by Frank Norris
“I am so sorry to interrupt,” said Mrs. Derrick, as she came up. “I hope Mr. Annixter will excuse me, but I want Magnus to open the safe for me. I have lost the combination, and I must have some money. Phelps is going into town, and I want him to pay some bills for me. Can’t you come right away, Magnus? Phelps is ready and waiting.”
Annixter struck his heel into the ground with a suppressed oath. Always these fool feemale women came between him and his plans, mixing themselves up in his affairs. Magnus had been on the very point of saying something, perhaps committing himself to some course of action, and, at precisely the wrong moment, his wife had cut in. The opportunity was lost. The three returned toward the ranch house; but before saying good-bye, Annixter had secured from Magnus a promise to the effect that, before coming to a definite decision in the matter under discussion, he would talk further with him.
Presley met him at the porch. He was going into town with Phelps, and proposed to Annixter that he should accompany them.
“I want to go over and see old Broderson,” Annixter objected.
But Presley informed him that Broderson had gone to Bonneville earlier in the morning. He had seen him go past in his buckboard. The three men set off, Phelps and Annixter on horseback, Presley on his bicycle.
When they had gone, Mrs. Derrick sought out her husband in the office of the ranch house. She was at her prettiest that morning, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her innocent, wide-open eyes almost girlish. She had fastened her hair, still moist, with a black ribbon tied at the back of her head, and the soft mass of light brown reached to below her waist, making her look very young.
“What was it he was saying to you just now,” she exclaimed, as she came through the gate in the green-painted wire railing of the office. “What was Mr. Annixter saying? I know. He was trying to get you to join him, trying to persuade you to be dishonest, wasn’t that it? Tell me, Magnus, wasn’t that it?”
Magnus nodded.
His wife drew close to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“But you won’t, will you? You won’t listen to him again; you won’t so much as allow him — anybody — to even suppose you would lend yourself to bribery? Oh, Magnus, I don’t know what has come over you these last few weeks. Why, before this, you would have been insulted if any one thought you would even consider anything like dishonesty. Magnus, it would break my heart if you joined Mr. Annixter and Mr. Osterman. Why, you couldn’t be the same man to me afterward; you, who have kept yourself so clean till now. And the boys; what would Lyman say, and Harran, and every one who knows you and respects you, if you lowered yourself to be just a political adventurer!”
For a moment, Derrick leaned his head upon his hand, avoiding her gaze. At length, he said, drawing a deep breath: “I am troubled, Annie. These are the evil days. I have much upon my mind.”
“Evil days or not,” she insisted, “promise me this one thing, that you will not join Mr. Annixter’s scheme.” She had taken his hand in both of hers and was looking into his face, her pretty eyes full of pleading.
“Promise me,” she repeated; “give me your word. Whatever happens, let me always be able to be proud of you, as I always have been. Give me your word. I know you never seriously thought of joining Mr. Annixter, but I am so nervous and frightened sometimes. Just to relieve my mind, Magnus, give me your word.”
“Why — you are right,” he answered. “No, I never thought seriously of it. Only for a moment, I was ambitious to be — I don’t know what — what I had hoped to be once — well, that is over now. Annie, your husband is a disappointed man.”
“Give me your word,” she insisted. “We can talk about other things afterward.”
Again Magnus wavered, about to yield to his better instincts and to the entreaties of his wife. He began to see how perilously far he had gone in this business. He was drifting closer to it every hour. Already he was entangled, already his foot was caught in the mesh that was being spun. Sharply he recoiled. Again all his instincts of honesty revolted. No, whatever happened, he would preserve his integrity. His wife was right. Always she had influenced his better side. At that moment, Magnus’s repugnance of the proposed political campaign was at its pitch of intensity. He wondered how he had ever allowed himself to so much as entertain the idea of joining with the others. Now, he would wrench free, would, in a single instant of power, clear himself of all compromising relations. He turned to his wife. Upon his lips trembled the promise she implored. But suddenly there came to his mind the recollection of his new-made pledge to Annixter. He had given his word that before arriving at a decision he would have a last interview with him. To Magnus, his given word was sacred. Though now he wanted to, he could not as yet draw back, could not promise his wife that he would decide to do right. The matter must be delayed a few days longer.
Lamely, he explained this to her. Annie Derrick made but little response when he had done. She kissed his forehead and went out of the room, uneasy, depressed, her mind thronging with vague fears, leaving Magnus before his office desk, his head in his hands, thoughtful, gloomy, assaulted by forebodings.
Meanwhile, Annixter, Phelps, and Presley continued on their way toward Bonneville. In a short time they had turned into the County Road by the great watering-tank, and proceeded onward in the shade of the interminable line of poplar trees, the wind-break that stretched along the roadside bordering the Broderson ranch. But as they drew near to Caraher’s saloon and grocery, about half a mile outside of Bonneville, they recognised Harran’s horse tied to the railing in front of it. Annixter left the others and went in to see Harran.
“Harran,” he said, when the two had sat down on either side of one of the small tables, “you’ve got to make up your mind one way or another pretty soon. What are you going to do? Are you going to stand by and see the rest of the Committee spending money by the bucketful in this thing and keep your hands in your pockets? If we win, you’ll benefit just as much as the rest of us. I suppose you’ve got some money of your own — you have, haven’t you? You are your father’s manager, aren’t you?”
Disconcerted at Annixter’s directness, Harran stammered an affirmative, adding:
“It’s hard to know just what to do. It’s a mean position for me, Buck. I want to help you others, but I do want to play fair. I don’t know how to play any other way. I should like to have a line from the Governor as to how to act, but there’s no getting a word out of him these days. He seems to want to let me decide for myself.”
“Well, look here,” put in Annixter. “Suppose you keep out of the thing till it’s all over, and then share and share alike with the Committee on campaign expenses.”
Harran fell thoughtful, his hands in his pockets, frowning moodily at the toe of his boot. There was a silence. Then:
“I don’t like to go it blind,” he hazarded. “I’m sort of sharing the responsibility of what you do, then. I’m a silent partner. And, then — I don’t want to have any difficulties with the Governor. We’ve always got along well together. He wouldn’t like it, you know, if I did anything like that.” “Say,” exclaimed Annixter abruptly, “if the Governor says he will keep his hands off, and that you can do as you please, will you come in? For God’s sake, let us ranchers act together for once. Let’s stand in with each other in ONE fight.”
Without knowing it, Annixter had touched the right spring.
“I don’t know but what you’re right,” Harran murmured vaguely. His sense of discouragement, that feeling of what’s-the-use, was never more oppressive. All fair means had been tried. The wheat grower was at last with his back to the wall. If he chose his own means of fighting, the responsibility must rest upon his enemies, not on himself.
“It’s the only way to accomplish anything,” he continued, “standing in with each other... well,... go ahead and see what you can do. If the Governor is willing, I’ll come in for my share of the campaign fund.”
“That’s some sense,” exclaimed Annixter, shaking him by t
he hand. “Half the fight is over already. We’ve got Disbrow you know; and the next thing is to get hold of some of those rotten San Francisco bosses. Osterman will — —” But Harran interrupted him, making a quick gesture with his hand.
“Don’t tell me about it,” he said. “I don’t want to know what you and Osterman are going to do. If I did, I shouldn’t come in.”
Yet, for all this, before they said good-bye Annixter had obtained Harran’s promise that he would attend the next meeting of the Committee, when Osterman should return from Los Angeles and make his report. Harran went on toward Los Muertos. Annixter mounted and rode into Bonneville.
Bonneville was very lively at all times. It was a little city of some twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, where, as yet, the city hall, the high school building, and the opera house were objects of civic pride. It was well governed, beautifully clean, full of the energy and strenuous young life of a new city. An air of the briskest activity pervaded its streets and sidewalks. The business portion of the town, centring about Main Street, was always crowded. Annixter, arriving at the Post Office, found himself involved in a scene of swiftly shifting sights and sounds. Saddle horses, farm wagons — the inevitable Studebakers — buggies grey with the dust of country roads, buckboards with squashes and grocery packages stowed under the seat, two-wheeled sulkies and training carts, were hitched to the gnawed railings and zinc-sheathed telegraph poles along the curb. Here and there, on the edge of the sidewalk, were bicycles, wedged into bicycle racks painted with cigar advertisements. Upon the asphalt sidewalk itself, soft and sticky with the morning’s heat, was a continuous movement. Men with large stomachs, wearing linen coats but no vests, laboured ponderously up and down. Girls in lawn skirts, shirt waists, and garden hats, went to and fro, invariably in couples, coming in and out of the drug store, the grocery store, and haberdasher’s, or lingering in front of the Post Office, which was on a corner under the I.O.O.F. hall. Young men, in shirt sleeves, with brown, wicker cuff-protectors over their forearms, and pencils behind their ears, bustled in front of the grocery store, anxious and preoccupied. A very old man, a Mexican, in ragged white trousers and bare feet, sat on a horse-block in front of the barber shop, holding a horse by a rope around its neck. A Chinaman went by, teetering under the weight of his market baskets slung on a pole across his shoulders. In the neighbourhood of the hotel, the Yosemite House, travelling salesmen, drummers for jewelry firms of San Francisco, commercial agents, insurance men, well-dressed, metropolitan, debonair, stood about cracking jokes, or hurried in and out of the flapping white doors of the Yosemite barroom. The Yosemite ‘bus and City ‘bus passed up the street, on the way from the morning train, each with its two or three passengers. A very narrow wagon, belonging to the Cole & Colemore Harvester Works, went by, loaded with long strips of iron that made a horrible din as they jarred over the unevenness of the pavement. The electric car line, the city’s boast, did a brisk business, its cars whirring from end to end of the street, with a jangling of bells and a moaning plaint of gearing. On the stone bulkheads of the grass plat around the new City Hall, the usual loafers sat, chewing tobacco, swapping stories. In the park were the inevitable array of nursemaids, skylarking couples, and ragged little boys. A single policeman, in grey coat and helmet, friend and acquaintance of every man and woman in the town, stood by the park entrance, leaning an elbow on the fence post, twirling his club.
But in the centre of the best business block of the street was a three-story building of rough brown stone, set off with plate glass windows and gold-lettered signs. One of these latter read, “Pacific and Southwestern Railroad, Freight and Passenger Office,” while another much smaller, beneath the windows of the second story bore the inscription, “P. and S. W. Land Office.”
Annixter hitched his horse to the iron post in front of this building, and tramped up to the second floor, letting himself into an office where a couple of clerks and bookkeepers sat at work behind a high wire screen. One of these latter recognised him and came forward.
“Hello,” said Annixter abruptly, scowling the while. “Is your boss in? Is Ruggles in?”
The bookkeeper led Annixter to the private office in an adjoining room, ushering him through a door, on the frosted glass of which was painted the name, “Cyrus Blakelee Ruggles.” Inside, a man in a frock coat, shoestring necktie, and Stetson hat, sat writing at a roller-top desk. Over this desk was a vast map of the railroad holdings in the country about Bonneville and Guadalajara, the alternate sections belonging to the Corporation accurately plotted. Ruggles was cordial in his welcome of Annixter. He had a way of fiddling with his pencil continually while he talked, scribbling vague lines and fragments of words and names on stray bits of paper, and no sooner had Annixter sat down than he had begun to write, in full-bellied script, ANN ANN all over his blotting pad.
“I want to see about those lands of mine — I mean of yours — of the railroad’s,” Annixter commenced at once. “I want to know when I can buy. I’m sick of fooling along like this.”
“Well, Mr. Annixter,” observed Ruggles, writing a great L before the ANN, and finishing it off with a flourishing D. “The lands” — he crossed out one of the N’s and noted the effect with a hasty glance— “the lands are practically yours. You have an option on them indefinitely, and, as it is, you don’t have to pay the taxes.”
“Rot your option! I want to own them,” Annixter declared. “What have you people got to gain by putting off selling them to us. Here this thing has dragged along for over eight years. When I came in on Quien Sabe, the understanding was that the lands — your alternate sections — were to be conveyed to me within a few months.”
“The land had not been patented to us then,” answered Ruggles.
“Well, it has been now, I guess,” retorted Annixter.
“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, Mr. Annixter.”
Annixter crossed his legs weariedly.
“Oh, what’s the good of lying, Ruggles? You know better than to talk that way to me.”
Ruggles’s face flushed on the instant, but he checked his answer and laughed instead.
“Oh, if you know so much about it—” he observed.
“Well, when are you going to sell to me?”
“I’m only acting for the General Office, Mr. Annixter,” returned Ruggles. “Whenever the Directors are ready to take that matter up, I’ll be only too glad to put it through for you.”
“As if you didn’t know. Look here, you’re not talking to old Broderson. Wake up, Ruggles. What’s all this talk in Genslinger’s rag about the grading of the value of our lands this winter and an advance in the price?”
Ruggles spread out his hands with a deprecatory gesture.
“I don’t own the ‘Mercury,’” he said.
“Well, your company does.”
“If it does, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh, rot! As if you and Genslinger and S. Behrman didn’t run the whole show down here. Come on, let’s have it, Ruggles. What does S. Behrman pay Genslinger for inserting that three-inch ad. of the P. and S. W. in his paper? Ten thousand a year, hey?”
“Oh, why not a hundred thousand and be done with it?” returned the other, willing to take it as a joke.
Instead of replying, Annixter drew his check-book from his inside pocket.
“Let me take that fountain pen of yours,” he said. Holding the book on his knee he wrote out a check, tore it carefully from the stub, and laid it on the desk in front of Ruggles.
“What’s this?” asked Ruggles.
“Three-fourths payment for the sections of railroad land included in my ranch, based on a valuation of two dollars and a half per acre. You can have the balance in sixty-day notes.”
Ruggles shook his head, drawing hastily back from the check as though it carried contamination.
“I can’t touch it,” he declared. “I’ve no authority to sell to you yet.”
“I don’t understand you people,” exclaimed An
nixter. “I offered to buy of you the same way four years ago and you sang the same song. Why, it isn’t business. You lose the interest on your money. Seven per cent. of that capital for four years — you can figure it out. It’s big money.”
“Well, then, I don’t see why you’re so keen on parting with it. You can get seven per cent. the same as us.”
“I want to own my own land,” returned Annixter. “I want to feel that every lump of dirt inside my fence is my personal property. Why, the very house I live in now — the ranch house — stands on railroad ground.”