The Octopus, Frank Norris [books you need to read txt] 📗

brown straw, varnished so bright that it reflected the light of the office windows like a helmet, and even from where he stood Dyke could hear his loud breathing and the clink of the hollow links of his watch chain upon the vest buttons of imitation pearl, as his stomach rose and fell.

Dyke looked at him with attention. There was the enemy, the representative of the Trust with which Derrick’s League was locking horns. The great struggle had begun to invest the combatants with interest. Daily, almost hourly, Dyke was in touch with the ranchers, the wheat-growers. He heard their denunciations, their growls of exasperation and defiance. Here was the other side—this placid, fat man, with a stiff straw hat and linen vest, who never lost his temper, who smiled affably upon his enemies, giving them good advice, commiserating with them in one defeat after another, never ruffled, never excited, sure of his power, conscious that back of him was the Machine, the colossal force, the inexhaustible coffers of a mighty organisation, vomiting millions to the League’s thousands.

The League was clamorous, ubiquitous, its objects known to every urchin on the streets, but the Trust was silent, its ways inscrutable, the public saw only results. It worked on in the dark, calm, disciplined, irresistible. Abruptly Dyke received the impression of the multitudinous ramifications of the colossus. Under his feet the ground seemed mined; down there below him in the dark the huge tentacles went silently twisting and advancing, spreading out in every direction, sapping the strength of all opposition, quiet, gradual, biding the time to reach up and out and grip with a sudden unleashing of gigantic strength.

“I’ll be wanting some cars of you people before the summer is out,” observed Dyke to the clerk as he folded up and put away the order that the other had handed him. He remembered perfectly well that he had arranged the matter of transporting his crop some months before, but his role of proprietor amused him and he liked to busy himself again and again with the details of his undertaking.

“I suppose,” he added, “you’ll be able to give ‘em to me. There’ll be a big wheat crop to move this year and I don’t want to be caught in any car famine.”

“Oh, you’ll get your cars,” murmured the other.

“I’ll be the means of bringing business your way,” Dyke went on; “I’ve done so well with my hops that there are a lot of others going into the business next season. Suppose,” he continued, struck with an idea, “suppose we went into some sort of pool, a sort of shippers’ organisation, could you give us special rates, cheaper rates—say a cent and a half?”

The other looked up.

“A cent and a half! Say FOUR cents and a half and maybe I’ll talk business with you.”

“Four cents and a half,” returned Dyke, “I don’t see it. Why, the regular rate is only two cents.”

“No, it isn’t,” answered the clerk, looking him gravely in the eye, “it’s five cents.”

“Well, there’s where you are wrong, m’son,” Dyke retorted, genially. “You look it up. You’ll find the freight on hops from Bonneville to ‘Frisco is two cents a pound for car load lots. You told me that yourself last fall.”

“That was last fall,” observed the clerk. There was a silence. Dyke shot a glance of suspicion at the other. Then, reassured, he remarked:

“You look it up. You’ll see I’m right.”

S. Behrman came forward and shook hands politely with the ex-engineer.

“Anything I can do for you, Mr. Dyke?”

Dyke explained. When he had done speaking, the clerk turned to S. Behrman and observed, respectfully:

“Our regular rate on hops is five cents.”

“Yes,” answered S. Behrman, pausing to reflect; “yes, Mr. Dyke, that’s right—five cents.”

The clerk brought forward a folder of yellow paper and handed it to Dyke. It was inscribed at the top “Tariff Schedule No. 8,” and underneath these words, in brackets, was a smaller inscription, “SUPERSEDES NO. 7 OF AUG. 1”

“See for yourself,” said S. Behrman. He indicated an item under the head of “Miscellany.”

“The following rates for carriage of hops in car load lots,” read Dyke, “take effect June 1, and will remain in force until superseded by a later tariff. Those quoted beyond Stockton are subject to changes in traffic arrangements with carriers by water from that point.”

In the list that was printed below, Dyke saw that the rate for hops between Bonneville or Guadalajara and San Francisco was five cents.

For a moment Dyke was confused. Then swiftly the matter became clear in his mind. The Railroad had raised the freight on hops from two cents to five.

All his calculations as to a profit on his little investment he had based on a freight rate of two cents a pound. He was under contract to deliver his crop. He could not draw back. The new rate ate up every cent of his gains. He stood there ruined.

“Why, what do you mean?” he burst out. “You promised me a rate of two cents and I went ahead with my business with that understanding. What do you mean?”

S. Behrman and the clerk watched him from the other side of the counter.

“The rate is five cents,” declared the clerk doggedly.

“Well, that ruins me,” shouted Dyke. “Do you understand? I won’t make fifty cents. MAKE! Why, I will OWE,—I’ll be—be— That ruins me, do you understand?”

The other, raised a shoulder.

“We don’t force you to ship. You can do as you like. The rate is five cents.”

“Well—but—damn you, I’m under contract to deliver. What am I going to do? Why, you told me—you promised me a two-cent rate.”

“I don’t remember it,” said the clerk. “I don’t know anything about that. But I know this; I know that hops have gone up. I know the German crop was a failure and that the crop in New York wasn’t worth the hauling. Hops have gone up to nearly a dollar. You don’t suppose we don’t know that, do you, Mr. Dyke?”

“What’s the price of hops got to do with you?”

“It’s got THIS to do with us,” returned the other with a sudden aggressiveness, “that the freight rate has gone up to meet the price. We’re not doing business for our health. My orders are to raise your rate to five cents, and I think you are getting off easy.”

Dyke stared in blank astonishment. For the moment, the audacity of the affair was what most appealed to him. He forgot its personal application.

“Good Lord,” he murmured, “good Lord! What will you people do next? Look here. What’s your basis of applying freight rates, anyhow?” he suddenly vociferated with furious sarcasm. “What’s your rule? What are you guided by?”

But at the words, S. Behrman, who had kept silent during the heat of the discussion, leaned abruptly forward. For the only time in his knowledge, Dyke saw his face inflamed with anger and with the enmity and contempt of all this farming element with whom he was contending.

“Yes, what’s your rule? What’s your basis?” demanded Dyke, turning swiftly to him.

S. Behrman emphasised each word of his reply with a tap of one forefinger on the counter before him:

“All—the—traffic—will—bear.”

The ex-engineer stepped back a pace, his fingers on the ledge of the counter, to steady himself. He felt himself grow pale, his heart became a mere leaden weight in his chest, inert, refusing to beat.

In a second the whole affair, in all its bearings, went speeding before the eye of his imagination like the rapid unrolling of a panorama. Every cent of his earnings was sunk in this hop business of his. More than that, he had borrowed money to carry it on, certain of success—borrowed of S. Behrman, offering his crop and his little home as security. Once he failed to meet his obligations, S. Behrman would foreclose. Not only would the Railroad devour every morsel of his profits, but also it would take from him his home; at a blow he would be left penniless and without a home. What would then become of his mother—and what would become of the little tad? She, whom he had been planning to educate like a veritable lady. For all that year he had talked of his ambition for his little daughter to every one he met. All Bonneville knew of it. What a mark for gibes he had made of himself. The workingman turned farmer! What a target for jeers—he who had fancied he could elude the Railroad! He remembered he had once said the great Trust had overlooked his little enterprise, disdaining to plunder such small fry. He should have known better than that. How had he ever imagined the Road would permit him to make any money?

Anger was not in him yet; no rousing of the blind, white-hot wrath that leaps to the attack with prehensile fingers, moved him. The blow merely crushed, staggered, confused.

He stepped aside to give place to a coatless man in a pink shirt, who entered, carrying in his hands an automatic door-closing apparatus.

“Where does this go?” inquired the man.

Dyke sat down for a moment on a seat that had been removed from a worn-out railway car to do duty in Ruggles’s office. On the back of a yellow envelope he made some vague figures with a stump of blue pencil, multiplying, subtracting, perplexing himself with many errors.

S. Behrman, the clerk, and the man with the door-closing apparatus involved themselves in a long argument, gazing intently at the top panel of the door. The man who had come to fix the apparatus was unwilling to guarantee it, unless a sign was put on the outside of the door, warning incomers that the door was self-closing. This sign would cost fifteen cents extra.

“But you didn’t say anything about this when the thing was ordered,” declared S. Behrman. “No, I won’t pay it, my friend. It’s an overcharge.”

“You needn’t think,” observed the clerk, “that just because you are dealing with the Railroad you are going to work us.”

Genslinger came in, accompanied by Delaney. S. Behrman and the clerk, abruptly dismissing the man with the door-closing machine, put themselves behind the counter and engaged in conversation with these two. Genslinger introduced Delaney. The buster had a string of horses he was shipping southward. No doubt he had come to make arrangements with the Railroad in the matter of stock cars. The conference of the four men was amicable in the extreme.

Dyke, studying the figures on the back of the envelope, came forward again. Absorbed only in his own distress, he ignored the editor and the cow-puncher.

“Say,” he hazarded, “how about this? I make out–-

“We’ve told you what our rates are, Mr. Dyke,” exclaimed the clerk angrily. “That’s all the arrangement we will make. Take it or leave it.” He turned again to Genslinger, giving the ex-engineer his back.

Dyke moved away and stood for a moment in the centre of the room, staring at the figures on the envelope.

“I don’t see,” he muttered, “just what I’m going to do. No, I don’t see what I’m going to do at all.”

Ruggles came in, bringing with him two other men in whom Dyke recognised dummy buyers of the Los Muertos and Osterman ranchos. They brushed by him, jostling his elbow, and as he went out of the door he heard them exchange jovial greetings with Delaney, Genslinger, and S. Behrman.

Dyke went down the stairs to the street and proceeded onward aimlessly in the direction of the Yosemite House, fingering the yellow envelope and looking vacantly at the sidewalk.

There was a stoop to his massive shoulders. His great arms dangled loosely at his sides, the palms of his hands open.

As he