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Willa Cather. - "The Troll Garden and Selected Stories"

Olive Schreiner - "Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland"

Unknown - "Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses"

Sarah Fielding - "The Governess [The Little Female Academy]"

The Octopus, by Frank Norris

F >> Frank Norris >> The Octopus, by Frank Norris




"Hello, old man," answered Presley, coming up to the engine.
"What are you doing about here at this time of day? I thought
you were on the night service this month."

"We've changed about a bit," answered the other. "Come up here
and sit down, and get out of the sun. They've held us here to
wait orders," he explained, as Presley, after leaning his bicycle
against the tender, climbed to the fireman's seat of worn green
leather. "They are changing the run of one of the crack
passenger engines down below, and are sending her up to Fresno.
There was a smash of some kind on the Bakersfield division, and
she's to hell and gone behind her time. I suppose when she
comes, she'll come a-humming. It will be stand clear and an open
track all the way to Fresno. They have held me here to let her
go by."

He took his pipe, an old T. D. clay, but coloured to a beautiful
shiny black, from the pocket of his jumper and filled and lit it.

"Well, I don't suppose you object to being held here," observed
Presley. "Gives you a chance to visit your mother and the little
girl."

"And precisely they choose this day to go up to Sacramento,"
answered Dyke. "Just my luck. Went up to visit my brother's
people. By the way, my brother may come down here--locate here,
I mean--and go into the hop-raising business. He's got an option
on five hundred acres just back of the town here. He says there
is going to be money in hops. I don't know; may be I'll go in
with him."

"Why, what's the matter with railroading?"

Dyke drew a couple of puffs on his pipe, and fixed Presley with a
glance.

"There's this the matter with it," he said; "I'm fired."

"Fired! You!" exclaimed Presley, turning abruptly toward him.
"That's what I'm telling you," returned Dyke grimly.

"You don't mean it. Why, what for, Dyke?"

"Now, YOU tell me what for," growled the other savagely. "Boy
and man, I've worked for the P. and S. W. for over ten years, and
never one yelp of a complaint did I ever hear from them. They
know damn well they've not got a steadier man on the road. And
more than that, more than that, I don't belong to the
Brotherhood. And when the strike came along, I stood by them--
stood by the company. You know that. And you know, and they
know, that at Sacramento that time, I ran my train according to
schedule, with a gun in each hand, never knowing when I was going
over a mined culvert, and there was talk of giving me a gold
watch at the time. To hell with their gold watches! I want
ordinary justice and fair treatment. And now, when hard times
come along, and they are cutting wages, what do they do? Do they
make any discrimination in my case? Do they remember the man
that stood by them and risked his life in their service? No.
They cut my pay down just as off-hand as they do the pay of any
dirty little wiper in the yard. Cut me along with--listen to
this--cut me along with men that they had BLACK-LISTED; strikers
that they took back because they were short of hands." He drew
fiercely on his pipe. "I went to them, yes, I did; I went to the
General Office, and ate dirt. I told them I was a family man,
and that I didn't see how I was going to get along on the new
scale, and I reminded them of my service during the strike. The
swine told me that it wouldn't be fair to discriminate in favour
of one man, and that the cut must apply to all their employees
alike. Fair!" he shouted with laughter. "Fair! Hear the P. and
S. W. talking about fairness and discrimination. That's good,
that is. Well, I got furious. I was a fool, I suppose. I told
them that, in justice to myself, I wouldn't do first-class work
for third-class pay. And they said, 'Well, Mr. Dyke, you know
what you can do.' Well, I did know. I said, 'I'll ask for my
time, if you please,' and they gave it to me just as if they were
glad to be shut of me. So there you are, Presley. That's the P.
& S. W. Railroad Company of California. I am on my last run
now."

"Shameful," declared Presley, his sympathies all aroused, now
that the trouble concerned a friend of his. "It's shameful,
Dyke. But," he added, an idea occurring to him, "that don't shut
you out from work. There are other railroads in the State that
are not controlled by the P. and S. W."

Dyke smote his knee with his clenched fist.

"NAME ONE."

Presley was silent. Dyke's challenge was unanswerable. There
was a lapse in their talk, Presley drumming on the arm of the
seat, meditating on this injustice; Dyke looking off over the
fields beyond the town, his frown lowering, his teeth rasping
upon his pipestem. The station agent came to the door of the
depot, stretching and yawning. On ahead of the engine, the empty
rails of the track, reaching out toward the horizon, threw off
visible layers of heat. The telegraph key clicked incessantly.

"So I'm going to quit," Dyke remarked after a while, his anger
somewhat subsided. "My brother and I will take up this hop
ranch. I've saved a good deal in the last ten years, and there
ought to be money in hops."

Presley went on, remounting his bicycle, wheeling silently
through the deserted streets of the decayed and dying Mexican
town. It was the hour of the siesta. Nobody was about. There
was no business in the town. It was too close to Bonneville for
that. Before the railroad came, and in the days when the raising
of cattle was the great industry of the country, it had enjoyed a
fierce and brilliant life. Now it was moribund. The drug store,
the two bar-rooms, the hotel at the corner of the old Plaza, and
the shops where Mexican "curios" were sold to those occasional
Eastern tourists who came to visit the Mission of San Juan,
sufficed for the town's activity.

At Solotari's, the restaurant on the Plaza, diagonally across
from the hotel, Presley ate his long-deferred Mexican dinner--an
omelette in Spanish-Mexican style, frijoles and tortillas, a
salad, and a glass of white wine. In a corner of the room,
during the whole course of his dinner, two young Mexicans (one of
whom was astonishingly handsome, after the melodramatic fashion
of his race) and an old fellow! the centenarian of the town,
decrepit beyond belief, sang an interminable love-song to the
accompaniment of a guitar and an accordion.

These Spanish-Mexicans, decayed, picturesque, vicious, and
romantic, never failed to interest Presley. A few of them still
remained in Guadalajara, drifting from the saloon to the
restaurant, and from the restaurant to the Plaza, relics of a
former generation, standing for a different order of things,
absolutely idle, living God knew how, happy with their cigarette,
their guitar, their glass of mescal, and their siesta. The
centenarian remembered Fremont and Governor Alvarado, and the
bandit Jesus Tejeda, and the days when Los Muertos was a Spanish
grant, a veritable principality, leagues in extent, and when
there was never a fence from Visalia to Fresno. Upon this
occasion, Presley offered the old man a drink of mescal, and
excited him to talk of the things he remembered. Their talk was
in Spanish, a language with which Presley was familiar.

"De La Cuesta held the grant of Los Muertos in those days," the
centenarian said; "a grand man. He had the power of life and
death over his people, and there was no law but his word. There
was no thought of wheat then, you may believe. It was all cattle
in those days, sheep, horses--steers, not so many--and if money
was scarce, there was always plenty to eat, and clothes enough
for all, and wine, ah, yes, by the vat, and oil too; the Mission
Fathers had that. Yes, and there was wheat as well, now that I
come to think; but a very little--in the field north of the
Mission where now it is the Seed ranch; wheat fields were there,
and also a vineyard, all on Mission grounds. Wheat, olives, and
the vine; the Fathers planted those, to provide the elements of
the Holy Sacrament--bread, oil, and wine, you understand. It was
like that, those industries began in California--from the Church;
and now," he put his chin in the air, "what would Father Ullivari
have said to such a crop as Senor Derrick plants these days? Ten
thousand acres of wheat! Nothing but wheat from the Sierra to
the Coast Range. I remember when De La Cuesta was married. He
had never seen the young lady, only her miniature portrait,
painted"--he raised a shoulder--"I do not know by whom, small, a
little thing to be held in the palm. But he fell in love with
that, and marry her he would. The affair was arranged between
him and the girl's parents. But when the time came that De La
Cuesta was to go to Monterey to meet and marry the girl, behold,
Jesus Tejeda broke in upon the small rancheros near Terrabella.
It was no time for De La Cuesta to be away, so he sent his
brother Esteban to Monterey to marry the girl by proxy for him.
I went with Esteban. We were a company, nearly a hundred men.
And De La Cuesta sent a horse for the girl to ride, white, pure
white; and the saddle was of red leather; the head-stall, the
bit, and buckles, all the metal work, of virgin silver. Well,
there was a ceremony in the Monterey Mission, and Esteban, in the
name of his brother, was married to the girl. On our way back,
De La Cuesta rode out to meet us. His company met ours at Agatha
dos Palos. Never will I forget De La Cuesta's face as his eyes
fell upon the girl. It was a look, a glance, come and gone like
THAT," he snapped his fingers. "No one but I saw it, but I was
close by. There was no mistaking that look. De La Cuesta was
disappointed."

"And the girl?" demanded Presley.

"She never knew. Ah, he was a grand gentleman, De La Cuesta.
Always he treated her as a queen. Never was husband more
devoted, more respectful, more chivalrous. But love?" The old
fellow put his chin in the air, shutting his eyes in a knowing
fashion. "It was not there. I could tell. They were married
over again at the Mission San Juan de Guadalajara--OUR Mission--
and for a week all the town of Guadalajara was in fete. There
were bull-fights in the Plaza--this very one--for five days, and
to each of his tenants-in-chief, De La Cuesta gave a horse, a
barrel of tallow, an ounce of silver, and half an ounce of gold
dust. Ah, those were days. That was a gay life. This"--he made
a comprehensive gesture with his left hand--"this is stupid."

"You may well say that," observed Presley moodily, discouraged by
the other's talk. All his doubts and uncertainty had returned to
him. Never would he grasp the subject of his great poem. To-
day, the life was colourless. Romance was dead. He had lived
too late. To write of the past was not what he desired. Reality
was what he longed for, things that he had seen. Yet how to make
this compatible with romance. He rose, putting on his hat,
offering the old man a cigarette. The centenarian accepted with
the air of a grandee, and extended his horn snuff-box. Presley
shook his head.

"I was born too late for that," he declared, "for that, and for
many other things. Adios."

"You are travelling to-day, senor?"

"A little turn through the country, to get the kinks out of the
muscles," Presley answered. "I go up into the Quien Sabe, into
the high country beyond the Mission."

"Ah, the Quien Sabe rancho. The sheep are grazing there this
week."

Solotari, the keeper of the restaurant, explained:

"Young Annixter sold his wheat stubble on the ground to the sheep
raisers off yonder;" he motioned eastward toward the Sierra
foothills. "Since Sunday the herd has been down. Very clever,
that young Annixter. He gets a price for his stubble, which else
he would have to burn, and also manures his land as the sheep
move from place to place. A true Yankee, that Annixter, a good
gringo."

After his meal, Presley once more mounted his bicycle, and
leaving the restaurant and the Plaza behind him, held on through
the main street of the drowsing town--the street that farther on
developed into the road which turned abruptly northward and led
onward through the hop-fields and the Quien Sabe ranch toward the
Mission of San Juan.

The Home ranch of the Quien Sabe was in the little triangle
bounded on the south by the railroad, on the northwest by
Broderson Creek, and on the east by the hop fields and the
Mission lands. It was traversed in all directions, now by the
trail from Hooven's, now by the irrigating ditch--the same which
Presley had crossed earlier in the day--and again by the road
upon which Presley then found himself. In its centre were
Annixter's ranch house and barns, topped by the skeleton-like
tower of the artesian well that was to feed the irrigating ditch.
Farther on, the course of Broderson Creek was marked by a curved
line of grey-green willows, while on the low hills to the north,
as Presley advanced, the ancient Mission of San Juan de
Guadalajara, with its belfry tower and red-tiled roof, began to
show itself over the crests of the venerable pear trees that
clustered in its garden.

When Presley reached Annixter's ranch house, he found young
Annixter himself stretched in his hammock behind the mosquito-bar
on the front porch, reading "David Copperfield," and gorging
himself with dried prunes.

Annixter--after the two had exchanged greetings--complained of
terrific colics all the preceding night. His stomach was out of
whack, but you bet he knew how to take care of himself; the last
spell, he had consulted a doctor at Bonneville, a gibbering busy-
face who had filled him up to the neck with a dose of some
hogwash stuff that had made him worse--a healthy lot the doctors
knew, anyhow. HIS case was peculiar. HE knew; prunes were what
he needed, and by the pound.

Annixter, who worked the Quien Sabe ranch--some four thousand
acres of rich clay and heavy loams--was a very young man, younger
even than Presley, like him a college graduate. He looked never
a year older than he was. He was smooth-shaven and lean built.
But his youthful appearance was offset by a certain male cast of
countenance, the lower lip thrust out, the chin large and deeply
cleft. His university course had hardened rather than polished
him. He still remained one of the people, rough almost to
insolence, direct in speech, intolerant in his opinions, relying
upon absolutely no one but himself; yet, with all this, of an
astonishing degree of intelligence, and possessed of an executive
ability little short of positive genius. He was a ferocious
worker, allowing himself no pleasures, and exacting the same
degree of energy from all his subordinates. He was widely hated,
and as widely trusted. Every one spoke of his crusty temper and
bullying disposition, invariably qualifying the statement with a
commendation of his resources and capabilities. The devil of a
driver, a hard man to get along with, obstinate, contrary,
cantankerous; but brains! No doubt of that; brains to his boots.
One would like to see the man who could get ahead of him on a
deal. Twice he had been shot at, once from ambush on Osterman's
ranch, and once by one of his own men whom he had kicked from the
sacking platform of his harvester for gross negligence. At
college, he had specialised on finance, political economy, and
scientific agriculture. After his graduation (he stood almost at
the very top of his class) he had returned and obtained the
degree of civil engineer. Then suddenly he had taken a notion
that a practical knowledge of law was indispensable to a modern
farmer. In eight months he did the work of three years, studying
for his bar examinations. His method of study was
characteristic. He reduced all the material of his text-books to
notes. Tearing out the leaves of these note-books, he pasted
them upon the walls of his room; then, in his shirt-sleeves, a
cheap cigar in his teeth, his hands in his pockets, he walked
around and around the room, scowling fiercely at his notes,
memorising, devouring, digesting. At intervals, he drank great
cupfuls of unsweetened, black coffee. When the bar examinations
were held, he was admitted at the very head of all the
applicants, and was complimented by the judge. Immediately
afterwards, he collapsed with nervous prostration; his stomach
"got out of whack," and he all but died in a Sacramento boarding-
house, obstinately refusing to have anything to do with doctors,
whom he vituperated as a rabble of quacks, dosing himself with a
patent medicine and stuffing himself almost to bursting with
liver pills and dried prunes.

He had taken a trip to Europe after this sickness to put himself
completely to rights. He intended to be gone a year, but
returned at the end of six weeks, fulminating abuse of European
cooking. Nearly his entire time had been spent in Paris; but of
this sojourn he had brought back but two souvenirs, an electro-
plated bill-hook and an empty bird cage which had tickled his
fancy immensely.

He was wealthy. Only a year previous to this his father--a
widower, who had amassed a fortune in land speculation--had died,
and Annixter, the only son, had come into the inheritance.

For Presley, Annixter professed a great admiration, holding in
deep respect the man who could rhyme words, deferring to him
whenever there was question of literature or works of fiction.
No doubt, there was not much use in poetry, and as for novels, to
his mind, there were only Dickens's works. Everything else was a
lot of lies. But just the same, it took brains to grind out a
poem. It wasn't every one who could rhyme "brave" and "glaive,"
and make sense out of it. Sure not.

But Presley's case was a notable exception. On no occasion was
Annixter prepared to accept another man's opinion without
reserve. In conversation with him, it was almost impossible to
make any direct statement, however trivial, that he would accept
without either modification or open contradiction. He had a
passion for violent discussion. He would argue upon every
subject in the range of human knowledge, from astronomy to the
tariff, from the doctrine of predestination to the height of a
horse. Never would he admit himself to be mistaken; when
cornered, he would intrench himself behind the remark, "Yes,
that's all very well. In some ways, it is, and then, again, in
some ways, it ISN'T."

Singularly enough, he and Presley were the best of friends. More
than once, Presley marvelled at this state of affairs, telling
himself that he and Annixter had nothing in common. In all his
circle of acquaintances, Presley was the one man with whom
Annixter had never quarrelled. The two men were diametrically
opposed in temperament. Presley was easy-going; Annixter, alert.
Presley was a confirmed dreamer, irresolute, inactive, with a
strong tendency to melancholy; the young farmer was a man of
affairs, decisive, combative, whose only reflection upon his
interior economy was a morbid concern in the vagaries of his
stomach. Yet the two never met without a mutual pleasure, taking
a genuine interest in each other's affairs, and often putting
themselves to great inconvenience to be of trifling service to
help one another.

As a last characteristic, Annixter pretended to be a woman-hater,
for no other reason than that he was a very bull-calf of
awkwardness in feminine surroundings. Feemales! Rot! There was
a fine way for a man to waste his time and his good money, lally
gagging with a lot of feemales. No, thank you; none of it in
HIS, if you please. Once only he had an affair--a timid, little
creature in a glove-cleaning establishment in Sacramento, whom he
had picked up, Heaven knew how. After his return to his ranch, a
correspondence had been maintained between the two, Annixter
taking the precaution to typewrite his letters, and never
affixing his signature, in an excess of prudence. He furthermore
made carbon copies of all his letters, filing them away in a
compartment of his safe. Ah, it would be a clever feemale who
would get him into a mess. Then, suddenly smitten with a panic
terror that he had committed himself, that he was involving
himself too deeply, he had abruptly sent the little woman about
her business. It was his only love affair. After that, he kept
himself free. No petticoats should ever have a hold on him.
Sure not.

As Presley came up to the edge of the porch, pushing his bicycle
in front of him, Annixter excused himself for not getting up,
alleging that the cramps returned the moment he was off his back.

"What are you doing up this way?" he demanded.

"Oh, just having a look around," answered Presley. "How's the
ranch?"

"Say," observed the other, ignoring his question, "what's this I
hear about Derrick giving his tenants the bounce, and working Los
Muertos himself--working ALL his land?"

Presley made a sharp movement of impatience with his free hand.
"I've heard nothing else myself since morning. I suppose it must
be so."

"Huh!" grunted Annixter, spitting out a prune stone. "You give
Magnus Derrick my compliments and tell him he's a fool."
"What do you mean?"

"I suppose Derrick thinks he's still running his mine, and that
the same principles will apply to getting grain out of the earth
as to getting gold. Oh, let him go on and see where he brings
up. That's right, there's your Western farmer," he exclaimed
contemptuously. "Get the guts out of your land; work it to
death; never give it a rest. Never alternate your crop, and then
when your soil is exhausted, sit down and roar about hard times."

"I suppose Magnus thinks the land has had rest enough these last
two dry seasons," observed Presley. "He has raised no crop to
speak of for two years. The land has had a good rest."

"Ah, yes, that sounds well," Annixter contradicted, unwilling to
be convinced. "In a way, the land's been rested, and then,
again, in a way, it hasn't."

But Presley, scenting an argument, refrained from answering, and
bethought himself of moving on.

"I'm going to leave my wheel here for a while, Buck," he said,
"if you don't mind. I'm going up to the spring, and the road is
rough between here and there."

"Stop in for dinner on your way back," said Annixter. "There'll
be a venison steak. One of the boys got a deer over in the
foothills last week. Out of season, but never mind that. I
can't eat it. This stomach of mine wouldn't digest sweet oil to-
day. Get here about six."

"Well, maybe I will, thank you," said Presley, moving off. "By
the way," he added, "I see your barn is about done."

"You bet," answered Annixter. "In about a fortnight now she'll
be all ready."

"It's a big barn," murmured Presley, glancing around the angle of
the house toward where the great structure stood.

"Guess we'll have to have a dance there before we move the stock
in," observed Annixter. "That's the custom all around here."

Presley took himself off, but at the gate Annixter called after
him, his mouth full of prunes, "Say, take a look at that herd of
sheep as you go up. They are right off here to the east of the
road, about half a mile from here. I guess that's the biggest
lot of sheep YOU ever saw. You might write a poem about 'em.
Lamb--ram; sheep graze--sunny days. Catch on?"

Beyond Broderson Creek, as Presley advanced, tramping along on
foot now, the land opened out again into the same vast spaces of
dull brown earth, sprinkled with stubble, such as had been
characteristic of Derrick's ranch. To the east the reach seemed
infinite, flat, cheerless, heat-ridden, unrolling like a gigantic
scroll toward the faint shimmer of the distant horizons, with
here and there an isolated live-oak to break the sombre monotony.
But bordering the road to the westward, the surface roughened and
raised, clambering up to the higher ground, on the crest of which
the old Mission and its surrounding pear trees were now plainly
visible.

Just beyond the Mission, the road bent abruptly eastward,
striking off across the Seed ranch. But Presley left the road at
this point, going on across the open fields. There was no longer
any trail. It was toward three o'clock. The sun still spun, a
silent, blazing disc, high in the heavens, and tramping through
the clods of uneven, broken plough was fatiguing work. The slope
of the lowest foothills begun, the surface of the country became
rolling, and, suddenly, as he topped a higher ridge, Presley came
upon the sheep.

Already he had passed the larger part of the herd--an intervening
rise of ground having hidden it from sight. Now, as he turned
half way about, looking down into the shallow hollow between him
and the curve of the creek, he saw them very plainly. The fringe
of the herd was some two hundred yards distant, but its farther
side, in that illusive shimmer of hot surface air, seemed miles
away. The sheep were spread out roughly in the shape of a figure
eight, two larger herds connected by a smaller, and were headed
to the southward, moving slowly, grazing on the wheat stubble as
they proceeded. But the number seemed incalculable. Hundreds
upon hundreds upon hundreds of grey, rounded backs, all exactly
alike, huddled, close-packed, alive, hid the earth from sight.
It was no longer an aggregate of individuals. It was a mass--a
compact, solid, slowly moving mass, huge, without form, like a
thick-pressed growth of mushrooms, spreading out in all
directions over the earth. From it there arose a vague murmur,
confused, inarticulate, like the sound of very distant surf,
while all the air in the vicinity was heavy with the warm,
ammoniacal odour of the thousands of crowding bodies.

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