“That’s nonsense, Buck. You’re not giving a public ball. You must send out invitations.”
“Hello, Presley, you there?” exclaimed Annixter, turning round. The two shook hands.
“Send out invitations?” repeated Annixter uneasily. “Why must I?”
“Because that’s the only way to do.”
“It is, is it?” answered Annixter, perplexed and troubled. No other man of his acquaintance could have so contradicted Annixter without provoking a quarrel upon the instant. Why the young rancher, irascible, obstinate, belligerent, should invariably defer to the poet, was an inconsistency never to be explained. It was with great surprise that Mrs. Derrick heard him continue:
“Well, I suppose you know what you’re talking about, Pres. Must have written invites, hey?”
“Of course.”
“Typewritten?”
“Why, what an ass you are, Buck,” observed Presley calmly. “Before you get through with it, you will probably insult three-fourths of the people you intend to invite, and have about a hundred quarrels on your hands, and a lawsuit or two.”
However, before Annixter could reply, Magnus came out on the porch, erect, grave, freshly shaven. Without realising what he was doing, Annixter instinctively rose to his feet. It was as though Magnus was a commander-in-chief of an unseen army, and he a subaltern. There was some little conversation as to the proposed dance, and then Annixter found an excuse for drawing the Governor aside. Mrs. Derrick watched the two with eyes full of poignant anxiety, as they slowly paced the length of the gravel driveway to the road gate, and stood there, leaning upon it, talking earnestly; Magnus tall, thin-lipped, impassive, one hand in the breast of his frock coat, his head bare, his keen, blue eyes fixed upon Annixter’s face. Annixter came at once to the main point.
“I got a wire from Osterman this morning, Governor, and, well—we’ve got Disbrow. That means that the Denver, Pueblo and Mojave is back of us. There’s half the fight won, first off.”
“Osterman bribed him, I suppose,” observed Magnus.
Annixter raised a shoulder vexatiously.
“You’ve got to pay for what you get,” he returned. “You don’t get something for nothing, I guess. Governor,” he went on, “I don’t see how you can stay out of this business much longer. You see how it will be. We’re going to win, and I don’t see how you can feel that it’s right of you to let us do all the work and stand all the expense. There’s never been a movement of any importance that went on around you that you weren’t the leader in it. All Tulare County, all the San Joaquin, for that matter, knows you. They want a leader, and they are looking to you. I know how you feel about politics nowadays. But, Governor, standards have changed since your time; everybody plays the game now as we are playing it—the most honourable men. You can’t play it any other way, and, pshaw! if the right wins out in the end, that’s the main thing. We want you in this thing, and we want you bad. You’ve been chewing on this affair now a long time. Have you made up your mind? Do you come in? I tell you what, you’ve got to look at these things in a large way. You’ve got to judge by results. Well, now, what do you think? Do you come in?”
Magnus’s glance left Annixter’s face, and for an instant sought the ground. His frown lowered, but now it was in perplexity, rather than in anger. His mind was troubled, harassed with a thousand dissensions.
But one of Magnus’s strongest instincts, one of his keenest desires, was to be, if only for a short time, the master. To control men had ever been his ambition; submission of any kind, his greatest horror. His energy stirred within him, goaded by the lash of his anger, his sense of indignity, of insult. Oh for one moment to be able to strike back, to crush his enemy, to defeat the railroad, hold the Corporation in the grip of his fist, put down S. Behrman, rehabilitate himself, regain his self-respect. To be once more powerful, to command, to dominate. His thin lips pressed themselves together; the nostrils of his prominent hawklike nose dilated, his erect, commanding figure stiffened unconsciously. For a moment, he saw himself controlling the situation, the foremost figure in his State, feared, respected, thousands of men beneath him, his ambition at length gratified; his career, once apparently brought to naught, completed; success a palpable achievement. What if this were his chance, after all, come at last after all these years. His chance! The instincts of the old-time gambler, the most redoubtable poker player of El Dorado County, stirred at the word. Chance! To know it when it came, to recognise it as it passed fleet as a wind-flurry, grip at it, catch at it, blind, reckless, staking all upon the hazard of the issue, that was genius. Was this his Chance? All of a sudden, it seemed to him that it was. But his honour! His cherished, lifelong integrity, the unstained purity of his principles? At this late date, were they to be sacrificed? Could he now go counter to all the firm built fabric of his character? How, afterward, could he bear to look Harran and Lyman in the face? And, yet—and, yet—back swung the pendulum—to neglect his Chance meant failure; a life begun in promise, and ended in obscurity, perhaps in financial ruin, poverty even. To seize it meant achievement, fame, influence, prestige, possibly great wealth.
“I am so sorry to interrupt,” said Mrs. Derrick, as she came up. “I hope Mr. Annixter will excuse me, but I want Magnus to open the safe for me. I have lost the combination, and I must have some money. Phelps is going into town, and I want him to pay some bills for me. Can’t you come right away, Magnus? Phelps is ready and waiting.”
Annixter struck his heel into the ground with a suppressed oath. Always these fool female women came
