by Frank Norris
“By the Lord! men have been shot for less than this,” cried Osterman. “You’ve sold us out, you, and if you ever bring that dago face of yours on a level with mine again, I’ll slap it.”
“Keep your hands off,” exclaimed Lyman quickly, the aggressiveness of the cornered rat flaming up within him. “No violence. Don’t you go too far.”
“How much were you paid? How much were you paid?” vociferated Harran.
“Yes, yes, what was your price?” cried the others. They were beside themselves with anger; their words came harsh from between their set teeth; their gestures were made with their fists clenched.
“You know the Commission acted in good faith,” retorted Lyman. “You know that all was fair and above board.”
“Liar,” shouted Annixter; “liar, bribe-eater. You were bought and paid for,” and with the words his arm seemed almost of itself to leap out from his shoulder. Lyman received the blow squarely in the face and the force of it sent him staggering backwards toward the wall. He tripped over his valise and fell half way, his back supported against the closed door of the room. Magnus sprang forward. His son had been struck, and the instincts of a father rose up in instant protest; rose for a moment, then forever died away in his heart. He checked the words that flashed to his mind. He lowered his upraised arm. No, he had but one son. The poor, staggering creature with the fine clothes, white face, and blood-streaked lips was no longer his. A blow could not dishonour him more than he had dishonoured himself.
But Gethings, the older man, intervened, pulling Annixter back, crying:
“Stop, this won’t do. Not before his father.”
“I am no father to this man, gentlemen,” exclaimed Magnus. “From now on, I have but one son. You, sir,” he turned to Lyman, “you, sir, leave my house.”
Lyman, his handkerchief to his lips, his smart cravat in disarray, caught up his hat and coat. He was shaking with fury, his protruding eyes were blood-shot. He swung open the door.
“Ruffians,” he shouted from the threshold, “ruffians, bullies. Do your own dirty business yourselves after this. I’m done with you. How is it, all of a sudden you talk about honour? How is it that all at once you’re so clean and straight? You weren’t so particular at Sacramento just before the nominations. How was the Board elected? I’m a bribe-eater, am I? Is it any worse than GIVING a bribe? Ask Magnus Derrick what he thinks about that. Ask him how much he paid the Democratic bosses at Sacramento to swing the convention.”
He went out, slamming the door.
Presley followed. The whole affair made him sick at heart, filled him with infinite disgust, infinite weariness. He wished to get away from it all. He left the dining-room and the excited, clamouring men behind him and stepped out on the porch of the ranch house, closing the door behind him. Lyman was nowhere in sight. Presley was alone. It was late, and after the lamp-heated air of the dining-room, the coolness of the night was delicious, and its vast silence, after the noise and fury of the committee meeting, descended from the stars like a benediction. Presley stepped to the edge of the porch, looking off to southward.
And there before him, mile after mile, illimitable, covering the earth from horizon to horizon, lay the Wheat. The growth, now many days old, was already high from the ground. There it lay, a vast, silent ocean, shimmering a pallid green under the moon and under the stars; a mighty force, the strength of nations, the life of the world. There in the night, under the dome of the sky, it was growing steadily. To Presley’s mind, the scene in the room he had just left dwindled to paltry insignificance before this sight. Ah, yes, the Wheat — it was over this that the Railroad, the ranchers, the traitor false to his trust, all the members of an obscure conspiracy, were wrangling. As if human agency could affect this colossal power! What were these heated, tiny squabbles, this feverish, small bustle of mankind, this minute swarming of the human insect, to the great, majestic, silent ocean of the Wheat itself! Indifferent, gigantic, resistless, it moved in its appointed grooves. Men, Liliputians, gnats in the sunshine, buzzed impudently in their tiny battles, were born, lived through their little day, died, and were forgotten; while the Wheat, wrapped in Nirvanic calm, grew steadily under the night, alone with the stars and with God.
CHAPTER V.
Jack-rabbits were a pest that year and Presley occasionally found amusement in hunting them with Harran’s half-dozen greyhounds, following the chase on horseback. One day, between two and three months after Lyman s visit to Los Muertos, as he was returning toward the ranch house from a distant and lonely quarter of Los Muertos, he came unexpectedly upon a strange sight.
Some twenty men, Annixter’s and Osterman’s tenants, and small ranchers from east of Guadalajara — all members of the League — were going through the manual of arms under Harran Derrick’s supervision. They were all equipped with new Winchester rifles. Harran carried one of these himself and with it he illustrated the various commands he gave. As soon as one of the men under his supervision became more than usually proficient, he was told off to instruct a file of the more backward. After the manual of arms, Harran gave the command to take distance as skirmishers, and when the line had opened out so that some half-dozen feet intervened between each man, an advance was made across the field, the men stooping low and snapping the hammers of their rifles at an imaginary enemy.
The League had its agents in San Francisco, who watched the movements of the Railroad as closely as was possible, and some time before this, Annixter had received word that the Marshal and his deputies were coming down to Bonneville to put the dummy buyers of his ranch in possession. The report proved to be but the first of many false alarms, but it had stimulated the League to unusual activity, and some three or four hundred men were furnished with arms and from time to time were drilled in secret.
Among themselves, the ranchers said that if the Railroad managers did not believe they were terribly in earnest in the stand they had taken, they were making a fatal mistake.
Harran reasserted this statement to Presley on the way home to the ranch house that same day. Harran had caught up with him by the time he reached the Lower Road, and the two jogged homeward through the miles of standing wheat.
“They may jump the ranch, Pres,” he said, “if they try hard enough, but they will never do it while I am alive. By the way,” he added, “you know we served notices yesterday upon S. Behrman and Cy. Ruggles to quit the country. Of course, they won’t do it, but they won’t be able to say they didn’t have warning.”
About an hour later, the two reached the ranch house, but as Harran rode up the driveway, he uttered an exclamation.
“Hello,” he said, “something is up. That’s Genslinger’s buckboard.”
In fact, the editor’s team was tied underneath the shade of a giant eucalyptus tree near by. Harran, uneasy under this unexpected visit of the enemy’s friend, dismounted without stabling his horse, and went at once to the dining-room, where visitors were invariably received. But the dining-room was empty, and his mother told him that Magnus and the editor were in the “office.” Magnus had said they were not to be disturbed.
Earlier in the afternoon, the editor had driven up to the porch and had asked Mrs. Derrick, whom he found reading a book of poems on the porch, if he could see Magnus. At the time, the Governor had gone with Phelps to inspect the condition of the young wheat on Hooven’s holding, but within half an hour he returned, and Genslinger had asked him for a “few moments’ talk in private.”
The two went into the “office,” Magnus locking the door behind him. “Very complete you are here, Governor,” observed the editor in his alert, jerky manner, his black, bead-like eyes twinkling around the room from behind his glasses. “Telephone, safe, ticker, account-books — well, that’s progress, isn’t it? Only way to manage a big ranch these days. But the day of the big ranch is over. As the land appreciates in value, the temptation to sell off small holdings will be too strong. And then the small holding can be cultivated to better advantage. I sha
ll have an editorial on that some day.”
“The cost of maintaining a number of small holdings,” said Magnus, indifferently, “is, of course, greater than if they were all under one management.”
“That may be, that may be,” rejoined the other.
There was a long pause. Genslinger leaned back in his chair and rubbed a knee. Magnus, standing erect in front of the safe, waited for him to speak.
“This is an unfortunate business, Governor,” began the editor, “this misunderstanding between the ranchers and the Railroad. I wish it could be adjusted. HERE are two industries that MUST be in harmony with one another, or we all go to pot.”
“I should prefer not to be interviewed on the subject, Mr. Genslinger,” said Magnus.
“Oh, no, oh, no. Lord love you, Governor, I don’t want to interview you. We all know how you stand.”
Again there was a long silence. Magnus wondered what this little man, usually so garrulous, could want of him. At length, Genslinger began again. He did not look at Magnus, except at long intervals.
“About the present Railroad Commission,” he remarked. “That was an interesting campaign you conducted in Sacramento and San Francisco.”
Magnus held his peace, his hands shut tight. Did Genslinger know of Lyman’s disgrace? Was it for this he had come? Would the story of it be the leading article in to-morrow’s Mercury?
“An interesting campaign,” repeated Genslinger, slowly; “a very interesting campaign. I watched it with every degree of interest. I saw its every phase, Mr. Derrick.”
“The campaign was not without its interest,” admitted Magnus.
“Yes,” said Genslinger, still more deliberately, “and some phases of it were — more interesting than others, as, for instance, let us say the way in which you — personally — secured the votes of certain chairmen of delegations — NEED I particularise further? Yes, those men — the way you got their votes. Now, THAT I should say, Mr. Derrick, was the most interesting move in the whole game — to you. Hm, curious,” he murmured, musingly. “Let’s see. You deposited two one-thousand dollar bills and four five-hundred dollar bills in a box — three hundred and eight was the number — in a box in the Safety Deposit Vaults in San Francisco, and then — let’s see, you gave a key to this box to each of the gentlemen in question, and after the election the box was empty. Now, I call that interesting — curious, because it’s a new, safe, and highly ingenious method of bribery. How did you happen to think of it, Governor?”
“Do you know what you are doing, sir?” Magnus burst forth. “Do you know what you are insinuating, here, in my own house?”
“Why, Governor,” returned the editor, blandly, “I’m not INSINUATING anything. I’m talking about what I KNOW.”
“It’s a lie.”
Genslinger rubbed his chin reflectively.
“Well,” he answered, “you can have a chance to prove it before the Grand Jury, if you want to.”
“My character is known all over the State,” blustered Magnus. “My politics are pure politics. My — —”
“No one needs a better reputation for pure politics than the man who sets out to be a briber,” interrupted Genslinger, “and I might as well tell you, Governor, that you can’t shout me down. I can put my hand on the two chairmen you bought before it’s dark to-day. I’ve had their depositions in my safe for the last six weeks. We could make the arrests to-morrow, if we wanted. Governor, you sure did a risky thing when you went into that Sacramento fight, an awful risky thing. Some men can afford to have bribery charges preferred against them, and it don’t hurt one little bit, but YOU — Lord, it would BUST you, Governor, bust you dead. I know all about the whole shananigan business from A to Z, and if you don’t believe it — here,” he drew a long strip of paper from his pocket, “here’s a galley proof of the story.”
Magnus took it in his hands. There, under his eyes, scare-headed, double-leaded, the more important clauses printed in bold type, was the detailed account of the “deal” Magnus had made with the two delegates. It was pitiless, remorseless, bald. Every statement was substantiated, every statistic verified with Genslinger’s meticulous love for exactness. Besides all that, it had the ring of truth. It was exposure, ruin, absolute annihilation.
“That’s about correct, isn’t it?” commented Genslinger, as Derrick finished reading. Magnus did not reply. “I think it is correct enough,” the editor continued. “But I thought it would only be fair to you to let you see it before it was published.”
The one thought uppermost in Derrick’s mind, his one impulse of the moment was, at whatever cost, to preserve his dignity, not to allow this man to exult in the sight of one quiver of weakness, one trace of defeat, one suggestion of humiliation. By an effort that put all his iron rigidity to the test, he forced himself to look straight into Genslinger’s eyes.
“I congratulate you,” he observed, handing back the proof, “upon your journalistic enterprise. Your paper will sell to-morrow.” “Oh, I don’t know as I want to publish this story,” remarked the editor, indifferently, putting away the galley. “I’m just like that. The fun for me is running a good story to earth, but once I’ve got it, I lose interest. And, then, I wouldn’t like to see you — holding the position you do, President of the League and a leading man of the county — I wouldn’t like to see a story like this smash you over. It’s worth more to you to keep it out of print than for me to put it in. I’ve got nothing much to gain but a few extra editions, but you — Lord, you would lose everything. Your committee was in the deal right enough. But your League, all the San Joaquin Valley, everybody in the State believes the commissioners were fairly elected.”
“Your story,” suddenly exclaimed Magnus, struck with an idea, “will be thoroughly discredited just so soon as the new grain tariff is published. I have means of knowing that the San Joaquin rate — the issue upon which the board was elected — is not to be touched. Is it likely the ranchers would secure the election of a board that plays them false?”
“Oh, we know all about that,” answered Genslinger, smiling. “You thought you were electing Lyman easily. You thought you had got the Railroad to walk right into your trap. You didn’t understand how you could pull off your deal so easily. Why, Governor, LYMAN WAS PLEDGED TO THE RAILROAD TWO YEARS AGO. He was THE ONE PARTICULAR man the corporation wanted for commissioner. And your people elected him — saved the Railroad all the trouble of campaigning for him. And you can’t make any counter charge of bribery there. No, sir, the corporation don’t use such amateurish methods as that. Confidentially and between us two, all that the Railroad has done for Lyman, in order to attach him to their interests, is to promise to back him politically in the next campaign for Governor. It’s too bad,” he continued, dropping his voice, and changing his position. “It really is too bad to see good men trying to bunt a stone wall over with their bare heads. You couldn’t have won at any stage of the game. I wish I could have talked to you and your friends before you went into that Sacramento fight. I could have told you then how little chance you had. When will you people realise that you can’t buck against the Railroad? Why, Magnus, it’s like me going out in a paper boat and shooting peas at a battleship.”
“Is that all you wished to see me about, Mr. Genslinger?” remarked Magnus, bestirring himself. “I am rather occupied to-day.” “Well,” returned the other, “you know what the publication of this article would mean for you.” He paused again, took off his glasses, breathed on them, polished the lenses with his handkerchief and readjusted them on his nose. “I’ve been thinking, Governor,” he began again, with renewed alertness, and quite irrelevantly, “of enlarging the scope of the ‘Mercury.’ You see, I’m midway between the two big centres of the State, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and I want to extend the ‘Mercury’s’ sphere of influence as far up and down the valley as I can. I want to illustrate the paper. You see, if I had a photo-engraving plant of my own, I could do a good deal of outside jobbing as well, and the investm
ent would pay ten per cent. But it takes money to make money. I wouldn’t want to put in any dinky, one-horse affair. I want a good plant. I’ve been figuring out the business. Besides the plant, there would be the expense of a high grade paper. Can’t print half-tones on anything but coated paper, and that COSTS. Well, what with this and with that and running expenses till the thing began to pay, it would cost me about ten thousand dollars, and I was wondering if, perhaps, you couldn’t see your way clear to accommodating me.”
“Ten thousand?”
“Yes. Say five thousand down, and the balance within sixty days.”
Magnus, for the moment blind to what Genslinger had in mind, turned on him in astonishment.
“Why, man, what security could you give me for such an amount?”
“Well, to tell the truth,” answered the editor, “I hadn’t thought much about securities. In fact, I believed you would see how greatly it was to your advantage to talk business with me. You see, I’m not going to print this article about you, Governor, and I’m not going to let it get out so as any one else can print it, and it seems to me that one good turn deserves another. You understand?”
Magnus understood. An overwhelming desire suddenly took possession of him to grip this blackmailer by the throat, to strangle him where he stood; or, if not, at least to turn upon him with that old-time terrible anger, before which whole conventions had once cowered. But in the same moment the Governor realised this was not to be. Only its righteousness had made his wrath terrible; only the justice of his anger had made him feared. Now the foundation was gone from under his feet; he had knocked it away himself. Three times feeble was he whose quarrel was unjust. Before this country editor, this paid speaker of the Railroad, he stood, convicted. The man had him at his mercy. The detected briber could not resent an insult. Genslinger rose, smoothing his hat.
“Well,” he said, “of course, you want time to think it over, and you can’t raise money like that on short notice. I’ll wait till Friday noon of this week. We begin to set Saturday’s paper at about four, Friday afternoon, and the forms are locked about two in the morning. I hope,” he added, turning back at the door of the room, “that you won’t find anything disagreeable in your Saturday morning ‘Mercury,’ Mr. Derrick.”