The Octopus - Frank Norris (novel24 .TXT) 📗

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.

All the colours of the scene were sombre—the brown of the earth, the faded yellow of the dead stubble, the grey of the myriad of undulating backs. Only on the far side of the herd, erect, motionless—a single note of black, a speck, a dot—the shepherd stood, leaning upon an empty water-trough, solitary, grave, impressive.

For a few moments, Presley stood, watching. Then, as he started to move on, a curious thing occurred. At first, he thought he had heard some one call his name. He paused, listening; there was no sound but the vague noise of the moving sheep. Then, as this first impression passed, it seemed to him that he had been beckoned to. Yet nothing stirred; except for the lonely figure beyond the herd there was no one in sight. He started on again, and in half a dozen steps found himself looking over his shoulder. Without knowing why, he looked toward the shepherd; then halted and looked a second time and a third. Had the shepherd called to him? Presley knew that he had heard no voice. Brusquely, all his attention seemed riveted upon this distant figure. He put one forearm over his eyes, to keep off the sun, gazing across the intervening herd. Surely, the shepherd had called him. But at the next instant he started, uttering an exclamation under his breath. The far-away speck of black became animated. Presley remarked a sweeping gesture. Though the man had not beckoned to him before, there was no doubt that he was beckoning now. Without any hesitation, and singularly interested in the incident, Presley turned sharply aside and hurried on toward the shepherd, skirting the herd, wondering all the time that he should answer the call with so little question, so little hesitation.

But the shepherd came forward to meet Presley, followed by one of his dogs. As the two men approached each other, Presley, closely studying the other, began to wonder where he had seen him before. It must have been a very long time ago, upon one of his previous visits to the ranch. Certainly, however, there was something familiar in the shepherd’s face and figure. When they came closer to each other, and Presley could see him more distinctly, this sense of a previous acquaintance was increased and sharpened.

The shepherd was a man of about thirty-five. He was very lean and spare. His brown canvas overalls were thrust into laced boots. A cartridge belt without any cartridges encircled his waist. A grey flannel shirt, open at the throat, showed his breast, tanned and ruddy. He wore no hat. His hair was very black and rather long. A pointed beard covered his chin, growing straight and fine from the hollow cheeks. The absence of any covering for his head was, no doubt, habitual with him, for his face was as brown as an Indian’s—a ruddy brown quite different from Presley’s dark olive. To Presley’s morbidly keen observation, the general impression of the shepherd’s face was intensely interesting. It was uncommon to an astonishing degree. Presley’s vivid imagination chose to see in it the face of an ascetic, of a recluse, almost that of a young seer. So must have appeared the half-inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the wilderness, beholders of visions, having their existence in a continual dream, talkers with God, gifted with strange powers.

Suddenly, at some twenty paces distant from the approaching shepherd, Presley stopped short, his eyes riveted upon the other.

“Vanamee!” he exclaimed.

The shepherd smiled and came forward, holding out his hands, saying, “I thought it was you. When I saw you come over the hill, I called you.”

“But not with your voice,” returned Presley. “I knew that some one wanted me. I felt it. I should have remembered that you could do that kind of thing.”

“I have never known it to fail. It helps with the sheep.”

“With the sheep?”

“In a way. I can’t tell exactly how. We don’t understand these things yet. There are times when, if I close my eyes and dig my fists into my temples, I can hold the entire herd for perhaps a minute. Perhaps, though, it’s imagination, who knows? But it’s good to see you again. How long has it been since the last time? Two, three, nearly five years.”

It was more than that. It was six years since Presley and Vanamee had met, and then it had been for a short time only, during one of the shepherd’s periodical brief returns to that part of the country. During a week he and Presley had been much together, for the two were devoted friends. Then, as abruptly, as mysteriously as he had come, Vanamee disappeared. Presley awoke one morning to find him gone. Thus, it had been with Vanamee for a period of sixteen years. He lived his life in the unknown, one could not tell where—in the desert, in the mountains, throughout all the vast and vague Southwest, solitary, strange. Three, four, five years passed. The shepherd would be almost forgotten. Never the most trivial scrap of information as to his whereabouts reached Los Muertos. He had melted off into the surface-shimmer of the desert, into the mirage; he sank below the horizons; he was swallowed up in the waste of sand and sage. Then, without warning, he would reappear, coming in from the wilderness, emerging from the unknown. No one knew him well. In all that countryside he had but three friends, Presley, Magnus Derrick, and the priest at the Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, Father Sarria. He remained always a mystery, living a life half-real, half-legendary. In all those years he did not seem to have grown older by a single day. At this time, Presley knew him to be thirty-six years of age. But since the first day the two had met, the shepherd’s face and bearing had, to his eyes, remained the same. At this moment, Presley was looking into the same face he had first seen many, many years ago. It was a face stamped with an unspeakable sadness, a deathless grief, the permanent imprint of a tragedy long past, but yet a living issue. Presley told himself that it was impossible to look long into Vanamee’s