But Presley was essentially a dreamer, not a man of affairs. He hesitated to act at this precise psychological moment, striking while the iron was yet hot, and while he hesitated, other affairs near at hand began to absorb his attention.
One night, about an hour after he had gone to bed, he was awakened by the sound of voices on the porch of the ranch house, and, descending, found Mrs. Dyke there with Sidney. The ex-engineer’s mother was talking to Magnus and Harran, and crying as she talked. It seemed that Dyke was missing. He had gone into town early that afternoon with the wagon and team, and was to have been home for supper. By now it was ten o’clock and there was no news of him. Mrs. Dyke told how she first had gone to Quien Sabe, intending to telephone from there to Bonneville, but Annixter was in San Francisco, and in his absence the house was locked up, and the overseer, who had a duplicate key, was himself in Bonneville. She had telegraphed three times from Guadalajara to Bonneville for news of her son, but without result. Then, at last, tortured with anxiety, she had gone to Hooven’s, taking Sidney with her, and had prevailed upon “Bismarck” to hitch up and drive her across Los Muertos to the Governor’s, to beg him to telephone into Bonneville, to know what had become of Dyke.
While Harran rang up Central in town, Mrs. Dyke told Presley and Magnus of the lamentable change in Dyke.
“They have broken my son’s spirit, Mr. Derrick,” she said. “If you were only there to see. Hour after hour, he sits on the porch with his hands lying open in his lap, looking at them without a word. He won’t look me in the face any more, and he don’t sleep. Night after night, he has walked the floor until morning. And he will go on that way for days together, very silent, without a word, and sitting still in his chair, and then, all of a sudden, he will break out—oh, Mr. Derrick, it is terrible—into an awful rage, cursing, swearing, grinding his teeth, his hands clenched over his head, stamping so that the house shakes, and saying that if S. Behrman don’t give him back his money, he will kill him with his two hands. But that isn’t the worst, Mr. Derrick. He goes to Mr. Caraher’s saloon now, and stays there for hours, and listens to Mr. Caraher. There is something on my son’s mind; I know there is—something that he and Mr. Caraher have talked over together, and I can’t find out what it is. Mr. Caraher is a bad man, and my son has fallen under his influence.” The tears filled her eyes. Bravely, she turned to hide them, turning away to take Sidney in her arms, putting her head upon the little girl’s shoulder.
“I—I haven’t broken down before, Mr. Derrick,” she said, “but after we have been so happy in our little house, just us three—and the future seemed so bright—oh, God will punish the gentlemen who own the railroad for being so hard and cruel.”
Harran came out on the porch, from the telephone, and she interrupted herself, fixing her eyes eagerly upon him.
“I think it is all right, Mrs. Dyke,” he said, reassuringly. “We know where he is, I believe. You and the little tad stay here, and Hooven and I will go after him.”
About two hours later, Harran brought Dyke back to Los Muertos in Hooven’s wagon. He had found him at Caraher’s saloon, very drunk.
There was nothing maudlin about Dyke’s drunkenness. In him the alcohol merely roused the spirit of evil, vengeful, reckless.
As the wagon passed out from under the eucalyptus trees about the ranch house, taking Mrs. Dyke, Sidney, and the onetime engineer back to the hop ranch, Presley leaning from his window heard the latter remark:
“Caraher is right. There is only one thing they listen to, and that’s dynamite.”
The following day Presley drove Magnus over to Guadalajara to take the train for San Francisco. But after he had said goodbye to the Governor, he was moved to go on to the hop ranch to see the condition of affairs in that quarter. He returned to Los Muertos overwhelmed with sadness and trembling with anger. The hop ranch that he had last seen in the full tide of prosperity was almost a ruin. Work had evidently been abandoned long since. Weeds were already choking the vines. Everywhere the poles sagged and drooped. Many had even fallen, dragging the vines with them, spreading them over the ground in an inextricable tangle of dead leaves, decaying tendrils, and snarled string. The fence was broken; the unfinished storehouse, which never was to see completion, was a lamentable spectacle of gaping doors and windows—a melancholy skeleton. Last of all, Presley had caught a glimpse of Dyke himself, seated in his rocking chair on the porch, his beard and hair unkempt, motionless, looking with vague eyes upon his hands that lay palm upwards and idle in his lap.
Magnus on his way to San Francisco was joined at Bonneville by Osterman. Upon seating himself in front of the master of Los Muertos in the smoking-car of the train, this latter, pushing back his hat and smoothing his bald head, observed:
“Governor, you look all frazeled out. Anything wrong these days?”
The other answered in the negative, but, for all that, Osterman was right. The Governor had aged suddenly. His former erectness was gone, the broad shoulders stooped a little, the strong lines of his thin-lipped mouth were relaxed, and his hand, as it clasped over the yellowed ivory knob of his cane, had an unwonted tremulousness not hitherto noticeable. But the change in Magnus was more than physical. At last, in the full tide of
