The Octopus - Frank Norris (novel24 .TXT) 📗

should like to have Annixter as well.”

Magnus was lavishly hospitable. Los Muertos’s doors invariably stood open to all the Derricks’ neighbours, and once in so often Magnus had a few of his intimates to dinner.

As Harran and his father drove along the road toward Annixter’s ranch house, Magnus asked about what had happened during his absence.

He inquired after his wife and the ranch, commenting upon the work on the irrigating ditch. Harran gave him the news of the past week, Dyke’s discharge, his resolve to raise a crop of hops; Vanamee’s return, the killing of the sheep, and Hooven’s petition to remain upon the ranch as Magnus’s tenant. It needed only Harran’s recommendation that the German should remain to have Magnus consent upon the instant. “You know more about it than I, boy,” he said, “and whatever you think is wise shall be done.”

Harran touched the bays with the whip, urging them to their briskest pace. They were not yet at Annixter’s and he was anxious to get back to the ranch house to supervise the blue-stoning of his seed.

“By the way, Governor,” he demanded suddenly, “how is Lyman getting on?”

Lyman, Magnus’s eldest son, had never taken kindly toward ranch life. He resembled his mother more than he did Magnus, and had inherited from her a distaste for agriculture and a tendency toward a profession. At a time when Harran was learning the rudiments of farming, Lyman was entering the State University, and, graduating thence, had spent three years in the study of law. But later on, traits that were particularly his father’s developed. Politics interested him. He told himself he was a born politician, was diplomatic, approachable, had a talent for intrigue, a gift of making friends easily and, most indispensable of all, a veritable genius for putting influential men under obligations to himself. Already he had succeeded in gaining for himself two important offices in the municipal administration of San Francisco—where he had his home—sheriff’s attorney, and, later on, assistant district attorney. But with these small achievements he was by no means satisfied. The largeness of his father’s character, modified in Lyman by a counter-influence of selfishness, had produced in him an inordinate ambition. Where his father during his political career had considered himself only as an exponent of principles he strove to apply, Lyman saw but the office, his own personal aggrandisement. He belonged to the new school, wherein objects were attained not by orations before senates and assemblies, but by sessions of committees, caucuses, compromises and expedients. His goal was to be in fact what Magnus was only in name—governor. Lyman, with shut teeth, had resolved that some day he would sit in the gubernatorial chair in Sacramento.

“Lyman is doing well,” answered Magnus. “I could wish he was more pronounced in his convictions, less willing to compromise, but I believe him to be earnest and to have a talent for government and civics. His ambition does him credit, and if he occupied himself a little more with means and a little less with ends, he would, I am sure, be the ideal servant of the people. But I am not afraid. The time will come when the State will be proud of him.”

As Harran turned the team into the driveway that led up to Annixter’s house, Magnus remarked:

“Harran, isn’t that young Annixter himself on the porch?”

Harran nodded and remarked:

“By the way, Governor, I wouldn’t seem too cordial in your invitation to Annixter. He will be glad to come, I know, but if you seem to want him too much, it is just like his confounded obstinacy to make objections.”

“There is something in that,” observed Magnus, as Harran drew up at the porch of the house. “He is a queer, cross-grained fellow, but in many ways sterling.”

Annixter was lying in the hammock on the porch, precisely as Presley had found him the day before, reading “David Copperfield” and stuffing himself with dried prunes. When he recognised Magnus, however, he got up, though careful to give evidence of the most poignant discomfort. He explained his difficulty at great length, protesting that his stomach was no better than a spongebag. Would Magnus and Harran get down and have a drink? There was whiskey somewhere about.

Magnus, however, declined. He stated his errand, asking Annixter to come over to Los Muertos that evening for seven o’clock dinner. Osterman and Broderson would be there.

At once Annixter, even to Harran’s surprise, put his chin in the air, making excuses, fearing to compromise himself if he accepted too readily. No, he did not think he could get around—was sure of it, in fact. There were certain businesses he had on hand that evening. He had practically made an appointment with a man at Bonneville; then, too, he was thinking of going up to San Francisco to-morrow and needed his sleep; would go to bed early; and besides all that, he was a very sick man; his stomach was out of whack; if he moved about it brought the gripes back. No, they must get along without him.

Magnus, knowing with whom he had to deal, did not urge the point, being convinced that Annixter would argue over the affair the rest of the morning. He resettled himself in the buggy and Harran gathered up the reins.

“Well,” he observed, “you know your business best. Come if you can. We dine at seven.”

“I hear you are going to farm the whole of Los Muertos this season,” remarked Annixter, with a certain note of challenge in his voice.

“We are thinking of it,” replied Magnus.

Annixter grunted scornfully.

“Did you get the message I sent you by Presley?” he began.

Tactless, blunt, and direct, Annixter was quite capable of calling even Magnus a fool to his face. But before he could proceed, S. Behrman in his single buggy turned into the gate, and driving leisurely up to the porch halted on the other side of Magnus’s team.

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” he remarked, nodding to the two Derricks as though he had not seen them earlier in the day. “Mr. Annixter, how do you do?”

“What in hell do YOU want?” demanded Annixter with a stare.

S. Behrman hiccoughed slightly and passed a fat hand over his waistcoat.

“Why, not very much, Mr. Annixter,” he replied, ignoring the belligerency in the young ranchman’s voice, “but I will have to lodge a protest against you, Mr. Annixter, in the matter of keeping your line fence in repair. The sheep were all over the track last night, this side the Long Trestle, and I am afraid they have seriously disturbed our ballast along there. We—the railroad—can’t fence along our right of way. The farmers have the prescriptive right of that, so we have to look to you to keep your fence in repair. I am sorry, but I shall have to protest–-” Annixter returned to the hammock and stretched himself out in it to his full length, remarking tranquilly:

“Go to the devil!”

“It is as much to your interest as to ours that the safety of the public–-”

“You heard what I said. Go to the devil!”

“That all may show obstinacy, Mr. Annixter, but–-”

Suddenly Annixter jumped up again and came to the edge of the porch; his face flamed scarlet to the roots of his stiff yellow hair. He thrust out his jaw aggressively, clenching his teeth.

“You,” he vociferated, “I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a—a— a PIP!”

To his mind it was the last insult, the most outrageous calumny. He had no worse epithet at his command.

“–-may show obstinacy,” pursued S. Behrman, bent upon finishing the phrase, “but it don’t show common sense.”

“I’ll mend my fence, and then, again, maybe I won’t mend my fence,” shouted Annixter. “I know what you mean—that wild engine last night. Well, you’ve no right to run at that speed in the town limits.”

“How the town limits? The sheep were this side the Long Trestle.”

“Well, that’s in the town limits of Guadalajara.” “Why, Mr. Annixter, the Long Trestle is a good two miles out of Guadalajara.”

Annixter squared himself, leaping to the chance of an argument.

“Two miles! It’s not a mile and a quarter. No, it’s not a mile. I’ll leave it to Magnus here.”

“Oh, I know nothing about it,” declared Magnus, refusing to be involved.

“Yes, you do. Yes, you do, too. Any fool knows how far it is from Guadalajara to the Long Trestle. It’s about five-eighths of a mile.”

“From the depot of the town,” remarked S. Behrman placidly, “to the head of the Long Trestle is about two miles.”

“That’s a lie and you know it’s a lie,” shouted the other, furious at S. Behrman’s calmness, “and I can prove it’s a lie. I’ve walked that distance on the Upper Road, and I know just how fast I walk, and if I can walk four miles in one hour”

Magnus and Harran drove on, leaving Annixter trying to draw S. Behrman into a wrangle.

When at length S. Behrman as well took himself away, Annixter returned to his hammock, finished the rest of his prunes and read another chapter of “Copperfield.” Then he put the book, open, over his face and went to sleep.

An hour later, toward noon, his own terrific snoring woke him up suddenly, and he sat up, rubbing his face and blinking at the sunlight. There was a bad taste in his mouth from sleeping with it wide open, and going into the dining-room of the house, he mixed himself a drink of whiskey and soda and swallowed it in three great gulps. He told himself that he felt not only better but hungry, and pressed an electric button in the wall near the sideboard three times to let the kitchen—situated in a separate building near the ranch house—know that he was ready for his dinner. As he did so, an idea occurred to him. He wondered if Hilma Tree would bring up his dinner and wait on the table while he ate it.

In connection with his ranch, Annixter ran a dairy farm on a very small scale, making just enough butter and cheese for the consumption of the ranch’s PERSONNEL. Old man Tree, his wife, and his daughter Hilma looked after the dairy. But there was not always work enough to keep the three of them occupied and Hilma at times made herself useful in other ways. As often as not she lent a hand in the kitchen, and two or three times a week she took her mother’s place in looking after Annixter’s house, making the beds, putting his room to rights, bringing his meals up from the kitchen. For the last summer she had been away visiting with relatives in one of the towns on the coast. But the week previous to this she had returned and Annixter had come upon her suddenly one day in the dairy, making cheese, the sleeves of her crisp blue shirt waist rolled back to her very shoulders. Annixter had carried away with him a clear-cut recollection of these smooth white arms of hers, bare to the shoulder, very round and cool and fresh. He would not have believed that a girl so young should have had arms so big and perfect. To his surprise he found himself thinking of her after he had gone to bed that night, and in the morning when he woke he was bothered to know whether he had dreamed about Hilma’s fine white arms over night. Then abruptly he had lost patience with himself for being so occupied with the subject, raging and furious with all the breed of feemales—a fine way for a man to waste his time. He had had his experience with the timid little creature in the glove-cleaning establishment in Sacramento. That was enough. Feemales! Rot! None of them