第20章

That he--outside of his few chosen deities--should care little for literature, shocked her beyond words.His indifference to "style," to elegant English, was a positive affront.His savage abuse and open ridicule of the neatly phrased rondeaux and sestinas and chansonettes of the little magazines was to her mind a wanton and uncalled-for cruelty.She found his Homer, with its slaughters and hecatombs and barbaric feastings and headstrong passions, violent and coarse.She could not see with him any romance, any poetry in the life around her; she looked to Italy for that.His "Song of the West," which only once, incoherent and fierce, he had tried to explain to her, its swift, tumultous life, its truth, its nobility and savagery, its heroism and obscenity had revolted her.

"But, Presley," she had murmured, "that is not literature.""No," he had cried between his teeth, "no, thank God, it is not."A little later, one of the stablemen brought the buggy with the team of bays up to the steps of the porch, and Harran, putting on a different coat and a black hat, took himself off to Guadalajara.

The morning was fine; there was no cloud in the sky, but as Harran's buggy drew away from the grove of trees about the ranch house, emerging into the open country on either side of the Lower Road, he caught himself looking sharply at the sky and the faint line of hills beyond the Quien Sabe ranch.There was a certain indefinite cast to the landscape that to Harran's eye was not to be mistaken.Rain, the first of the season, was not far off.

"That's good," he muttered, touching the bays with the whip, "we can't get our ploughs to hand any too soon."These ploughs Magnus Derrick had ordered from an Eastern manufacturer some months before, since he was dissatisfied with the results obtained from the ones he had used hitherto, which were of local make.However, there had been exasperating and unexpected delays in their shipment.Magnus and Harran both had counted upon having the ploughs in their implement barns that very week, but a tracer sent after them had only resulted in locating them, still en route, somewhere between The Needles and Bakersfield.Now there was likelihood of rain within the week.

Ploughing could be undertaken immediately afterward, so soon as the ground was softened, but there was a fair chance that the ranch would lie idle for want of proper machinery.

It was ten minutes before train time when Harran reached the depot at Guadalajara.The San Francisco papers of the preceding day had arrived on an earlier train.He bought a couple from the station agent and looked them over till a distant and prolonged whistle announced the approach of the down train.

In one of the four passengers that alighted from the train, he recognised his father.He half rose in his seat, whistling shrilly between his teeth, waving his hand, and Magnus Derrick, catching sight of him, came forward quickly.

Magnus--the Governor--was all of six feet tall, and though now well toward his sixtieth year, was as erect as an officer of cavalry.He was broad in proportion, a fine commanding figure, imposing an immediate respect, impressing one with a sense of gravity, of dignity and a certain pride of race.He was smooth-shaven, thin-lipped, with a broad chin, and a prominent hawk-like nose--the characteristic of the family--thin, with a high bridge, such as one sees in the later portraits of the Duke of Wellington.His hair was thick and iron-grey, and had a tendency to curl in a forward direction just in front of his ears.He wore a top-hat of grey, with a wide brim, and a frock coat, and carried a cane with a yellowed ivory head.

As a young man it had been his ambition to represent his native State--North Carolina--in the United States Senate.Calhoun was his "great man," but in two successive campaigns he had been defeated.His career checked in this direction, he had come to California in the fifties.He had known and had been the intimate friend of such men as Terry, Broderick, General Baker, Lick, Alvarado, Emerich, Larkin, and, above all, of the unfortunate and misunderstood Ralston.Once he had been put forward as the Democratic candidate for governor, but failed of election.After this Magnus had definitely abandoned politics and had invested all his money in the Corpus Christi mines.Then he had sold out his interest at a small profit--just in time to miss his chance of becoming a multi-millionaire in the Comstock boom--and was looking for reinvestments in other lines when the news that "wheat had been discovered in California" was passed from mouth to mouth.Practically it amounted to a discovery.

Dr.Glenn's first harvest of wheat in Colusa County, quietly undertaken but suddenly realised with dramatic abruptness, gave a new matter for reflection to the thinking men of the New West.

California suddenly leaped unheralded into the world's market as a competitor in wheat production.In a few years her output of wheat exceeded the value of her out-put of gold, and when, later on, the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad threw open to settlers the rich lands of Tulare County--conceded to the corporation by the government as a bonus for the construction of the road--Magnus had been quick to seize the opportunity and had taken up the ten thousand acres of Los Muertos.Wherever he had gone, Magnus had taken his family with him.Lyman had been born at Sacramento during the turmoil and excitement of Derrick's campaign for governor, and Harran at Shingle Springs, in El Dorado County, six years later.