第25章

"It is as much to your interest as to ours that the safety of the public----""You heard what I said.Go to the devil!""That all may show obstinacy, Mr.Annixter, but----"Suddenly Annixter jumped up again and came to the edge of the porch; his face flamed scarlet to the roots of his stiff yellow hair.He thrust out his jaw aggressively, clenching his teeth.

"You," he vociferated, "I'll tell you what you are.You're a--a--a PIP!"

To his mind it was the last insult, the most outrageous calumny.

He had no worse epithet at his command.

"----may show obstinacy," pursued S.Behrman, bent upon finishing the phrase, "but it don't show common sense.""I'll mend my fence, and then, again, maybe I won't mend my fence," shouted Annixter."I know what you mean--that wild engine last night.Well, you've no right to run at that speed in the town limits.""How the town limits? The sheep were this side the Long Trestle.""Well, that's in the town limits of Guadalajara.""Why, Mr.Annixter, the Long Trestle is a good two miles out of Guadalajara."Annixter squared himself, leaping to the chance of an argument.

"Two miles! It's not a mile and a quarter.No, it's not a mile.

I'll leave it to Magnus here."

"Oh, I know nothing about it," declared Magnus, refusing to be involved.

"Yes, you do.Yes, you do, too.Any fool knows how far it is from Guadalajara to the Long Trestle.It's about five-eighths of a mile.""From the depot of the town," remarked S.Behrman placidly, "to the head of the Long Trestle is about two miles.""That's a lie and you know it's a lie," shouted the other, furious at S.Behrman's calmness, "and I can prove it's a lie.

I've walked that distance on the Upper Road, and I know just how fast I walk, and if I can walk four miles in one hour"Magnus and Harran drove on, leaving Annixter trying to draw S.

Behrman into a wrangle.

When at length S.Behrman as well took himself away, Annixter returned to his hammock, finished the rest of his prunes and read another chapter of "Copperfield." Then he put the book, open, over his face and went to sleep.

An hour later, toward noon, his own terrific snoring woke him up suddenly, and he sat up, rubbing his face and blinking at the sunlight.There was a bad taste in his mouth from sleeping with it wide open, and going into the dining-room of the house, he mixed himself a drink of whiskey and soda and swallowed it in three great gulps.He told himself that he felt not only better but hungry, and pressed an electric button in the wall near the sideboard three times to let the kitchen--situated in a separate building near the ranch house--know that he was ready for his dinner.As he did so, an idea occurred to him.He wondered if Hilma Tree would bring up his dinner and wait on the table while he ate it.

In connection with his ranch, Annixter ran a dairy farm on a very small scale, making just enough butter and cheese for the consumption of the ranch's PERSONNEL.Old man Tree, his wife, and his daughter Hilma looked after the dairy.But there was not always work enough to keep the three of them occupied and Hilma at times made herself useful in other ways.As often as not she lent a hand in the kitchen, and two or three times a week she took her mother's place in looking after Annixter's house, making the beds, putting his room to rights, bringing his meals up from the kitchen.For the last summer she had been away visiting with relatives in one of the towns on the coast.But the week previous to this she had returned and Annixter had come upon her suddenly one day in the dairy, making cheese, the sleeves of her crisp blue shirt waist rolled back to her very shoulders.

Annixter had carried away with him a clear-cut recollection of these smooth white arms of hers, bare to the shoulder, very round and cool and fresh.He would not have believed that a girl so young should have had arms so big and perfect.To his surprise he found himself thinking of her after he had gone to bed that night, and in the morning when he woke he was bothered to know whether he had dreamed about Hilma's fine white arms over night.

Then abruptly he had lost patience with himself for being so occupied with the subject, raging and furious with all the breed of feemales--a fine way for a man to waste his time.He had had his experience with the timid little creature in the glove-cleaning establishment in Sacramento.That was enough.

Feemales! Rot! None of them in HIS, thank you.HE had seen Hilma Tree give him a look in the dairy.Aha, he saw through her! She was trying to get a hold on him, was she?He would show her.Wait till he saw her again.He would send her about her business in a hurry.He resolved upon a terrible demeanour in the presence of the dairy girl--a great show of indifference, a fierce masculine nonchalance; and when, the next morning, she brought him his breakfast, he had been smitten dumb as soon as she entered the room, glueing his eyes upon his plate, his elbows close to his side, awkward, clumsy, overwhelmed with constraint.

While true to his convictions as a woman-hater and genuinely despising Hilma both as a girl and as an inferior, the idea of her worried him.Most of all, he was angry with himself because of his inane sheepishness when she was about.He at first had told himself that he was a fool not to be able to ignore her existence as hitherto, and then that he was a greater fool not to take advantage of his position.Certainly he had not the remotest idea of any affection, but Hilma was a fine looking girl.He imagined an affair with her.

As he reflected upon the matter now, scowling abstractedly at the button of the electric bell, turning the whole business over in his mind, he remembered that to-day was butter-making day and that Mrs.Tree would be occupied in the dairy.That meant that Hilma would take her place.He turned to the mirror of the sideboard, scrutinising his reflection with grim disfavour.

After a moment, rubbing the roughened surface of his chin the wrong way, he muttered to his image in the glass: