Norris, Frank I The complete editise of Frank Norris OCTOPUS THE OCTOPUS A STORY OF CALIFORNIA DOUBLEDAY, (I) FRANK NORRIS BY Alym WITH A FOREWORD BY IRVIN S. COBB VOLUME I DD 1928 DORAN COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 828 N855 1928 V.I 010 210 444 COYYRIGHT, 1928 BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1901 BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. DEDICATED TO MY WIFE English 1 Themas 10-1- 32864 100. 36 PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL MAGNUS DERRICK (the "Governor "), proprietor of the Los MUER- TOS RANCHO. ANNIE DERRICK, wife of Magnus Derrick. LYMAN DERRICK, sons of Magnus Derrick. HARRAN DERRICK, Broderson, OSTERMAN, friends and neighbours of Magnus Derrick. ANNIXTER, proprietor of the QUIEN SABE RANCHO. HILMA TREE, a dairy girl on Annixter's ranch. Genslinger, editor of the Bonneville Mercury, the railroad organ. S. BEHRMAN, representative of the Pacific and Southwestern Rail- road. PRESLEY, a protégé of Magnus Derrick. VANAMEE, a sheep herder and range rider. ANGÉLE VARIAN. FATHER SARRIA, a Mission priest. DYKE, a black-listed railroad engineer. MRS. DYKE, Dyke's mother. SIDNEY DYKE, Dyke's daughter. CARAHER, a saloon keeper. HOOVEN, a tenant of Derrick. MRS. HOOVEN, his wife. MINNA HOOVEN, his daughter. CEDARQUIST, a manufacturer and shipbuilder. MRS. CEDARQUIST, his wife. GARNETT, DABNEY, KEAST, CHATTERN, ranchers of the San Joaquin Valley. FOREWORD A foreword done by me to a book of the late Frank Norris is as unnecessary as hiring a Broadway press agent for the Second Coming. Generally speaking, I think forewords are unnecessary anyhow. Good wine needs no bush. Good writing needs no bushelman fussing about in an effort to explain what the writer meant or what his writings may mean after he's dead and gone as Norris is. That's wrong, though. Norris is dead but he will never go. His stories, which represent and typify the soul and the spirit of the man, will live, I think, for many genera- tions to come. In particular I think this present work The Octopus has as sure a claim on immortality—meas- uring the immortal by mortal standards-as, let us say, Huckleberry Finn has or The Scarlet Letter, or Emerson's Essays, or Poe's best, or Whitman's best. I claim that distinguished American writers may, roughly, be divided into three classes: At the bottom are the good journeymen; in the second place, the real artists; at the top-and God knows there's plenty of room up there at the top and always will be a few, a very few true geniuses. Most certainly Frank Norris was one of those geniuses. For one thing he was a pioneer of the modern school of native realists-not our very first one, perhaps, but surely one of the very first to plough and to sow and to reap in a hitherto almost entirely neglected field. But he did not tumble into the pitfall which has engulfed some of the well-intentioned realists who followed in his footprints. He did not confuse realism with dullness. ix FOREWORD He did not see life as a penny peepshow-this was no Paul Pry of literature with his eye at a keyhole and his nose sniffing at a garbage dump. He did not behold truth as something which always is drab and flat and ugly and smelling of the sewer. His harp was a harp of a thousand strings and what a Heaven-sent harpist he was! He touched the strings and beauty came forth, and not only beauty but drama and humour and poetry and tragedy and a thundering clamour of indignation for what was unjust and what was wrong and what was rotten. His was the wisest, most subtle form of propaganda for it was not preaching; it was not even teaching; it was story telling. I have just finished re-reading The Octopus. I am glad that it is to be reprinted in a special edition because, being reprinted it will reach many readers who other- wise might miss the uplifting joy it has given me and to millions like me. A professional writer, reading a really meritorious piece of writing, is likely to say to himself, "I wish I had done that." But once in a while he comes upon a piece of writing so splendid that envy dies within him and jealousy is for the moment extinguished and he says, "I couldn't have done this, ever. But, thank God, there was somebody who could do it!" You can say that for much of what Norris wrote. You have to say it of The Octopus. For here Frank Norris took the whole breadth of our national horizon for his canvas and he dipped his brush in the rainbow and he painted his picture in such colours as can never fade. I find them as bright and vivid as they were twenty-odd years ago. A hundred and twenty-odd years from now I believe people will still be saying the same thing. IRVIN S. COBB. X BOOK I Bonneville (TULARE) Carahers' Saloon! Z and Grocery Store SE1 DER 8 o R O B COUN Fil ROAD 10 II N NC H atomentar du aÐ HANAND AN SON ANY me do ROAD b Division House Poplar Windbreak mens n de to detende TUMOURNE SCALE OF MILES ERMAN RANCIO. RỠä PACIFIC Watering Tank d & Broderson a I HOME RANCH Eucalyptus Trees 8 LOS ROAD QUTEN SABE UPPER ROAD. SOUTHWESTERN Division House RANCH-Q Bunk House 2. Osterman's Ranch House 4. Annixter's Ranch House LOWER Live Oak Tree Division House III EL RANO H LONG TRESTLE B Hoover 11 Willows Low Ground ROAD House TRAIL TRAIL a abcdef Telephone Lines Spring TRAIL Irrigating Ditch ROAD Artesian Well ROAD IV ROAD a SEED RANCH Low Ground, Guadalajar Mission TRAIL MUERTOS Mission San Juan de Guadalajara DE HOP FIELDS INALL 5 Laston ori MAP OF THE COUNTRY DESCRIBED IN "THE Octopus" 3 ידי 12 Cutters' House Low Ground Dyke's House !Spring STOCK RANGE L.L.POATES, ENGR., H.Y. 8. Derrick's Ranch House 9. Broderson's Ranch House High Ground to Eastward THE OCTOPUS BOOK I CHAPTER I JUST after passing Caraher's saloon, on the County Road that ran south from Bonneville, and that divided the Broderson ranch from that of Los Muertos, Presley was suddenly aware of the faint and prolonged blowing of a steam whistle that he knew must come from the railroad shops near the depot at Bonneville. In starting out from the ranch house that morning, he had for- gotten his watch, and was now perplexed to know whether the whistle was blowing for twelve or for one o'clock. He hoped the former. Early that morning he had decided to make a long excursion through the neighbouring country, partly on foot and partly on his bicycle, and now noon was come already, and as yet he had hardly started. As he was leaving the house after breakfast, Mrs. Derrick had asked him to go for the mail at Bonneville, and he had not been able to refuse. He took a firmer hold of the cork grips of his handle bars-the road being in a wretched condition after the recent hauling of the crop-and quickened his pace. He told himself that, no matter what the time was, he would not stop for luncheon at the ranch house, but would push on to Guadalajara and have a Spanish dinner at Solotari's, as he had originally planned. There had not been much of a crop to haul that year. I THE OCTOPUS Half of the wheat on the Broderson ranch had failed entirely, and Derrick himself had hardly raised more than enough to supply seed for the winter's sowing. But such little hauling as there had been had reduced the roads thereabouts to a lamentable condition, and during the dry season of the past few months, the layer of dust had deepened and thickened to such an extent that more than once Presley was obliged to dismount and trudge along on foot, pushing his bicycle in front of him. It was the last half of September, the very end of the dry season, and all Tulare County, all the vast reaches of the San Joaquin Valley-in fact, all south central Cali- fornia, was bone dry, parched, and baked and crisped after four months of cloudless weather, when the day seemed always at noon, and the sun blazed white hot over the valley from the Coast Range in the west to the foothills of the Sierras in the east. As Presley drew near to the point where what was known as the Lower Road struck off through the Rancho de Los Muertos, leading on to Guadalajara, he came upon one of the county watering-tanks, a great, iron-hooped tower of wood, straddling clumsily on its four uprights by the roadside. Since the day of its com- pletion, the storekeepers and retailers of Bonneville had painted their advertisements upon it. It was a land- mark. In that reach of level fields, the white letters upon it could be read for miles. A watering-trough stood near by, and, as he was very thirsty, Presley resolved to stop for a moment to get a drink. He drew abreast of the tank and halted there, lean- ing his bicycle against the fence. A couple of men in white overalls were repainting the surface of the tank, seated on swinging platforms that hung by hooks from the roof. They were painting a sign-an advertise- ment. It was all but finished and read, “S. Behrman, 2 A STORY OF CALIFORNIA Real Estate, Mortgages, Main Street, Bonneville, Opposite the Post Office." On the horse-trough that stood in the shadow of the tank was another freshly painted inscription: "S. Behrman Has Something To Say To You." As Presley straightened up after drinking from the faucet at one end of the horse-trough, the watering-cart itself laboured into view around the turn of the Lower Road. Two mules and two horses, white with dust, strained leisurely in the traces, moving at a snail's pace, their limp ears marking the time; while perched high upon the seat, under a yellow cotton wagon umbrella, Presley recognized Hooven, one of Derrick's tenants, a German, whom every one called "Bismarck," an ex- citable little man with a perpetual grievance and an endless flow of broken English. "Hello, Bismarck," said Presley, as Hooven brought his team to a standstill by the tank, preparatory to refilling. "Yoost der men I look for, Mist'r Praicely," cried the other, twisting the reins around the brake. "Yoost one minute, you wait, hey? I wanta talk mit you." Presley was impatient to be on his way again. A little more time wasted, and the day would be lost. He had nothing to do with the management of the ranch, and if Hooven wanted any advice from him, it was so much breath wasted. These uncouth brutes of farm- hands and petty ranchers, grimed with the soil they worked upon, were odious to him beyond words. Never could he feel in sympathy with them, nor with their lives, their ways, their marriages, deaths, bickerings, and all the monotonous round of their sordid existence. "Well, you must be quick about it, Bismarck," he answered sharply. "I'm late for dinner, as it is.' "Soh, now. Two minuten, und I be mit you." He drew down the overhanging spout of the tank to the 3 THE OCTOPUS vent in the circumference of the cart and pulled the chain that let out the water. Then he climbed down from the seat, jumping from the tire of the wheel, and taking Presley by the arm led him a few steps down the road. "Say," he began. "Say, I want to hef some conver- zations mit you. Yoost der men I want to see. Say, Caraher, he tole me dis morgen—say, he told me Mist'r Derrick gowun to farm der whole demn rench hisseluf der next yahr. No more tenants. Say, Caraher, he tole me all der tenants get der sack; Mist'r Derrick gowun to work der whole demn rench hisseluf, hey? Me, I get der sack alzoh, hey? You hef hear about dose ting? Say, me, I hef on der ranch been sieben yahr-seven yahr. Do I alzoh- "" "You'll have to see Derrick himself or Harran about that, Bismarck," interrupted Presley, trying to draw away. "That's something outside of me entirely. " But Hooven was not to be put off. No doubt he had been meditating his speech all the morning, formulating his words, preparing his phrases. "Say, no, no," he continued. "Me, I wanta stay bei der place; seven yahr I hef stay. Mist'r Derrick, he doand want dot I should be ge-sacked. Who, den, will der ditch ge-tend? Say, you tell 'em Bismarck hef gotta sure stay bei der place. Say, you hef der pull mit der Governor. You speak der gut word for me." "Harran is the man that has the pull with his father, Bismarck," answered Presley. "You get Harran to speak for you, and you're all right." "Sieben yahr I hef stay," protested Hooven, "and who will der ditch ge-tend, und alle dem cettles drive?" "Well, Harran's your man," answered Presley, pre- paring to mount his bicycle. "Say, you hef hear about dose ting?" "I don't hear about anything, Bismarck. I don't know the first thing about how the ranch is run.' >> 4 A STORY OF CALIFORNIA "Und der pipe-line ge-mend," Hooven burst out, sud- denly remembering a forgotten argument. He waved an arm. "Ach, der pipe-line bei der Mission Greek, und der waäter-hole for dose cettles. Say, he doand doo ut himselluf, berhaps, I doand tink.” "Well, talk to Harran about it." G << 'Say, he doand farm der whole demn rench bei his- seluf. Me, I gotta stay.' But on a sudden the water in the cart gushed over the sides from the vent in the top with a smart sound of splashing. Hooven was forced to turn his attention to it. Presley got his wheel under way. "I hef some converzations mit Herran," Hooven called after him. "He doand doo ut bei hisseluf, den, Mist'r Derrick; ach, no. I stay bei der rench to drive dose cettles." >> He climbed back to his seat under the wagon um- brella, and, as he started his team again with great cracks of his long whip, turned to the painters still at work upon the sign and declared with some defiance: "Sieben yahr; yais, sir, sieben yahr I hef been on dis rench. Git oop, you mule you, hoop!" Meanwhile Presley had turned into the Lower Road. He was now on Derrick's land, division No. 1, or, as it was called, the Home ranch, of the great Los Muertos Rancho. The road was better here, the dust laid after the passage of Hooven's watering-cart, and, in a few minutes, he had come to the ranch house itself, with its white picket fence, its few flower beds, and grove of eucalyptus trees. On the lawn at the side of the house, he saw Harran in the act of setting out the automatic sprinkler. In the shade of the house, by the porch, were two or three of the greyhounds, part of the pack that were used to hunt down jack-rabbits, and Godfrey, Harran's prize deerhound. Presley wheeled up the driveway and met Harran by 5 THE OCTOPUS the horse-block. Harran was Magnus Derrick's young- est son, a very well-looking young fellow of twenty- three or twenty-five. He had the fine carriage that marked his father, and still further resembled him in that he had the Derrick nose-hawk-like and promi- nent, such as one sees in the later portraits of the Duke of Wellington. He was blond, and incessant exposure to the sun had, instead of tanning him brown, merely heightened the colour of his cheeks. His yellow hair had a tendency to curl in a forward direction, just in front of the ears. Beside him, Presley made the sharpest of contrasts. Presley seemed to have come of a mixed origin; ap- peared to have a nature more composite, a temperament more complex. Unlike Harran Derrick, he seemed more of a character than a type. The sun had browned his face till it was almost swarthy. His eyes were a dark brown, and his forehead was the forehead of the intel- lectual, wide and high, with a certain unmistakable lift about it that argued education, not only of himself, but of his people before him. The impression conveyed by his mouth and chin was that of a delicate and highly sensitive nature, the lips thin and loosely shut together, the chin small and rather receding. One guessed that Presley's refinement had been gained only by a certain loss of strength. One expected to find him nervous, in- trospective, to discover that his mental life was not at all the result of impressions and sensations that came to him from without, but rather of thoughts and reflec- tions germinating from within. Though morbidly sen- sitive to changes in his physical surroundings, he would be slow to act upon such sensations, would not prove impulsive, not because he was sluggish, but because he was merely irresolute. It could be foreseen that morally he was of that sort who avoid evil through good taste, lack of decision, and want of opportunity. His tem- 6 A STORY OF CALIFORNIA perament was that of the poet; when he told himself he had been thinking, he deceived himself. He had, on such occasions, been only brooding. Some eighteen months before this time, he had been threatened with consumption, and, taking advantage of a standing invitation on the part of Magnus Derrick, had come to stay in the dry, even climate of the San Joaquin for an indefinite length of time. He was thirty years old, and had graduated and post-graduated with high honours from an Eastern college, where he had devoted himself to a passionate study of literature, and, more especially, of poetry. It was his insatiable ambition to write verse. But up to this time, his work had been fugitive, ephemeral, a note here and there, heard, appreciated, and forgotten. He was in search of a subject; something magnificent, he did not know exactly what; some vast, tremendous theme, heroic, terrible, to be unrolled in all the thun- dering progression of hexameters. But whatever he wrote, and in whatever fashion, Presley was determined that his poem should be of the West, that world's frontier of Romance, where a new race, a new people-hardy, brave, and passionate- were building an empire; where the tumultuous life ran like fire from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn again, primitive, brutal, honest, and without fear. Something (to his idea not much) had been done to catch at that life in passing, but its poet had not yet arisen. The few sporadic attempts, thus he told himself, had only touched the keynote. He strove for the dia- pason, the great song that should embrace in itself a whole epoch, a complete era, the voice of an entire people, wherein all people should be included—they and their legends, their folk lore, their fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their stoi- cism under stress, their adventures, their treasures f 7 THE OCTOPUS T found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their hero- ism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity-a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, uncompromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine all this, all the traits and types of every community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe, gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together in one single, mighty song, the Song of the West. That was what he dreamed, while things without names-thoughts for which no man had yet invented words, terrible form- less shapes, vague figures, colossal, monstrous, dis- torted-whirled at a gallop through his imagination. As Harran came up, Presley reached down into the pouches of the sun-bleached shooting coat he wore and drew out and handed him the packet of letters and papers. (c "" Here's the mail. I think I shall go on.' "But dinner is ready," said Harran; "we are just sitting down." Presley shook his head. "No, I'm in a hurry. Per- haps I shall have something to eat at Guadalajara. I shall be gone all day.” He delayed a few moments longer, tightening a loose nut on his forward wheel, while Harran, recognizing his father's handwriting on one of the envelopes, slit it open and cast his eye rapidly over its pages. "The Governor is coming home," he exclaimed, "to-morrow morning on the early train; wants me to meet him with the team at Guadalajara; and,” he cried between his clenched teeth, as he continued to read, "we've lost the case." "What case? Oh, in the matter of rates?" 8 A STORY OF CALIFORNIA Harran nodded, his eyes flashing, his face growing suddenly scarlet. "Ulsteen gave his decision yesterday," he continued, reading from his father's letter. "He holds, Ulsteen does, that 'grain rates as low as the new figure would amount to confiscation of property, and that, on such a basis, the railroad could not be operated at a legitimate profit. As he is powerless to legislate in the matter, he can only put the rates back at what they originally were before the commissioners made the cut, and it is so ordered.' That's our friend S. Behrman again," added Harran, grinding his teeth. "He was up in the city the whole of the time the new schedule was being drawn, and he and Ulsteen and the Railroad Commission were as thick as thieves. He has been up there all this last week, too, doing the railroad's dirty work, and backing Ulsteen up. 'Legitimate profit, legitimate profit,"" he broke out. "Can we raise wheat at a legitimate profit with a tariff of four dollars a ton for moving it two hundred miles to tide-water, with wheat at eighty-seven cents? Why not hold us up with a gun in our faces, and say, 'hands up,' and be done with it?" He dug his boot-heel into the ground and turned away to the house abruptly, cursing beneath his breath. "By the way," Presley called after him, "Hooven wants to see you. He asked me about this idea of the Governor's of getting along without the tenants this year. Hooven wants to stay to tend the ditch and look after the stock. I told him to see you. " Harran, his mind full of other things, nodded to say he understood. Presley only waited till he had disap- peared indoors, so that he might not seem too indiffer- ent to his trouble; then, remounting, struck at once into a brisk pace, and, turning out from the carriage gate, held on swiftly down the Lower Road, going in the 9 THE OCTOPUS direction of Guadalajara. These matters, these eternal fierce bickerings between the farmers of the San Joa- quin and the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad irri- tated him and wearied him. He cared for none of these things. They did not belong to his world. In the picture of that huge romantic West that he saw in his imagina- tion, these dissensions made the one note of harsh colour that refused to enter into the great scheme of harmony. It was material, sordid, deadly commonplace. But, however he strove to shut his eyes to it or his ears to it, the thing persisted and persisted. The romance seemed complete up to that point. There it broke, there it failed, there it became realism, grim, unlovely, unyield- ing. To be true-and it was the first article of his creed to be unflinchingly true he could not ignore it. All the noble poetry of the ranch-the valley-seemed in his mind to be marred and disfigured by the presence of certain immovable facts. Just what he wanted, Presley hardly knew. On one hand, it was his ambition to por- tray life as he saw it directly, frankly, and through no medium of personality or temperament. But, on the other hand, as well, he wished to see everything through a rose-coloured mist—a mist that dulled all harsh out- lines, all crude and violent colours. He told himself that, as a part of the people, he loved the people and sympathized with their hopes and fears, and joys and griefs; and yet Hooven, grimy and perspiring, with his perpetual grievance and his.contracted horizon, only revolted him. He had set himself the task of giving true, absolutely true, poetical expression to the life of the ranch, and yet, again and again, he brought up against the railroad, that stubborn iron barrier against which his romance shattered itself to froth and disintegrated, flying spume. His heart went out to the people, and his groping hand met that of a slovenly little Dutchman, whom it was impossible to consider seriously. He IO A STORY OF CALIFORNIA 1+ searched for the True Romance, and, in the end, found grain rates and unjust freight tariffs. “But the stuff is here," he muttered, as he sent his wheel rumbling across the bridge over Broderson Creek. "The romance, the real romance, is here some- where. I'll get hold of it yet." He shot a glance about him as if in search of the in- spiration. By now he was not quite halfway across the northern and narrowest corner of Los Muertos, at this point some eight miles wide. He was still on the Home ranch. A few miles to the south he could just make out the line of wire fence that separated it from the third division; and to the north, seen faint and blue through the haze and shimmer of the noon sun, a long file of telegraph poles showed the line of the railroad and marked Derrick's northeast boundary. The road over which Presley was travelling ran almost diametrically straight. In front of him, but at a great distance, he could make out the giant live-oak and the red roof of Hooven's barn that stood near it. All about him the country was flat. In all directions he could see for miles. The harvest was just over. Nothing but stubble remained on the ground. With the one exception of the live-oak by Hooven's place, there was nothing green in sight. The wheat stubble was of a dirty yellow; the ground, parched, cracked, and dry, of a cheerless brown. By the roadside the dust lay thick and grey, and, on either hand, stretching on toward the horizon, losing itself in a mere smudge in the distance, ran the illimitable parallels of the wire fence. And that was all; that and the burnt-out blue of the sky and the steady shimmer of the heat. The silence was infinite. After the harvest, small though that harvest had been, the ranches seemed asleep. It was as though the earth, after its period of reproduction, its pains of labour, had been delivered of II THE OCTOPUS the fruit of its loins, and now slept the sleep of exhaus- tion. It was the period between seasons, when nothing was being done, when the natural forces seemed to hang suspended. There was no rain, there was no wind, there was no growth, no life; the very stubble had no force even to rot. The sun alone moved. Le Toward two o'clock, Presley reached Hooven's place, two or three grimy frame buildings, infested with a swarm of dogs. A hog or two wandered aimlessly about. Under a shed by the barn, a broken-down seeder lay rusting to its ruin. But overhead, a mammoth live- oak, the largest tree in all the countryside, towered superb and magnificent. Grey bunches of mistletoe and festoons of trailing moss hung from its bark. From its lowest branch hung Hooven's meat-safe, a square box faced with wire screens. What gave a special interest to Hooven's was the fact that here was the intersection of the Lower Road and Derrick's main irrigating ditch, a vast trench not yet completed, which he and Annixter, who worked the Quien Sabe ranch, were jointly constructing. It ran directly across the road and at right angles to it, and lay a deep groove in the field between Hooven's and the town of Guadalajara, some three miles farther on. Be- sides this, the ditch was a natural boundary between two divisions of the Los Muertos ranch, the first and fourth. Presley now had the choice of two routes. His objec- tive point was the spring at the headwaters of Broder- son Creek, in the hills on the eastern side of the Quien Sabe ranch. The trail afforded him a short cut thither- ward. As he passed the house, Mrs. Hooven came to the door, her little daughter Hilda, dressed in a boy's overalls and clumsy boots, at her skirts. Minna, her oldest daughter, a very pretty girl, whose love affairs were continually the talk of all Los Muertos, was 12 A STORY OF CALIFORNIA visible through a window of the house, busy at the week's washing. Mrs. Hooven was a faded, colourless woman, middle-aged and commonplace, and offering not the least characteristic that would distinguish her from a thousand other women of her class and kind. She nodded to Presley, watching him with a stolid gaze from under her arm, which she held across her fore- head to shade her eyes. But now Presley exerted himself in good earnest. His bicycle flew. He resolved that after all he would go to Guadalajara. He crossed the bridge over the irrigat- ing ditch with a brusque spurt of hollow sound, and shot forward down the last stretch of the Lower Road that yet intervened between Hooven's and the town. He was on the fourth division of the ranch now, the only one whereon the wheat had been successful, no doubt be- cause of the Little Mission Creek that ran through it. But he no longer occupied himself with the landscape. His only concern was to get on as fast as possible. He had looked forward to spending nearly the whole day on the crest of the wooded hills in the northern corner of the Quien Sabe ranch, reading, idling, smoking his pipe. But now he would do well if he arrived there by the middle of the afternoon. In a few moments he had reached the line fence that marked the limits of the ranch. Here were the railroad tracks, and just beyond- a huddled mass of roofs, with here and there an adobe house on its outskirts-the little town of Guadalajara. Nearer at hand, and directly in front of Presley, were the freight and passenger depots of the P. and S. W., painted in the grey and white which seemed to be the official colours of all the buildings owned by the cor- poration. The station was deserted. No trains passed at this hour. From the direction of the ticket window, Presley heard the unsteady chittering of the telegraph key. In the shadow of one of the baggage trucks upon 13 THE OCTOPUS the platform, the great yellow cat that belonged to the agent dozed complacently, her paws tucked under her body. Three flat cars, loaded with bright-painted farm- ing machines, were on the siding above the station, while, on the switch below, a huge freight engine that lacked its cow-catcher sat back upon its monstrous driving-wheels, motionless, solid, drawing long breaths that were punctuated by the subdued sound of its steam-pump clicking at exact intervals. But evidently it had been decreed that Presley should be stopped at every point of his ride that day, for, as he was pushing his bicycle across the tracks, he was surprised to hear his name called. "Hello, there, Mr. Presley. What's the good word?" Presley looked up quickly, and saw Dyke, the engi- neer, leaning on his folded arms from the cab window of the freight engine. But at the prospect of this further delay, Presley was less troubled. Dyke and he were well acquainted and the best of friends. The picturesque- ness of the engineer's life was always attractive to Presley, and more than once he had ridden on Dyke's engine between Guadalajara and Bonneville. Once, even, he had made the entire run between the latter town and San Francisco in the cab. Dyke's home was in Guadalajara. He lived in one of the remodelled 'dobe cottages, where his mother kept house for him. His wife had died some five years before this time, leaving him a little daughter, Sidney, to bring up as best he could. Dyke himself was a heavy built, well-looking fellow, nearly twice the weight of Presley, with great shoulders and massive hairy arms, and a tremendous rumbling voice. "Hello, old man," answered Presley, coming up to the engine. "What are you doing about here at this time of day? I thought you were on the night service this month." 14 A STORY OF CALIFORNIA "We've changed about a bit," answered the other. "Come up here and sit down, and get out of the sun. They've held us here to wait orders," he explained, as Presley, after leaning his bicycle against the tender, climbed to the fireman's seat of worn green leather. "They are changing the run of one of the crack passen- ger engines down below, and are sending her up to Fresno. There was a smash of some kind on the Bakers- field division, and she's to hell and gone behind her time. I suppose when she comes, she'll come a-humming. It will be stand clear and an open track all the way to Fresno. They have held me here to let her go by." He took his pipe, an old T. D. clay, but coloured to a beautiful shiny black, from the pocket of his jumper and filled and lit it. "Well, I don't suppose you object to being held here,' observed Presley. "Gives you a chance to visit your mother and the little girl." "" "And precisely they choose this day to go up to Sac- ramento," answered Dyke. "Just my luck. Went up to visit my brother's people. By the way, my brother may come down here-locate here, I mean-and go into the hop-raising business. He's got an option on five hundred acres just back of the town here. He says there's going to be money in hops. I don't know; maybe I'll go in with him." "Why, what's the matter with railroading?" Dyke drew a couple of puffs on his pipe, and fixed Presley with a glance. rr "There's this the matter with it," he said; “I'm fired." "Fired! You!" exclaimed Presley, turning abruptly toward him. "That's what I'm telling you," returned Dyke grimly. "You don't mean it. Why, what for, Dyke?" 15 THE OCTOPUS "Now, you tell me what for," growled the other savagely. "Boy and man, I've worked for the P. and S. W. for over ten years, and never one yelp of a com- plaint did I ever hear from them. They know damn well they've not got a steadier man on the road. And more than that, more than that, I don't belong to the Broth- erhood. And when the strike came along, I stood by them-stood by the company. You know that. And you know, and they know, that at Sacramento that time, I ran my train according to schedule, with a gun in each hand, never knowing when I was going over a mined culvert, and there was talk of giving me a gold watch at the time. To hell with their gold watches! I want ordinary justice and fair treatment. And now, when hard times come along, and they are cutting wages, what do they do? Do they make any discrimina- tion in my case? Do they remember the man that stood by them and risked his life in their service? No. They cut my pay down just as off-hand as they do the pay of any dirty little wiper in the yard. Cut me along with listen to this-cut me along with men that they had black-listed; strikers that they took back because they were short of hands." He drew fiercely on his pipe. “I went to them, yes, I did; I went to the General Office, and ate dirt. I told them I was a family man, and that I didn't see how I was going to get along on the new scale, and I reminded them of my service during the strike. The swine told me that it wouldn't be fair to discriminate in favour of one man, and that the cut must apply to all their employees alike. Fair!" he shouted with laughter. "Fair! Hear the P. and S. W. talking about fairness and discrimination. That's good, that is. Well, I got furious. I was a fool, I suppose. I told them that, in justice to myself, I wouldn't do first- class work for third-class pay. And they said, 'Well, Mr. Dyke, you know what you can do.' Well, I did