第70章

"Well," Dyke said, "it's like this, Mr.Presley.I, personally, haven't got the right to kick.With you wheat-growing people Iguess it's different, but hops, you see, don't count for much in the State.It's such a little business that the road don't want to bother themselves to tax it.It's the wheat growers that the road cinches.The rates on hops ARE FAIR.I've got to admit that; I was in to Bonneville a while ago to find out.It's two cents a pound, and Lord love you, that's reasonable enough to suit any man.No," he concluded, "I'm on the way to make money now.The road sacking me as they did was, maybe, a good thing for me, after all.It came just at the right time.I had a bit of money put by and here was the chance to go into hops with the certainty that hops would quadruple and quintuple in price inside the year.No, it was my chance, and though they didn't mean it by a long chalk, the railroad people did me a good turn when they gave me my time--and the tad'll enter the seminary next fall."About a quarter of an hour after they had said goodbye to the one-time engineer, Presley and Vanamee, tramping briskly along the road that led northward through Quien Sabe, arrived at Annixter's ranch house.At once they were aware of a vast and unwonted bustle that revolved about the place.They stopped a few moments looking on, amused and interested in what was going forward.

The colossal barn was finished.Its freshly white-washed sides glared intolerably in the sun, but its interior was as yet innocent of paint and through the yawning vent of the sliding doors came a delicious odour of new, fresh wood and shavings.Acrowd of men--Annixter's farm hands--were swarming all about it.

Some were balanced on the topmost rounds of ladders, hanging festoons of Japanese lanterns from tree to tree, and all across the front of the barn itself.Mrs.Tree, her daughter Hilma and another woman were inside the barn cutting into long strips bolt after bolt of red, white and blue cambric and directing how these strips should be draped from the ceiling and on the walls;everywhere resounded the tapping of tack hammers.A farm wagon drove up loaded to overflowing with evergreens and with great bundles of palm leaves, and these were immediately seized upon and affixed as supplementary decorations to the tri-coloured cambric upon the inside walls of the barn.Two of the larger evergreen trees were placed on either side the barn door and their tops bent over to form an arch.In the middle of this arch it was proposed to hang a mammoth pasteboard escutcheon with gold letters, spelling the word WELCOME.Piles of chairs, rented from I.O.O.F.hall in Bonneville, heaped themselves in an apparently hopeless entanglement on the ground; while at the far extremity of the barn a couple of carpenters clattered about the impromptu staging which was to accommodate the band.

There was a strenuous gayety in the air; everybody was in the best of spirits.Notes of laughter continually interrupted the conversation on every hand.At every moment a group of men involved themselves in uproarious horse-play.They passed oblique jokes behind their hands to each other--grossly veiled double-meanings meant for the women--and bellowed with laughter thereat, stamping on the ground.The relations between the sexes grew more intimate, the women and girls pushing the young fellows away from their sides with vigorous thrusts of their elbows.It was passed from group to group that Adela Vacca, a division superintendent's wife, had lost her garter; the daughter of the foreman of the Home ranch was kissed behind the door of the dairy-house.

Annixter, in execrable temper, appeared from time to time, hatless, his stiff yellow hair in wild disorder.He hurried between the barn and the ranch house, carrying now a wickered demijohn, now a case of wine, now a basket of lemons and pineapples.Besides general supervision, he had elected to assume the responsibility of composing the punch--something stiff, by jingo, a punch that would raise you right out of your boots; a regular hairlifter.

The harness room of the barn he had set apart for: himself and intimates.He had brought a long table down from the house and upon it had set out boxes of cigars, bottles of whiskey and of beer and the great china bowls for the punch.It would be no fault of his, he declared, if half the number of his men friends were not uproarious before they left.His barn dance would be the talk of all Tulare County for years to come.For this one day he had resolved to put all thoughts of business out of his head.For the matter of that, things were going well enough.

Osterman was back from Los Angeles with a favourable report as to his affair with Disbrow and Darrell.There had been another meeting of the committee.Harran Derrick had attended.Though he had taken no part in the discussion, Annixter was satisfied.

The Governor had consented to allow Harran to "come in," if he so desired, and Harran had pledged himself to share one-sixth of the campaign expenses, providing these did not exceed a certain figure.

As Annixter came to the door of the barn to shout abuse at the distraught Chinese cook who was cutting up lemons in the kitchen, he caught sight of Presley and Vanamee and hailed them.

"Hello, Pres," he called."Come over here and see how she looks;" he indicated the barn with a movement of his head.

"Well, we're getting ready for you tonight," he went on as the two friends came up."But how we are going to get straightened out by eight o'clock I don't know.Would you believe that pip Caraher is short of lemons--at this last minute and I told him I'd want three cases of 'em as much as a month ago, and here, just when I want a good lively saddle horse to get around on, somebody hikes the buckskin out the corral.STOLE her, by jingo.