“By the Lord! men have been shot for less than this,” cried Osterman. “You’ve sold us out, you, and if you ever bring that dago face of yours on a level with mine again, I’ll slap it.”
“Keep your hands off,” exclaimed Lyman quickly, the aggressiveness of the cornered rat flaming up within him. “No violence. Don’t you go too far.”
“How much were you paid? How much were you paid?” vociferated Harran.
“Yes, yes, what was your price?” cried the others. They were beside themselves with anger; their words came harsh from between their set teeth; their gestures were made with their fists clenched.
“You know the Commission acted in good faith,” retorted Lyman. “You know that all was fair and above board.”
“Liar,” shouted Annixter; “liar, bribe-eater. You were bought and paid for,” and with the words his arm seemed almost of itself to leap out from his shoulder. Lyman received the blow squarely in the face and the force of it sent him staggering backwards toward the wall. He tripped over his valise and fell halfway, his back supported against the closed door of the room. Magnus sprang forward. His son had been struck, and the instincts of a father rose up in instant protest; rose for a moment, then forever died away in his heart. He checked the words that flashed to his mind. He lowered his upraised arm. No, he had but one son. The poor, staggering creature with the fine clothes, white face, and blood-streaked lips was no longer his. A blow could not dishonour him more than he had dishonoured himself.
But Gethings, the older man, intervened, pulling Annixter back, crying:
“Stop, this won’t do. Not before his father.”
“I am no father to this man, gentlemen,” exclaimed Magnus. “From now on, I have but one son. You, sir,” he turned to Lyman, “you, sir, leave my house.”
Lyman, his handkerchief to his lips, his smart cravat in disarray, caught up his hat and coat. He was shaking with fury, his protruding eyes were bloodshot. He swung open the door.
“Ruffians,” he shouted from the threshold, “ruffians, bullies. Do your own dirty business yourselves after this. I’m done with you. How is it, all of a sudden you talk about honour? How is it that all at once you’re so clean and straight? You weren’t so particular at Sacramento just before the nominations. How was the Board elected? I’m a bribe-eater, am I? Is it any worse than giving a bribe? Ask Magnus Derrick what he thinks about that. Ask him how much he paid the Democratic bosses at Sacramento to swing the convention.”
He went out, slamming the door.
Presley followed. The whole affair made him sick at heart, filled him with infinite disgust, infinite weariness. He wished to get away from it all. He left the dining-room and the excited, clamouring men behind him and stepped out on the porch of the ranch house, closing the door behind him. Lyman was nowhere in sight. Presley was alone. It was late, and after the lamp-heated air of the dining-room, the coolness of the night was delicious, and its vast silence, after the noise and fury of the committee meeting, descended from the stars like a benediction. Presley stepped to the edge of the porch, looking off to southward.
And there before him, mile after mile, illimitable, covering the earth from horizon to horizon, lay the Wheat. The growth, now many days old, was already high from the ground. There it lay, a vast, silent ocean, shimmering a pallid green under the moon and under the stars; a mighty force, the strength of nations, the life of the world. There in the night, under the dome of the sky, it was growing steadily. To Presley’s mind, the scene in the room he had just left dwindled to paltry insignificance before this sight. Ah, yes, the Wheat—it was over this that the Railroad, the ranchers, the traitor false to his trust, all the members of an obscure conspiracy, were wrangling. As if human agency could affect this colossal power! What were these heated, tiny squabbles, this feverish, small bustle of mankind, this minute swarming of the human insect, to the great, majestic, silent ocean of the Wheat itself! Indifferent, gigantic, resistless, it moved in its appointed grooves. Men, Liliputians, gnats in the sunshine, buzzed impudently in their tiny battles, were born, lived through their little day, died, and were forgotten; while the Wheat, wrapped in Nirvanic calm, grew steadily under the night, alone with the stars and with God.
V
Jackrabbits were a pest that year and Presley occasionally found amusement in hunting them with Harran’s half-dozen greyhounds, following the chase on horseback. One day, between two and three months after Lyman’s visit to Los Muertos, as he was returning toward the ranch house from a distant and lonely quarter of Los Muertos, he came unexpectedly upon a strange sight.
Some twenty men, Annixter’s and Osterman’s tenants, and small ranchers from east of Guadalajara—all members of the League—were going through the manual of arms under Harran Derrick’s supervision. They were all equipped with new Winchester rifles. Harran carried one of these himself and with it he illustrated the various commands he gave. As soon as one of the men under his supervision became more than usually proficient, he was told off to instruct a file of the more backward. After the manual of arms, Harran gave the command to take distance as skirmishers, and when the line had opened out so that some half-dozen feet intervened between each man, an advance was made across the field, the men stooping low and snapping the hammers of their rifles at an imaginary enemy.
The League had its agents in San Francisco, who watched the movements of the Railroad as closely as was possible, and some time before this, Annixter had received word that the Marshal and his deputies were coming down to Bonneville to
