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Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol - "Taras Bulba and Other Tales"

Anthony Hope - "Dolly Dialogues"

F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau - "The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther"

Charles Dickens - "To be Read at Dusk"

The Octopus, by Frank Norris

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




As from a pinnacle, Presley, from where he now stood, dominated
the entire country. The sun had begun to set, everything in the
range of his vision was overlaid with a sheen of gold.

First, close at hand, it was the Seed ranch, carpeting the little
hollow behind the Mission with a spread of greens, some dark,
some vivid, some pale almost to yellowness. Beyond that was the
Mission itself, its venerable campanile, in whose arches hung the
Spanish King's bells, already glowing ruddy in the sunset.
Farther on, he could make out Annixter's ranch house, marked by
the skeleton-like tower of the artesian well, and, a little
farther to the east, the huddled, tiled roofs of Guadalajara.
Far to the west and north, he saw Bonneville very plain, and the
dome of the courthouse, a purple silhouette against the glare of
the sky. Other points detached themselves, swimming in a golden
mist, projecting blue shadows far before them; the mammoth live-
oak by Hooven's, towering superb and magnificent; the line of
eucalyptus trees, behind which he knew was the Los Muertos ranch
house--his home; the watering-tank, the great iron-hooped tower
of wood that stood at the joining of the Lower Road and the
County Road; the long wind-break of poplar trees and the white
walls of Caraher's saloon on the County Road.

But all this seemed to be only foreground, a mere array of
accessories--a mass of irrelevant details. Beyond Annixter's,
beyond Guadalajara, beyond the Lower Road, beyond Broderson
Creek, on to the south and west, infinite, illimitable,
stretching out there under the sheen of the sunset forever and
forever, flat, vast, unbroken, a huge scroll, unrolling between
the horizons, spread the great stretches of the ranch of Los
Muertos, bare of crops, shaved close in the recent harvest. Near
at hand were hills, but on that far southern horizon only the
curve of the great earth itself checked the view. Adjoining Los
Muertos, and widening to the west, opened the Broderson ranch.
The Osterman ranch to the northwest carried on the great sweep of
landscape; ranch after ranch. Then, as the imagination itself
expanded under the stimulus of that measureless range of vision,
even those great ranches resolved themselves into mere
foreground, mere accessories, irrelevant details. Beyond the
fine line of the horizons, over the curve of the globe, the
shoulder of the earth, were other ranches, equally vast, and
beyond these, others, and beyond these, still others, the
immensities multiplying, lengthening out vaster and vaster. 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. At long intervals, a faint
breath of wind out of the south passed slowly over the levels of
the baked and empty earth, accentuating the silence, marking off
the stillness. It seemed to exhale from the land itself, a
prolonged sigh as of deep fatigue. 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, the infinite repose of the
colossus, benignant, eternal, strong, the nourisher of nations,
the feeder of an entire world.
Ha! there it was, his epic, his inspiration, his West, his
thundering progression of hexameters. A sudden uplift, a sense
of exhilaration, of physical exaltation appeared abruptly to
sweep Presley from his feet. As from a point high above the
world, he seemed to dominate a universe, a whole order of things.
He was dizzied, stunned, stupefied, his morbid supersensitive
mind reeling, drunk with the intoxication of mere immensity.
Stupendous ideas for which there were no names drove headlong
through his brain. Terrible, formless shapes, vague figures,
gigantic, monstrous, distorted, whirled at a gallop through his
imagination.

He started homeward, still in his dream, descending from the
hill, emerging from the canyon, and took the short cut straight
across the Quien Sabe ranch, leaving Guadalajara far to his left.
He tramped steadily on through the wheat stubble, walking fast,
his head in a whirl.

Never had he so nearly grasped his inspiration as at that moment
on the hilltop. Even now, though the sunset was fading, though
the wide reach of valley was shut from sight, it still kept him
company. Now the details came thronging back--the component
parts of his poem, the signs and symbols of the West. It was
there, close at hand, he had been in touch with it all day. It
was in the centenarian's vividly coloured reminiscences--De La
Cuesta, holding his grant from the Spanish crown, with his power
of life and death; the romance of his marriage; the white horse
with its pillion of red leather and silver bridle mountings; the
bull-fights in the Plaza; the gifts of gold dust, and horses and
tallow. It was in Vanamee's strange history, the tragedy of his
love; Angele Varian, with her marvellous loveliness; the Egyptian
fulness of her lips, the perplexing upward slant of her violet
eyes, bizarre, oriental; her white forehead made three cornered
by her plaits of gold hair; the mystery of the Other; her death
at the moment of her child's birth. It was in Vanamee's flight
into the wilderness; the story of the Long Trail, the sunsets
behind the altar-like mesas, the baking desolation of the
deserts; the strenuous, fierce life of forgotten towns, down
there, far off, lost below the horizons of the southwest; the
sonorous music of unfamiliar names--Quijotoa, Uintah, Sonora,
Laredo, Uncompahgre. It was in the Mission, with its cracked
bells, its decaying walls, its venerable sun dial, its fountain
and old garden, and in the Mission Fathers themselves, the
priests, the padres, planting the first wheat and oil and wine to
produce the elements of the Sacrament--a trinity of great
industries, taking their rise in a religious rite.

Abruptly, as if in confirmation, Presley heard the sound of a
bell from the direction of the Mission itself. It was the de
Profundis, a note of the Old World; of the ancient regime, an
echo from the hillsides of mediaeval Europe, sounding there in
this new land, unfamiliar and strange at this end-of-the-century
time.

By now, however, it was dark. Presley hurried forward. He came
to the line fence of the Quien Sabe ranch. Everything was very
still. The stars were all out. There was not a sound other than
the de Profundis, still sounding from very far away. At long
intervals the great earth sighed dreamily in its sleep. All
about, the feeling of absolute peace and quiet and security and
untroubled happiness and content seemed descending from the stars
like a benediction. The beauty of his poem, its idyl, came to
him like a caress; that alone had been lacking. It was that,
perhaps, which had left it hitherto incomplete. At last he was
to grasp his song in all its entity.
But suddenly there was an interruption. Presley had climbed the
fence at the limit of the Quien Sabe ranch. Beyond was Los
Muertos, but between the two ran the railroad. He had only time
to jump back upon the embankment when, with a quivering of all
the earth, a locomotive, single, unattached, shot by him with a
roar, filling the air with the reek of hot oil, vomiting smoke
and sparks; its enormous eye, cyclopean, red, throwing a glare
far in advance, shooting by in a sudden crash of confused
thunder; filling the night with the terrific clamour of its iron
hoofs.

Abruptly Presley remembered. This must be the crack passenger
engine of which Dyke had told him, the one delayed by the
accident on the Bakersfield division and for whose passage the
track had been opened all the way to Fresno.

Before Presley could recover from the shock of the irruption,
while the earth was still vibrating, the rails still humming, the
engine was far away, flinging the echo of its frantic gallop over
all the valley. For a brief instant it roared with a hollow
diapason on the Long Trestle over Broderson Creek, then plunged
into a cutting farther on, the quivering glare of its fires
losing itself in the night, its thunder abruptly diminishing to a
subdued and distant humming. All at once this ceased. The
engine was gone.

But the moment the noise of the engine lapsed, Presley--about to
start forward again--was conscious of a confusion of lamentable
sounds that rose into the night from out the engine's wake.
Prolonged cries of agony, sobbing wails of infinite pain, heart-
rending, pitiful.

The noises came from a little distance. He ran down the track,
crossing the culvert, over the irrigating ditch, and at the head
of the long reach of track--between the culvert and the Long
Trestle--paused abruptly, held immovable at the sight of the
ground and rails all about him.

In some way, the herd of sheep--Vanamee's herd--had found a
breach in the wire fence by the right of way and had wandered out
upon the tracks. A band had been crossing just at the moment of
the engine's passage. The pathos of it was beyond expression.
It was a slaughter, a massacre of innocents. The iron monster
had charged full into the midst, merciless, inexorable. To the
right and left, all the width of the right of way, the little
bodies had been flung; backs were snapped against the fence
posts; brains knocked out. Caught in the barbs of the wire,
wedged in, the bodies hung suspended. Under foot it was
terrible. The black blood, winking in the starlight, seeped down
into the clinkers between the ties with a prolonged sucking
murmur.

Presley turned away, horror-struck, sick at heart, overwhelmed
with a quick burst of irresistible compassion for this brute
agony he could not relieve. The sweetness was gone from the
evening, the sense of peace, of security, and placid contentment
was stricken from the landscape. The hideous ruin in the
engine's path drove all thought of his poem from his mind. The
inspiration vanished like a mist. The de Profundis had ceased to
ring.

He hurried on across the Los Muertos ranch, almost running, even
putting his hands over his ears till he was out of hearing
distance of that all but human distress. Not until he was beyond
ear-shot did he pause, looking back, listening. The night had
shut down again. For a moment the silence was profound,
unbroken.

Then, faint and prolonged, across the levels of the ranch, he
heard the engine whistling for Bonneville. Again and again, at
rapid intervals in its flying course, it whistled for road
crossings, for sharp curves, for trestles; ominous notes, hoarse,
bellowing, ringing with the accents of menace and defiance; and
abruptly Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping
monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single eye,
cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now
as the symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible, flinging the echo
of its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood
and destruction in its path; the leviathan, with tentacles of
steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron-
hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus.


CHAPTER II


On the following morning, Harran Derrick was up and about by a
little after six o'clock, and a quarter of an hour later had
breakfast in the kitchen of the ranch house, preferring not to
wait until the Chinese cook laid the table in the regular dining-
room. He scented a hard day's work ahead of him, and was anxious
to be at it betimes. He was practically the manager of Los
Muertos, and, with the aid of his foreman and three division
superintendents, carried forward nearly the entire direction of
the ranch, occupying himself with the details of his father's
plans, executing his orders, signing contracts, paying bills, and
keeping the books.

For the last three weeks little had been done. The crop--such as
it was--had been harvested and sold, and there had been a general
relaxation of activity for upwards of a month. Now, however, the
fall was coming on, the dry season was about at its end; any time
after the twentieth of the month the first rains might be
expected, softening the ground, putting it into condition for the
plough. Two days before this, Harran had notified his
superintendents on Three and Four to send in such grain as they
had reserved for seed. On Two the wheat had not even shown
itself above the ground, while on One, the Home ranch, which was
under his own immediate supervision, the seed had already been
graded and selected.

It was Harran's intention to commence blue-stoning his seed that
day, a delicate and important process which prevented rust and
smut appearing in the crop when the wheat should come up. But,
furthermore, he wanted to find time to go to Guadalajara to meet
the Governor on the morning train. His day promised to be busy.

But as Harran was finishing his last cup of coffee, Phelps, the
foreman on the Home ranch, who also looked after the storage
barns where the seed was kept, presented himself, cap in hand, on
the back porch by the kitchen door.

"I thought I'd speak to you about the seed from Four, sir," he
said. "That hasn't been brought in yet."

Harran nodded.

"I'll see about it. You've got all the blue-stone you want, have
you, Phelps?" and without waiting for an answer he added, "Tell
the stableman I shall want the team about nine o'clock to go to
Guadalajara. Put them in the buggy. The bays, you understand."
When the other had gone, Harran drank off the rest of his coffee,
and, rising, passed through the dining-room and across a stone-
paved hallway with a glass roof into the office just beyond.

The office was the nerve-centre of the entire ten thousand acres
of Los Muertos, but its appearance and furnishings were not in
the least suggestive of a farm. It was divided at about its
middle by a wire railing, painted green and gold, and behind this
railing were the high desks where the books were kept, the safe,
the letter-press and letter-files, and Harran's typewriting
machine. A great map of Los Muertos with every water-course,
depression, and elevation, together with indications of the
varying depths of the clays and loams in the soil, accurately
plotted, hung against the wall between the windows, while near at
hand by the safe was the telephone.

But, no doubt, the most significant object in the office was the
ticker. This was an innovation in the San Joaquin, an idea of
shrewd, quick-witted young Annixter, which Harran and Magnus
Derrick had been quick to adopt, and after them Broderson and
Osterman, and many others of the wheat growers of the county.
The offices of the ranches were thus connected by wire with San
Francisco, and through that city with Minneapolis, Duluth,
Chicago, New York, and at last, and most important of all, with
Liverpool. Fluctuations in the price of the world's crop during
and after the harvest thrilled straight to the office of Los
Muertos, to that of the Quien Sabe, to Osterman's, and to
Broderson's. During a flurry in the Chicago wheat pits in the
August of that year, which had affected even the San Francisco
market, Harran and Magnus had sat up nearly half of one night
watching the strip of white tape jerking unsteadily from the
reel. At such moments they no longer felt their individuality.
The ranch became merely the part of an enormous whole, a unit in
the vast agglomeration of wheat land the whole world round,
feeling the effects of causes thousands of miles distant--a
drought on the prairies of Dakota, a rain on the plains of India,
a frost on the Russian steppes, a hot wind on the llanos of the
Argentine.

Harran crossed over to the telephone and rang six bells, the call
for the division house on Four. It was the most distant, the
most isolated point on all the ranch, situated at its far
southeastern extremity, where few people ever went, close to the
line fence, a dot, a speck, lost in the immensity of the open
country. By the road it was eleven miles distant from the
office, and by the trail to Hooven's and the Lower Road all of
nine.

"How about that seed?" demanded Harran when he had got Cutter on
the line.

The other made excuses for an unavoidable delay, and was adding
that he was on the point of starting out, when Harran cut in
with:

"You had better go the trail. It will save a little time and I
am in a hurry. Put your sacks on the horses' backs. And,
Cutter, if you see Hooven when you go by his place, tell him I
want him, and, by the way, take a look at the end of the
irrigating ditch when you get to it. See how they are getting
along there and if Billy wants anything. Tell him we are
expecting those new scoops down to-morrow or next day and to get
along with what he has until then. . . . How's everything on
Four? . . . All right, then. Give your seed to Phelps when you
get here if I am not about. I am going to Guadalajara to meet
the Governor. He's coming down to-day. And that makes me think;
we lost the case, you know. I had a letter from the Governor
yesterday. . . . Yes, hard luck. S. Behrman did us up. Well,
good-bye, and don't lose any time with that seed. I want to
blue-stone to-day."

After telephoning Cutter, Harran put on his hat, went over to the
barns, and found Phelps. Phelps had already cleaned out the vat
which was to contain the solution of blue-stone, and was now at
work regrading the seed. Against the wall behind him ranged the
row of sacks. Harran cut the fastenings of these and examined
the contents carefully, taking handfuls of wheat from each and
allowing it to run through his fingers, or nipping the grains
between his nails, testing their hardness.

The seed was all of the white varieties of wheat and of a very
high grade, the berries hard and heavy, rigid and swollen with
starch.

"If it was all like that, sir, hey?" observed Phelps.

Harran put his chin in the air.

"Bread would be as good as cake, then," he answered, going from
sack to sack, inspecting the contents and consulting the tags
affixed to the mouths.

"Hello," he remarked, "here's a red wheat. Where did this come
from?"

"That's that red Clawson we sowed to the piece on Four, north the
Mission Creek, just to see how it would do here. We didn't get a
very good catch."

"We can't do better than to stay by White Sonora and Propo,"
remarked Harran. "We've got our best results with that, and
European millers like it to mix with the Eastern wheats that have
more gluten than ours. That is, if we have any wheat at all next
year."

A feeling of discouragement for the moment bore down heavily upon
him. At intervals this came to him and for the moment it was
overpowering. The idea of "what's-the-use" was upon occasion a
veritable oppression. Everything seemed to combine to lower the
price of wheat. The extension of wheat areas always exceeded
increase of population; competition was growing fiercer every
year. The farmer's profits were the object of attack from a
score of different quarters. It was a flock of vultures
descending upon a common prey--the commission merchant, the
elevator combine, the mixing-house ring, the banks, the warehouse
men, the labouring man, and, above all, the railroad. Steadily
the Liverpool buyers cut and cut and cut. Everything, every
element of the world's markets, tended to force down the price to
the lowest possible figure at which it could be profitably
farmed. Now it was down to eighty-seven. It was at that figure
the crop had sold that year; and to think that the Governor had
seen wheat at two dollars and five cents in the year of the
Turko-Russian War!

He turned back to the house after giving Phelps final directions,
gloomy, disheartened, his hands deep in his pockets, wondering
what was to be the outcome. So narrow had the margin of profit
shrunk that a dry season meant bankruptcy to the smaller farmers
throughout all the valley. He knew very well how widespread had
been the distress the last two years. With their own tenants on
Los Muertos, affairs had reached the stage of desperation.
Derrick had practically been obliged to "carry" Hooven and some
of the others. The Governor himself had made almost nothing
during the last season; a third year like the last, with the
price steadily sagging, meant nothing else but ruin.

But here he checked himself. Two consecutive dry seasons in
California were almost unprecedented; a third would be beyond
belief, and the complete rest for nearly all the land was a
compensation. They had made no money, that was true; but they
had lost none. Thank God, the homestead was free of mortgage;
one good season would more than make up the difference.

He was in a better mood by the time he reached the driveway that
led up to the ranch house, and as he raised his eyes toward the
house itself, he could not but feel that the sight of his home
was cheering. The ranch house was set in a great grove of
eucalyptus, oak, and cypress, enormous trees growing from out a
lawn that was as green, as fresh, and as well-groomed as any in a
garden in the city. This lawn flanked all one side of the house,
and it was on this side that the family elected to spend most of
its time. The other side, looking out upon the Home ranch toward
Bonneville and the railroad, was but little used. A deep porch
ran the whole length of the house here, and in the lower branches
of a live-oak near the steps Harran had built a little summer
house for his mother. To the left of the ranch house itself,
toward the County Road, was the bunk-house and kitchen for some
of the hands. From the steps of the porch the view to the
southward expanded to infinity. There was not so much as a twig
to obstruct the view. In one leap the eye reached the fine,
delicate line where earth and sky met, miles away. The flat
monotony of the land, clean of fencing, was broken by one spot
only, the roof of the Division Superintendent's house on Three--a
mere speck, just darker than the ground. Cutter's house on Four
was not even in sight. That was below the horizon.

As Harran came up he saw his mother at breakfast. The table had
been set on the porch and Mrs. Derrick, stirring her coffee with
one hand, held open with the other the pages of Walter Pater's
"Marius." At her feet, Princess Nathalie, the white Angora cat,
sleek, over-fed, self-centred, sat on her haunches, industriously
licking at the white fur of her breast, while near at hand, by
the railing of the porch, Presley pottered with a new bicycle
lamp, filling it with oil, adjusting the wicks.

Harran kissed his mother and sat down in a wicker chair on the
porch, removing his hat, running his fingers through his yellow
hair.

Magnus Derrick's wife looked hardly old enough to be the mother
of two such big fellows as Harran and Lyman Derrick. She was not
far into the fifties, and her brown hair still retained much of
its brightness. She could yet be called pretty. Her eyes were
large and easily assumed a look of inquiry and innocence, such as
one might expect to see in a young girl. By disposition she was
retiring; she easily obliterated herself. She was not made for
the harshness of the world, and yet she had known these
harshnesses in her younger days. Magnus had married her when she
was twenty-one years old, at a time when she was a graduate of
some years' standing from the State Normal School and was
teaching literature, music, and penmanship in a seminary in the
town of Marysville. She overworked herself here continually,
loathing the strain of teaching, yet clinging to it with a
tenacity born of the knowledge that it was her only means of
support. Both her parents were dead; she was dependent upon
herself. Her one ambition was to see Italy and the Bay of
Naples. The "Marble Faun," Raphael's "Madonnas" and "Il
Trovatore" were her beau ideals of literature and art. She
dreamed of Italy, Rome, Naples, and the world's great "art-
centres." There was no doubt that her affair with Magnus had
been a love-match, but Annie Payne would have loved any man who
would have taken her out of the droning, heart-breaking routine
of the class and music room. She had followed his fortunes
unquestioningly. First at Sacramento, during the turmoil of his
political career, later on at Placerville in El Dorado County,
after Derrick had interested himself in the Corpus Christi group
of mines, and finally at Los Muertos, where, after selling out
his fourth interest in Corpus Christi, he had turned rancher and
had "come in" on the new tracts of wheat land just thrown open by
the railroad. She had lived here now for nearly ten years. But
never for one moment since the time her glance first lost itself
in the unbroken immensity of the ranches had she known a moment's
content. Continually there came into her pretty, wide-open eyes--
the eyes of a young doe--a look of uneasiness, of distrust, and
aversion. Los Muertos frightened her. She remembered the days
of her young girlhood passed on a farm in eastern Ohio--five
hundred acres, neatly partitioned into the water lot, the cow
pasture, the corn lot, the barley field, and wheat farm; cosey,
comfortable, home-like; where the farmers loved their land,
caressing it, coaxing it, nourishing it as though it were a thing
almost conscious; where the seed was sown by hand, and a single
two-horse plough was sufficient for the entire farm; where the
scythe sufficed to cut the harvest and the grain was thrashed
with flails.

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