At the drug store, which also kept a stock of miscellaneous stationery, his eye was caught by a “transparent slate,” a child’s toy, where upon a little pane of frosted glass one could trace with considerable elaboration outline figures of cows, ploughs, bunches of fruit and even rural water mills that were printed on slips of paper underneath.
“Now, there’s an idea, Jim,” he observed to the boy behind the soda-water fountain; “I know a little tad that would just about jump out of her skin for that. Think I’ll have to take it with me.”
“How’s Sidney getting along?” the other asked, while wrapping up the package.
Dyke’s enthusiasm had made of his little girl a celebrity throughout Bonneville.
The ex-engineer promptly became voluble, assertive, doggedly emphatic.
“Smartest little tad in all Tulare County, and more fun! A regular whole show in herself.”
“And the hops?” inquired the other.
“Bully,” declared Dyke, with the good-natured man’s readiness to talk of his private affairs to anyone who would listen. “Bully. I’m dead sure of a bonanza crop by now. The rain came just right. I actually don’t know as I can store the crop in those barns I built, it’s going to be so big. That foreman of mine was a daisy. Jim, I’m going to make money in that deal. After I’ve paid off the mortgage—you know I had to mortgage, yes, crop and homestead both, but I can pay it off and all the interest to boot, lovely—well, and as I was saying, after all expenses are paid off I’ll clear big money, m’son. Yes, sir. I knew there was boodle in hops. You know the crop is contracted for already. Sure, the foreman managed that. He’s a daisy. Chap in San Francisco will take it all and at the advanced price. I wanted to hang on, to see if it wouldn’t go to six cents, but the foreman said, ‘No, that’s good enough.’ So I signed. Ain’t it bully, hey?”
“Then what’ll you do?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll have a layoff for a month or so and take the little tad and mother up and show ’em the city—’Frisco—until it’s time for the schools to open, and then we’ll put Sid in the seminary at Marysville. Catch on?”
“I suppose you’ll stay right by hops now?”
“Right you are, m’son. I know a good thing when I see it. There’s plenty others going into hops next season. I set ’em the example. Wouldn’t be surprised if it came to be a regular industry hereabouts. I’m planning ahead for next year already. I can let the foreman go, now that I’ve learned the game myself, and I think I’ll buy a piece of land off Quien Sabe and get a bigger crop, and build a couple more barns, and, by George, in about five years time I’ll have things humming. I’m going to make money, Jim.”
He emerged once more into the street and went up the block leisurely, planting his feet squarely. He fancied that he could feel he was considered of more importance nowadays. He was no longer a subordinate, an employee. He was his own man, a proprietor, an owner of land, furthering a successful enterprise. No one had helped him; he had followed no one’s lead. He had struck out unaided for himself, and his success was due solely to his own intelligence, industry, and foresight. He squared his great shoulders till the blue gingham of his jumper all but cracked. Of late, his great blond beard had grown and the work in the sun had made his face very red. Under the visor of his cap—relic of his engineering days—his blue eyes twinkled with vast good-nature. He felt that he made a fine figure as he went by a group of young girls in lawns and muslins and garden hats on their way to the Post Office. He wondered if they looked after him, wondered if they had heard that he was in a fair way to become a rich man.
But the chronometer in the window of the jewelry store warned him that time was passing. He turned about, and, crossing the street, took his way to Ruggles’s office, which was the freight as well as the land office of the P. and S.W. Railroad.
As he stood for a moment at the counter in front of the wire partition, waiting for the clerk to make out the order for the freight agent at the depot, Dyke was surprised to see a familiar figure in conference with Ruggles himself, by a desk inside the railing.
The figure was that of a middle-aged man, fat, with a great stomach, which he stroked from time to time. As he turned about, addressing a remark to the clerk, Dyke recognised S. Behrman. The banker, railroad agent, and political manipulator seemed to the ex-engineer’s eyes to be more gross than ever. His smooth-shaven jowl stood out big and tremulous on either side of his face; the roll of fat on the nape of his neck, sprinkled with sparse, stiff hairs, bulged out with greater prominence. His great stomach, covered with a light brown linen vest, stamped with innumerable interlocked horseshoes, protruded far in advance, enormous, aggressive. He wore his inevitable round-topped hat of stiff brown straw, varnished so bright that it reflected the light of the office windows like a helmet, and even from where he stood Dyke could hear his loud breathing and the clink of the hollow links of his watch chain upon the vest buttons of imitation pearl, as his stomach rose and fell.
Dyke looked at him with attention. There was the enemy, the representative of the Trust with which Derrick’s League was locking horns. The great struggle had begun to invest the combatants with interest. Daily, almost hourly, Dyke was in touch with
