Only S. Behrman persisted. He had made up his mind to bring Dyke in. He succeeded in arousing the same degree of determination in Delaney—by now, a trusted aide of the Railroad—and of his own cousin, a real estate broker, named Christian, who knew the mountains and had once been marshal of Visalia in the old stock-raising days. These two went into the Sierras, accompanied by two hired deputies, and carrying with them a month’s provisions and two of the bloodhounds loaned by the Santa Clara sheriff.
On a certain Sunday, a few days after the departure of Christian and Delaney, Annixter, who had been reading David Copperfield in his hammock on the porch of the ranch house, put down the book and went to find Hilma, who was helping Louisa Vacca set the table for dinner. He found her in the dining-room, her hands full of the gold-bordered china plates, only used on special occasions and which Louisa was forbidden to touch.
His wife was more than ordinarily pretty that day. She wore a dress of flowered organdie over pink sateen with pink ribbons about her waist and neck, and on her slim feet the low shoes she always affected, with their smart, bright buckles. Her thick, brown, sweet-smelling hair was heaped high upon her head and set off with a bow of black velvet, and underneath the shadow of its coils, her wide-open eyes, rimmed with the thin, black line of her lashes, shone continually, reflecting the sunlight. Marriage had only accentuated the beautiful maturity of Hilma’s figure—now no longer precocious—defining the single, deep swell from her throat to her waist, the strong, fine amplitude of her hips, the sweet feminine undulation of her neck and shoulders. Her cheeks were pink with health, and her large round arms carried the piled-up dishes with never a tremour. Annixter, observant enough where his wife was concerned noted how the reflection of the white china set a glow of pale light underneath her chin.
“Hilma,” he said, “I’ve been wondering lately about things. We’re so blamed happy ourselves it won’t do for us to forget about other people who are down, will it? Might change our luck. And I’m just likely to forget that way, too. It’s my nature.”
His wife looked up at him joyfully. Here was the new Annixter, certainly.
“In all this hullabaloo about Dyke,” he went on “there’s someone nobody ain’t thought about at all. That’s Mrs. Dyke—and the little tad. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in a hole over there. What do you say we drive over to the hop ranch after dinner and see if she wants anything?”
Hilma put down the plates and came around the table and kissed him without a word.
As soon as their dinner was over, Annixter had the carryall hitched up, and, dispensing with young Vacca, drove over to the hop ranch with Hilma.
Hilma could not keep back the tears as they passed through the lamentable desolation of the withered, brown vines, symbols of perished hopes and abandoned effort, and Annixter swore between his teeth.
Though the wheels of the carryall grated loudly on the roadway in front of the house, nobody came to the door nor looked from the windows. The place seemed tenantless, infinitely lonely, infinitely sad.
Annixter tied the team, and with Hilma approached the wide-open door, scuffling and tramping on the porch to attract attention. Nobody stirred. A Sunday stillness pervaded the place. Outside, the withered hop-leaves rustled like dry paper in the breeze. The quiet was ominous. They peered into the front room from the doorway, Hilma holding her husband’s hand. Mrs. Dyke was there. She sat at the table in the middle of the room, her head, with its white hair, down upon her arm. A clutter of unwashed dishes were strewed over the red and white tablecloth. The unkempt room, once a marvel of neatness, had not been cleaned for days. Newspapers, Genslinger’s extras and copies of San Francisco and Los Angeles dailies were scattered all over the room. On the table itself were crumpled yellow telegrams, a dozen of them, a score of them, blowing about in the draught from the door. And in the midst of all this disarray, surrounded by the published accounts of her son’s crime, the telegraphed answers to her pitiful appeals for tidings fluttering about her head, the highwayman’s mother, worn out, abandoned and forgotten, slept through the stillness of the Sunday afternoon.
Neither Hilma nor Annixter ever forgot their interview with Mrs. Dyke that day. Suddenly waking, she had caught sight of Annixter, and at once exclaimed eagerly:
“Is there any news?”
For a long time afterwards nothing could be got from her. She was numb to all other issues than the one question of Dyke’s capture. She did not answer their questions nor reply to their offers of assistance. Hilma and Annixter conferred together without lowering their voices, at her very elbow, while she looked vacantly at the floor, drawing one hand over the other in a persistent, maniacal gesture. From time to time she would start suddenly from her chair, her eyes wide, and as if all at once realising Annixter’s presence, would cry out:
“Is there any news?”
“Where is Sidney, Mrs. Dyke?” asked Hilma for the fourth time. “Is she well? Is she taken care of?”
“Here’s the last telegram,” said Mrs. Dyke, in a loud, monotonous voice. “See, it says there is no news. He didn’t do it,” she moaned, rocking herself back and forth, drawing one hand over the other, “he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it. I don’t know where he is.”
When at last she came to herself, it was with a flood of tears. Hilma put her arms around
