Magnus climbed into the buggy, helping himself with Harran’s outstretched hand which he still held. The two were immensely fond of each other, proud of each other. They were constantly together and Magnus kept no secrets from his favourite son.
“Well, boy.”
“Well, Governor.”
“I am very pleased you came yourself, Harran. I feared that you might be too busy and send Phelps. It was thoughtful.”
Harran was about to reply, but at that moment Magnus caught sight of the three flat cars loaded with bright-painted farming machines which still remained on the siding above the station. He laid his hands on the reins and Harran checked the team.
“Harran,” observed Magnus, fixing the machinery with a judicial frown, “Harran, those look singularly like our ploughs. Drive over, boy.”
The train had by this time gone on its way and Harran brought the team up to the siding.
“Ah, I was right,” said the Governor. “‘Magnus Derrick, Los Muertos, Bonneville, from Ditson & Co., Rochester.’ These are ours, boy.”
Harran breathed a sigh of relief.
“At last,” he answered, “and just in time, too. We’ll have rain before the week is out. I think, now that I am here, I will telephone Phelps to send the wagon right down for these. I started blue-stoning to-day.”
Magnus nodded a grave approval.
“That was shrewd, boy. As to the rain, I think you are well informed; we will have an early season. The ploughs have arrived at a happy moment.”
“It means money to us, Governor,” remarked Harran.
But as he turned the horses to allow his father to get into the buggy again, the two were surprised to hear a thick, throaty voice wishing them good-morning, and turning about were aware of S. Behrman, who had come up while they were examining the ploughs. Harran’s eyes flashed on the instant and through his nostrils he drew a sharp, quick breath, while a certain rigour of carriage stiffened the set of Magnus Derrick’s shoulders and back. Magnus had not yet got into the buggy, but stood with the team between him and S. Behrman, eyeing him calmly across the horses’ backs. S. Behrman came around to the other side of the buggy and faced Magnus.
He was a large, fat man, with a great stomach; his cheek and the upper part of his thick neck ran together to form a great tremulous jowl, shaven and blue-grey in colour; a roll of fat, sprinkled with sparse hair, moist with perspiration, protruded over the back of his collar. He wore a heavy black moustache. On his head was a round-topped hat of stiff brown straw, highly varnished. A light-brown linen vest, stamped with innumerable interlocked horseshoes, covered his protuberant stomach, upon which a heavy watch chain of hollow links rose and fell with his difficult breathing, clinking against the vest buttons of imitation mother-of-pearl.
S. Behrman was the banker of Bonneville. But besides this he was many other things. He was a real estate agent. He bought grain; he dealt in mortgages. He was one of the local political bosses, but more important than all this, he was the representative of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad in that section of Tulare County. The railroad did little business in that part of the country that S. Behrman did not supervise, from the consignment of a shipment of wheat to the management of a damage suit, or even to the repair and maintenance of the right of way. During the time when the ranchers of the county were fighting the grain-rate case, S. Behrman had been much in evidence in and about the San Francisco court rooms and the lobby of the legislature in Sacramento. He had returned to Bonneville only recently, a decision adverse to the ranchers being foreseen. The position he occupied on the salary list of the Pacific and Southwestern could not readily be defined, for he was neither freight agent, passenger agent, attorney, real-estate broker, nor political servant, though his influence in all these offices was undoubted and enormous. But for all that, the ranchers about Bonneville knew whom to look to as a source of trouble. There was no denying the fact that for Osterman, Broderson, Annixter and Derrick, S. Behrman was the railroad.
“Mr. Derrick, good-morning,” he cried as he came up. “Good-morning, Harran. Glad to see you back, Mr. Derrick.” He held out a thick hand.
Magnus, head and shoulders above the other, tall, thin, erect, looked down upon S. Behrman, inclining his head, failing to see his extended hand.
“Good-morning, sir,” he observed, and waited for S. Behrman’s further speech.
“Well, Mr. Derrick,” continued S. Behrman, wiping the back of his neck with his handkerchief, “I saw in the city papers yesterday that our case had gone against you.”
“I guess it wasn’t any great news to YOU,” commented Harran, his face scarlet. “I guess you knew which way Ulsteen was going to jump after your very first interview with him. You don’t like to be surprised in this sort of thing, S. Behrman.”
“Now, you know better than that, Harran,” remonstrated S. Behrman blandly. “I know what you mean to imply, but I ain’t going to let it make me get mad. I wanted to say to your Governor—I wanted to say to you, Mr. Derrick—as one man to another—letting alone for the minute that we were on opposite sides of the case—that I’m sorry you didn’t win. Your side made a good fight, but it was in a mistaken cause. That’s the whole trouble. Why, you could have figured out before you ever went into the case that such rates are confiscation of property. You must allow us—must allow the railroad—a fair interest on the investment. You don’t want us to go into the receiver’s hands, do you now, Mr. Derrick?”
“The Board of Railroad Commissioners was bought,” remarked Magnus sharply, a keen, brisk flash glinting in his eye.
“It was part of the game,” put in Harran, “for the Railroad Commission to cut rates to a ridiculous figure, far below a REASONABLE figure, just so that it WOULD be confiscation. Whether Ulsteen is a tool of yours or not, he had to put the rates back to what they were originally.”
“If you enforced those rates, Mr. Harran,” returned S. Behrman calmly, “we wouldn’t be able to earn sufficient money to meet operating expenses or fixed charges, to say nothing of a surplus left over to pay dividends–”
“Tell me when the P. and S. W. ever paid dividends.”
“The lowest rates,” continued S. Behrman, “that the legislature can establish must be such as will secure us a fair interest on our investment.”
“Well, what’s your standard? Come, let’s hear it. Who is to say what’s a fair rate? The railroad has its own notions of fairness sometimes.”
“The laws of the State,” returned S. Behrman, “fix the rate of interest at seven per cent. That’s a good enough standard for us. There is no reason, Mr. Harran, why a dollar invested in a railroad should not earn as much as a dollar represented by a promissory note—seven per cent. By applying your schedule of rates we would not earn a cent; we would be bankrupt.”
“Interest on your investment!” cried Harran, furious. “It’s fine to talk about fair interest. I know and you know that the total earnings