第6章

"You don't mean it.Why, what for, Dyke?""Now, YOU tell me what for," growled the other savagely."Boy and man, I've worked for the P.and S.W.for over ten years, and never one yelp of a complaint did I ever hear from them.They know damn well they've not got a steadier man on the road.And more than that, more than that, I don't belong to the Brotherhood.And when the strike came along, I stood by them--stood by the company.You know that.And you know, and they know, that at Sacramento that time, I ran my train according to schedule, with a gun in each hand, never knowing when I was going over a mined culvert, and there was talk of giving me a gold watch at the time.To hell with their gold watches! I want ordinary justice and fair treatment.And now, when hard times come along, and they are cutting wages, what do they do? Do they make any discrimination in my case? Do they remember the man that stood by them and risked his life in their service?No.

They cut my pay down just as off-hand as they do the pay of any dirty little wiper in the yard.Cut me along with--listen to this--cut me along with men that they had BLACK-LISTED; strikers that they took back because they were short of hands." He drew fiercely on his pipe."I went to them, yes, I did; I went to the General Office, and ate dirt.I told them I was a family man, and that I didn't see how I was going to get along on the new scale, and I reminded them of my service during the strike.The swine told me that it wouldn't be fair to discriminate in favour of one man, and that the cut must apply to all their employees alike.Fair!" he shouted with laughter."Fair! Hear the P.and S.W.talking about fairness and discrimination.That's good, that is.Well, I got furious.I was a fool, I suppose.I told them that, in justice to myself, I wouldn't do first-class work for third-class pay.And they said, 'Well, Mr.Dyke, you know what you can do.' Well, I did know.I said, 'I'll ask for my time, if you please,' and they gave it to me just as if they were glad to be shut of me.So there you are, Presley.That's the P.

& S.W.Railroad Company of California.I am on my last run now.""Shameful," declared Presley, his sympathies all aroused, now that the trouble concerned a friend of his."It's shameful, Dyke.But," he added, an idea occurring to him, "that don't shut you out from work.There are other railroads in the State that are not controlled by the P.and S.W."Dyke smote his knee with his clenched fist.

"NAME ONE."

Presley was silent.Dyke's challenge was unanswerable.There was a lapse in their talk, Presley drumming on the arm of the seat, meditating on this injustice; Dyke looking off over the fields beyond the town, his frown lowering, his teeth rasping upon his pipestem.The station agent came to the door of the depot, stretching and yawning.On ahead of the engine, the empty rails of the track, reaching out toward the horizon, threw off visible layers of heat.The telegraph key clicked incessantly.

"So I'm going to quit," Dyke remarked after a while, his anger somewhat subsided."My brother and I will take up this hop ranch.I've saved a good deal in the last ten years, and there ought to be money in hops."Presley went on, remounting his bicycle, wheeling silently through the deserted streets of the decayed and dying Mexican town.It was the hour of the siesta.Nobody was about.There was no business in the town.It was too close to Bonneville for that.Before the railroad came, and in the days when the raising of cattle was the great industry of the country, it had enjoyed a fierce and brilliant life.Now it was moribund.The drug store, the two bar-rooms, the hotel at the corner of the old Plaza, and the shops where Mexican "curios" were sold to those occasional Eastern tourists who came to visit the Mission of San Juan, sufficed for the town's activity.

At Solotari's, the restaurant on the Plaza, diagonally across from the hotel, Presley ate his long-deferred Mexican dinner--an omelette in Spanish-Mexican style, frijoles and tortillas, a salad, and a glass of white wine.In a corner of the room, during the whole course of his dinner, two young Mexicans (one of whom was astonishingly handsome, after the melodramatic fashion of his race) and an old fellow! the centenarian of the town, decrepit beyond belief, sang an interminable love-song to the accompaniment of a guitar and an accordion.

These Spanish-Mexicans, decayed, picturesque, vicious, and romantic, never failed to interest Presley.A few of them still remained in Guadalajara, drifting from the saloon to the restaurant, and from the restaurant to the Plaza, relics of a former generation, standing for a different order of things, absolutely idle, living God knew how, happy with their cigarette, their guitar, their glass of mescal, and their siesta.The centenarian remembered Fremont and Governor Alvarado, and the bandit Jesus Tejeda, and the days when Los Muertos was a Spanish grant, a veritable principality, leagues in extent, and when there was never a fence from Visalia to Fresno.Upon this occasion, Presley offered the old man a drink of mescal, and excited him to talk of the things he remembered.Their talk was in Spanish, a language with which Presley was familiar.