“Who made it worth twenty?” cried Annixter. “I’ve improved it up to that figure. Genslinger seems to have that idea in his nut, too. Do you people think you can hold that land, untaxed, for speculative purposes until it goes up to thirty dollars and then sell out to someone else—sell it over our heads? You and Genslinger weren’t in office when those contracts were drawn. You ask your boss, you ask S. Behrman, he knows. The General Office is pledged to sell to us in preference to anyone else, for two and a half.”
“Well,” observed Ruggles decidedly, tapping the end of his pencil on his desk and leaning forward to emphasise his words, “we’re not selling now. That’s said and signed, Mr. Annixter.”
“Why not? Come, spit it out. What’s the bunco game this time?”
“Because we’re not ready. Here’s your check.”
“You won’t take it?”
“No.”
“I’ll make it a cash payment, money down—the whole of it—payable to Cyrus Blakelee Ruggles, for the P. and S.W.”
“No.”
“Third and last time.”
“No.”
“Oh, go to the devil!”
“I don’t like your tone, Mr. Annixter,” returned Ruggles, flushing angrily.
“I don’t give a curse whether you like it or not,” retorted Annixter, rising and thrusting the check into his pocket, “but never you mind, Mr. Ruggles, you and S. Behrman and Genslinger and Shelgrim and the whole gang of thieves of you—you’ll wake this State of California up some of these days by going just one little bit too far, and there’ll be an election of Railroad Commissioners of, by, and for the people, that’ll get a twist of you, my bunco-steering friend—you and your backers and cappers and swindlers and thimble-riggers, and smash you, lock, stock, and barrel. That’s my tip to you and be damned to you, Mr. Cyrus Blackleg Ruggles.”
Annixter stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and Ruggles, trembling with anger, turned to his desk and to the blotting pad written all over with the words Lands, Twenty dollars, Two and a half, Option
, and, over and over again, with great swelling curves and flourishes, Railroad, Railroad, Railroad
.
But as Annixter passed into the outside office, on the other side of the wire partition he noted the figure of a man at the counter in conversation with one of the clerks. There was something familiar to Annixter’s eye about the man’s heavy built frame, his great shoulders and massive back, and as he spoke to the clerk in a tremendous, rumbling voice, Annixter promptly recognised Dyke.
There was a meeting. Annixter liked Dyke, as did everyone else in and about Bonneville. He paused now to shake hands with the discharged engineer and to ask about his little daughter, Sidney, to whom he knew Dyke was devotedly attached.
“Smartest little tad in Tulare County,” asserted Dyke. “She’s getting prettier every day, Mr. Annixter. There’s a little tad that was just born to be a lady. Can recite the whole of ‘Snow Bound’ without ever stopping. You don’t believe that, maybe, hey? Well, it’s true. She’ll be just old enough to enter the Seminary up at Marysville next winter, and if my hop business pays two percent on the investment, there’s where she’s going to go.”
“How’s it coming on?” inquired Annixter.
“The hop ranch? Prime. I’ve about got the land in shape, and I’ve engaged a foreman who knows all about hops. I’ve been in luck. Everybody will go into the business next year when they see hops go to a dollar, and they’ll overstock the market and bust the price. But I’m going to get the cream of it now. I say two percent. Why, Lord love you, it will pay a good deal more than that. It’s got to. It’s cost more than I figured to start the thing, so, perhaps, I may have to borrow somewheres; but then on such a sure game as this—and I do want to make something out of that little tad of mine.”
“Through here?” inquired Annixter, making ready to move off.
“In just a minute,” answered Dyke. “Wait for me and I’ll walk down the street with you.”
Annixter grumbled that he was in a hurry, but waited, nevertheless, while Dyke again approached the clerk.
“I shall want some empty cars of you people this fall,” he explained. “I’m a hop-raiser now, and I just want to make sure what your rates on hops are. I’ve been told, but I want to make sure. Savvy?”
There was a long delay while the clerk consulted the tariff schedules, and Annixter fretted impatiently. Dyke, growing uneasy, leaned heavily on his elbows, watching the clerk anxiously. If the tariff was exorbitant, he saw his plans brought to naught, his money jeopardised, the little tad, Sidney, deprived of her education. He began to blame himself that he had not long before determined definitely what the railroad would charge for moving his hops. He told himself he was not much of a business man; that he managed carelessly.
“Two cents,” suddenly announced the clerk with a certain surly indifference.
“Two cents a pound?”
“Yes, two cents a pound—that’s in carload lots, of course. I won’t give you that rate on smaller consignments.”
“Yes, carload lots, of course … two cents. Well, all right.”
He turned away with a great sigh of relief.
“He sure did have me scared for a minute,” he said to Annixter, as the two went down to the street, “fiddling and fussing so long. Two cents is all right, though. Seems fair to me. That fiddling of his was all put on. I know ’em, these railroad heelers. He knew I was a discharged employee first off, and he played the game just to make me seem small because I had to ask favours of him. I don’t suppose the General Office tips its slavees off to act like swine, but there’s the feeling through the whole herd of them. ‘Ye got to come to
