The Octopus : A Story of California

At once Annixter began to get red in the face, retiring towards a corner of the room, standing in an awkward position by the case of stuffed birds, shambling and confused, while Mrs. Derrick was present, standing rigidly on both feet, his elbows close to his sides. But he was angry with Osterman, muttering imprecations to himself, horribly vexed that the young fellow should call him “Buck” before Magnus’s wife. This goat Osterman! Hadn’t he any sense, that fool? Couldn’t he ever learn how to behave before a feemale? Calling him “Buck” like that while Mrs. Derrick was there. Why a stable-boy would know better; a hired man would have better manners. All through the dinner that followed Annixter was out of sorts, sulking in his place, refusing to eat by way of vindicating his self-respect, resolving to bring Osterman up with a sharp turn if he called him “Buck” again.

The Chinaman had made a certain kind of plum pudding for dessert, and Annixter, who remembered other dinners at the Derrick’s, had been saving himself for this, and had meditated upon it all through the meal. No doubt, it would restore all his good humour, and he believed his stomach was so far recovered as to be able to stand it.

But, unfortunately, the pudding was served with a sauce that he abhorred—a thick, gruel-like, colourless mixture, made from plain water and sugar. Before he could interfere, the Chinaman had poured a quantity of it upon his plate.

“Faugh!” exclaimed Annixter. “It makes me sick. Such—such SLOOP. Take it away. I’ll have mine straight, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s good for your stomach, Buck,” observed young Osterman; “makes it go down kind of sort of slick; don’t you see? Sloop, hey? That’s a good name.”

“Look here, don’t you call me Buck. You don’t seem to have any sense, and, besides, it ISN’T good for my stomach. I know better. What do YOU know about my stomach, anyhow? Just looking at sloop like that makes me sick.”

A little while after this the Chinaman cleared away the dessert and brought in coffee and cigars. The whiskey bottle and the syphon of soda-water reappeared. The men eased themselves in their places, pushing back from the table, lighting their cigars, talking of the beginning of the rains and the prospects of a rise in wheat. Broderson began an elaborate mental calculation, trying to settle in his mind the exact date of his visit to Ukiah, and Osterman did sleight-of-hand tricks with bread pills. But Princess Nathalie, the cat, was uneasy. Annixter was occupying her own particular chair in which she slept every night. She could not go to sleep, but spied upon him continually, watching his every movement with her lambent, yellow eyes, clear as amber.

Then, at length, Magnus, who was at the head of the table, moved in his place, assuming a certain magisterial attitude. “Well, gentlemen,” he observed, “I have lost my case against the railroad, the grain-rate case. Ulsteen decided against me, and now I hear rumours to the effect that rates for the hauling of grain are to be advanced.”

When Magnus had finished, there was a moment’s silence, each member of the group maintaining his attitude of attention and interest. It was Harran who first spoke.

“S. Behrman manipulated the whole affair. There’s a big deal of some kind in the air, and if there is, we all know who is back of it; S. Behrman, of course, but who’s back of him? It’s Shelgrim.”

Shelgrim! The name fell squarely in the midst of the conversation, abrupt, grave, sombre, big with suggestion, pregnant with huge associations. No one in the group who was not familiar with it; no one, for that matter, in the county, the State, the whole reach of the West, the entire Union, that did not entertain convictions as to the man who carried it; a giant figure in the end-of-the-century finance, a product of circumstance, an inevitable result of conditions, characteristic, typical, symbolic of ungovernable forces. In the New Movement, the New Finance, the reorganisation of capital, the amalgamation of powers, the consolidation of enormous enterprises—no one individual was more constantly in the eye of the world; no one was more hated, more dreaded, no one more compelling of unwilling tribute to his commanding genius, to the colossal intellect operating the width of an entire continent than the president and owner of the Pacific and Southwestern.

“I don’t think, however, he has moved yet,” said Magnus.

“The thing for us, then,” exclaimed Osterman, “is to stand from under before he does.”

“Moved yet!” snorted Annixter. “He’s probably moved so long ago that we’ve never noticed it.”

“In any case,” hazarded Magnus, “it is scarcely probable that the deal—whatever it is to be—has been consummated. If we act quickly, there may be a chance.”

“Act quickly! How?” demanded Annixter. “Good Lord! what can you do? We’re cinched already. It all amounts to just this: YOU CAN’T BUCK AGAINST THE RAILROAD. We’ve tried it and tried it, and we are stuck every time. You, yourself, Derrick, have just lost your grain-rate case. S. Behrman did you up. Shelgrim owns the courts. He’s got men like Ulsteen in his pocket. He’s got the Railroad Commission in his pocket. He’s got the Governor of the State in his pocket. He keeps a million-dollar lobby at Sacramento every minute of the time the legislature is in session; he’s got his own men on the floor of the United States Senate. He has the whole thing organised like an army corps. What ARE you going to do? He sits in his office in San Francisco and pulls the strings and we’ve got to dance.”

“But—well—but,” hazarded Broderson, “but there’s the Interstate Commerce Commission. At least on long-haul rates they–”

“Hoh, yes, the Interstate Commerce Commission,” shouted Annixter, scornfully, “that’s great, ain’t it? The greatest Punch and Judy; show on earth. It’s almost as good as the Railroad Commission. There never was and there never will be a California Railroad Commission not in the pay of the P. and S. W.”

“It is to the Railroad Commission, nevertheless,” remarked Magnus, “that the people of the State must look for relief. That is our only hope. Once elect Commissioners who would be loyal to the people, and the whole system of excessive rates falls to the ground.”

“Well, why not HAVE a Railroad Commission of our own, then?” suddenly declared young Osterman.

“Because it can’t be done,” retorted Annixter. “YOU CAN’T BUCK AGAINST THE RAILROAD and if you could you can’t organise the farmers in the San Joaquin. We tried it once, and it was enough to turn your stomach. The railroad quietly bought delegates through S. Behrman and did us up.”

“Well, that’s the game to play,” said Osterman decisively, “buy delegates.”

“It’s the only game that seems to win,” admitted Harran gloomily. “Or ever will win,” exclaimed Osterman, a sudden excitement seeming to take possession of him. His face—the face of a comic actor, with its great slit of mouth and stiff, red ears—went abruptly pink.

“Look here,” he cried, “this thing is getting desperate. We’ve fought and fought in the courts and out and we’ve tried agitation and—and all the rest of it and S. Behrman sacks us every time. Now comes the time when there’s a prospect of a big crop; we’ve had no rain for two years and the land has had a long rest. If there is any rain at all this winter, we’ll have a bonanza year, and just at this very moment when we’ve got our chance—a chance to pay off our mortgages and get clear of debt and make a strike—here is Shelgrim making a deal to cinch us and put up rates. And now here’s the primaries coming off and a new Railroad Commission going in. That’s why Shelgrim chose this time to make his deal. If we wait till Shelgrim pulls it off, we’re done for, that’s flat. I tell you we’re in a fix if we don’t keep an eye open. Things are getting desperate. Magnus has just said that the key to the whole thing is the Railroad Commission. Well, why not have a Commission of our own? Never mind how we get it, let’s get it. If it’s got to be bought, let’s buy it and put our own men on it and dictate what the rates will be. Suppose it costs a hundred thousand dollars. Well, we’ll get back more than that in cheap rates.”

“Mr. Osterman,” said Magnus, fixing the young man with a swift glance, “Mr. Osterman, you are proposing a scheme of bribery, sir.”

“I am proposing,” repeated Osterman, “a scheme of bribery. Exactly so.”

“And a crazy, wild-eyed scheme at that,” said Annixter gruffly. “Even supposing you bought a Railroad Commission and got your schedule of low rates, what happens? The P. and S. W. crowd get out an injunction and tie you up.”

“They would tie themselves up, too. Hauling at low rates is better than no hauling at all. The wheat has got to be moved.” “Oh, rot!” cried Annixter. “Aren’t you ever going to learn any sense? Don’t you know that cheap transportation would benefit the Liverpool buyers and not us? Can’t it be FED into you that you can’t buck against the railroad? When you try to buy a Board of Commissioners don’t you see that you’ll have to bid against the railroad, bid against a corporation that can chuck out millions to our thousands? Do you think you can bid against the P. and S. W.?”

“The railroad don’t need to know we are in the game against them till we’ve got our men seated.”

“And when you’ve got them seated, what’s to prevent the corporation buying them right over your head?”

“If we’ve got the right kind of men in they could not be bought that way,” interposed Harran. “I don’t know but what there’s something in what Osterman says. We’d have the naming of the Commission and we’d name honest men.”

Annixter struck the table with his fist in exasperation.

“Honest men!” he shouted; “the kind of men you could get to go into such a scheme would have to be DIS-honest to begin with.”

Broderson, shifting uneasily in his place, fingering his beard with a vague, uncertain gesture, spoke again:

“It would be the CHANCE of them—our Commissioners—selling out against the certainty of Shelgrim doing us up. That is,” he hastened to add, “ALMOST a certainty; pretty near a certainty.”

“Of course, it would be a chance,” exclaimed Osterman. “But it’s come to the point where we’ve got to take chances, risk a big stake to make a big strike, and risk is better than sure failure.”

“I can be no party to a scheme of avowed bribery and corruption, Mr. Osterman,” declared Magnus, a ring of severity in his voice. “I am surprised, sir, that you should even broach the subject in my hearing.”

“And,” cried Annixter, “it can’t be done.”

“I don’t know,” muttered Harran, “maybe it just wants a little spark like this to fire the whole train.”

Magnus glanced at his son in considerable surprise. He had not expected this of Harran. But so great was his affection for his son, so accustomed had he become to listening to his advice, to respecting his opinions, that, for the moment, after the first shock of surprise and disappointment, he was influenced to give a certain degree of attention to this new proposition. He in no way countenanced it. At any moment he was prepared to rise in his place and denounce it and Osterman both. It was trickery of the most contemptible order, a thing he believed to be unknown to the old school of politics and statesmanship to which he was proud to belong; but since Harran, even for one moment, considered it, he, Magnus, who trusted Harran implicitly, would do likewise—if it was only to oppose and defeat it in its very beginnings.

And abruptly the discussion began. Gradually Osterman, by dint of his clamour, his strident reiteration, the plausibility of his glib, ready assertions, the ease with which he extricated himself when apparently driven to a corner, completely won over old Broderson to his way of thinking. Osterman bewildered him with his volubility, the lightning rapidity with which he leaped from one subject to another, garrulous, witty, flamboyant, terrifying the old man with pictures of the swift approach of ruin, the imminence of danger.

Annixter, who led the argument against him—loving argument though he did—appeared to poor advantage, unable to present his side effectively. He called Osterman a fool, a goat, a senseless, crazy-headed jackass, but was unable to refute his assertions. His debate was the clumsy heaving of brickbats, brutal, direct. He contradicted everything Osterman said as a matter of principle, made conflicting assertions, declarations that were absolutely inconsistent, and when Osterman or Harran used these against him, could only exclaim:

“Well, in a way it’s so, and then again in a way it isn’t.”

But suddenly Osterman discovered a new argument. “If we swing this deal,” he cried, “we’ve got old jelly-belly Behrman right where we want him.”

“He’s the man that does us every time,” cried Harran. “If there is dirty work to be done in which the railroad doesn’t wish to appear, it is S. Behrman who does it. If the freight rates are to be ‘adjusted’ to squeeze us a little harder, it is S. Behrman who regulates what we can stand. If there’s a judge to be bought, it is S. Behrman who does the bargaining. If there is a jury to be bribed, it is S. Behrman who handles the money. If there is an election to be jobbed, it is S. Behrman who manipulates it. It’s Behrman here and Behrman there. It is Behrman we come against every time we make a move. It is Behrman who has the grip of us and will never let go till he has squeezed us bone dry. Why, when I think of it all sometimes I wonder I keep my hands off the man.”

Osterman got on his feet; leaning across the table, gesturing wildly with his right hand, his serio-comic face, with its bald forehead and stiff, red ears, was inflamed with excitement. He took the floor, creating an impression, attracting all attention to himself, playing to the gallery, gesticulating, clamourous, full of noise.

“Well, now is your chance to get even,” he vociferated. “It is now or never. You can take it and save the situation for yourselves and all California or you can leave it and rot on your own ranches. Buck, I know you. I know you’re not afraid of anything that wears skin. I know you’ve got sand all through you, and I know if I showed you how we could put our deal through and seat a Commission of our own, you wouldn’t hang back. Governor, you’re a brave man. You know the advantage of prompt and fearless action. You are not the sort to shrink from taking chances. To play for big stakes is just your game—to stake a fortune on the turn of a card. You didn’t get the reputation of being the strongest poker player in El Dorado County for nothing. Now, here’s the biggest gamble that ever came your way. If we stand up to it like men with guts in us, we’ll win out. If we hesitate, we’re lost.”

“I don’t suppose you can help playing the goat, Osterman,” remarked Annixter, “but what’s your idea? What do you think we can do? I’m not saying,” he hastened to interpose, “that you’ve anyways convinced me by all this cackling. I know as well as you that we are in a hole. But I knew that before I came here to-night. YOU’VE not done anything to make me change my mind. But just what do you propose? Let’s hear it.”

“Well, I say the first thing to do is to see Disbrow. He’s the political boss of the Denver, Pueblo, and Mojave road. We will have to get in with the machine some way and that’s particularly why I want Magnus with us. He knows politics better than any of us and if we don’t want to get sold again we will have to have some one that’s in the know to steer us.”

“The only politics I understand, Mr. Osterman,” answered Magnus sternly, “are honest politics. You must look elsewhere for your political manager. I refuse to have any part in this matter. If the Railroad Commission can be nominated legitimately, if your arrangements can be made without bribery, I am with you to the last iota of my ability.”