Osterman found an excuse for going to bed, but Annixter and Harran remained in the latter’s room, in a haze of blue tobacco smoke, talking, talking. But at length, at the end of all argument, Annixter got up, remarking:
“Well, I’m going to turn in. It’s nearly two o’clock.”
He went to his room, closing the door, and Harran, opening his window to clear out the tobacco smoke, looked out for a moment across the country toward the south.
The darkness was profound, impenetrable; the rain fell with an uninterrupted roar. Near at hand one could hear the sound of dripping eaves and foliage and the eager, sucking sound of the drinking earth, and abruptly while Harran stood looking out, one hand upon the upraised sash, a great puff of the outside air invaded the room, odourous with the reek of the soaking earth, redolent with fertility, pungent, heavy, tepid. He closed the window again and sat for a few moments on the edge of the bed, one shoe in his hand, thoughtful and absorbed, wondering if his father would involve himself in this new scheme, wondering if, after all, he wanted him to.
But suddenly he was aware of a commotion, issuing from the direction of Annixter’s room, and the voice of Annixter himself upraised in expostulation and exasperation. The door of the room to which Annixter had been assigned opened with a violent wrench and an angry voice exclaimed to anybody who would listen:
“Oh, yes, funny, isn’t it? In a way, it’s funny, and then, again, in a way it isn’t.”
The door banged to so that all the windows of the house rattled in their frames.
Harran hurried out into the dining-room and there met Presley and his father, who had been aroused as well by Annixter’s clamour. Osterman was there, too, his bald head gleaming like a bulb of ivory in the light of the lamp that Magnus carried.
“What’s all up?” demanded Osterman. “Whatever in the world is the matter with Buck?”
Confused and terrible sounds came from behind the door of Annixter’s room. A prolonged monologue of grievance, broken by explosions of wrath and the vague noise of some one in a furious hurry. All at once and before Harran had a chance to knock on the door, Annixter flung it open. His face was blazing with anger, his outthrust lip more prominent than ever, his wiry, yellow hair in disarray, the tuft on the crown sticking straight into the air like the upraised hackles of an angry hound. Evidently he had been dressing himself with the most headlong rapidity; he had not yet put on his coat and vest, but carried them over his arm, while with his disengaged hand he kept hitching his suspenders over his shoulders with a persistent and hypnotic gesture. Without a moment’s pause he gave vent to his indignation in a torrent of words.
“Ah, yes, in my bed, sloop, aha! I know the man who put it there,” he went on, glaring at Osterman, “and that man is a PIP. Sloop! Slimy, disgusting stuff; you heard me say I didn’t like it when the Chink passed it to me at dinner—and just for that reason you put it in my bed, and I stick my feet into it when I turn in. Funny, isn’t it? Oh, yes, too funny for any use. I’d laugh a little louder if I was you.”
“Well, Buck,” protested Harran, as he noticed the hat in Annixter’s hand, “you’re not going home just for–”
Annixter turned on him with a shout.
“I’ll get plumb out of here,” he trumpeted. “I won’t stay here another minute.”
He swung into his waistcoat and coat, scrabbling at the buttons in the violence of his emotions. “And I don’t know but what it will make me sick again to go out in a night like this. NO, I won’t stay. Some things are funny, and then, again, there are some things that are not. Ah, yes, sloop! Well, that’s all right. I can be funny, too, when you come to that. You don’t get a cent of money out of me. You can do your dirty bribery in your own dirty way. I won’t come into this scheme at all. I wash my hands of the whole business. It’s rotten and it’s wild-eyed; it’s dirt from start to finish; and you’ll all land in State’s prison. You can count me out.”
“But, Buck, look here, you crazy fool,” cried Harran, “I don’t know who put that stuff in your bed, but I’m not going; to let you go back to Quien Sabe in a rain like this.”
“I know who put it in,” clamoured the other, shaking his fists, “and don’t call me Buck and I’ll do as I please. I WILL go back home. I’ll get plumb out of here. Sorry I came. Sorry I ever lent myself to such a disgusting, dishonest, dirty bribery game as this all to-night. I won’t put a dime into it, no, not a penny.”
He stormed to the door leading out upon the porch, deaf to all reason. Harran and Presley followed him, trying to dissuade him from going home at that time of night and in such a storm, but Annixter was not to be placated. He stamped across to the barn where his horse and buggy had been stabled, splashing through the puddles under foot, going out of his way to drench himself, refusing even to allow Presley and Harran to help him harness the horse.
“What’s the use of making a fool of yourself, Annixter?” remonstrated Presley, as Annixter backed the horse from the stall. “You act just like a ten-year-old boy. If Osterman wants to play the goat, why should you help him out?”
“He’s a PIP,” vociferated Annixter. “You don’t understand, Presley. It runs in my family to hate anything sticky. It’s—it’s—it’s heredity. How would you like to get into bed at two in the morning and jam your feet down into a slimy mess like that? Oh, no. It’s not so funny then. And you mark my words, Mr. Harran Derrick,” he continued, as he climbed into the buggy, shaking the whip toward Harran, “this business we talked over to-night—I’m OUT of it. It’s yellow. It’s too CURSED dishonest.”
He cut the horse across the back with the whip and drove out into the pelting rain. In a few seconds the sound of his buggy wheels was lost in the muffled roar of the downpour.
Harran and Presley closed the barn and returned to the house, sheltering themselves under a tarpaulin carriage cover. Once inside, Harran went to remonstrate with Osterman, who was still up. Magnus had again retired. The house had fallen quiet again.
As Presley crossed the dining-room on the way to his own apartment in the second story of the house, he paused for a moment, looking about him. In the dull light of the lowered lamps, the redwood panelling of the room showed a dark crimson as though stained with blood. On the massive slab of the dining table the half-emptied glasses and bottles stood about in the confusion in which they had been left, reflecting themselves deep into the polished wood; the glass doors of the case of stuffed birds was a subdued shimmer; the many-coloured Navajo blanket over the couch seemed a mere patch of brown.
Around the table the chairs in which the men had sat throughout the evening still ranged themselves in a semi-circle, vaguely suggestive of the conference of the past few hours, with all its possibilities of good and evil, its significance of a future big with portent. The room was still. Only on the cushions of the chair that Annixter had occupied, the cat, Princess Nathalie, at last comfortably settled in her accustomed place, dozed complacently, her paws tucked under her breast, filling the deserted room with the subdued murmur of her contented purr.
CHAPTER IV
On the Quien Sabe ranch, in one of its western divisions, near the line fence that divided it from the Osterman holding, Vanamee was harnessing the horses to the plough to which he had been assigned two days before, a stable-boy from the division barn helping him.
Promptly discharged from the employ of the sheep-raisers after the lamentable accident near the Long Trestle, Vanamee had presented himself to Harran, asking for employment. The season was beginning; on all the ranches work was being resumed. The rain had put the ground into admirable condition for ploughing, and Annixter, Broderson, and Osterman all had their gangs at work. Thus, Vanamee was vastly surprised to find Los Muertos idle, the horses still in the barns, the men gathering in the shade of the bunk-house and eating-house, smoking, dozing, or going aimlessly about, their arms dangling. The ploughs for which Magnus and Harran were waiting in a fury of impatience had not yet arrived, and since the management of Los Muertos had counted upon having these in hand long before this time, no provision had been made for keeping the old