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

the jamb of the door.

Hilma, leaving Mrs. Derrick, entered the house. The front room was full of men. She was dimly conscious of Cyrus Ruggles and S. Behrman, both deadly pale, talking earnestly and in whispers to Cutter and Phelps. There was a strange, acrid odour of an unfamiliar drug in the air. On the table before her was a satchel, surgical instruments, rolls of bandages, and a blue, oblong paper box full of cotton. But above the hushed noises of voices and footsteps, one terrible sound made itself heard—the prolonged, rasping sound of breathing, half choked, laboured, agonised.

“Where is my husband?” she cried. She pushed the men aside. She saw Magnus, bareheaded, three or four men lying on the floor, one half naked, his body swathed in white bandages; the doctor in shirt sleeves, on one knee beside a figure of a man stretched out beside him.

Garnett turned a white face to her.

“Where is my husband?”

The other did not reply, but stepped aside and Hilma saw the dead body of her husband lying upon the bed. She did not cry out. She said no word. She went to the bed, and sitting upon it, took Annixter’s head in her lap, holding it gently between her hands. Thereafter she did not move, but sat holding her dead husband’s head in her lap, looking vaguely about from face to face of those in the room, while, without a sob, without a cry, the great tears filled her wide-opened eyes and rolled slowly down upon her cheeks.

On hearing that his wife was outside, Magnus came quickly forward. She threw herself into his arms.

“Tell me, tell me,” she cried, “is Harran—is–-”

“We don’t know yet,” he answered. “Oh, Annie–-”

Then suddenly the Governor checked himself. He, the indomitable, could not break down now.

“The doctor is with him,” he said; “we are doing all we can. Try and be brave, Annie. There is always hope. This is a terrible day’s work. God forgive us all.”

She pressed forward, but he held her back.

“No, don’t see him now. Go into the next room. Garnett, take care of her.”

But she would not be denied. She pushed by Magnus, and, breaking through the group that surrounded her son, sank on her knees beside him, moaning, in compassion and terror.

Harran lay straight and rigid upon the floor, his head propped by a pillow, his coat that had been taken off spread over his chest. One leg of his trousers was soaked through and through with blood. His eyes were half-closed, and with the regularity of a machine, the eyeballs twitched and twitched. His face was so white that it made his yellow hair look brown, while from his opened mouth, there issued that loud and terrible sound of guttering, rasping, laboured breathing that gagged and choked and gurgled with every inhalation.

“Oh, Harrie, Harrie,” called Mrs. Derrick, catching at one of his hands.

The doctor shook his head.

“He is unconscious, Mrs. Derrick.”

“Where was he—where is—the—the–-”

“Through the lungs.”

“Will he get well? Tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Derrick.”

She had all but fainted, and the old rancher, Garnett, half-carrying, half-leading her, took her to the one adjoining room— Minna Hooven’s bedchamber. Dazed, numb with fear, she sat down on the edge of the bed, rocking herself back and forth, murmuring:

“Harrie, Harrie, oh, my son, my little boy.”

In the outside room, Presley came and went, doing what he could to be of service, sick with horror, trembling from head to foot.

The surviving members of both Leaguers and deputies—the warring factions of the Railroad and the People—mingled together now with no thought of hostility. Presley helped the doctor to cover Christian’s body. S. Behrman and Ruggles held bowls of water while Osterman was attended to. The horror of that dreadful business had driven all other considerations from the mind. The sworn foes of the last hour had no thought of anything but to care for those whom, in their fury, they had shot down. The marshal, abandoning for that day the attempt to serve the writs, departed for San Francisco.

The bodies had been brought in from the road where they fell. Annixter’s corpse had been laid upon the bed; those of Dabney and Hooven, whose wounds had all been in the face and head, were covered with a tablecloth. Upon the floor, places were made for the others. Cutter and Ruggles rode into Guadalajara to bring out the doctor there, and to telephone to Bonneville for others.

Osterman had not at any time since the shooting, lost consciousness. He lay upon the floor of Hooven’s house, bare to the waist, bandages of adhesive tape reeved about his abdomen and shoulder. His eyes were half-closed. Presley, who looked after him, pending the arrival of a hack from Bonneville that was to take him home, knew that he was in agony.

But this poser, this silly fellow, this cracker of jokes, whom no one had ever taken very seriously, at the last redeemed himself. When at length, the doctor had arrived, he had, for the first time, opened his eyes.

“I can wait,” he said. “Take Harran first.” And when at length, his turn had come, and while the sweat rolled from his forehead as the doctor began probing for the bullet, he had reached out his free arm and taken Presley’s hand in his, gripping it harder and harder, as the probe entered the wound. His breath came short through his nostrils; his face, the face of a comic actor, with its high cheek bones, bald forehead, and salient ears, grew paler and paler, his great slit of a mouth shut tight, but he uttered no groan.

When the worst anguish was over and he could find breath to speak, his first words had been:

“Were any of the others badly hurt?”

As Presley stood by the door of the house after bringing in a pail of water for the doctor, he was aware of a party of men who had struck off from the road on the other side of the irrigating ditch and were advancing cautiously into the field of wheat. He wondered what it meant and Cutter, coming up at that moment, Presley asked him if he knew.

“It’s Delaney,” said Cutter. “It seems that when he was shot he crawled off into the wheat. They are looking for him there.”

Presley had forgotten all about the buster and had only a vague recollection of seeing him slide from his horse at the beginning of the fight. Anxious to know what had become of him, he hurried up and joined the party of searchers.

“We better look out,” said one of the young men, “how we go fooling around in here. If he’s alive yet he’s just as liable as not to think we’re after him and take a shot at us.”

“I guess there ain’t much fight left in him,” another answered. “Look at the wheat here.”

“Lord! He’s bled like a stuck pig.”

“Here’s his hat,” abruptly exclaimed the leader of the party. “He can’t be far off. Let’s call him.”

They called repeatedly without getting any answer, then proceeded cautiously. All at once the men in advance stopped so suddenly that those following carromed against them. There was an outburst of exclamation.

“Here he is!”

“Good Lord! Sure, that’s him.”

“Poor fellow, poor fellow.”

The cow-puncher lay on his back, deep in the wheat, his knees drawn up, his eyes wide open, his lips brown. Rigidly gripped in one hand was his empty revolver.

The men, farm hands from the neighbouring ranches, young fellows from Guadalajara, drew back in instinctive repulsion. One at length ventured near, peering down into the face.

“Is he dead?” inquired those in the rear.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, put your hand on his heart.” “No! I—I don’t want to.”

“What you afraid of?”

“Well, I just don’t want to touch him, that’s all. It’s bad luck. YOU feel his heart.”

“You can’t always tell by that.”

“How can you tell, then? Pshaw, you fellows make me sick. Here, let me get there. I’ll do it.”

There was a long pause, as the other bent down and laid his hand on the cow-puncher’s breast.

“Well?”

“I can’t tell. Sometimes I think I feel it beat and sometimes I don’t. I never saw a dead man before.”

“Well, you can’t tell by the heart.”

“What’s the good of talking so blame much. Dead or not, let’s carry him back to the house.”

Two or three ran back to the road for planks from the broken bridge. When they returned with these a litter was improvised, and throwing their coats over the body, the party carried it back to the road. The doctor was summoned and declared the cow-puncher to have been dead over half an hour.

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed one of the group.

“Well, I never said he wasn’t dead,” protested the other. “I only said you couldn’t always tell by whether his heart beat or not.”

But all at once there was a commotion. The wagon containing Mrs. Hooven, Minna, and little Hilda drove up.

“Eh, den, my men,” cried Mrs. Hooven, wildly interrogating the faces of the crowd. “Whadt has happun? Sey, den, dose vellers, hev dey hurdt my men, eh, whadt?”

She sprang from the wagon, followed by Minna with Hilda in her arms. The crowd bore back as they advanced, staring at them in silence.

“Eh, whadt has happun, whadt has happun?” wailed Mrs. Hooven, as she hurried on, her two hands out before her, the fingers spread wide. “Eh, Hooven, eh, my men, are you alle righdt?”

She burst into the house. Hooven’s body had been removed to an adjoining room, the bedroom of the house, and to this room Mrs. Hooven—Minna still at her heels—proceeded, guided by an instinct born of the occasion. Those in the outside room, saying no word, made way for them. They entered, closing the door behind them, and through all the rest of that terrible day, no sound nor sight of them was had by those who crowded into and about that house of death. Of all the main actors of the tragedy of the fight in the ditch, they remained the least noted, obtruded themselves the least upon the world’s observation. They were, for the moment, forgotten.

But by now Hooven’s house was the centre of an enormous crowd. A vast concourse of people from Bonneville, from Guadalajara, from the ranches, swelled by the thousands who had that morning participated in the rabbit drive, surged about the place; men and women, young boys, young girls, farm hands, villagers, townspeople, ranchers, railroad employees, Mexicans, Spaniards, Portuguese. Presley, returning from the search for Delaney’s body, had to fight his way to the house again.

And from all this multitude there rose an indefinable murmur. As yet, there was no menace in it, no anger. It was confusion merely, bewilderment, the first long-drawn “oh!” that greets the news of some great tragedy. The people had taken no thought as yet. Curiosity was their dominant impulse. Every one wanted to see what had been done; failing that, to hear of it, and failing that, to be near the scene of the affair. The crowd of people packed the road in front of the house for nearly a quarter of a mile in either direction. They balanced themselves upon the lower strands of the barbed wire fence in their effort to see over each others’ shoulders; they stood on the seats of their carts, buggies, and farm wagons, a few even upon the saddles of their riding horses. They crowded, pushed, struggled, surged forward and back without knowing why, converging incessantly upon Hooven’s house.

When, at length, Presley got to the gate, he found a carryall drawn up before it. Between the