The Octopus, by Frank Norris

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"Oh, you don't know and you do know, and maybe and perhaps, and
you're not so sure," vociferated Annixter. "How about ignoring
the value of our improvements? Nothing hazy about THAT
statement, I guess. It says in so many words that any
improvements we make will not be considered when the land is
appraised and that's the same thing, isn't it? The unimproved
land is worth two-fifty an acre; only timber land is worth more
and there's none too much timber about here."

"Well, one thing at a time," said Harran. "The thing for us now
is to get into this primary election and the convention and see
if we can push our men for Railroad Commissioners."

"Right," declared Annixter. He rose, stretching his arms above
his head. "I've about talked all the wind out of me," he said.
"Think I'll be moving along. It's pretty near midnight."

But when Magnus's guests turned their attention to the matter of
returning to their different ranches, they abruptly realised that
the downpour had doubled and trebled in its volume since earlier
in the evening. The fields and roads were veritable seas of
viscid mud, the night absolutely black-dark; assuredly not a
night in which to venture out. Magnus insisted that the three
ranchers should put up at Los Muertos. Osterman accepted at
once, Annixter, after an interminable discussion, allowed himself
to be persuaded, in the end accepting as though granting a
favour. Broderson protested that his wife, who was not well,
would expect him to return that night and would, no doubt, fret
if he did not appear. Furthermore, he lived close by, at the
junction of the County and Lower Road. He put a sack over his
head and shoulders, persistently declining Magnus's offered
umbrella and rubber coat, and hurried away, remarking that he had
no foreman on his ranch and had to be up and about at five the
next morning to put his men to work.

"Fool!" muttered Annixter when the old man had gone. "Imagine
farming a ranch the size of his without a foreman."

Harran showed Osterman and Annixter where they were to sleep, in
adjoining rooms. Magnus soon afterward retired.

Osterman found an excuse for going to bed, but Annixter and
Harran remained in the latter's room, in a haze of blue tobacco
smoke, talking, talking. But at length, at the end of all
argument, Annixter got up, remarking:

"Well, I'm going to turn in. It's nearly two o'clock."

He went to his room, closing the door, and Harran, opening his
window to clear out the tobacco smoke, looked out for a moment
across the country toward the south.

The darkness was profound, impenetrable; the rain fell with an
uninterrupted roar. Near at hand one could hear the sound of
dripping eaves and foliage and the eager, sucking sound of the
drinking earth, and abruptly while Harran stood looking out, one
hand upon the upraised sash, a great puff of the outside air
invaded the room, odourous with the reek of the soaking earth,
redolent with fertility, pungent, heavy, tepid. He closed the
window again and sat for a few moments on the edge of the bed,
one shoe in his hand, thoughtful and absorbed, wondering if his
father would involve himself in this new scheme, wondering if,
after all, he wanted him to.

But suddenly he was aware of a commotion, issuing from the
direction of Annixter's room, and the voice of Annixter himself
upraised in expostulation and exasperation. The door of the room
to which Annixter had been assigned opened with a violent wrench
and an angry voice exclaimed to anybody who would listen:

"Oh, yes, funny, isn't it? In a way, it's funny, and then,
again, in a way it isn't."

The door banged to so that all the windows of the house rattled
in their frames.

Harran hurried out into the dining-room and there met Presley and
his father, who had been aroused as well by Annixter's clamour.
Osterman was there, too, his bald head gleaming like a bulb of
ivory in the light of the lamp that Magnus carried.

"What's all up?" demanded Osterman. "Whatever in the world is
the matter with Buck?"

Confused and terrible sounds came from behind the door of
Annixter's room. A prolonged monologue of grievance, broken by
explosions of wrath and the vague noise of some one in a furious
hurry. All at once and before Harran had a chance to knock on
the door, Annixter flung it open. His face was blazing with
anger, his outthrust lip more prominent than ever, his wiry,
yellow hair in disarray, the tuft on the crown sticking straight
into the air like the upraised hackles of an angry hound.
Evidently he had been dressing himself with the most headlong
rapidity; he had not yet put on his coat and vest, but carried
them over his arm, while with his disengaged hand he kept
hitching his suspenders over his shoulders with a persistent and
hypnotic gesture. Without a moment's pause he gave vent to his
indignation in a torrent of words.

"Ah, yes, in my bed, sloop, aha! I know the man who put it
there," he went on, glaring at Osterman, "and that man is a PIP.
Sloop! Slimy, disgusting stuff; you heard me say I didn't like
it when the Chink passed it to me at dinner--and just for that
reason you put it in my bed, and I stick my feet into it when I
turn in. Funny, isn't it? Oh, yes, too funny for any use. I'd
laugh a little louder if I was you."

"Well, Buck," protested Harran, as he noticed the hat in
Annixter's hand, "you're not going home just for----"

Annixter turned on him with a shout.

"I'll get plumb out of here," he trumpeted. "I won't stay here
another minute."

He swung into his waistcoat and coat, scrabbling at the buttons
in the violence of his emotions. "And I don't know but what it
will make me sick again to go out in a night like this. NO, I
won't stay. Some things are funny, and then, again, there are
some things that are not. Ah, yes, sloop! Well, that's all
right. I can be funny, too, when you come to that. You don't
get a cent of money out of me. You can do your dirty bribery in
your own dirty way. I won't come into this scheme at all. I
wash my hands of the whole business. It's rotten and it's wild-
eyed; it's dirt from start to finish; and you'll all land in
State's prison. You can count me out."

"But, Buck, look here, you crazy fool," cried Harran, "I don't
know who put that stuff in your bed, but I'm not going; to let
you go back to Quien Sabe in a rain like this."

"I know who put it in," clamoured the other, shaking his fists,
"and don't call me Buck and I'll do as I please. I WILL go back
home. I'll get plumb out of here. Sorry I came. Sorry I ever
lent myself to such a disgusting, dishonest, dirty bribery game
as this all to-night. I won't put a dime into it, no, not a
penny."

He stormed to the door leading out upon the porch, deaf to all
reason. Harran and Presley followed him, trying to dissuade him
from going home at that time of night and in such a storm, but
Annixter was not to be placated. He stamped across to the barn
where his horse and buggy had been stabled, splashing through the
puddles under foot, going out of his way to drench himself,
refusing even to allow Presley and Harran to help him harness the
horse.

"What's the use of making a fool of yourself, Annixter?"
remonstrated Presley, as Annixter backed the horse from the
stall. "You act just like a ten-year-old boy. If Osterman wants
to play the goat, why should you help him out?"

"He's a PIP," vociferated Annixter. "You don't understand,
Presley. It runs in my family to hate anything sticky. It's--
it's--it's heredity. How would you like to get into bed at two
in the morning and jam your feet down into a slimy mess like
that? Oh, no. It's not so funny then. And you mark my words,
Mr. Harran Derrick," he continued, as he climbed into the buggy,
shaking the whip toward Harran, "this business we talked over to-
night--I'm OUT of it. It's yellow. It's too CURSED dishonest."

He cut the horse across the back with the whip and drove out into
the pelting rain. In a few seconds the sound of his buggy wheels
was lost in the muffled roar of the downpour.

Harran and Presley closed the barn and returned to the house,
sheltering themselves under a tarpaulin carriage cover. Once
inside, Harran went to remonstrate with Osterman, who was still
up. Magnus had again retired. The house had fallen quiet again.

As Presley crossed the dining-room on the way to his own
apartment in the second story of the house, he paused for a
moment, looking about him. In the dull light of the lowered
lamps, the redwood panelling of the room showed a dark crimson as
though stained with blood. On the massive slab of the dining
table the half-emptied glasses and bottles stood about in the
confusion in which they had been left, reflecting themselves deep
into the polished wood; the glass doors of the case of stuffed
birds was a subdued shimmer; the many-coloured Navajo blanket
over the couch seemed a mere patch of brown.

Around the table the chairs in which the men had sat throughout
the evening still ranged themselves in a semi-circle, vaguely
suggestive of the conference of the past few hours, with all its
possibilities of good and evil, its significance of a future big
with portent. The room was still. Only on the cushions of the
chair that Annixter had occupied, the cat, Princess Nathalie, at
last comfortably settled in her accustomed place, dozed
complacently, her paws tucked under her breast, filling the
deserted room with the subdued murmur of her contented purr.

CHAPTER IV

On the Quien Sabe ranch, in one of its western divisions, near
the line fence that divided it from the Osterman holding, Vanamee
was harnessing the horses to the plough to which he had been
assigned two days before, a stable-boy from the division barn
helping him.

Promptly discharged from the employ of the sheep-raisers after
the lamentable accident near the Long Trestle, Vanamee had
presented himself to Harran, asking for employment. The season
was beginning; on all the ranches work was being resumed. The
rain had put the ground into admirable condition for ploughing,
and Annixter, Broderson, and Osterman all had their gangs at
work. Thus, Vanamee was vastly surprised to find Los Muertos
idle, the horses still in the barns, the men gathering in the
shade of the bunk-house and eating-house, smoking, dozing, or
going aimlessly about, their arms dangling. The ploughs for
which Magnus and Harran were waiting in a fury of impatience had
not yet arrived, and since the management of Los Muertos had
counted upon having these in hand long before this time, no
provision had been made for keeping the old stock in repair; many
of these old ploughs were useless, broken, and out of order; some
had been sold. It could not be said definitely when the new
ploughs would arrive. Harran had decided to wait one week
longer, and then, in case of their non-appearance, to buy a
consignment of the old style of plough from the dealers in
Bonneville. He could afford to lose the money better than he
could afford to lose the season.

Failing of work on Los Muertos, Vanamee had gone to Quien Sabe.
Annixter, whom he had spoken to first, had sent him across the
ranch to one of his division superintendents, and this latter,
after assuring himself of Vanamee's familiarity with horses and
his previous experience--even though somewhat remote--on Los
Muertos, had taken him on as a driver of one of the gang ploughs,
then at work on his division.

The evening before, when the foreman had blown his whistle at six
o'clock, the long line of ploughs had halted upon the instant,
and the drivers, unharnessing their teams, had taken them back to
the division barns--leaving the ploughs as they were in the
furrows. But an hour after daylight the next morning the work
was resumed. After breakfast, Vanamee, riding one horse and
leading the others, had returned to the line of ploughs together
with the other drivers. Now he was busy harnessing the team. At
the division blacksmith shop--temporarily put up--he had been
obliged to wait while one of his lead horses was shod, and he had
thus been delayed quite five minutes. Nearly all the other teams
were harnessed, the drivers on their seats, waiting for the
foreman's signal.

"All ready here?" inquired the foreman, driving up to Vanamee's
team in his buggy.

"All ready, sir," answered Vanamee, buckling the last strap.

He climbed to his seat, shaking out the reins, and turning about,
looked back along the line, then all around him at the landscape
inundated with the brilliant glow of the early morning.

The day was fine. Since the first rain of the season, there had
been no other. Now the sky was without a cloud, pale blue,
delicate, luminous, scintillating with morning. The great brown
earth turned a huge flank to it, exhaling the moisture of the
early dew. The atmosphere, washed clean of dust and mist, was
translucent as crystal. Far off to the east, the hills on the
other side of Broderson Creek stood out against the pallid
saffron of the horizon as flat and as sharply outlined as if
pasted on the sky. The campanile of the ancient Mission of San
Juan seemed as fine as frost work. All about between the
horizons, the carpet of the land unrolled itself to infinity.
But now it was no longer parched with heat, cracked and warped by
a merciless sun, powdered with dust. The rain had done its work;
not a clod that was not swollen with fertility, not a fissure
that did not exhale the sense of fecundity. One could not take a
dozen steps upon the ranches without the brusque sensation that
underfoot the land was alive; roused at last from its sleep,
palpitating with the desire of reproduction. Deep down there in
the recesses of the soil, the great heart throbbed once more,
thrilling with passion, vibrating with desire, offering itself to
the caress of the plough, insistent, eager, imperious. Dimly one
felt the deep-seated trouble of the earth, the uneasy agitation
of its members, the hidden tumult of its womb, demanding to be
made fruitful, to reproduce, to disengage the eternal renascent
germ of Life that stirred and struggled in its loins.

The ploughs, thirty-five in number, each drawn by its team of
ten, stretched in an interminable line, nearly a quarter of a
mile in length, behind and ahead of Vanamee. They were arranged,
as it were, en echelon, not in file--not one directly behind the
other, but each succeeding plough its own width farther in the
field than the one in front of it. Each of these ploughs held
five shears, so that when the entire company was in motion, one
hundred and seventy-five furrows were made at the same instant.
At a distance, the ploughs resembled a great column of field
artillery. Each driver was in his place, his glance alternating
between his horses and the foreman nearest at hand. Other
foremen, in their buggies or buckboards, were at intervals along
the line, like battery lieutenants. Annixter himself, on
horseback, in boots and campaign hat, a cigar in his teeth,
overlooked the scene.

The division superintendent, on the opposite side of the line,
galloped past to a position at the head. For a long moment there
was a silence. A sense of preparedness ran from end to end of
the column. All things were ready, each man in his place. The
day's work was about to begin.

Suddenly, from a distance at the head of the line came the shrill
trilling of a whistle. At once the foreman nearest Vanamee
repeated it, at the same time turning down the line, and waving
one arm. The signal was repeated, whistle answering whistle,
till the sounds lost themselves in the distance. At once the
line of ploughs lost its immobility, moving forward, getting
slowly under way, the horses straining in the traces. A
prolonged movement rippled from team to team, disengaging in its
passage a multitude of sounds---the click of buckles, the creak
of straining leather, the subdued clash of machinery, the
cracking of whips, the deep breathing of nearly four hundred
horses, the abrupt commands and cries of the drivers, and, last
of all, the prolonged, soothing murmur of the thick brown earth
turning steadily from the multitude of advancing shears.

The ploughing thus commenced, continued. The sun rose higher.
Steadily the hundred iron hands kneaded and furrowed and stroked
the brown, humid earth, the hundred iron teeth bit deep into the
Titan's flesh. Perched on his seat, the moist living reins
slipping and tugging in his hands, Vanamee, in the midst of this
steady confusion of constantly varying sensation, sight
interrupted by sound, sound mingling with sight, on this swaying,
vibrating seat, quivering with the prolonged thrill of the earth,
lapsed to a sort of pleasing numbness, in a sense, hypnotised by
the weaving maze of things in which he found himself involved.
To keep his team at an even, regular gait, maintaining the
precise interval, to run his furrows as closely as possible to
those already made by the plough in front--this for the moment
was the entire sum of his duties. But while one part of his
brain, alert and watchful, took cognisance of these matters, all
the greater part was lulled and stupefied with the long monotony
of the affair.

The ploughing, now in full swing, enveloped him in a vague, slow-
moving whirl of things. Underneath him was the jarring, jolting,
trembling machine; not a clod was turned, not an obstacle
encountered, that he did not receive the swift impression of it
through all his body, the very friction of the damp soil, sliding
incessantly from the shiny surface of the shears, seemed to
reproduce itself in his finger-tips and along the back of his
head. He heard the horse-hoofs by the myriads crushing down
easily, deeply, into the loam, the prolonged clinking of trace-
chains, the working of the smooth brown flanks in the harness,
the clatter of wooden hames, the champing of bits, the click of
iron shoes against pebbles, the brittle stubble of the surface
ground crackling and snapping as the furrows turned, the
sonorous, steady breaths wrenched from the deep, labouring
chests, strap-bound, shining with sweat, and all along the line
the voices of the men talking to the horses. Everywhere there
were visions of glossy brown backs, straining, heaving, swollen
with muscle; harness streaked with specks of froth, broad, cup-
shaped hoofs, heavy with brown loam, men's faces red with tan,
blue overalls spotted with axle-grease; muscled hands, the
knuckles whitened in their grip on the reins, and through it all
the ammoniacal smell of the horses, the bitter reek of
perspiration of beasts and men, the aroma of warm leather, the
scent of dead stubble--and stronger and more penetrating than
everything else, the heavy, enervating odour of the upturned,
living earth.

At intervals, from the tops of one of the rare, low swells of the
land, Vanamee overlooked a wider horizon. On the other divisions
of Quien Sabe the same work was in progress. Occasionally he
could see another column of ploughs in the adjoining division--
sometimes so close at hand that the subdued murmur of its
movements reached his ear; sometimes so distant that it resolved
itself into a long, brown streak upon the grey of the ground.
Farther off to the west on the Osterman ranch other columns came
and went, and, once, from the crest of the highest swell on his
division, Vanamee caught a distant glimpse of the Broderson
ranch. There, too, moving specks indicated that the ploughing
was under way. And farther away still, far off there beyond the
fine line of the horizons, over the curve of the globe, the
shoulder of the earth, he knew were other ranches, and beyond
these others, and beyond these still others, the immensities
multiplying to infinity.

Everywhere throughout the great San Joaquin, unseen and unheard,
a thousand ploughs up-stirred the land, tens of thousands of
shears clutched deep into the warm, moist soil.

It was the long stroking caress, vigorous, male, powerful, for
which the Earth seemed panting. The heroic embrace of a
multitude of iron hands, gripping deep into the brown, warm flesh
of the land that quivered responsive and passionate under this
rude advance, so robust as to be almost an assault, so violent as
to be veritably brutal. There, under the sun and under the
speckless sheen of the sky, the wooing of the Titan began, the
vast primal passion, the two world-forces, the elemental Male and
Female, locked in a colossal embrace, at grapples in the throes
of an infinite desire, at once terrible and divine, knowing no
law, untamed, savage, natural, sublime.

From time to time the gang in which Vanamee worked halted on the
signal from foreman or overseer. The horses came to a
standstill, the vague clamour of the work lapsed away. Then the
minutes passed. The whole work hung suspended. All up and down
the line one demanded what had happened. The division
superintendent galloped past, perplexed and anxious. For the
moment, one of the ploughs was out of order, a bolt had slipped,
a lever refused to work, or a machine had become immobilised in
heavy ground, or a horse had lamed himself. Once, even, toward
noon, an entire plough was taken out of the line, so out of gear
that a messenger had to be sent to the division forge to summon
the machinist.

Annixter had disappeared. He had ridden farther on to the other
divisions of his ranch, to watch the work in progress there. At
twelve o'clock, according to his orders, all the division
superintendents put themselves in communication with him by means
of the telephone wires that connected each of the division
houses, reporting the condition of the work, the number of acres
covered, the prospects of each plough traversing its daily
average of twenty miles.

At half-past twelve, Vanamee and the rest of the drivers ate
their lunch in the field, the tin buckets having been distributed
to them that morning after breakfast. But in the evening, the
routine of the previous day was repeated, and Vanamee,
unharnessing his team, riding one horse and leading the others,
returned to the division barns and bunk-house.

It was between six and seven o'clock. The half hundred men of
the gang threw themselves upon the supper the Chinese cooks had
set out in the shed of the eating-house, long as a bowling alley,
unpainted, crude, the seats benches, the table covered with oil
cloth. Overhead a half-dozen kerosene lamps flared and smoked.

The table was taken as if by assault; the clatter of iron knives
upon the tin plates was as the reverberation of hail upon a metal
roof. The ploughmen rinsed their throats with great draughts of
wine, and, their elbows wide, their foreheads flushed, resumed
the attack upon the beef and bread, eating as though they would
never have enough. All up and down the long table, where the
kerosene lamps reflected themselves deep in the oil-cloth cover,
one heard the incessant sounds of mastication, and saw the
uninterrupted movement of great jaws. At every moment one or
another of the men demanded a fresh portion of beef, another pint
of wine, another half-loaf of bread. For upwards of an hour the
gang ate. It was no longer a supper. It was a veritable
barbecue, a crude and primitive feasting, barbaric, homeric.

But in all this scene Vanamee saw nothing repulsive. Presley
would have abhorred it--this feeding of the People, this gorging
of the human animal, eager for its meat. Vanamee, simple,
uncomplicated, living so close to nature and the rudimentary
life, understood its significance. He knew very well that within
a short half-hour after this meal the men would throw themselves
down in their bunks to sleep without moving, inert and stupefied
with fatigue, till the morning. Work, food, and sleep, all life
reduced to its bare essentials, uncomplex, honest, healthy. They
were strong, these men, with the strength of the soil they
worked, in touch with the essential things, back again to the
starting point of civilisation, coarse, vital, real, and sane.

For a brief moment immediately after the meal, pipes were lit,
and the air grew thick with fragrant tobacco smoke. On a corner
of the dining-room table, a game of poker was begun. One of the
drivers, a Swede, produced an accordion; a group on the steps of
the bunk-house listened, with alternate gravity and shouts of
laughter, to the acknowledged story-teller of the gang. But soon
the men began to turn in, stretching themselves at full length on
the horse blankets in the racklike bunks. The sounds of heavy
breathing increased steadily, lights were put out, and before the
afterglow had faded from the sky, the gang was asleep.

Vanamee, however, remained awake. The night was fine, warm; the
sky silver-grey with starlight. By and by there would be a moon.
In the first watch after the twilight, a faint puff of breeze
came up out of the south. From all around, the heavy penetrating
smell of the new-turned earth exhaled steadily into the darkness.
After a while, when the moon came up, he could see the vast brown
breast of the earth turn toward it. Far off, distant objects
came into view: The giant oak tree at Hooven's ranch house near
the irrigating ditch on Los Muertos, the skeleton-like tower of
the windmill on Annixter's Home ranch, the clump of willows along
Broderson Creek close to the Long Trestle, and, last of all, the
venerable tower of the Mission of San Juan on the high ground
beyond the creek.