But in the centre of the best business block of the street was a three-story building of rough brown stone, set off with plate glass windows and gold-lettered signs. One of these latter read, “Pacific and Southwestern Railroad, Freight and Passenger Office,” while another much smaller, beneath the windows of the second story bore the inscription, “P. and S.W. Land Office.”
Annixter hitched his horse to the iron post in front of this building, and tramped up to the second floor, letting himself into an office where a couple of clerks and bookkeepers sat at work behind a high wire screen. One of these latter recognised him and came forward.
“Hello,” said Annixter abruptly, scowling the while. “Is your boss in? Is Ruggles in?”
The bookkeeper led Annixter to the private office in an adjoining room, ushering him through a door, on the frosted glass of which was painted the name, “Cyrus Blakelee Ruggles.” Inside, a man in a frock coat, shoestring necktie, and Stetson hat, sat writing at a roller-top desk. Over this desk was a vast map of the railroad holdings in the country about Bonneville and Guadalajara, the alternate sections belonging to the Corporation accurately plotted.
Ruggles was cordial in his welcome of Annixter. He had a way of fiddling with his pencil continually while he talked, scribbling vague lines and fragments of words and names on stray bits of paper, and no sooner had Annixter sat down than he had begun to write, in full-bellied script, Ann Ann
all over his blotting pad.
“I want to see about those lands of mine—I mean of yours—of the railroad’s,” Annixter commenced at once. “I want to know when I can buy. I’m sick of fooling along like this.”
“Well, Mr. Annixter,” observed Ruggles, writing a great L before the Ann
, and finishing it off with a flourishing d. “The lands”—he crossed out one of the n’s and noted the effect with a hasty glance—“the lands are practically yours. You have an option on them indefinitely, and, as it is, you don’t have to pay the taxes.”
“Rot your option! I want to own them,” Annixter declared. “What have you people got to gain by putting off selling them to us. Here this thing has dragged along for over eight years. When I came in on Quien Sabe, the understanding was that the lands—your alternate sections—were to be conveyed to me within a few months.”
“The land had not been patented to us then,” answered Ruggles.
“Well, it has been now, I guess,” retorted Annixter.
“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, Mr. Annixter.”
Annixter crossed his legs weariedly.
“Oh, what’s the good of lying, Ruggles? You know better than to talk that way to me.”
Ruggles’s face flushed on the instant, but he checked his answer and laughed instead.
“Oh, if you know so much about it—” he observed.
“Well, when are you going to sell to me?”
“I’m only acting for the General Office, Mr. Annixter,” returned Ruggles. “Whenever the Directors are ready to take that matter up, I’ll be only too glad to put it through for you.”
“As if you didn’t know. Look here, you’re not talking to old Broderson. Wake up, Ruggles. What’s all this talk in Genslinger’s rag about the grading of the value of our lands this winter and an advance in the price?”
Ruggles spread out his hands with a deprecatory gesture.
“I don’t own the Mercury,” he said.
“Well, your company does.”
“If it does, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh, rot! As if you and Genslinger and S. Behrman didn’t run the whole show down here. Come on, let’s have it, Ruggles. What does S. Behrman pay Genslinger for inserting that three-inch ad of the P. and S.W. in his paper? Ten thousand a year, hey?”
“Oh, why not a hundred thousand and be done with it?” returned the other, willing to take it as a joke.
Instead of replying, Annixter drew his checkbook from his inside pocket.
“Let me take that fountain pen of yours,” he said. Holding the book on his knee he wrote out a check, tore it carefully from the stub, and laid it on the desk in front of Ruggles.
“What’s this?” asked Ruggles.
“Three-fourths payment for the sections of railroad land included in my ranch, based on a valuation of two dollars and a half per acre. You can have the balance in sixty-day notes.”
Ruggles shook his head, drawing hastily back from the check as though it carried contamination.
“I can’t touch it,” he declared. “I’ve no authority to sell to you yet.”
“I don’t understand you people,” exclaimed Annixter. “I offered to buy of you the same way four years ago and you sang the same song. Why, it isn’t business. You lose the interest on your money. Seven percent of that capital for four years—you can figure it out. It’s big money.”
“Well, then, I don’t see why you’re so keen on parting with it. You can get seven percent the same as us.”
“I want to own my own land,” returned Annixter. “I want to feel that every lump of dirt inside my fence is my personal property. Why, the very house I live in now—the ranch house—stands on railroad ground.”
“But, you’ve an option—”
“I tell you I don’t want your cursed option. I want ownership; and it’s the same with Magnus Derrick and old Broderson and Osterman and all the ranchers of the county. We want to own our land, want to feel we can do as we blame please with it. Suppose I should want to sell Quien Sabe. I can’t sell it as a whole till I’ve bought of you. I can’t give anybody a clear title. The land has doubled in value ten times over again since I came in on it and improved it. It’s worth easily twenty an acre now. But I can’t take advantage of that rise in value so long as you won’t sell, so long as I don’t own it. You’re blocking me.”
“But, according to you, the railroad can’t take advantage
