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.