Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  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?”

&nbs
p; 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.