“I understand Magnus all right,” put in Osterman. “He don’t have to go into this thing, if it’s against his conscience. That’s all right. Magnus can stay out if he wants to, but that won’t prevent us going ahead and seeing what we can do. Only there’s this about it.” He turned again to Magnus, speaking with every degree of earnestness, every appearance of conviction. “I did not deny, Governor, from the very start that this would mean bribery. But you don’t suppose that I like the idea either. If there was one legitimate hope that was yet left untried, no matter how forlorn it was, I would try it. But there’s not. It is literally and soberly true that every means of help—every honest means—has been attempted. Shelgrim is going to cinch us. Grain rates are increasing, while, on the other hand, the price of wheat is sagging lower and lower all the time. If we don’t do something we are ruined.”

Osterman paused for a moment, allowing precisely the right number of seconds to elapse, then altering and lowering his voice, added:

“I respect the Governor’s principles. I admire them. They do him every degree of credit.” Then, turning directly to Magnus, he concluded with, “But I only want you to ask yourself, sir, if, at such a crisis, one ought to think of oneself, to consider purely personal motives in such a desperate situation as this? Now, we want you with us, Governor; perhaps not openly, if you don’t wish it, but tacitly, at least. I won’t ask you for an answer to-night, but what I do ask of you is to consider this matter seriously and think over the whole business. Will you do it?”

Osterman ceased definitely to speak, leaning forward across the table, his eyes fixed on Magnus’s face. There was a silence. Outside, the rain fell continually with an even, monotonous murmur. In the group of men around the table no one stirred nor spoke. They looked steadily at Magnus, who, for the moment, kept his glance fixed thoughtfully upon the table before him. In another moment he raised his head and looked from face to face around the group. After all, these were his neighbours, his friends, men with whom he had been upon the closest terms of association. In a way they represented what now had come to be his world. His single swift glance took in the men, one after another. Annixter, rugged, crude, sitting awkwardly and uncomfortably in his chair, his unhandsome face, with its outthrust lower lip and deeply cleft masculine chin, flushed and eager, his yellow hair disordered, the one tuft on the crown standing stiffly forth like the feather in an Indian’s scalp lock; Broderson, vaguely combing at his long beard with a persistent maniacal gesture, distressed, troubled and uneasy; Osterman, with his comedy face, the face of a music-hall singer, his head bald and set off by his great red ears, leaning back in his place, softly cracking the knuckle of a forefinger, and, last of all and close to his elbow, his son, his support, his confidant and companion, Harran, so like himself, with his own erect, fine carriage, his thin, beak-like nose and his blond hair, with its tendency to curl in a forward direction in front of the ears, young, strong, courageous, full of the promise of the future years. His blue eyes looked straight into his father’s with what Magnus could fancy a glance of appeal. Magnus could see that expression in the faces of the others very plainly. They looked to him as their natural leader, their chief who was to bring them out from this abominable trouble which was closing in upon them, and in them all he saw many types. They—these men around his table on that night of the first rain of a coming season—seemed to stand in his imagination for many others—all the farmers, ranchers, and wheat growers of the great San Joaquin. Their words were the words of a whole community; their distress, the distress of an entire State, harried beyond the bounds of endurance, driven to the wall, coerced, exploited, harassed to the limits of exasperation. “I will think of it,” he said, then hastened to add, “but I can tell you beforehand that you may expect only a refusal.”

After Magnus had spoken, there was a prolonged silence. The conference seemed of itself to have come to an end for that evening. Presley lighted another cigarette from the butt of the one he had been smoking, and the cat, Princess Nathalie, disturbed by his movement and by a whiff of drifting smoke, jumped from his knee to the floor and picking her way across the room to Annixter, rubbed gently against his legs, her tail in the air, her back delicately arched. No doubt she thought it time to settle herself for the night, and as Annixter gave no indication of vacating his chair, she chose this way of cajoling him into ceding his place to her. But Annixter was irritated at the Princess’s attentions, misunderstanding their motive.

“Get out!” he exclaimed, lifting his feet to the rung of the chair. “Lord love me, but I sure do hate a cat.”

“By the way,” observed Osterman, “I passed Genslinger by the gate as I came in to-night. Had he been here?”

“Yes, he was here,” said Harran, “and—” but Annixter took the words out of his mouth.

“He says there’s some talk of the railroad selling us their sections this winter.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” exclaimed Osterman, interested at once. “Where did he hear that?”

“Where does a railroad paper get its news? From the General Office, I suppose.”

“I hope he didn’t get it straight from headquarters that the land was to be graded at twenty dollars an acre,” murmured Broderson.

“What’s that?” demanded Osterman. “Twenty dollars! Here, put me on, somebody. What’s all up? What did Genslinger say?”

“Oh, you needn’t get scared,” said Annixter. “Genslinger don’t know, that’s all. He thinks there was no understanding that the price of the land should not be advanced when the P. and S. W. came to sell to us.”

“Oh,” muttered Osterman relieved. Magnus, who had gone out into the office on the other side of the glass-roofed hallway, returned with a long, yellow envelope in his hand, stuffed with newspaper clippings and thin, closely printed pamphlets.

“Here is the circular,” he remarked, drawing out one of the pamphlets. “The conditions of settlement to which the railroad obligated itself are very explicit.”

He ran over the pages of the circular, then read aloud:

“‘The Company invites settlers to go upon its lands before patents are issued or the road is completed, and intends in such cases to sell to them in preference to any other applicants and at a price based upon the value of the land without improvements,’ and on the other page here,” he remarked, “they refer to this again. ‘In ascertaining the value of the lands, any improvements that a settler or any other person may have on the lands will not be taken into consideration, neither will the price be increased in consequence thereof.... Settlers are thus insured that in addition to being accorded the first privilege of purchase, at the graded price, they will also be protected in their improvements.’ And here,” he commented, “in Section IX. it reads, ‘The lands are not uniform in price, but are offered at various figures from $2.50 upward per acre. Usually land covered with tall timber is held at $5.00 per acre, and that with pine at $10.00. Most is for sale at $2.50 and $5.00.”

“When you come to read that carefully,” hazarded old Broderson, “it—it’s not so VERY REASSURING. ‘MOST is for sale at two-fifty an acre,’ it says. That don’t mean ‘ALL,’ that only means SOME. I wish now that I had secured a more iron-clad agreement from the P. and S. W. when I took up its sections on my ranch, and—and Genslinger is in a position to know the intentions of the railroad. At least, he—he—he is in TOUCH with them. All newspaper men are. Those, I mean, who are subsidised by the General Office. But, perhaps, Genslinger isn’t subsidised, I don’t know. I—I am not sure. Maybe—perhaps”

“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.