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.