第16章

Abruptly, as if in confirmation, Presley heard the sound of a bell from the direction of the Mission itself.It was the de Profundis, a note of the Old World; of the ancient regime, an echo from the hillsides of mediaeval Europe, sounding there in this new land, unfamiliar and strange at this end-of-the-century time.

By now, however, it was dark.Presley hurried forward.He came to the line fence of the Quien Sabe ranch.Everything was very still.The stars were all out.There was not a sound other than the de Profundis, still sounding from very far away.At long intervals the great earth sighed dreamily in its sleep.All about, the feeling of absolute peace and quiet and security and untroubled happiness and content seemed descending from the stars like a benediction.The beauty of his poem, its idyl, came to him like a caress; that alone had been lacking.It was that, perhaps, which had left it hitherto incomplete.At last he was to grasp his song in all its entity.

But suddenly there was an interruption.Presley had climbed the fence at the limit of the Quien Sabe ranch.Beyond was Los Muertos, but between the two ran the railroad.He had only time to jump back upon the embankment when, with a quivering of all the earth, a locomotive, single, unattached, shot by him with a roar, filling the air with the reek of hot oil, vomiting smoke and sparks; its enormous eye, cyclopean, red, throwing a glare far in advance, shooting by in a sudden crash of confused thunder; filling the night with the terrific clamour of its iron hoofs.

Abruptly Presley remembered.This must be the crack passenger engine of which Dyke had told him, the one delayed by the accident on the Bakersfield division and for whose passage the track had been opened all the way to Fresno.

Before Presley could recover from the shock of the irruption, while the earth was still vibrating, the rails still humming, the engine was far away, flinging the echo of its frantic gallop over all the valley.For a brief instant it roared with a hollow diapason on the Long Trestle over Broderson Creek, then plunged into a cutting farther on, the quivering glare of its fires losing itself in the night, its thunder abruptly diminishing to a subdued and distant humming.All at once this ceased.The engine was gone.

But the moment the noise of the engine lapsed, Presley--about to start forward again--was conscious of a confusion of lamentable sounds that rose into the night from out the engine's wake.

Prolonged cries of agony, sobbing wails of infinite pain, heart-rending, pitiful.

The noises came from a little distance.He ran down the track, crossing the culvert, over the irrigating ditch, and at the head of the long reach of track--between the culvert and the Long Trestle--paused abruptly, held immovable at the sight of the ground and rails all about him.

In some way, the herd of sheep--Vanamee's herd--had found a breach in the wire fence by the right of way and had wandered out upon the tracks.A band had been crossing just at the moment of the engine's passage.The pathos of it was beyond expression.

It was a slaughter, a massacre of innocents.The iron monster had charged full into the midst, merciless, inexorable.To the right and left, all the width of the right of way, the little bodies had been flung; backs were snapped against the fence posts; brains knocked out.Caught in the barbs of the wire, wedged in, the bodies hung suspended.Under foot it was terrible.The black blood, winking in the starlight, seeped down into the clinkers between the ties with a prolonged sucking murmur.

Presley turned away, horror-struck, sick at heart, overwhelmed with a quick burst of irresistible compassion for this brute agony he could not relieve.The sweetness was gone from the evening, the sense of peace, of security, and placid contentment was stricken from the landscape.The hideous ruin in the engine's path drove all thought of his poem from his mind.The inspiration vanished like a mist.The de Profundis had ceased to ring.

He hurried on across the Los Muertos ranch, almost running, even putting his hands over his ears till he was out of hearing distance of that all but human distress.Not until he was beyond ear-shot did he pause, looking back, listening.The night had shut down again.For a moment the silence was profound, unbroken.

Then, faint and prolonged, across the levels of the ranch, he heard the engine whistling for Bonneville.Again and again, at rapid intervals in its flying course, it whistled for road crossings, for sharp curves, for trestles; ominous notes, hoarse, bellowing, ringing with the accents of menace and defiance; and abruptly Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single eye, cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now as the symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible, flinging the echo of its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path; the leviathan, with tentacles of steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron-hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus.