sidewalks. Where was Minna;
where was she and her baby to sleep that night? How was Hilda to be fed?

She could not stand still. There was no place to sit down; but one thing
was left, walk.

Ah, that via dolorosa of the destitute, that chemin de la croix of the
homeless. Ah, the mile after mile of granite pavement that MUST be, MUST
be traversed. Walk they must. Move, they must; onward, forward, whither
they cannot tell; why, they do not know. Walk, walk, walk with bleeding
feet and smarting joints; walk with aching back and trembling knees;
walk, though the senses grow giddy with fatigue, though the eyes droop
with sleep, though every nerve, demanding rest, sets in motion its tiny
alarm of pain. Death is at the end of that devious, winding maze of
paths, crossed and re-crossed and crossed again. There is but one goal
to the via dolorosa; there is no escape from the central chamber of that
labyrinth. Fate guides the feet of them that are set therein. Double on
their steps though they may, weave in and out of the myriad corners of
the city’s streets, return, go forward, back, from side to side, here,
there, anywhere, dodge, twist, wind, the central chamber where Death
sits is reached inexorably at the end.

Sometimes leading and sometimes carrying Hilda, Mrs. Hooven set off
upon her objectless journey. Block after block she walked, street after
street. She was afraid to stop, because of the policemen. As often as
she so much as slackened her pace, she was sure to see one of these
terrible figures in the distance, watching her, so it seemed to her,
waiting for her to halt for the fraction of a second, in order that he
might have an excuse to arrest her.

Hilda fretted incessantly.

“Mammy, where’re we gowun? Mammy, I’m tired.” Then, at last, for the
first time, that plaint that stabbed the mother’s heart:

“Mammy, I’m hungry.”

“Be qui-ut, den,” said Mrs. Hooven. “Bretty soon we’ll hev der subber.”

Passers-by on the sidewalk, men and women in the great six o’clock
homeward march, jostled them as they went along. With dumb, dull
curiousness, she looked into one after another of the limitless stream
of faces, and she fancied she saw in them every emotion but pity. The
faces were gay, were anxious, were sorrowful, were mirthful, were lined
with thought, or were merely flat and expressionless, but not one was
turned toward her in compassion. The expressions of the faces might be
various, but an underlying callousness was discoverable beneath every
mask. The people seemed removed from her immeasurably; they were
infinitely above her. What was she to them, she and her baby, the
crippled outcasts of the human herd, the unfit, not able to survive,
thrust out on the heath to perish?

To beg from these people did not yet occur to her. There was no pride,
however, in the matter. She would have as readily asked alms of so many
sphinxes.

She went on. Without willing it, her feet carried her in a wide circle.
Soon she began to recognise the houses; she had been in that street
before. Somehow, this was distasteful to her; so, striking off at right
angles, she walked straight before her for over a dozen blocks. By now,
it was growing darker. The sun had set. The hands of a clock on the
power-house of a cable line pointed to seven. No doubt, Minna had come
long before this time, had found her mother gone, and had--just what had
she done, just what COULD she do? Where was her daughter now? Walking
the streets herself, no doubt. What was to become of Minna, pretty
girl that she was, lost, houseless and friendless in the maze of these
streets? Mrs. Hooven, roused from her lethargy, could not repress an
exclamation of anguish. Here was misfortune indeed; here was calamity.
She bestirred herself, and remembered the address of the boarding-house.
She might inquire her way back thither. No doubt, by now the policeman
would be gone home for the night. She looked about. She was in the
district of modest residences, and a young man was coming toward her,
carrying a new garden hose looped around his shoulder.

“Say, Meest’r; say, blease----”

The young man gave her a quick look and passed on, hitching the coil
of hose over his shoulder. But a few paces distant, he slackened in his
walk and fumbled in his vest pocket with his fingers. Then he came back
to Mrs. Hooven and put a quarter into her hand.

Mrs. Hooven stared at the coin stupefied. The young man disappeared.
He thought, then, that she was begging. It had come to that; she,
independent all her life, whose husband had held five hundred acres of
wheat land, had been taken for a beggar. A flush of shame shot to her
face. She was about to throw the money after its giver. But at the
moment, Hilda again exclaimed:

“Mammy, I’m hungry.”

With a movement of infinite lassitude and resigned acceptance of the
situation, Mrs. Hooven put the coin in her pocket. She had no right to
be proud any longer. Hilda must have food.

That evening, she and her child had supper at a cheap restaurant in
a poor quarter of the town, and passed the night on the benches of a
little uptown park.

Unused to the ways of the town, ignorant as to the customs and
possibilities of eating-houses, she spent the whole of her quarter upon
supper for herself and Hilda, and had nothing left wherewith to buy a
lodging.

The night was dreadful; Hilda sobbed herself to sleep on her mother’s
shoulder, waking thereafter from hour to hour, to protest, though
wrapped in her mother’s shawl, that she was cold, and to enquire why
they did not go to bed. Drunken men snored and sprawled near at hand.
Towards morning, a loafer, reeking of alcohol, sat down beside her,
and indulged in an incoherent soliloquy, punctuated with oaths and
obscenities. It was not till far along towards daylight that she fell
asleep.

She awoke to find it broad day. Hilda--mercifully--slept. Her mother’s
limbs were stiff and lame with cold and damp; her head throbbed. She
moved to another bench which stood in the rays of the sun, and for a
long two hours sat there in the thin warmth, till the moisture of the
night that clung to her clothes was evaporated.

A policeman came into view. She woke Hilda, and carrying her in her
arms, took herself away.

“Mammy,” began Hilda as soon as she was well awake; “Mammy, I’m hungry.
I want mein breakfest.”

“Sure, sure, soon now, leedle tochter.”

She herself was hungry, but she had but little thought of that. How was
Hilda to be fed? She remembered her experience of the previous day, when
the young man with the hose had given her money. Was it so easy, then,
to beg? Could charity be had for the asking? So it seemed; but all that
was left of her sturdy independence revolted at the thought. SHE beg!
SHE hold out the hand to strangers!

“Mammy, I’m hungry.”

There was no other way. It must come to that in the end. Why temporise,
why put off the inevitable? She sought out a frequented street where men
and women were on their way to work. One after another, she let them
go by, searching their faces, deterred at the very last moment by some
trifling variation of expression, a firm set mouth, a serious, level
eyebrow, an advancing chin. Then, twice, when she had made a choice, and
brought her resolution to the point of speech, she quailed, shrinking,
her ears tingling, her whole being protesting against the degradation.
Every one must be looking at her. Her shame was no doubt the object of
an hundred eyes.

“Mammy, I’m hungry,” protested Hilda again.

She made up her mind. What, though, was she to say? In what words did
beggars ask for assistance?

She tried to remember how tramps who had appeared at her back door
on Los Muertos had addressed her; how and with what formula certain
mendicants of Bonneville had appealed to her. Then, having settled upon
a phrase, she approached a whiskered gentleman with a large stomach,
walking briskly in the direction of the town.

“Say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”

The gentleman passed on.

“Perhaps he doand hear me,” she murmured.

Two well-dressed women advanced, chattering gayly.

“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”

One of the women paused, murmuring to her companion, and from her purse
extracted a yellow ticket which she gave to Mrs. Hooven with voluble
explanations. But Mrs. Hooven was confused, she did not understand. What
could the ticket mean? The women went on their way.

The next person to whom she applied was a young girl of about eighteen,
very prettily dressed.

“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”

In evident embarrassment, the young girl paused and searched in her
little pocketbook. “I think I have--I think--I have just ten cents here
somewhere,” she murmured again and again.

In the end, she found a dime, and dropped it into Mrs. Hooven’s palm.

That was the beginning. The first step once taken, the others became
easy. All day long, Mrs. Hooven and Hilda followed the streets, begging,
begging. Here it was a nickel, there a dime, here a nickel again. But
she was not expert in the art, nor did she know where to buy food the
cheapest; and the entire day’s work resulted only in barely enough for
two meals of bread, milk, and a wretchedly cooked stew. Tuesday night
found the pair once more shelterless.

Once more, Mrs. Hooven and her baby passed the night on the park
benches. But early on Wednesday morning, Mrs. Hooven found herself
assailed by sharp pains and cramps in her stomach. What was the
cause she could not say; but as the day went on, the pains increased,
alternating with hot flushes over all her body, and a certain weakness
and faintness. As the day went on, the pain and the weakness increased.
When she tried to walk, she found she could do so only with the greatest
difficulty. Here was fresh misfortune. To beg, she must walk. Dragging
herself forward a half-block at a time, she regained the street once
more. She succeeded in begging a couple of nickels, bought a bag of
apples from a vender, and, returning to the park, sank exhausted upon a
bench.

Here she remained all day until evening, Hilda alternately whimpering
for her bread and milk, or playing languidly in the gravel walk at her
feet. In the evening, she started out again. This time, it was bitter
hard. Nobody seemed inclined to give. Twice she was “moved on” by
policemen. Two hours’ begging elicited but a single dime. With this, she
bought Hilda’s bread and milk, and refusing herself to eat, returned to
the bench--the only home she knew--and spent the night shivering with
cold, burning with fever.

From Wednesday morning till Friday evening, with the exception of the
few apples she had bought, and a quarter of a loaf of hard bread that
she found in a greasy newspaper--scraps of a workman’s dinner--Mrs.
Hooven had nothing to eat. In her weakened condition, begging became
hourly more difficult, and such little money as was given her, she
resolutely spent on Hilda’s bread and milk in the morning and evening.

By Friday afternoon, she was very weak, indeed. Her eyes troubled her.
She could no longer see distinctly, and at times there appeared to
her curious figures, huge crystal goblets of the most graceful shapes,
floating and swaying in the air in front of her, almost within arm’s
reach. Vases of elegant forms, made of shimmering glass, bowed and
courtesied toward her. Glass bulbs took graceful and varying shapes
before her vision, now rounding into globes, now evolving into
hour-glasses, now twisting into pretzel-shaped convolutions.

“Mammy, I’m hungry,” insisted Hilda, passing her hands over her face.
Mrs. Hooven started and woke. It was Friday evening. Already the street
lamps were being lit.

“Gome, den, leedle girl,” she said, rising and taking Hilda’s hand.
“Gome, den, we go vind subber, hey?”

She issued from the park and took a cross street, directly away from the
locality where she had begged the previous days. She had had no success
there of late. She would try some other quarter of the town. After a
weary walk, she came out upon Van Ness Avenue, near its junction with
Market Street. She turned into the avenue, and went on toward the Bay,
painfully traversing block after block, begging of all whom she met (for
she no longer made any distinction among the passers-by).

“Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun.”

“Mammy, mammy, I’m hungry.”

It was Friday night, between seven and eight. The great deserted avenue
was already dark. A sea fog was scudding overhead, and by degrees
descending lower. The warmth was of the meagerest, and the street lamps,
birds of fire in cages of glass, fluttered and danced in the prolonged
gusts of the trade wind that threshed and weltered in the city streets
from off the ocean.

*****

Presley entered the dining-room of the Gerard mansion with little Miss
Gerard on his arm. The other guests had preceded them--Cedarquist with
Mrs. Gerard; a pale-faced, languid young man (introduced to Presley
as Julian Lambert) with Presley’s cousin Beatrice, one of the twin
daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Cedarquist; his brother Stephen, whose
hair was straight as an Indian’s, but of a pallid straw color, with
Beatrice’s sister; Gerard himself, taciturn, bearded, rotund, loud of
breath, escorted Mrs. Cedarquist. Besides these, there were one or two
other couples, whose names Presley did not remember.

The dining-room was superb in its appointments. On three sides of the
room, to the height of some ten feet, ran a continuous picture, an oil
painting, divided into long sections by narrow panels of black oak. The
painting represented the personages in the Romaunt de la Rose, and
was conceived in an atmosphere of the most delicate, most ephemeral
allegory. One saw young chevaliers, blue-eyed, of elemental beauty
and purity; women with crowns, gold girdles, and cloudy wimples; young
girls, entrancing in their loveliness, wearing snow-white kerchiefs,
their golden hair unbound and flowing, dressed in white samite, bearing
armfuls of flowers; the whole procession defiling against a background
of forest glades, venerable oaks, half-hidden fountains, and fields of
asphodel and roses.

Otherwise, the room was simple. Against the side of the wall unoccupied
by the picture stood a sideboard of gigantic size, that once had adorned
the banquet hall of an Italian palace of the late Renaissance. It was
black with age, and against its sombre surfaces glittered an array of
heavy silver dishes and heavier cut-glass bowls and goblets.

The company sat down to the first course of raw Blue Point oysters,
served upon little pyramids of shaved ice, and the two butlers at once
began filling the glasses of the guests with cool Haut Sauterne.

Mrs. Gerard, who was very proud of her dinners, and never able to resist
the temptation of commenting upon them to her guests, leaned across to
Presley and Mrs. Cedarquist, murmuring, “Mr. Presley, do you find that
Sauterne too cold? I always believe it is so bourgeois to keep such
a delicate wine as Sauterne on the ice, and to ice Bordeaux or
Burgundy--oh, it is nothing short of a crime.”

“This is from your own vineyard, is it not?” asked Julian Lambert. “I
think I recognise the bouquet.”

He strove to maintain an attitude of fin gourmet, unable to refrain from
comment upon the courses as they succeeded one another.

Little Honora Gerard turned to Presley:

“You know,” she explained, “Papa has his own vineyards in southern
France. He is so particular about his wines; turns up his nose at
California wines. And I am to go there next summer. Ferrieres is the
name of the place where our vineyards are, the dearest village!” She was
a beautiful little girl of a dainty porcelain type, her colouring low
in tone. She wore no jewels, but her little, undeveloped neck and
shoulders, of an exquisite immaturity, rose from the tulle bodice of her
first decollete gown.

“Yes,” she continued; “I’m to go to Europe for the first time. Won’t it
be gay? And I am to have my own bonne, and Mamma and I are to travel--so
many places, Baden, Homburg, Spa, the Tyrol. Won’t it be gay?”

Presley assented in meaningless words. He sipped his wine mechanically,
looking about that marvellous room, with its subdued saffron lights,
its glitter of glass and silver, its beautiful women in their elaborate
toilets, its deft, correct servants; its array of tableware--cut glass,
chased silver, and Dresden crockery. It was Wealth, in all its outward
and visible forms, the signs of an opulence so great that it need never
be husbanded. It was the home of a railway “Magnate,” a Railroad King.
For this, then, the farmers paid. It was for this that S. Behrman turned
the screw, tightened the vise. It was for this that Dyke had been driven
to outlawry and a jail. It was for this that Lyman Derrick had been
bought, the Governor ruined and broken, Annixter shot down, Hooven
killed.

The soup, puree a la Derby, was served, and at the same time, as hors
d’oeuvres, ortolan patties, together with a tiny sandwich made of
browned toast and thin slices of ham, sprinkled over with Parmesan
cheese. The wine, so Mrs. Gerard caused it to be understood, was Xeres,
of the 1815 vintage.

*****

Mrs. Hooven crossed the avenue. It was growing late. Without knowing
it, she had come to a part of the city that experienced beggars shunned.
There was nobody about. Block after block of residences stretched
away on either hand, lighted, full of people. But the sidewalks were
deserted.

“Mammy,” whimpered Hilda. “I’m tired, carry me.”

Using all her strength, Mrs. Hooven picked her up and moved on
aimlessly.

Then again that terrible cry, the cry of the hungry child appealing to
the helpless mother:

“Mammy, I’m hungry.”

“Ach, Gott, leedle girl,” exclaimed Mrs. Hooven, holding her close to
her shoulder, the tears starting from her eyes. “Ach, leedle tochter.
Doand, doand, doand. You praik my hairt. I cen’t vind any subber. We got
noddings to eat, noddings, noddings.”

“When do we have those bread’n milk again, Mammy?”

“To-morrow--soon--py-and-py, Hilda. I doand know what pecome oaf us now,
what pecome oaf my leedle babby.”

She went on, holding Hilda against her shoulder with one arm as best she
might, one hand steadying herself against the fence railings along the
sidewalk. At last, a solitary pedestrian came into view, a young man
in a top hat and overcoat, walking rapidly. Mrs. Hooven held out a
quivering hand as he passed her.

“Say, say, den, Meest’r, blease hellup a boor womun.”

The other hurried on.

*****

The fish course was grenadins of bass and small salmon, the latter
stuffed, and cooked in white wine and mushroom liquor.

“I have read your poem, of course, Mr. Presley,” observed Mrs. Gerard.
“‘The Toilers,’ I mean. What a sermon you read us, you dreadful young
man. I felt that I ought at once to ‘sell all that I have and give to
the poor.’ Positively, it did stir me up. You may congratulate yourself
upon making at least one convert. Just because of that poem Mrs.
Cedarquist and I have started a movement to send a whole shipload of
wheat to the starving people in India. Now, you horrid reactionnaire,
are you satisfied?”

“I am very glad,” murmured Presley.

“But I am afraid,” observed Mrs. Cedarquist, “that we may be too late.
They are dying so fast, those poor people. By the time our ship reaches
India the famine may be all over.”

“One need never be afraid of being ‘too late’ in the matter of helping
the destitute,” answered Presley. “Unfortunately, they are always a
fixed quantity. ‘The poor ye have always with you.’”

“How very clever that is,” said Mrs. Gerard.

Mrs. Cedarquist tapped the table with her fan in mild applause.

“Brilliant, brilliant,” she murmured, “epigrammatical.”

“Honora,” said Mrs. Gerard, turning to her daughter, at that moment in
conversation with the languid Lambert, “Honora, entends-tu, ma cherie,
l’esprit de notre jeune Lamartine.”

*****

Mrs. Hooven went on, stumbling from street to street, holding Hilda to
her breast. Famine gnawed incessantly at her stomach; walk though she
might, turn upon her tracks up and down the streets, back to the avenue
again, incessantly and relentlessly the torture dug into her vitals.
She was hungry, hungry, and if the want of food harassed and rended
her, full-grown woman that she was, what must it be in the poor, starved
stomach of her little girl? Oh, for some helping hand now, oh, for one
little mouthful, one little nibble! Food, food, all her wrecked body
clamoured for nourishment; anything to numb those gnawing teeth--an
abandoned loaf, hard, mouldered; a half-eaten fruit, yes, even the
refuse of the gutter, even the garbage of the ash heap. On she went,
peering into dark corners, into the areaways, anywhere, everywhere,
watching the silent prowling of cats, the intent rovings of stray
dogs. But she was growing weaker; the pains and cramps in her stomach
returned. Hilda’s weight bore her to the pavement. More than once a
great giddiness, a certain wheeling faintness all but overcame her.
Hilda, however, was asleep. To wake her would only mean to revive her to
the consciousness of hunger; yet how to carry her further? Mrs. Hooven
began to fear that she would fall with her child in her arms. The terror
of a collapse upon those cold pavements glistening with fog-damp roused
her; she must make an effort to get through the night. She rallied all
her strength, and pausing a moment to shift the weight of her baby to
the other arm, once more set off through the night. A little while later
she found on the edge of the sidewalk the peeling of a banana. It had
been trodden upon and it was muddy, but joyfully she caught it up.

“Hilda,” she cried, “wake oop, leedle girl. See, loog den, dere’s
somedings to eat. Look den, hey? Dat’s goot, ain’t it? Zum bunaner.”

But it could not be eaten. Decayed, dirty, all but rotting, the stomach
turned from the refuse, nauseated.

“No, no,” cried Hilda, “that’s not good. I can’t eat it. Oh, Mammy,
please gif me those bread’n milk.”

*****

By now the guests of Mrs. Gerard had come to the entrees--Londonderry
pheasants, escallops of duck, and rissolettes a la pompadour. The wine
was Chateau Latour.

All around the table conversations were going forward gayly. The good
wines had broken up the slight restraint of the early part of the
evening and a spirit of good humour and good fellowship prevailed. Young
Lambert and Mr. Gerard were deep in reminiscences of certain mutual
duck-shooting expeditions. Mrs. Gerard and Mrs. Cedarquist discussed
a novel--a strange mingling of psychology, degeneracy, and analysis
of erotic conditions--which had just been translated from the Italian.
Stephen Lambert and Beatrice disputed over the merits of a Scotch collie
just given to the young lady. The scene was gay, the electric bulbs
sparkled, the wine flashing back the light. The entire table was a vague
glow of white napery, delicate china, and glass as brilliant as crystal.
Behind the guests the serving-men came and went, filling the glasses
continually, changing the covers, serving the entrees, managing the
dinner without interruption, confusion, or the slightest unnecessary
noise.

But Presley could find no enjoyment in the occasion. From that picture
of feasting, that scene of luxury, that atmosphere of decorous,
well-bred refinement, his thoughts went back to Los Muertos and Quien
Sabe and the irrigating ditch at Hooven’s. He saw them fall, one by one,
Harran, Annixter, Osterman, Broderson, Hooven. The clink of the wine
glasses was drowned in the explosion of revolvers. The Railroad might
indeed be a force only, which no man could control and for which no man
was responsible, but his friends had been killed, but years of extortion
and oppression had wrung money from all the San Joaquin, money that had
made possible this very scene in which he found himself. Because Magnus
had been beggared, Gerard had become Railroad King; because the farmers
of the valley were poor, these men were rich.

The fancy grew big in his mind, distorted, caricatured, terrible.
Because the farmers had been killed at the irrigation ditch, these
others, Gerard and his family, fed full. They fattened on the blood of
the People, on the blood of the men who had been killed at the ditch.
It was a half-ludicrous, half-horrible “dog eat dog,” an unspeakable
cannibalism. Harran, Annixter, and Hooven were being devoured there
under his eyes. These dainty women, his cousin Beatrice and little Miss
Gerard, frail, delicate; all these fine ladies with their small fingers
and slender necks, suddenly were transfigured in his tortured mind into
harpies tearing human flesh. His head swam with the horror of it, the
terror of it. Yes, the People WOULD turn some day, and turning, rend
those who now preyed upon them. It would be “dog eat dog” again, with
positions reversed, and he saw for one instant of time that splendid
house sacked to its foundations, the tables overturned, the pictures
torn, the hangings blazing, and Liberty, the red-handed Man in the
Street, grimed with powder smoke, foul with the gutter, rush yelling,
torch in hand, through every door.

*****

At ten o’clock Mrs. Hooven fell.

Luckily she was leading Hilda by the hand at the time and the little
girl was not hurt. In vain had Mrs. Hooven, hour after hour, walked the
streets. After a while she no longer made any attempt to beg; nobody was
stirring, nor did she even try to hunt for food with the stray dogs and
cats. She had made up her mind to return to the park in order to
sit upon the benches there, but she had mistaken the direction, and
following up Sacramento Street, had come out at length, not upon the
park, but upon a great vacant lot at the very top of the Clay Street
hill. The ground was unfenced and rose above her to form the cap of the
hill, all overgrown with bushes and a few stunted live oaks. It was in
trying to cross this piece of ground that she fell. She got upon her
feet again.

“Ach, Mammy, did you hurt yourself?” asked Hilda.

“No, no.”

“Is that house where we get those bread’n milk?”

Hilda pointed to a single rambling building just visible in the night,
that stood isolated upon the summit of the hill in a grove of trees.

“No, no, dere aindt no braid end miluk, leedle tochter.”

Hilda once more began to sob.

“Ach, Mammy, please, PLEASE, I want it. I’m hungry.”

The jangled nerves snapped at last under the tension, and Mrs. Hooven,
suddenly shaking Hilda roughly, cried out: “Stop, stop. Doand say ut
egen, you. My Gott, you kill me yet.”

But quick upon this came the reaction. The mother caught her little
girl to her, sinking down upon her knees, putting her arms around her,
holding her close.

“No, no, gry all so mudge es you want. Say dot you are hongry. Say ut
egen, say ut all de dime, ofer end ofer egen. Say ut, poor, starfing,
leedle babby. Oh, mein poor, leedle tochter. My Gott, oh, I go crazy
bretty soon, I guess. I cen’t hellup you. I cen’t ged you noddings to
eat, noddings, noddings. Hilda, we gowun to die togedder. Put der arms
roundt me, soh, tighd, leedle babby. We gowun to die, we gowun to vind
Popper. We aindt gowun to be hongry eny more.”

“Vair we go now?” demanded Hilda.

“No places. Mommer’s soh tiredt. We stop heir, leedle while, end rest.”

Underneath a large bush that afforded a little shelter from the wind,
Mrs. Hooven lay down, taking Hilda in her arms and wrapping her shawl
about her. The infinite, vast night expanded gigantic all around them.
At this elevation they were far above the city. It was still. Close
overhead whirled the chariots of the fog, galloping landward, smothering
lights, blurring outlines. Soon all sight of the town was shut out; even
the solitary house on the hilltop vanished. There was nothing left but
grey, wheeling fog, and the mother and child, alone, shivering in a
little strip of damp ground, an island drifting aimlessly in empty
space.

Hilda’s fingers touched a leaf from the bush and instinctively closed
upon it and carried it to her mouth.

“Mammy,” she said, “I’m eating those leaf. Is those good?”

Her mother did not reply.

“You going to sleep, Mammy?” inquired Hilda, touching her face.

Mrs. Hooven roused herself a little.

“Hey? Vat you say? Asleep? Yais, I guess I wass asleep.”

Her voice trailed unintelligibly to silence again. She was not, however,
asleep. Her eyes were open. A grateful numbness had begun to creep over
her, a pleasing semi-insensibility. She no longer felt the pain and
cramps of her stomach, even the hunger was ceasing to bite.

*****

“These stuffed artichokes are delicious, Mrs. Gerard,” murmured young
Lambert, wiping his lips with a corner of his napkin. “Pardon me for
mentioning it, but your dinner must be my excuse.”

“And this asparagus--since Mr. Lambert has set the bad example,”
 observed Mrs. Cedarquist, “so delicate, such an exquisite flavour. How
do you manage?”

“We get all our asparagus from the southern part of the State, from one
particular ranch,” explained Mrs. Gerard. “We order it by wire and get
it only twenty hours after cutting. My husband sees to it that it is
put on a special train. It stops at this ranch just to take on our
asparagus. Extravagant, isn’t it, but I simply cannot eat asparagus that
has been cut more than a day.”

“Nor I,” exclaimed Julian Lambert, who posed as an epicure. “I can tell
to an hour just how long asparagus has been picked.”

“Fancy eating ordinary market asparagus,” said Mrs. Gerard, “that has
been fingered by Heaven knows how many hands.”

*****

“Mammy, mammy, wake up,” cried Hilda, trying to push open Mrs. Hooven’s
eyelids, at last closed. “Mammy, don’t. You’re just trying to frighten
me.”

Feebly Hilda shook her by the shoulder. At last Mrs. Hooven’s lips
stirred. Putting her head down, Hilda distinguished the whispered words:

“I’m sick. Go to schleep....Sick....Noddings to eat.”

*****

The dessert was a wonderful preparation of alternate layers of biscuit
glaces, ice cream, and candied chestnuts.

“Delicious, is it not?” observed Julian Lambert, partly to himself,
partly to Miss Cedarquist. “This Moscovite fouette--upon my word, I have
never tasted its equal.”

“And you should know, shouldn’t you?” returned the young lady.

*****

“Mammy, mammy, wake up,” cried Hilda. “Don’t sleep so. I’m frightenedt.”

Repeatedly she shook her; repeatedly she tried to raise the inert
eyelids with the point of her finger. But her mother no longer stirred.
The gaunt, lean body, with its bony face and sunken eye-sockets, lay
back, prone upon the ground, the feet upturned and showing the ragged,
worn soles of the shoes, the forehead and grey hair beaded with fog, the
poor, faded bonnet awry, the poor, faded dress soiled and torn. Hilda
drew close to her mother, kissing her face, twining her arms around
her neck. For a long time, she lay that way, alternately sobbing and
sleeping. Then, after a long time, there was a stir. She woke from a
doze to find a police officer and two or three other men bending over
her. Some one carried a lantern. Terrified, smitten dumb, she was unable
to answer the questions put to her. Then a woman, evidently a mistress
of the house on the top of the hill, arrived and took Hilda in her arms
and cried over her.

“I’ll take the little girl,” she said to the police officer.

“But the mother, can you save her? Is she too far gone?”

“I’ve sent for a doctor,” replied the other.

*****

Just before the ladies left the table, young Lambert raised his glass of
Madeira. Turning towards the wife of the Railroad King, he said:

“My best compliments for a delightful dinner.”

*****

The doctor who had been bending over Mrs. Hooven, rose.

“It’s no use,” he said; “she has been dead some time--exhaustion from
starvation.”



CHAPTER IX


On Division Number Three of the Los Muertos ranch the wheat had already
been cut, and S. Behrman on a certain morning in the first week of
August drove across the open expanse of stubble toward the southwest,
his eyes searching the horizon for the feather of smoke that would
mark the location of the steam harvester. However, he saw nothing. The
stubble extended onward apparently to the very margin of the world.

At length, S. Behrman halted his buggy and brought out his field glasses
from beneath the seat. He stood up in his place and, adjusting the
lenses, swept the prospect to the south and west. It was the same as
though the sea of land were, in reality, the ocean, and he, lost in an
open boat, were scanning the waste through his glasses, looking for the
smoke of a steamer, hull down, below the horizon. “Wonder,” he muttered,
“if they’re working on Four this morning?”

At length, he murmured an “Ah” of satisfaction. Far to the south into
the white sheen of sky, immediately over the horizon, he made out a
faint smudge--the harvester beyond doubt.

Thither S. Behrman turned his horse’s head. It was all of an hour’s
drive over the uneven ground and through the crackling stubble, but at
length he reached the harvester. He found, however, that it had been
halted. The sack sewers, together with the header-man, were stretched
on the ground in the shade of the machine, while the engineer and
separator-man were pottering about a portion of the works.

“What’s the matter, Billy?” demanded S. Behrman reining up.

The engineer turned about.

“The grain is heavy in here. We thought we’d better increase the speed
of the cup-carrier, and pulled up to put in a smaller sprocket.”

S. Behrman nodded to say that was all right, and added a question.

“How is she going?”

“Anywheres from twenty-five to thirty sacks to the acre right along
here; nothing the matter with THAT I guess.”

“Nothing in the world, Bill.”

One of the sack sewers interposed:

“For the last half hour we’ve been throwing off three bags to the
minute.”

“That’s good, that’s good.”

It was more than good; it was “bonanza,” and all that division of the
great ranch was thick with just such wonderful wheat. Never had Los
Muertos been more generous, never a season more successful. S. Behrman
drew a long breath of satisfaction. He knew just how great was his share
in the lands which had just been absorbed by the corporation he served,
just how many thousands of bushels of this marvellous crop were his
property. Through all these years of confusion, bickerings, open
hostility and, at last, actual warfare he had waited, nursing his
patience, calm with the firm assurance of ultimate success. The end, at
length, had come; he had entered into his reward and saw himself at last
installed in the place he had so long, so silently coveted; saw himself
chief of a principality, the Master of the Wheat.

The sprocket adjusted, the engineer called up the gang and the men took
their places. The fireman stoked vigorously, the two sack sewers resumed
their posts on the sacking platform, putting on the goggles that kept
the chaff from their eyes. The separator-man and header-man gripped
their levers.

The harvester, shooting a column of thick smoke straight upward,
vibrating to the top of the stack, hissed, clanked, and lurched forward.
Instantly, motion sprang to life in all its component parts; the header
knives, cutting a thirty-six foot swath, gnashed like teeth; beltings
slid and moved like smooth flowing streams; the separator whirred,
the agitator jarred and crashed; cylinders, augers, fans, seeders and
elevators, drapers and chaff-carriers clattered, rumbled, buzzed, and
clanged. The steam hissed and rasped; the ground reverberated a hollow
note, and the thousands upon thousands of wheat stalks sliced and
slashed in the clashing shears of the header, rattled like dry rushes in
a hurricane, as they fell inward, and were caught up by an endless belt,
to disappear into the bowels of the vast brute that devoured them.

It was that and no less. It was the feeding of some prodigious monster,
insatiable, with iron teeth, gnashing and threshing into the fields
of standing wheat; devouring always, never glutted, never satiated,
swallowing an entire harvest, snarling and slobbering in a welter of
warm vapour, acrid smoke, and blinding, pungent clouds of chaff. It
moved belly-deep in the standing grain, a hippopotamus, half-mired in
river ooze, gorging rushes, snorting, sweating; a dinosaur wallowing
through thick, hot grasses, floundering there, crouching, grovelling
there as its vast jaws crushed and tore, and its enormous gullet
swallowed, incessant, ravenous, and inordinate.

S. Behrman, very much amused, changed places with one of the sack
sewers, allowing him to hold his horse while he mounted the sacking
platform and took his place. The trepidation and jostling of the machine
shook him till his teeth chattered in his head. His ears were shocked
and assaulted by a myriad-tongued clamour, clashing steel, straining
belts, jarring woodwork, while the impalpable chaff powder from the
separators settled like dust in his hair, his ears, eyes, and mouth.

Directly in front of where he sat on the platform was the chute from
the cleaner, and from this into the mouth of a half-full sack spouted an
unending gush of grain, winnowed, cleaned, threshed, ready for the mill.

The pour from the chute of the cleaner had for S. Behrman an immense
satisfaction. Without an instant’s pause, a thick rivulet of wheat
rolled and dashed tumultuous into the sack. In half a minute--sometimes
in twenty seconds--the sack was full, was passed over to the second
sewer, the mouth reeved up, and the sack dumped out upon the ground, to
be picked up by the wagons and hauled to the railroad.

S. Behrman, hypnotised, sat watching that river of grain. All that
shrieking, bellowing machinery, all that gigantic organism, all the
months of labour, the ploughing, the planting, the prayers for rain, the
years of preparation, the heartaches, the anxiety, the foresight, all
the whole business of the ranch, the work of horses, of steam, of men
and boys, looked to this spot--the grain chute from the harvester into
the sacks. Its volume was the index of failure or success, of riches or
poverty. And at this point, the labour of the rancher ended. Here, at
the lip of the chute, he parted company with his grain, and from here
the wheat streamed forth to feed the world. The yawning mouths of the
sacks might well stand for the unnumbered mouths of the People, all
agape for food; and here, into these sacks, at first so lean, so
flaccid, attenuated like starved stomachs, rushed the living stream
of food, insistent, interminable, filling the empty, fattening the
shrivelled, making it sleek and heavy and solid.

Half an hour later, the harvester stopped again. The men on the sacking
platform had used up all the sacks. But S. Behrman’s foreman, a new
man on Los Muertos, put in an appearance with the report that the wagon
bringing a fresh supply was approaching.

“How is the grain elevator at Port Costa getting on, sir?”

“Finished,” replied S. Behrman.

The new master of Los Muertos had decided upon accumulating his grain in
bulk in a great elevator at the tide-water port, where the grain ships
for Liverpool and the East took on their cargoes. To this end, he had
bought and greatly enlarged a building at Port Costa, that was already
in use for that purpose, and to this elevator all the crop of Los
Muertos was to be carried. The P. and S. W. made S. Behrman a special
rate.

“By the way,” said S. Behrman to his superintendent, “we’re in luck.
Fallon’s buyer was in Bonneville yesterday. He’s buying for Fallon and
for Holt, too. I happened to run into him, and I’ve sold a ship load.”

“A ship load!”

“Of Los Muertos wheat. He’s acting for some Indian Famine Relief
Committee--lot of women people up in the city--and wanted a whole cargo.
I made a deal with him. There’s about fifty thousand tons of disengaged
shipping in San Francisco Bay right now, and ships are fighting for
charters. I wired McKissick and got a long distance telephone from him
this morning. He got me a barque, the ‘Swanhilda.’ She’ll dock day after
to-morrow, and begin loading.”

“Hadn’t I better take a run up,” observed the superintendent, “and keep
an eye on things?”

“No,” answered S. Behrman, “I want you to stop down here, and see that
those carpenters hustle the work in the ranch house. Derrick will be
out by then. You see this deal is peculiar. I’m not selling to any
middle-man--not to Fallon’s buyer. He only put me on to the thing. I’m
acting direct with these women people, and I’ve got to have some hand in
shipping this stuff myself. But I made my selling figure cover the price
of a charter. It’s a queer, mixed-up deal, and I don’t fancy it much,
but there’s boodle in it. I’ll go to Port Costa myself.”

A little later on in the day, when S. Behrman had satisfied himself that
his harvesting was going forward favourably, he reentered his buggy
and driving to the County Road turned southward towards the Los Muertos
ranch house. He had not gone far, however, before he became aware of
a familiar figure on horse-back, jogging slowly along ahead of him. He
recognised Presley; he shook the reins over his horse’s back and very
soon ranging up by the side of the young man passed the time of day with
him.

“Well, what brings you down here again, Mr. Presley?” he observed. “I
thought we had seen the last of you.”

“I came down to say good-bye to my friends,” answered Presley shortly.

“Going away?”

“Yes--to India.”

“Well, upon my word. For your health, hey?”

“Yes.”

“You LOOK knocked up,” asserted the other. “By the way,” he added, “I
suppose you’ve heard the news?”

Presley shrank a little. Of late the reports of disasters had followed
so swiftly upon one another that he had begun to tremble and to quail at
every unexpected bit of information.

“What news do you mean?” he asked.

“About Dyke. He has been convicted. The judge sentenced him for life.”

For life! Riding on by the side of this man through the ranches by
the County Road, Presley repeated these words to himself till the full
effect of them burst at last upon him.

Jailed for life! No outlook. No hope for the future. Day after day, year
after year, to tread the rounds of the same gloomy monotony. He saw the
grey stone walls, the iron doors; the flagging of the “yard” bare of
grass or trees--the cell, narrow, bald, cheerless; the prison garb, the
prison fare, and round all the grim granite of insuperable barriers,
shutting out the world, shutting in the man with outcasts, with the
pariah dogs of society, thieves, murderers, men below the beasts, lost
to all decency, drugged with opium, utter reprobates. To this, Dyke
had been brought, Dyke, than whom no man had been more honest, more
courageous, more jovial. This was the end of him, a prison; this was his
final estate, a criminal.

Presley found an excuse for riding on, leaving S. Behrman behind him.
He did not stop at Caraher’s saloon, for the heat of his rage had long
since begun to cool, and dispassionately, he saw things in their true
light. For all the tragedy of his wife’s death, Caraher was none the
less an evil influence among the ranchers, an influence that worked only
to the inciting of crime. Unwilling to venture himself, to risk his own
life, the anarchist saloon-keeper had goaded Dyke and Presley both to
murder; a bad man, a plague spot in the world of the ranchers, poisoning
the farmers’ bodies with alcohol and their minds with discontent.

At last, Presley arrived at the ranch house of Los Muertos. The place
was silent; the grass on the lawn was half dead and over a foot high;
the beginnings of weeds showed here and there in the driveway. He tied
his horse to a ring in the trunk of one of the larger eucalyptus trees
and entered the house.

Mrs. Derrick met him in the dining-room. The old look of uneasiness,
almost of terror, had gone from her wide-open brown eyes. There was in
them instead, the expression of one to whom a contingency, long
dreaded, has arrived and passed. The stolidity of a settled grief, of an
irreparable calamity, of a despair from which there was no escape was in
her look, her manner, her voice. She was listless, apathetic, calm with
the calmness of a woman who knows she can suffer no further.

“We are going away,” she told Presley, as the two sat down at opposite
ends of the dining table. “Just Magnus and myself--all there is left
of us. There is very little money left; Magnus can hardly take care of
himself, to say nothing of me. I must look after him now. We are going
to Marysville.”

“Why there?”

“You see,” she explained, “it happens that my old place is vacant in
the Seminary there. I am going back to teach--literature.” She smiled
wearily. “It is beginning all over again, isn’t it? Only there is
nothing to look forward to now. Magnus is an old man already, and I must
take care of him.”

“He will go with you, then,” Presley said, “that will be some comfort to
you at least.”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly, “you have not seen Magnus lately.”

“Is he--how do you mean? Isn’t he any better?”

“Would you like to see him? He is in the office. You can go right in.”

Presley rose. He hesitated a moment, then:

“Mrs. Annixter,” he asked, “Hilma--is she still with you? I should like
to see her before I go.” “Go in and see Magnus,” said Mrs. Derrick. “I
will tell her you are here.”

Presley stepped across the stone-paved hallway with the glass roof,
and after knocking three times at the office door pushed it open and
entered.

Magnus sat in the chair before the desk and did not look up as Presley
entered. He had the appearance of a man nearer eighty than sixty. All
the old-time erectness was broken and bent. It was as though the muscles
that once had held the back rigid, the chin high, had softened and
stretched. A certain fatness, the obesity of inertia, hung heavy around
the hips and abdomen, the eye was watery and vague, the cheeks and chin
unshaven and unkempt, the grey hair had lost its forward curl towards
the temples and hung thin and ragged around the ears. The hawk-like
nose seemed hooked to meet the chin; the lips were slack, the mouth
half-opened.

Where once the Governor had been a model of neatness in his dress, the
frock coat buttoned, the linen clean, he now sat in his shirt sleeves,
the waistcoat open and showing the soiled shirt. His hands were stained
with ink, and these, the only members of his body that yet appeared to
retain their activity, were busy with a great pile of papers,--oblong,
legal documents, that littered the table before him. Without a moment’s
cessation, these hands of the Governor’s came and went among the papers,
deft, nimble, dexterous.

Magnus was sorting papers. From the heap upon his left hand he selected
a document, opened it, glanced over it, then tied it carefully, and laid
it away upon a second pile on his right hand. When all the papers were
in one pile, he reversed the process, taking from his right hand to
place upon his left, then back from left to right again, then once more
from right to left. He spoke no word, he sat absolutely still, even
his eyes did not move, only his hands, swift, nervous, agitated, seemed
alive.

“Why, how are you, Governor?” said Presley, coming forward. Magnus
turned slowly about and looked at him and at the hand in which he shook
his own.

“Ah,” he said at length, “Presley...yes.”

Then his glance fell, and he looked aimlessly about upon the floor.
“I’ve come to say good-bye, Governor,” continued Presley, “I’m going
away.”

“Going away...yes, why it’s Presley. Good-day, Presley.”

“Good-day, Governor. I’m going away. I’ve come to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” Magnus bent his brows, “what are you saying good-bye for?”

“I’m going away, sir.”

The Governor did not answer. Staring at the ledge of the desk, he seemed
lost in thought. There was a long silence. Then, at length, Presley
said:

“How are you getting on, Governor?”

Magnus looked up slowly.

“Why it’s Presley,” he said. “How do you do, Presley.”

“Are you getting on all right, sir?”

“Yes,” said Magnus after a while, “yes, all right. I am going away. I’ve
come to say good-bye. No--” He interrupted himself with a deprecatory
smile, “YOU said THAT, didn’t you?”

“Well, you are going away, too, your wife tells me.”

“Yes, I’m going away. I can’t stay on...” he hesitated a long time,
groping for the right word, “I can’t stay on--on--what’s the name of
this place?”

“Los Muertos,” put in Presley.

“No, it isn’t. Yes, it is, too, that’s right, Los Muertos. I don’t know
where my memory has gone to of late.”

“Well, I hope you will be better soon, Governor.”

As Presley spoke the words, S. Behrman entered the room, and the
Governor sprang up with unexpected agility and stood against the wall,
drawing one long breath after another, watching the railroad agent with
intent eyes.

S. Behrman saluted both men affably and sat down near the desk, drawing
the links of his heavy watch chain through his fat fingers.

“There wasn’t anybody outside when I knocked, but I heard your voice in
here, Governor, so I came right in. I wanted to ask you, Governor, if
my carpenters can begin work in here day after to-morrow. I want to take
down that partition there, and throw this room and the next into one. I
guess that will be O. K., won’t it? You’ll be out of here by then, won’t
you?”

There was no vagueness about Magnus’s speech or manner now. There was
that same alertness in his demeanour that one sees in a tamed lion in
the presence of its trainer.

“Yes, yes,” he said quickly, “you can send your men here. I will be gone
by to-morrow.”

“I don’t want to seem to hurry you, Governor.” “No, you will not hurry
me. I am ready to go now.”

“Anything I can do for you, Governor?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, there is, Governor,” insisted S. Behrman. “I think now that all is
over we ought to be good friends. I think I can do something for you. We
still want an assistant in the local freight manager’s office. Now, what
do you say to having a try at it? There’s a salary of fifty a month goes
with it. I guess you must be in need of money now, and there’s always
the wife to support; what do you say? Will you try the place?”

Presley could only stare at the man in speechless wonder. What was he
driving at? What reason was there back of this new move, and why should
it be made thus openly and in his hearing? An explanation occurred to
him. Was this merely a pleasantry on the part of S. Behrman, a way of
enjoying to the full his triumph; was he testing the completeness of
his victory, trying to see just how far he could go, how far beneath his
feet he could push his old-time enemy?

“What do you say?” he repeated. “Will you try the place?”

“You--you INSIST?” inquired the Governor.

“Oh, I’m not insisting on anything,” cried S. Behrman. “I’m offering you
a place, that’s all. Will you take it?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll take it.”

“You’ll come over to our side?”

“Yes, I’ll come over.”

“You’ll have to turn ‘railroad,’ understand?”

“I’ll turn railroad.”

“Guess there may be times when you’ll have to take orders from me.”

“I’ll take orders from you.”

“You’ll have to be loyal to railroad, you know. No funny business.”

“I’ll be loyal to the railroad.”

“You would like the place then?”

“Yes.”

S. Behrman turned from Magnus, who at once resumed his seat and began
again to sort his papers.

“Well, Presley,” said the railroad agent: “I guess I won’t see you
again.”

“I hope not,” answered the other.

“Tut, tut, Presley, you know you can’t make me angry.”

He put on his hat of varnished straw and wiped his fat forehead with
his handkerchief. Of late, he had grown fatter than ever, and the linen
vest, stamped with a multitude of interlocked horseshoes, strained tight
its imitation pearl buttons across the great protuberant stomach.

Presley looked at the man a moment before replying.

But a few weeks ago he could not thus have faced the great enemy of the
farmers without a gust of blind rage blowing tempestuous through all his
bones. Now, however, he found to his surprise that his fury had
lapsed to a profound contempt, in which there was bitterness, but no
truculence. He was tired, tired to death of the whole business.

“Yes,” he answered deliberately, “I am going away. You have ruined this
place for me. I couldn’t live here where I should have to see you, or
the results of what you have done, whenever I stirred out of doors.”

“Nonsense, Presley,” answered the other, refusing to become angry.
“That’s foolishness, that kind of talk; though, of course, I understand
how you feel. I guess it was you, wasn’t it, who threw that bomb into my
house?”

“It was.”

“Well, that don’t show any common sense, Presley,” returned S. Behrman
with perfect aplomb. “What could you have gained by killing me?”

“Not so much probably as you have gained by killing Harran and Annixter.
But that’s all passed now. You’re safe from me.” The strangeness of this
talk, the oddity of the situation burst upon him and he laughed aloud.
“It don’t seem as though you could be brought to book, S. Behrman, by
anybody, or by any means, does it? They can’t get at you through the
courts,--the law can’t get you, Dyke’s pistol missed fire for just your
benefit, and you even escaped Caraher’s six inches of plugged gas pipe.
Just what are we going to do with you?”

“Best give it up, Pres, my boy,” returned the other. “I guess there
ain’t anything can touch me. Well, Magnus,” he said, turning once more
to the Governor. “Well, I’ll think over what you say, and let you know
if I can get the place for you in a day or two. You see,” he added,
“you’re getting pretty old, Magnus Derrick.”

Presley flung himself from the room, unable any longer to witness the
depths into which Magnus had fallen. What other scenes of degradation
were enacted in that room, how much further S. Behrman carried the
humiliation, he did not know. He suddenly felt that the air of the
office was choking him.

He hurried up to what once had been his own room. On his way he could
not but note that much of the house was in disarray, a great packing-up
was in progress; trunks, half-full, stood in the hallways, crates and
cases in a litter of straw encumbered the rooms. The servants came and
went with armfuls of books, ornaments, articles of clothing.

Presley took from his room only a few manuscripts and note-books, and a
small valise full of his personal effects; at the doorway he paused and,
holding the knob of the door in his hand, looked back into the room a
very long time.

He descended to the lower floor and entered the dining-room. Mrs.
Derrick had disappeared. Presley stood for a long moment in front of the
fireplace, looking about the room, remembering the scenes that he had
witnessed there--the conference when Osterman had first suggested the
fight for Railroad Commissioner and then later the attack on Lyman
Derrick and the sudden revelation of that inconceivable treachery. But
as he stood considering these things a door to his right opened and
Hilma entered the room.

Presley came forward, holding out his hand, all unable to believe his
eyes. It was a woman, grave, dignified, composed, who advanced to meet
him. Hilma was dressed in black, the cut and fashion of the gown severe,
almost monastic. All the little feminine and contradictory daintinesses
were nowhere to be seen. Her statuesque calm evenness of contour
yet remained, but it was the calmness of great sorrow, of infinite
resignation. Beautiful she still remained, but she was older. The
seriousness of one who has gained the knowledge of the world--knowledge
of its evil--seemed to envelope her. The calm gravity of a great
suffering past, but not forgotten, sat upon her. Not yet twenty-one, she
exhibited the demeanour of a woman of forty.

The one-time amplitude of her figure, the fulness of hip and shoulder,
the great deep swell from waist to throat were gone. She had grown
thinner and, in consequence, seemed unusually, almost unnaturally tall.
Her neck was slender, the outline of her full lips and round chin was a
little sharp; her arms, those wonderful, beautiful arms of hers, were
a little shrunken. But her eyes were as wide open as always, rimmed
as ever by the thin, intensely black line of the lashes and her brown,
fragrant hair was still thick, still, at times, glittered and coruscated
in the sun. When she spoke, it was with the old-time velvety huskiness
of voice that Annixter had learned to love so well.

“Oh, it is you,” she said, giving him her hand. “You were good to want
to see me before you left. I hear that you are going away.”

She sat down upon the sofa.

“Yes,” Presley answered, drawing a chair near to her, “yes, I felt I
could not stay--down here any longer. I am going to take a long ocean
voyage. My ship sails in a few days. But you, Mrs. Annixter, what are
you going to do? Is there any way I can serve you?”

“No,” she answered, “nothing. Papa is doing well. We are living here
now.”

“You are well?”

She made a little helpless gesture with both her hands, smiling very
sadly.

“As you see,” she answered.

As he talked, Presley was looking at her intently. Her dignity was a new
element in her character and the certain slender effect of her figure,
emphasised now by the long folds of the black gown she wore, carried it
almost superbly. She conveyed something of the impression of a queen in
exile. But she had lost none of her womanliness; rather, the contrary.
Adversity had softened her, as well as deepened her. Presley saw that
very clearly. Hilma had arrived now at her perfect maturity; she had
known great love and she had known great grief, and the woman that had
awakened in her with her affection for Annixter had been strengthened
and infinitely ennobled by his death. What if things had been different?
Thus, as he conversed with her, Presley found himself wondering. Her
sweetness, her beautiful gentleness, and tenderness were almost like
palpable presences. It was almost as if a caress had been laid softly
upon his cheek, as if a gentle hand closed upon his. Here, he knew, was
sympathy; here, he knew, was an infinite capacity for love.

Then suddenly all the tired heart of him went out towards her. A longing
to give the best that was in him to the memory of her, to be strong and
noble because of her, to reshape his purposeless, half-wasted life with
her nobility and purity and gentleness for his inspiration leaped all at
once within him, leaped and stood firm, hardening to a resolve stronger
than any he had ever known.

For an instant he told himself that the suddenness of this new emotion
must be evidence of its insincerity. He was perfectly well aware that
his impulses were abrupt and of short duration. But he knew that this
was not sudden. Without realising it, he had been from the first drawn
to Hilma, and all through these last terrible days, since the time he
had seen her at Los Muertos, just after the battle at the ditch, she had
obtruded continually upon his thoughts. The sight of her to-day, more
beautiful than ever, quiet, strong, reserved, had only brought matters
to a culmination.

“Are you,” he asked her, “are you so unhappy, Hilma, that you can look
forward to no more brightness in your life?”

“Unless I could forget--forget my husband,” she answered, “how can I
be happy? I would rather be unhappy in remembering him than happy in
forgetting him. He was my whole world, literally and truly. Nothing
seemed to count before I knew him, and nothing can count for me now,
after I have lost him.”

“You think now,” he answered, “that in being happy again you would be
disloyal to him. But you will find after a while--years from now--that
it need not be so. The part of you that belonged to your husband can
always keep him sacred, that part of you belongs to him and he to it.
But you are young; you have all your life to live yet. Your sorrow need
not be a burden to you. If you consider it as you should--as you WILL
some day, believe me--it will only be a great help to you. It will make
you more noble, a truer woman, more generous.”

“I think I see,” she answered, “and I never thought about it in that
light before.”

“I want to help you,” he answered, “as you have helped me. I want to be
your friend, and above all things I do not want to see your life wasted.
I am going away and it is quite possible I shall never see you again,
but you will always be a help to me.”

“I do not understand,” she answered, “but I know you mean to be very,
very kind to me. Yes, I hope when you come back--if you ever do--you
will still be that. I do not know why you should want to be so kind,
unless--yes, of course--you were my husband’s dearest friend.”

They talked a little longer, and at length Presley rose.

“I cannot bring myself to see Mrs. Derrick again,” he said. “It would
only serve to make her very unhappy. Will you explain that to her? I
think she will understand.”

“Yes,” answered Hilma. “Yes, I will.”

There was a pause. There seemed to be nothing more for either of them to
say. Presley held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” she said, as she gave him hers.

He carried it to his lips.

“Good-bye,” he answered. “Good-bye and may God bless you.”

He turned away abruptly and left the room. But as he was quietly making
his way out of the house, hoping to get to his horse unobserved, he came
suddenly upon Mrs. Dyke and Sidney on the porch of the house. He had
forgotten that since the affair at the ditch, Los Muertos had been a
home to the engineer’s mother and daughter.

“And you, Mrs. Dyke,” he asked as he took her hand, “in this break-up of
everything, where do you go?”

“To the city,” she answered, “to San Francisco. I have a sister there
who will look after the little tad.”

“But you, how about yourself, Mrs. Dyke?”

She answered him in a quiet voice, monotonous, expressionless:

“I am going to die very soon, Mr. Presley. There is no reason why I
should live any longer. My son is in prison for life, everything is over
for me, and I am tired, worn out.”

“You mustn’t talk like that, Mrs. Dyke,” protested Presley, “nonsense;
you will live long enough to see the little tad married.” He tried to
be cheerful. But he knew his words lacked the ring of conviction. Death
already overshadowed the face of the engineer’s mother. He felt that
she spoke the truth, and as he stood there speaking to her for the last
time, his arm about little Sidney’s shoulder, he knew that he was seeing
the beginnings of the wreck of another family and that, like Hilda
Hooven, another baby girl was to be started in life, through no fault of
hers, fearfully handicapped, weighed down at the threshold of existence
with a load of disgrace. Hilda Hooven and Sidney Dyke, what was to be
their histories? the one, sister of an outcast; the other, daughter of
a convict. And he thought of that other young girl, the little Honora
Gerard, the heiress of millions, petted, loved, receiving adulation from
all who came near to her, whose only care was to choose from among
the multitude of pleasures that the world hastened to present to her
consideration.

“Good-bye,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Sidney.”

He kissed the little girl, clasped Mrs. Dyke’s hand a moment with his;
then, slinging his satchel about his shoulders by the long strap with
which it was provided, left the house, and mounting his horse rode away
from Los Muertos never to return.

Presley came out upon the County Road. At a little distance to his left
he could see the group of buildings where once Broderson had lived.
These were being remodelled, at length, to suit the larger demands of
the New Agriculture. A strange man came out by the road gate; no doubt,
the new proprietor. Presley turned away, hurrying northwards along the
County Road by the mammoth watering-tank and the long wind-break of
poplars.

He came to Caraher’s place. There was no change here. The saloon had
weathered the storm, indispensable to the new as well as to the old
regime. The same dusty buggies and buckboards were tied under the shed,
and as Presley hurried by he could distinguish Caraher’s voice, loud as
ever, still proclaiming his creed of annihilation.

Bonneville Presley avoided. He had no associations with the town. He
turned aside from the road, and crossing the northwest corner of Los
Muertos and the line of the railroad, turned back along the Upper Road
till he came to the Long Trestle and Annixter’s,--Silence, desolation,
abandonment.

A vast stillness, profound, unbroken, brooded low over all the place. No
living thing stirred. The rusted wind-mill on the skeleton-like tower of
the artesian well was motionless; the great barn empty; the windows of
the ranch house, cook house, and dairy boarded up. Nailed upon a tree
near the broken gateway was a board, white painted, with stencilled
letters, bearing the inscription:

“Warning. ALL PERSONS FOUND TRESPASSING ON THESE PREMISES WILL BE
PROSECUTED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW. By order P. and S. W. R.
R.”

As he had planned, Presley reached the hills by the head waters of
Broderson’s Creek late in the afternoon. Toilfully he climbed them,
reached the highest crest, and turning about, looked long and for the
last time at all the reach of the valley unrolled beneath him. The land
of the ranches opened out forever and forever under the stimulus of that
measureless range of vision. The whole gigantic sweep of the San Joaquin
expanded Titanic before the eye of the mind, flagellated with heat,
quivering and shimmering under the sun’s red eye. It was the season
after the harvest, and the great earth, the mother, after its period of
reproduction, its pains of labour, delivered of the fruit of its loins,
slept the sleep of exhaustion in the infinite repose of the colossus,
benignant, eternal, strong, the nourisher of nations, the feeder of an
entire world.

And as Presley looked there came to him strong and true the sense and
the significance of all the enigma of growth. He seemed for one
instant to touch the explanation of existence. Men were nothings, mere
animalculae, mere ephemerides that fluttered and fell and were forgotten
between dawn and dusk. Vanamee had said there was no death. But for one
second Presley could go one step further. Men were naught, death was
naught, life was naught; FORCE only existed--FORCE that brought men
into the world, FORCE that crowded them out of it to make way for
the succeeding generation, FORCE that made the wheat grow, FORCE that
garnered it from the soil to give place to the succeeding crop.

It was the mystery of creation, the stupendous miracle of recreation;
the vast rhythm of the seasons, measured, alternative, the sun and the
stars keeping time as the eternal symphony of reproduction swung in
its tremendous cadences like the colossal pendulum of an almighty
machine--primordial energy flung out from the hand of the Lord God
himself, immortal, calm, infinitely strong.

But as he stood thus looking down upon the great valley he was aware of
the figure of a man, far in the distance, moving steadily towards the
Mission of San Juan. The man was hardly more than a dot, but there was
something unmistakably familiar in his gait; and besides this, Presley
could fancy that he was hatless. He touched his pony with his spur. The
man was Vanamee beyond all doubt, and a little later Presley, descending
the maze of cow-paths and cattle-trails that led down towards the
Broderson Creek, overtook his friend.

Instantly Presley was aware of an immense change. Vanamee’s face was
still that of an ascetic, still glowed with the rarefied intelligence of
a young seer, a half-inspired shepherd-prophet of Hebraic legends; but
the shadow of that great sadness which for so long had brooded over
him was gone; the grief that once he had fancied deathless was, indeed,
dead, or rather swallowed up in a victorious joy that radiated like
sunlight at dawn from the deep-set eyes, and the hollow, swarthy cheeks.
They talked together till nearly sundown, but to Presley’s questions
as to the reasons for Vanamee’s happiness, the other would say nothing.
Once only he allowed himself to touch upon the subject.

“Death and grief are little things,” he said. “They are transient.
Life must be before death, and joy before grief. Else there are no such
things as death or grief. These are only negatives. Life is positive.
Death is only the absence of life, just as night is only the absence of
day, and if this is so, there is no such thing as death. There is only
life, and the suppression of life, that we, foolishly, say is death.
‘Suppression,’ I say, not extinction. I do not say that life returns.
Life never departs. Life simply IS. For certain seasons, it is hidden in
the dark, but is that death, extinction, annihilation? I take it, thank
God, that it is not. Does the grain of wheat, hidden for certain seasons
in the dark, die? The grain we think is dead RESUMES AGAIN; but how? Not
as one grain, but as twenty. So all life. Death is only real for all the
detritus of the world, for all the sorrow, for all the injustice,
for all the grief. Presley, the good never dies; evil dies, cruelty,
oppression, selfishness, greed--these die; but nobility, but love, but
sacrifice, but generosity, but truth, thank God for it, small as they
are, difficult as it is to discover them--these live forever, these are
eternal. You are all broken, all cast down by what you have seen in this
valley, this hopeless struggle, this apparently hopeless despair. Well,
the end is not yet. What is it that remains after all is over, after the
dead are buried and the hearts are broken? Look at it all from the vast
height of humanity--‘the greatest good to the greatest numbers.’ What
remains? Men perish, men are corrupted, hearts are rent asunder, but
what remains untouched, unassailable, undefiled? Try to find that, not
only in this, but in every crisis of the world’s life, and you will
find, if your view be large enough, that it is not evil, but good, that
in the end remains.”

There was a long pause. Presley, his mind full of new thoughts, held his
peace, and Vanamee added at length:

“I believed Angele dead. I wept over her grave; mourned for her as dead
in corruption. She has come back to me, more beautiful than ever. Do not
ask me any further. To put this story, this idyl, into words, would, for
me, be a profanation. This must suffice you. Angele has returned to me,
and I am happy. Adios.”

He rose suddenly. The friends clasped each other’s hands.

“We shall probably never meet again,” said Vanamee; “but if these are
the last words I ever speak to you, listen to them, and remember them,
because I know I speak the truth. Evil is short-lived. Never judge of
the whole round of life by the mere segment you can see. The whole is,
in the end, perfect.”

Abruptly he took himself away. He was gone. Presley, alone, thoughtful,
his hands clasped behind him, passed on through the ranches--here
teeming with ripened wheat--his face set from them forever.

Not so Vanamee. For hours he roamed the countryside, now through the
deserted cluster of buildings that had once been Annixter’s home;
now through the rustling and, as yet, uncut wheat of Quien Sabe! now
treading the slopes of the hills far to the north, and again following
the winding courses of the streams. Thus he spent the night.

At length, the day broke, resplendent, cloudless. The night was passed.
There was all the sparkle and effervescence of joy in the crystal
sunlight as the dawn expanded roseate, and at length flamed dazzling to
the zenith when the sun moved over the edge of the world and looked down
upon all the earth like the eye of God the Father.

At the moment, Vanamee stood breast-deep in the wheat in a solitary
corner of the Quien Sabe rancho. He turned eastward, facing the
celestial glory of the day and sent his voiceless call far from him
across the golden grain out towards the little valley of flowers.

Swiftly the answer came. It advanced to meet him. The flowers of the
Seed ranch were gone, dried and parched by the summer’s sun, shedding
their seed by handfuls to be sown again and blossom yet another time.
The Seed ranch was no longer royal with colour. The roses, the lilies,
the carnations, the hyacinths, the poppies, the violets, the mignonette,
all these had vanished, the little valley was without colour; where once
it had exhaled the most delicious perfume, it was now odourless. Under
the blinding light of the day it stretched to its hillsides, bare,
brown, unlovely. The romance of the place had vanished, but with it had
vanished the Vision.

It was no longer a figment of his imagination, a creature of dreams that
advanced to meet Vanamee. It was Reality--it was Angele in the flesh,
vital, sane, material, who at last issued forth from the entrance of the
little valley. Romance had vanished, but better than romance was here.
Not a manifestation, not a dream, but her very self. The night was
gone, but the sun had risen; the flowers had disappeared, but strong,
vigorous, noble, the wheat had come.

In the wheat he waited for her. He saw her coming. She was simply
dressed. No fanciful wreath of tube-roses was about her head now, no
strange garment of red and gold enveloped her now. It was no longer
an ephemeral illusion of the night, evanescent, mystic, but a simple
country girl coming to meet her lover. The vision of the night had been
beautiful, but what was it compared to this? Reality was better than
Romance. The simple honesty of a loving, trusting heart was better than
a legend of flowers, an hallucination of the moonlight. She came nearer.
Bathed in sunlight, he saw her face to face, saw her hair hanging in two
straight plaits on either side of her face, saw the enchanting fulness
of her lips, the strange, balancing movement of her head upon her
slender neck. But now she was no longer asleep. The wonderful eyes,
violet blue, heavy-lidded, with their perplexing, oriental slant towards
the temples, were wide open and fixed upon his.

From out the world of romance, out of the moonlight and the star sheen,
out of the faint radiance of the lilies and the still air heavy with
perfume, she had at last come to him. The moonlight, the flowers, and
the dream were all vanished away. Angele was realised in the Wheat. She
stood forth in the sunlight, a fact, and no longer a fancy.

He ran forward to meet her and she held out her arms to him. He caught
her to him, and she, turning her face to his, kissed him on the mouth.

“I love you, I love you,” she murmured.

*****

Upon descending from his train at Port Costa, S. Behrman asked to be
directed at once to where the bark “Swanhilda” was taking on grain.
Though he had bought and greatly enlarged his new elevator at this port,
he had never seen it. The work had been carried on through agents, S.
Behrman having far too many and more pressing occupations to demand
his presence and attention. Now, however, he was to see the concrete
evidence of his success for the first time.

He picked his way across the railroad tracks to the line of warehouses
that bordered the docks, numbered with enormous Roman numerals and full
of grain in bags. The sight of these bags of grain put him in mind of
the fact that among all the other shippers he was practically alone
in his way of handling his wheat. They handled the grain in bags;
he, however, preferred it in the bulk. Bags were sometimes four cents
apiece, and he had decided to build his elevator and bulk his grain
therein, rather than to incur this expense. Only a small part of his
wheat--that on Number Three division--had been sacked. All the rest,
practically two-thirds of the entire harvest of Los Muertos, now found
itself warehoused in his enormous elevator at Port Costa.

To a certain degree it had been the desire of observing the working of
his system of handling the wheat in bulk that had drawn S. Behrman to
Port Costa. But the more powerful motive had been curiosity, not to say
downright sentiment. So long had he planned for this day of triumph,
so eagerly had he looked forward to it, that now, when it had come, he
wished to enjoy it to its fullest extent, wished to miss no feature of
the disposal of the crop. He had watched it harvested, he had watched it
hauled to the railway, and now would watch it as it poured into the hold
of the ship, would even watch the ship as she cleared and got under way.

He passed through the warehouses and came out upon the dock that ran
parallel with the shore of the bay. A great quantity of shipping was in
view, barques for the most part, Cape Horners, great, deep sea tramps,
whose iron-shod forefeet had parted every ocean the world round from
Rangoon to Rio Janeiro, and from Melbourne to Christiania. Some were
still in the stream, loaded with wheat to the Plimsoll mark, ready
to depart with the next tide. But many others laid their great flanks
alongside the docks and at that moment were being filled by derrick
and crane with thousands upon thousands of bags of wheat. The scene was
brisk; the cranes creaked and swung incessantly with a rattle of
chains; stevedores and wharfingers toiled and perspired; boatswains
and dock-masters shouted orders, drays rumbled, the water lapped at
the piles; a group of sailors, painting the flanks of one of the great
ships, raised an occasional chanty; the trade wind sang aeolian in the
cordages, filling the air with the nimble taint of salt. All around were
the noises of ships and the feel and flavor of the sea.

S. Behrman soon discovered his elevator. It was the largest structure
discernible, and upon its red roof, in enormous white letters, was his
own name. Thither, between piles of grain bags, halted drays, crates
and boxes of merchandise, with an occasional pyramid of salmon cases, S.
Behrman took his way. Cabled to the dock, close under his elevator, lay
a great ship with lofty masts and great spars. Her stern was toward him
as he approached, and upon it, in raised golden letters, he could read
the words “Swanhilda--Liverpool.”

He went aboard by a very steep gangway and found the mate on the quarter
deck. S. Behrman introduced himself.

“Well,” he added, “how are you getting on?”

“Very fairly, sir,” returned the mate, who was an Englishman. “We’ll
have her all snugged down tight by this time, day after to-morrow. It’s
a great saving of time shunting the stuff in her like that, and three
men can do the work of seven.”

“I’ll have a look ‘round, I believe,” returned S. Behrman.

“Right--oh,” answered the mate with a nod.

S. Behrman went forward to the hatch that opened down into the vast hold
of the ship. A great iron chute connected this hatch with the elevator,
and through it was rushing a veritable cataract of wheat.

It came from some gigantic bin within the elevator itself, rushing down
the confines of the chute to plunge into the roomy, gloomy interior
of the hold with an incessant, metallic roar, persistent, steady,
inevitable. No men were in sight. The place was deserted. No human
agency seemed to be back of the movement of the wheat. Rather, the
grain seemed impelled with a force of its own, a resistless, huge force,
eager, vivid, impatient for the sea.

S. Behrman stood watching, his ears deafened with the roar of the hard
grains against the metallic lining of the chute. He put his hand once
into the rushing tide, and the contact rasped the flesh of his fingers
and like an undertow drew his hand after it in its impetuous dash.

Cautiously he peered down into the hold. A musty odour rose to his
nostrils, the vigorous, pungent aroma of the raw cereal. It was dark. He
could see nothing; but all about and over the opening of the hatch the
air was full of a fine, impalpable dust that blinded the eyes and choked
the throat and nostrils.

As his eyes became used to the shadows of the cavern below him, he
began to distinguish the grey mass of the wheat, a great expanse, almost
liquid in its texture, which, as the cataract from above plunged into
it, moved and shifted in long, slow eddies. As he stood there, this
cataract on a sudden increased in volume. He turned about, casting his
eyes upward toward the elevator to discover the cause. His foot caught
in a coil of rope, and he fell headforemost into the hold.

The fall was a long one and he struck the surface of the wheat with
the sodden impact of a bundle of damp clothes. For the moment he was
stunned. All the breath was driven from his body. He could neither
move nor cry out. But, by degrees, his wits steadied themselves and his
breath returned to him. He looked about and above him. The daylight in
the hold was dimmed and clouded by the thick, chaff-dust thrown off by
the pour of grain, and even this dimness dwindled to twilight at a short
distance from the opening of the hatch, while the remotest quarters were
lost in impenetrable blackness. He got upon his feet only to find that
he sunk ankle deep in the loose packed mass underfoot.

“Hell,” he muttered, “here’s a fix.”

Directly underneath the chute, the wheat, as it poured in, raised itself
in a conical mound, but from the sides of this mound it shunted
away incessantly in thick layers, flowing in all directions with the
nimbleness of water. Even as S. Behrman spoke, a wave of grain poured
around his legs and rose rapidly to the level of his knees. He stepped
quickly back. To stay near the chute would soon bury him to the waist.

No doubt, there was some other exit from the hold, some companion ladder
that led up to the deck. He scuffled and waded across the wheat, groping
in the dark with outstretched hands. With every inhalation he choked,
filling his mouth and nostrils more with dust than with air. At times he
could not breathe at all, but gagged and gasped, his lips distended. But
search as he would he could find no outlet to the hold, no stairway,
no companion ladder. Again and again, staggering along in the black
darkness, he bruised his knuckles and forehead against the iron sides
of the ship. He gave up the attempt to find any interior means of escape
and returned laboriously to the space under the open hatchway. Already
he could see that the level of the wheat was raised.

“God,” he said, “this isn’t going to do at all.” He uttered a great
shout. “Hello, on deck there, somebody. For God’s sake.”

The steady, metallic roar of the pouring wheat drowned out his voice. He
could scarcely hear it himself above the rush of the cataract. Besides
this, he found it impossible to stay under the hatch. The flying grains
of wheat, spattering as they fell, stung his face like wind-driven
particles of ice. It was a veritable torture; his hands smarted with it.
Once he was all but blinded. Furthermore, the succeeding waves of wheat,
rolling from the mound under the chute, beat him back, swirling and
dashing against his legs and knees, mounting swiftly higher, carrying
him off his feet.

Once more he retreated, drawing back from beneath the hatch. He stood
still for a moment and shouted again. It was in vain. His voice returned
upon him, unable to penetrate the thunder of the chute, and horrified,
he discovered that so soon as he stood motionless upon the wheat, he
sank into it. Before he knew it, he was knee-deep again, and a long
swirl of grain sweeping outward from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming
pyramid below the chute, poured around his thighs, immobolising him.

A frenzy of terror suddenly leaped to life within him. The horror of
death, the Fear of The Trap, shook him like a dry reed. Shouting, he
tore himself free of the wheat and once more scrambled and struggled
towards the hatchway. He stumbled as he reached it and fell directly
beneath the pour. Like a storm of small shot, mercilessly, pitilessly,
the unnumbered multitude of hurtling grains flagellated and beat and
tore his flesh. Blood streamed from his forehead and, thickening with
the powder-like chaff-dust, blinded his eyes. He struggled to his feet
once more. An avalanche from the cone of wheat buried him to his thighs.
He was forced back and back and back, beating the air, falling, rising,
howling for aid. He could no longer see; his eyes, crammed with dust,
smarted as if transfixed with needles whenever he opened them. His mouth
was full of the dust, his lips were dry with it; thirst tortured him,
while his outcries choked and gagged in his rasped throat.

And all the while without stop, incessantly, inexorably, the wheat, as
if moving with a force all its own, shot downward in a prolonged roar,
persistent, steady, inevitable.

He retreated to a far corner of the hold and sat down with his back
against the iron hull of the ship and tried to collect his thoughts, to
calm himself. Surely there must be some way of escape; surely he was not
to die like this, die in this dreadful substance that was neither solid
nor fluid. What was he to do? How make himself heard?

But even as he thought about this, the cone under the chute broke again
and sent a great layer of grain rippling and tumbling toward him. It
reached him where he sat and buried his hand and one foot.

He sprang up trembling and made for another corner.

“By God,” he cried, “by God, I must think of something pretty quick!”

Once more the level of the wheat rose and the grains began piling deeper
about him. Once more he retreated. Once more he crawled staggering to
the foot of the cataract, screaming till his ears sang and his eyeballs
strained in their sockets, and once more the relentless tide drove him
back.

Then began that terrible dance of death; the man dodging, doubling,
squirming, hunted from one corner to another, the wheat slowly,
inexorably flowing, rising, spreading to every angle, to every nook
and cranny. It reached his middle. Furious and with bleeding hands and
broken nails, he dug his way out to fall backward, all but exhausted,
gasping for breath in the dust-thickened air. Roused again by the slow
advance of the tide, he leaped up and stumbled away, blinded with the
agony in his eyes, only to crash against the metal hull of the vessel.
He turned about, the blood streaming from his face, and paused to
collect his senses, and with a rush, another wave swirled about his
ankles and knees. Exhaustion grew upon him. To stand still meant to
sink; to lie or sit meant to be buried the quicker; and all this in the
dark, all this in an air that could scarcely be breathed, all this while
he fought an enemy that could not be gripped, toiling in a sea that
could not be stayed.

Guided by the sound of the falling wheat, S. Behrman crawled on hands
and knees toward the hatchway. Once more he raised his voice in a shout
for help. His bleeding throat and raw, parched lips refused to utter
but a wheezing moan. Once more he tried to look toward the one patch of
faint light above him. His eye-lids, clogged with chaff, could no longer
open. The Wheat poured about his waist as he raised himself upon his
knees.

Reason fled. Deafened with the roar of the grain, blinded and made dumb
with its chaff, he threw himself forward with clutching fingers, rolling
upon his back, and lay there, moving feebly, the head rolling from side
to side. The Wheat, leaping continuously from the chute, poured around
him. It filled the pockets of the coat, it crept up the sleeves and
trouser legs, it covered the great, protuberant stomach, it ran at last
in rivulets into the distended, gasping mouth. It covered the face. Upon
the surface of the Wheat, under the chute, nothing moved but the Wheat
itself. There was no sign of life. Then, for an instant, the surface
stirred. A hand, fat, with short fingers and swollen veins, reached up,
clutching, then fell limp and prone. In another instant it was covered.
In the hold of the “Swanhilda” there was no movement but the widening
ripples that spread flowing from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming
cone; no sound, but the rushing of the Wheat that continued to plunge
incessantly from the iron chute in a prolonged roar, persistent, steady,
inevitable.



CONCLUSION


The “Swanhilda” cast off from the docks at Port Costa two days after
Presley had left Bonneville and the ranches and made her way up to San
Francisco, anchoring in the stream off the City front. A few hours after
her arrival, Presley, waiting at his club, received a despatch from
Cedarquist to the effect that she would clear early the next morning and
that he must be aboard of her before midnight.

He sent his trunks aboard and at once hurried to Cedarquist’s office to
say good-bye. He found the manufacturer in excellent spirits.

“What do you think of Lyman Derrick now, Presley?” he said, when Presley
had sat down. “He’s in the new politics with a vengeance, isn’t he? And
our own dear Railroad openly acknowledges him as their candidate. You’ve
heard of his canvass.”

“Yes, yes,” answered Presley. “Well, he knows his business best.”

But Cedarquist was full of another idea: his new venture--the organizing
of a line of clipper wheat ships for Pacific and Oriental trade--was
prospering.

“The ‘Swanhilda’ is the mother of the fleet, Pres. I had to buy HER, but
the keel of her sister ship will be laid by the time she discharges at
Calcutta. We’ll carry our wheat into Asia yet. The Anglo-Saxon started
from there at the beginning of everything and it’s manifest destiny that
he must circle the globe and fetch up where he began his march. You are
up with procession, Pres, going to India this way in a wheat ship that
flies American colours. By the way, do you know where the money is to
come from to build the sister ship of the ‘Swanhilda’? From the sale
of the plant and scrap iron of the Atlas Works. Yes, I’ve given it up
definitely, that business. The people here would not back me up. But I’m
working off on this new line now. It may break me, but we’ll try it on.
You know the ‘Million Dollar Fair’ was formally opened yesterday. There
is,” he added with a wink, “a Midway Pleasance in connection with the
thing. Mrs. Cedarquist and our friend Hartrath ‘got up a subscription’
to construct a figure of California--heroic size--out of dried apricots.
I assure you,” he remarked With prodigious gravity, “it is a real work
of art and quite a ‘feature’ of the Fair. Well, good luck to you, Pres.
Write to me from Honolulu, and bon voyage. My respects to the hungry
Hindoo. Tell him ‘we’re coming, Father Abraham, a hundred thousand
more.’ Tell the men of the East to look out for the men of the West. The
irrepressible Yank is knocking at the doors of their temples and he will
want to sell ‘em carpet-sweepers for their harems and electric light
plants for their temple shrines. Good-bye to you.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

“Get fat yourself while you’re about it, Presley,” he observed, as the
two stood up and shook hands.

“There shouldn’t be any lack of food on a wheat ship. Bread enough,
surely.”

“Little monotonous, though. ‘Man cannot live by bread alone.’ Well,
you’re really off. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

And as Presley issued from the building and stepped out into the street,
he was abruptly aware of a great wagon shrouded in white cloth, inside
of which a bass drum was being furiously beaten. On the cloth, in great
letters, were the words:

“Vote for Lyman Derrick, Regular Republican Nominee for Governor of
California.”

*****

The “Swanhilda” lifted and rolled slowly, majestically on the ground
swell of the Pacific, the water hissing and boiling under her forefoot,
her cordage vibrating and droning in the steady rush of the trade winds.
It was drawing towards evening and her lights had just been set.
The master passed Presley, who was leaning over the rail smoking a
cigarette, and paused long enough to remark:

“The land yonder, if you can make it out, is Point Gordo, and if you
were to draw a line from our position now through that point and carry
it on about a hundred miles further, it would just about cross Tulare
County not very far from where you used to live.”

“I see,” answered Presley, “I see. Thanks. I am glad to know that.”

The master passed on, and Presley, going up to the quarter deck, looked
long and earnestly at the faint line of mountains that showed vague and
bluish above the waste of tumbling water.

Those were the mountains of the Coast range and beyond them was what
once had been his home. Bonneville was there, and Guadalajara and
Los Muertos and Quien Sabe, the Mission of San Juan, the Seed ranch,
Annixter’s desolated home and Dyke’s ruined hop-fields.

Well, it was all over now, that terrible drama through which he had
lived. Already it was far distant from him; but once again it rose in
his memory, portentous, sombre, ineffaceable. He passed it all in review
from the day of his first meeting with Vanamee to the day of his parting
with Hilma. He saw it all--the great sweep of country opening to view
from the summit of the hills at the head waters of Broderson’s Creek;
the barn dance at Annixter’s, the harness room with its jam of furious
men; the quiet garden of the Mission; Dyke’s house, his flight upon the
engine, his brave fight in the chaparral; Lyman Derrick at bay in the
dining-room of the ranch house; the rabbit drive; the fight at the
irrigating ditch, the shouting mob in the Bonneville Opera House. The
drama was over. The fight of Ranch and Railroad had been wrought out
to its dreadful close. It was true, as Shelgrim had said, that forces
rather than men had locked horns in that struggle, but for all that the
men of the Ranch and not the men of the Railroad had suffered. Into the
prosperous valley, into the quiet community of farmers, that galloping
monster, that terror of steel and steam had burst, shooting athwart the
horizons, flinging the echo of its thunder over all the ranches of the
valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path.

Yes, the Railroad had prevailed. The ranches had been seized in the
tentacles of the octopus; the iniquitous burden of extortionate freight
rates had been imposed like a yoke of iron. The monster had killed
Harran, had killed Osterman, had killed Broderson, had killed Hooven. It
had beggared Magnus and had driven him to a state of semi-insanity after
he had wrecked his honour in the vain attempt to do evil that good might
come. It had enticed Lyman into its toils to pluck from him his manhood
and his honesty, corrupting him and poisoning him beyond redemption; it
had hounded Dyke from his legitimate employment and had made of him
a highwayman and criminal. It had cast forth Mrs. Hooven to starve to
death upon the City streets. It had driven Minna to prostitution. It had
slain Annixter at the very moment when painfully and manfully he had at
last achieved his own salvation and stood forth resolved to do right, to
act unselfishly and to live for others. It had widowed Hilma in the very
dawn of her happiness. It had killed the very babe within the mother’s
womb, strangling life ere yet it had been born, stamping out the spark
ordained by God to burn through all eternity.

What then was left? Was there no hope, no outlook for the future, no
rift in the black curtain, no glimmer through the night? Was good to be
thus overthrown? Was evil thus to be strong and to prevail? Was nothing
left?

Then suddenly Vanamee’s words came back to his mind. What was the larger
view, what contributed the greatest good to the greatest numbers? What
was the full round of the circle whose segment only he beheld? In the
end, the ultimate, final end of all, what was left? Yes, good issued
from this crisis, untouched, unassailable, undefiled.

Men--motes in the sunshine--perished, were shot down in the very noon
of life, hearts were broken, little children started in life lamentably
handicapped; young girls were brought to a life of shame; old women died
in the heart of life for lack of food. In that little, isolated group of
human insects, misery, death, and anguish spun like a wheel of fire.

BUT THE WHEAT REMAINED. Untouched, unassailable, undefiled, that mighty
world-force, that nourisher of nations, wrapped in Nirvanic calm,
indifferent to the human swarm, gigantic, resistless, moved onward in
its appointed grooves. Through the welter of blood at the irrigation
ditch, through the sham charity and shallow philanthropy of famine
relief committees, the great harvest of Los Muertos rolled like a
flood from the Sierras to the Himalayas to feed thousands of starving
scarecrows on the barren plains of India.

Falseness dies; injustice and oppression in the end of everything
fade and vanish away. Greed, cruelty, selfishness, and inhumanity are
short-lived; the individual suffers, but the race goes on. Annixter
dies, but in a far distant corner of the world a thousand lives are
saved. The larger view always and through all shams, all wickednesses,
discovers the Truth that will, in the end, prevail, and all things,
surely, inevitably, resistlessly work together for good.





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