[Cover Illustration]




                                  OIL!

                                A NOVEL

                                   BY
                             UPTON SINCLAIR

                              _Author of_
                 “THE JUNGLE,” “THE BRASS CHECK,” ETC.

                             [Illustration]


                        PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
                    STATION A, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA




                          COPYRIGHT 1926, 1927
                                   BY
                             UPTON SINCLAIR
                                   ——
                       Copyright in Great Britain
                                   ——
                         _All rights reserved._




Shuffle the cards, and deal a new round of poker hands: they differ in
every way from the previous round, and yet it is the same pack of cards,
and the same game, with the same spirit, the players grim-faced and
silent, surrounded by a haze of tobacco-smoke.

So with this novel, a picture of civilization in Southern California, as
the writer has observed it during eleven years’ residence. The picture
is the truth, and the great mass of detail actually exists. But the
cards have been shuffled; names, places, dates, details of character,
episodes—everything has been dealt over again. The only personalities
to be recognized in this book are three presidents of the United States
who have held office during the past fifteen years. Manifestly, one
could not “shuffle” these, without destroying all sense of reality. But
the reader who spends his time seeking to identify oil magnates and
moving picture stars will be wasting time, and perhaps doing injustice
to some individual, who may happen to have shot off his toe to collect
accident insurance, but may not happen to be keeping a mistress or to
have bribed a cabinet official.




                                  OIL!
                     A  Novel  by  Upton  Sinclair





                               CHAPTER I
                                THE RIDE


                                   I

The road ran, smooth and flawless, precisely fourteen feet wide, the
edges trimmed as if by shears, a ribbon of grey concrete, rolled out
over the valley by a giant hand. The ground went in long waves, a slow
ascent and then a sudden dip; you climbed, and went swiftly over—but
you had no fear, for you knew the magic ribbon would be there, clear of
obstructions, unmarred by bump or scar, waiting the passage of inflated
rubber wheels revolving seven times a second. The cold wind of morning
whistled by, a storm of motion, a humming and roaring with ever-shifting
overtones; but you sat snug behind a tilted wind-shield, which slid the
gale up over your head. Sometimes you liked to put your hand up, and
feel the cold impact; sometimes you would peer around the side of the
shield, and let the torrent hit your forehead, and toss your hair about.
But for the most part you sat silent and dignified—because that was
Dad’s way, and Dad’s way constituted the ethics of motoring.

Dad wore an overcoat, tan in color, soft and woolly in texture, opulent
in cut, double-breasted, with big collar and big lapels and big flaps
over the pockets—every place where a tailor could express munificence.
The boy’s coat had been made by the same tailor, of the same soft,
woolly material, with the same big collar and big lapels and big flaps.
Dad wore driving gauntlets; and the same shop had had the same kind for
boys. Dad wore horn-rimmed spectacles; the boy had never been taken to
an oculist, but he had found in a drug-store a pair of amber-colored
glasses, having horn rims the same as Dad’s. There was no hat on Dad’s
head, because he believed that wind and sunshine kept your hair from
falling out; so the boy also rode with tumbled locks. The only
difference between them, apart from size, was that Dad had a big brown
cigar, unlighted, in the corner of his mouth; a survival of the rough
old days, when he had driven mule-teams and chewed tobacco.

Fifty miles, said the speedometer; that was Dad’s rule for open country,
and he never varied it, except in wet weather. Grades made no
difference; the fraction of an ounce more pressure with his right foot,
and the car raced on—up, up, up—until it topped the ridge, and was
sailing down into the next little valley, exactly in the centre of the
magic grey ribbon of concrete. The car would start to gather speed on
the down grade, and Dad would lift the pressure of his foot a trifle,
and let the resistance of the engine check the speed. Fifty miles was
enough, said Dad; he was a man of order.

Far ahead, over the tops of several waves of ground, another car was
coming. A small black speck, it went down out of sight, and came up
bigger; the next time it was bigger yet; the next time—it was on the
slope above you, rushing at you, faster and faster, a mighty projectile
hurled out of a six-foot cannon. Now came a moment to test the nerve of
a motorist. The magic ribbon of concrete had no stretching powers. The
ground at the sides had been prepared for emergencies, but you could not
always be sure how well it had been prepared, and if you went off at
fifty miles an hour you would get disagreeable waverings of the wheels;
you might find the neatly trimmed concrete raised several inches above
the earth at the side of it, forcing you to run along on the earth until
you could find a place to swing in again; there might be soft sand,
which would swerve you this way and that, or wet clay which would skid
you, and put a sudden end to your journey.

So the laws of good driving forbade you to go off the magic ribbon
except in extreme emergencies. You were ethically entitled to several
inches of margin at the right-hand edge; and the man approaching you was
entitled to an equal number of inches; which left a remainder of inches
between the two projectiles as they shot by. It sounds risky as one
tells it, but the heavens are run on the basis of similar calculations,
and while collisions do happen, they leave time enough in between for
universes to be formed, and successful careers conducted by men of
affairs.

“Whoosh!” went the other projectile, hurtling past; a loud, swift
“Whoosh!” with no tapering off at the end. You had a glimpse of another
man with horn-rimmed spectacles like yourself, with a similar grip of
two hands upon a steering-wheel, and a similar cataleptic fixation of
the eyes. You never looked back; for at fifty miles an hour, your
business is with the things that lie before you, and the past is
past—or shall we say that the passed are passed? Presently would come
another car, and again it would be necessary for you to leave the
comfortable centre of the concrete ribbon, and content yourself with a
precisely estimated one-half minus a certain number of inches. Each
time, you were staking your life upon your ability to place your car
upon the exact line—and upon the ability and willingness of the unknown
other party to do the same. You watched his projectile in the instant of
hurtling at you, and if you saw that he was not making the necessary
concession, you knew that you were encountering that most dangerous of
all two-legged mammalian creatures, the road-hog. Or maybe it was a
drunken man, or just a woman—there was no time to find out; you had the
thousandth part of a second in which to shift your steering-wheel the
tenth part of an inch, and run your right wheels off onto the dirt.

That might happen only once or twice in the course of a day’s driving.
When it did, Dad had one invariable formula; he would shift the cigar a
bit in his mouth and mutter: “Damn fool!” It was the only cuss-word the
one-time mule-driver permitted himself in the presence of the boy; and
it had no profane significance—it was simply the scientific term for
road-hogs, and drunken men, and women driving cars; as well as for loads
of hay, and furniture-vans, and big motor-trucks which blocked the road
on curves; and for cars with trailers, driving too rapidly, and swinging
from side to side; and for Mexicans in tumble-down buggies, who failed
to keep out on the dirt where they belonged, but came wabbling onto the
concrete—and right while a car was coming in the other direction, so
that you had to jam on your foot-brake, and grab the hand-brake, and
bring the car to a halt with a squealing and grinding, and worse yet a
sliding of tires. If there is anything a motorist considers disgraceful
it is to “skid his tires”; and Dad had the conviction that some day
there would be a speed law turned inside out—it would be forbidden to
drive less than forty miles an hour on state highways, and people who
wanted to drive spavined horses to tumble-down buggies would either go
cross-lots or stay at home.

                                   II

A barrier of mountains lay across the road. Far off, they had been blue,
with a canopy of fog on top; they lay in tumbled masses, one summit
behind another, and more summits peeking over, fainter in color, and
mysterious. You knew you had to go up there, and it was interesting to
guess where a road might break in. As you came nearer, the great masses
changed color—green, or grey, or tawny yellow. No trees grew upon them,
but bushes of a hundred shades. They were spotted with rocks, black,
white, brown, or red; also with the pale flames of the yucca, a plant
which reared a thick stem ten feet or more in the air, and covered it
with small flowers in a huge mass, exactly the shape of a candle-flame,
but one that never flickered in the wind.

The road began to climb in earnest; it swung around the shoulder of a
hill, and there was a sign in red letters: “Guadalupe Grade: Speed limit
on curves 15 miles per hour.” Dad gave no evidence that he knew how to
read, either that sign, or his speedometer. Dad understood that signs
were for people who did not know how to drive; for the initiate few the
rule was, whatever speed left you on your own half of the highway. In
this case the road lay on the right side of the pass; you had the
mountain on your right, and hugged it closely as you swung round the
turns; the other fellow had the outside edge, and in the cheerful phrase
of the time, it was “his funeral.”

Another concession Dad made—wherever the bend was to the right, so that
the mass of the mountain obstructed the road, he sounded his horn. It
was a big, commanding horn, hidden away somewhere under the capacious
hood of the car; a horn for a man whose business took him on flying
trips over a district big enough for an ancient empire; who had
important engagements waiting at the end of his journey, and who went
through, day or night, fair weather or foul. The voice of his horn was
sharp and military; there was in it no undertone of human kindness. At
fifty miles an hour there is no place for such emotions—what you want
is for people to get out of the way, and do it quick, and you tell them
so. “Whanhnh!” said the horn—a sound you must make through your nose,
for the horn was one big nose. A sudden swing of the
highway—“Whanhnh!”—and then an elbow jutting out and another
swing—“Whanhnh!”—so you went winding up, up, and the rocky walls of
Guadalupe Pass resounded to the strange new cry—“Whanhnh! Whanhnh!” The
birds looked about in alarm, and the ground-squirrels dived into their
sandy entrance-holes, and ranchmen driving rickety Fords down the grade,
and tourists coming to Southern California with all their chickens and
dogs and babies and mattresses and tin pans tied onto the
running-boards—these swung out to the last perilous inch of the
highway, and the low, swift roadster sped on: “Whanhnh! Whanhnh!”

Any boy will tell you that this is glorious. Whoopee! you bet! Sailing
along up there close to the clouds, with an engine full of power,
magically harnessed, subject to the faintest pressure from the ball of
your foot. The power of ninety horses—think of that! Suppose you had
had ninety horses out there in front of you, forty-five pairs in a long
line, galloping around the side of a mountain, wouldn’t that make your
pulses jump? And this magic ribbon of concrete laid out for you, winding
here and there, feeling its way upward with hardly a variation of grade,
taking off the shoulder of a mountain, cutting straight through the apex
of another, diving into the black belly of a third; twisting, turning,
tilting inward on the outside curves, tilting outward on the inside
curves, so that you were always balanced, always safe—and with a
white-painted line marking the centre, so that you always knew exactly
where you had a right to be—what magic had done all this?

Dad had explained it—money had done it. Men of money had said the word,
and surveyors and engineers had come, and diggers by the thousand,
swarming Mexicans and Indians, bronze of skin, armed with picks and
shovels; and great steam shovels with long hanging lobster-claws of
steel; derricks with wide swinging arms, scrapers and grading machines,
steel drills and blasting men with dynamite, rock-crushers, and concrete
mixers that ate sacks of cement by the thousand, and drank water from a
flour-stained hose, and had round steel bellies that turned all day with
a grinding noise. All these had come, and for a year or two they had
toiled, and yard by yard they had unrolled the magic ribbon.

Never since the world began had there been men of power equal to this.
And Dad was one of them; he could do things like that, he was on his way
to do something like that now. At seven o’clock this evening, in the
lobby of the Imperial Hotel at Beach City, a man would be waiting, Ben
Skutt, the oil-scout, whom Dad described as his “lease-hound”; he would
have a big “proposition” all lined up, and the papers ready for
signature. So it was that Dad had a right to have the road clear; that
was the meaning of the sharp military voice of the horn, speaking
through its nose: “Whanhnh! Whanhnh! Dad is coming! Get out of the way!
Whanhnh! Whanhnh!”

The boy sat, eager-eyed, alert; he was seeing the world, in a fashion
men had dreamed in the days of Haroun al Raschid—from a magic horse
that galloped on top of the clouds, from a magic carpet that went
sailing through the air. It was a giant’s panorama unrolling itself; new
vistas opening at every turn, valleys curving below you, hilltops rising
above you, processions of ranges, far as your eye could reach. Now that
you were in the heart of the range, you saw that there were trees in the
deep gorges, towering old pine trees, gnarled by storms and split by
lightning; or clumps of live oaks that made pleasant spaces like English
parks. But up on the tops there was only brush, now fresh with the brief
spring green; mesquite and sage and other desert plants, that had
learned to bloom quickly, while there was water, and then stand the long
baking drought. They were spotted with orange-colored patches of dodder,
a plant that grew in long threads like corn-silk, weaving a garment on
top of the other plants; it killed them—but there were plenty more.

Other hills were all rock, of an endless variety of color. You saw
surfaces mottled and spotted like the skins of beasts—tawny leopards,
and creatures red and grey or black and white, whose names you did not
know. There were hills made of boulders, scattered as if giants had been
throwing them in battle; there were blocks piled up, as if the children
of giants had grown tired of play. Rocks towered like cathedral arches
over the road; through such an arch you swung out into view of a gorge,
yawning below, with a stout white barrier to protect you as you made the
turn. Out of the clouds overhead a great bird came sailing; his wings
collapsed as if he had been shot, and he dived into the abyss. “Was that
an eagle?” asked the boy. “Buzzard,” answered Dad, who had no romance in
him.

Higher and higher they climbed, the engine purring softly, one unvarying
note. Underneath the wind-shield were dials and gauges in complicated
array: a speedometer with a little red line showing exactly how fast you
were going; a clock, and an oil gauge, a gas gauge, an ammeter, and a
thermometer that mounted slowly on a long grade like this. All these
things were in Dad’s consciousness—a still more complicated machine.
For, after all, what was ninety horsepower compared with a million
dollar power? An engine might break down, but Dad’s mind had the
efficiency of an eclipse of the sun. They were due at the top of the
grade by ten o’clock; and the boy’s attitude was that of the old farmer
with a new gold watch, who stood on his front-porch in the early
morning, remarking, “If that sun don’t get over the hill in three
minutes, she’s late.”

                                  III

But something went wrong and spoiled the schedule. You had got up into
the fog, and cold white veils were sweeping your face. You could see all
right, but the fog had wet the road, and there was clay on it, a
combination that left the most skilful driver helpless. Dad’s quick eye
noted it, and he slowed down; a fortunate thing, for the car began to
slide, and almost touched the white wooden barrier that guarded the
outer edge.

They started again, creeping along, in low gear, so that they could stop
quickly; five miles the speedometer showed, then three miles; then
another slide, and Dad said “Damn”. They wouldn’t stand that very long,
the boy knew; “Chains”, he thought, and they drew up close against the
side of the hill, on an inside curve where cars coming from either
direction could see them. The boy opened the door at his side and popped
out; the father descended gravely, and took off his overcoat and laid it
in the seat; he took off his coat and laid that in the same way—for
clothing was part of a man’s dignity, a symbol of his rise in life, and
never to be soiled or crumpled. He unfastened his cuffs and rolled up
the sleeves—each motion precisely followed by the boy. At the rear of
the car was a flat compartment with a sloping cover, which Dad opened
with a key; one of a great number of keys, each precisely known to him,
each symbolical of efficiency and order. Having got out the chains, and
fastened them upon the rear tires, Dad wiped his hands on the fog-laden
plants by the roadside; the boy did the same, liking the coldness of the
shining globes of water. There was a clean rag in the compartment, kept
there for drying your hands, and changed every so often. The two donned
their coats again, and resumed their places, and the car set out, a
little faster now, but still cautiously, and away off the schedule.

“Guadalupe Grade: Height of Land: Caution: Fifteen miles per hour on
curves.” So ran the sign; they were creeping down now, in low gear,
holding back the car, which resented it, and shook impatiently. Dad had
his spectacles in his lap, because the fog had blurred them; it had
filled his hair with moisture, and was trickling down his forehead into
his eyes. It was fun to breathe it and feel the cold; it was fun to
reach over and sound the horn—Dad would let you do it now, all you
wanted. A car came creeping towards them out of the mist, likewise
tooting lustily; it was a Ford, puffing from the climb, with steam
coming out of the radiator.

Then suddenly the fog grew thinner; a few wisps more, and it was gone;
they were free, and the car leaped forward into a view—oh, wonderful!
Hill below hill dropping away, and a landscape spread out, as far as
forever; you wanted wings, so as to dive down there, to sail out over
the hilltops and the flat plains. What was the use of speed limits, and
curves, and restraining gears and brakes?—“Dry my spectacles,” said
Dad, prosaically. Scenery was all right, but he had to keep to the right
of the white-painted line on the road. “Whanhnh! Whanhnh!” said the
horn, on all the outside curves.

They slid down, and little by little the scenery disappeared; they were
common mortals, back on earth. The curves broadened out, they left the
last shoulder of the last hill, and before them was a long, straight
descent; the wind began to whistle, and the figures to creep past the
red line on the speedometer. They were making up for lost time. Whee!
How the trees and telegraph poles went whizzing! Sixty miles now; some
people might have been scared, but no sensible person would be scared
while Dad was at the wheel.

But suddenly the car began to slow up; you could feel yourself sliding
forward in your seat, and the little red line showed fifty, forty,
thirty. The road lay straight ahead, there was no other car in sight,
yet Dad’s foot was on the brake. The boy looked up inquiringly. “Sit
still,” said the man. “Don’t look round. A speed-trap!”

Oho! An adventure to make a boy’s heart jump! He wanted to look and see,
but understood that he must sit rigid, staring out in front, utterly
innocent. They had never driven any faster than thirty miles per hour in
their lives, and if any traffic-officer thought he had seen them coming
faster down the grade, that was purely an optical delusion, the natural
error of a man whose occupation destroyed his faith in human nature.
Yes, it must be a dreadful thing to be a “speed-cop”, and have the whole
human race for your enemy! To stoop to disreputable actions—hiding
yourself in bushes, holding a stop-watch in hand, and with a confederate
at a certain measured distance down the road, also holding a stop-watch,
and with a telephone line connecting the two of them, so they could keep
tab on motorists who passed! They had even invented a device of mirrors,
which could be set up by the roadside, so that one man could get the
flash of a car as it passed, and keep the time. This was a trouble the
motorist had to keep incessant watch for; at the slightest sign of
anything suspicious, he must slow up quickly—and yet not too
quickly—no, just a natural slowing, such as any man would employ if he
should discover that he had accidentally, for the briefest moment,
exceeded ever so slightly the limits of complete safety in driving.

“That fellow will be following us,” said Dad. He had a little mirror
mounted in front of his eyes, so that he could keep tab on such enemies
of the human race; but the boy could not see into the mirror, so he had
to sit on pins and needles, missing the fun.

“Do you see anything?”

“No, not yet; but he’ll come; he knows we were speeding. He puts himself
on that straight grade, because everybody goes fast at such a place.”
There you saw the debased nature of the “speed-cop”! He chose a spot
where it was perfectly safe to go fast, and where he knew that everyone
would be impatient, having been held in so long by the curves up in the
mountains, and by the wet roads! That was how much they cared for fair
play, those “speed-cops”!

They crept along at thirty miles an hour; the lawful limit in those
benighted times, back in 1912. It took all the thrill out of motoring,
and it knocked the schedule to pot. The boy had a vision of Ben Skutt,
the “lease-hound”, sitting in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel at Beach
City; there would be others waiting, also—there were always dozens
waiting, grave matters of business with “big money” at stake. You would
hear Dad at the long distance telephone, and he would consult his watch,
and figure the number of miles to be made, and make his appointment
accordingly; and then he had to be there—nothing must stop him. If
there were a breakdown of the car, he would take out their suit-cases,
and lock the car, hail a passing motorist and get a ride to the next
town, and there rent the best car he could find—or buy it outright if
need be—and drive on, leaving the old car to be towed in and repaired.
Nothing could stop Dad!

But now he was creeping along at thirty miles! “What’s the matter?”
asked the boy, and received the answer: “Judge Larkey!” Oh, sure enough!
They were in San Geronimo County, where the terrible Judge Larkey was
sending speeders to jail! Never would the boy forget that day, when Dad
had been compelled to put all his engagements aside, and travel back to
San Geronimo, to appear in court and be scolded by this elderly
autocrat. Most of the time you did not undergo such indignities; you
simply displayed your card to the “speed-cop”, showing that you were a
member of the Automobile Club, and he would nod politely, and hand you a
little slip with the amount of your “bail” noted on it, proportioned to
the speed you had been caught at; you mailed a check for the amount, and
heard and thought no more about it.

But here in San Geronimo County they had got nasty, and Dad had told
Judge Larkey what he thought of the custom of setting
“speed-traps”—officers hiding in the bushes and spying on citizens; it
was undignified, and taught motorists to regard officers of the law as
enemies. The Judge had tried to be smart, and asked Dad if he had ever
thought of the possibility that burglars also might come to regard
officers of the law as enemies. The newspapers had put that on the front
page all over the state: “Oil Operator Objects to Speed Law: J. Arnold
Ross Says He Will Change It.” Dad’s friends kidded him about that, but
he stuck it out—sooner or later he was going to make them change that
law, and sure enough he did, and you owe to him the fact that there are
no more “speed-traps,” but officers have to ride the roads in uniform,
and if you watch your little mirror, you can go as fast as you please.

                                   IV

They came to a little house by the roadside, with a shed that you drove
under, and a round-bellied object, half glass and half red paint, that
meant gasoline for sale. “Free Air,” read a sign, and Dad drew up, and
told the man to take off his chains. The man brought a jack and lifted
the car; and the boy, who was always on the ground the instant the car
stopped, opened the rear compartment and got out the little bag for the
chains to go in. Also he got out the “grease-gun”, and unwrapped that.
“Grease is cheaper than steel,” Dad would say. He had many such maxims,
a whole modern Book of Proverbs which the boy learned by heart. It was
not that Dad was anxious to save the money; nor was it that he had
grease to sell and not steel; it was the general principle of doing
things right, of paying respect to a beautiful piece of machinery.

Dad had got out, to stretch his legs. He was a big figure of a man,
filling every inch of the opulent overcoat. His cheeks were rosy, and
always fresh from the razor; but at second glance you noted little
pockets of flesh about his eyes, and a network of wrinkles. His hair was
grey; he had had many cares, and was getting old. His features were big
and his whole face round, but he had a solid jaw, which he could set in
ugly determination. For the most part, however, his expression was
placid, rather bovine, and his thoughts came slowly and stayed a long
time. On occasions such as the present he would show a genial side—he
liked to talk with the plain sort of folks he met along the road, folks
of his own sort, who did not notice his extremely crude English; folks
who weren’t trying to get any money out of him—at least not enough to
matter.

He was pleased to tell this man at the “filling station” about the
weather up there in the pass; yes, the fog was thick—delayed them quite
a bit—bad place for skidding. Lots of cars got into trouble up there,
said the man—that soil was dobe, slick as glass; have to trench the
road better. Quite a job that, Dad thought—taking off the side of the
mountain. The man said the fog was going now—lots of “high fog” in the
month of May, but generally it cleared up by noon. The man wanted to
know if Dad needed any gas, and Dad said no, they had got a supply
before they tackled the grade. The truth was, Dad was particular, he
didn’t like to use any gas but his own make; but he wouldn’t say that to
the man, because it might hurt the man’s feelings.

He handed the man a silver dollar for his services, and the man started
to get change, but Dad said never mind the change; the man was quite
overwhelmed by that, and put up his finger in a kind of salute, and it
was evident he realized he was dealing with a “big man.” Dad was used to
such scenes, of course, but it never failed to bring a little glow to
his heart; he went about with a supply of silver dollars and half
dollars jingling in his pocket, so that all with whom he had dealings
might share that spiritual warmth. “Poor devils,” he would say, “they
don’t get much.” He knew, because he had been one of them, and he never
lost an opportunity to explain it to the boy. To him it was real, and to
the boy it was romantic.

Behind the “filling station” was a little cabinet, decorously marked,
“Gents.” Dad called this the “emptying station”, and that was a joke
over which they chuckled. But it was a strictly family joke, Dad
explained; it must not be passed on, for other people would be shocked
by it. Other people were “queer”; but just why they were queer was
something not yet explained.

They took their seats in the car, and were about to start, when who
should come riding up behind them—the “speed-cop”! Yes, Dad was right,
the man had been following them, and he seemed to scowl when he saw
them. They had no business with him, so they drove on; doubtless he
would take the filling station as a place to hide, and watch for
speeders, said Dad. And so it proved. They had gone for a mile or two,
at their tiresome pace of thirty, when a horn sounded behind them, and a
car went swiftly by. They let it go, and half a minute later Dad,
looking into his little mirror, remarked: “Here comes the cop!” The boy
turned round, and saw the motor-cycle pass them with a roaring of the
engine. The boy leaped up and down in the seat. “It’s a race! It’s a
race! Oh, Dad, let’s follow them!”

Dad was not too old to have some sporting spirit left; besides, it was a
convenience to have the enemy out in front, where you could watch him,
and he couldn’t watch you. Dad’s car leaped forward, and the figures
again crept past the red line of the
speedometer—thirty-five—forty—forty-five—fifty—fifty-five. The boy
was half lifted out of his seat, his eyes shining and his hands
clenched.

The concrete ribbon had come to an end; there was now a dirt road, wide
and level, winding in slow curves through a country of gentle hills,
planted in wheat. The road was rolled hard, but there were little bumps,
and the car leaped from one to another; it was armed with springs and
shock-absorbers and “snubbers”, every invented device for easy riding.
Out in front were clouds of dust, which the wind seized and swept over
the hills; you would have thought that an army was marching there. Now
and then you got a glimpse of the speeding car, and the motor-cycle
close behind it. “He’s trying to get away! Oh, Dad, step on her!” This
was an adventure you didn’t meet on every trip!

“Damn fool!” was Dad’s comment; a man who would risk his life to avoid
paying a small fine. You couldn’t get away from a traffic-officer, at
least not on roads like this. And sure enough, the dust clouds died, and
on a straight bit of the highway, there they were—the car drawn up at
the right, and the officer standing alongside, with his little notebook
and pencil, writing things. Dad slowed down to the innocent thirty miles
and went by. The boy would have liked to stop, and listen to the
argument inevitable on such occasions; but he knew that the schedule
took precedence, and here was the chance to make a “get-away.” Passing
the first turn, they hit it up; the boy looked round every half minute
for the next half hour, but they saw no more of the “speed-cop.” They
were again their own law.

                                   V

Some time ago these two had witnessed a serious traffic accident, and
afterwards had appeared to testify concerning it. The clerk of the court
had called “J. Arnold Ross,” and then, just as solemnly, “J. Arnold
Ross, junior,” and the boy had climbed into the witness-chair, and
testified that he knew the nature of an oath, and knew the traffic
regulations, and just what he had seen.

That had made him, as you might say, “court-conscious.” Whenever, in
driving, anything happened that was the least bit irregular, the boy’s
imagination would elaborate it into a court scene. “No, your honor, the
man had no business on the left side of the road; we were too close to
him, he had no time to pass the car in front of him.” Or it was: “Your
honor, the man was walking on the right side of the road at night, and
there was a car coming towards us, that had blinding lights. You know,
your honor, a man should walk on the left side of the road at night, so
that he can see the cars coming towards him.” In the midst of these
imaginings of accidents, the boy would give a little jump; and Dad would
ask, “What’s the matter, son?” The boy would be embarrassed, because he
didn’t like to say that he had been letting his dreams run away with
him. But Dad knew, and would smile to himself; funny kid, always
imagining things, his mind jumping from one thing to another, always
excited!

Dad’s mind was not like that; it got on one subject and stayed there,
and ideas came through it in slow, grave procession; his emotions were
like a furnace that took a long time to heat up. Sometimes on these
drives he would say nothing for a whole hour; the stream of his
consciousness would be like a river that has sunk down through rocks and
sand, clean out of sight; he would be just a pervading sense of
well-being, wrapped in an opulent warm overcoat, an accessory, you might
say, of a softly purring engine running in a bath of boiling oil, and
traversing a road at fifty miles an hour. If you had taken this
consciousness apart, you would have found, not thoughts, but conditions
of physical organs, and of the weather, and of the car, and of
bank-accounts, and of the boy at his side. Putting it into words makes
it definite and separate—so you must try to take it all at once,
blended together: “I, the driver of this car, that used to be Jim Ross,
the teamster, and J. A. Ross and Co., general merchandise at Queen
Centre, California, am now J. Arnold Ross, oil operator, and my
breakfast is about digested, and I am a little too warm in my big new
overcoat because the sun is coming out, and I have a new well flowing
four thousand barrels at Lobos River, and sixteen on the pump at
Antelope, and I’m on my way to sign a lease at Beach City, and we’ll
make up our schedule in the next couple of hours, and ‘Bunny’ is sitting
beside me, and he is well and strong, and is going to own everything I
am making, and follow in my footsteps, except that he will never make
the ugly blunders or have the painful memories that I have, but will be
wise and perfect and do everything I say.”

Meantime the mind of “Bunny” was not behaving in the least like this,
but on the contrary was leaping from theme to theme, as a grass-hopper
in a field leaps from one stalk of grass to another. There was a
jackrabbit, racing away like mad; he had long ears, like a mule, and why
were they so transparent and pink? There was a butcher-bird, sitting on
the fence; he stretched his wings all the time, like he was
yawning—what did he mean by that? And there was a road-runner, a long
lean bird as fast as a race-horse, beautiful and glossy, black and brown
and white, with a crest and a streaming tail. Where do you suppose he
got water in these dry hills? There on the road was a mangled corpse—a
ground squirrel had tried to cross, and a car had mashed it flat; other
cars would roll over it, till it was ground to powder and blown away by
the wind. There was no use saying anything to Dad about that—he would
remark that squirrels carried plague, or at least they had fleas which
did; every now and then there would be cases of this disease and the
newspapers would have to hush it up, because it was bad for real estate.

But the boy was thinking about the poor little mite of life that had
been so suddenly snuffed out. How cruel life was; and how strange that
things should grow, and have the power to make themselves, out of
nothing apparently—and Dad couldn’t explain it, and said that nobody
else could, you were just here. And then came a ranch wagon in front of
them, a one-sided old thing loaded with household goods; to Dad it was
just an obstacle, but “Bunny” saw two lads of his own age, riding in
back of the load and staring at him with dull, listless eyes. They were
pale, and looked as if they hadn’t enough to eat; and that was another
thing to wonder about, why people should be poor and nobody to help
them. It was a world you had to help yourself in, was Dad’s explanation.

“Bunny,” the every-day name of this boy, had been started by his mother
when he was little—because he was soft and brown and warm, and she had
dressed him in a soft, fuzzy sweater, brown in color with white
trimmings. Now he was thirteen, and resented the name, but the boys cut
it to “Bun,” which was to stay with him, and which was satisfactory. He
was a pretty boy, still brown, with wavy brown hair, tumbled by the
wind, and bright brown eyes, and a good color, because he lived
outdoors. He did not go to school, but had a tutor at home, because he
was to take his father’s place in the world, and he went on these rides
in order that he might learn his father’s business.

Wonderful, endlessly wonderful, were these scenes; new faces, new kinds
of life revealed. There came towns and villages—extraordinary towns and
villages, full of people and houses and cars and horses and signs. There
were signs along the road; guide-posts at every crossing, giving you a
geography lesson—a list of the places to which the roads led, and the
distances; you could figure your schedule, and that was a lesson in
arithmetic! There were traffic signs, warning you of danger—curves,
grades, slippery places, intersections, railroad crossings. There were
big banners across the highway, or signs with letters made of electric
lights: “Loma Vista: Welcome to Our City.” Then, a little farther on:
“Loma Vista, City Limits: Good-bye: Come Again.”

Also there were no end of advertising signs, especially contrived to
lend variety to travel. “Picture ahead; kodak as you go,” was a frequent
legend, and you looked for the picture, but never could be sure what it
was. A tire manufacturer had set up big wooden figures of a boy waving a
flag; Dad said this boy looked like Bunny, and Bunny said he looked like
a picture of Jack London he had seen in a magazine. Another tire
manufacturer had a great open book, made of wood, and set up at a turn
of the road leading into each town; it was supposed to be a history
book, and told you something about that place—facts at once novel and
instructive: you learned that Citrus was the location of the first
orange grove in California, and that Santa Rosita possessed the finest
radium springs west of the Rocky mountains, and that on the outskirts of
Crescent City Father Junipero Serra had converted two thousand Indians
to Christianity in the year 1769.

There were people still engaged in converting, you learned; they had
gone out on the highway with pots of vari-colored paint, and had
decorated rocks and railway culverts with inscriptions: “Prepare to meet
thy God.” Then would come a traffic sign: “Railroad crossing. Stop.
Look. Listen.” The railroad company wanted you to meet your God through
some other agency, Dad explained, because there would be damage suits
for taking religious faith too seriously. “Jesus waits,” a boulder would
proclaim; and then would come, “Chicken Dinner, $1.” There were always
funny signs about things to eat—apparently all the world loved a meal,
and became jolly at the thought. “Hot Dog Kennels,” was an eating-place,
and “Ptomaine Tommy,” and “The Clam-Baker,” and the “Lobster-Pot.” There
were endless puns on the word inn—“Dew Drop Inn” and “Happen Inn,”
“Welcome Inn” and “Hurry Inn.” When you went into these places you would
find the spirit of jollity rampaging on the walls: “In God we Trust, All
Others Cash.” “Don’t complain about our coffee; some day you may be old
and weak yourself.” “We have an arrangement with our bank; the bank does
not sell soup, and we do not cash checks.”

                                   VI

They were passing through a broad valley, miles upon miles of wheat
fields, shining green in the sun; in the distance were trees, with
glimpses of a house here and there. “Are you looking for a Home?”
inquired a friendly sign. “Santa Ynez is a place for folks. Good water,
cheap land, seven churches. See Sprouks and Knuckleson, Realtors.” And
presently the road broadened out, with a line of trees in the middle,
and there began to be houses on each side. “Drive slow and see our city;
drive fast and see our jail,” proclaimed a big board—“By Order of the
Municipal Council of Santa Ynez.” Dad slowed down to twenty-five miles;
for it was a favorite trick of town marshals and justices of the peace
to set speed-traps for motorists coming from the country, with engines
keyed up to country rates of speed; they would haul you up and soak you
a big fine—and you had a vision of these new-style highwaymen spending
your dollars in riotous living. That was something else Dad was going to
stop, he said—such fines ought to go to the state, and be used for
road-repairs.

“Business zone, 15 miles per hour.” The main street of Santa Ynez was a
double avenue, with two lines of cars parked obliquely in the centre of
it, and another line obliquely against each curb. You crept along
through a lane, watching for a car that was backing out, and you dived
into the vacant place, just missing the fender of the car at your right.
Dad got out, and took off his overcoat, and folded it carefully, outside
in, the sleeves inside; that was something he was particular about,
having kept a general store, which included “Gents’ Clothing.” He and
Bunny laid their coats neatly in the rear compartment, locked safe, and
then strolled down the sidewalk, watching the ranchers of Santa Ynez
valley, and the goods which the stores displayed for them. This was the
United States, and the things on sale were the things you would have
seen in store-windows on any other Main Street, the things known as
“nationally advertised products.” The ranchman drove to town in a
nationally advertised auto, pressing the accelerator with a nationally
advertised shoe; in front of the drug-store he found a display of
nationally advertised magazines, containing all the nationally
advertised advertisements of the nationally advertised articles he would
take back to the ranch.

There were a few details which set this apart as a Western town: the
width of the street, the newness of the stores, the shininess of their
white paint, and the network of electric lights hung over the centre of
the street; also a man with a broad-brimmed hat, and a stunted old
Indian mumbling his lips as he walked, and a solitary cowboy wearing
“chaps.” “Elite Café,” said a white-painted sign, reading vertically;
the word “Waffles” was painted on the window, and there was a menu
tacked by the door, so that you could see what was offered, and the
prices charged. There were tables along one side of the wall, and a
counter along the other, with a row of broad backs in shirtsleeves and
suspenders perched on top of little stools; this was the way if you
wanted quick action, so Dad and the boy took two stools they found
vacant.

Dad was in his element in a place like this. He liked to “josh” the
waitress; he knew all kinds of comic things to say, funny names for
things to eat. He would order his eggs “sunny side up,” or “with their
eyes open, please.” He would say, “Wrap the baby in the blanket,” and
laugh over the waitress’ effort to realize that this meant a fried egg
sandwich. He would chat with the rancher at his other side—learning
about the condition of the wheat, and the prospects of prices for the
orange and walnut crops; he was interested in everything like this, as a
man who had oil to sell, to men who would buy more or less, according to
what they got for their products. Dad owned land, too; he was always
ready to “pick up” a likely piece, for there was oil all over Southern
California, he said, and some day there would be an empire here.

But now they were behind their schedule, and no time for play. Dad would
take fried rabbit; and Bunny thought he wouldn’t—not because of the
cannibalistic suggestion, but because of one he had seen mashed on the
road that morning. He chose roast pork—not having seen any dead pigs.
So there came on a platter two slices of meat, and mashed potatoes
scooped out in a round ball, with a hole in the top filled with gluey
brown gravy; also a spoonful of chopped up beets, and a leaf of lettuce
with apple sauce in it. The waitress had given him an extra helping,
because she liked this jolly brown kid, with his rosy cheeks and hair
tumbled by the wind, and sensitive lips, like a girl’s, and eager brown
eyes that roamed over the place and took in everything, the signs on the
wall, the bottles of catsup and slices of pie, the fat jolly waitress,
and the tired thin one who was waiting on him. He cheered her up by
telling her about the speed-cop they had met, and the chase they had
seen. In turn she tipped them off to a speed-trap just outside the town;
the man next to Bunny had been caught in it and fined ten dollars, so
they had plenty to talk about while Bunny finished his dinner, and his
slice of raisin pie and glass of milk. Dad gave the waitress a half
dollar for a tip, which was an unheard-of thing at a counter, and seemed
almost immoral; but she took it.

They drove carefully until they were past the speed-trap; then they “hit
it up,” along a broad boulevard known as the Mission Way, with bronze
bells hanging from poles along it. They had all kinds of picturesque
names for highways in this country; the Devil’s Garden Way and the Rim
of the World Drive, Mountain Spring Grade and Snow Creek Run, Thousand
Palm Cañon and Fig Tree John’s Road, Coyote Pass and the Jackrabbit
Trail. There was a Telegraph Road, and that was thrilling to the boy
because he had read about a battle in the civil war for the possession
of a “Telegraph Road”; when they drove along this one, he would see
infantry hiding in the bushes and cavalry charging across the fields; he
would give a start of excitement, and Dad would ask, “What is it?”
“Nothing, Dad; I was just thinking.” Funny kid! Always imagining things!

Also, there were Spanish names, reverently cherished by the pious
“realtors” of the country. Bunny knew what these meant, because he was
studying Spanish, so that some day he would be equipped to deal with
Mexican labor. “El Camino Real”—that meant the Royal Highway; and
“Verdugo Cañon”—that meant “executioner.” “What happened there, Dad?”
But Dad didn’t know the story; he shared the opinion of the manufacturer
of a nationally advertised automobile—that history is mostly “bunk.”

                                   VI

The road was asphalt now; it shimmered in the heat, and whenever it fell
away before you, a mirage made it look like water. It was lined with
orange-groves; dark green shiny trees, golden with a part of last year’s
crop, and snowy white with the new year’s blossoms. Now and then a puff
of breeze blew out, and you got a ravishing sweet odor. There were
groves of walnuts, broad trees with ample foliage, casting dark shadows
on the carefully cultivated, powdery brown soil. There were hedges of
roses, extending for long distances, eight or ten feet high, and covered
with blossoms. There were wind-breaks of towering thin eucalyptus trees,
with long wavy leaves and bark that scales off and leaves them naked;
all the world is familiar with them in the moving pictures, where they
do duty for sturdy oaks and ancient elms and spreading chestnuts and
Arabian date-palms and cedars of Lebanon and whatever else the scenario
calls for.

You had to cut your speed down here, and had to watch incessantly; there
were intersections, and lanes coming in, and warning signs of many
sorts; there was traffic both ways, and delicate decisions to be made as
to whether you could get past the car ahead of you, before one coming in
the other direction would bear down on you and shut you in a pair of
scissors. It was exciting to watch Dad’s handling of these emergencies,
to read his intentions and watch him carry them out.

There were towns every five or ten miles now, and you were continually
being slowed up by traffic, and continually being warned to conform to a
rate of movement which would have irritated an able-bodied snail. The
highway passed through the main street of each town; the merchants
arranged that, Dad said, hoping you would get out and buy something at
their places; if the highway were shifted to the outskirts of the town,
to avoid traffic congestion, all the merchants would forthwith move to
the highway! Sometimes they would put up signs, indicating a turn in the
highway, attempting to lure the motorist onto a business street; after
you had got to the end of that street, they would steer you back to the
highway! Dad noted such tricks with the amused tolerance of a man who
had worked them on others, but did not let anyone work them on him.

Each town consisted of some tens, or hundreds, or thousands of perfectly
rectangular blocks, divided into perfectly rectangular lots, each
containing a strictly modern bungalow, with a lawn and a housewife
holding a hose. On the outskirts would be one or more “subdivisions,” as
they were called; “acreage” was being laid out into lots, and decorated
with a row of red and yellow flags fluttering merrily in the breeze;
also a row of red and yellow signs which asked questions and answered
them with swift efficiency: “Gas? Yes.” “Water? Best ever.” “Lights?
Right.” “Restrictions? You bet.” “Schools? Under construction.”
“Scenery? Beats the Alps.”—and so on. There would be an office or a
tent by the roadside, and in front of it an alert young man with a
writing pad and a fountain-pen, prepared to write you a contract of sale
after two minutes conversation. These subdividers had bought the land
for a thousand dollars an acre, and soon as they had set up the
fluttering little flags and the tent it became worth $1675 per lot. This
also Dad explained with amused tolerance. It was a great country!

They were coming to the outskirts of Angel City. Here were trolley
tracks and railroads, and subdivisions with no “restrictions”—that is,
you might build any kind of house you pleased, and rent it to people of
any race or color; which meant an ugly slum, spreading like a great
sore, with shanties of tin and tar-paper and unpainted boards. There
were great numbers of children playing here—for some strange reason
there seemed to be more of them where they were least apt to thrive.

By dint of constant pushing and passing every other car, Dad had got on
his schedule again. They skirted the city, avoiding the traffic crowds
in its centre, and presently came a sign: “Beach City Boulevard.” It was
a wide asphalt road, with thousands of speeding cars, and more
subdivisions and suburban home-sites, with endless ingenious
advertisements designed to catch the fancy of the motorist, and cause
him to put on brakes. The real estate men had apparently been reading
the Arabian Nights and Grimm’s fairy-tales; they were housed in little
freak offices that shot up to a point, or tilted like a drunken sailor;
their colors orange and pink, or blue and green, or with separately
painted shingles, spotted with various colors. There were “good eats”
signs and “barbecue” signs—the latter being a word which apparently had
not been in the spelling-books when the sign-painters went to school.
There were stands where you got orange-juice and cider, with
orange-colored wicker chairs out in front for you to sit in. There were
fruit and vegetable stands kept by Japs, and other stands with signs
inviting you to “patronize Americans.” There was simply no end of things
to look at, each separate thing bringing its separate thrill to the mind
of a thirteen-year old boy. The infinite strangeness and fascinatingness
of this variegated world! Why do people do this, Dad? And why do they do
that?

They came to Beach City, with its wide avenue along the ocean-front.
Six-thirty, said the clock on the car’s running-board—exactly on the
schedule. They stopped before the big hotel, and Bunny got out of the
car, and opened the back compartment, and the bell-hop came hopping—you
bet, for he knew Dad, and the dollars and half dollars that were
jingling in Dad’s pockets. The bell-hop grabbed the suit-cases and the
overcoats, and carried them in, and the boy followed, feeling
responsible and important, because Dad couldn’t come yet, Dad had to put
the car in a parking place. So Bunny strode in and looked about the
lobby for Ben Skutt, the oil-scout, who was Dad’s “lease-hound.” There
he was, seated in a big leather chair, puffing at a cigar and watching
the door; he got up when he saw Bunny, and stretched his long, lean
body, and twisted his lean, ugly face into a grin of welcome. The boy,
very erect, remembering that he was J. Arnold Ross, junior, and
representing his father in an important transaction, shook hands with
the man, remarking: “Good evening, Mr. Skutt. Are the papers ready?”




                               CHAPTER II
                               THE LEASE


                                   I

The number of the house was 5746 Los Robles Boulevard, and you would
have had to know this land of hope in order to realize that it stood in
a cabbage field. Los Robles means “the oaks”; and two or three miles
away, where this boulevard started in the heart of Beach City, there
were four live oak trees. But out here a bare slope of hill, quite
steep, yet not too steep to be plowed and trenched and covered with
cabbages, with sugar-beets down on the flat. The eye of hope, aided by
surveyors’ instruments, had determined that some day a broad boulevard
would run on this line; and so there was a dirt road, and at every
corner white posts set up, with a wing north and a wing east—Los Robles
Blvd.-Palomitas Ave.; Los Robles Blvd.-El Centro Ave.; and so on.

Two years ago the “subdividers” had been here, with their outfit of
little red and yellow flags; there had been full-page advertisements in
the newspapers, and free auto rides from Beach City, and a free lunch;
consisting of “hot dog” sandwiches, a slice of apple pie, and a cup of
coffee. At that time the fields had been cleared of cabbages, and
graded, and the lots had blossomed with little signs: “Sold.” This was
supposed to refer to the lot, but in time it came to refer to the
purchaser. The company had undertaken to put in curbs and sidewalks,
water and gas and sewers; but somebody made off with the money, and the
enterprise went into bankruptcy, and presently new signs began to
appear: “For Sale, by Owner,” or “Bargain: See Smith and Headmutton,
Real Estate.” And when these signs brought no reply, the owners sighed,
and reflected that some day when little Willie grew up he would make a
profit out of that investment. Meantime, they would accept the
proposition of Japanese truck-gardeners, to farm the land for one-third
of the crop.

But three or four months ago something unexpected had happened. A man
who owned an acre or two of land on the top of the hill had caused a
couple of motor-trucks to come toiling up the slope, loaded with large
square timbers of Oregon pine; carpenters had begun to work on these,
and the neighborhood had stared, wondering what strange kind of house it
could be. Suddenly the news had spread, in an explosion of excitement:
an oil-derrick!

A deputation called upon the owner, to find out what it meant. It was
pure “wild-catting,” he assured them; he happened to have a hundred
thousand dollars to play with, and this was his idea of play.
Nevertheless, the bargain signs came down from the cabbage fields, and
were replaced by “Oil Lot for Sale.” Speculators began to look up the
names and addresses of owners, and offers were made—there were rumors
that some had got as high as a thousand dollars, nearly twice the
original price of the lots. Motor-cars took to bumping out over the dirt
roads, up and down the lanes; and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons
there would be a crowd staring at the derrick.

The drilling began, and went on, monotonously and uneventfully. The
local newspapers reported the results: the D. H. Culver Prospect No. 1
was at 1478 feet, in hard sandstone formation and no signs of oil. It
was the same at 2,000, and at 3,000; and then for weeks the rig was
“fishing” for a broken drill, and everybody lost interest; it was
nothing but a “dry hole,” and people who had refused double prices for
their lots began to curse themselves for fools. “Wild-catting” was
nothing but gambling anyhow—quite different from conservative
investments in town lots. Then the papers reported that D. H. Culver
Prospect No. 1 was drilling again; it was at 3059 feet, but the owners
had not yet given up hope of striking something.

Then a strange thing happened. There came trucks, heavily loaded with
stuff, carefully covered with canvas. Everybody connected with the
enterprise had been warned or bribed to silence; but small boys peered
under the canvas while the trucks were toiling up the hill with roaring
motors, and they reported big sheets of curved metal, with holes along
the edges for bolts. That could be only one thing, tanks. And at the
same time came rumors that D. H. Culver had purchased another tract of
land on the hill. The meaning of all this was obvious: Prospect No. 1
had got into oil-sands!

The whole hill began to blossom with advertisements, and real estate
agents swarmed to the “field.” A magic word now—no longer cabbage field
or sugar-beet field, but “_the_ field!” Speculators set themselves up in
tents, or did business from automobiles drawn up by the roadside, with
canvas signs on them. There was coming and going all day long, and
crowds of people gathered to stare up at the derrick, and listen to the
monotonous grinding of the heavy drill that went round and round all
day—“Ump-um—ump-um—ump-um—ump-um”—varied by the “puff-puff” of the
engine. “Keep out—this means you!” declared a conspicuous sign; Mr. D.
H. Culver and his employees had somehow lost all their good breeding.

But suddenly there was no possibility of secrecy; literally all the
world knew—for telegraph and cable carried the news to the farthest
corners of civilization. The greatest oil strike in the history of
Southern California, the Prospect Hill field! The inside of the earth
seemed to burst out through that hole; a roaring and rushing, as
Niagara, and a black column shot up into the air, two hundred feet, two
hundred and fifty—no one could say for sure—and came thundering down
to earth as a mass of thick, black, slimy, slippery fluid. It hurled
tools and other heavy objects this way and that, so the men had to run
for their lives. It filled the sump-hole, and poured over, like a
saucepan boiling too fast, and went streaming down the hill-side.
Carried by the wind, a curtain of black mist, it sprayed the Culver
homestead, turning it black, and sending the women of the household
flying across the cabbage-fields. Afterwards it was told with Homeric
laughter how these women had been heard to lament the destruction of
their clothing and their window-curtains by this million-dollar flood of
“black gold”!

Word spread by telephone to Beach City; the newspapers bulletined it,
the crowds shouted it on the street, and before long the roads leading
to Prospect Hill were black with a solid line of motor-cars. The news
reached Angel City, the papers there put out “extras,” and before
nightfall the Beach City boulevard was crowded with cars, a double line,
all coming one way. Fifty thousand people stood in a solid ring at what
they considered a safe distance from the gusher, with emergency
policemen trying to drive them further back, and shouting: “Lights out!
Lights out!” All night those words were chanted in a chorus; everybody
realized the danger—some one fool might forget and light a cigarette,
and the whole hill-side would leap into flame; a nail in your shoe might
do it, striking on a stone; or a motor-truck, with its steel-rimmed
tires. Quite frequently these gushers caught fire at the first moment.

But still the crowds gathered; men put down the tops of their
automobiles, and stood up in the seats and conducted auction rooms by
the light of the stars. Lots were offered for sale at fabulous prices,
and some of them were bought; leases were offered, companies were
started and shares sold—the traders would push their way out of the
crowd to a safe distance on the windward side, where they could strike a
match, and see each other’s faces, and scrawl a memorandum of what they
agreed. Such trading went on most of the night, and in the morning came
big tents that had been built for revival meetings, and the cabbage
fields became gay with red and black signs: “Beach Co-operative No. 1,”
“Skite Syndicate, No. 1, ten thousand units, $10.”

Meantime the workmen were toiling like mad to stop the flow of the well;
they staggered here and there, half-blinded by the black spray—and with
no place to brace themselves, nothing they could hold onto, because
everything was greased, streaming with grease. You worked in darkness,
groping about, with nothing but the roar of the monster, his blows upon
your body, his spitting in your face, to tell you where he was. You
worked at high tension, for there were bonuses offered—fifty dollars
for each man if you stopped the flow before midnight, a hundred dollars
if you stopped it before ten o’clock. No one could figure how much
wealth that monster was wasting, but it must be thousands of dollars
every minute. Mr. Culver himself pitched in to help, and in his reckless
efforts lost both of his ear-drums. “Tried to stop the flow with his
head,” said a workman, unsympathetically. In addition the owner
discovered, in the course of ensuing weeks, that he had accumulated a
total of forty-two suits for damages to houses, clothing, chickens,
goats, cows, cabbages, sugar-beets, and automobiles which had skidded
into ditches on too well-greased roads.

                                   II

The house numbered 5746 Los Robles Boulevard belonged to Joe Groarty,
night watchman for the Altmann Lumber Company of Beach City. Mrs.
Groarty had “taken in” washing to help support her seven children; now
that they were grown up and scattered, she kept rabbits and chickens.
Joe usually left for his job at six p. m.; but on the third day after
the “strike” he had got up the nerve to give up his job, and now he was
on his front-porch, a mild, grey-haired old fellow, wearing a black
suit, with celluloid collar and black tie, his costume for Sundays and
holidays, weddings and funerals. Mrs. Groarty had had no clothing
suitable for this present occasion, so she had been driven down-town in
her husband’s Ford, and had spent some of her oil expectations for an
evening-gown of yellow satin. Now she felt embarrassed because there was
not enough of it, either at the top where her arms and bosom came out,
or below, where her fat calves were encased in embroidered silk
stockings, so thin as to seem almost nothing. It was what “they” were
wearing, the saleswomen had assured her; and Mrs. Groarty was grimly set
upon being one of “them.”

The house was in the conventional “bungalow style,” and had been built
by a wealthier family, in the days of the real estate boom. It had been
offered at a sacrifice, and Mrs. Groarty had fastened upon it because of
the wonderful living-room. They had put their savings into a cash
payment, and were paying the balance thirty dollars a month. They had
got a deed to the property, and were up to date on their payments, so
they were safe.

When you passed the threshold of the house, the first thing you saw was
shine; the most marvelous gloss ever seen on wood-work—and to heighten
the effect the painter had made it wavy, in imitation of the grain of
oak; there must have been ten thousand lines, each one a separate wiggle
of a brush. The fire-place was of many-colored stones, highly polished
and gleaming like jewels. In the back of the room, most striking feature
of all, was a wooden staircase, with a balustrade, also shiny and wavy;
this staircase went up, and made a turn, and there was a platform with a
palm-tree in a pot. You would take it for granted that it was a
staircase like all other staircases, intended to take you to the second
story. You might go into the Groarty home a hundred times, and see it
both day and night, before it would occur to you there was anything
wrong; but suddenly—standing outside on some idle day—it would flash
over you that the Groarty home had a flat roof over its entire extent,
and at no part was there any second story. Then you would go inside,
inspired by a new, malignant curiosity, and would study the staircase
and landing, and realize that they didn’t lead anywhere, their beauty
was its own excuse for being.

Mrs. Groarty stood by the centre-table of her living-room, awaiting the
arrival of the expected company. There was a bowl of roses in a vase on
this table, and immediately in front of it, conspicuous under the
electric lamp, was a handsome volume bound in blue cloth and stamped
with gold letters: “The Ladies’ Guide: A Practical Handbook of
Gentility.” It was the only book in the Groarty home, and it had been
there only two days; an intelligent clerk in the department-store, after
selling the satin robe, had mentioned to the future “oil-queen” the
existence of this bargain in the literature department. Mrs. Groarty had
been studying the volume at spare moments, and now had it set out as an
exhibit of culture.

The first to arrive was the widow Murchey, who had only to come from the
end of the block, where she lived in a little bungalow with her two
children; she was frail, and timid of manner, and wore black wristbands.
She went into raptures over Mrs. Groarty’s costume, and congratulated
her on her good fortune in being on the south slope of the hill, where
one could wear fine dresses. Over on the north side, where the
prevailing winds had blown the oil, you ruined your shoes every time you
went out. Some people still did not dare to light their kitchen fires,
for fear of an explosion.

Then came the Walter Blacks, Mr. and Mrs. and their grown son, owners of
the southwest corner lot; they were in real estate in the city. Mr.
Black wore a checked suit, an expansive manner, and a benevolent
protective gold animal as watch-fob on his ample front. Mrs. Black, also
ample, had clothes at home as good as Mrs. Groarty’s, but her manner
said that she hadn’t put them on to come out to any cabbage-patch. They
were followed by Mr. Dumpery, the carpenter, who had a little cottage in
back of the Groarty’s, fronting on Eldorado Road, the other side of the
block; Mr. Dumpery was a quiet little man, with shoulders bowed and
hands knotted by a life-time of toil. He was not very good at figures,
and was distressed by these sudden uncertainties which had invaded his
life.

Next came the Raithels, who had a candy-store in town, a very genteel
young couple, anxious to please everybody, and much distressed because
it had so far proven impossible; they were the owners of one of the
“little lots.” Then Mr. Hank, a lean and hatchet-faced man with an
exasperating voice; he owned the next “little lot,” and because he had
been a gold miner, considered himself an authority on oil leases. After
him came his enemy, Mr. Dibble, the lawyer, who represented the absent
owner of the northwest corner, and had made trouble by insisting on many
technicalities difficult for non-lawyers to understand; he had tried
hard to separate the north half of the block, and was regarded as a
traitor by those of the south half. Then came Mr. Golighty, one of the
“medium lots.” His occupation was not known, but he impressed everyone
by his clothing and cultured manner; he was a reconciler, with a suave,
rotund voice, and talked a great deal, the only trouble being that when
he got through you were a little uncertain as to what he had said.

The Bromleys arrived, an elderly couple of means, driving a big car.
They brought with them the Lohlkers, two little Jewish tailors, whom
ordinarily they would have talked with only in the tailor-shop; but with
these allies they controlled four of the “medium lots,” which was
sufficient for a drilling site, and cutting right across the block, had
enabled them to threaten the rest with a separate lease. Behind them
came the Sivons, walking from their house on the northeast corner; they
were pretentious people, who looked down on the rest of the
neighborhood—and without any cause, for they drove a second-hand car,
three years out of date. They were the people who had got this lease,
and everyone was sure they were getting a big “rake-off” on the side;
but there was no way to prove it, and nothing you could do about it, for
the reason that all the others who had brought leasing propositions had
been secretly promised a similar “rake-off.”

With them came Mr. Sahm, a plasterer, who lived in a temporary
“garage-house” on the “little lot” adjoining the Sivons. His dwelling
amounted to nothing, nevertheless he had been the one who had clamored
most strenuously that the houses should be moved at the lessor’s
expense; he had even tried to put in a provision for compensation for
the rows of beans and tomatoes he had planted on his lot. The others had
sought to hoot him down, when to their dismay the silent Mr. Dumpery,
the carpenter, arose, declaring that it seemed to him a quite sensible
request; he had seven rows of corn, himself, and beans in full blossom,
and he thought the contract should at least contain a provision that the
first well should be drilled on some lot which was not planted, so as to
give the gardeners time to reap the benefit of their labor.

                                  III

It was seven-thirty, the hour set for the meeting; and everybody looked
about, waiting for somebody else to begin. At last a stranger rose, a
big six-footer with a slow drawl, introducing himself as Mr. F. T.
Merriweather, attorney for Mr. and Mrs. Black, owners of the southwest
corner; by his advice, these parties wished to request a slight change
in the wording of the lease.

“_Changes in the lease?_” It was the hatchet-faced Mr. Hank who leaped
up. “I thought it was agreed we’d make no more changes?”

“This is a very small matter, sir—”

“But Mr. Ross is to be here in fifteen minutes, ready to sign up!”

“This is a detail, which can be changed in five minutes.”

There was an ominous silence. “Well, what is your change?”

“Merely this,” said Mr. Merriweather; “it should be explicitly stated
that in figuring the area for the apportioning of the royalty, due
regard shall be paid to the provision of the law that oil rights run to
the centre of the street, and to the centre of the alley in the rear.”

“_What’s that?_” Eyes and mouths went open, and there was a general
murmur of amazement and dissent. “Where do you get that?” cried Mr.
Hank.

“I get it from the statutes of the State of California.”

“Well, you don’t get it from this lease, and you don’t get it from me!”
There was a chorus of support: “I should think not! Whoever heard of
such a thing? Ridiculous!”

“I think I speak for the majority here,” said old Mr. Bromley. “We had
no such understanding; we assumed that the area of the lots to be taken
was that given on the maps of the company.”

“Certainly, certainly!” cried Mrs. Groarty.

“I think, Mrs. Groarty,” replied Mr. Dibble, the lawyer, “there has been
an unfortunate accident, owing to your unfamiliarity with the oil-laws
of the State. The provisions of the statute are clear.”

“Oh, yes, of course!” snapped Mrs. Groarty. “We don’t need to be told
what you would say, seeing as you represent a corner lot, and the corner
lots will get twice as much money!”

“Not so bad as that, Mrs. Groarty. Don’t forget that your own lot will
run to the centre of Las Robles Boulevard, which is eighty feet wide.”

“Yes, but your lot will run to the centre of the side street also—”

“Yes, Mrs. Groarty, but El Centro Avenue is only sixty feet wide.”

“What it means is just this, you make your lots ninety-five feet lots,
instead of sixty-five feet lots, as we all thought when we give up and
consented to let the big lots have a bigger share.”

“And you were going to let us sign that!” shouted Mr. Hank. “You were
sitting still and working that swindle on us!”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” boomed the voice of Mr. Golighty, the
conciliator.

“Let me git this straight,” broke in Abe Lohlker, the tailor. “Eldorado
Road ain’t so wide as Los Robles Boulevard, so us fellers on the east
half don’t git so much money as the others.”

“That amounts to practically nothing,” said Mr. Merriweather. “You can
figure—”

“Sure I can figger! But then, if it don’t amount to nothin’, what you
comin’ here bustin’ up our lease about it for?”

“I can tell you this right now!” cried Mr. Hank. “You’ll never get me to
sign no such agreement.”

“Nor me,” said Miss Snypp, the trained nurse, a decided young lady with
spectacles. “I think us little lots have put up with our share of
imposition.”

“What I say,” added Mr. Hank, “let’s go back to the original agreement,
the only sensible one, share and share alike, all lots equal, same as we
vote.”

“Let me point out something, Mr. Hank,” said Mr. Dibble, with much
dignity. “Am I correct in the impression that you own one of the little
lots adjoining the alley?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, then, have you figured that the law entitles you to an extra
fifteen feet all along that alley? That puts you somewhat ahead of the
medium lots.”

Mr. Hank’s lantern jaw dropped down. “Oh!” he said.

And Mrs. Groarty burst into laughter. “Oh! Oh! That changes it, of
course! It’s us medium lots that are the suckers now—us that make up
half the lease!”

“And us little lots that ain’t on the alley!” cried Mrs. Keith, the wife
of a baseball player. “What about my husband and I?”

“It looks to me we’re clean busted up,” said Mr. Sahm, the plasterer.
“We don’t know who we belong with no more.” Like most of the men in the
room, he had got out a pencil and paper, and was trying to figure this
new arrangement; and the more he figured, the more complications he
discovered.

                                   IV

It had been the Walter Browns who had started the idea of a “community
agreement” for this block. Two or three lots were enough for a well, but
for such a lease you could only get some small concern, and like as not
you would fall into the hands of a speculator, and be bartered about,
perhaps exploited by a “syndicate” and sold in “units,” or tied up in a
broken contract, and have to sit by and watch while other people drained
the oil from under your land. No, the thing to do was to get a whole
block together; then you had enough for half a dozen wells, and could
deal with one of the big companies, and you would get quick drilling,
and more important yet, you would be sure of your royalties when they
were earned.

So, after much labor, and pulling and hauling, and threatening and
cajoling, and bargaining and intriguing, the owners of the twenty-four
lots had met at the Groarty home, and had signed their names, both
husbands and wives, to a “community agreement,” to the effect that none
of them would lease apart from the others. This document had been duly
recorded in the county archives; and now day by day they were realizing
what they had done to themselves. They had agreed to agree; and from
that time on, they had never been able to agree to anything!

They met at seven-thirty every evening, and wrangled until midnight or
later; they went home exhausted, and could not sleep; they neglected
their business and their house-keeping and the watering of their
lawns—what was the use of working like a slave when you were going to
be rich? They held minority meetings, and formed factional groups, and
made pledges which they broke, more or less secretly, before the sun had
set. Their frail human nature was subjected to a strain greater than it
was made for; the fires of greed had been lighted in their hearts, and
fanned to a white heat that melted every principle and every law.

The “lease-hounds” were on their trail, besieging their homes, ringing
the telephone, following them in automobiles. But each new proposition,
instead of satisfaction, brought worry, suspicion and hate. Whoever
proposed it, must be trying to cheat the rest; whoever defended it, must
have entered into league with him. No one of them but knew the
possibilities of treasons and stratagems; even the mildest of
them—poor, inoffensive Mr. Dumpery, the carpenter, who, dragging his
steps home from the trolley, with fingers sore and back aching from the
driving of several thousand shingle-nails on a roof, was met by a man
driving a palatial limousine. “Step in, Mr. Dumpery,” said the man.
“This is a fine car, don’t you think? How would you like to have me get
out and leave you in it? I’ll be very glad to do that if you’ll persuade
your group to sign up with the Couch Syndicate.” “Oh, no,” said Mr.
Dumpery, “I couldn’t do that, I promised Miss Snypp I’d stick by the
Owens plan.” “Well, you can forget that,” said the other. “I’ve just had
a talk with Miss Snypp, and she is willing to take an automobile.”

They had got into a condition of perpetual hysteria, when suddenly hope
broke upon them, like the sun out of storm-clouds; Mr. and Mrs. Sivon
brought a proposition from a man named Skutt, who represented J. Arnold
Ross, and made them the best offer they had yet had—one thousand
dollars cash bonus for each lot, one-fourth royalty, and an agreement to
“spud in” the first well within thirty days, under penalty of another
thousand dollars per lot, this forfeit to be posted in the bank.

All of them knew about J. Arnold Ross; the local papers had had articles
telling how another “big operator” was entering the new field. The
papers printed his picture, and a sketch of his life—a typical
American, risen from the ranks, glorifying once more this great land of
opportunity. Mr. Sahm, the plasterer, and Mr. Dumpery, the carpenter,
and Mr. Hank, the miner, and Mr. Groarty, the night watchman, and Mr.
Raithel, the candy-store keeper, and Messrs. Lohlker and Lohlker,
ladies’ and gents’ tailors, felt a glow of the heart as they read these
stories. Their chance had come now, it was the land of opportunity for
them!

There was another agonizing wrangle, as a result of which the big and
medium lots decided to drop their differences; they voted against the
little lots, and drew up a lease on the basis of each lot receiving a
share of royalty proportioned to its area. They notified Mr. Skutt that
they were ready, and Mr. Skutt arranged for the great Mr. Ross to meet
them at a quarter to eight the following evening and sign the papers.
And now, here they were, exactly on the minute appointed—and they were
in another mess! Here were four of the “little lots,” set unexpectedly
above the “medium lots”; as a result of which, four “big lots” and four
“big little lots” were in favor of the lease, and four “little little
lots” and twelve “medium lots” were against it!

Here was Miss Snypp, her face brick-red with wrath, shaking her finger
at Mr. Hank. “Let me tell you, you’ll never get me to put my signature
on that paper—never in this world!” And here was Mr. Hank, shouting
back: “Let me tell you, the law will _make_ you sign it, if the majority
votes for it!” And here was Mrs. Groarty, forgetting all about the
Practical Handbook of Gentility, glaring at Mr. Hank and clenching her
hands as if she had him by the throat: “And you the feller that was
yellin’ for the rights of the little lots! You was for sharin’ and
sharin’ alike—you snake in the grass!” Such was the state to which they
had come, when suddenly every voice was stilled, clenched hands were
loosened, and angry looks died away. A knock upon the door, a sharp,
commanding knock; and to every person in the room came the identical
thought: J. Arnold Ross!

                                   V

Not many of these men would ever read a book on etiquette; they would
learn about life from action—and here was an occasion, the most
instructive that had so far come to them. They learned that when a great
man comes into a room, he comes first, preceding his subordinates. They
learned that he wears a majestic big overcoat, and stands in silence
until he is introduced by a subordinate. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said
the lease-agent, Skutt, “this is Mr. J. Arnold Ross.” Whereupon Mr. Ross
smiled agreeably, taking in the entire company: “Good evenin’, ladies
and gentlemen.” Half a dozen men arose, offering him a chair; he took a
large one, quite simply, and without wasting time in
discussion—realizing, no doubt, how he would be embarrassing the
hostess if he called attention to a shortage of chairs.

Behind him stood another man, also big. “Mr. Alston D. Prentice,” said
Skutt, and they were doubly impressed, this being a famous lawyer from
Angel City. Also there had entered a little boy, apparently a son of Mr.
Ross. The women in the room many of them had little boys of their own,
each one destined to grow up into a great oil man; therefore they
watched the Ross boy, and learned that such a boy stays close by his
father, and says nothing, but takes in everything with eager roving
eyes. As soon as possible he gets himself a perch in the window-sill,
where he sits listening, as attentively as if he were a man.

Mrs. Groarty had got all the chairs her neighbors could spare, and had
visited the “morticians” and rented a dozen camp-chairs; but still there
was a shortage, and the etiquette book did not tell you what to do. But
these rough and ready Western men had solved the problem, having sought
out the wood-shed, which was behind the garage, and fetched some empty
“lug-boxes,” such as you got when you bought peaches and apricots and
plums for canning. Set up on end, these made satisfactory seats, and the
company was soon settled.

“Well, folks,” said Mr. Skutt, genially. “Everything ready?”

“No,” said the acid voice of Mr. Hank. “We ain’t ready. We can’t agree.”

“What?” cried the “lease-hound.” “Why, you told me you had got
together!”

“I know. But we’re busted open again.”

“What is the matter?”

Half a dozen people started to tell what was the matter; The voice of
Mr. Sahm prevailed over the rest. “There’s some people come here with
too good lawyers, and they’ve raked up what they claim is laws that the
rest of us won’t stand for.”

“Well now,” said Mr. Skutt, politely, “Mr. Prentice here is a very good
lawyer, and perhaps he can help clear up the matter.”

So, more or less in chorus, they explained, and made known their
protests at the same time. Then Mr. Ross’ lawyer, speaking ex cathedra,
advised them that the statement of the law was absolutely correct, the
lease as it stood would be interpreted to mean the area to the middle of
the streets and alleys; but of course there was nothing to prevent their
making a different arrangement if they saw fit, and so specifying in the
lease.

And then the fat was in the fire; they began to argue their rights and
wrongs, and their animosities flamed so hotly that they forgot even the
presence of J. Arnold Ross, and of his eminent lawyer. “I said it once,
and I’ll say it again,” declared Miss Snypp—“Never! Never!”

“You’ll sign if we vote it!” cried Mr. Hank.

“You try it and see!”

“You mean you think you can break the agreement?”

“I mean I’ve got a lawyer that says he can break it any day I tell him.”

“Well, I’ll say this,” put in Mr. Dibble; “speaking as a lawyer—and I
think my colleagues, Mr. Prentice and Mr. Merriweather will back
me—that agreement is iron-clad.”

“Well, at least we can tie you up in the courts!” cried Mr. Sahm. “And
keep you there for a year or two!”

“A fat lot o’ good that’ll do you!” sneered Mr. Hank.

“Well, we’d as soon be robbed by one set of thieves as another,”
declared Miss Snypp.

“Now, now, folks!” put in Ben Skutt, hastily. “Surely we’re none of us
goin’ to cut off our noses to spite our faces. Don’t you think you
better let Mr. Ross tell you about his plans?”

“Sure, let’s hear Mr. Ross!” cried Mr. Golighty; and there was a
chorus—yes, by all means they would hear Mr. Ross. If anyone could save
them, it was he!

                                   VI

Mr. Ross arose, slowly and gravely. He had already taken off his big
overcoat, and folded it and laid it neatly on the rug beside his chair;
the housewives had made note of that, and would use it in future
domestic arguments. He faced them now, a portly person in a comfortable
serge suit, his features serious but kindly, and speaking to them in a
benevolent, almost fatherly voice. If you are troubled by the fact that
he differs from you in the use of language, bear in mind that it is not
the English but the southwestern American language that he is using. You
would need to play the oil-game out in that country, in order to realize
that a man may say, “I jist done it onst, and I’m a-goin’ to do it
again,” and yet be dressed like a metropolitan banker, and have the calm
assurance of a major-general commanding, and the kindly dignity of an
Episcopal bishop. Said Mr. J. Arnold Ross:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I traveled over jist about half our state to get
here this evenin’. I couldn’t get away sooner, because my new well was
a-comin’ in at Lobos River, and I had to see about it. That well is now
flowin’ four thousand barrel, and payin’ me an income of five thousand
dollars a day. I got two others drillin’, and I got sixteen producin’ at
Antelope. So, ladies and gentlemen, if I say I’m an oil man, you got to
agree.

“You got a great chanct here, ladies and gentlemen; but bear in mind,
you can lose it all if you ain’t careful. Out of all the fellers that
beg you for a chanct to drill your land, maybe one in twenty will be oil
men; the rest will be speculators, fellers tryin’ to get between you and
the oil men, to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you.
Even if you find one that has money, and means to drill, he’ll maybe
know nothin’ about drillin’, and have to hire out the job on
contract—and then you’re dependin’ on a contractor that’s tryin’ to
rush the job through, so as to get to another contract jist as quick as
he can.

“But, ladies and gentlemen, I do my own drillin’, and the fellers that
work for me are fellers I know. I make it my business to be there and
see to their work. I don’t lose my tools in the hole, and spend months
a-fishin’; I don’t botch the cementin’ off, and let water into the hole,
and ruin the whole lease. And let me tell you, I’m fixed right now like
no other man or company in this field. Because my Lobos River well has
jist come in, I got a string of tools all ready to put to work. I can
load a rig onto trucks, and have them here in a week. I’ve got business
connections, so I can get the lumber for the derrick—such things go by
friendship, in a rush like this. That’s why I can guarantee to start
drillin’, and put up the cash to back my word. I assure you whatever the
others promise to do, when it comes to the showdown, they won’t be
there.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not up to me to say how you’re a-goin’ to
divide the royalty. But let me say this; whatever you give up, so as to
get together, it’ll be small compared to what you may lose by delay, and
by fallin’ into the hands of gamblers and crooks. Ladies and gentlemen,
take it from me as an oil man, there ain’t a-goin’ to be many gushers
here at Prospect Hill; the pressure under the ground will soon let up,
and it’ll be them that get their wells down first that’ll get the oil. A
field plays out very quick; in two or three years you’ll see all these
here wells on the pump—yes, even this discovery well that’s got you all
crazy. So, take my word for it, and don’t break up this lease; take a
smaller share of royalty, if you must, and I’ll see that it’s a small
share of a big royalty, so you won’t lose in real money. That, ladies
and gentlemen, is what I had to say.”

The great man stood, as if waiting to see if anyone had anything to
answer; then he sat down, and there was a pause in the proceedings. His
had been weighty words, and no one quite had the courage to break the
spell.

At last Mr. Golighty arose. “Friends,” he said, “we have been hearing
common sense, from a gentleman in whom we all have confidence; and I for
one admit myself convinced, and hope that we may prove ourselves a group
of business people, capable of making a wise decision, in this matter
which means so much to all of us.” And so Mr. Golighty was started on
one of his long speeches, the purport of which appeared to be that the
majority should rule.

“But that’s just the trouble,” said Mr. Sahm; “what is the majority?”

“We take a wote,” said Mr. Chaim Lohlker, “and we find out.”

Mr. Merriweather, the lawyer, had been consulting in whispers with his
clients. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he now declared, “I am authorized by
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Black to say that they have been greatly impressed
by what Mr. Ross has said, and they wish to make any concession
necessary to harmony. They are willing to waive the point which I raised
at the beginning of this discussion, and to sign the lease as it
stands.”

“But what does that mean?” demanded Mrs. Groarty. “Are they to get a
royalty on a ninety-five foot lot?”

“Our offer is to sign the document as it stands, and the question of
interpretation may be decided later.”

“Oho!” said Mr. Groarty. “A fine concession that—and when we’ve just
heard Mr. Prentice tell us that the law reads your way!”

“We agreed to sign it,” said Mr. Hank, doing his best to make his voice
sound pleasant.

“Oh, listen to who’s talking!” cried Miss Snypp. “The gentleman that was
saying, less than a half an hour ago, that we should go back to our
original arrangement—‘the only sensible one, share and share alike, all
lots equal, same as we vote.’ Have I quoted you correct, Mr. Hank?”

“I agreed to sign this lease,” declared the ex-goldminer, stubbornly.

“And for my part,” said the trained nurse, “I said it once and I’ll say
it again, never on this earth!”

                                  VII

Old Mrs. Ross, Bunny’s grandmother, was accustomed to protest
strenuously against a boy being taken about on these business trips. It
was enough to destroy all the sweetness of his nature, she declared; it
would make him a hardened cynic in his childhood, all this sordidness
and hatefulness of money-grabbing. But Bunny’s father answered that that
was life, and there was no good fooling yourself; Bunny would have to
live in the world some day, and the quicker he learned about it the
better. So there the boy sat, on his perch in the window-sill, watching,
and recalling his grandmother’s words.

Yes, they were a mean bunch, sure enough; Dad was right when he said you
had to watch out every minute, because somebody would be trying to take
something away from you. These people had simply gone crazy, with the
sudden hope of getting a lot of money in a hurry. Bunny, who had always
had all the money he could use, looked down with magnificent scorn upon
their petty bickering. You couldn’t trust such people around the corner,
he decided; there was nothing they wouldn’t do to you. That fat old
woman in the yellow satin dress, with her fat red arms and her fat legs
cased in silk—it wouldn’t take much more to have her clawing somebody’s
face. And that hatchet-faced man with the voice like a buzz-saw—he
would be capable of sticking a knife into you on a dark night!

Dad wanted his son to understand every detail of these business
arrangements: the terms of the lease, the provisions of the law, the
size of the different lots, the amounts of money involved. He would talk
about it afterwards, and it would be a kind of examination, to see how
much the boy had really understood. So Bunny listened attentively, and
put this and that together, remembering the points of the lease as he
had heard his father going over them with Ben Skutt and Mr. Prentice
while they were driving out to the field in the latter’s car. But the
boy could not keep his mind from going off to the different
personalities involved, and their points of view, and the hints one got
of their lives. That old fellow with the stooped shoulders and the
gnarled hands—he was some kind of poor workingman, and you could see he
was unhappy over this arguing; he wanted somebody he could trust, and he
looked this way and that, but there was no such person in the crowd.
That young woman with the nose-glasses, she was a hard one—what did she
do when she wasn’t quarreling? That elderly couple that looked
rich—they were very much on their dignity, but they had come to get
their share, all the same, and they weren’t having any generous emotions
towards the “little lots”!

The old gentleman drew his chair over beside Dad and began a whispered
conversation. Bunny saw Dad shake his head, and the old gentleman drew
away. Dad spoke to Skutt, and the latter rose and said: “Mr. Ross wishes
me to make clear that he isn’t interested in any proposition for leasing
a portion of the block. He wouldn’t put down a well without room for
offset wells. If you people can’t agree, he’ll take another lease that
I’ve found him.”

This struck a chill to them, and stopped the wrangling. Dad saw it, and
nodded to his “lease-hound,” who went on: “Mr. Ross has an offer of a
lease on the north side, which has very good prospects, because we
believe the anticline runs that way. There are several acres which
belong to one party, so it will be easy to agree.”—Yes, that scared the
wits out of them; it was several minutes before they were quarreling
again!

Where Bunny sat in the window-sill, he could see the lights of the
“discovery well,” now shut off and awaiting the building of tanks; he
could hear through the open window the hammering of the riveters on the
tanks, and of carpenters building new derricks along the slope. His
attention was wandering, when suddenly he was startled by a whispered
voice, coming from the darkness, apparently right alongside him: “Hey,
kid!”

Bunny peered around the edge of the window, and saw a figure, flattened
against the side of the house. “Hey, kid,” said the whisper again.
“Listen to me, but don’t let nobody know you’re listenin’. They mustn’t
know I’m here.”

Bunny’s thought was, “A spy! Trying to find out about the lease!” So he
was on the alert; he listened to a steady, persistent whisper, intense
and moving:

“Hey, kid! I’m Paul Watkins, and the lady what lives here is my aunt. I
dassn’t let her know I’m here, see, cause she’ll make me go back home. I
live on a ranch up in the San Elido, and I run away from home ’cause I
can’t stand it, see. I got to get a job, but first I got to have
somethin’ to eat, ’cause I’m near starved. And my aunt would want me to
have it, ’cause we’re friends, see—only she’d want me to go back home,
and I can’t stand it. So I want to get somethin’ to eat out of the
kitchen, and when I earn some money, I’ll mail it to her, so I’ll just
be borrowin’, see. What I want you to do is to unlock the kitchen door.
I won’t take nothin’ but a piece of pie, and maybe a sandwich or
somethin’, see. All you got to do is, tell my aunt to let you go into
the kitchen and get a drink of water, and then turn the key in the door
and go back into the house. You come out the front door if you want to,
and come round and make sure it’s all like I tell you. Say kid, be a
good scout, ’cause I’m up against it, it’s sure tough not to have a meal
all day, and I been hitch-hikin’ and walkin’ a lot o’ the time, and I’m
done up. You come out and I’ll tell you about it, but don’t try to talk
to me here, ’cause they’ll see your lips movin’, see, and they’ll know
there’s somebody out here.”

Bunny thought quickly. It was a delicate ethical question—whether you
had a right to unlock somebody else’s back door, so that a possible
thief could get in! But of course it wasn’t really a thief, if it was
your aunt, and she would give it to you anyhow. But how could you know
if the story was true? Well, you could go out, like the fellow said, and
if he was a thief you could grab him. What decided Bunny was the voice,
which he liked; even before he laid eyes on Paul Watkins’ face, Bunny
felt the power in Paul Watkins’ character, he was attracted by something
deep and stirring and powerful.

Bunny slid off the window-sill, and walked over to Mrs. Groarty, who was
wiping the perspiration from her forehead after a vicious tirade.
“Please, ma’am,” he said, “would you be so good as to excuse me if I go
into the kitchen and get a drink of water?”

He thought that would cover the case, but he failed to allow for the
fact that Mrs. Groarty was preparing for a career of elegance, and
losing no chance of observing the ways of the wealthy, even to the
drinking of a glass of water. Her heart warmed to the son of J. Arnold
Ross, and all the vinegar went out of her voice. “Certainly, dear,” she
said, and rose and led the way to the kitchen.

Bunny looked about. “My, what a pretty room!” he exclaimed—which was
true enough, because it was all enameled white paint.

“Yes, it is nice, I’m glad you think so,” said the mistress of it, as
she took a glass from a shelf and set the faucet to running.

“A real big kitchen,” said Bunny; “that’s always a comfort.” He took the
glass of water with thanks, and drank part of it. So polite and natural!
thought Mrs. Groarty. Not a bit stuck-up!

And Bunny went to the back door. “I suppose you’ve got a big
screen-porch here. Kind of hot indoors, don’t you think?” He unlocked
the door, and opened it, and looked out. “The breeze feels good,” he
said. “And you can see all the wells from here. Won’t it be fun when
they get to drilling right on this block!”

What a friendly little fellow! Mrs. Groarty was thinking; and she said
yes, and it would be soon, she hoped. Bunny said that perhaps she’d
catch cold, with that lovely evening dress she had on; so he shut the
door again; and his hostess was so charmed by the agreeable manners of
the aristocracy that she failed to notice that he did not lock the door.
He put the empty glass on the drain-board of the sink, and said no
thanks, he didn’t wish any more, and followed Mrs. Groarty back to the
crowded living-room.

“What I say is this—” it was the voice of Mr. Sahm, the plasterer. “If
you really want to sign the lease as it was, sign it as we all
understood it; let’s figure the land we own, and not the street we don’t
own.”

“In other words,” said Mrs. Walter Black, sarcastically, “let’s change
the lease.”

“In other words,” said Miss Snypp, even more sarcastically, “let’s not
fall into the trap you big lots set for us.”

                                  VIII

It was to be expected that a thirteen-year old boy would grow weary of
such a wrangle; so no one paid the least attention when J. Arnold Ross,
junior, made his way to the front door and went out. He reached the back
door just as Paul Watkins was closing it softly behind him. “Thanks,
kid,” whispered the latter, and stole away to the wood-shed, with Bunny
close behind him. Paul’s first sentence was: “I got a piece of ham and
two slices of bread, and one piece of pie.” He already had his mouth
full.

“That’s all right, I guess,” said Bunny, judiciously. He waited, and for
a while there was no sound, save that of a hungry creature chewing. The
stranger was only a shadow with a voice; but outside, in the starlight,
Bunny had noted that the shadow was a head taller than himself, and
thin.

“Gee, it’s tough to be starvin’!” said the voice, at last. “Do you want
any of this?”

“Oh no, I had my supper,” said Bunny. “And I’m not supposed to eat at
night.”

The other went on chewing, and Bunny found it mysterious and romantic;
it might have been a hungry wolf there in the darkness! They sat on
boxes, and when the sounds of eating ceased, Bunny said: “What made you
run away from home?”

The other answered with another question, a puzzling one: “What church
do you belong to?”

“How do you mean?” countered Bunny.

“Don’t you know what it means to belong to a church?”

“Well, my grandmother takes me to a Baptist church sometimes, and my
mother takes me to a ’Piscopal one when I’m visiting her. But I don’t
know as I belong to any.”

“My Gosh!” said Paul. It was evident he was deeply impressed by this
statement. “You mean your father don’t make you belong to no church?”

“I don’t think Dad believes in things like that very much.”

“My Gosh! And you ain’t scared?”

“Scared of what?”

“Why, hell-fire and brimstone. Of losin’ your soul.”

“No, I never thought about it.”

“Say, kid, you dunno how queer that hits me. I just been makin’ up my
mind to go to hell, and not give a damn. Do you cuss?”

“Not very often.”

“Well, I cussed God.”

“How do you do that?”

“Why, I said, ‘Damn God!’ I said it half a dozen times, see, and I
thought sure the lightnin’ would come down and strike me. I said: I
don’t believe, and I ain’t a-goin’ to believe, and I don’t give a damn.”

“Well, but if you don’t believe, why should you be scared?” Bunny’s mind
was always logical like that.

“Well, I guess I didn’t know whether I believed or not. I don’t know
now. It didn’t seem like I could set my poor frail mind up against the
Rock of Ages. I didn’t know there was anybody had ever been that wicked
before. Pap says I’m the wickedest boy was ever born.”

“Pap is your father?”

“Yes.”

“What does he believe?”

“The Old Time Religion. It’s called the Four Square Gospel. It’s the
Apostolic Church, and they jump.”

“_Jump!_”

“The Holy Spirit comes down to you, see, and makes you jump. Sometimes
it makes you roll, and sometimes you talk in tongues.”

“What is that?”

“Why, you make noises, fast, like you was talkin’ in some foreign
language; and maybe it is—Pap says it’s the language of the archangels,
but I don’t know. I can’t understand it, and I hate it.”

“And your father does that?”

“Any time, day or night, he’s liable to. It’s his way of foilin’ the
tempter. If you say anything at meal-times, like there ain’t enough to
eat in the house, or you mention how the interest on the mortgage will
be due, and he hadn’t ought to give all the money for the missions, then
Pap will roll up his eyes, and begin to pray out loud and let go, as he
calls it; and then the Holy Spirit seizes him and he begins to jump and
shake all over, and he slides down out of his chair and rolls on the
floor, and begins to talk in tongues, like it says in the Bible. And
then Mom starts to cry, ’cause it scares her, she knows she’s got things
to do for the kids, but she dassn’t resist the Spirit, and Pap shouts,
Let go, let go—real loud, in the Voice of Sinai, as he says, and then
Mom’s shoulders begin to jerk, and her mouth pops down, and she begins
to roll in the chair, and shout for the Pentecostal Baptism. And that
turns the kids loose, they all begin to jump and to babble; and gee, it
scares you, somethin’ starts to grab you, and make you jerk whether you
want to or not. I rushed out of the house, and I shook my fist tip at
the sky and I yelled: ‘Damn God! Damn God!’ And then I waited for the
sky to fall in, and it didn’t, and I said, I don’t believe it, and I
ain’t a-goin’ to make myself believe it, not if I get sent to hell for
it.”

“Is that the reason you ran away?”

“That’s one of the reasons. You can’t get nowhere, livin’ like we do. We
got a big ranch, but it’s mostly rocks, and we’d have a hard time
anyhow; you plant things, and the rain fails, and nothin’ but weeds come
up. Why, if there’s a God, and he loves his poor human creatures, why
did he have to make so many weeds? That was when I first started to
cussin’—I was hoin’ weeds all day, and I just couldn’t help it, I found
myself sayin’, over and over: ‘Damn weeds! Damn weeds! Damn weeds!’ Pap
says it wasn’t God that made ’em, it was the devil; but then, God made
the devil, and God knew what the devil was goin’ to do, so ain’t God to
blame?”

“It seems like it to me,” said Bunny.

“Gee, kid, but you’re lucky! You never knew you had a soul at all! You
sure missed a lot of trouble!” There was a pause, and then Paul added:
“I had a hard time runnin’ away, and I ’spose I’ll go back in the
end—it’s tough to think of your brothers and sisters starvin’ to death,
and I don’t see what else can happen to ’em.”

“How many are there?”

“There’s four, besides me; and they’re all younger’n me.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen. The next is Eli, he’s fifteen; and the Holy Spirit has
blessed him—he has the shivers, and they last all day sometimes. He
sees the angels, comin’ down in clouds of glory; and he healed old Mrs.
Bugner, that had complications, by the layin’ on of his hands. Pap says
the Lord plans great blessings through him. Then there’s Ruth, she’s
thirteen, and she had visions too, but she’s beginnin’ to think like I
do; we have sensible talks—you know how it is, you can sometimes talk
to people that’s your own age, things you can’t ever say to grown-ups.”

“Yes, I know,” said Bunny. “They think you don’t understand anything.
They’ll talk right in front of you, and what do they think is the matter
with your brains? It makes me tired.”

“Ruth is what makes it hard for me to stay away,” continued the other.
“She said for me to go, but gee, what’ll they all do? They can’t do hard
work like I can. And don’t you think I’d run away from hard work; it’s
only that I want to get somewhere, else what’s the use of it? There
ain’t any chance for us. Pap hitches up the wagon and drives us all to
Paradise, where the Pentecostal Mission is, and there they all roll and
babble all day Sunday, most, and the Spirit commands them to pledge all
the money they’ve got to convert the heathen—you see, we’ve got
missions in England and France and Germany and them godless nations, and
Pap’ll promise more than he’s got, and then he’s got to give it, ’cause
it don’t belong to him no more, it’s the Holy Spirit’s, see. That’s why
I quit.”

There was silence for a space; then Paul asked: “What’s that big crowd
of folks in there for?”

“That’s the oil lease; didn’t you know about the oil?”

“Yes, we heard about the strike. We’re supposed to have oil on our
ranch—at least, my Uncle Eby used to say he’d come onto signs of it;
but he’s dead, and I never seen ’em, and I never expected no luck for
our family. But they say Aunt Allie here is a-goin’ to be rich.”

A sudden vision flashed over Bunny—of Mrs. Groarty, in her shiny robe
of yellow satin, and her large bare arms and bosom. “Tell me,” he said,
“does your aunt roll?”

“Gosh, no!” said the other. “She married a Romanist, and Pap calls her
the Whore of Babylon, and we’re not supposed to speak to her no more.
But she’s kind, and I knew she’d gimme some grub, so when I found I
couldn’t get a job, I come here.”

“Why couldn’t you get a job?”

“’Cause everybody lectures you and tells you to go back home.”

“But why do you tell them about it?”

“You have to. They ask where you live, and why ain’t you at home; and I
ain’t a-goin’ to lie.”

“But you can’t starve!”

“I can before I’ll go crooked. I had a fuss with Pap, and he says, if
you depart from the Holy Word, the devil gets you, and you lie and cheat
and steal and fornicate; and I says, ‘Well, sir, I’ll show you. I think
a fellow can be decent without no devil.’ I made up my mind, and I’m
a-goin’ to show him. I’ll pay back Aunt Allie, so I’m only borrowin’
this grub.”

Bunny held out his hand in the darkness. “You take this,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Some money.”

“No, sir, I don’t want no money, not till I earn it.”

“But listen, Paul, my Dad’s got a lot of money, and he gives me what I
ask him for. He’s come here to lease this block from your aunt, and he
won’t miss this little bit.”

“No, sir, I ain’t a-goin’ to turn into no bum; I didn’t run away for
that. You think ’cause I took some food out of my aunt’s pantry—”

“No, I don’t think that at all! And you can call this a loan, if you
want to.”

“You put up your money,” said the other, with a note of harshness in his
voice. “I ain’t a-goin’ to call no loans, and you done enough for me
already; so forget it.”

“Well, but Paul—”

“Do what I say, now!”

“But then, you’ll come to the hotel tomorrow and have lunch with me?”

“No, I can’t come to no hotel, I don’t look decent.”

“But that don’t matter, Paul.”

“Sure it matters! Your Dad’s a rich man, and he wouldn’t want no
ranch-boy at his hotel.”

“Dad wouldn’t care—honest, he wouldn’t! He says I don’t know enough
boys, I stay by myself and read too much.”

“Yes, but he don’t want no boys like me.”

“He says I’ve got to work, Paul—honest, you don’t know Dad. He’d like
to have you come; he’d like us to be friends.”

There was a pause, while Paul weighed this proposition, and Bunny
waited, as anxiously as if it were the sentence of a court. He liked
this boy! He had never met any boy he liked so much as this one! And did
the boy like him?

As it happened, the sentence of the court was never pronounced. Paul
suddenly started to his feet, crying, “What’s that?” Bunny also sprang
up. From the direction of Mrs. Groarty’s house had come a clamor of
voices, rising above the pounding of hammers and the sounds of labor in
the neighborhood. The yells grew louder, and yet louder, and the boys
dashed to the open window of the house.

Everybody in the room was on his or her feet, and all seemed to be
shouting at once. It was impossible to see many in the crowd, but two
men close by the window made a little drama all by themselves. They were
Mr. Sahm, the plasterer, owner of one of the “little little lots,” and
Mr. Hank, the ex-goldminer, owner of one of the “big little lots”; they
were shaking their fists at each other, and Mr. Sahm, the party of the
first part, was shouting at Mr. Hank, the party of the second part,
“You’re a dirty, lying, yellow skunk!” To which the party of the second
part answered, “Take that, you white-livered puppy!” and hit the party
of the first part, Biff! a crack on the nose. The party of the first
part countered with a nasty uppercut to the jaw of the party of the
second part, Bang! And so they went to it, Biff, bang! Bang, biff!—and
the two boys gazed through the open window, horrified, enraptured.
Whoopee! A scrap!

                                   IX

There was a general appearance as if everybody in the room were
fighting; but that could not have been the case, for there were several
left to separate Messrs. Sahm and Hank, and to shove them into opposite
corners. Before this process was entirely completed, Bunny heard a voice
calling his name from the front of the house. “All right, Dad!” he
answered, and ran to meet his father.

The three men of the Ross party were descending the front steps, and
proceeding down the walk. “Come on,” said the father; “we’re a-goin’
back to the hotel.”

“Gee, Dad! What happened?”

“They’re a bunch of boobs, and you can’t do anything with them. I
wouldn’t take their lease if they offered it as a gift. Let’s get out of
here.”

They were walking towards their car, which was parked a little way down
the road. Suddenly Bunny halted. “Oh, Dad,” he cried; “wait just a
minute! Please, Dad, there’s a boy I met, and I want to tell him
something. Wait for me, please!”

“Well, be quick,” said Dad. “I got another lease to see about tonight.”

Bunny raced back, as fast as his legs could move. A panic had seized
him. “Paul! Paul!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

There was no sound, and no sign of the other boy. Bunny ran to the
wood-shed, he ran all the way round the house, shouting, “Paul! Paul!”
He dashed into the screen-porch, and opened the back door, and peered
into the empty, white-enameled kitchen; he ran back to the wood-shed,
and then to the garage in front of it; he stood gazing across the dark
cabbage fields and calling at the top of his lungs: “Paul! Paul! Where
are you? Please don’t go away!” But there was no reply.

Then Bunny heard his father’s voice again, in a tone that was not to be
neglected; so he went, with sinking heart, and climbed into his place in
the automobile. All the way back to the hotel, while the men were
discussing the new lease they planned to make, Bunny sat in silence,
with tears stealing down his cheeks. Paul was gone! He might never see
Paul again! And oh, such a wonderful boy! Such a wise boy—he knew so
many things! A clear-sighted boy, and so interesting to talk to! And an
honest boy—he wouldn’t lie or steal! Bunny was ashamed, recollecting
several times in his life when he had told lies—nothing very serious,
but little things, that seemed so petty and mean, in the sudden clear
light of Paul’s uprightness.

And Paul wouldn’t take any of Dad’s money! Dad thought that everybody in
the world would be glad to get his money; but this boy had refused it!
He must have been angry with Bunny for pressing it upon him, else he
wouldn’t have run away like that! Or else, for whatever reason, he
didn’t like Bunny; and so Bunny would never see him again!




                              CHAPTER III
                              THE DRILLING


                                   I

Once more the valleys and gorges of Guadalupe Grade resounded to the
flying echoes of honking horns. This time it was not one car, but a
whole fleet of them, a dozen seven-ton trucks, broad and solid, with
broad and solid double wheels, and trailers on behind, that carried even
more tons. The first load towered high, a big stationary engine, held in
place by heavy timbers bolted fast at the sides; that truck went
carefully round the curves, you bet! Behind it came the “mud-hogs” and
the “draw-works”; and then the “string” of drilling tools, hollow tubes
of the best steel, that were screwed end to end and went down into the
earth, a mile or more, if need be. These tubes extended over the end of
the trailers, where red flags waved in warning; on the short curves they
swept the road, and if you met a car coming in the opposite direction,
you had to stop while the other car crept carefully by; if there was not
room enough, the other car would have to back up to a place where the
road was straighter. All this required continuous clamor of horns; you
would have thought some huge flock of prehistoric birds—did the
pterodactyls make noises?—had descended upon Guadalupe Pass, and were
hopping along, crying: “Honk! Honk! Honk!”

What they were really saying was: “Dad is waiting for us! Dad has signed
his lease, and the derrick is under way, and his ‘rig’ must be on time!
Clear the road!” Dad would not trust to railroads for a rush job like
this; they switched your stuff onto sidings, and you spent a week
telephoning and interviewing dumb officials. But when you hired
motor-trucks, you owned them for the time being, and they came right
through. There was insurance to cover all possible accidents—including
the value of any man you might chance to send rolling down a
mountain-side in a Ford car!

So here came the dozen valiant tooters, toiling slowly up the grade, at
far less than the ordained speed of fifteen miles per hour. Their
radiators were hissing with steam, and every mile or so they would have
to stop and cool off. But they got to the summit all right; and then
came the slow crawl downwards, a man going ahead with a red flag,
warning other cars into safe pockets on the road, to wait till the whole
fleet had got by. So they got out of the pass, and onto the straight
road, where they could go flying like any other cars; then it was a
mighty roaring and a jolly sight. “Honk! Honk! Get out of the way! Dad
is waiting!”

Perched on top of the drilling tools were young fellows in blue-jeans
and khaki, giving abundant evidence that their last well had not been a
dry hole, but had given its due yield of smeary treasures. However, they
had got their faces clean, and they met the sunny landscape with no less
sunny smiles. They sang songs, and exchanged jollifications with the
cars they passed, and threw kisses to the girls in the ranch-houses and
the filling-stations, the orange-juice parlors and the “good eats”
shacks. Two days the journey took them, and meantime they had not a care
in the world; they belonged to Old Man Ross, and it was his job to
worry. First of all things he saw that they got their pay-envelopes
every other Saturday night—and that the envelopes contained one dollar
per day more than anybody else nearby was getting; moreover, you got
this pay, not only while you were drilling, but while you were sitting
on top of a load of tools, flying through a paradise of orange-groves at
thirty miles an hour, singing songs about the girl who was waiting for
you in the town to which you were bound.

                                   II

Dad had signed up with the man on the North slope, Mr. Bankside, a
gentleman who knew what he wanted, and didn’t waste your time. It was
not so close to the discovery well, therefore Dad would have to pay only
a sixth royalty, and a bonus of five thousand dollars on the two and
one-half acres.

Dad and Bunny called at the offices of the Sunset Lumber Company, and
had a very special private interview with the president of this concern.
Mr. Ascott was a heavy gentleman with flushed cheeks and a manner of
strenuous cordiality; he rumpled Bunny’s hair, and swapped cigars in
gold-foil, and discussed the weather and the prospects of the new field,
so that you’d have thought he and Dad were life-long chums. Until at
last Dad got down to business, and said that he positively had to have
the lumber for a derrick delivered on the ground within three days;
whereupon Mr. Ascott threw up his hands and declared that such an order
could not be filled for God Almighty himself. The demand for derrick
material had simply emptied all the yards, and orders were piling up a
score a day. But Dad interrupted—he knew all that, but this was
something special, he had jist got himself into a contract with a big
forfeit posted at the bank, and he didn’t believe in steel derricks, but
the lumber men would sure have to help him, unless they wanted to lose
him for good. He wanted to place an order for half a dozen more
derricks, to be delivered in the course of the next three months; and
moreover, Mr. Ascott must understand that this well Dad proposed to
drill was going to extend the field, and lead to new developments, and a
big increase in the lumber business, so it was really a public service
Dad was performing, and they must all stand together and help him.
Moreover, Dad was forming a little syndicate to handle a part of this
first well—jist a quiet affair for a few people that knew a good thing
when they saw it, and would appreciate getting in on the ground floor;
and Mr. Ascott knew Dad for a man of his word, and no piker.

Mr. Ascott said that yes, he did; and Dad said that he had come to that
field to give most of his time to it, and he was a-goin’ to make a big
thing there, and he wanted to get a little organization together—they
would all stand by one another, and that was the way to make things go
in this world. Mr. Ascott said that of course, co-operation was the word
in modern business, he granted that; and he wrinkled up his forehead,
and studied some papers on his desk, and did some figuring on a pad, and
asked at just what hour Dad had to have that lumber. And Dad explained
that his cement-man had the cellar and the foundations half done, and
his boss-carpenter was a-gettin’ a crew together—in a matter like this
he wouldn’t trust no contractor. It would suffice if Mr. Ascott would
have the sills there by Thursday night.

Mr. Ascott said they were having a lot of trouble because the roads
about Prospect Hill were in such bad condition; and Dad said he knew
that, and something would have to be done about it quick, he was jist
a-goin’ to see the county superintendent of roads. So then Mr. Ascott
said all right, he would do his part; and Dad invited him to come down
and look the field over, and let Dad put him onto a few good things down
there; and they shook hands, and Bunny had his hair rumpled
again—something which in the course of business he had to pretend that
he didn’t mind.

So that was that. And as they got into their car and drove away, Dad
repeated his maxim that grease is cheaper than steel. Dad meant by that,
you must let people have a share of your profits, so they would become a
part of your “organization,” and do quickly whatever you said. And
meantime they had come to the office of the superintendent of roads,
where they had another very special private interview. This official,
Mr. Benzinger, a sharp little man with nose-glasses, was not dressed
like a man of money, and Bunny knew it by the difference in the tone Dad
took. There was no exchanging of gold-foil cigars, and no talk about the
weather; but Dad got right down to business. He had come to Beach City
to put through a job that would employ hundreds of men, and mean
millions of dollars to the community; the question was, would the road
authorities co-operate to make this possible.

Mr. Benzinger answered that of course, the authorities wanted to do
everything to that end—it was the purpose for which they were in
office; the trouble was that this “strike” at Prospect Hill had caught
them without any funds for rush work. Dad said that might be, but there
must be some way to handle such a situation, everybody’d ought to get
together.

Mr. Benzinger hesitated, and asked just what it was that Mr. Ross
wanted. So Dad explained that he was jist about to drill on such and
such a tract, and he drew a little map showing the streets that he
needed to have graded, and the holes filled up with crushed rock, so his
sills could be delivered on Thursday night. Mr. Benzinger said that
might be arranged, perhaps, and asked his secretary, the only other
person in the room, to step out and ask Mr. Jones to come in; Dad caught
the meaning of that, and as soon as the secretary was gone, he pulled a
little roll of bills out of his pocket, remarking that Mr. Benzinger
would have to work overtime on the matter, and be put to extra trouble
and expense, and it was only fair that Dad should make it up to him; he
hoped Mr. Benzinger would understand that they would have many dealings
in future, as Dad believed in taking care of his friends. Mr. Benzinger
put the bills quietly into his pocket, and said that he understood
fully, and the county authorities wished to give every help to men who
came in to build up the community and its industries; Dad might count
upon it that the work on those streets would start in the morning.

So then they shook hands, and Dad and Bunny went out, and Dad told Bunny
that he must never under any circumstances mention what he had seen in
that office, because every public official had enemies who were trying
to take his job away, and would try to represent it that Dad had paid
him a bribe. But of course it wasn’t anything of the sort; it was the
man’s business to keep the roads in repair, and what Dad gave him was
jist a little tip, by way of thanks, so to speak. You wouldn’t feel
decent not to give him something, because you were going to make a lot
of money yourself, and these here poor devils had to live on a beggar’s
salary. No doubt Mr. Benzinger had a wife and children at home, and they
were in debt; maybe the wife was sick, and they had no way to pay the
doctor. The man would have to stay late at his office, and go out
tonight and hustle up some men to do that job, and maybe get scolded by
his superiors for having acted without authority; the superiors were
doubtless in the pay of some of the big companies, which didn’t want
roads built except to leases of their own. There was all kinds of wires
like that being pulled, said Dad, and you had to be on the watch every
minute. Never imagine that you’d be allowed to come into a new place and
take out several million dollars worth of wealth from the ground, and
not have all kinds of fellers a-tryin’ to get it away from you!

That all sounded reasonable, and Bunny listened while Dad impressed his
favorite lesson: take care of your money! Some day an accident might
happen to Dad, and then Bunny would have the whole thing on his
shoulders; so he could not begin too early to realize that the people he
met would be trying, by devices more or less subtle, to get a hold of
his money. Bunny, not thinking of opposing his father’s arguments, but
merely getting things straight in his own mind, was moved to remark:
“But Dad, you remember that boy Paul? He certainly wasn’t trying to get
our money, for I offered him some, and he wouldn’t take it; he went away
without my seeing him again.”

“Yes, I know,” said Dad; “but he told you his whole family is crazy, and
he’s jist crazy a little different, that’s all.”

                                  III

This was a moral problem which Bunny debated within himself: was Paul
Watkins crazy, because of the way he behaved? If so, there must be a
crazy streak in Bunny also, for he had been enormously impressed by
Paul, and could not help thinking about him. He had paid a tribute to
Paul’s sense of honor, by resolving that he, Bunny, would permit himself
the luxury of not being a liar—not even in trivial things. Also, the
meeting with Paul had caused Bunny to become suddenly aware what an easy
time he was having in life. The very next morning, when he opened his
eyes, lying in the deep soft mattress of the hotel-bed, with its heavy
linen sheets so smooth and white, and its warm blankets, soft as fleece,
and striped the color of ripe strawberries—at once his thought was: how
had Paul slept that night, without shelter and without cover? Had he
lain on the ground? But grandmother, if she saw you even sitting on the
ground in the evening, would cry out that you would “catch your death!”
And down in the spacious dining-room of the hotel, the thought of Paul
without breakfast had quite ruined the taste of grape-fruit in crushed
ice, and cereal and thick cream, and bacon and eggs, and wheat-cakes
with maple syrup. Paul would be going hungry, because he was too proud
to eat food until he had earned it; and some strange perversity caused
Bunny, in the midst of comfort, to yearn toward this fierce anchorite
who spurned the flesh!

The morning after the meeting at Mrs. Groarty’s, Bunny had sat under a
palm-tree in front of the hotel, hoping that Paul would come by.
Instead, there had come Mrs. Groarty and her husband, bringing Mr.
Dumpery, and followed by Mr. and Mrs. Bromley, with their temporary
friends the Jewish tailors. It was a deputation from the “medium lots,”
explaining that they had continued their meeting until one o’clock that
morning, and had decided to rescind their community agreement, and go
each man for himself; now the “medium lots” wanted Dad to take their
lease. Bunny told them that Dad was out in the field with the geologist;
they might wait for him, but Bunny knew how emphatic Dad was about
offset wells, so there was no chance of his taking a small lease.

After which Bunny took a seat on the bench next to Mrs. Groarty, for the
purpose of finding out whether Paul had revealed himself to her. Bunny
confessed to her that he had done something very wrong the previous
evening; he had failed to lock the kitchen door after looking out on the
porch. Following his program of telling the exact truth, he stated that
somebody had gone into her kitchen and taken some food; Bunny had
promised not to tell who it was, but it was someone who was very hungry,
and Bunny had felt sorry about it. If Mrs. Groarty would let him—and he
hauled out his little purse.

Mrs. Groarty was all aglow with pleasure at the delicacy of feeling of
the aristocracy; she had quite fallen in love with this strange little
fellow, who was so pretty to look at, with sensitive red lips like a
girl’s, and at the same time had the manners of an elderly marquis, or
something like that, as Mrs. Groarty had come to know such persons in
moving pictures. She refused his money, at the same time thinking what a
shame her own fortune had not been made earlier in life, so that her
children could have worn such lovely clothes, and learned to express
themselves with old-fashioned elegance!

Two or three days later, while Bunny was poking about the “field,”
watching the interesting sights, he happened to pass the Groarty home,
and saw the future oil-queen feeding her rabbits. “Oh, little boy!” she
called; and when Bunny had come near, she said: “I had a letter from
Paul.”

“Where is he?” cried Bunny, in excitement.

“The letter was mailed in San Paulo. But he says not to look for him,
because he’s hitch-hiking, and he’ll be gone.”

“And how is he?”

“He says he’s all right and not to worry. The poor child, he sent me
two-bits in stamps, to pay for that food he took! He says he earned the
money—bless him!” Tears ran down the lady’s ample cheeks; and Bunny
learned the difficult lesson that human nature is a complicated thing,
so that the same fat lady can be at one moment a hyena of greed, and at
the next a mater dolorosa.

These two sat down on a rabbit-hutch, and had a good talk. Bunny told
Mrs. Groarty just how it had happened, and it was a relief to get it off
his conscience. Mrs. Groarty in turn told him about the Watkins family,
and how they had moved from Arkansas, traveling in the old fashion, by
wagon, when Mrs. Groarty was a girl; before that, she had been driven,
as a baby in arms, from the mountains of Tennessee. Their place at
Paradise, in the San Elido country, was a goat-ranch, with a spring in a
little rocky valley; there was only a couple of acres you could
cultivate, and for part of that you had to pump irrigating water by
hand. It was a desert country, and she didn’t see how they could
possibly get along without Paul’s work; she would send them a little of
her oil money, but she didn’t know whether Abel—that was her brother,
Paul’s father—would take anything from her, he was so crazy with his
religion.

Bunny asked whether he had always been a “roller”; and the other
answered no, it was a notion he had taken up, just a few years ago. As
for Mrs. Groarty, when she had married her present husband, three years
back, she had found her home in the one true faith which had never
changed through the ages; it was a comfortable faith, and let you alone,
and you weren’t always getting crazy new notions and splitting up into
sects. They had a lovely church in Beach City, and Father Patrick had
such a kind heart and a big, splendid voice—had Bunny ever been to a
Catholic service? Bunny said he hadn’t; and Mrs. Groarty might perhaps
have found a handsome and wealthy convert, had it not been that she was
just then being so sorely tempted by the powers of this world.

Yes—Satan had brought her there, and set her on a rabbit-hutch, and was
showing her all the kingdoms of the earth! Right across the street, at
number 5743 Los Robles Boulevard, the Couch Syndicate had set up a big
tent, plastered with red signs, and there were automobiles driving up
all day, with people to buy “units” at ten dollars each. Mrs. Groarty’s
group of “medium lots” had not yet leased, she explained; they had
several offers—the best from Sliper and Wilkins, and had Bunny ever
heard anything about these operators? And was Dad really quite decided
that the best oil prospects lay on the north side? Mrs. Groarty and her
husband were thinking of putting their bonus money, when they got it,
into some units of “Eureka Pete”—the Eureka Petroleum Company—which
was promising a quick drilling on the north slope. And Bunny found
himself suddenly recollecting Dad’s warning: “Look out for people who
mistake you for an oil well, and try to put you on the pump!”

                                   IV

Mr. Benzinger had sent two truck-loads of Mexicans and fixed up the
roads; and Mr. Ascott had kept his promise and delivered the lumber for
the derrick; and Dad’s boss-carpenter had got his gang, and they had cut
mortise-joints in the sills, and drilled holes through them, and set
them with bolts; then stage by stage the towering derrick had come into
being, 122 feet high, straight and true and solid. There was a ladder,
and a platform half-way up, and another place to stand at the top; it
was all nice and clean and new, and Dad would let you climb, and you
could see the view, clear over the houses and the trees, to the blue
waters of the Pacific—gee, it was great! And then came the fleet of
motor-trucks, thundering in just at sunset, dusty and travel-stained,
but full of “pep”—judging by the racket they made, tooting a greeting
to J. Arnold Ross and his son. The ditch by the roadside had been filled
with crushed rock, making a place where they could drive in to the
field; and there they stood, twelve of them lined up in a row.

There were bright electric lights on the derrick, and men waiting, the
sleeves of their khaki shirts rolled up. They went to it with a will;
for they were working under the eye of the “old man,” the master of the
pay-roll and of their destinies. They respected this “old man,” because
he knew his business, and nobody could fool him. Also they liked him,
because he combined a proper amount of kindliness with his sternness; he
was simple and unpretentious—when the work was crowded, you would have
him eating his beans and coffee on a stool in the “eats” joint alongside
you. He was a “real guy”; and with this he combined the glamour of a
million dollars. Yes, he had “the stuff,” barrels of it—and what is a
magician who pulls rabbits and yards of ribbon out of his sleeves,
compared with one who can pull out a couple of dozen oil-derricks, and
as many miles of steel casing, and tanks, and fleets of motor-trucks,
and roads for them to run on?

Also they liked the “kid,” because he put on no more airs than his Dad,
but was jolly, and interested in what you were doing, and asked sensible
questions and remembered your explanations. Yes, a kid like that would
learn the business and carry it on; the old man was teaching him right.
He knew all the crew by their first names, and took their joshing, and
had a suit of old clothing, duly smeared with grease, which he would put
on, and tackle any job where a half-sized pair of hands could get a
hold.

But there was no joshing now; this was a time for breaking records.
There was a big cement block for the engine, and a wooden block on top
of that, to take up the vibration; and now the truck with the engine on
was backed into place, and blocked firm, and the skids made solid, and
in a jiffy the engine was slid into place and ready for business. At the
same time another crew had got the big steam boiler ready. There was a
tank of fuel oil at hand, and the feed-pipe was hitched up, and she was
ready to make steam. And meantime the next truck was backed into place,
and the skids put under the “draw-works”; when Bunny came back the next
morning he found the big “drum” bolted into place, and the running
tackle up in the derrick, and they were unloading the “drill-stem.” They
would fit a steel chain about three of the heavy pipes at once, and a
pulley with a steel hook would come down and seize the chain; the engine
would start thumping, and the chain and the steel cable would draw
tight, and the pipe would slide off the truck. These pipes were twenty
feet long, and weighed nineteen pounds to the foot, and when you had
your well a mile deep, you could figure it for yourself, there was fifty
tons of steel, and your derrick had to carry that weight, and your steel
cables had to lift it, and your drum and engine had to stand the strain.
People kicked at the price of gasoline, but they never thought about the
price of drill-stem and casings!

All these things Bunny had heard a hundred times, but Dad never tired of
telling them. He was never entirely content unless the boy was by his
side, learning the business. You mustn’t fool yourself with the idea
that you could hire experts to attend to things; for how could you know
that a man was an expert, unless you knew as much as he did? Some day
your foreman might drop dead, or some other fellow would buy him away
from you, and then where would you be? Be your own expert, said Dad!

The machinery which did the turning was called a “rotary table”; it was
connected with the engine by a steel chain, exactly like the
sprocket-chain of a bicycle, except that the links were as big as your
fist. The rotary table had a hole through the centre, where the
drill-stem went through; there was a corresponding hole in the
derrick-floor—and soon there would be one in the ground! The hole in
the rotary-table was square, and the top drill-stem, known as your
“Kelly joint,” was square, and fitted this hole; you lowered it
through—but first you screwed in your “collar” and “bit,” the tool
which did the actual cutting. They were starting with a “disc-bit”—it
had two steel things like dinner-plates, set opposite each other, and as
they went round and round, the weight of the pipe caused them to chew
their way into the earth. You started with an eighteen-inch “bit,” and
as it flopped round, it cut you a hole two feet across.

Well, the time came when the last tool was on hand, and the last bolt
made tight, and the drilling tools ready for their long journey into the
bowels of the earth. This was a great moment, akin to the launching of a
ship, or the inauguration of the first president of a republic. Your
friends gathered, and the workers from nearby jobs, and a crowd of
sightseers. The crew had been hustling for three weeks, with this as
their goal, and now they stood, both the day shift and the night shift,
proud of their past, and eager for their future. The engineman had his
hand at the lever, and his eye on Dad; Dad gave him a nod, and he shoved
the lever, and the engine started, and the gears made a roaring racket,
and the bit hit the ground—“Spud! Spud!” At least that is what men
imagine they hear, and so they call the operation “spudding in.” “All
aboard for China!” sang the foreman; and everybody who had clean hands
shook hands with Dad—including Mr. Bankside, whose land they were
drilling, and Mrs. Bankside and the whole Bankside family. They carried
Dad and Bunny to their home, which was on the lease, and they opened a
bottle of champagne, and drank a wee sip to the health of the
Ross-Bankside Number 1, which was already a half-dozen feet down in the
ground.

                                   V

It was cool at the beach in summer, and back at Lobos River it was hot
as the original fires; so the family was going to move. Dad wasted very
little time on such a matter; he dropped in at a real estate agent’s,
and asked for the best furnished house in town, and drove out to an
imitation palace on the ocean-front, and looked it over, and went back
to the office and signed a six month’s lease for twenty-five hundred
dollars.

Outside, this house was plaster applied to chicken-wire, or something
that looked like it; inside, it was shiny like the home of Mrs. Groarty,
only it was imitation mahogany instead of imitation oak. There was a big
entrance hall, and a drawing-room on one side, and on the other a
dining-room, with elaborate up-to-date “built-in” features. To these the
owner had added furniture regardless of expense or period:
spindley-legged gilded French things, done in flowered silk; mid-century
American black walnut, with roses and rosettes; black Chinese teak-wood,
carved with dragons. There were statues of nude ladies, in highly
polished marble, and also a marble clergyman in a frock coat and a
string tie. Upstairs were six bed-rooms, each done in a different color
by a lady from the best department-store in town. Some people might have
found the place lacking in the elements of home, but Bunny never thought
of such a thing—he had learned to be happy in a hotel room, with the
use of the lobby. All his life that he could remember, home had been a
place which you rented, or bought with the idea of holding it as a real
estate speculation. As the Indians in the Hudson Bay country kill a
moose in the winter-time, and move to the moose, so Dad started an oil
well, and moved to the well.

First came Mr. Eaton, the tutor; he was used to getting a telephone
call, informing him where the carcase of the moose was to be found. He
would pack his two suit-cases and his steamer-trunk, and take the train
or the motor-bus to his pupil. He was a rather delicate young man, very
retiring, with pale blue eyes, and pockets that bagged because he put
books in them. He had been engaged with the express restriction that oil
was to come before culture; in other words, he was to teach his pupil at
such times as Dad was not doing it. Dad was not quite clear on the
subject of book knowledge; at times he would say it was all “bunk,” but
at other times he would pay it a tribute of embarrassment. Yes, he was a
“roughneck,” of course, and Bunny would have to know more than he; but
at the same time he was jealous of that knowledge, troubled by fear it
might be something he would disapprove of. He was right in this, for Mr.
Eaton told Bunny quite shamelessly that there were things in the world
more important than oil.

Then came the family limousine, with grandmother and Aunt Emma, driven
by Rudolph, who was a combination of chauffeur and gardener, and would
put on a frock coat and be a butler at parties. Beside him on the front
seat rode Sing, the Chinese cook, who was too precious to be trusted to
motor-bus or train. Nellie, the house-maid, could be more easily
replaced, so she brought herself. A truck brought the trunks and
miscellaneous belongings—Bunny’s bicycle and Aunt Emma’s hat-boxes, and
grandmother’s precious works of art.

Old Mrs. Ross was seventy-five years of age, and her life had been that
of a ranch-woman, in the days before automobiles and telephones and
machinery. She had slaved in poverty, and raised a family, and seen one
daughter die in child-birth, and a son of typhoid in the Spanish war,
and another son as a drunkard; now “Jim” was all she had left, and he
had made a fortune late in his life, and lifted her to leisure at the
end of hers. You might have been a long time guessing what use she would
make of it. Out of a clear sky she announced that she was going to be a
painter! For sixty years, it appeared, she had cherished that dream,
while washing dishes, and spanking babies, and drying apricots and
muscat grapes.

So now, wherever they lived, grandmother had a spare room for a
“studio.” A wandering artist had taught her the handling of crude and
glaring colors. This artist had painted desert sunsets, and the
mountains and rocky coasts of California; but old Mrs. Ross never
painted anything she had ever seen. What she was interested in was
gentility—parks, and lawns, and shady avenues with ladies in
hoop-skirts, and gentlemen with wide-bottomed trousers. Her masterpiece
was six feet by four, and always hung in the dining-room of the rented
home; it showed in the background an extremely elegant two-story house,
with two-storied porches having pillars on which you could see every
curlicue. In front ran a circular drive, with a fountain in the middle,
and water which was very plainly splashing. Around the drive rolled a
victoria—or maybe it was a landau or a barouche—with a lady and a
gentleman being driven by a Negro coachman. Behind the vehicle raced a
little dog, and playing on the lawn were a boy, and a girl in wide
skirts, having a hoop in her hand. Also there were iron deer on the
lawn—you never got tired of looking at this picture, because you could
always find something new in it; Dad would show it to visitors, and say:
“Ma painted that; ain’t she a wonder, for an old lady seventy-five?”
Agents who had come with leasing propositions, or lawyers with papers to
be gone over, or foremen coming for orders, would examine it carefully,
and never disagreed with Dad’s judgment.

Aunt Emma was the widow of the son who had died a drunkard; and to her
also prosperity had come late in life. Dad set no limits—the ladies
charged anything they wanted, and even drew checks on Dad’s account. So
Aunt Emma went to the fanciest shops and got herself raiment, and went
out to uphold the prestige of the Ross family in the town or city where
they were staying. There were ladies’ clubs, and Aunt Emma would attend
their functions, and listen to impressive personalities who rose and
said, “Madam Chairman,” and read papers on the Feminine Element in
Shakespeare’s Plays, and the Therapeutic Value of Optimism, and What
Shall We Do for Our Youth? Once every month the two ladies gave a
tea-party, and Dad always managed to be “spudding in” a new well, or
seeing to a difficult job of “cementing off” on that afternoon.

Aunt Emma particularly patronized the drug-store counters where they
sold cosmetics, and she knew by name the fashionable young ladies who
presided there; also she knew the names of the latest products they
handled, pronouncing these names in quite naive and shameless
American—“Roodge finn dee Theeayter” and “Pooder der Reeze ah lah
corbeel flurry”—which, it must be added, was the only way she could
have got the sales-ladies to know what she meant. Her dressing-table was
covered with rows of delicate little boxes and jars and bottles,
containing paints and powders and perfumes and beauty clays and enamels,
and she alone knew what else. One of Bunny’s earliest memories was of
Aunt Emma, perched on a chair, looking like an enlarged parokeet in a
harness. She was only half dressed, paying no attention to him, because
he was so little; so he observed how she was laced and strapped up in
armor—tight corsets and dress-shields and side-garters and tightly
laced little boots. She sat, erect and serious, putting things on her
cheeks and eye-brows, and dabbing herself with little puffs of pink and
white powder; and at the same time telling Bunny about her husband,
deceased many years ago. He had had many virtues, in spite of his one
tragic weakness; he had had a kind heart, so sweet and generous—“yes,
yes,” said Aunt Emma, “he was a good little man; I wonder where he is
now.” And then, dab, dab, she was patting the tears away from her cheeks
and making them pink again!

                                   VI

Far down in the ground, underneath the Ross-Bankside No. 1, a great
block of steel was turning round and round. The under surface of it had
blunt steel teeth, like a nutmeg-grater; on top of it rested a couple of
thousand feet of steel tubing, the “drill-stem,” a weight of twenty tons
pressing it down; so, as it turned, it ate into the solid rock, grinding
it to powder. It worked in the midst of a river of thin mud, which was
driven down through the center of the hollow tubing, and came up again
between the outside of the tubing and the earth. The river of mud served
three purposes: it kept the bit and the drill-stem from heating; it
carried away the ground-up rock; and as it came up on the outside of the
drill-stem, it was pressed against the walls of the hole, and made a
plaster to keep the walls rigid, so that they did not press in upon the
drill-stem. Up on the top of the ground was a “sump-hole,” of mud and
water, and a machine to keep up the mixture; there were “mud-hogs,”
snorting and puffing, which forced it down inside the stem under a
pressure of 250 pounds to the square inch. Drilling was always a dirty
business; you swam in pale grey mud until the well came in, and after
that you slid in oil.

Also it was an expensive business. To turn those twenty tons of steel
tubing, getting heavier every day as they got longer—that took real
power, you want to know. When the big steam engine started pulling on
the chain, and the steel gears started their racket, Bunny would stand
and listen, delighted. Some engine, that! Fifty horsepower, the
cathead-man would say; and you would imagine fifty horses harnessed to
an old-fashioned turn-table with a pole, such as our ancestors employed
to draw up water from a well, or to run a primitive threshing-machine.

Yes, it took money to drill an oil well out here in California; it
wasn’t like the little short holes in the East, where you pounded your
way down by lifting up your string of tools and letting them drop again.
No siree, here you had to be prepared to go six or seven thousand feet,
which meant from three hundred to three hundred and fifty joints of
pipe; also casing, for you could not leave this hole very long without
protection. There were strata of soft sand, with water running through,
and when you got past these you would have to let down a cylinder of
steel or wrought iron, like a great long stove pipe; joint after joint
you would slide down, carefully rivetting them together, making a
water-proof job; and when you had this casing all set in cement, you
would start drilling with a smaller bit, say fourteen inches, leaving
the upper casing resting firmly on a sort of shelf. So you would go,
smaller and smaller, until, when you got to the oil-sands, your hole
would have shrunk to five or six inches. If you were a careful man, like
Dad, you would run each string of casing all the way up to the
derrick-floor, so that in the upper part of the hole you would have four
sets of casing, one inside the other.

All day and all night the engine labored, and the great chain pulled,
and the rotary-table went round and round, and the bit ate into the
rock. You had to have two shifts of men, twelve hours each, and because
living quarters were scarce in this sudden rush, they kept the same bed
warm all the time. A crew had to be on the job every moment, to listen
and to watch. The engine must have plenty of water and gas and oil; the
pump must be working, and the mud-river circulating, and the
mixing-machine splashing, and the drill making depth at the proper rate.
There were innumerable things that might go wrong, and some of them cost
money, and some of them cost more money. Dad was liable to be waked up
at any hour of the night, and he would give orders over the telephone,
or perhaps he would slip into his clothes and drive out to the field.
And next morning, at breakfast, he would tell Bunny about it; that
fellow Dan Rossiger, the night-foreman, he sure was one balky mule; he
jist wouldn’t make any time, and when you kicked, he said, “All right,
if you want a ‘twist-off’.” And Dad had said, “‘Twist-off’ or no
‘twist-off,’ I want you to make time.” And so, sure enough, there was a
“twist-off,” right away! Dad vowed that Dan had done it on purpose;
there were fellows mean enough for that—and, of course, all they had to
do was to speed up the engine.

Anyhow, there was your “twist-off”; which meant that you had to lift out
every inch of your two thousand feet of pipe. You pulled it up, and
unscrewed it, four joints at a time—“breaking out,” the men called that
operation; each four joints, a “stand,” were stood up in the derrick,
and the weary work went on. You couldn’t tell where the break was, until
you got to it; then you screwed off the broken piece, and threw it away,
and went to your real job, “fishing” for the remainder of your
drill-stem, down in the hole. For this job you had a device called an
“overshot,” which you let down with a cable; it was big and heavy, and
went over the pipe, and caught on a joint when you pulled it
up—something like an ice-man’s tongs. But maybe you got it over, and
maybe you didn’t; you spent a lot of time jiggling it up and down—until
at last she caught fast, and up came the rest of your stem! Then you
unscrewed the broken piece, and put in a sound piece, and let it all
back into the hole, one stand at a time, until you were ready to start
again. But this time you went at the rate Dan Rossiger considered safe,
and you didn’t nag at him for any more “twist-offs!”

Meantime Dad would be spending the day at his little office down in the
business part of the town. There he had a stenographer and a bookkeeper,
and all the records of his various wells. There came people who wanted
to offer him new leases, and hustling young salesmen to show him a
wonderful new device in the way of an “under-reamer,” or to persuade him
that wrought casing lasts longer than cast steel, or to explain the
model of a new bit, that was making marvelous records in the Palomar
field. Dad would see them all, for they might “have something,” you
never could be sure. But woe to the young man who hadn’t got his figures
just right; for Dad had copies of the “logs” of every one of his wells,
and he would pull out the book, and show the embarrassed young man
exactly what he had done over at Lobos River with a Stubbs Fishtail
number seven.

Then the postman would come, bringing reports from all the wells; and
Dad would dictate letters and telegrams. Or perhaps the phone would
ring—long distance calling Mr. Ross; and Dad would come home to lunch
fuming—that fellow Impey over at Antelope had gone and broke his leg,
letting a pipe fall on him: that chap with the black moustache, you
remember? Bunny said, yes, he remembered; the one Dad had bawled out. “I
fired him,” said Dad; “and then I got sorry for his wife and children,
and took him back. I found that fellow down on his knees, with his head
stuck between the chain and the bull-wheel—and he knew we had no
bleeder-valve on that engine! Jist tryin’ to get out a piece of rope, he
said—and his fingers jammed up in there! What’s the use a-tryin’ to do
anything for people that ain’t got sense enough to take care of their
own fingers, to say nothing of their heads? By golly, I don’t see how
they ever live long enough to grow black moustaches on their faces!” So
Dad would fuss—his favorite theme, the shiftlessness of the
working-class whom he had to employ. Of course he had a purpose;
drilling is a dangerous business at best, and Bunny must know what he
was doing when he went poking about under a derrick.

There came a telegram from Lobos River; Number Two was stuck. First,
they had lost a set of tools, and then, while they were stringing up for
the fishing job, a “roughneck” had dropped a steel crowbar into the
hole! They were down four thousand feet, and “fishing” is costly sport
at that depth! Seemed like there was a jinx in that hole; they had
“jammed” three times, and they were six weeks behind their schedule. Dad
fretted, and he would call up the well every couple of hours all day,
but nothing doing; they tried this device and that, and Dad phoned them
to try something else, but in vain. The hole caved in on them, and they
had to clean out and fish ahead, run after run. They had caught the
tools and jarred them out, but the crowbar was still down there, wedged
fast.

The third evening Dad said he guessed he’d have to run over to Lobos
River; it was time to set a new casing anyhow, and he liked to oversee
those cement fellows. Bunny jumped up, crying, “Take me, Dad!” And Dad
said, “Sure thing!” Grandmother made her usual remark about Bunny’s
education going to pot; and Dad made his usual answer, that Bunny would
have all his life to learn about poetry and history—now he was going to
learn about oil, while he had his father to teach him. Aunt Emma tried
to get Mr. Eaton to say something in defense of poetry and history, but
the tutor kept a discreet silence—he knew who held the purse-strings in
that family! Bunny understood that Mr. Eaton didn’t mind about it; he
was preparing a thesis that was to get him a master’s degree, and he
used his spare time quite contentedly, counting the feminine endings in
certain of the pre-Elizabethan dramatists.

                                  VII

Well, they made the trip back to the old field; and Bunny remembered all
the adventures of the last ride, the place where they had had lunch, and
what the waitress had said, and the place where they had stopped for
gas, and what the man had said, and the place where they had run into
the “speed-cop.” It was like fishing—that is, for real fish, like you
catch in water, not in oil wells; you remember where you got the big
fish, and you expect another bite there. But the big fish always come at
a new place, said Dad, and it was the same with “speed-cops.” A cop
picked them up just outside Beach City, passing a speed-trap at
forty-seven miles; and Dad grinned and chaffed the cop, and said he was
glad he hadn’t been really going fast.

They got to Lobos River that evening; and there was the rig, fishing
away—screwing the stands of pipe together and working down into the
hole with some kind of grabbing device on the end, and then hauling up
and unscrewing—stand after stand, fifty or sixty of them, one after
another—until at last you got to the bottom one, only to find that you
had missed your “fish!”

Well, Dad said his say, in tones that nobody could help hearing. If he
couldn’t find men who would take care of their own bones, it was
doubtless too much to hope they would take care of his property. They
stood there, looking like a lot of school-boys getting a
birching—though of course the “roughneck” who was wholly to blame had
been turned loose on the road long ago.

There was a salesman from a supply house there with a patent device
which he guaranteed would bring up the obstacle the first run; so they
tried it, and left the device in the hole—it had held on too tight!
Evidently there was a pocket down there, and the crowbar had got wedged
crossways; so they’d have to try a small chunk of dynamite, said Dad.
Ever listen to an explosion four thousand feet under the ground? Well,
that was how they got the crowbar loose; and then they had a job of
cleaning out, and drilling some more, and setting a casing to cover the
damaged place in the hole.

Thus, day by day, Bunny got his oil lessons. He wandered about the field
with Dad and the geologist and the boss driller, while they laid out the
sites for future wells; and Dad took an envelope and pencil, and
explained to Bunny why you place your wells on the four corners of a
diamond, and not on the four corners of a square. You may try that out
for yourself, drawing a circle about each well, to indicate the
territory from which the oil is drained; you will see that the diamond
shape covers the ground with less overlapping. Wherever you overlap, you
are drilling two holes to get the same barrel of oil; and only a dub
would do that.

They drove back to Beach City, and found that Bertie had come home.
Bertie was Bunny’s sister, two years his senior, and she had been
visiting the terribly fashionable Woodbridge Rileys, up north. Bunny
tried to tell her about the fishing-job, and how things were going at
Lobos River, but she was most cruelly cutting—described him as a
“little oil gnome,” and said that his finger-nails were a “dead
give-away.” It appeared that Bertie had become ashamed of oil; and this
was something new, for of old she had been a good pal, interested in the
business, and arguing with Bunny and bossing him as any older sister
should. Bunny didn’t know what to make of it, but gradually he came to
understand that this was a part of the fashionable education Bertie was
getting at Miss Castle’s school.

Aunt Emma was to blame for this. She had granted Jim’s right to confine
Bunny’s training to the making of money, but Bertie at least should be a
young lady—meaning that she should learn how to spend the money which
Dad and Bunny were going to make. So Aunt Emma got the name of the most
expensive school for young female money-spenders, and from that time on
the family saw little of Bertie; after school she went to visit her new
rich friends. She couldn’t bring them to her home, there being no real
butler—Rudolph was a “farm-hand,” she declared. She had picked up some
wonderful new slang; if she didn’t like what you said, she would tell
you that you were “full of prunes”—this was away back in history, you
understand. She would give a pirouette and show off her fancy lingerie,
with violet-colored ribbons in it; she would laugh gleefully: “Aren’t I
a speedy young thing?”—and other phrases which caused grandmother to
stare and Dad to grin. She would be pained by her father’s grammar: “Oh,
Dad, _don’t_ say ‘jist’!” And Dad would grin again, and reply: “I been
a-sayin’ it jist fifty-nine years.” But all the same, he began a-sayin’
it less frequently; which is how civilization progresses.

Bertie condescended to drive out to the field, and see the new derricks
that were going up. They went for a walk, and whom should they meet but
Mrs. Groarty, getting out of her elderly Ford car in front of her home.
Bunny was naively glad to see her, and insisted upon introducing Bertie,
who displayed her iciest manner, and, as they went on, scolded Bunny
because of his horrid vulgar taste; he might pick up acquaintance with
every sort of riff-raff if he chose, but certainly he need not make his
sister shake hands with them! Bunny could not understand—he never did
succeed in understanding, all his life long, how people could fail to be
interested in other people.

He told Bertie about Paul, and what a wonderful fellow he was, but
Bertie said just what Dad had said, that Paul was “crazy.” More than
that, she became angry, she thought that Paul was a “horrid fellow,” she
was glad Bunny hadn’t been able to find him again. That was an attitude
which Bertie was to show to Paul all through Paul’s life; she showed it
at the very first instant, and poor Bunny was utterly bewildered. But in
truth, it was hardly reasonable to expect that Bertie, who was going to
school in order to learn to admire money—to find out by intuition
exactly how much money everybody had, and to rate them
accordingly—should be moved to admiration by a man who insisted that
you had no right to money unless you had earned it!

Bertie was following her nature, and Bunny followed his. The anger of
his sister had the effect of setting Paul upon a lonely eminence in
Bunny’s imagination; a strange, half-legendary figure, the only person
who had ever had a chance to get some of Dad’s money, and had refused
it! Every now and then Bunny would stop by and sit on a rabbit-hutch,
and ask Mrs. Groarty for news about her nephew. One time the stout lady
showed him a badly scrawled note from Ruth Watkins—Paul’s sister, whom
he loved—saying that the family had had no word; also that they were
having a hard time keeping alive, they were having to kill a goat now
and then—and Mrs. Groarty said that was literally eating up their
capital. Later on there was another letter from Ruth, saying that Paul
had written to her; he was up north, and still on the move, so no one
could get hold of him; he sent a five-dollar bill in a registered
letter, and specified that it was to go for food, and not for missions.
It wasn’t easy to save money when you were only getting a boy’s pay,
Paul said; and again Bunny was moved to secret awe. He went off and did
a strange secret thing—he took a five-dollar bill, and folded it
carefully in a sheet of paper, and sealed it up in a plain envelope, and
addressed it to “Miss Ruth Watkins, Paradise, California,” and dropped
it into a mail-box.

Mrs. Groarty was always glad to see Bunny, and Bunny, alas, knew
why—she wanted to use him for an oil well! He would politely pay her
with a certain amount of information. He asked Dad about Sliper and
Wilkins, and Dad said they were “four-flushers”; Bunny passed this
information on, but the “medium lots” went ahead and signed up with this
pair—and very soon wished they hadn’t. For Sliper and Wilkins proceeded
to sell the lease to a syndicate, and so there was a tent on the lot
next to the Groarty home, and free lunches being served to crowds of
people gathered up in the streets of Beach City by a “ballyhoo” man.
“Bonanza Syndicate No. 1,” it was called; and they hustled up a derrick,
and duly “spudded in,” and drilled a hundred feet or so; and Mrs.
Groarty was in heaven, and spent her thousand dollars of bonus money for
a hundred units of another syndicate, the “Co-operative No. 3.” The
crowds trampled her lawn, but she didn’t care—the company would move
her home when they drilled the second well, and she was going into a
neighborhood that was “much sweller”—so she told Bunny.

But then, on his next visit, he saw trouble in the stout lady’s
features. The drilling had stopped; the papers said the crew was
“fishing,” but the men said they were “fishing for their pay.” The
selling of “units” slowed down, the “ballyhoo” stopped, and then the
syndicate was sold to what was called a “holding company.” The drilling
was not resumed, however, and poor Mrs. Groarty tried pitifully to get
Bunny to find out from his father what was happening to them. But Dad
didn’t know, and nobody knew—until six months or so later, long after
Dad had brought in his Ross-Bankside No. 1 with triumphant success. Then
the newspapers appeared with scare headlines to the effect that the
grand jury was about to indict D. Buckett Kyber and his associates of
the Bonanza Syndicate for fraudulent sales of oil stock. Dad remarked to
Bunny that this was probably a “shake-down”; some of the officials, and
maybe some of the newspaper men, desired to be “seen” by Mr. Kyber.
Presumably they were “seen,” for nothing more was heard of the
prosecution. Meantime, the owners of the lease could not get anyone to
continue the drilling, for the block next to them had brought in a two
hundred barrel well, which was practically nothing; the newspapers now
said that the south slope looked decidedly “edgy.”

So Bunny, in the midst of his father’s glory, would pass down the street
and encounter poor Mr. Dumpery, coming home from the trolley with
dragging steps, after having driven some thousands of shingle-nails into
a roof; or Mr. Sahm, the plasterer, tending his little garden, with its
rows of corn and beans that were irrigated with a hose. Bunny would see
Mrs. Groarty, feeding her chickens and cleaning out her
rabbit-hutches—but never again did he see the fancy evening-gown of
yellow satin! He would go inside, and sit down and chat, in order not to
seem “stuck-up”; and there was the stairway that led to nowhere, and the
copy of “The Ladies’ Guide: A Practical Handbook of Gentility,” still
resting on the centre-table, its blue silk now finger-soiled, and its
gold letters tarnished. Bunny’s eyes took in these things, and he
realized what Dad meant when he compared the oil-game to heaven, where
many are called and few are chosen.

                                  VIII

Scattered here and there over the hill were derricks, and the drilling
crews were racing to be the first to tap the precious treasure. By day
you saw white puffs from the steam-engines, and by night you saw lights
gleaming on the derricks, and day and night you heard the sound of heavy
machinery turning, turning—“ump-um—ump-um—ump-um—ump-um.” The
newspapers reported the results, and a hundred thousand speculators and
would-be speculators read the reports, and got into their cars and rode
out to the field where the syndicates had their tents, or thronged the
board-rooms in town, where prices were chalked up on blackboards, and
“units” were sold to people who would not know an oil-derrick from a
“chute the chutes.”

Who do you think stood first in the newspaper reports? You would need to
make but one guess—Ross-Bankside No. 1. Dad was right there, day and
night, knowing the men who were working for him, watching them,
encouraging them, scolding them if need be—and so Dad had not had a
single accident, he had not lost a day or night. The well was down to
thirty-two hundred feet, and in the first stratum of oil-sand.

They were using an eight-inch bit, and for some time they had been
taking a core. Dad was strenuous about core-drilling; he insisted that
you must know every inch of the hole, and he would tell stories of men
who had drilled through paying oil-sands and never known it. So the
drill brought up a cylinder of rock, exactly like the core you would
take out of an apple; and Bunny learned to tell shale from sandstone,
and conglomerate from either. He learned to measure the tilt of the
strata, and what that told the geologist about the shape of things down
below, and the probable direction of the anticline. When there were
traces of oil, there had to be chemical analyses, and he learned to
interpret these reports. Every oil-pool in the world was different—each
one a riddle, with colossal prizes for the men who could guess it!

Dad guessed that he was right over the pool, and so he had ordered his
“tankage.” There was going to be a rush for this, as for everything
else, and Dad had the cash—and still more important, the reputation for
having the cash! He would get his “tankage” onto the lease, and if he
were disappointed in his hopes for oil—well, somebody else would get
it, and they would be glad to take the “tankage” off his hands. So there
came a stream of heavy trucks, and stacked up on the field were flat
sheets of steel, and curved sheets, all fitting exactly. You may be sure
the buyers of “units” did not fail to make note of that! They were
hanging round the derrick day and night, trying to pick up hints; they
followed the men to their homes, and tried to bribe them, or to get into
conversation with their wives. As for Bunny, he was about the most
popular boy in Beach City; it was wonderful how many kind gentlemen, and
even kind ladies there were, anxious to buy him ice-cream, or to feed
him out of boxes of candy! Dad forbade him to say a word to strangers,
or to have anything to do with them; and presently Dad banned
discussions at the family table—because Aunt Emma was chattering in the
ladies’ clubs, and the ladies were telling their husbands, besides
gambling “on their own!”

The core showed more signs, and Dad gave orders to build the foundations
of the tanks; then he ordered the tanks put up, and the clatter of
riveting machines was heard, and magically there rose three ten thousand
barrel tanks, newly-painted with flaming red lead. And then—hush!—they
were in the real oil-sands; Dad set a crew of Mexicans to digging him a
trench for a pipe-line; and the lease-hounds and the dealers in units
discovered that, and the town went wild. In the middle of the night Dad
was routed out of bed, and he called Bunny, and they jumped into their
old clothes and went racing out to the well, and there were the first
signs of the pressure, the mud was beginning to jump and bubble in the
hole! The drilling had stopped, and the men were hastily screwing on the
big “casing-head” that Dad had provided. He wasn’t satisfied even with
that—he set them to fastening heavy lugs to the head, and he hustled up
a couple of cement-men and built great blocks of cement over the lugs,
to hold her down in spite of any pressure. There wasn’t going to be a
blow-out on Ross-Bankside No. 1, you bet; whatever oil came through that
hole was going into the tanks, and from there into Dad’s bank account!

It was time for the “cementing off,” to make the well water-proof, and
protect the precious oil-sands. Down there under the ground was a pool
of oil, caught under a layer of impermeable rock, exactly like an
inverted wash-basin. The oil was full of gas, which made the pressure.
Now you had drilled a hole through the wash-basin, and the oil and gas
would come to you—but only on condition that you did not let any
surface water down to kill the pressure. All the way down you had been
tapping underground streams and pools of water; and now you had to set a
big block of cement at the bottom of the hole, solid and tight, filling
every crevice, both inside and outside your casing. Having got this
tight, you would drill a hole through it, and on down into the
oil-sands, thus making a channel through which the oil could flow up,
and no water could leak down. This was the critical part of your
operation, and while it was going on the whole crew was keyed up, and
the owner and his son, needless to say.

First you put down your casing, known as the “water-string.” If you were
a careful man, like Dad, you ran this “string” all the way up to your
derrick-floor. Next you began pumping down clean water; for many hours
you pumped, until you had washed the dirt and oil out of the hole; and
then you were ready for the cement-men. They came with a truck, a
complete outfit on wheels, ready to travel to any well. Another truck
brought the sacks of cement, a couple of hundred of them; the job called
for pure cement, no sand. They got everything ready before they started,
and then they worked like so many fiends—for this whole job had to be
put through in less than an hour, before the cement began to set.

It was an ingenious scheme they had, very fascinating to watch. They
fitted inside the casing a cast-iron “packer,” having rubber discs at
the top and bottom, so that it floated on the water in the casing; the
cement went on top of this. The sacks were jerked open, and dumped into
the hopper of the mixing machine, and the mixer began to revolve, and
the river of grey liquid to pour into the hole. It ran fast, and the
heavy pumps set to work, and drove it down, stroke after stroke. In half
an hour they had filled several hundred feet of the casing with cement;
after which they put on a rubber “packer,” fitting tight to the casing;
and again the heavy pumps went to work, and drove the mass of cement,
between the two “packers,” down into the hole. When they came to the
bottom, the bottom packer would drop, and the cement would pour in, and
the pressure of the top packer would force it into every cranny of the
hole, and up between the outside of the casing and the earth—one or two
hundred feet high it would rise, and when it set, there you would have
your “water shut-off.”

What could be more fun to watch than a job like this? To know what was
going on under the ground; to see the ingenuity by which men overcame
Nature’s obstacles; to see a crew of workers, rushing here and there,
busy as beavers or ants, yet at the same time serene and sure, knowing
their job, and just how it was going!

The job was done; and then you had to wait ten days for your cement to
get thoroughly set. The state inspector came and made his tests, to be
sure you had got a complete “shut-off”; if you hadn’t, he would make you
do it over again—some poor devils had to do it twenty or thirty times!
But nothing like that happened to Dad; he knew about “cementing
off”—and also about inspectors, he added with a grin. Anyhow, he got
his permit; and now Ross-Bankside No. 1 was drilling into the real
oil-sands, going down with a six-inch hole. Every few hours they would
test for pressure, to be sure they had enough, but not too much. You
were right on the verge of triumph now, and your pulse went fast and you
walked on tiptoe with excitement. It was like waiting for Christmas
morning, to open your stocking, and see what Santa Claus had brought!
There were crowds staring at the well all day, and you put up rude signs
to make them keep their noses out.

Dad said they were deep enough now, and they proceeded to set the last
casing—it was known as the “liner,” and had holes like a sieve, through
which the treasure would flow. They were working late into the night,
and both Dad and Bunny had old clothes on, and were bathed in oil and
mud. At last they had the “liner” all ready, and the tools out, and they
started to “wash” the well, pumping in fresh water and cleaning out the
mud and sand. That would go on for five or six hours, and meantime Dad
and Bunny would get their sleep.

When they came back, it was time to “bail.” You understand, the pressure
of the gas and oil was held down by the column of water, two thirds of a
mile deep. Now they had what they called a “double-section bailer,”
which was simply a bucket fifty feet long. They would let that down, and
lift out fifty feet of the water-column, and dump it into the sump-hole.
Then they would go down for another fifty; and presently they would find
they didn’t have to go down so far, the pressure was shoving the column
of water up in the hole. Then you knew you were getting near to the end;
one or two more trips of the bailer, and the water would be shot out of
the hole, and mud and water and oil would spout up over the top of the
derrick, staining it a lovely dripping black. You must drive the crowds
off the lease now, and shout “Lights out!” to the fools with cigarettes.

There she came! There was a cheer from all hands, and the spectators
went flying to avoid the oily spray blown by the wind. They let her
shoot for a while, until the water had been ejected; higher and higher,
way up over the derrick—she made a lovely noise, hissing and splashing,
bouncing up and down!

It was just at sundown, and the sky was crimson. “Lights out!” Dad kept
calling—nobody must even start a motor-car while she was spouting.
Presently they shut her off, to try the valve of the casing-head; they
worked on, late into the night, letting her spout, and then shutting her
off again; it was mysteriously thrilling in the darkness. At last they
were ready to “bring her in”—which meant they would screw up the
“flow-line” between the casing-head and the tank, and let the oil run
into the latter. Just as simple as that—no show, no fuss, you just let
her flow; the gauge showed her coming at the rate of thirty thousand
gallons every hour, which meant that the first tank was full by noon the
next day.

Yes, that was all; but the news affected Beach City as if an angel had
appeared in a shining cloud and scattered twenty-dollar gold pieces over
the streets. You see, Ross-Bankside No. 1 “proved up” the whole north
slope; to tens of thousands of investors, big and little, it meant that
a hope was turned into glorious certainty. You couldn’t keep such news
quiet, it just didn’t lie in the possibility of human nature not to
tell; the newspapers bulletined the details—Ross-Bankside was flowing
sixteen thousand barrels a day, and the gravity was 32, and as soon as
the pipe-line was completed—which would be by the end of the week—its
owner would be in possession of an income of something over twenty
thousand dollars every twenty-four hours. Would you need to be told that
the crowds stared at Dad and at Bunny, everywhere they went about the
streets of the city? There goes the great J. Arnold Ross, owner of the
new well! And that little chap is his son! Say, he’s got thirteen
dollars coming to him every minute of the day or night, whether he’s
awake or asleep. By God, a fellow would feel he could afford to order
his lunch, if he was to have an income like that!

Bunny couldn’t help but get a sense of importance, and think that he was
something special and wonderful. Little thrills ran over him; he felt as
if he could run up into the air and fly. And then Dad would say: “Take
it easy, son! Keep your mouth shut, and don’t go a-gettin’ your head
swelled. Remember, you didn’t make this here money, and you can lose it
in no time, if you’re a lightweight.” Dad was a sensible fellow, you
see; he had been through all this before, first at Antelope, and then at
Lobos River. He had felt the temptation of grandeur, and knew what it
must be to a boy. It was pleasant to have a lot of money; but you must
set up a skeleton at the feast, and while you quaffed the wine of
success, you must hear a voice behind you whispering, “Memento mori!”




                               CHAPTER IV
                               THE RANCH


                                   I

Soon after this it was time for Bunny to visit his mother.

Bunny’s mother did not bear Dad’s name, as other boys’ mothers do; she
was called Mrs. Lang, and lived in a bungalow on the outskirts of Angel
City. There was an arrangement whereby she had a right to have Bunny
with her one week in every six months; Bunny always knew when this time
was approaching, and looked forward to it with mixed emotions. His
mother was sweet, and gave him the petting which he missed at other
times; “pretty little Mamma,” was her name for herself. But in other
ways the visit was embarrassing, because there were matters supposed to
be kept hidden from Bunny, but which he could not help guessing. Mamma
would question him about Dad’s affairs, and Bunny knew that Dad did not
wish his affairs talked about. Then too, Mamma complained that she never
had enough money; Dad allowed her only two hundred dollars a month, and
how could a young and charming grass-widow exist on such a sum? Her
garage bill was always unpaid, and she would tell Bunny about it, and
expect him to tell Dad—but Dad would evade hearing. And next time,
Mamma would cry, and say that Jim was a tyrant and a miser. The
situation was especially difficult just now, because Mamma had read
about the new well in the papers, and knew just how much money Dad had;
she unfolded to Bunny a plan, that he should try to persuade Dad to
increase her allowance, but without having Dad suspect that she had
suggested it. And this, right after Bunny had renounced the luxury of
small lies!

Also there was the mystery about Mamma’s friends. There were always
gentlemen friends who came to see her while Bunny was there, and who
might or might not be agreeable to Bunny. When he came home, Aunt Emma
would ask him questions, from which it was evident that she wanted to
know about these gentlemen friends, but didn’t want Bunny to know that
she wanted to know. Bunny noticed that Dad never referred to such
matters; he never asked any questions about Mamma, and Aunt Emma always
did her asking out of Dad’s presence.

All this had a peculiar effect upon Bunny. Just as Dad kept a safe
deposit box at the bank, into which nobody ever looked but himself, so
Bunny kept a secret place in his own mind. Outwardly, he was a cheerful
and frank little fellow, if somewhat too mature for his years; but all
the time he was leading a dual life—picking up ideas here and there,
and carrying them off and hiding them, as a squirrel does nuts, so that
he may come back at a later season and crack them open and nibble them.
Some nuts were good and some were bad, and Bunny learned to judge them,
and to throw away the bad ones.

One thing was plain: there was something which men and women did, which
they were all in a conspiracy to keep you from knowing that they did. It
was a dark corner of life, mysterious and rather hateful. In the
beginning, Bunny was loyal to his father, not trying to find out what
his father didn’t want him to know. But this could not continue
indefinitely, for the mind automatically seeks understanding. It was not
merely that the birds and the chickens and the dogs in the street gave
you hints; it was not merely that every street-boy knew, and was eager
to explain; it was that the stupid grown-ups themselves persisted in
saying things which you couldn’t help getting. It was Aunt Emma’s fixed
conviction that every lady was after Dad; “setting her cap at him,” or
“making sheep’s eyes at him”—she had many such phrases. And Dad always
showed a queer embarrassment whenever he had been the least bit polite
to any lady; he seemed to be concerned lest Bunny should share Aunt
Emma’s suspicions. But the truth was, Bunny was irritated by his aunt,
and learned to evade her questions, and not tell what Dad had said to
the nice lady in the hotel at Lobos River, and whether or not the lady
had had dinner with them. These worldly arts Bunny acquired, but all the
time he was in secret revolt. Why couldn’t people talk plainly? Why did
they have to be pretending, and whispering, and making you
uncomfortable?

                                   II

Within a week after bringing in Ross-Bankside No. 1, Dad had a new
derrick under way on the lease, and in another week he had it rigged up,
and the old string of tools was on its way into the earth again. Also he
had two new derricks under way, and two new strings in process of
delivery. There would be four wells, standing on the four corners of a
diamond-shaped figure, three hundred feet on the side. It was necessary
to call house-movers, and take the Bankside homestead to another lot;
but that didn’t trouble Mr. Bankside, who had already moved himself to
an ocean-front palace near Dad, and bought himself a whole outfit of
furniture, and a big new limousine, also a “sport-car,” in which to
drive himself to the country club to play golf every afternoon. The
Bankside family was accustoming itself to the presence of a butler, and
Mrs. Bankside had been proposed at the most exclusive of the ladies’
clubs. Efficiency was the watch-word out here in the West, and when you
decided to change your social status, you put the job right through.

Dad and Bunny made another trip to Lobos River, and not without some
difficulty they conquered the “jinx” in Number Two, and brought in a
very good well. There were to be two more derricks here, and more tools
to be bought and delivered. That was the way in the oil business, as
fast as you got any money, you put it back into new drilling—and, of
course, new responsibilities. You were driven to this by the forces
inherent in the game. You were racing with other people, who were always
threatening to get your oil. As soon as you had one well, you had to
have “offset wells” to protect it from the people on every side who
would otherwise get your oil. Also, you might have trouble in marketing
your oil, and would begin to think, how nice to have your own refinery,
and be entirely independent. But independence had its price, for then
you would have to provide enough oil to keep the refinery going, and you
would want a chain of filling-stations to get rid of your products. It
was a hard game for the little fellow; and no matter how big you got,
there was always somebody bigger!

But Dad had no kick just now; everything was a-comin’ his way
a-whoopin’. Right in the midst of his other triumphs it had occurred to
him to take one of his old Antelope wells and go a little lower, and see
what he found; he tried it—and lo and behold, at eight hundred feet
farther down the darn thing went and blew its head off. They were in a
new layer of oil-sands; and every one of these sixteen old wells, that
had been on the pump for a couple of years, and were about played out,
were ready to present Dad with a new fortune, at a cost of only a few
thousand dollars each!

But right away came a new problem; there was no pipe-line to this field,
and there ought to be one. Dad wanted some of the other operators to go
in with him, and he was going up there and make a deal. Then Bunny came
to him, looking very serious. “Dad, have you forgotten, it’s close to
the fifteenth of November.”

“What about it, son?”

“You promised we were going quail-shooting this year.”

“By gosh, that’s so! But I’m frightfully rushed jist now, son.”

“You’re working too hard, Dad; Aunt Emma says you’re putting a strain on
your kidneys, the doctor has told you so.”

“Does he recommend a quail diet?”

Bunny knew by Dad’s grin that he was going to make some concession.
“Let’s take our camping things,” the boy pleaded, “and when you get
through at Antelope, let’s come home by the San Elido valley.”

“The San Elido! But son, that’s fifty miles out of our way!”

“They say there’s no end of quail there, Dad.”

“Yes, but we can get quail a lot nearer home.”

“I know, Dad; but I’ve never been there, and I want to see it.”

“But what made you hit on that place?”

Bunny was embarrassed, because he knew Dad was going to think he was
“queer.” Nevertheless, he persisted. “That’s where the Watkins family
live.”

“Watkins family—who are they?”

“Don’t you remember that boy, Paul, that I met one night when you were
talking about the lease?”

“Gosh, son! You still a-frettin’ about that boy?”

“I met Mrs. Groarty on the street yesterday, and she told me about the
family; they’re in dreadful trouble, they’re going to lose their ranch
to the bank because they can’t meet the interest on the mortgage, and
Mrs. Groarty says she can’t think what they’ll do. You know Mrs. Groarty
didn’t get any money herself—at least, she spent her bonus money for
units, and she isn’t getting anything out of them, and has to live on
what her husband gets as a night watchman.”

“What you want to do about it?”

“I want you to buy that mortgage, Dad; or anything, so the Watkinses can
stay in their home. It’s wicked that people should be turned out like
that, when they’re doing the best they can.”

“There’s plenty o’ people bein’ turned out when they don’t meet their
obligations, son.”

“But when it’s not their fault, Dad?”

“It would take a lot of bookkeeping to figger jist whose fault it is;
and the banks don’t keep books that way.” Then seeing the protest in
Bunny’s face, “You’ll find, son there’s a lot o’ harsh things in the
world, that ain’t in your power to change. You’ll jist have to make up
your mind to that, sooner or later.”

“But Dad, there’s four children there, and three of them are girls, and
where are they to go? Paul is away, and they haven’t any way to let him
know what’s happened. Mrs. Groarty showed me a picture of them, Dad;
they’re good, kind people, you can see they’ve never done anything but
work hard. Honest, Dad, I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t help them. You
said you’d buy me a car some day, and I’d rather you took the money and
bought that mortgage. It’s less than a couple of thousand dollars, and
that’s nothing to you.”

“I know, son; but then you’ll get them on your hands—”

“No, they’re not like that, they’re proud; Mrs. Groarty says they
wouldn’t take money from you, any more than Paul would. But if you
bought the mortgage from the bank, they couldn’t help that. Or you might
buy the ranch, Dad, and rent it back to them. Paul says there’s oil on
that ranch—at least his Uncle Eby had seen it on top of the ground.”

“There’s thousands of ranches jist like that in California, son. Oil on
top of the ground don’t mean anything special.”

“Well, Dad, you’ve always said you wanted to try some wild-catting; and
you know, that’s the only way you’ll ever get what you talk about—a
whole big tract that belongs to you, with no royalties to pay, and
nobody to butt in. So let’s take a chance on Paradise, and drive through
there and camp out a few days and get some quail, and we’ll see what we
think of it, and we’ll help those poor people, and give your kidneys a
rest at the same time.”

So Dad said all right; and he went away thinking to himself: “Gosh!
Funny kid!”

                                  III

The San Elido valley lay on the edge of the desert, and you crossed a
corner of the desert to get to it; a bare wilderness of sun-baked sand
and rock, with nothing but grey, dusty desert plants. You sped along
upon a fine paved road, but the land was haunted by the souls of
old-time pioneers who had crossed it in covered wagons or with
pack-mules, and had left their bones beside many a trail. Even now, you
had to be careful when you went off into side-trails across these
wastes; every now and then a car would get stuck with an empty radiator,
and the people would be lucky to get out alive.

You could get water if you sunk a deep well; and so there were fruit
ranches and fields of alfalfa here and there. There came long stretches
where the ground was white, like salt; that was alkali, Dad said, and it
made this country a regular boob-trap. The stranger from the East would
come in and inspect a nice fruit ranch, and would think he was making a
good bargain to get the land next door for a hundred dollars an acre; he
would set out his fruit-trees and patiently water them, and they
wouldn’t grow; nothing would grow but a little alfalfa, and maybe there
was too much alkali for that. The would-be rancher would have to pull up
the trees, and obliterate the traces of them, and set a real-estater to
hunting for another boob.

Strapped to the running-board of Dad’s car, on the right hand side where
Bunny sat, was a big bundle wrapped in a water-proof cover; they were
camping out—which meant that the mind of a boy was back amid racial
memories, the perils and excitements of ten thousand years ago. Tightly
clutched in Bunny’s two hands were a couple of repeating shot-guns; he
held these for hours, partly because he liked the feel of them, and
partly because they had to be carried in the open—if you shut them up
in the compartment they would be “concealed weapons,” and that was
against the law.

Near the head of the valley a dirt road went off, and a sign said:
“Paradise, eight miles.” They wound up a little pass, with mountains
that seemed to be tumbled heaps of rock, of every size and color. There
were fruit ranches, the trees now bare of leaves, with trunks calcimined
white, and young trees with wire netting about them, to keep away the
rabbits. The first rains of the season had fallen, and new grass was
showing—the California spring, which begins in the fall.

The pass broadened out; there were ranch-houses scattered here and
there, and the village of Paradise—one street, with a few scattered
stores, sheltered under eucalyptus trees that made long shadows in the
late afternoon light. Dad drew up at the filling station, which was also
a feed-store. “Can you tell me where is the Watkins ranch?”

“There’s two Watkinses,” said the man. “There’s old Abel Watkins—”

“That’s the one!” exclaimed Bunny.

“He’s got a goat-ranch, over by the slide. It ain’t so easy to find. Was
you plannin’ to get there tonight?”

“We shan’t worry if we get lost,” said Dad; “we got a campin’ outfit.”

So the man gave them complicated directions. You took the lane back of
the school-house, and you made several jogs, and then there were about
sixteen forks, and you must get the right one, and you followed the
slide that took the water down to Roseville, and it was the fourth
arroyo after you had passed old man Tucker’s sheep-ranch, with the
little house up under the pepper trees. And so they started and followed
a winding road that had apparently been laid out by sheep, and the sun
set behind the dark hills, and the clouds turned pink, and they dodged
rocks that were too high for the clearance of the car and crawled down
into little gullies, and up again with a constant shifting of gears.
There was no need to ask about the quail, for the hills echoed with the
melodious double call of the flocks gathering for the night.

Presently they came to the “slide,” which was a wooden runway carrying
water—with many leaks, so that bright green grass was spread in every
direction, and made food for a big flock of sheep, which paid no
attention to the car, nor to all the tooting—the silly fools, they just
_would_ get under your wheels! And then came a man riding horseback; a
big brown handsome fellow, with a fancy-colored handkerchief about his
neck, and a wide-brimmed hat with a leather strap. He was bringing in a
herd of cattle, and as he rode, his saddle and his stirrup-straps went
“Squnch, squnch,” which was a sort of thrilling sound to a boy,
especially there in the evening quiet. Dad stopped, and the man stopped,
and Dad said “Good evening,” and the man answered, “Evenin’.” He had a
pleasant, open face, and told them the way; they couldn’t miss the
arroyo, because it was the only one that had water, and they would see
the buildings as soon as they had got a little way up. And as they went
on Bunny said, “Gee, Dad, but I wish we could live here; I’d like to
ride a horse like that.” He knew this would fetch Dad, because the man
looked jist the way Dad thought a man ought to look, big and sturdy,
colored brown and red like an Injun. Yes, it wouldn’t take much to
persuade Dad to buy the Watkins ranch for his son!

Well, they went wabbling on down the sheep-trail, counting the arroyos,
whose walls loomed high in the twilight, crowned with fantastic piles of
rocks. The lights of the car were on, and swung this way and that,
picking out the road; until at last there was an arroyo with water—you
knew it by the bright green grass—and they turned in, and followed a
still more bumpy lane, and there ahead were some buildings, with one
light shining in a window. It was the ranch where Paul Watkins had been
born and raised; and something in Bunny stirred with a quite
inexplicable thrill—as if he were approaching the birth-place of
Abraham Lincoln, or some person of that great sort!

Suddenly Dad spoke. “Listen, son,” he said. “There might be oil
here—there’s always one chance in a million, so don’t you say nothin’
about it. You can tell them you met Paul if you want to, but don’t say
that he mentioned no oil, and don’t you mention none. Let me do all the
talkin’ about business.”

It was a “California house,” that is, it was made of boards a foot wide,
running vertically, with little strips of “batting” to cover the cracks.
It had no porch, whether front or back, nothing but one flat stone for a
step. The paint, if there had ever been any, was so badly faded that you
saw no trace of it by the lights of the car. On the other side of the
lane, and farther up the little valley, loomed a group of sheds, with a
big pen made of boards, patched here and there with poles cut from
eucalyptus trees. From this place came the stirring and murmuring of a
great number of animals crowded together.

The family stood in the yard, lined up to stare at the unaccustomed
spectacle of an automobile entering their premises. There was a man,
lean and stooped, and a boy, somewhat shorter, but already stooped; both
of them clad in faded blue shirts without collar, and denim trousers,
very much patched, held up by suspenders. There were three girls, in a
descending row, in nondescript calico dresses; and in the doorway a
woman, a little wraith of a woman, sallow and worn. All six of them
stood motionless and silent, while the car came into the yard, and
stopped, and the engine fell to a soft purring. “Good evening,” said
Dad.

“Howdy, brother,” said the man.

“Is this the Watkins place!”

“Yes, brother.” It was a feeble, uncertain voice, but it thrilled Bunny
to the depths, for he knew that this voice was accustomed to “babble”
and “talk in tongues.” Suppose the family were to “let go,” and start
their “jumping” and “rolling” while Bunny was there!

“We’re huntin’,” Dad explained, “and we was told this would be a good
place to camp. You got good water?”

“None better. Make yourself to home, brother.”

“Well, we’ll go up the lane jist a bit, somewheres out of the way. You
got a big tree that’ll give us shade?”

“Eli, you show ’em the oak-tree, and help ’em git fixed.”

And again Bunny was thrilled; for this was Eli, that had been blessed of
the Holy Spirit, and had the “shivers,” and had healed old Mrs. Bugner,
that had complications, by the laying on of hands. Bunny remembered
every detail about this family, the most extraordinary he had ever come
upon outside of a story-book.

                                   IV

Eli moved up the lane, the car following. There was a big live oak tree
with a clear space underneath, and Dad placed the car so that the lights
streamed upon the space—you never needed to worry about darkness, when
you were camping with a car! They stopped, and Bunny slid over the top
of his door, and went to work on the straps which held the big bundle to
the running-board. He had it off in a jiffy, and unrolled it, and quite
magical were the things which came out of it. There was a tent, made of
such light water-proofed silk that a structure eight feet square rolled
up to a bundle which might have been a suit of clothes. There were the
tent poles, made in several joints which screwed together; and the
stakes, and a little camp hatchet to drive them with. There were three
warm camping-blankets, besides the water-proof cover, which also made a
blanket. There were two pneumatic pillows, and a pneumatic mattress,
which you sat and puffed at until you were red in the face—it was great
sport! Finally there was a canvas bag containing a set of camp utensils,
all made of aluminum, and fitting one into another, everything with
detachable handles; and aluminum boxes with several compartments for
grub. When all these things were set in order, you could be as
comfortable in the midst of a desert or on top of a mountain as in the
best hotel room.

Mr. Watkins told Eli to help, but Dad said never mind, they knew jist
what to do, and it was easy. So then Mr. Watkins told Eli to fetch a
pail of water; and next he asked if they’d like some milk—they had only
goat’s milk, of course. Dad said that was fine; and Bunny was
transported to the Balkans, or whatever exciting places he had read
about, where the people live on goat’s milk. Mr. Watkins said for Ruth
to go git some; and Bunny was thrilled again, because Ruth was the
sister that Paul loved, and that he said had “sense.” Mr. Watkins called
after her to fatch some “aigs” too; and Dad said they’d like some
bread—and then Bunny got a shock, for the old man said they didn’t git
no bread, they hadn’t room to raise grain, and corn didn’t fill out good
up here in the hills, so all they had was taters. And Dad said potatoes
would do jist as good, they’d boil some for supper; and Mr. Watkins said
they’d git ’em quicker if the missus was to bile ’em on the stove—thus
showing a complete misapprehension of the significance of a
camping-trip. Dad said no, they’d want a fire anyway; and Mr. Watkins
said they was gettin’ a nip o’ frost every night now, and for Eli to
rustle ’em up a lot of wood. This was easily done, for as soon as you
went a few feet up the side of the arroyo you came upon desert brush,
much of which was dead and dry, and Eli tore some of the bushes loose
and dragged them down and broke them to pieces over his knee. Then he
fetched a couple of stones—that also was easy, for you could hardly
walk a dozen feet on the Watkins ranch without hitting your toe on a
stone.

Very soon they had a fire going, and the potatoes boiling merrily in the
pot, and a jar of bacon open and sizzling in the frying pan. Dad did the
cooking—it was a dignified occupation, while Bunny hustled about and
set the plates and things on the water-proof cover which served as a
table cloth without a table. When the bacon was done, Dad cracked the
eggs on the side of the pan, and fried them “with their eyes open.” And
there was the goat’s milk, rich and creamy, cold from the
“spring-house;” you didn’t mind the strong flavor, because you persuaded
yourself it was romantic. The milk was served in aluminum cups which
were part of the camping outfit; and also there was a plate of honey and
comb—sage-honey, brown, and strong of flavor—which Ruth had brought.

Dad invited the family to come and have something, but the old man said
no thanks, they had all et. Dad said would they please at least sit
down, because they didn’t seem comfortable jist standin’ there; so Eli
and the three girls, and their mother, who had joined them, all sat down
on stones at a modest distance from the light, and Mr. Watkins sat on a
stone a little closer, and while they ate Dad talked with him about the
state of the weather, and of the crops, and about their way of life up
here in the hills.

And when Dad and Bunny were done, and stretched themselves on the
blankets, feeling fine and comfortable, Mr. Watkins offered to have the
tent put up by Eli, but Dad again said not to mind, it was very simple
and would only take a few minutes. Then Mr. Watkins said that one of the
gals would wash up for them, and Dad said all right, he’d like that; so
Bunny got the pans and plates together, and the middle-sized girl, who
went by the name of Meelie, carried them off to the house. And then they
chatted some more; and Bunny saw that Dad was skilfully finding out
about the family, and getting their confidence.

Suddenly came a critical moment in the acquaintance; there was a pause,
and in a voice different from his usual one, solemn and burdened with
feeling, Abel Watkins said: “Brother, may I ask a personal question?”

“Yes, sure,” said Dad.

“Brother, are you saved?”

Bunny caught his breath; for he remembered what Paul had said about Mr.
Watkins’ way—if you said anything contrary to his religion, he would
roll up his eyes and begin to pray out loud and “let go.” Bunny had told
Dad about this; and evidently Dad had figured out what to do. He replied
in a tone no less solemn: “Yes, brother, we are saved.”

“You been washed in the Blood?”

“Yes, brother, we been washed.”

“What is your church, brother.”

“It is called the Church of the True Word.”

There was a pause. “I dunno as I know that there message,” said Mr.
Watkins.

“I am sorry,” said Dad. “I should like to explain it, but we’re not
permitted to talk about our faith with strangers.”

“But brother!” Mr. Watkins was evidently bewildered by that. “We are
told in the Book that ‘The Lord has called us for to preach the Gospel
unto them;’ and also, ‘the Gospel must first be published among all
nations.’”

“Brother,” said Dad, still with the utmost earnestness, “I understand
that; but according to our faith, we get to know men in friendship, and
talk about our religion later. We all have to respect the convictions of
others.”

“Yes, brother,” said Mr. Watkins; and his voice sort of faded away, and
you could see he did not know what to say next. He looked at the members
of his family, as if seeking support from them; but they hadn’t yet said
anything, except “Yes, Pap,” when he gave them an order.

So it was up to Dad to relieve the embarrassment. “We come here to look
for quail,” he said. “I hear aplenty of ’em about.”

                                   V

It was growing so cold that the little fire no longer sufficed for
comfort; so the Watkins family took their departure, and Dad and Bunny
set up the tent, and stowed their goods in it, and Bunny did his job of
puffing at the mattress until it was full. The stars were shining, so
they made their bed in the open. After spreading the blankets, they took
off their shoes and outside clothing, and laid them in the tent, and
crawled under the blankets in a hurry—gee, but that cold made you jump!
Bunny snuggled up into a ball, and lay there, feeling the night breeze
on his forehead; and he remarked: “Say, Dad, what is the Church of the
True Word?”

Dad chuckled. “The poor old crack-brain,” he said; “I had to get some
way to shut him up.”

They lay still, and pretty soon Dad was breathing deeply. But the boy,
though he was tired, did not go to sleep at once. He lay thinking: Dad’s
code was different from the one which Bunny had decided to follow. Dad
would lie, whenever he considered it necessary; he would argue that the
other person could not use the truth, or had no right to it in the
particular circumstances. And yet, this also was plain, Dad didn’t want
Bunny to follow that same code. He would tell Bunny to say nothing, but
he would never tell Bunny to lie; and as a rule, when he had to do any
lying, he would do it out of Bunny’s presence! There were lots of things
like that; Dad smoked cigars, and he took a drink now and then, but he
didn’t want Bunny to smoke or to drink. It was queer.

Bunny’s head and face were cold, but the rest of him was warm, and he
was drifting, drifting off; his thoughts became a blur—but then
suddenly he was wide awake again. What was that? The mattress was
rocking; it rolled you from side to side, so that you had to put out
your elbows. “Dad!” cried Bunny. “What’s that?” And Dad came suddenly
awake; he sat up, and Bunny sat up—putting his two hands out to keep
himself steady. “By jiminy!” cried Dad. “An earthquake!”

Sure enough, an earthquake! And say, it was queer to feel the solid
ground, that you counted on, shaking you about like that! The tree began
to creak over their heads, as if a wind were rocking it; they jumped up
and got out from under. A clamor arose, a bleating and moaning—the
goats, who liked this sensation even less than the humans, having no
ideas of earth structures and geological faults to steady their minds.
And then came another kind of clamor—from the Watkins family, who
apparently had rushed out of their cabin. “Glory hallelujah! Jesus, save
us! Lord, have mercy!”

Dad said, “It’s all over now; let’s crawl in, or we’ll have them folks
up here praying over us.”

Bunny obeyed, and they lay still. “Gee, that was a terrible earthquake!”
whispered the boy. “Do you think it knocked down any cities?”

“It was likely jist local,” answered Dad. “They have lots of them up
here in this hill country.”

“Then you’d think the Watkinses would be used to them.”

“They enjoy makin’ a fuss, I guess. They don’t have so much excitement
in their lives.” And that was all Dad had to say. He had plenty of
excitements in his own life, and was not specially interested in
earthquakes, and still less in the ravings of religious maniacs. He was
soon fast asleep again.

But Bunny lay and listened. The Watkins family had “let go,” and were
having a regular holy jumping service, out there under the cold white
stars. They shouted, they prayed, they laughed and sang, they cried
“Glory! Glory!” and “Amen!” and “Selah!” and other words which Bunny did
not understand, but which may have been Greek or Hebrew, or else the
speech of the archangels. The voice of old Abel Watkins dominated, and
the shrill screams of the children made a chorus, and the bleating of
the goats was like a lot of double basses in an orchestra. Cold chills
ran up and down Bunny’s back; for, after all, the scientific mind in
him, which knew about earth structures and geological faults, was only a
century or two old, while the instinctive mind which pronounces
incantations, is thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years
old. Priests have wrought frenzies and pronounced dooms, and because the
priests believed them and the victims believed them, they have worked,
and therefore they were believed more than ever. And now here was an
incantation against earthquakes—and people down on their knees, with
their hands in the air and their bodies swaying—

               “Chariots to glory, chariots to glory,
               Chariots to glory with the Holy Lamb!”

Bunny dozed off at last; and when he opened his eyes again, the dawn was
pink behind the hills, and Dad was slipping into his khaki
hunting-clothes. Bunny didn’t stop to rub his eyes, he popped out of bed
and got his clothes on quick—that cold just froze your bones!

He clambered up the hill-side and began pulling dead brush, and got a
fire going and the saucepan on. And then came Eli, bringing the clean
plates and things, and asking whether they wanted last night’s milk,
which was cold, or this morning’s milk, which was warm. “And say, did
you feel that yearthquake!” asked Eli, in excitement. “Say, that was a
terrible yearthquake! Does you-all have yearthquakes in you-all’s
parts?”

Eli had pale yellow hair, which had not been cut for some time, and had
not been combed since the “yearthquake.” He had pale blue eyes which
protruded slightly, and gave him an eager look. He had a long neck with
a conspicuous Adam’s apple. His legs had grown too fast for the pair of
worn trousers which were supposed to cover them, and which revealed
Eli’s shoes without socks. He stood there, staring at every detail of
the equipment and clothing of these city strangers, and at the same time
attempting to probe their souls. “What does this yere True Word teach
about yearthquakes?”

Dad was busy frying the bacon and eggs, and he said they would like some
of this morning’s milk—which was a way to get rid of Eli. But it didn’t
take Eli long to come back, and he stood and followed every morsel of
food as it went into their mouths; and he told them that the family had
“prayed a mighty power” over that yearthquake, and yearthquakes meant
the Holy Spirit was growing weary of fornications and drunkenness and
lying in the world, and had they been doing any of them things? Bunny
had but a vague idea concerning fornications, but he knew that Dad had
told a whopping big lie just a short time before that “yearthquake,” and
he chuckled to himself as he thought what a portent the Watkinses would
make out of that, if they knew!

The old man came, to make sure they were all right. Mr. Watkins was a
bigger and taller edition of his son, with the same prominent pale blue
eyes and large Adam’s apple; his face was weather-beaten, heavily lined
with care, and you could see he was a kind old man, honest and good, for
all his craziness. He too talked about the “yearthquakes,” and told
about one which had shaken down brick and concrete buildings in
Roseville a couple of years ago. Then he said that Meelie and Sadie were
going out to school, and they would bring in some bread if the strangers
wanted it. So Dad gave him a dollar, and they had a little argument,
because Mr. Watkins said they wouldn’t take only the regular price what
they got for the eggs and the milk and the taters at the store, and they
didn’t want no pay for the camping out, because that wasn’t no trouble
to them, they was glad to see strangers; it was a lonely life they lived
up in these here hills, and if it wasn’t for the Lord and His Gospel,
they would have very little pleasure in life.

                                   VI

Dad and Bunny strapped on their cartridge belts, which went over their
shoulders, and they loaded up the repeating shot-guns, and set out up
the little valley and over the hills. Bunny didn’t really care very much
about killing quail, he was sorry for the lovely black and brown birds,
that had such proud and stately crests, and ran with such quick
twinkling legs, and made such pretty calls at sundown. But Bunny never
said anything about these ideas, because he knew Dad liked to hunt, and
it was the only way you could get him away from his work, and out into
the open, which the doctor said was good for his health. Dad was quick
as lightning to swing his gun, and it looked as if he didn’t aim at all,
but apparently he did; and he never made the mistake that Bunny did, of
trying to shoot at two birds at the same time. Also Dad had time to
watch Bunny and teach him—to make sure that they travelled in an even
line, and didn’t get turned so that one was out in front of the other’s
gun.

Well they tramped the hills and the valleys, and the birds rose, flying
in every direction—a whir, and a grey streak—bang, bang—and either
they were gone, or else they were down. But you didn’t run to pick them
up, because there would be others, they would hide and run, and you
moved on, and banged some more, until finally you gathered up all you
could find, bundles of soft warm feathers, spotted with blood. Sometimes
they were still alive, and you had to wring their necks, and that was
the part Bunny hated.

They filled their bags, and then they tramped back to camp, tired and
hungry—oh gosh! Eli came, offering to clean the birds for them, and
they were glad to let him, and gave him half the birds for the family to
eat—it was pitiful to see the light in the eyes of the poor,
half-starved youth when he heard this news. It isn’t easy to live
altogether in the spirit while you are not fully grown!

Eli took the birds to the house, where there was a chopping-block and
pails of water handy; and meantime Bunny stretched out to rest, with his
feet up in front. Suddenly he sat up with an exclamation. “Dad! Look at
that!”

“Look at what?”

“At my shoe!”

“What is it?”

Bunny pulled his foot up close. “Dad, that’s oil!”

“Are you sure?”

“What else could it be?” He got up and hopped over, so Dad could see for
himself. “It’s all up over the top.”

“You sure it wasn’t there before?”

“Of course not, Dad! It’s still soft. I couldn’t pack up my shoes like
that and not see. I must have stepped into a regular pool of it. And oh,
say—I’ll bet you it was the earthquake! Some oil came up through a
crack!”

Bunny took off his shoe, and Dad examined the find. He said not to get
too much excited, it was a common thing to find oil pools close to the
surface; as a rule they were small, and didn’t amount to anything. But
still, oil signs were not to be neglected; so after lunch they would go
out again, and retrace their steps, and see what they could find.

It was easy for Dad to say not to get excited; so little did he know
about his boy’s mind! This was Bunny’s dream, that he had had for years.
You see, Dad was all the time talking about how he was going to get a
real oil-tract some day—one that belonged to himself alone. He would
figure up and show that when you paid a man a sixth royalty, you were
really giving half your net profits—for you had to pay all the costs,
not merely of the drilling, but of the upkeep and operation of the well,
and the marketing of the oil. The other fellow got half your money—and
didn’t do a thing but own the land! Well, some day Dad would get a tract
of his own discovery, and have it to himself, so that he could develop
it right, and build an oil-town that he could run right, without any
interference or any graft.

How was he to find that tract? That was Bunny’s dream! He had lived the
adventure in a score of different forms; he would be digging a hole in
the ground, and the oil would come spouting up, and he would cover it
over to hide it, and Dad would buy the land for miles around, and take
Bunny into partnership with him; or else Bunny would be exploring a cave
in the mountains, and he would fall into a pool of oil and get out with
great difficulty. There were many different ways he had pictured—but
never once had he thought of having an earthquake come and split open
the ground, just before he and Dad were starting out after quail!

Bunny was so much excited that he hardly noticed the taste of that
especially delicious meal of quail and fried potatoes and boiled
turnips. Just as soon as Dad had got his cigar smoked, they set forth
again, keeping their eyes on the ground, except when they lifted them to
study the landmarks, and to figure whether they had taken this opening
through the hills or that. They had walked half a mile or so, when a
couple of quail rose, and Dad dropped them both, and walked over to pick
them up, and then he called, “Here you are, son!” Bunny thought he meant
the birds; but Dad called again, “Come over here!” And when the boy was
near he said, “Here’s your oil!”

There it was, sure enough; a black streak of it, six or eight inches
wide, wiggling here and there, following a crack in the ground; it was
soft and oozy, and now and then it bubbled, as if it were still leaking
up. Dad knelt down and stuck his finger into it, and held it up to the
light to see the color; he broke off a dead branch from a bush and poked
it into the crevice to see how deep it was, and how much more came up.
When Dad got up again he said, “That’s real oil, no doubt of it I guess
it won’t do any harm to buy this ranch.”

So they went back. Bunny was dancing, both outside and inside, and Dad
was figuring and planning, and neither of them bothered about the quail.
“Did Mrs. Groarty ever tell you how much land there is in this ranch?”
asked Dad.

“She said it was a section.”

“We’ll have to find out where it runs. And by the way, son, don’t make
any mistake, now, not a word to any one about oil, not even after I buy
the place. It won’t do any harm to get a lot of land in these here
hills. You don’t have to pay much for rocks.”

“But listen, Dad; you’ll pay Mr. Watkins a fair price!”

“I’ll pay him a land price, but I ain’t a-goin’ to pay him no oil price.
In the first place, he’d maybe get suspicious, and refuse to sell. He’s
got nothin’ to do with any oil that’s here—it ain’t been any use to
him, and wouldn’t be in a million years. And besides, what use could a
poor feeble-minded old fellow like that make of oil money?”

“But we don’t want to take advantage of him, Dad!”

“I’ll see that he don’t suffer; I’ll jist fix the money so he can’t give
it away to no missionaries, and I’ll always take care of him, and of the
children, and see they get along. But there’s purely not a-goin’ to be
no oil-royalties! And if any of them ask you about me, son, you jist say
I’m in business—I trade in land, and all kinds o’ stuff. Tell them I
got a general store, and I buy machinery, and lend money. That’s all
quite true.”

They walked on, and Bunny began to unfold the elements of a moral
problem that was to occupy him, off and on, for many years. Just what
rights did the Watkinses have to the oil that lay underneath this ranch?
The boy didn’t say any more to his father, because he knew that his
father’s mind was made up, and of course he would obey his father’s
orders. But he debated the matter all the way until they got back to the
ranch, where they saw the old man patching his goat-pen. They joined
him, and after chatting about the quail for a bit, Dad remarked: “Mr.
Watkins, I wonder if you’d come into the house and have a chat with me,
you and your wife.” And when Mr. Watkins said he would, Dad turned to
Bunny, saying: “Excuse me, son—see if you can get some birds by
yourself.” And Bunny knew exactly what that meant—Dad thought that his
son would be happier if he didn’t actually witness the surgical
operation whereby the pitiful Watkinses were to be separated from their
six hundred and forty acres of rocks!

                                  VII

Bunny wandered up the arroyo, and high on the slope he saw the goats
feeding. He went up to watch them; and so he got acquainted with Ruth.

She sat upon a big boulder, gazing out over the rim of the hills. She
was bare-headed and bare-legged, and you saw that she was outgrowing the
patched and faded calico dress which was her only covering. She was a
thin child, and gave the impression she was pale, in spite of her
brownness; it was an anaemic brown, without much red in it. She had the
blue eyes of the family, and a round, domed forehead, with hair pulled
straight back and tied with a bit of old ribbon. She sat tending the
flocks and herds, as boys and girls had done two thousand years ago in
Palestine, which she read about in the only book to be found in the
Watkins household. One week out of three she did this, ten or twelve
hours a day, taking turns with her sisters. Very seldom did anyone come
near, and now she was ill at ease as the strange boy came climbing up;
she did not look at him, and her toes were twisted together.

But Bunny had the formula for entrance to her heart. “You are Ruth,
aren’t you?” he asked, and when she nodded, he said “I know Paul.”

So in a flash they were friends. “Oh, where?” She clasped her hands
together and gazed at him.

Bunny told how he had been at Mrs. Groarty’s—saying nothing about oil,
of course—and how Paul had come, and just what had happened. She drank
in every word, not interrupting; Ruth never did say much, her feelings
ran deep, and made no foam upon the surface. But Bunny knew that her
whole soul was hanging on his story; she fairly worshiped her brother.
“And you never seen him again?” she whispered.

“I never really saw him at all,” said Bunny; “I wouldn’t know him now,
if I was to meet him. You don’t know where he is?”

“I’ve had three letters. Always it’s a new place, and he says he ain’t
stayin’ there. Some day, he says, he’ll come to see me—jest me. He’s
scairt o’ Pap.”

“What would Pap do?”

“Pap would whale him. He’s terrible set agin him. He says he’s a limb of
Satan. Paul says he don’t believe what’s in the Book? Do you believe
it?”

Bunny hesitated, remembering Dad and his “True Word.” He decided he
could trust Ruth that far, so he told her he didn’t think he believed
quite everything. And Ruth, gazing into his eyes with intense concern,
inquired: “What is it makes yearthquakes?”

So Bunny told what Mr. Eaton had taught him about the earth’s crust and
its shrinking, and the faults in the strata, that were the first to
yield to the strain. He judged by the wondering look on her face that
this was the first hint of natural science that had ever come to her
mind. “So you don’t have to be scairt!” she said.

And then Bunny saw the signs of another idea dawning in her mind. Ruth
was gazing at him, more intently than ever, and she exclaimed, “Oh! It
was you sent that money!”

“Money?” said he, innocently.

“Four times they come a letter with a five-dollar bill in it, and no
writin’. Pap said it was the Holy Spirit—but it was you! Warn’t it?”

Thus directly attacked, Bunny nodded his confession; and Ruth colored,
and began to stammer her embarrassed thanks—she didn’t see how they
could ever repay it—they were having such a hard time. Bunny stopped
her—that was all nonsense, Dad had more money than he knew what to do
with. Bunny explained that Dad was offering to buy the ranch from her
parents, and pay off the mortgage, and let them live there for as long
as they wanted to, for a very small rent. The tears began to run down
Ruth’s cheeks, and she had to turn her head away; she could not control
herself, and it was embarrassing, because she had nothing with which to
wipe the tears away, every bit of her dress being needed to cover her
bare legs. She slid off the boulder, and had a little sobbing fit out of
his sight; and Bunny sat troubled, not so much by this display of
emotion, as by the ethical war going on in his soul. He told himself, it
was really true that his motive in getting Dad to come here had been to
help the Watkinses; the oil had been merely a pretext to persuade Dad.
For that matter, Dad would have bought the ranch, just to help the
family, and without any oil; it might have taken some arguing, but he
would have done it! So Bunny comforted himself; but all the time he was
thinking of that surgical operation going on down in the cabin, while he
sat here letting Ruth think of him as a hero and a savior.

Dad had said, “What use could a poor feeble-minded old fellow like that
make of oil money?” Dad would argue the same way about Ruth, Bunny knew:
she was healthy and happy, sitting out there in the sun with her bare
brown legs; it was the best thing in the world for her—far better than
if her legs were covered with costly silk stockings. And that was all
right; but then—some little imp was starting arguments in Bunny’s
mind—why should other women have the silk stockings? There was Aunt
Emma, at her dressing-table, with not only silk stockings, but corsets
imported from Paris, and a whole drug-store full of fixings; why would
it not be good for Aunt Emma to sit out here in the sun with bare brown
legs and tend the goats?

                                  VIII

There was Dad’s voice, calling Bunny; so he said good-bye, and ran down
the arroyo. Dad was sitting in the car. “We’re a-goin’ in to Paradise,”
he said. “But first, change them oil shoes.” Bunny did so, and put the
shoes away in the back of the car. He hopped in, and they drove down the
lane, and Dad remarked, with a cheerful smile, “Well, son, we own the
ranch.”

Dad was amused by the game he had just played, and told Bunny about it,
overlooking the possibility of complications in Bunny’s feelings. Dad
had tactfully begun talking to Mr. and Mrs. Watkins about the family’s
lack of bread, and that had started Mr. Watkins telling the whole
situation. There was a sixteen hundred dollar mortgage against the
ranch, with nearly three hundred dollars interest overdue, and they had
got a final notice from the bank, that foreclosure proceedings would
begin next week. So Dad had explained that he wanted a place for summer
camping, where his boy could have an outdoor life, and he would buy the
ranch at a fair price. Poor Mrs. Watkins began to cry—she had been born
on this place, it seemed, it was her homestead. Dad said she didn’t need
to worry, they might stay right on, and have all the farming rights of
the place, he would lease it to them for ninety-nine years at ten
dollars a year. The old man caught Dad’s hand; he had known the Lord
would save them, he said. Dad decided that was a good lead, so he
explained that the Lord had sent him, according to the revelation of the
True Word; after which Mr. Watkins had done jist whatever the Lord had
told Dad to tell him to do!

And J. Arnold Ross had put the affairs of that family in order, you
bet—there would be no more nonsense of giving away their money to
missionaries! The Lord had told Dad to tell Mr. Watkins that he was to
use his money to feed and clothe and educate his children. The Lord had
furthermore told him that the equity in his land was not to be paid in
cash, but was to consist of certificates of deposit in a trust-company,
which would pay them a small income, about fifteen dollars a month—a
lot better than having to pay the bank nearly ten dollars a month
interest on a mortgage! Moreover, the Lord had directed that this money
was to be held in trust for the children; and Bunny’s friend Paul could
thank Dad for having saved him a share. Mr. Watkins had said that one of
his sons was a black sheep, and unworthy of the Lord’s care, but Dad had
stated it as a revelation of the True Word that there was no sheep so
black but that the Lord would wash it white in His own good time; and
Mr. Watkins had joyfully accepted this revelation, and he and his wife
had put their names to a contract of sale which Dad had drawn up. The
purchase price was thirty-seven hundred dollars, which had been Mr.
Watkins’ own figure—he had said that this hill land was worth five
dollars an acre, and he figured his improvements at five hundred. They
weren’t really worth that, they were a lot of ruins, Dad said, but he
took the old man’s valuation of them. The contract provided that Mr.
Watkins was to have water sufficient to irrigate two acres of land,
which was jist about all he had under cultivation now; of course, Dad
would give him more, if he could use it, but Dad wouldn’t take no chance
of disputes about water-rights. In the morning Mr. and Mrs. Watkins
would drive out to Paradise, and Dad would hire a four-passenger car
there, and drive them to some other town, where they could put the
matter into escrow without too much talk.

In the meantime, Dad was on his way to Paradise, to set the town’s one
real estate agent to work buying more land for him. “Why don’t you send
for Ben Skutt?” asked Bunny; but Dad answered that Ben was a rascal—he
had caught him trying to collect a commission from the other party. And
anyhow, a local man could do it better—Dad would buy him with an extra
commission, let Bunny watch and see how it was worked. Fortunately, Dad
had taken the precaution to bring along a cashier’s check for three
thousand dollars. “I didn’t know jist how long we might camp,” he said,
with his sly humor.

So they came to an office labelled, “J. H. Hardacre, Real Estate,
Insurance and Loans.” Mr. Hardacre sat with his feet on his desk and a
cigar in his mouth, waiting for his prey; he was a lean, hungry-looking
spider, and was not fooled for an instant by Dad’s old khaki
hunting-clothes—he knew that here was money, and he swung his feet to
the floor and sat right up. Dad took a chair, and remarked on the
weather, and asked about the earthquake, and finally said that he had a
relative who wanted to live in the open for his health, and Dad had jist
bought the Abel Watkins place, and he jist thought he’d like to raise
goats on a bigger scale, and could he get some land adjoining? Mr.
Hardacre answered right away, there was a pile of that hill-stuff to be
had; there was the Bandy tract, right alongside—and Mr. Hardacre got
out a big map and began to show Dad with his pencil, there was close to
a thousand acres of that, but it was mostly back in the hills, and all
rocks. Dad asked what it could be bought for, and Mr. Hardacre said all
that hill-stuff was held at five or six dollars an acre. He began to
show other tracts, and Dad said wait now, and he got a paper and pencil
and began to jot down the names and the acreage and the price.
Apparently everything around here could be bought—whenever the man
failed to include any tract, Dad would ask “And what about that?” and
Mr. Hardacre would say, “That’s the old Rascum tract—yes, I reckon that
could be got.” And Dad said, “Let’s list them all,” and a queer look
began to come over Mr. Hardacre’s face—it was dawning upon him that
this was the great hour of his life.

“Now, Mr. Hardacre,” said Dad, “let’s you and me talk turkey. I want to
buy some land, if it can be got reasonable. Of course as soon as people
find you want it, they begin to boost the price; so let’s get that
clear, I want it jist enough to pay a fair price, and I don’t want it no
more than that, and if anybody starts a-boostin’ you jist tell ’em to
forget it, and I’ll forget it, too. But all the land you can buy
reasonable, you buy for me, and collect your commission from the seller
in the regular way, and besides that, you’ll get a five percent
commission from me. That means, I want you to be my man, and do
everything you can to get me the land at the lowest prices. I don’t need
to point out to you that my one idea is to buy quick and quiet, so
people won’t have time to decide there’s a boom on. You get me?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Hardacre. “But I’m not sure how quietly it can be done;
this is a pretty small place, there’s lots of talk, and it takes time to
put through a deal.”

“It won’t take no time at all if you jist handle it my way and use good
sense. You don’t mention me, you do the buyin’ for an unknown client,
and you buy options for cash—that means, if the people are hereabouts,
you close the deals right off.”

“But that’ll take quite a bunch of money,” said Mr. Hardacre, a little
frightened.

“I got a little change in my pocket,” said Dad, “and I brought a
cashier’s check for three thousand, that I can turn into cash in the
mornin’. You see, Mr. Hardacre, I happen to be jist crazy about quail
shootin’, and I had the idea that if I found plenty of quail, I’d get a
little land to shoot over. But get this clear, I can shoot quail on one
hill jist as good as on the next—and I don’t let nobody mistake me for
a quail!”

Dad took out of his card-case a letter from the president of a big bank
in Angel City, advising whomever it might concern that Mr. James Ross
was a man of large resources and the highest integrity. Dad had two such
letters, as Bunny knew—one in the name of James Ross and the other in
the name of J. Arnold Ross; the former was the one he used when he
bought oil lands, and no one had ever yet got onto his identity in time!

Dad’s proposition was this: He would make a contract with Mr. Hardacre,
whereby Mr. Hardacre was authorized to buy ten-day options upon a long
list of tracts, of specified acreage and at specified prices, paying
five percent upon the purchase price for each option, and Dad agreeing
to take up all these options within three days, and to pay Mr. Hardacre
five percent on all purchases. Mr. Hardacre, torn between anxiety and
acquisitiveness, finally said he guessed he’d take a chance on it, and
if Dad threw him down, it would be easy for him to go into bankruptcy!
He sat at his rusty typewriter and made two copies of the agreement,
with a long list of tracts that were to cost Dad something over sixty
thousand dollars. They read that over twice, and Dad signed it, and Mr.
Hardacre signed it with a rather shaky hand, and Dad said fine, and
counted out ten one hundred dollar bills on the desk, and said for Mr.
Hardacre to get to work right away. He would do well to have his options
all ready for the other party to sign, and Dad thought he had some
blanks in the car—he wasn’t jist sure, but he’d see. He went out, and
Mr. Hardacre said to Bunny, quite casual and friendly-like, “What is
your father’s business, little man?” And Bunny, smiling to himself,
answered, “Oh, Dad’s in all kinds of business, he buys land, and lots of
things.” “What other things?” And Bunny said, “Well, he has a general
store, and then sometimes he buys machinery, and he lends money.” And
then Dad came back; through a stroke of good fortune he happened to have
a bunch of option blanks in his car—and Bunny smiled to himself again,
for he never yet had seen the time when Dad did not happen to have
exactly the right document, or the right tool, or the right grub, or the
right antiseptic and surgical tape, stowed away somewhere in that car!

                                   IX

They drove back to camp, and it was coming on to sunset again, and the
quail were calling all over the hills. They passed the horseman bringing
in the cattle, and he stopped and had a chat about the earthquake, and
then he rode on, his saddle and stirrup-straps going “Squnch, squnch.”
And Dad said, “We’ll maybe buy that fellow out before night, and you can
ride his horse.” And they went on, and presently came another fellow,
this time on foot. He was a young chap, tall and lanky, but stooped as
if he had hold of plow-handles; he was wearing country clothes and a
straw hat, and he strode rapidly by them, staring hard at both of them,
barely nodding in answer to Dad’s friendly “Good evening.” Dad remarked,
“Queer-looking chap, that,” and Bunny retained an impression of a face,
very serious, with a large prominent nose, and a broad mouth drooping at
the corners.

They went on, and came to their camp, and built a fire, and got
themselves a gorgeous supper, with a panful of quail and bacon, and hot
cocoa, and toast made of the bread which Meelie and Sadie had brought
in, and some canned peaches which Bunny had bought. And after supper
Bunny saw Ruth down by the goat-pen, and he strolled over to meet her;
she gazed about timidly, to make certain no one else was near, and then
she whispered, “Paul was here!”

Bunny started, amazed. “_Paul?_” And then suddenly the truth flashed
over him. “That was Paul we passed on the road!” He described the figure
to Ruth, and she said yes, that had been Paul; he had taken a
“hitch-hike” to see her, as he had promised, and he had brought her
fifteen dollars saved from his earnings. “I told him we didn’t have no
need for it now; but he left it.”

Then Bunny cried: “Oh, why didn’t he stop and talk to Dad and me? He
barely nodded to us!”

Ruth was evidently embarrassed; it was hard to get her to talk about
Paul any more. But Bunny persisted, he was so anxious to know Paul, he
said, and it seemed as if Paul didn’t like him. Only then was Ruth moved
to tell him what Paul had said. “He was mad because Pap had sold the
ranch. He says we hadn’t ought to done it.”

“But what else could you do?”

“He says we’d ought to sell the goats, and pay the bank, and raise
strawberries, like some o’ the folks is doin’ here. We could git along
and be independent—”

“Paul is so proud!” cried Bunny. “He’s so afraid of charity!”

“No, it ain’t exactly that,” said Ruth.

“What is it then?”

“Well—it ain’t very polite to talk about—” Ruth was embarrassed again.

“What is it, Ruth? I want to try to understand Paul.”

“Well, he says your Pap is a big oil man, and he says there’s oil on
this ranch, and you know it, for he told you so.”

There was a silence.

“Is your Pap an oil man?”

Bunny forced himself to answer. “Dad’s a business man; he buys land, and
all kinds of things. He has a general store, and he buys machinery, and
lends money.” That was what Dad had ordered him to say, and it was
strictly the truth, as we know; and yet Bunny considered himself a liar
while he said it. He was misleading Ruth—gentle, innocent, trusting
Ruth, with the wide, candid eyes and the kind, sweet features; Ruth, who
was incapable of a hateful thought or a selfish impulse, whose whole
life was to be one long immolation in the cause of the brother she
loved! Oh, why did it happen that he had to practice deception upon
Ruth?

They talked about Paul some more. He had sat up in the hills most of the
afternoon and told his sister about himself. He was getting along all
right, he said; he had got a job with an old lawyer who didn’t mind his
having run away from home, but would help him to keep hidden. This
lawyer was what was called a free-thinker—he said you had a right to
believe whatever you chose, and Paul was his gardener and handy man, and
the old lawyer gave him books to read, and Paul was getting educated. It
sounded wonderful, and terrible at the same time—Paul had read a book
about the Bible, that showed it was nothing but old Hebrew history and
fairy-tales, and full of contradictions and bloody murders and
fornications, and things that there was no sense calling God’s word. And
Paul wanted Ruth to read it, and Ruth was in an agony of concern—but
Bunny noticed it was Paul’s soul she was afraid for, and not her own!

Then Bunny went back to Dad, and told him that was Paul they had passed
on the road; and Dad said “Indeed?” and repeated that he was a “queer
looking chap.” Dad wasn’t interested, he had no slightest inkling of
Bunny’s distress of soul; his thoughts were all on the great discovery,
and the deals he was putting through. He lay on his back, with a pillow
under his head, gazing up at the stars. “There’s one thing sure,
son”—and there was laughter in his voice; “either you and me move up to
front row seats in the oil-game, or else, by golly, we’ll be the goat
and sheep kings of California!”




                               CHAPTER V
                             THE REVELATION


                                   I

Bunny was going to school. Aunt Emma and Grandmother and Bertie had got
their way by incessant nagging, and he was no longer to be a “little oil
gnome,” and devote his time to learning to make money; he was going to
be a boy like other boys, and have a good time, and wear athletic
sweaters, and shout at football games, and be part of a great machine.
Mr. Eaton had been spurred to a last suicidal effort, and had patched up
the weak spots in the mental equipment of his charge, and Bunny had
passed some examinations, and was a duly enrolled pupil in the Beach
City High School.

This school occupied two blocks on the outskirts of town, and consisted
of several buildings arranged on three sides of a Square; elaborate and
ornate buildings, a great pride to the city, as well as a strain upon
its purse. The school was free, and to it came the sons and daughters of
that part of the population which did not have to go to work before the
age of eighteen or twenty. This meant all the moderately well-to-do
people; and the boys and girls, thus constituting an economic stratum,
proceeded to arrange themselves in sub-strata upon the same principle.
Their “secret societies” were forbidden by the teachers, but flourished
none the less; the basis of admission being wealth and the pleasant
things which wealth buys—well-nourished bodies, and fashionable
clothing, and easy manners, and a playful attitude towards life.

The young people were collected into small herds, and rushed about from
room to room, where culture was handed out to them in properly measured
doses. It was an enormous education-factory, and the parents had paid
for the best possible equipment, but by some process impossible to
explain, it was gradually being taken away from the teachers, and turned
over to the pupils. Every year the young people seemed to be less
interested in work, and more absorbed in what were called “outside
activities”—the athletic-field, the tennis and basket-ball courts, the
big swimming pool and the dancing floor. The boys and girls were making
for themselves a separate world, having its own standards, its own
secret life. They wore pins and badges, and had pass-words and grips
with esoteric significance; they had elaborate codes, having to do with
the wearing of flowers, or the color of your neck-tie, or the ribbon on
your hat, or the angle at which you affixed a postage stamp to an
envelope.

It was a herd life, based in part upon money-prestige, like the life of
the adults, and in part upon athletic prowess. It consisted in rushing
about from one mass-event to another mass-event. You pitted the powers
of your team against those of some other team, and the ability of your
mob to shout louder than the other mob; you got together and rehearsed
these shoutings, while the teams rehearsed the battles over which you
were to shout. It was all practice for the later and more real glories
of college and university, where the financially and athletically more
powerful students would be taken up by the great fraternities, and would
perform their social and athletic functions with skill and grace made
perfect.

Bunny, as we know, possessed the requirements of a fraternity career; he
had Anglo-Saxon features, and plenty of big sweaters, and drove to
school in a car of that year’s model. He was taken up by an exclusive
society, and was soon in demand for whatever was going on. He was
enormously interested in everything; he had never imagined there were so
many young people in the world before, and he wanted to know them all.
He raced about with them from one thing to another, and watched with
open eyes and listened with open ears to everything that came from
either the teachers or the pupils. But all the time there was something
which set him apart from the rest—something sober and old-fashioned and
“queer.” It came, no doubt, from his knowing so much about the oil
business; Bertie was right in her cruel remark that he had oil stains
under his finger-nails. He would never share the idea of other darlings
of luxury, that “money grows on trees;” he knew that it comes by hard
and dangerous work. Also, Bunny had to meet the situation at home, which
he understood quite clearly; his father wasn’t at all sure that high
school was the best place for a boy, and was watching and listening all
the time, to see what sort of ideas Bunny was getting. So the boy was
always comparing the school’s kind of education with Dad’s kind, and
which was really right?

Before starting out in his new career Bunny received what parents know
as a “serious talk”; and that was curious and puzzling. First, Dad was
going to give him a car, and there must be rules about it. He must give
his word never to exceed the speed limit, whether in the city or
outside; and that was certainly a curious case of the double standard of
morals! But Dad met it frankly; he was mature, and could judge about
speeds; moreover, he had important business for his excuse, but Bunny
was to start for school early, and the rest of the time he would be
driving for pleasure. He might take out others in his car, but he must
never let anyone drive the car but himself; Dad had no money to run a
free garage for a high school fraternity, and it would be convenient for
Bunny to be able to say, once for all, that his father had laid down the
law in that matter.

Furthermore, Dad wanted Bunny to promise him not to smoke tobacco or
drink liquor until he was twenty-one. Here again was the “double
standard,” and Dad was frank about it. He had learned to smoke, but
wished he hadn’t; if Bunny wanted to acquire the habit, it was his
right, but Dad thought he ought to wait until he was old enough to know
what he was doing, and until he had got his full growth. And the same
applied to liquor. Dad drank very little now, but there had been a time
in his life when he had come close to becoming a drunkard, and so he was
afraid of it, and Bunny’s being allowed to go to college—at least on
Dad’s money—would have to be dependent upon his promising to avoid the
drinking-bouts. Bunny said all right, sure; that was easy enough for
him. He would have liked to ask more about Dad’s own story, but he did
not quite like to. He had never seen Dad drunk; and it was a startling
idea to contemplate.

Finally there was the matter of women; and here, apparently, Dad could
not bring himself to be frank. Two things he said: first, Bunny was
known to have a father with a pile of money, and this exposed him to one
of the worst perils of young men. All kinds of women would be a-tryin’
to get a-hold of him, jist in order to get him to spend money on them,
or to blackmail him; and Bunny would be disposed to trust women, so he
must be warned about this. Dad told him dreadful stories about rich
young men, and the women into whose hands they had fallen, and how it
had wrecked their lives and brought shame upon their families. And then,
there was the matter of disease; loose women were very apt to have
diseases, and Dad told something about this, and about the quacks who
prey upon ignorant and frightened boys. If one got into trouble of that
sort, one must go to a first-class doctor.

And that was all Dad had to say. Bunny took it gratefully, but he wished
there might have been more; he would have liked to ask his father many
questions, but he could not bring himself to do it, in the face of his
father’s evident shrinking. Dad’s manner and attitude seemed to say that
there was something so inherently evil about sex that you jist couldn’t
bring yourself to talk about it; it was a part of your life that you
lived in the dark, and never dragged out into the light. Bunny’s idea
was that his father’s discourse didn’t apply very much to himself. He
knew there were dirty boys, but he was not one, and never expected to
be.

The matter was made easier for Bunny by the fact that he very soon fell
severely in love. There were such swarms of charming young feminine
things in the school, it was simply not possible to escape them,
especially when your possessions and social standing were such that so
many of them set out after you! Some young misses were too bold in their
advances, or too obviously coy, and repelled the shy lad; the one who
secured him was very demure and still, so that his imagination could
endow her with romantic qualities. Rosie Taintor was her name, and she
had hair that made a tail half-way down her back, and was fluffy on her
forehead, with golden glints; she was even more shy than Bunny, and had
little conversation, but that was not necessary, for she had a great
power of admiration, and had a phrase by which she expressed it: things
were “wonderful”; they grew more and more “wonderful,” with soulful,
mysterious whispers; the oil business was especially “wonderful,” and
Rosie never tired of being told about it, which pleased Bunny, who had
much to tell. Rosie’s father, and also her mother, were dentists, and
this is not an especially romantic occupation, so naturally the child
thought it thrilling to dash about the country as Bunny did, and direct
armies of labor, and command vast treasures to flow out of the earth.

Bunny would take her for rides; and when they were out in the country,
where it was safe, Bunny would drive with one hand, and the other hand
would rest on Rosie’s, and truly “wonderful” were the thrills that would
steal over both of them. They were content to ride that way for hours;
or to get out and wander in the hills, and gather wild flowers, and sit
and watch the sunset. Bunny was full of reverence, and when once or
twice he dared so far as to place a kiss upon his adored one’s cheek, it
was with almost religious awe. When the weather was not suitable for
outdoor courtship, he would visit her home, where the mother and father
had a hobby, the collecting of old English prints; these were framed on
all the walls, and there were stacks of them you could look at, quaint
eighteenth-century scenes of hunting gentlemen in red coats with packs
of hounds, and red-cheeked barmaids serving pots of ale to topers with
big pipes. Bunny would look at these for hours—for it took only one
hand to turn them over. What is there that is not “wonderful,” when you
are so young, and at the same time so good? It made Bunny walk on air,
just to buy a new straw hat, and meet his chosen one upon the street,
and anticipate her comments!

                                   II

When Dad took his business trips now he took them alone; that is, unless
he could arrange them for week-ends and holidays. He didn’t like going
alone; and Bunny for his part, always had a part of his mind on Dad, and
when Dad got back, he would hear all the details of how things were
going.

There were six wells now at Lobos River, and they were all “paying big.”
Dad had four more drilling, and had deepened eleven of his old Antelope
wells, and had a pipe-line there, through which a river of wealth was
flowing to him. On the Bankside lease he had six wells, all on
production, and he had paid Mr. Bankside something over a million
dollars of royalty, and had only got started, so he said. He had a good
well on the next lease, the Ross-Wagstaff, and three more drilling, and
out about half a mile to the north he was opening up new territory with
the Ross-Armitage No. 1.

It was amazing to see what had happened to the Prospect Hill field. All
over the top of the hill and the slopes a forest of oil-derricks had
arisen, and had started marching across the fields of cabbages and sugar
beets. Seeing them from the distance, in the haze of sunset, you could
fancy an army of snails moving forth—the kind which have crests lifted
high in the air. When you came near, you heard a roaring and a
grumbling, as of Pluto’s realm; at night there was a scene of
enchantment, a blur of white and golden lights, with jets of steam, and
a glare of leaping flame where they were burning gas that came roaring
out of the earth, and which they had no way to use.

Yes, when you drove past, sitting in a comfortable car, you might
mistake it for fairyland. You had to remind yourself that an army of men
were working here, working hard in twelve hour shifts, and in peril of
life and limb. Also you had to remember the pulling and hauling, the
intrigue and treachery, the ruin and blasted hopes; you had to hear
Dad’s stories of what was happening to the little fellows, the thousands
of investors who had come rushing to the field like moths to a
candle-flame. Then your fairyland was turned into a slaughter-house,
where the many were ground up into sausages for the breakfast of the
few!

Dad had a big office now, with a manager and half a dozen clerks, and he
sat there, like the captain of a battleship in his conning tower.
Whatever might happen to the others, Dad took care of himself and his
own. He had come to be known as the biggest independent operator in the
field, and all sorts of people came to him with propositions; new,
wonderful, glowing schemes—with Dad’s reputation for solidity, he could
organize a ten or twenty million dollar company, and the investing
public would flock to him. But Dad turned all such things down; he would
wait, he told Bunny, until Bunny was grown up, and through with this
here education business. They would have a pile of cash by that time and
would do something sure enough big. And Bunny said all right, that
suited him. He hoped the “something big” might be at Paradise, for then
he would have a real share in it. Dad said, sure, the Watkins ranch was
his discovery, and when they come to drill there, the well would be
known as the Ross Junior.

They had made no move there; they were waiting, because of an
unfortunate slip-up in the negotiations for the land. An unkind fate had
willed that Mr. Bandy, owner of the big Bandy tract, had been away from
home on the day that Mr. Hardacre had collected his options; and when
Mr. Bandy got back, and learned about all the sudden purchases, he
became suspicious, and decided that he would hold onto his land. At
least, it amounted to that, for he raised his price from five dollars an
acre to fifty! What made this especially bad, the Bandy tract lay right
next to the Watkins section; it was over a thousand acres, and ran near
to where Dad and Bunny had found the oil—in fact, Dad thought the
streak of oil was on Mr. Bandy’s land, he couldn’t be sure without a
survey. They would wait, Dad said, and let Mr. Bandy stay in pickle for
a few years. It was like a cat watching a gopher hole, and which would
get tired first. Bunny asked which was Mr. Bandy, the cat or the gopher;
and Dad replied that if anybody ever mistook Jim Ross for a gopher, he
would jist try to show them their mistake.

So they were waiting. Some day that mythical relative of Dad’s, who was
an invalid, was coming into those rocky hills and tend a few thousand
goats; and meantime most of the ranches were rented to the people who
had formerly owned them. Three or four were vacant, but Dad didn’t worry
about that; he would leave them to the quail, he said, and told Mr.
Hardacre to put up a thousand “No Trespassing” signs over the whole
twelve thousand acres he had bought, so as to impress Mr. Bandy with
Dad’s gluttonous attitude toward small game.

                                  III

The greater part of the civilized world had gone to war. The newspapers
which Dad and Bunny read turned themselves into posters, with
streamer-heads all the way across the page, telling every day of battles
and campaigns in which thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands of men
had lost their lives. To people in California, so peaceful and
prosperous, this was a tale of “old, unhappy far-off things,” impossible
to make real to yourself. America had officially declared neutrality;
which meant that in the “current events” class, where Bunny learned what
was going on in the world, the teacher was expected to deal with the war
objectively, and to rebuke any child who expressed a partisanship
offensive to any other child. To business men like Dad it meant that
they would make money out of both sides; they would sell to the Allies
direct, and they would sell to the Central powers by way of agents in
Holland and Scandinavia, and they would raise a howl when the British
tried to stop this by the blockade.

The price of “gas” of course began to mount immediately. It seemed to
Bunny a rather dreadful thing that Dad’s millions should be multiplied
out of the collective agony of the rest of the world; but Dad said that
was rubbish, it wasn’t his fault that people in Europe insisted on
fighting, and if they wanted things he had to sell, they would pay him
the market price. When speculators came to him, showing how he, with his
big supply of cash, could make a quick turn-over, buying shoes, or
ships, or sealing-wax, or other articles of combat, Dad would reply that
he knew one business, which was oil, and he had made his way in life by
sticking to what he knew. When representatives of the warring powers
invited him to sign contracts to deliver oil, he would answer that
nothing gave him more pleasure than to sign such contracts; but they
must change their European bonds into good American dollars, and pay him
with these latter. He would offer to take them to the little roadside
restaurant where they could see the sign: “We have an arrangement with
our bank; the bank does not sell soup, and we do not cash checks.”

On the basis of his father’s reputation for unlimited resources and
invincible integrity, Bunny had been chosen treasurer of the freshman
football team, a position of grave responsibility, which entitled him to
sit on the side-lines and help the cheer-leaders. While on the other
side of the world men were staggering about in darkness and mud and
snow, blind with fatigue, or with their eyes shot out, or their entrails
dragging in the dirt, the sun would be shining in California, and Bunny
would be facing a crowd of one or two thousand school children, lined up
on benches and shrieking in unison: “Rah, rah, rah, slippery,
slam!—wallibazoo, bazim, bazam! Beach City.” He would come home
radiant, with barely enough voice left to tell the score; and Aunt Emma
would sit beaming—he was being like other boys, and the Ross family was
taking its position in society.

The Christmas holidays came; and Dad was working too hard, everybody
declared; and Bunny said, “Let’s go after quail!” It wasn’t so hard to
pull him loose now, for they had their own game-preserve—it sounded
most magnificent, and it would obviously be a great waste not to use it.
So they packed up their camping outfit, and drove to Paradise, and
pitched their tent under the live oak tree; and there was the ranch, and
the Watkins family, the same as before, except that the row of children
was a couple of inches taller, and the girls each had a new dress to
cover their growing brown legs. Things were a whole lot easier with the
family, since they had an income of fifteen dollars a month from the
bank, instead of an outgo of ten dollars.

Well, Dad and Bunny went after the quail, and got a bagful; and
incidentally they examined the streak of oil, now grown dry and hard,
and covered with sand and dust. They went back to camp and had a good
feed, and then came Ruth, to get their soiled dishes; she was taking
Eli’s place, she explained, because Eli had been called to attend Mrs.
Puffer, that was ill with pains in her head. Eli had been doing a power
of good with his healing, it had made a great stir, and people were
coming from all over to have him lay hands on them. Bunny asked if Ruth
had heard from Paul, and she answered that he had come to see her a
couple of months ago, and was getting along all right.

She seemed a little shy, and Bunny thought it might be on account of Dad
lying there listening, so he strolled back to the house with her, and on
the way Ruth confided to him that Paul had brought her a book to read,
to show her she didn’t have to believe the Bible if she didn’t want to;
and Pap had caught her with that book, and he had took it away and threw
it in the fire, and had whaled her good.

Bunny was horrified. “You mean he beat you?” And Ruth nodded; she meant
that. “What did he use?” cried Bunny, and she answered that he had used
a strap off’n the harness. “And did he hurt you?” She answered that he
had hurt right smart, it had been a week afore she was able to sit down.
She was a little surprised at his indignation, for it didn’t seem to her
out of the way that a girl almost sixteen years old should be “whaled”
by her Pap; he meant it for her good, he thought it was his duty to save
her soul from hell-fire. And Bunny could see that Ruth wasn’t sure but
her Pap might be right.

“What was the book?” he asked, and she told him it was called “The Age
of Reason”; it was an old-time book, and maybe Bunny had heard of it.
Bunny never had; but naturally, he resolved to find a copy, and read it,
and tell Ruth all that was in it.

He went back to his father, and poured out his indignation; but Dad took
much the same view of the matter as Ruth. Of course it was a shame for a
child to be whipped for trying to get knowledge, but old Abel Watkins
was the boss in his own family, and had the right to discipline his
children. Dad said he had heard of the book; it was by a famous
“infidel” named Tom Paine, who had had something to do with the American
Revolution. Dad had never read the book, but it was easy to understand
how Mr. Watkins had been outraged by it; if Paul was reading such
things, he had surely traveled far.

Bunny couldn’t rest there; it was too horrible that Ruth should be
beaten because she tried to use her mind. Bunny kept talking about it
all afternoon, there ought to be a law to prevent such a thing. Dad said
the law would only interfere in case the father had used unusual and
cruel punishment. Bunny insisted that Dad ought to do something, and Dad
laughed, and asked if Bunny wanted him to adopt Ruth. Bunny didn’t want
that, but he thought Dad should use his influence with the old man. To
this Dad answered, it would be foolish to try to reason with a crank
like that, the more you argued the more set he would become; what
influence Dad possessed, he had got by pretending to agree with the old
man’s delusions.

But Bunny wouldn’t drop the subject—Dad could do something if he would,
and he absolutely must. And so Dad thought for a bit, and then he said:
“I’ll tell you, son; what you and me have got to do is to get a new
religion.” Bunny knew this tone—his father was “kidding” him, and so he
waited patiently. Yes, Dad said, they would have to elaborate the True
Word; they must make it one of the cardinal points in this Word that
girls were never to be beaten by men. There would have to be a special
revelation, jist on that point, said Dad; and so Bunny began to take an
interest. Dad asked him questions about Paul, what Paul believed, and
what Paul had said about Ruth, and what Ruth had told him about herself.
Bunny realized that Dad was going to try something, and he waited.

They shot some more quail, and came back and built a big camp-fire, and
had a jolly supper, and then Dad said, “Now let’s go start that there
religion.” So they strolled down to the cabin, Dad in deep thought, and
Bunny on tiptoe with curiosity—for you never could tell what Dad would
do when he was in a mood of mischief. In after years the boy used to
look back upon this moment and marvel; what would their emotions have
been, had they been able to foresee the consequences of their jest—a
“revival” movement that was to shake the whole State of California, or
at any rate the rural portion of it, and of several states adjoining!

                                   IV

Well, old Mr. Watkins invited them cordially to come in; and Sadie and
Meelie gave up their chairs and sat on a box or something in a corner of
the room. It was the first time that Bunny had been inside the Watkins’
home, and it gave him a shuddering sense of poverty. It was bare boards
inside, the same as out; there was a big, unpainted table, and six
unpainted chairs, a few shelves with crockery, a few pans hanging on the
wall, and a stove that rested on a stone where one leg was broken. That
was everything, literally everything—save for a feeble kerosene lamp,
which enabled you to see the rest. There were two other rooms to the
cabin, one for the husband and wife, and the other for the three girls,
who slept in one bed. Attached to the back of the house was a shed with
two bunks against the wall, the top one occupied by Eli, and the other
vacant, a reminder of the sheep that had strayed.

Eli was in the room, having come back from his expedition. Eli was now
eighteen, and had attained the full stature of a man; also his voice was
that of a man, except that now and then it cracked and went up in a way
that would have been comical, if anybody that listened to Eli ever had a
sense of fun. Just now he was telling his parents and wondering sisters
how the Holy Spirit had blessed him again, the shivers had seized him,
and old Mrs. Puffer had been instantly relieved of her pains. Mr.
Watkins said “Amen!” three or four times, very loud, and then he turned
to Dad, remarking, “The Lord blesses us in our children.” Dad said yes,
that was true, possibly more true than they knew; he asked, had Mr.
Watkins ever thought of the possibility that the Lord might send a new
revelation into the world? And instantly you could see the family sit
up, and fix their eyes upon Dad, the whole six of them, as rigid as so
many statues. What did their visitor mean?

Dad explained: there had been two revelations so far, to be found in the
old and the new testaments; why mightn’t it be that the Holy Spirit was
preparing another? For a long time the followers of the True Word had
awaited this fulfillment; the promise was in the Book, for anyone to
read. This New Dispensation would supersede the others, and naturally
would have to be different from the others, and the followers of the old
message might fail to recognize it, jist like the previous case. Didn’t
that seem reasonable? Dad asked; and Mr. Watkins answered promptly that
it did, and for Dad to go on. So Dad said that this True Word was to be
revealed through the minds of men, and would be a message of freedom;
the Holy Spirit wanted us to seek boldly, and not be afraid; and
presently out of the seeking of many minds the Truth would come—perhaps
from some one who had been despised and rejected, that would become the
corner stone of the new temple. Dad said all this with the deepest
solemnity, and Bunny listened, not a little bewildered; he had never had
any idea that Dad knew so much Bible-talk—as much as any preacher!

So it seemed to the Watkins family also. The old man drank in every
word, and insisted that Dad should reveal to them all he knew. And Dad
told them that they had one son, whose words had been reported to him,
and seemed to him to bear the true spirit of the Third Revelation. Dad
had met this son, and been struck by his appearance, for he looked jist
like what followers of the True Word had been taught to expect—he was
tall, and had fair hair and blue eyes, and his look was grave and his
voice deep. So Dad believed that the bearer of this message of freedom,
to which they were charged to listen, was their eldest son, Paul, whom
they mistakenly had driven from among them.

Well, you should have seen the sensation in that family! Old Mr. Watkins
sat with his jaw dropped down, as thunder-struck as if Dad had sprouted
a pair of angel’s wings before his eyes. Mrs. Watkins’ thin face wore a
look of utter rapture, and her two stringy hands were clasped together
in front of her chin. As for Ruth, she seemed just about ready to slide
off her chair and onto her knees. Everybody seemed to be pleased but
one, and that was Eli. Eli was glaring at Dad, and suddenly he sprang
from his chair, his face contorted; he shouted, and his voice cracked,
and went up shrill and piercing: “Can he show the signs?” And as Dad
delayed to answer, he shouted again, “I say, can he show the signs? Has
he healen the sick? Has he casted out devils? Do the lame rise up and
walk? Do the dying take up their beds? Tell me that! Tell me!”

Well, sir, it floored Dad; for Eli was the last person in the room from
whom he would have expected an onslaught. Dad thought of Eli as a gawky
farm yokel, who came, with no socks on, and pants that did not reach his
shoe-tops, to bring the milk and take away the dirty dishes; but here
was Eli, transformed into a prophet of the Lord, and blazing, after a
fashion not unknown to prophets, with a white flame of jealousy! “_I_ am
him who the Holy Spirit has blessed! _I_ am him who the Lord hath chosen
to show the signs! Look at me, I say—look at me! Ain’t my hair fair and
my eyes blue? Ain’t my face grave and my voice deep?”—and sure enough,
Eli’s voice had gone down again, and Eli was a grown man, a seer of
visions and pronouncer of dooms. “I say beware of he that cometh as a
serpent creeping in the night, to tempt the souls of they that waver! I
say, beware the spawns of Satan, that lure the soul with false doctrine,
and blast away the Rock of Ages! I give the signs, that all men may
know! I stand by the Four Square Gospel, that was good enough for my
fathers and is good enough for me! Glory Hallelujah, and Salvation unto
they that has washed their sins in the Blood of the Lamb! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!”

Eli flung up his hands with a mighty shriek, and old Mr. Watkins rose
from his chair, and shouted “Glory! Glory!” And then a horrible thing
began to happen, right there before your eyes; a kind of convulsion
seized upon Eli, his eyes rolled up, and foam appeared at his lips, and
a series of wriggles started at his shoulders and ran out at his finger
tips; and his knees began to knock together, and his features to work in
a kaleidescope of idiocy. He began to bellow, in an enormous voice, that
you would never have dreamed could be contained in a body of his size;
and what he said was—but you couldn’t reproduce it, because no one can
recollect a jabber of syllables, and anyhow, it would look too silly on
a printed page. But it had some kind of spell for old Mr. Watkins, it
caused him to throw his two hands up into the air, and jerk his arms as
if he were trying to jump up to heaven with them. “Let go! Let go!” he
shrieked, and began to double up and straighten out again as if he had
been shot through the middle; and old Mrs. Watkins:—poor frail little
woman, made of nothing but bones and whipcord covered with skin—began
to rock and sway in her chair, and the two little girls slid off onto
the floor and wallowed on their stomachs, and Ruth sat white-faced and
terrified, gazing at the two strangers, and from them to Eli, bellowing
his jabber of syllables like a furious malediction at Dad.

And that was the end of it. Dad backed out, and Bunny with him, and the
two of them crept away through the darkness to their camp; and all the
way Dad whispered, “Jesus Christ!”

                                   V

The next day was Sunday, or the Sabbath, as the Watkinses called it; and
by the time Dad and Bunny had got their breakfast in the morning, the
family had hitched up their one old horse to their one old wagon, and
departed—the father and mother riding, and the four young people
walking ahead, on their way to the weekly debauch at the Apostolic
Church of Paradise.

That left Dad and Bunny to hunt quail, undisturbed by public opinion;
and in the afternoon they got into their car, and rode about to make an
inspection of the domain they had purchased, and to meet some of the
neighbors, now their tenants. Dad had a map, showing the various tracts,
and as they drove he was laying out roads and other improvements in his
mind; some day this country would all be settled, he said—and the thing
to begin with was a rock-crusher! There came riding along the fellow on
horseback whom they had met the first time; they knew now that it was
young Bandy, the son of their enemy, and they exchanged greetings—the
cat and the gopher being polite!

They rode up into one of the arroyos where there was a vacant ranch, the
Rascum place. They were surprised to find a charming little bungalow,
with a good porch in front, completely buried under a bougainvillea
vine, which would be a mass of purple blossoms in the spring. “Gee,
Dad,” exclaimed Bunny, “this is where we ought to come and stay!” The
other answered, there should be somebody to keep it up; there was a well
here, and with a little fixing it would be quite a place. There was even
a cat, and she looked contented; there were plenty of gophers, Dad said,
and it was a good sign for victory over Mr. Bandy! They laughed
together.

They followed the “slide” down to Roseville, and saw the old mission
there, and had supper, and came round by way of Paradise in the evening;
and on the outskirts of the town, just after turning off the highway,
they came on a building, standing in a grove of trees, with lights
shining in the windows, and a murmur of voices within. One voice rose
above the others, a bellowing voice which needed no identifying. It was
the “holy jumpers’” church, and Eli was preaching. “Oh, Dad,” exclaimed
Bunny, “let’s hear him!” So they parked the car and got out, and stood
in the shadow of the trees; and this is what they heard:

“—for the days of your trials is ended. Come unto me all ye that
travels and is heavy ladened and I will refreshen you. For I am the
bearer of the True Word! I bring the signs—the sick shall be healen,
and the devils shall be casted out—the lame shall walk and the dying
shall take up their beds! Brethren, I am sent for to announce unto you
the Third Revelation! Once moreover the Holy Spirit disclothes Himself,
the New Gospel is unfolded to you, according to the prophesies hitherto
fore explained. There was an Old Dispensation, and it was outgrowed and
supercedened, and now the New Testament is outgrowed and supercedened in
the same way, and the True Word of freedom is handed unto you, and I am
him that is sent to make it known. And woe unto they that doth not heed,
for he shall be casted down into the bottomless pit, and it were better
that a millstone was hanged about his neck and he was drowned in the
sea. Woe unto he that cometh as a serpent creeping in the night, to
tempt the souls of they that waver! I say, beware the spawns of Satan,
that lure the soul with false doctrine, and blast away the Rock of Ages!
I give the signs that all men may know; and he that follows me will I
bless, and his pains shall be healen, and he shall see the glory of God
and receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the talking in tongues! Glory
Hallelujah, and Salvation unto they that has washed their sins in the
Blood of the Lamb! Hallelujah!”

The bellowing voice of Eli was drowned in a chorus of acclamation,
shouts and shrieks and groans, as if the whole congregation of the
Apostolic Church of Paradise were jumping in their seats or rolling on
the floor. As a matter of fact, it was but a little while before that
very thing was happening; but Dad wouldn’t let Bunny go near to see it,
it was too degrading, he said, and they got into their car and drove
off. “Gee whiz, Dad!” exclaimed the boy. “Eli was saying every word that
you taught him! Do you suppose he really believes it all?”

Dad answered that only the Holy Spirit could tell that. Eli was a
lunatic, and a dangerous one, but a kind that you couldn’t put in an
asylum, because he used the phrases of religion. He hadn’t wits enough
to make up anything for himself, he had jist enough to see what could be
done with the phrases Dad had given him; so now there was a new religion
turned loose to plague the poor and ignorant, and the Almighty himself
couldn’t stop it.

There came next day a man riding out from Paradise, bringing a telephone
call for Dad; Ross-Armitage No. 1 was in trouble, and Dad was needed at
once. Before they started for home Bunny managed to have a talk with
Ruth, and told her a wonderful plan that had occurred to him: Dad said
there ought to be some one to live on the Rascum place and keep it up,
and Bunny suggested that Dad should buy some goats and stock the place,
and rent it to Paul, and let Ruth go there to keep house for him; then
Ruth could read all the books she pleased, and there would be nobody to
beat her.

Ruth looked happy, but she said Paul would never do that, he wouldn’t
take anybody’s charity. Bunny insisted that it wouldn’t be charity at
all—Dad really wanted some one on the ranch, and he would make a
business arrangement, Paul would work the place, and pay Dad part of the
money. But Ruth sighed, and said anyhow, Pap would never let her go; he
was more than ever set against Paul, on account of Eli, who was jealous
of Paul, and of Paul’s claim to know things. Eli had always been that
way, but now he was worse, because the city people had backed Paul, and
so Pap didn’t even want her to talk with Bunny or his father, for fear
she would lose her faith.

Ruth was just Bunny’s age, almost sixteen, and Bunny said it wouldn’t be
but two years before she would be of age, and then she could go where
she pleased, Dad said; she could join Paul, or she and Paul could run
the Rascum ranch. Bunny told her not to be afraid, but to wait, and not
bother with that fool jumping business; it was hateful nonsense, and it
wouldn’t hurt her the least bit to think for herself, and use her common
sense, and wait till she was grown up. Dad would be glad to help her get
an education, and get free from Eli and his prophesying—for Ruth might
be sure Dad didn’t like Eli any better than Eli liked Dad!

                                   VI

Three months passed, and Dad brought in the Ross-Armitage No. 1, and
made another big success, and proved up a lot of new territory, and was
hailed again as a benefactor to the Prospect Hill field. But once more
the doctor said he was overworking; it was time for the Easter holidays,
and Bunny studied the maps, and brought Dad a proposition—the Blue
Mountains were only ten miles from Paradise, and there was no end of
trout fishing there, so why not make their headquarters at the Rascum
ranch, and get some trout? Dad smiled; Bunny couldn’t keep away from
Paradise! To which Bunny answered that Paradise was his discovery; and
besides, he wanted to see how Ruth was getting along, and to hear about
Paul, and about Eli and his Third Revelation.

Right on top of that came a letter from Mr. Hardacre, the agent, telling
how the elder Mr. Bandy had gone out into a field and been attacked by a
bull and was badly crippled; Mr. Hardacre didn’t believe that young
Bandy wanted to work the ranch, but move to the city, so it might be
possible to buy the place, if Mr. Ross still wanted it. Bunny was all on
pins and needles at that, but Dad told him to keep his shirt on, that
young gophers were a lot easier to catch than old ones; and he wrote Mr.
Hardacre he wasn’t specially keen for the land, but he would take it at
the same price as the rest; he was coming up fishing in a few days, and
would see about it.

So then Dad wrote a letter to Mr. Watkins, asking him to be so good as
to have one of the children go and clean the house at the Rascum ranch
and get it ready for them. And Dad told Bunny to go with Aunt Emma to a
furniture store in Beach City and get a little stuff, including crockery
and kitchen things, and have them put it on a truck and run it out to
Paradise; Bunny had better put in some canned food, too, everything
they’d need, so the place could be ready when they got there. You can
imagine what fun Bunny had with that commission; in his thoughts he was
fitting out this house, not merely for Dad and him to camp in, but for
Paul and Ruth to settle down and make a home!

When you happen to be the son of a successful oil operator, you can make
your dreams come true. Dad and Bunny motored out, arriving just at
sundown, and went directly to the Rascum place, and there, standing on
the front-porch, with the bougainvillea vine now in full blossom, making
a glorious purple arch above her head, was Ruth; and alongside her was a
man—at a distance Bunny thought it was old Mr. Watkins, but then he saw
it was a young man, and Bunny’s heart went up into his mouth. He looked
at this big, powerful figure, clad in a blue shirt and khaki trousers
held up by suspenders, and with a mop of yellowish touselled hair. Could
it be—yes, Bunny could never mistake that sombre face, with prominent
big nose and mouth drawn down at the corners; he whispered, excitedly,
“It’s Paul!”

And so it was. The pair came forward, and Ruth introduced her brother to
Dad, and Paul said, “Good evening, sir,” and waited to be sure that Dad
wished to shake hands with him. Then Paul shook hands with Bunny—and it
was a strange sensation to the latter, who had lost all at once the Paul
he had been dreaming, the boy who might have been a good chum—and had
got instead this grown man, who seemed ten years older than himself, and
forever out of his reach.

“Did the furniture come?” asked Dad; and Ruth answered that it had, and
everything was in order, they’d have had supper ready, if they’d been
sure that Mr. Ross would arrive; they’d get it ready right off. Meantime
Paul was helping Bunny carry in the bags, and oh, gee—there was the
loveliest little bungalow you ever laid eyes on, everything spick and
span, even to a pink paper shade over the lamp, and flowers on the
center table! Evidently Ruth had put her heart into that job. She asked
Dad very shyly what he’d like for supper, and Dad said everything in the
place, and very soon the bacon was sizzling in the pan and making a nice
friendly smell; and Paul, having emptied the car, stood waiting, and
Bunny started in right away to find out all about him, and how he came
to be here.

Paul explained that he had turned up yesterday, having come to see Ruth.
He had had things out with his father this time; being nineteen now, he
thought he was old enough to be allowed to take care of himself. Bunny
asked if his father had “whaled” him, and Paul smiled and said his
father wasn’t in condition to whale anybody, he was getting worse with
rheumatism. He was as bitter and implacable as ever, but told Paul to go
his own way to hell, and his father would pray for him. Bunny noticed
right away that Paul no longer referred to his father as “Pap,” and that
he no longer murdered the English language like the rest of the Watkins
family; he talked like an educated man, as indeed he was.

Well, they had supper. Paul and Ruth expected to wait on the table, but
Dad made them sit down, and they had a little party, the four of them,
and it was great fun. Bunny bombarded Paul with questions about himself
and his life; and incidentally told Paul how he had hunted for him that
night at Mrs. Groarty’s, and why had he run away? They talked about
Paul’s aunt, and the tragedy of her lease, and of the worthless “units”
she had bought. Paul had learned from Ruth how Bunny had sent money to
her, and Paul expressed his gratitude, and said he would pay it back; he
still had that stubborn pride—he would never ask a favor, and he never
thrust himself forward, but held back until he was called upon.

He told how he had lived, and how the old lawyer, his benefactor, had
died just recently, and had left him a part of his library, all but the
law books. It was a most wonderful treasure, a lot of scientific books,
and the best old English literature. For nearly three years Paul had had
the use of this library, and that had been his life, he had seldom
missed an evening reading until after midnight; also he had studied a
lot during the day, for he had really had very little work to do, Judge
Minter had made a sort of pet of him—having no children of his own, and
being stirred by the idea of a boy who wanted to educate himself. The
Judge had had an old microscope, and Paul had worked with that, and had
made up his mind to a career; he was going to spend a couple more years
reading science, and then he would get a job in some laboratory, a
janitor’s job, if necessary, and work his way up to do microscopic work.

The things that Paul had learned about! He had read Huxley and Spencer,
and he talked about Galton and Weissmann and Lodge and Lankester, and a
lot of names Bunny had never even heard of. Poor Bunny’s pitiful little
high school knowledge shrank up to nothing; and how silly seemed
football victories all of a sudden. Dad didn’t know about these matters
either; he was a man well into his fifties, but he had never met a
student of science before! It was interesting to see how quickly he took
hold of these things. Paul told how investigators were trying to find
out whether acquired characteristics could be transmitted by heredity;
it was a most important question, and Weissmann had cut off the tails of
mice, to see if the next generations would have tails. But Paul said
that was silly, because there wasn’t any real change in a mouse when you
cut off its tail, no vital quality; the thing to find out was, how long
it took the tail to heal up when you cut it off, and whether the new
generations of mice could heal up quicker.

Paul said the way to settle the question of inheritance of acquired
characteristics was to stimulate the animals to develop some new
faculty, and see if new generations would develop it more easily. Dad
got the point at once, and said you might learn something by studying
trotting horses and their pedigrees; to which Paul replied, exactly. Dad
would like to know more about such questions; and Paul had a book with
him, which Dad was welcome to read. Ruth was washing the dishes, and
Paul went out to get some more wood, and Dad looked at Bunny and said,
“That’s a fine young fellow, son”; and then Bunny felt a glow of pride,
right up to the roots of his hair—because, you see, Paul was his
discovery, just like the Paradise oil field, that was some day going to
occupy this spot!

So then Dad settled down to talk business with Paul. Dad wanted some one
to occupy this ranch, and Paul said he had thought it over, and would do
it if they could make a fair arrangement. Dad asked how he could get
along, and Paul said he had saved up three hundred dollars from his
wages, and he would get a few goats, and put in some beans this spring,
and some strawberries that would bring an income next year; he would pay
Dad one-half whatever he got for the crops. They had an argument over
that, for Dad thought he ought to pay Paul to act as caretaker, but Paul
said he wouldn’t take it on that basis, he would insist on going shares,
in the regular way they rented land in these parts. And when Mr. Ross
came on hunting or fishing trips, Paul of course would move out into the
tent. But Dad said no, he was planning to build himself a shack, a
better place than this, and Paul might help the carpenter and earn wages
if he wanted to. Paul said he could do the building himself, if Dad said
so—everything but hanging the doors and windows; a fellow learned to do
about all the jobs there were on a ranch. And Dad asked if Ruth would
stay with Paul, and Paul said he would settle here in the house, and go
easy, and Ruth would come to see him, until gradually their father got
used to the idea. It wouldn’t be possible to keep Paul and Ruth
apart—especially now since Eli was away from home nearly all the time.

So Dad asked about Eli, and the development of the Third Revelation.
Only three or four days after Eli had made his announcement in the
Paradise Church, there had come a deputation from the church at
Roseville, saying that they had heard the fame of Eli’s miracles, and
would he come and preach to them. And Eli preached, and the “signs” were
manifested, and so the new prophet grew bolder. Now he was being driven
about the country in somebody’s costly limousine, and in the back part
of the car was a stack of the crutches of people who had been “healen.”
These crutches would be set up in sight of each new congregation, and
nearly always they were added to; and there fell over the head of the
prophet a shower of silver dollars and half dollars, and coins, wrapped
in banknotes, Eli had now given himself a title; he was the Messenger of
the Second Coming, and the hour of Christ’s return to earth was to be
made known through him. Sometimes whole congregations would be swept off
their feet and converted to the True Word; or again, some would be
converted, and there would be a split, and a new church in that place.

“How do you suppose he works it?” Dad asked.

“He really does cure people,” said Paul; “there are some about here you
can talk to. I’ve been reading a book on suggestion; it seems that kind
of thing has been going on for thousands of years.”

“Does he send any money home to his folks?” Dad asked.

And Paul smiled, rather grimly. “The money is sacred,” he said; “it
belongs to the Holy Spirit, and Eli is His treasurer.”

                                  VII

Next morning they set forth after trout; and on the way they stopped to
see Mr. Hardacre. Before they went in, Dad cautioned Bunny, “Now don’t
you say a word, and don’t make any faces. Jist let me handle this.” They
entered, and Mr. Hardacre said that he had an offer from young Bandy,
speaking for his father, to sell the ranch for twenty thousand dollars.
Bunny’s heart leaped, and it was well that Dad had warned him, for he
wanted to cry out, “Take it, Dad! Take it!” But he caught himself, and
sat rigid, while Dad said, “Holy smoke, what does the fellow take us
for?”

Mr. Hardacre explained, there was about twenty acres of good land on
this tract; and Dad said all right, call that a hundred an acre, and the
improvements, say four thousand, that meant young Bandy was trying to
soak them fourteen dollars an acre for his thousand acres of rocks. He
must think he had a sucker on his hook.

“To tell the truth, Mr. Ross,” said the agent, “he knows you’re an oil
man, and he thinks you’re going to drill this tract.”

“All right,” said Dad. “You jist tell him to hunt round and find
somebody to drill his own tract, and if he gets any oil, I’ll drill
mine. Meantime, the land I got now will raise all the quail the law will
let me shoot in a season.”

The end was that Dad said he would pay twelve thousand cash, and
otherwise he’d forget it; and after they had got into the car and
started the engine, Bunny whispered, “Gee whiz, Dad, aren’t you taking a
chance?” But Dad said, “You let him stay in pickle a while. I got all
the land I can drill right now.”

“But Dad, he might get some one else to drill it!”

“Don’t you worry! You want that land, because you got a hunch; but
nobody else has got any hunches around here, and young Bandy’ll get
tired after he’s tried a while. Let’s you and me go a-fishin’.”

So they went, and drew beautiful cold shiny trout out of a little
mountain lake, and late in the evening they got back to the Rascum
place, and Paul fried the fish, and the three of them had a gorgeous
supper, and afterwards Dad smoked a cigar and asked Paul all sorts of
questions about science. Dad said he wished he had-a got that kind of
education when he was young, that was a sort of stuff worth knowing; why
didn’t Bunny study biology and physics, instead of letting them fill his
head up with Latin and poetry, and history business about old kings and
their wars and their mistresses, that wasn’t a bit of use to nobody?

Next morning they said good-bye to Paul, and went back into the
mountains, and spent most of the day getting fish; and then they set out
for Beach City, and got in just about bed-time. Bunny went back to
school, and his new duties as treasurer for the baseball team; and Dad
set to work putting four more wells on the Armitage tract, and three on
the Wagstaff tract. And meantime the nations of Europe had established
for themselves two lines of death, extending all the way across the
continent; and millions of men, as if under the spell of some monstrous
enchantment, rushed to these lines to have their bodies blown to pieces
and their life-blood poured out upon the ground. The newspapers told
about battles that lasted for months, and the price of petroleum
products continued to pile up fortunes for J. Arnold Ross.

Summer was here, and Bertie had plans for her brother. Bertie was now a
young lady of eighteen, a brilliant, flashing creature—she picked out
clothing shiny enough for a circus dancer. Her trim little legs were
sheathed in the glossiest and most diaphanous silk, and her fancy,
pointed shoes were without a scratch. If Bertie got a dress of purple or
carmine or orange or green, why then, mysteriously, there were stockings
and shoes, and a hat and gloves and even a hand-bag of the same shade;
Dad said she would soon be having sport-cars to match. Dad was grimly
humorous about the stacks of bills, and not a little puzzled by this
splendid young butterfly he had helped to hatch out. Aunt Emma said the
child was entitled to her “fling,” and so Dad paid the charges, but he
stood as solid as Gibraltar against Bertie’s efforts to push him into
her social maelstrom. By golly, no—he was scared to death of them high
muckymucks, and especially the women, when they glared at him through
their law-nets, or whatever they called them—he felt the size of a
potato-bug. What could he say to people that didn’t know an under-reamer
from a sucker-rod rotator?

This vulgar attitude had been taken up by Bunny, who thought it was
“smart”—so his sister jeered. Of course a young lady of eighteen hardly
condescends to be aware of the existence of a kid of sixteen; but there
were younger brothers and sisters of Bertie’s rich friends, and she
wanted Bunny to scrape the oil from underneath his finger-nails, and
come into this fashionable world, and get a more worthwhile girl than
Rosie Taintor. Bunny, always curious about new things, tried it for a
while, and had to confess that these ineffable rich young persons didn’t
interest him very much; he couldn’t see that they knew anything, or
could do anything special. Their talk was all about one another, and
they had so many cryptic allusions and so much home-made slang that it
amounted almost to a new language. Bunny didn’t like any of them well
enough to be interested in deciphering it, and he would rather put on
his oil clothes and drive out to the wells that were drilling, and if
there was no other job for a “roughneck,” he would help the cathead-men
and the tool-dressers to scrape out the mass of sand and ground-up rock
that came out with the mud, and that was forever choking the way to the
sump-hole.

Meantime Bunny was thinking, and pretty soon he had a scheme. “Dad,”
said he, “what about that cabin we were going to build at Paradise?”

“Well, what?” asked Dad.

“Paul writes that Ruth has come to stay with him. So next fall, when we
want to go after quail, there won’t be any place for us. Let’s go up
there now, and have a holiday, and build that cabin now.”

“But son, it’s hot as Flujins up there in summer!” Bunny didn’t know
where or what “Flujins” might be; but he answered that Paul was standing
it, and anyhow it was good for you to sweat, Dad was getting too heavy,
and he could sit under the bougainvillea vine in a Palm Beach suit while
Bunny did carpentry work with Paul, and it would be a change, and Bunny
would call up Dr. Blakiston and have him order it. Whereupon Dad
grinned, and said all right, and he might jist as well adopt that
Watkins pair and be done with it.

So they went up to the Rascum ranch, taking their tent along—and Paul
and Ruth insisted on giving up the house, and Ruth slept in the tent,
and Paul made his bed in the empty hay-mow. Paul had hired a horse and
plow, and had a flourishing vegetable garden and big patch of beans, and
had set in strawberries which he was tending with a little hand
cultivator; they had half a dozen goats, and plenty of milk, and some
chickens which Ruth took care of.

And most amazing of all, Paul had got the books from Judge Minter’s
library. Most of them were still in boxes, because there was no place
for them; but Paul had made some shelves out of a packing-box, and there
stood Huxley and Haeckel and Renan, and other writers absolutely fatal
to the soul of any person who reads them. But “Pap” had given up, Ruth
said, she had got too growed up all of a sudden, too big to be “whaled;”
and besides, Pap’s rheumatix was terrible, and Eli couldn’t heal it. Dad
said that when they were ordering the lumber for the cabin they would
get some stuff for bookshelves, and Paul could build them during the
winter. Dad and Paul had another argument, and Dad said this was his
house, wasn’t it, and he sure had a right to put some bookshelves in it
if he wanted them; Paul could lend him some books when he come up here,
and jist help him get a bit of education, even now, as old as he was.

It was a happy family, and a fine place to be, because it took Dad’s
mind off his wells, and his trouble with one of his best foremen, that
had gone and got married to a fool flapper, and didn’t have his mind on
his work no more. They got the lumber from the dealer at Roseville, and
Paul was the “boss-carpenter,” and Bunny was the “jack-carpenter,” and
Dad kind of fussed around until he got to perspiring too hard, and then
he went and sat under the bougainvillea blossoms, and Ruth opened him a
bottle of grape-juice, that was part of the fancy stuff he had brought
in.

And then in the evening they would drive into Paradise and get the mail,
and there came a little local paper that old Mr. Watkins took, and Bunny
began to look it over, and gosh-amighty, look at this, Dad—a story on
the front page, about the marvelous meeting that Eli had held at Santa
Lucia, and how frenzied the worshipers had got, and Eli had made the
announcement that he had been commissioned to build the Tabernacle of
the Third Revelation, which was to be all of snow-white marble, with a
frieze of gold, and was to occupy one entire block in Angel City, and be
of exactly the dimensions which had been revealed to Eli in a dream. The
dimensions were given, and Dad said they were bigger than any block that
Eli would find in Angel City, but no doubt they’d find a way to get
round that, and call it a new Revelation. The Roseville “Eagle”—that
was the name of the paper—was boastful of Eli, who was “putting the San
Elido valley on the map,” it said. The Apostolic Church of Paradise was
to be rebuilt out of the “free will offerings” at Eli’s meetings; but
the old structure would be preserved, so that pilgrims might come to
visit the place where the True Word had been handed down.

And then came Mr. Hardacre, meeting them on the street. He said that
young Bandy had got tired of his idea that Dad was going to drill; he
wanted to take his parents to the city and be a business man, so the
family would take Dad’s offer if it was still open. Dad said all right,
to let him know, he’d come in any time, and they’d put it into escrow.
Next day Mr. Hardacre drove out to the Rascum place, and said he’d taken
the escrow officer out to the Bandy place, and old Mr. Bandy and his
wife had signed the agreement to deliver the deed; and so Dad and Bunny
got into their car, and drove to the bank, and Dad put up four thousand
dollars, and signed a contract to pay eight thousand more when the title
search was completed. Then, when they were out of the bank, he grinned
and said, “All right, son, now you can drill your tract!”

Of course, Bunny wanted to go right to it—wanted Dad to telephone for
his head foreman, and get a road contractor at work! But Dad said they’d
finish the cabin first, and meantime he’d be thinking. So Bunny went
back to work, nailing shingles on the roof, and he was happy as a
youngster could be—except for one uncomfortable thought that was
gnawing like a worm in his soul. How could he tell Paul and Ruth about
their decision to drill, and would Paul and Ruth consider that Dad had
got the Watkins ranch upon false pretences?

Fate was kind to Bunny. Something happened—you could never guess it in
a thousand years! Only three days had passed since they put through the
Bandy deal, and Dad was still thinking matters over, when Meelie Watkins
came walking from her home—with a big blue sun-bonnet to protect her
from the mid-day sun—and brought an amazing piece of news. Old Mr.
Wrinkum, driving in from town, had stopped by, and told Pap that a big
oil concern, the Excelsior Petroleum Company, had leased the Carter
ranch, on the other side of the valley, about a mile west of Paradise,
and was going to start drilling for oil! Meelie gave this news to Dad,
who was sitting under the bougainvillea; and Dad shouted to Bunny and
Paul, who were up laying the floor of the cabin. The two came running,
and Ruth came running from her chicken-yard, and when they heard the
news, Bunny cried, “Excelsior Pete! Why, Dad, that’s one of the Big
Five!”

They stared at each other, and suddenly Dad clenched his hands and
exclaimed, “By golly, them people don’t drill unless they know what
they’re doin’. Bunny, I believe I’ll try a well here on our place, and
see what we get!”

“Oh, Mr. Ross!” exclaimed Ruth. “You ought to do it—my Uncle Eby always
used to say there was oil here!”

“Is that so?” said Dad. “Well, I’ll take a chance then, jist for fun.”
And he looked at Bunny, with just the flicker of a smile. It told Bunny
a lot, when he came to think it over; Dad had guessed that Bunny was
worried, and exactly what was his dilemma with the Watkinses; and Dad
had had the wit to save Bunny’s face, and avoid the need of confessing.
Dear, kind old Dad, that was anxious to do everything for his boy—that
would even do his lying for him! How could any boy refuse to be content
with such a happy solution of his ethical problems?




                               CHAPTER VI
                              THE WILD-CAT


                                   I

Dad had thought things over, and studied his bank account, and given his
decision; they would drill the Ross Junior-Paradise No. 1, and do it
quick, and give the “Excelsior Pete” crowd a run for their money; there
was no use letting the Big Five think they owned the whole oil industry.
Dad would stick here and see things started; so he phoned for his
geologist, and hunted up a contractor to figure over a well for water.

Mr. Banning, the geologist, came next day, and gave Bunny’s hopes a
knock over the head at the very outset. He said Dad was right in his
idea that you couldn’t count very much on that streak of oil on the top
of the ground. You might come on oil-sands one or two hundred feet down,
but they wouldn’t be likely to amount to much; if that was all you were
looking for, you might bring in one of those little drilling-rigs on
wheels such as they used back in Pennsylvania! But out here, said Mr.
Banning, the real oil-sands lay deep, and you never knew what you’d find
till you got there. But he liked the looks of the district, and thought
it worth a chance; he spent a couple of days wandering over the hills
with Dad and Bunny, studying the slope of the strata, and finally he and
Dad chose the side of a hill on the Watkins ranch, not far from the
place where Bunny had sat and talked with Ruth while she tended the
goats.

The water-well man came, offering to drill a four-inch well for $2.12 a
foot; and Dad signed a contract with him, on the basis of his making so
many feet a day, and getting a bonus if he went above that, and paying a
forfeit if he fell below it. After which Dad and Bunny drove over to pay
a visit to Mr. Jeremiah Carey, a rancher near Roseville, who was
chairman of the county board of supervisors, which had to do with the
all-important question of road construction.

A great part of the road passed through Dad’s own property; and it had
been Bunny’s naive idea that Dad would call in a contractor, and pay the
price, as in the case of the water well. But Dad said no, that wasn’t
the way you did with roads; it was a public road, running from Paradise
to Roseville, down along the slide, and it would be graded and paved at
public expense. To be sure, Dad would use this road more than anyone
else, but also he would pay some of the taxes; all the people owning
property along the slide would pay a share, and the new road would
increase the value of their property.

All this Dad explained, first to Bunny, and then to Mr. Carey, a
friendly old fellow who grew apricots and peaches on the slopes of a
ridge overlooking the San Elido valley. Mr. Carey was evidently pleased
to meet a famous oil operator, and he took them up to the house and made
them sit comfortable in big porch chairs, and called to Mrs. Carey to
bring some lemonade for Bunny. Dad produced his gold-foil cigars, and
told the chairman of the county board of supervisors what a great thing
it was going to mean for this whole section if oil developments came in;
he told about the Bankside lease at Prospect Hill, and the million and
more which he had paid to the Bankside family, and the palace on the
beach front which Mr. Bankside was now occupying; you could see the eyes
of Mr. and Mrs. Carey open wider and wider, as Dad visioned this slope
covered with a forest of oil-derricks. Absolutely, the whole thing
depended upon one problem, that of roads. Manifestly, you couldn’t bring
in derrick materials and drilling tools and heavy machinery over that
sheep-track which they now had, and which had jist broken a spring on
Dad’s new motor-car; nor could the county expect Dad to improve a public
road at his own expense, in order to have the privilege of paying tens
of thousands of dollars of new taxes into the county treasury. To all of
which Mr. Carey agreed.

Dad went on to say that it was a question of time; if the county
authorities were going to dilly-dally along, and keep him waiting—why
then, he had plenty of other tracts he could drill, and he would keep
this here Paradise place for a quail-preserve. Mr. Carey looked worried,
and said he’d do his best, but of course Mr. Ross understood that public
affairs didn’t move in a hurry, you had to issue bonds to pave a new
road, and there would have to be a special election to vote them. Dad
said that was what he had come to find out about; if that was the case,
it was all off so far as he was concerned. Wasn’t there some way this
work could be done at once, on the basis of its being repairs to an old
road, instead of new paving? And Mr. Carey said of course, they had
funds for repair work, he didn’t know just how much, he’d have to
consult his associates on the board.

Mr. Carey got up and strolled down to the car with Dad and Bunny; and as
they stood there chatting, Dad took out an envelope from his pocket, and
said: “Mr. Carey, I’m asking a lot of your time, and it ain’t fair you
should work for nothing. I hope you won’t take offense if I ask you to
let me pay your gasoline and tire-cost while you’re running about
a-seein’ to this.” Mr. Carey hesitated, and said he didn’t know whether
that would be exactly proper or not; and Dad said it would be
understood, it was jist for Mr. Carey’s time, it wouldn’t change his
judgment as to what should be done; they would have other dealings, no
doubt, and perhaps some day Dad would come wild-catting on Mr. Carey’s
ranch. The other put the envelope into his pocket, and said Dad would
hear from him soon.

Now Bunny had been taking a course in school which was called “civics,”
and had learned all about how the government of his country was run.
There had been many discussions in class, and among other things they
had mentioned “corruption of public officials.” Bunny—of course without
any hint that he had ever had personal knowledge of such a thing—had
asked the lady teacher about the possibility of a business man’s paying
a public official extra sums for his time and trouble in public matters;
and the lady teacher had been shocked by such a suggestion, and had
declared that it would be bribery without question. So now Bunny told
Dad, and the latter explained. It was the difference between a
theoretical and a practical view of a question. The lady-teacher had
never had to drill an oil well, her business didn’t depend on moving
heavy materials over a sheep-trail; all she did was jist to sit in a
room and use high-soundin’ words, like “ideals” and “democracy” and
“public service.” That was the trouble with this education business, the
people that taught was people that never done things, and had no real
knowledge of the world.

In this case it all came down to one question, did they want to drill
the Watkins tract or not. Of course they might wait ten years, till in
the course of the county’s development somebody else come in and did
what Dad was now a-doin’—put skids under the public authorities, and
“greased” the skids. In a great many cases the authorities were greedy,
they went out on purpose to hold you up and make you pay; in other cases
they was jist ignorant and indifferent; but anyhow, if you wanted things
done you had to pay for them. Dad explained the difference between
public and private business; in your own business, you were boss, and
you drove ahead and pushed things through; but when you ran into public
authorities, you saw graft and waste and inefficiency till it made you
sick. And yet there was fools always rooting for public ownership;
people who called themselves Socialists, and wanted to turn everything
over to the government to run, and when they had their way, you’d have
to fill out a dozen application blanks and await the action of a board
of officials before you could buy a loaf of bread.

Dad said that Bunny would get a practical course in civics, that he
could take back to his teacher; they wasn’t going to get their road,
jist by paying a tip to one apricot-grower. And sure enough, they
didn’t! A couple of days later Dad got Mr. Carey on the phone, and
learned that he had interviewed the other board members, and feared
there would be some opposition; the board came up for re-election this
fall, and there had been a lot of grumbling over the waste of road
funds, and nobody wanted to take on any more troubles. There was to be a
meeting of the board next week, and meantime, if Dad had any influence,
it would be a good time for him to use it. Dad repeated this to Bunny,
and explained, he was supposed to call on the other board members and
distribute some more envelopes. “But I’ll do it wholesale,” said Dad,
“and I’ll do it quick—before the Excelsior Pete crowd wake up to what’s
happening. That’s our only chance, I’ve an idea.”

So Dad strolled into the office of Mr. Hardacre, the real estate agent,
and through the smoke of a gold-foil cigar he put to that knowing
gentleman the problem of what people he, Mr. Hardacre, would call on, in
case he wanted to get a road built in San Elido county. Mr. Hardacre
laughed and said that first he’d go to see Jake Coffey, and after that
he’d go home and rest. Further questions elicited the fact that Jake
Coffey was a hay and feed dealer in the town of San Elido, the county
seat; also, he was the Republican boss of the county. Dad said all
right, thanks, and he and Bunny were soon in the car, and headed for San
Elido at Dad’s customary speed. “Now, son,” said he, “you’ll finish your
lesson in civics!”

                                   II

Jacob Coffey, Hay, Feed and Grain, Lime, Cement and Plaster, sat in the
private office behind his store, with his feet on a center table from
which the remains of a poker game had not yet been cleaned. He was a
hard-bitten individual with tight-shut mouth and other features to
correspond; his skin was tanned to leather, and all his teeth were gold,
so far as they showed. He got his feet off the table and stood up; and
when he heard Dad’s name, he said: “I was rather expecting you’d call.”
Dad said: “I only jist heard about you. I came at fifty miles an hour.”
So they were friends, and Mr. Coffey accepted a gold-foil cigar instead
of his half-chewed one, and they sat down to business.

“Mr. Coffey,” said Dad, “I am an independent oil man; what the Big Five
call one of the ‘little fellers’—though not so little that I won’t show
here in San Elido county. I’ve bought twelve thousand acres, and want to
prospect for oil. If there’s any here, I’ll put a couple of hundred
wells on the tract, and employ a thousand men, and pay a few million
dollars in wages, and double real estate values for five or ten miles
around. Now, Excelsior Pete is here; and of course they’ll fight to keep
me or anyone else out. The thing I want to show you political fellers is
that these big companies never put up the dough unless they have to, and
it most all goes to the state machine, anyhow. Like everything else,
they need a little competition to keep them softened up. Us independents
pay more, and we make the big fellows pay more too. I assume I’m talking
to a man who knows this game.”

“You may assume it,” said Mr. Coffey, drily. “Exactly what do you want?”

“For the present, jist one thing—a road to Paradise. It’s a case of no
road, no drilling, and that’s no bluff, but a fact you can understand,
because you haul heavy material yourself, and you may have tried to
deliver over that there sheep-trail.”

“I have,” said Mr. Coffey.

“Well, then, no words needed. I want a road, and I want it without no
red tape—I want the county to start work within the next ten days, and
jist push the job right through, so that I can get in here and drill my
well, now while I got a rig to spare. Maybe that’s never been done
before, but it’s what I want, and I’ve come to ask what it’s worth. Do I
make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Mr. Coffey, and his hard face yielded to a slight
smile. It was evident that he liked Dad’s business methods.

He told his side of the case; and Bunny understood that he was
bargaining, drawing a fancy picture of the tremendous difficulties
involved. The county machine had been having a peck of trouble of late,
some damned fool had stolen some money—a silly thing to take the
county’s money, said Mr. Coffey, when you could make so much more in
legitimate ways. Also there had been criticism of road contracts; they
had a crank in this town that published a weekly paper, the “Watch-Dog,”
and filled it with reckless charges. Well, the long and short of it was
that to use the emergency repair funds of the county to build a road for
an oil operator, would be bound to stir up a lot of fuss, and lose votes
which the county machine needed. As Mr. Ross had said, the Excelsior
Pete crowd, who already had a road to their tract, wouldn’t favor Dad’s
road; they might furnish material for the crank’s weekly paper, and they
might make a kick to the state committee, and make Mr. Coffey’s life a
little hell.

Dad listened politely—as the process of bargaining required. He said
that he appreciated all these troubles, and would expect to make up for
them. In the first place, there would be the job of carrying the county
supervisors into office. Would it seem a fair proposition if Dad were to
contribute five thousand dollars to the war chest of the campaign
committee? Mr. Coffey blew a big cloud of grey-blue tobacco-smoke into
the air, and sat gazing fixedly at the figure 5 and three O’s written in
these clouds.

“You understand,” Dad added; “that’s a party matter, and separate from
any proposition I make to you personally.”

“Let’s have your whole idea,” said Mr. Coffey, quietly.

So Dad gave his “spiel” about believing in co-operation, and how he
always got a little organization together wherever he worked, and stood
by his friends and gave them a share of what he made. He told about his
Ross-Bankside No. 1, and how he had formed a syndicate for that well,
and, in order to make sure of getting his derrick material on the spot,
he had let the president of a big lumber company have two percent of
it—jist a little friendly service, and the well had earned so far
nearly six hundred thousand dollars net profits, and the president of
this company had made over twelve thousand, jist for his trouble in
seeing that Dad always got his lumber the day he asked for it.

And now here was the same thing; if Dad could get a road, he would
gamble on the Paradise tract, and Mr. Coffey might gamble with him. Dad
offered to “carry” him to the amount of two percent of the well; the
cost would run over a hundred thousand dollars, so Mr. Coffey would be
getting a two thousand dollar investment, and if the well became a
producer, he might get five or ten, or even thirty or forty thousand
dollars; such things had happened many times, and were to be reckoned
on. Of course, Dad would expect this to mean that he and Mr. Coffey
would be friends; they would work together, and help each other with any
little favors that might be needed.

And Mr. Coffey puffed several more clouds of smoke, and studied them,
and said he felt friendly to Dad; but he thought it would be better if
Dad would contribute two thousand dollars to the campaign fund, and
carry five thousand for Mr. Coffey personally. And Dad, looking him in
the eye, inquired, “Can you deliver the goods?” Mr. Coffey said yes, he
could deliver them all right, Dad needn’t have any worries. So it was a
bargain, and Dad took out his check-book and wrote out two thousand
dollars to the order of the treasurer of the county campaign committee
of the Republican party. Then he asked Mr. Coffey whether he held any
public office, and the latter replied no, he was just a plain business
man; so Dad said all right then, the agreement could be in Mr. Coffey’s
name; and he wrote a memorandum to the effect that he had received the
sum of one dollar and other good and valuable considerations, in return
for which Mr. Coffey was owner of five percent interest in the net
profits of a well to be drilled on the Abel Watkins ranch near Paradise,
to be known as the Ross Junior-Paradise No. 1. But it was understood and
agreed that the said well was not to be drilled until there was a good
hard road completed from the main street of Paradise to the entrance of
the Abel Watkins ranch, and if the said road were not completed within
sixty days the said J. Arnold Ross was under no obligation to drill the
said well, nor to return to the said Jacob Coffey the said one dollar
and other good and valuable considerations. And Dad handed that to the
said Jacob Coffey, and smiled, and remarked that he hoped it wouldn’t
fall into the hands of the “Watch-Dog.” Mr. Coffey smiled, and laid his
hand on Bunny’s shoulder, and said he hoped this young man wouldn’t make
any mistake and talk about it; and Dad said that Bunny was learning the
oil business, and the first lesson he had learned was never to talk
about his father’s affairs.

So then they shook hands all round, and the two got into their car, and
Bunny exclaimed, “But Dad, I thought you were a Democrat!” And Dad
laughed and said that he wasn’t deciding the tariff on hyperchlorides,
nor the independence of the Philippine Islands, he was jist gettin’ a
road to the Watkins ranch. Bunny said, “There’s one thing I don’t
understand; how can Mr. Coffey do all that, if he hasn’t any office?” To
which Dad answered that the big fellows as a rule avoided holding office
for that very reason, so they were free to do business. Mr. Carey could
be sent to prison if it were proven that he had taken money from Dad,
but nothing could be done to Coffey, he was jist the “boss.” The
office-holder, said Dad, was either a poor devil who needed a fifth-rate
salary, or else he was a man actuated by vanity, he liked to make
speeches, and be applauded by the crowd, and see his picture in the
papers. You would never see pictures of Jake Coffey in the papers, he
done his work in his back office, and never in the lime-light.

Bunny, of course, remembered what he had been taught in the “civics”
class, and asked if that was the way the business of government was
always run. Dad said it was about the same everywhere, from the county
up to the state, and on to the national government. It wasn’t really as
bad as it seemed, it was jist a natural consequence of the inefficiency
of great masses of people. It was all right to make spread-eagle
speeches on “democracy,” but what was the fact? Who was the voters here
in San Elido county? Why, the very boobs that Bunny had seen “jumping”
and “rolling” and “talking in tongues” at Eli’s church; and could
anybody pretend that these people could run a government? They were
supposed to decide whether or not Dad should have a road and drill a
well! It was a sure thing they couldn’t do it; and Jake Coffey was the
feller that done the deciding for them—he provided that promptness and
efficiency that business men had to have, and that couldn’t be got under
our American system.

                                  III

The water-well men got to work, and the telephone linemen; and Dad said
it was time to figure on living quarters for their crew. They would get
along with a bunk-house while they were prospecting; then, if they found
oil, they’d put up nice cabins for the families of the men. Dad said to
Paul that he was foolish to waste his time on beans and strawberries,
which would keep him a pauper all his life; he had better turn carpenter
and do this building job, and after that he could learn oil-drilling.
Dad would have his boss-carpenter come and figure the materials for the
bunk-house, and see to the foundations and the sills, and after that
Paul could finish the job with carpenters he’d pick up in the
neighborhood, and Dad would pay him five dollars a day, which was jist
about five times what he’d get working this old ranch by himself.

Paul said all right, and they sat down one evening and made out the
plans of the house. It was going to be real nice, Dad said, because this
was Bunny’s well, and Bunny was turning into a little social reformer,
and intended to feed his men on patty de far grar. Instead of having one
long room with bunks, they’d have little individual cubby-holes, each
with its separate window, and two bunks, one on top of the other, for
the day man and the night man. There would be a couple of showers, and
besides the dining-room and kitchen and store-room, a nice sitting-room,
with a victrola and some magazines and books; that was Bunny’s own idea,
he was a-goin’ to have a sure enough cultured oil-crew.

Dad and Bunny took a drive to Roseville, to get some furniture and stuff
for their own cabin, which was now complete. Dad purchased a copy of the
“Eagle,” fresh off the press, and he opened it, and burst into a roar of
laughter. Bunny had never seen him do that in his life before, so he
looked in a hurry, and there on the front page was a story about one
Adonijah Prescott, a rancher who lived near the slide between Paradise
and Roseville; some three months ago his wagon had been overturned and
his collar-bone broken, and now he was filing suit against the county
for fifteen thousand dollars damages; more than that, he was suing each
and every member of the county board of supervisors, alleging neglect of
their public duties in leaving the road in an unsafe condition! On the
editorial page appeared a two-column discourse on the dreadful condition
of the aforesaid road; there were mineral springs nearby, and it had
been proposed to develop them, but the project had been dropped, because
of lack of transportation; and now there were possibilities of oil, but
these also were in danger, because of bad roads, which kept San Elido
one of the most backward counties of the state. The “Eagle” stated that
a public-spirited rancher, Mr. Joe Limacher, was circulating a petition
for immediate repairs to the road along the slide, and it was to be
hoped that all citizens and tax-payers would sign up.

Next day along came Mr. Limacher, in a rusty Ford, and asked Dad to
sign! Dad looked very thoughtful, and said it would cost him a hell of a
lot of taxes. The public-spirited Mr. Limacher—who was being paid three
dollars a day by Jake Coffey—argued a while with Dad, and in the end
Dad said all right, he didn’t want his neighbors to think him a
cheapskate, so he’d sign along with the rest. Four days later came the
news that the supervisors had held a special meeting and voted immediate
repairs to the slide road; and two days after that came the grading
gang, teams of big horses with heavy plows—you’d never have guessed
there were so many in the county, there must have been a score of them
on that two mile stretch. They tore up the ground, and men with
crow-bars rolled the boulders out of the way, and more teams with
scrapers slid the dirt this way and that, and pretty soon it began to
look like a highway. And then, beginning at the Paradise end, came
countless loads of crushed rock, in big motor-trucks which tilted up
backwards and slid out their burden. There were machines to level this
material, and great steam-rollers to roll it flat—gee, it was wonderful
to see what Dad’s money could do!

They had ordered the lumber for the bunk-house, and got it in by small
loads, and Paul was at work with half a dozen men from the neighborhood.
He had engaged them himself, telephoning from Paradise; and if any of
them felt humiliated at working under a nineteen year old boss, Dad’s
twenty-two dollar check salved their feelings at twelve-thirty every
Saturday. Even old Mr. Watkins, Paul’s father, was impressed by this
sudden rise of his “black sheep,” and no longer said anything about
hell-fire and brimstone. It was on his ranch, you understand, that all
this activity was taking place; the carpenters’ hammers were thumping
all day, and up near the head of the arroyo the artesian well was
flowing, and a gang of men and horses were leveling a road up to the
drilling site. It seemed to the Watkins family as if the whole county
had suddenly moved to their ranch. It meant high prices, right on the
spot, for everything good to eat they could raise. You could not help
being impressed by so much activity, even though you knew it was the
activity of Satan!

Best of all was the effect upon Ruth, who fairly shone with happiness
over Paul’s success. Ruth kept house for Dad and Bunny, besides what she
did for Paul and herself; but it seemed to agree with her, she filled
out, and her cheeks grew rosy. She had money to buy shoes and stockings
and clean dresses, and Bunny noticed all of a sudden that she was quite
a pretty girl. She shared Bunny’s idea that his father was a great man,
and she expressed her admiration by baking pies and puddings for him,
regardless of the fact that he was trying to keep his weight down! The
four of them had supper together every evening, after the day’s work was
done, in the Rascum bungalow with the bougainvillea vine; and then they
sat out under the vine in the moonlight and talked about what they had
done, and what they were going to do, and the world was certainly an
interesting place to be alive in!

                                   IV

It was time for Bunny to go back to school; but first he had to pay his
semi-annual visit to his mother.

Bunny had seen a notice in the paper, to the effect that Mrs. Andrew
Wotherspoon Lang was suing for divorce on grounds of desertion. Now
Mamma told him about it—her second husband had basely left her, two
years after their marriage, and she had no idea where he was. She was a
lonely and very sad woman, with tears in her eyes; Bunny could have no
idea how hard it was, how every one tried to prey upon defenseless
women. Presently, through the tears, Bunny became aware that his “pretty
little Mamma” was tactfully hinting something; she would have to have a
new name when she got the divorce, and she wanted to take back Dad’s
name, and Bunny wasn’t quite sure whether that meant that she was to
take Dad back along with his name. She asked how Dad was, and mustn’t he
be lonely, and did he have any women friends? That bothered Bunny, who
didn’t like to have people probing into his father’s relations with
women—he wasn’t sure himself, and didn’t like to think about it. He
said that Mamma would have to write to Dad, because Dad wouldn’t let
him, Bunny, talk about these matters. So then some more tears ran down
the pretty cheeks, and Mamma said that everybody shut her out, even her
own daughter, Bertie, had refused to come and stay with her this time,
and what did that mean? Bunny explained, as well as he could; his sister
was selfish, he thought, and wrapped up in her worldly career; she was a
young lady now, flying very high, with a fast set, and didn’t have time
for any of her family.

But Bertie had found time recently for a talk with her brother; telling
him that he was old enough now to know about their mother. Bertie had
got the facts long ago from Aunt Emma, and now she passed them on, and
many mysteries were solved for the boy, not merely about his mother, but
about his father. Dad had married after he was forty, being then the
keeper of a cross-roads store; he had married the village belle, who
thought she was making a great conquest. But very soon she had got ideas
beyond the village; she had tried to pry Dad loose, and finally had run
away and left him, with a prosperous bond-salesman from Angel City, who
had married her, but then got tired and left her.

Mamma’s leaving had done what all her arguments had failed to do—it had
pried Dad loose. He had thought it over and realized—what everybody
wanted was money, and he had lost out because he hadn’t made enough;
well, he’d show them. And from that time Dad had shut his lips and set
to work. Some of his associates in the village had proposed to drill for
oil, and he had gone in with them, and they had made a success, and
pretty soon Dad had branched out for himself.

Bunny thought that story over, and watched his father, and pieced things
together. Yes, he understood now—that grim concentration, and
watchfulness, and merciless driving; Dad was punishing Mrs. Andrew
Wotherspoon Lang, showing her that he was just as good a man as any
bond-salesman from the city! And Dad’s distrust of women, his idea that
they were all trying to get your money away from you! And his centering
of all his hopes upon Bunny, who was going to be happy, and to have all
of his father’s virtues and none of his faults, and provide that meaning
and justification which Dad couldn’t find in his own life! When Bunny
thought of that, he would have a sudden access of affection, and put his
arm across Dad’s shoulders, and say something about how his father was
working too hard, and how Bunny must hurry and grow up and carry some of
the load.

He ventured very timidly to broach the matter of his mother’s debts, and
her plea that her income be increased; and so he got his father’s point
of view about his mother. There was jist no use a-givin’ her money, Dad
said; she was the type that never lives upon an income, but always has
debts and is discontented. It wasn’t stinginess on Dad’s part, nor any
wish to punish her; she had money enough to live like she had bargained
to live when she married him, and that was his idea of justice. She had
had nothing to do with his later success, and no claim upon its fruits.
If she once found out that she could get money from Bunny, she would
jist make his life miserable, and that was why Dad was so determined
about it. The tradesmen could sue his mother, but they couldn’t collect
anything, so in the end they’d learn not to give her credit, and that
would be the best thing for her. It was a painful subject, but the time
had come when Bunny must understand it, and learn that women who tried
to get your money away from you would even go so far as to marry you!

Bunny didn’t say so, but he thought Dad was a little too pessimistic
about one-half the human race. Bunny knew there were women who weren’t
like that, for he had found one—Rosie Taintor, who had been his
sweetheart now for a year or more. Rosie always tried to keep him from
spending money on her, saying that she didn’t have any money, and it
wasn’t fair; she would ride in his car, but that was all. She was so
gentle and good—and Bunny was very unhappy about what was happening to
their love-affair. But his efforts to deny the truth to himself had been
futile—he was beginning to be bored by it! They had looked at the
eighteenth-century English prints until they knew them by heart; and
Rosie’s comment on everything was still the same—“wonderful!” Bunny had
gone on to new things, and he wanted new comments, and could not help
wanting them, no matter how cruel it seemed. Therefore he did not take
Rosie driving so often, and once or twice he took some other girl to a
dance. And little Rosie was gentle and demure as ever, she did not even
cry, at least not in his presence; Bunny was deeply touched, but like
all male creatures, he found it an immense convenience when old loves
consent to die painlessly, and without making a fuss! Without realizing
it, he got ready to fall in love with some new girl.

                                   V

The new road was done, and the bunk-house was done, and occupied; Dad’s
boss-carpenter had gone up there, and Paul was working with him on the
derrick. Then came the fleet of motor-trucks, with the drilling tools,
and they were rigging up, and Paul was helping with that. Bunny was in
school, and missing all the fun, but Dad got a report almost every day
from his foreman, and passed it on to Bunny at supper-time. They were
behind in their race with Excelsior Pete, which had already spudded in,
having had the advantage of a road from the start; but Dad said not to
worry, it would be a long way to the bottom of those wells.

Bunny’s great hour came; it happened to be a Friday, and he begged off
from school—it wasn’t often that a boy had such an excuse, that he had
a “wild-cat” named after him, and had to go to press a lever and start
the drilling machinery! They set out early in the morning, and arrived
in mid-afternoon; and rolling over that new road, hard and smooth and
grey, how proud they felt! They came to the Watkins arroyo, and the new
road leading into it—their own private road, so marked! There was no
one at the Watkins place, everyone had gone up to the well; you could
see a crowd gathered about the derrick—the nice new shiny derrick of
yellow pine, built on a little shelf, half-way up the slope—the Ross
Junior-Paradise Number One!

They drove up, and the foreman welcomed them; everything was ready, the
last bolt tight, and full steam up—they could have started a couple of
hours ago. Bunny looked about; there was Paul among the other workmen,
keeping himself in the background. And Ruth—she was with her family;
Bunny went up to them, he was glad to see them all, even old Mr.
Watkins, in spite of the jumping and the rolling and the rheumatix and
other troubles. The whole neighborhood was there, and Bunny knew many of
them by name, and spoke to them, whether he knew them or not; they all
liked this eager lad—the young prince who had a well named after him.
Some of them in their secret hearts were “sore,” because they had sold
their land so cheap, and if they had held on, they too might have become
rich and famous; but nothing of that showed now, this was a great hour,
a ceremony about which they would talk for many a day.

Dad looked things over, and asked a few questions, and was about to say,
“Go,” when he noticed another car coming up the road. It was a big shiny
limousine, and it rolled up fast, and the crowd parted, and it stopped,
and from it descended—gee whiz, could you believe your eyes?—a young
man, tall and rather gawky, stoop-shouldered, sun-tanned, with pale blue
eyes and a mop of corn-colored hair; Eli Watkins, Prophet of the Third
Revelation, transfigured and glorified in a stiff white collar and black
tie and black broadcloth suit, ill-fitting but expensive, and with a
manner cut to the same pattern, that peculiar blend of humble pride
which the divine profession generates. He was followed by an elderly
rich gentleman, who assisted from the car two ladies with costumes, as
you might say the feminine gender of Eli’s; they were some of the
prophet’s new converts, or those whom he had “healen.” The neighbors
stared respectfully, and for a minute or two the well was forgotten, the
spiritual power took precedence over the temporal.

Dad came forward, and shook hands with the prophet; bye-gones were to be
bye-gones, and all disharmonies forgotten in this great hour. Bunny was
amazed by what happened, for he had never known Dad to make a speech
unless he was made to. But there was a whimsical streak in J. Arnold
Ross, which bubbled up once in a while, and caused these queer turns of
events. Dad faced the crowd, and clearing his throat, said: “Ladies and
gentlemen, we are drilling this here well on the ranch where Mr. Eli
Watkins was born, so perhaps he would like to say jist a few words to
you on this occasion.” There was a round of hand-clapping, and Eli
colored, and was obviously very much flattered; he took a step or two
forwards, and folded his hands in front of him in the fashion of a
blessing, and lifted his head, and half closed his eyes, and the booming
voice rolled out:

“Brethren and sisters: Upon these hills have I tendened my father’s
herds, like the prophets of old, and have harkened unto the voice of the
Holy Spirit, speaking to me in the storms and the thunders. Brethren and
sisters, the Lord unfoldens Himself in many ways, and gives precious
gifts to His children. The treasures of the yearth are His, and when in
His Mercy they are handened unto mankind, it is His Will that they be
used in His service and unto His Glory. The things of the body are
subjected unto the things of the spirit; and if in God’s wisdom it
should happen that this well should bring forth treasure, may it be used
in the service of the Most Highest, and may His Blessings rest upon all
they that own or labor for it. Amen.”

There was a chorus from the audience, “Amen!” And so there you were, a
regular consecration! All the lies that Dad had told to the Watkins
family and to others, the bribes that he had paid to Messrs. Carey and
Coffey—all these were abrogated, nullified, and remitted, and the Ross
Junior-Paradise No. 1 was from that time forth a sanctified well. And so
Dad turned and looked at Bunny, who was standing by the engine with the
lever in his hand. “All right, son!” And Bunny moved the lever, and the
engine gave a thump, and the chain gave a pull, and the gears gave a
rattle, and the rotary-table gave a turn, and down underneath the
derrick-floor you heard that exciting sound which the oil men report as
“Spud!”

                                   VI

At less than two hundred feet they struck the sands which accounted for
Bunny’s “earthquake oil;” there proved to be two feet of them, and Dad
said it would give them enough oil to run their own car for a year! They
were going deeper, still with an eighteen-inch bit, through hard
sandstone formation; they were working in an open hole, with no casing,
because the ground was so firm. Paul was working as a general utility
man, mainly carpentry. “Dad, we’re going to make Paul our manager some
day,” Bunny had said; but Paul had smiled and said that he was going to
be a scientist, and he wouldn’t fool himself with the idea that the jobs
at the top were easy—he’d not exchange his eight hour job for Dad’s
eighteen hour job. This was a subtle kind of flattery, and gave Dad a
tremendously high opinion of Paul!

Thanksgiving Day was coming; and Bunny’s soul was torn in half. It was a
great occasion at the school, the annual football battle with a rival
institution known as “Polly High,” located in Angel City. And what was
Bunny, a real boy or an oil gnome? He fought it out within himself, and
announced his decision, to the dismay of Rosie Taintor and of Aunt
Emma—he was going to Paradise with Dad! It was the quail season, and
Dad needed a change, the boy told his aunt; but the sharp old lady said
he could fool himself, but he couldn’t fool her.

They didn’t have to take any camping things now, for they had their
cabin on the Rascum place, with a telephone and everything comfortable.
There was an extension phone in the bungalow, and all they had to do was
to call up Ruth, and there would be a jolly fire in the cabin, and a
supper on the table at the bungalow, with all kinds of home-made good
things, the eating of which would make it necessary for Dad to walk
miles and miles over the hills next day! First, of course, they would
stop at the well, and inspect things, and have a talk with the foreman.
There were traces of oil again, and Dad had told them to take a core,
and he asked Mr. Banning to come up next day and study it with him.

They came in sight of the derrick. The drill-stem was out of the hole,
they could see the mass of “stands” setting in place. When they got
nearer, they saw that the crew had a cable down in the hole; and when
Dave Murgins, the foreman, saw them, he came out to the car, and it was
plain that something was wrong. “We’ve had an accident, Mr. Ross.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s a man fell in the hole.”

“Oh, my God!” cried Dad. “Who?” And Bunny’s heart was in his throat, for
of course his first thought was Paul.

“A roughneck,” said the foreman. “Fellow by the name of Joe Gundha. You
don’t know him.”

“How did that happen?”

“Nobody knows. We was changing the bit, and this fellow went down into
the cellar for some reason—he had no business there that we know of.
Nobody thought about him for a while.”

“You sure he went down?”

“We been fishing with a hook, and we got a bit of his shirt.”

Bunny was white about the lips. “Oh, Dad, will he be alive?”

“How long has he been down?”

“We’ve been fishing half an hour,” said Murgins.

“And you haven’t heard a sound?”

“Not one.”

“Well then, he’s drowned in the mud. How far down is he?”

“About fifty feet. The mud sinks that far when we take out the
drill-stem. He must have went down head first, or he’d have been able to
keep his head above the mud and make a noise.”

“My God! My God!” exclaimed Dad. “It makes me want to quit this
business! What can you do to help men that won’t help themselves?”

Bunny had heard that cry a thousand times before. They had a cover for
the hole, and any man who went down into the cellar was supposed to slip
it into place. Of necessity the dirt caved in about the edges, so that
the top of the hole was a kind of funnel, its edges slippery with mud,
and in this case with traces of oil; yet men would take chances, sliding
around on the edge of that yawning pit! What could you do for them?

“Has he got any family?” asked Dad.

“He told Paul Watkins he’d got a wife and some children in Oklahoma; he
worked in the oil fields there.”

Dad sat motionless, staring in front of him; and nobody said a word.
They knew he really was interested in his men, taking care of them was a
matter of personal pride to him. Bunny had turned sort of sick inside;
gee, what a shame—in his well, of all places, his first one, that was
to start off the new field! It was all spoiled for him; he wouldn’t be
able to enjoy his oil if he got it!

“Well,” said Dad, at last, “what are you doin’? Jigglin’ a hook up and
down in there? You’ll never get him up that way. You’ll have to put down
a three-pronged grab.”

“I thought that would tear him so—” explained Dave Murgins,
hesitatingly.

“I know,” said Dad; “but you’ve got it to do. It ain’t as if he might
have any life in him. Bend the prongs so they fit the hole, and force
them past the body. Go ahead and get it over with, and let’s hope it’ll
teach the rest of you something.”

Dad got out of the car, and told Bunny to take their things down to the
Rascum place, and break the news to Ruth; she’d be upset, especially if
she knew the fellow. Bunny understood that Dad didn’t want him around
when that torn body came out of the hole; and since he couldn’t do any
good, he turned the car in silence, and drove away. In his mind he saw
the men screwing the “grab” onto the drill-stem—a tool which was built
to go over obstacles that fell into the hole, and to catch hold of them
with sharp hooks. They might get Joe Gundha by the legs and they might
get him by the face—ugh, the less you thought about a thing like that,
the better for your enjoyment of the oil-game!

Dad came to the cabin after a couple of hours, and lay down for a while
to rest. They had got the body out, he said, and had telephoned for the
coroner; he would swear in several of the men as a jury, and hear the
testimony of others, and look at the body, and then give a burial
permit. Paul had been to the dead man’s bunk and looked over his things,
and put them all into a box to be shipped to his wife; Dad had in his
pocket half a dozen letters that had been found among the things, and
because he didn’t want Bunny to think that money came easy, or that life
was all play, he gave him these letters, and Bunny sat off in a corner
and read them: pitiful little messages, scrawled in a childish hand,
telling how the doctor said that Susie’s heart would be weak for a long
time after the flu, and the baby was getting two more teeth and was
awful cross, and Aunt Mary had just been in to see her, and said that
Willie was in Chicago and doing good; there were cross-marks and circles
that were kisses from mamma, and from Susie and from the baby. One
sentence there was to cheer up Dad and Bunny: “I am glad you got such a
good boss.”

Well, it made a melancholy Thanksgiving evening for them; they ate a
little of the feast which Ruth had prepared, but without real enjoyment.
They talked about accidents, and Dad told of something which had
happened in the first well he had drilled—they were down only thirty
feet, when a baby had crawled down into the cellar and slid into the
hole. It had taken a couple of able-bodied men to hold the mother back,
while the rest of them tried to get the child out. They fished for it
with a big hook on the end of a rope, and got the hook under the baby’s
body and lifted it gently a few feet, but then the body got wedged
somehow, and they were helpless. The child had hung there, not
screaming, just making a low, moaning sound all the time, “U-u-u-” like
that, never stopping; they could hear it plainly. They started twenty
feet from the well and dug a shaft, big enough for two men to work in,
breaking the ground with crow-bars, scraping it into buckets with big
hoes, and the men on top hauling the buckets out with ropes. When they
got below the baby, they ran in sideways, and got the baby out all
right. The hook had sunk into the flesh of the thigh, but without
breaking the skin; the bruise had healed, and in a few days the child
was all right.

A strange thing was life! If Bunny had stayed home that day, he’d have
taken Rosie Taintor to the football game, and at the moment when poor
Joe Gundha had plunged to his doom, Bunny would have been yelling his
head off over a few yards gained by his team. And now, in the evening,
he’d have been at a dance; yes, Bertie actually was at a dance, at the
home of one of her fashionable friends, or at some fancy hotel where
they were giving a party. Bunny could see, in his mind’s eye, her
gleaming shoulders and bosom, her dress of soft shimmering stuff, her
bright cheeks and vivid face; she would be sipping champagne, or gliding
about the room in the arms of Ashleigh Mathews, the young fellow she was
in love with just now. Aunt Emma would be all dressed up, playing at a
card-party; and grandmother was painting a picture of a young lord, or
duke, or somebody, in short pants and silk stockings, kissing the hand
of his lady love!

Yes, life was strange—and cruel. You lived in the little narrow circle
of your own consciousness, and, as people said, what you didn’t know
didn’t hurt you. Your Thanksgiving dinner was spoiled, because one poor
laborer had slid down into a well which you happened to own; but dozens
and perhaps hundreds of men had been hurt in other wells all over the
country, and that didn’t trouble you a bit. For that matter, think of
all the men who were dying over there in Europe! All the way from
Flanders to Switzerland the armies were hiding in trenches, bombarding
each other day and night, and thousands were being mangled just as
horribly as by a grab in the bottom of a well; but you hadn’t intended
to let that spoil your Thanksgiving dinner, not a bit! Those men didn’t
mean as much to you as the quail you were going to kill the next day!

Well, the coroner came, and they buried the body of Joe Gundha, on a
hill-top a little way back out of sight, and with a wooden cross to mark
the spot. It was a job for Mr. Shrubbs, the preacher at Eli’s church;
and Eli came along, and old Mr. Watkins and his wife, and other old
ladies and gentlemen of the church who liked to go to funerals. It was
curious—Dad seemed glad to have them come and tell him what to do; they
knew, and he didn’t! Obviously, it didn’t really do the poor devil any
good to preach and pray over his mangled corpse; but at least it was
something, and there were people who came and did it, and all you had to
do was jist to stand bare-headed in the sun for a while, and hand the
preacher a ten-dollar bill afterwards. Yes, that was the procedure—in
death, as in life; you wanted something done, and there was a person
whose business it was to do that thing, and you paid him. To Bunny it
seemed a natural phenomenon—and all the same, whether it was Mr.
Shrubbs, who prayed over your dead roughneck, or the man at the filling
station who supplied the gas and oil and water and air for your car, or
the public officials who supplied the road over which you drove the car.

Dad had sent a telegram to Mrs. Gundha, telling her the sad news, and
adding that he was sending a check for a hundred dollars to cover her
immediate expenses. Now Dad wrote a letter, explaining what they had
done, and how they were sending her dead husband’s things in a box by
express. Dad carried insurance to cover his liability for accidents, and
Mrs. Gundha would be paid by the insurance company; she must present her
claim to the industrial accident commission. They would probably allow
her five thousand dollars, and Dad hoped she would invest the money in
government bonds, and not let anybody swindle her, with oil stocks or
other get rich quick schemes.

So that was that; and Dad said they might jist as well go
quail-shooting, and forget what they couldn’t help. And Bunny said all
right; but in truth he didn’t enjoy the sport, because in his mind
somehow the quail had got themselves mixed up with Joe Gundha and the
soldiers in France, and he couldn’t get any fun out of mangled bodies.

                                  VII

Christmas was coming; and Bunny had his program all laid out. He was
going to take Dad to the Christmas Day football game, and next morning
they would leave for Paradise, and stay there until it was time to go
back for the New Year’s Day football game. The well was going fine; they
were down over two thousand feet, in soft shale, and having no trouble.
Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Bunny came home from school,
and Aunt Emma said, “Your father just phoned; he’s got some news about
Excelsior Peter.” That was a joke they had in the family—“Excelsior
Peter;” Aunt Emma had guessed that “Pete” was a nick-name, and she would
be real lady-like and use the full name! So, of course, they teased the
life out of her.

“What is it?” cried Bunny.

“They’ve struck oil.”

“At Paradise?” Bunny rushed to the phone, in great excitement. Yes, Dad
said, Dave Murgins had jist phoned down; “Excelsior-Carter No. 1,” as
the well was called, had been in oil-sands for several days, and had
managed to keep it secret. Now they were cementing off, something you
couldn’t hide.

Bunny jumped into the car and rushed down to the office. Everybody was
excited; the afternoon papers had the news, and some of Dad’s oil
friends dropped in to talk about it. It meant a new field, of course;
there would be a rush to Paradise. Dad was the lucky one—to think he
had got twelve thousand acres up there, owned them outright! How had it
happened? Dad said it wasn’t his doings; he had spent a hundred thousand
dollars jist to amuse his boy, to get him interested in the business,
and perhaps teach him a lesson. But now, by golly, it looked as if the
boy had done the teaching! Mr. Bankside, who had got to be quite an oil
man now, and was drilling a well of his own, said that he always hoped
his sons would lose when they started gambling, so they’d not get the
habit; Dad said yes, but he’d risk Bunny’s soul this once, there was too
much money at stake!

After that, of course, Bunny was on pins and needles to get to Paradise;
he wanted to quit school, but Dad said no. Bunny decided he didn’t care
about that old Christmas Day football game; what did Dad think? To which
Dad answered that he’d managed to get along to the age of fifty-nine
without ever seeing a football game! So Bunny said he’d write and tell
Ruth, they’d run up on Christmas eve, starting after school, and have
dinner late, in regular society style. It would be hard for Ruth to
believe that fashionable people in the cities ate their dinner at eight
or nine o’clock at night!

Meantime, the bit was grinding away in the well; they were down to 2300
feet, and it was known that Excelsior-Carter No. 1 had struck the sands
at 2437 feet. Bunny was so much excited that he would run to the phone
in between classes at school, and call up his father’s secretary at the
office, to ask if there was any news. And so, three days before
Christmas, he got the magic word; Dad was on the phone, and said that
Bunny’s well was in oil-sands. It was too early yet to say any more,
they were taking a core, that was all. As soon as he got free from
class, Bunny went flying over to the office, and there he listened to a
conversation—Dad had put in a long distance call, and was talking to
the man from whom he got his machinery. He was ordering a patent
casing-head, the biggest made, to be shipped to the well; it was to be
put on a truck and start tonight. And then Dad was talking to Murgins
again, telling him at what hour the casing-head was due, and they must
set to work and break out the drill-stem, and put that casing-head on
tight, with lugs on the side, and jist bury it with cement, not less
than fifty tons, Dad said; they were away off from everything, out there
at Paradise, and if they was to have a blow-out, it would be the very
devil.

Well, they got their core, eight feet of it, and it was high gravity
oil—a fortune waiting for them, down underneath those rocky hills,
where the feet of goats and sheep had trod for so many years! Dad
ordered his “tankage,” and then he ordered more. Then they learned that
the casing-head had arrived; it was screwed on, and the “lugs” were on,
and when the cement had set, all the gas under Mount Vesuvius couldn’t
lift that there load, said Dad. They started drilling again, and took
another core, and found the oil heavier yet. So finally Dad gave way,
and said it was too important, he guessed Bunny would have to beg off a
day in school. Dad gave orders to “wash” the well, and he called up the
cement-man, and arranged for the big truck to set out for Paradise; Dad
would meet them there, and they would do the job the day before
Christmas, and if they got their shut-off, they’d celebrate with the
biggest turkey in that famous turkey-raising country. So, early the next
morning, Dad and Bunny chucked their suit-cases into the car, and set
out to break the speed records to Paradise. Three hours later they
stopped to telephone, and the foreman said they were “washing;” also
that the Excelsior Pete well had got a water shut-off, and had drilled
through the cement, and was going down into the oil-sands, the final
stage of making a well.

They got to San Elido; and Dad said, “We’ll jist stop and shake hands
with Jake Coffey.” They drove up to the store, and Bunny jumped out, and
there was a clerk and he said, “Jake’s gone up to Paradise to see the
well. Have you heard the news? Excelsior Pete has got a gusher, there’s
oil all over the place!” Bunny ran out and shouted to Dad, and leaped
into the car, and gosh-amighty, the way they did burn up that road
across the desert! Dad laughed, and said the speed-cops would all be up
at the well.

They got to Paradise, and the town was deserted, not a soul on the
streets, and not a car, except those that were hurrying through, like
the Rosses. A burglar could have made off with the whole place—but any
burglar would have been watching the gusher, along with the speed-cops!
You had to park your car a quarter of a mile away from the well, and you
could hear the gusher roaring like Niagara Falls! And then, walking, you
came round a turn in the road, and you could see the valley, and
everything in sight was black; there was a high wind blowing, and it was
a regular thunder cloud, a curtain of black mist as far as you could
see. The derrick was hidden altogether—you had to make a detour, behind
a little ridge, and come over the top to windward, and there the crowds
were gathered, staring at the great black jet that came rushing up out
of the ground, a couple of hundred feet into the air, with a sound like
an endless express train going by. You could see men working, or trying
to work, under the derrick; you could see a bunch of them with picks and
shovels, throwing up a sort of dam to hold the oil; they wouldn’t save
much, Dad said, it evaporated too fast.

Dad could watch this scene philosophically; it wasn’t his “funeral.” If
it had been one of the independents, like himself, he’d have offered to
help; but this was a dirty crowd, Excelsior Pete, they didn’t think the
little fellows had any business on earth, there was nothing too mean for
them to do. Of course, it was a shame to see all that treasure going to
waste; but you couldn’t be sentimental when you were playing the
oil-game. What you had to watch out for was that the wind didn’t shift
suddenly and ruin your good suit of clothes!

                                  VIII

They watched for a while, and then they remembered they had a well of
their own, and drove back to Paradise, and across the valley to the
Watkins ranch. They had a long talk with the foreman; Dad examined the
core, and the report of the chemist who had tested the oil; he saw that
the “washing” was going all right, they would be ready for the cementing
off in the morning. Everybody was on tiptoe; they were going to do their
job better than the “Excelsior Pete” crowd, and not smear all the
landscape with crude petroleum. The tankage was at the railroad depot,
and they inspected the foundations, just completed for the tanks.

Everything “hunkydory,” said Dad. They drove over to the Rascum place
and saw Ruth, and Bunny got on his hunting-clothes, and got a few quail
before sundown; and then they had supper, and Paul told them all the
gossip about the well, also how much money Eli had collected for his
temple. After supper they went back to the well—they just couldn’t keep
away! It was a crisp cold evening, a new moon in the sky, a big white
star just over it—everything so beautiful, and Bunny so happy, he owned
a “wild-cat,” and it was “coming in,” it was going to yield him a
treasure that would make all the old-time fairy-tales and Arabian Nights
adventures seem childish things. They were lifting the “water-string”
now—a process necessary to cementing off; the casing at the bottom had
to be raised, so that the cement could be forced under. It was
difficult, for the casing was wedged, and they had to put down a tool
known as a “jar,” which struck heavy blows and shook the casing loose.
Standing on the derrick platform, Bunny listened to these blows, far
down in the earth; and then suddenly came a sound, the like of which had
never assailed his ears in all his life, a sound that was literally a
blow on the side of his head; it seemed as if the whole inside of the
earth suddenly blew out. That tremendous casing-head, with its mass of
cement, which Dad had said would hold down Mt. Vesuvius, went suddenly
up into the air; straight up, with the big fourteen inch casing
following it, right through the top of the derrick, smashing the crown
block and tackle as if these had been made of sugar candy!

Of course Bunny turned and ran for his life, everybody scattered in
every direction. Bunny looked once or twice as he ran, and saw the
casing-head and a long string of casing up in the air, for all the world
like a Dutchman’s pipe, only it was straight. When this pipe-stem got
too long, it broke off, and crashed over sideways, taking part of the
derrick with it; and out of the hole there shot a geyser of water, and
then oil, black floods of it, with that familiar roaring sound—an
express train shooting out of the ground! Bunny gave a yell or two, and
he saw Dad waving his arms, and presumably calling; he started toward
his father—when suddenly, most dreadful thing of all, the whole mass of
oil up in the air burst into flame!

They were never to know what did it; perhaps an electric spark, or the
fire in the boiler, or a spark made by falling wreckage, or rocks blown
out of the hole, striking on steel; anyhow, there was a tower of flame,
and the most amazing spectacle—the burning oil would hit the ground,
and bounce up, and explode, and leap again and fall again, and great red
masses of flame would unfold, and burst, and yield black masses of
smoke, and these in turn red. Mountains of smoke rose to the sky, and
mountains of flame came seething down to the earth; every jet that
struck the ground turned into a volcano, and rose again, higher than
before; the whole mass, boiling and bursting, became a river of fire, a
lava flood that went streaming down the valley, turning everything it
touched into flame, then swallowing it up and hiding the flames in a
cloud of smoke. The force of gravity took it down the valley, and the
force of the wind swept it over the hill-side; it touched the
bunk-house, and swallowed it in one gulp; it took the tool-house,
everything that was wood; and when there came a puff of wind, driving
the stream of oil and gas to one side, you saw the skeleton of the
derrick, draped with fire!

Bunny saw his father, and ran to join him. Dad was rallying the men; was
anybody hurt? He got the crew together, one by one; they were all there,
thank God! He told Paul to run down to the ranch-house and get his
family up into the hills; he told Bunny to go with him, and keep away
from the fire—a long way, you never could tell in which direction it
would explode. So Bunny went flying down the arroyo at Paul’s heels;
they found the family down on their knees, praying, the two girls
hysterical. They got them up, and told them where to go; never mind
their few belongings, cried Bunny, Dad would pay for them. Paul shouted
to see to the goats, and they ran to the pen, but they weren’t needed;
the panic-stricken creatures flung themselves against the side of the
pen and broke through, and away they went down the arroyo; they would
take care of themselves!

Bunny started back; and on the way, here came Dad in his car. He was
going after dynamite, he called to them; they were to keep away from the
fire meantime; and off he went in the darkness. It was one time in his
life that Bunny knew his father to be caught without something he
needed; he hadn’t thought to carry any dynamite around with him on his
drives!

Of course Bunny had heard about oil fires, which are the terror of the
industry. He knew of the devices ordinarily used to extinguish them.
Water was of no use—quite the contrary, the heat would dissolve the
water into its constituents, and you would merely be feeding oxygen to
the flames. You must have live steam in enormous quantities, and for
that you needed many boilers, and they had only one here, this fire
would go on burning all the while they were fetching more; Bunny had
heard of a fire that burned for ten days, until they made a great
conical hood of steel to slide over the well, with an opening in the top
through which the flames rushed out, and into which was poured the live
steam. And meantime all the pressure would be wasted, and millions of
dollars worth of money burned up! Bunny realized that, as a desperate
alternative, Dad was going to try to plug up the hole by a dynamite
blast, even at the risk of ruining the well.

The two boys skirted the slopes, and got back to the well, on the
windward side, away from the flames. There they found the crew engaged
in digging a shaft, as close to the fire as they could get; Bunny
understood that it was in preparation for the dynamite. They had set up
a barrier against the heat, a couple of those steel troughs in which
they mixed cement; upon this they had a hose playing, the water turning
to steam as it hit. A man would run into the searing heat, and chop a
few strokes with a pick, or throw out a few shovelfuls of dirt, and then
he would flee, and another man would run in. Dave Murgins was working
the hose, lying flat on the ground with some wet canvas over his head.
Fortunately, they had pressure from the artesian well, for their pump
was out of commission, along with everything else. Dave shouted his
orders, and the hole got deeper and deeper. Paul ran in to help, and
Bunny wanted to, but Dave shouted him back, and so he had to stand and
watch his “wild-cat” burning up, and all he could do was to bake his
face a little!

They got down below the surface of the ground, and after that it was
easier; but the man who worked in that hole was risking his
life—suppose the wind were to shift, even for a few seconds, and blow
that mass of boiling oil over him! But the wind held strong and steady,
and the men jumped into the hole and dug, and the dirt flew out in
showers. Presently they were tunneling in towards the well—they would
go as close as they dared, before they set the dynamite.

And suddenly Bunny thought of his father, coming with the stuff; he
wouldn’t be able to drive up the road, he’d have to come round by the
rocky hill-side, carrying that dangerous load in the darkness. Bunny
went running, as fast as he dared, to help.

There were cars down on the road; many people had seen the glare of the
fire, and come to the scene. Bunny inquired for his father; and at last
there came a car with much tooting, and there was Dad, and another man
whom Bunny did not know. They drove as far up as they dared—the Watkins
house had been long ago swallowed by the flames. They stopped and got
out, and Dad told Bunny to take the car back to a safe place, and not
come near him or the other man with the dynamite; they would make their
way to the well, very carefully. Bunny heard Dad telling the other man
to go slow, they’d not risk their lives jist to save a few barrels of
oil.

When Bunny got back to the well again, Dad and the man were already
there, and the crew was setting the dynamite. They had some kind of
electric battery to explode it with, and presently they were ready, and
everybody stood back, and the strange man pushed down a handle, and
there was a roar and a burst of flame from the shaft, and the geyser of
oil that was rushing out of the well was snubbed off in an instant—just
as if you stopped a garden hose by pinching it! The tower of oil
dropped; it leaped and exploded a few times more, and that was the end.
The river of fire was still flowing down the arroyo, and would take a
long time to burn itself out; but the main part of the show was over.

And nobody was hurt—that is, nobody but Bunny, who stood by the edge of
the red glare, gazing at the stump of his beautiful oil-derrick, and the
charred foundations of his home-made bunk-house, and all the wreckage of
his hopes. If the boy had been a little younger, there would have been
tears in his eyes. Dad came up to him and saw his face, and guessed the
truth, and began to laugh. “What’s the matter, son? Don’t you realize
that you’ve got your oil?”

Strange as it may seem, that idea came to Bunny for the first time! He
stared at his father, with such a startled expression that the latter
put his arm about the boy and gave him a hug. “Cheer up, son! This here
is nothin’, this is a joke. You’re a millionaire ten times over.”

“Gosh!” said Bunny. “That’s really true, isn’t it!”

“True?” echoed Dad. “Why, boy, we got an ocean of oil down underneath
here; and it’s all ours—not a soul can get near it but us! Are you
a-frettin’ about this measly little well?”

“But Dad, we worked so hard over it!”

Dad laughed again. “Forget it, son! We’ll open it up again, or drill a
new one in a jiffy. This was jist a little Christmas bonfire, to
celebrate our bustin’ in among the big fellers!”




                              CHAPTER VII
                               THE STRIKE


                                   I

A year had passed, and you would hardly have known the town of Paradise.
The road was paved, all the way up from the valley, and lined with
placards big and little, oil lands for sale or lease, and shacks and
tents in which the selling and leasing was done. Presently you saw
derricks—one right alongside Eli’s new church, and another by that
holier of holies, the First National Bank. Somebody would buy a lot and
build a house and move in, and the following week they would sell the
house, and the purchaser would move it away, and start an oil-derrick. A
great many never got any farther than the derrick—for subdividers of
real estate had made the discovery that all the advertising in the world
was not equal to the presence of one such structure on the tract. You
counted eleven as you drove to the west side of the valley, where the
Excelsior gusher had spouted forth; and from the top of the ridge, you
could count fifty, belonging to a score of different companies. Going
east, there were a dozen more before you reached the Ross tract, and now
some one was prospecting on the far side of this tract, along the slide
to Roseville, where the Mineral Springs Hotel was being built.

The little Watkins arroyo was the site of a village. You counted
fourteen derricks here and there on the slopes, and big tanks down
below, and tool-houses and sheds, and an office. Dad had built the new
home of the Watkins family near the entrance to the place; they had sold
their goats, and they now irrigated a tract and raised strawberries and
garden truck and chickens and eggs for the company mess. In addition to
that, they had a little stand by the roadside, and Mrs. Watkins and the
girls baked pies and cakes and other goodies, which disappeared down the
throats of oil workers with incredible rapidity, assisted by “soft
drinks” of vivid hues. But you couldn’t buy any “smokes” at the stand,
these being contrary to the Third Revelation, and obtainable at the
rival stand across the road.

The new bunk-house stood a little way back, under the shelter of some
eucalyptus trees. It had six shower-baths, which were generously
patronized, but to Bunny’s great sorrow you seldom saw anybody in the
reading-room, despite the pretty curtains which Ruth had made; the
high-brow magazines were rarely smudged by the fingers of oil workers.
Bunny tried to find out why, and Paul told him it was because the men
had to work too long hours; Paul himself, as a carpenter, had an eight
hour day, and found time for reading; but the oil workers were on two
shifts, twelve hours each, and they worked every day in the year, both
Sundays and holidays. When you had put in that much time handling heavy
tools, you wanted nothing but to get your supper and lie down and snore.
This was a problem which Dad was too busy to solve just now.

Paul was boss-carpenter, having charge of all the building operations;
quite a responsibility for a fellow not quite of age. So far they had
completed forty shacks for the workers’ families, costing about six
hundred dollars each, and renting for thirty dollars a month, with
water, gas and electric light free. No one knew exactly what these
latter services cost, so Bunny could not determine whether the price was
fair or not, and neither could the oil workers; but Dad said they were
glad to get the houses, which was the business man’s way of determining
fairness.

But there was one point upon which Bunny had interfered with energy; he
didn’t see why everything about the oil industry had to be so ugly, and
certainly something ought to be done about these shacks. He asked Ruth
about it, and they drove to a nursery in San Elido, and without saying
anything to Dad, incurred a bill for a hundred young acacia trees, each
in a tin can, and two hundred climbing roses, each with its roots tied
up in a gunny sack. So now at every shack there was a young tree with a
stake beside it, and all along the road there were frames made of gas
pipe, with a rose vine getting ready to climb. It was Ruth’s duty once a
month to pull one of the laborers off his job and make him soak the
trees and the vines, and next day cultivate them and dig away the grass
and weeds. For this service Ruth was compelled to receive a salary of
ten dollars a month, and bore the imposing title of “Superintendent of
Horticultural Operations.” Bunny would inspect the growing plants, and
sit in his reading-room, and persuade himself that he had made a start
as a social reformer, resolving the disharmonies between capital and
labor, about which he was being taught in the “social ethics” class in
school.

Bunny was now almost eighteen, slender, but well built, and something of
a runner. He was brown as ever, and his hair was still wavy, and his
lips red and pretty like a girl’s; he was merry on the surface, but
serious underneath, trying most conscientiously to prepare for the task
of administering some millions of dollars of capital, and directing the
lives of some thousands of workingmen. If the people who wrote books
about these matters, and taught them in school, had any useful
suggestions, Bunny wanted to get them; so he listened, and read what he
was told to read, and then he would come home and ask Dad about it, and
when he visited the field, he would ask Paul. The teachers and the
textbooks said there was no real disharmony between capital and labor;
both were necessary to industry, they were partners, and must learn to
get along together. And Dad said that was all right, only, like
everything else, it was theory, and didn’t always work out. Dad said
that the workingmen were ignorant, and wanted things the industry
couldn’t afford to give; it was from this the quarrels grew. But Dad
didn’t know what to do about it, and apparently wasn’t trying to find
out; he was always too busy getting some new tract developed; and Bunny
couldn’t very well complain—having got Dad into this latest pile of
work!

It seemed a shame, when you came to realize it. This ranch had been a
place where Dad could come to rest and shoot quail; but now that they
had struck oil, it was the last place in the world where he could rest.
There were new wells to be planned and drilled, and pipe-lines to be
run, and oil to be marketed, and financing to be seen to, and houses and
roads, and a gas-plant, and more water—there was something new every
day. The books showed that nearly three million dollars had gone into
the place so far, and now Dad was talking about the absolute necessity
of having his own refinery; his mind was full of a thousand technical
details along this line. There was a group of men—really big
capitalists—who wanted to go in with him, and turn this into one of the
monster oil fields, with a company capitalized at sixty million dollars;
there would be a “tank-farm,” and several distilleries, and a chain of
distributing stations. Should Dad follow this course, or should he save
the business for Bunny? The boy would have to decide pretty soon, did he
want to shoulder an enormous burden like this, or to let other people
carry it for him? Did he want to study all kinds of things, like Paul,
or did he want to buckle down to the oil-game, and give his attention to
the process of cracking distillation, and the use of dephlegmators in
connection with tower stills?

                                   II

Bunny’s speculations upon the problem of capital and labor were not
destined to remain academic. Spending his Christmas holidays at
Paradise, he found Paul looking very serious, and asking what would be
Dad’s attitude towards the matter of unions in this field. There was an
organizer for the carpenters here, and Paul had talked with him, and
decided that it was his duty to join. Some of the men had joined
secretly, but Paul wouldn’t have any concealment in his relations with
Mr. Ross. Bunny answered that his father didn’t think much of unions,
but he certainly wouldn’t object to Paul’s joining, if Paul thought it
was right; anyhow they’d talk it out. So that evening they had a
session, which wasn’t quite the same as a class at high school.

Dad believed in organization; he always said that, and his formula would
apply to workingmen—at least in theory. But in practice Dad had
observed that a labor union enabled a lot of officials to live off the
work of the real workers; these officials became a class by themselves,
a sort of vested interest, and they looked out for themselves, and not
for labor. They naturally had to make some excuse for their own
existence, and so were apt to stir up the workers to discontent which
otherwise the workers wouldn’t feel.

Paul said that was one way to look at it; but as a matter of fact, it
was just as apt to work the other way—the men would be discontented,
and officials would be trying to smooth them down. The officials made
bargains with the employers, and naturally wanted the workers to fall
into line. Didn’t it seem more reasonable to account for disputes in
industry by the fundamental fact that one group was selling labor, and
the other was buying it? Nobody was ever surprised that a man who was
buying a horse didn’t value it so high as the owner.

You could see Dad didn’t like that, because it was a view that made his
business more difficult. He said that what troubled him about unions
was, they deprived a man of his personal liberty; he was no longer a
free American citizen, he was jist a part of a machine, run by
politicians, and often by grafters. What had made this country great was
individual enterprise, and we ought to protect that. And Paul said yes,
but the employers had set the men a bad example; they had joined a
“Petroleum Employers’ Federation,” which ruled the industry very
strictly. Paul had been told that in his early days Mr. Ross had paid
his men a dollar a day more than the regular scale, so as to get the
best labor; but when he had got into the Prospect Hill field, he had had
to join the Federation, and now wasn’t allowed to pay more than the
regular scale.

That was true, Dad admitted, but he hastened to explain, he hadn’t
reduced anybody’s wages; his business had grown so fast, he had put his
men into higher classifications, and when he engaged new men for the old
jobs, they had got the regular price. But when Paul pinned him down, Dad
admitted that it really was a union he belonged to, and he had
sacrificed his personal liberty to that extent. It was clear enough,
there had to be some order among the employers, to keep them from
cutting one another’s throats; and Dad was fair enough to admit that
maybe if he were a laborer, he’d see the same necessity.

Paul pleased Dad by saying that if all the employers were as fair as Mr.
Ross, it would be easy to deal with them; but the fact was plain that
many of them would respect only power, and the workers had no power
except as a group. Why was it the carpenters were working only eight
hours? Because they were organized all over the country, you couldn’t
get a lot of good carpenters on any other terms. But the oil workers
were poorly organized, so here was this two-shift arrangement, an
inhuman thing, and the reason why Bunny couldn’t get the men to make use
of his reading-room. Paul said that with a smile, to take the sting out
of it; he knew it would hurt Bunny, and that Dad wouldn’t feel
comfortable over it, either. Dad couldn’t give his oil workers an eight
hour day, even if he wanted to—because the Petroleum Employers’
Federation had taken away his personal liberty and initiative in that
respect. Paul added that the Federation would have to face this issue
very shortly, because the oil workers were organizing—right in this
Paradise field, as Mr. Ross no doubt knew.

Dad said he had heard it; he went so far as to admit that the Federation
had sent him bulletins to keep him posted. But he wasn’t worrying, he
said; if his men wanted a union, he guessed he’d find a way to get along
with it—he had tried to be fair all his life, and the men knew it, most
of them. Paul answered that Mr. Ross ought to understand the fundamental
fact, which was that the cost of everything had been going up, ever
since the war in Europe had begun; the price of oil was going up also,
but the Employers’ Federation held to the old wage schedule, and that
was not fair, and was making the trouble. The employers who fought the
unions were short-sighted, for what they really did was to turn the men
over to the I. W. W. Dad looked startled at that, for the “wobblies,” as
they were called, had the reputation of being dangerous people, almost
Anarchists, who wanted to seize the wells and run them for the workers;
you heard terrible rumors of a thing called “sabotage,” which meant that
the men, if they didn’t get what they considered a square deal, would
punish the employers by damaging the property, even setting fire to
wells. Were I. W. W. really in the field? Paul answered that it wouldn’t
be fair for him to report on the men, that would be making him a spy;
but as a matter of fact the wobblies were in every field, and in every
industry—you could never keep them out, and the only thing to do was to
keep their influence down by a policy of fair play.

Paul had been studying this question of capital and labor, as he studied
everything that came his way. He had been reading books of which Bunny
had never heard even the names—they were not taught in the high school
courses, because, so Paul declared, they gave the labor side. Paul had
been talking to an organizer who was here for the Oil Workers’ Union, an
especially intelligent man, who had been working in oil fields for
several years, and knew conditions thoroughly. Bunny was tremendously
interested at that, and said he’d like to meet the man, and wouldn’t Dad
like to? Dad made the answer he always made now-a-days, he was jist too
crowded with business over the new pipe-line, and the problem of a
refinery, but later on, perhaps, he might be interested. Dad was always
fooling himself that way; there was going to be some time in the future
when he would be free!

However, he hadn’t any objection to Bunny’s meeting all the union
organizers he pleased; he’d no doubt have to bargain with a lot of them
during his life. Paul said that Tom Axton was supposed to be here
secretly, but as a matter of fact the bosses all knew him, he had been
kicked off the Excelsior Pete property only yesterday. He’d no doubt be
willing to talk with Bunny, provided it was made clear that this
wouldn’t affect his right to organize the men in Mr. Ross’ employ.

The upshot of it was that Axton was invited to meet Bunny one morning in
the reading-room; and that was the biggest sensation this Watkins tract
had known since the discovery well had busted loose and caught fire. The
men of the night-shift forgot to go to sleep; they waited round to see
the sight, and you saw faces pass by doors and windows—and always
turned inwards as they passed! The union organizer was supposed to be a
mysterious and terrible person, who came onto the tract at night, and
met you and your friends somewhere out in the hills; but here he was,
being publicly entertained by the Old Man’s son! Great kid, that Bunny
Ross, said the men—agreeing with Dad on this point!

Tom Axton was a big fellow, slow spoken, soft of voice, with a trace of
Southern accent; he looked powerful, and had need to be, considering the
treatment he got. Of course, he couldn’t swear that it was the
Employers’ Federation which sent thugs to beat him up and try to cripple
him; but when the same thing happened to him in several different fields
in Southern California, and didn’t happen to anybody else, he naturally
drew his own conclusions. Bunny was aghast at this; he had never heard
anything like it, and didn’t know what to answer—except that he hoped
Mr. Axton knew that his father didn’t have anything to do with such
dirty work. The organizer smiled; he had evidently had a talk with Paul,
for he said, “Your father thinks that labor unions are run by grafters
and parasites. Well, I wish you’d ask him how much he really knows about
the Employers’ Federation, and the kind of men who run it, and what
they’re doing to us. You may find that your father has been neglecting
the affairs of his union, just as most of the workers neglect theirs.”
Bunny had to admit that was a fair point, and when he asked Dad, and
found that Dad had never attended a meeting of the Federation, but
merely paid its assessments without question—why naturally, that made
Bunny have more respect for Tom Axton, and believe what he said about
conditions here in Paradise, and in the other fields, and how rapidly
discontent was spreading among the men.

Only yesterday the Victor Oil Company had fired fourteen who had signed
up with the union; the bosses had a spy among them, and had waited to
give everybody a chance to hang himself! “You’re surely going to have a
strike before long,” said the organizer. “It will be a strike for the
three-shift day, among other things; and when it comes, your father will
have to consider whether to deal separately with his own men, or to
stand by his employers’ union, and let a bunch of big business rowdies
drag him into trouble.” You can imagine how much that gave Bunny to
think about, and how many discussions he had with his father, and with
Paul, and with the teacher of the class in “social ethics” at the Beach
City High School!

                                  III

The Allies, having control of the sea, were engaged in starving out
Germany; and the Germans were replying with the only weapon they had,
the submarine. The United States had forced the German government to
agree not to torpedo passenger vessels without warning; but now, early
in the winter of 1917, the Germans gave notice that they would no longer
follow this policy, and everybody was saying that America would have to
go into the war. The German ambassador at Washington was sent home, and
after that the spirit of neutrality was no longer dominant in the
“current events” classes at school.

To the oil operators it seemed most unpatriotic on the part of workers,
to demand the eight hour day and an increase of wages at this crisis.
What?—when the country was about to defend itself, and would need oil
as never before in history! But the workers replied that the employers
did not make concessions because they wanted to, but because they had
to, and this might be the only time they would have to. It was not
necessary to assume that the employers were giving the oil away; they
were getting a fancy price for it, and would get the same price, or
better, if the country went to war. The workers claimed a share,
proportioned to the price of everything they had to buy. They were
holding meetings all over the field, and in the latter part of February
their union officials wrote to the various companies, asking for a
conference. When this request was ignored, they served notice on the
employers that there would be a strike.

Three men came to see Dad; one of them an old employee, the others new
men. All three were young in years—indeed you almost never saw an oil
worker over thirty-five, and they were all white Americans. This
committee held their hats in their hands, and were somewhat pale,
embarrassed but determined. They all liked Mr. Ross, and said so; he was
“square,” and he must know that their demands were reasonable. Wouldn’t
he set the example to the other employers, granting the new schedule, so
that his work could go on without interruption? The strike, if it came,
would be bound to spread, and the cost of oil would go up at once; Mr.
Ross would gain far more than he would have to pay to the men. But Dad
answered that he had joined the Federation, and agreed to stand by its
decisions; what would become of his reputation for “squareness,” if he
were to go back on his associates in a crisis? What he would do was to
work within the Federation for an agreement with the men; he would drop
everything else, and go down to Angel City and see what he could
accomplish. He thought the eight hour day was fair, and he would favor a
wage-scale adjusted to the cost of living, so that the men’s income
would not be subject to fluctuations. The committee was cheered by these
promises, and there was hand-shaking all around.

Left to himself, you understand that J. Arnold Ross would probably never
have taken this advanced position. His mind was on his money—or on the
things he wanted to do, and that his money enabled him to do; he would
probably have gone with his crowd, as he had done hitherto. But there
was Bunny, a “little idealist”; Bunny liked the men, and the men liked
him, and Dad was proud of that mutual liking, and could be sentimental
for Bunny, where he would never have dreamed of being for himself.
Furthermore, there was Paul, who knew the men’s side at first hand; and
Bunny persisted in bringing Paul into their life, in plying Paul with
questions, and making him say, right out, the things he might not
otherwise have felt free to say. So Paul had become a force in Dad’s
consciousness; and so Dad promised to try to help the men.

He attended for the first time a meeting of his own trade union. It was
at night, and lasted till one o’clock in the morning; and the next day
being Saturday, Bunny came up to town and met his father at the hotel,
and heard the story of what had happened. Most of the oil employers, it
appeared, were exactly like J. Arnold Ross, in that they left the
running of their union to others; there had been not more than forty men
at this critical meeting, and the dominant group consisted of
representatives of the “Big Five.” The chairman, and obviously the man
who ran the organization, was an attorney for Excelsior Pete, who owned
a small well, presumably to give him standing. He had a group which took
the cue from him and voted with him. It had been rather a steam-roller
affair, said Dad.

Bunny wanted all the particulars, and plied his father with questions.
Dad had pleaded the men’s side, as tactfully as he could, and had found
exactly two operators in the gathering who were willing to agree, ever
so timidly, with his point of view. To the ruling group he had seemed
something of a renegade, and they had hinted as much. “You know how it
is, son,” Dad explained, “this is an ‘open shop’ town; that’s the way
the crowd feels, and you might jist as well butt your head against a
stone wall as argue with them about unions. There’s everything to be
said for them—they’ve had trouble with organized labor, and it’s made
them bitter. They say”—and Dad went on to detail the arguments that had
been hurled at him; unions meant graft, unions meant “hold-ups,” unions
meant disorder, unions meant strikes, unions meant Socialism.

“What are they going to do, Dad?”

“They’re jist not a-goin’ to let the men have a union—that’s all. I
said, ‘It looks as if the Federation has turned into a strike-breaking
organization.’ And Fred Naumann—that’s the chairman—snapped back at
me, ‘You said it!’ They’ll be a strike-breaking organization, if and
when and so long as there’s strikes in their field—that’s the way
Raymond put it, the vice-president of Victor. And then Ben Skutt put in
an oar—”

“Ben _Skutt_?”

“Yes, he was there; it seems he’s been doing some ‘investigation work’
for the Federation—a polite name for spyin’. He knew jist exactly what
I’d said to our men the day before; and he wondered if I realized the
unfortunate effect of my attitude—it amounted to givin’ the strikers
moral support. I told Ben that I usually took the liberty of saying what
I thought; I was taking it in this meeting, and I’d take it in the
newspapers if they asked me. Naumann smiled sarcastically: ‘I really
don’t think they’re going to ask you, Mr. Ross.’”

And sure enough, they didn’t—either then, or later! The meeting was
supposed to be secret—which meant that individual members were not
allowed to be quoted, but the chairman or somebody gave to the press an
official story, telling how the meeting had voted to stand firm against
the threats of the union. It was a time for all lovers of America to
uphold the country’s welfare against enemies without and within—so ran
the statement in both the morning newspapers.

“What are you going to do?” asked Bunny.

“What can I do, son?” Dad’s face was grey, and deeply lined; he was not
used to staying up so late, Bunny knew, and he had probably lain awake
until morning, worrying over this situation.

And yet Bunny could not help making it harder for him. “Are we going to
let those fellows run our business, Dad?”

“It looks as if we’d have to, son. I’m in no position financially to
buck the game.”

“But with all the oil you’ve got!”

“I’ve got a good deal of oil, but it’s mostly in the ground, and what
I’d need for this job would be a couple of million dollars in the bank.”

He went on to explain how modern affairs were conducted. A man never had
enough money, no matter how much he had; he was always reaching out,
doing business with the future, so to speak. He put money into the bank,
and that gave him the right to take out more than he had put in; the
bank would take his “paper,” as it was called. Here Dad was drilling a
lot of new wells, he was buying machinery and materials, and paying for
labor in advance—all on the certainty of the oil he was going to get
next month and the month after; he knew he was going to get it, and the
banks trusted him, on the basis of his reputation, and the known value
of his property. But if Dad were to set out to fight the Federation, he
might jist as well forget there was such a thing as a bank in the State
of California; he’d have to pay cash for everything, he’d have to stop
all his development work, and even then, he mightn’t be able to meet his
notes when they fell due.

Bunny was appalled; for he had thought of his father as one of the
richest men in the state, and one of the most independent. “Why, Dad, we
don’t own our own business! We don’t even own our souls!”

That started the other on one of his stock themes. Business was
business, and not the same as a tea-party. Property was hard to get,
and, as he had told his son many times, there was always people trying
to take it away from you. If there was going to be any security for
wealth, there had to be discipline, and men of wealth had to stand
together. It might seem harsh, if you didn’t understand, but it was the
way of life. Look at that war over there in Europe; it was a horrible
thing—jist made you sick to think about it; but there it was, and if
you was in it, you was in, and you had to fight. It was exactly the same
with the business game; there was no safety for you, unless you stood
with the group that had power. If you stepped out of the reservation,
the wolves would tear you to pieces in short order.

But Bunny was not satisfied with general principles; he wanted the
details of this situation. “Please tell me, Dad, just who are these men
we have to work with?”

Dad answered: they were a group, it was hard to define them, you might
say the “open shop crowd;” they were the big business men who ran Angel
City, and the territory which lived upon the city, or supported the
city, according as you looked at it. They had several organizations, not
merely the Petroleum Employers’ Federation, but the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the Bankers’ Club.
They were interlocked, and a little group ran them all—Fred Naumann
could call a dozen men on the telephone, and turn you into an outcast
from business society; no bank would lend you a dollar, and none of the
leading merchants would give you credit, some would refuse to do
business with you even for cash.

To the hour of his death, the elder Ross never really understood this
strange son of his. He was always being surprised by the intensity with
which Bunny took things, which to the father were part of the nature of
life. The father kept two compartments in his mind, one for things that
were right, and the other for things that existed, and which you had to
allow to exist, and to defend, in a queer, half-hearted, but stubborn
way. But here was this new phenomenon, a boy’s mind which was all one
compartment; things ought to be right, and if they were not right, you
ought to _make_ them right, or else what was the use of having any
right—you were only fooling yourself about it.

“Listen, Dad,” the boy pleaded; “isn’t there some way we could break
that combination? Couldn’t you stop your new developments, and put
everything on a cash basis, and go slow? You know, that might be better,
in a way; you’re trying to do too much, and you need a rest badly.”

The other could not help smiling, in spite of the pain he read in
Bunny’s face. “Son,” he answered, “if I set out to buck that game, I’d
never have another hour’s rest, till you buried me up there on the hill
beside Joe Gundha.”

“But you’ve got the oil, and if you settle with the men, it will go on
flowing. It will be the only oil from this whole district!”

“Yes, son, but oil ain’t cash; it has got to be sold.”

“You mean they wouldn’t take it from you?”

“I can’t say, son; I’ve never known such a case, and I don’t know jist
what they’d do. All I say is this—they wouldn’t let me lose their
strike for them! They’d find some way to get me, jist as sure as
tomorrow’s sunrise!”

                                   IV

Dad went back to the field and got the representatives of his men
together. He did not tell them the whole story, of course, but said that
he had tried his best to bring the employers to his views, and had
failed. He was bound by agreements that he could not break, but he would
be very glad to meet the men’s terms if the Federation would do so. If
there was a strike, he would make no attempt to work his properties for
the present. It would mean heavy losses to him, the shutting down of his
best paying wells, but he would try to stick it out, and his men might
consider they were taking a vacation, and come back to him when the
strike was over. Meantime, he would not turn them out, they might
continue to occupy the bunk-house, provided they would keep order, and
not injure the property. That was, of course, a very unusual concession,
and he hoped the men would appreciate it. The committee answered that
the men undoubtedly would do so; they were deeply grateful to Mr. Ross
for his attitude. The members of the committee were embarrassed, and
very respectful; you see, it is hard for humble workingmen to confront
their employer, a “big” man, and armed with the magic power of money.

The strike was called for noon on Wednesday, and the men all marched out
singing songs. Not more than ten percent had joined the union, but they
quit to a man—the few who might have liked to stay were not enough to
work the wells, anyhow. They shut off the flow, and left everything in
good order, and marched in to Paradise, where they held a mass-meeting.
There were nearly three thousand workers in this field, and they all
came, and most of the townspeople, and a number of the ranchers; the
sympathy of the community appeared to be all with the workers.

Tom Axton made a speech, in which he set forth the grievances of the
men, and told them, out of his previous experience, how a strike must be
conducted. One thing above all others, they must keep public sympathy
with them, by obeying the law and avoiding every suggestion of disorder;
this would not be easy, because the Employers’ Federation knew this, as
well as the strike leaders, and would do everything possible to provoke
the men to violence; that was the purpose for which the “guards” were
coming, the strikers’ difficulty would be to keep out of the way. That
was generally the case in strikes, if you could believe Axton; he said
that the guards were men of a low type, hired by the big detective
agencies out of the city’s underworld, and supplied with a gun on their
hip-pocket. Whether the whiskey-bottle on the other hip-pocket was
supplied by the employers, or got by the men themselves, was something
Tom Axton did not know. Anyhow, they were brought here by the
truck-load, and on the way they stopped at the sheriff’s office in San
Elido—kept open day and night for the purpose—and were sworn in
wholesale as “deputy-sheriffs,” and supplied with a silver shield to
wear on their coat-lapels, and after that, anything they did was
according to law. A few of these deputies were standing about, listening
to Axton’s speech, and needless to say, they did not appreciate it.

The president of the union, who had come to the field to conduct the
strike, also made a speech; and the secretary of the union, and the
organizer of the carpenter’s union—there could not be too many
speeches, for the men were full of enthusiasm, and their minds were open
to ideas; it was an education in the meaning of solidarity. They signed
up by hundreds, and paid their assessments out of their scanty savings.
Committees were appointed, and these got down to work in an old barn
which had been hired for headquarters, the only vacant place of any size
to be found in the midst of this oil boom. The place was crowded with
men, coming and going, and there was not a little confusion, officials
and volunteer helpers working as if such things as rest and sleep were
unknown to the human organism. There were temporary lodgings to be
found—for not many oil operators were being so generous as to provide
shelter for strikers! The union had ordered a lot of tents, and would
need more yet, when leases expired on shacks which had been rented on
company property. Fortunately, not many of the men had families in this
field; your oil worker is a migratory bird—he moves to a new field, and
has to work quite a while before he gets enough money to bring his wife
and children from the last field.

Bunny drove up on Saturday morning; by which time the first flush of
excitement had passed. It was a rainy day, and the men had no meeting
place, and you saw bunches of them crowded into doorways, or under
awnings, wherever there was free shelter; they looked rather melancholy,
as if they found being on strike less romantic than they had expected.
In front of the oil properties, especially those of the big companies,
you saw men pacing up and down, wearing rubber coats and hats, from
under which they eyed you suspiciously; some of them carried rifles on
their shoulders, like military sentries. Bunny drove up to his father’s
tract, and there he saw the same sight, and it cut him to the heart—the
very personification of that hatred which so pained him in the
industrial world, and which he had fondly dreamed he might exclude from
the “Ross Junior” field. But the truth was, the “junior” aspects of the
business were fading temporarily; the “senior” aspects were in control,
and giving the impress to events.

Sitting in the office on the tract, Bunny pinned his father down on the
matter of guards; did they really have to have guards against their own
men?

“But surely, son,” protested Dad, “you can’t be serious! Leave three
million dollars worth of property unprotected?”

“Where did we hire these guards, Dad?”

“We didn’t hire them, son; the Federation is handling that.”

“But couldn’t we have got guards of our own?”

“I don’t know any guards, or where to get them. I’d have had to go to
some agency, jist the same.”

“And we couldn’t have used our own men, that we know?”

“Turn strikers into guards? Why, son, you must know that wouldn’t do!”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, the insurance companies—imagine how quick they’d
jump to cancel my fire insurance! And then, suppose I was to have a
fire, I’d be ruined. Don’t you see that?”

Yes, Bunny saw; it appeared as if the whole world was one elaborate
system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and
pain. And he and his father were part of that system, and must help to
maintain it in spite of themselves!

“Do we pay for these guards, Dad?”

“We’re assessed for it, of course.”

“Then what it comes to, is this: we have to put up the money for Fred
Naumann to break the strike; and even though we may not want the strike
broken!” To this Dad remarked, it was devilish inconvenient to have all
those paying wells shut off all of a sudden. He turned to some papers on
his desk, and Bunny sat in silence for a while, thinking his father’s
thoughts. They were elemental thoughts, not requiring any subtlety to
interpret. There were eleven producing wells on the tract, which on last
Thursday morning had been flowing at a total rate of thirty-seven
thousand barrels of oil per day. That meant, at present boom prices, a
gross income of close to two million dollars a month. Dad’s mind had
been full of all the things he was going to do with that money; and now
his mind was full of problems of how to get along without it. His face
was still grey and lined with care, and Bunny’s heart smote him. He,
Bunny, wanted the men to win; but did he want it at the cost of having
his father carry this extra burden?

                                   V

Paul had gone with the strikers, so Bunny learned. Mr. Ross had offered
to keep him on, for there was some building that needed to be done, and
the carpenters were not on strike. But Paul had thought it over and
decided that his duty lay with the oil workers; they hadn’t many
educated men among them—that was one of the burdens the twelve hour day
put upon them; so Mr. Ross would have to accept Paul’s resignation,
permanently or temporarily, as he might think best. Dad had said there
would be no hard feelings, and Paul might come back when the strike was
over.

Bunny went up to the Rascum place to see Ruth and ask her about it. The
“Superintendent of Horticultural Operations” had gone on strike with the
boss-carpenter, but they were still occupying the bungalow, and Ruth did
the work for Dad, whenever he occupied the cabin. Ruth said that Paul
couldn’t get out here any more, he was sleeping on some sacks of straw
in the union headquarters, where he worked about twenty hours a day. So
Meelie was staying with her sister, and they spent all their spare time
baking things, and old Mr. Watkins came, with the same old horse hitched
to the same old wagon, and carried the things to Paradise, where they
were sold to the strikers. They had closed up their stand at the Watkins
tract, because there wasn’t nobody there but guards, and they wouldn’t
feed no guards, not if they starved. So spoke Meelie, who was a little
chatterbox; and Ruth looked at Bunny with some embarrassment, thinking
that wasn’t proper talk before him. But Bunny said he wasn’t strong for
guards himself, it had made him sort of sick to see them on the place
that was supposed to be his. And Meelie said the man that was in charge
at their place wasn’t a bad fellow, he had been a forester and
fire-guard; but some of them others was awful mean, and Pap was a-scairt
for the girls to go on the road at night, they cussed something fierce,
and they had liquor all the time.

There was an alluring odor of hot gingerbread in the kitchen, and Bunny
had not yet had his lunch; so the girls set the little table, and the
three sat down, and had a meal of scrambled eggs and potatoes, and bread
and butter, and goat’s milk and gingerbread and strawberries—for the
plants which Paul had set out had been diligently tended by Ruth, who
couldn’t bear to let living things suffer, even green ones. Ruth was now
a young lady of almost eighteen, the same age as Bunny, but she felt a
lot older, as girls do. Her fair hair was done up on the top of her
head, and you saw her bare legs no longer. She always looked nice
working in the kitchen, because then her cheeks were rosy; she was
competent in her own domain, and told you to sit down and not mess
things up trying to help. She had the bright blue eyes of all the
Watkins family; in her case they went with a candid, quiet gaze that
seemed to go to the depths of you, and make both deception and
unkindness impossible.

Bunny at this time was just beginning an intense experience back at
home—his first serious love-affair, about which we shall be told before
long. Eunice Hoyt was a rich girl, and complicated; to know her was
sometimes pleasure and sometimes torment. But Ruth was a poor girl, and
simple; her presence was soothing, calm and still like a Sabbath
morning. The basis of Ruth’s life was the conviction that her brother
Paul was a great and good man. Now Paul had given up his ten dollar a
day job to help the strikers, and Ruth was baking food for the strikers,
and while they had money she would sell it to them, and when they had no
more money she would give it to them.

Meelie, likewise, was delighted to bake for the men, but that was not
her only interest in them. The coming of oil to the Watkins tract had
meant vast changes in Meelie’s life, she was no longer to be recognized
as a goat-herd, but had blossomed out, acquiring sophistication and
conversation, and a bright colored ribbon in her hair and a necklace of
yellow beads about her neck. Meelie had been to town the evening before,
and it had been so exciting! Eli was a full-fledged preacher now, with a
church of his own, and was holding services every evening for the glory
of the Lord, and great numbers of the strikers had come, and grace had
been abounding; and in between the pentecostal manifestations, Meelie
had picked up news of the strike—there had been a fight on Main Street
because a drunken guard had been rude to Mamie Parsons; and Paul had
been one of a committee to see the sheriff and demand that he take
either the liquor or the guns away from his deputies; and tomorrow
Meelie was going to church again—there would be three services all
through the day; and it was said that on Monday the operators were going
to bring in strike-breakers, and start the wells flowing on Excelsior
Pete; and the men were getting ready to stop that if they could—it
would be terrible!

Bunny drove to town and wandered about to see the sights, but none of
them brought happiness to him. He could not see Paul, for Paul was hard
at work in the strike headquarters, and Bunny could not go there,
because it would not look right, somebody might think he was spying. No
longer was Bunny the young oil prince, flattered and admired by all; he
was an enemy, and read hostility in men’s glances, even where there
might be none. He was in the position of a soldier in an army, who feels
that his cause is unjust, and has no stomach for the fight—yet it is
hard to wish one’s self defeat!

On Sunday morning the sun was shining, and never had Bunny seen such
crowds in Paradise. Eli was holding a service in the grove alongside his
new “tabernacle,” and was telling the strikers that if only they would
have faith in the Holy Spirit, they need not worry about their wages,
there was the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and was not their
Heavenly Father able to feed them if they would trust him? Some believed
this, and shouted “Amen”; others jeered, and went off to the playground
at the school-house, where the union was holding a meeting for those who
believed that wages were necessary. Bunny went there, and heard Paul
make his first speech. It was a great sensation to Bunny, and in fact,
to the whole town; a picturesque situation, you must admit—the two
Watkins boys, the rival prodigies of the neighborhood, making speeches
at the same time, and preaching somewhat opposite doctrines!

It must be said on behalf of Eli that he did not deliberately oppose the
strike, and probably never clearly understood how his doctrine was
likely to aid the Employers’ Federation. His sisters were baking bread
for the strikers, working hard with their physical hands kneading
physical dough—and all the while Eli was proclaiming that he could make
magical miraculous bread, whole baskets of it, by the agency of prayer.
Why didn’t he do it, jeered the skeptics; and Eli answered that it was
because of their lack of faith. But they said it was up to him to begin;
and the production of one single loaf of bread by the Bible method would
multiply faith a million-fold, and bring the whole organized labor
movement into the Church of the Third Revelation!

Paul had a deep, mature voice, and a slow, impressive way of speaking.
He was a good orator, for the very reason that he knew none of the
tricks, but was entirely wrapped up in what he had to say. There was a
struggle impending over the issue of the re-opening of the wells, and
Paul had been consulting lawyers, and told the strikers exactly what
they had a right to do, and what they must refrain from doing. They
would maintain their legal rights, but not weaken their case by
committing the least breach of the law, and giving their enemies a
chance to put them in the wrong. Their whole future was at stake, and
the future of their wives and children; if they could win the
three-shift day, they would have leisure to study and think, and raise
their own status, and keep their children longer in school. That was the
real issue in this strike, and if democracy did not mean that, it had no
meaning, and talk about patriotism was buncombe. The vast throng cheered
Paul, and Bunny could hardly keep from cheering also, and went away
feeling cheap, and utterly out of harmony with life. He had time to
think it over on the long drive back to Beach City by himself; he did
not get in until midnight, and all the way he heard Paul’s voice above
the hum of the engine, challenging everything that Bunny thought he
believed!

                                   VI

Back in school, Bunny had to get his news about the strike from the
papers, and these did not give him much comfort. The papers thought the
strike was a crime against the country in this crisis, and they punished
the strikers, not merely by denouncing them in long editorials, but by
printing lurid accounts of the strikers’ bad behavior. On Tuesday
morning you read how several truck-loads of oil workers—the despatches
did not call them strike-breakers—had been brought into the Excelsior
Petroleum Company’s tract, and how, at the entrances, they were met by
howling mobs, which cursed them, and called them vile names, and even
threw bricks at them. The Employers’ Federation issued a statement
denouncing this rule of a peaceful community by riot, and the statement
was published in full.

Next day it was the turn of the Victor Oil Company, which concern had
brought a train-load of men to Roseville, and from there to Paradise by
automobiles, with armed guards to defend them. There had been more mob
scenes; and also fights between the deputies and strikers at various
other places. It was not long before several strikers were wounded, and
a couple of deputies badly beaten. The Federation issued an appeal to
the governor to send in militia to protect them in their rights, which
were being jeopardized by lawless criminals, organized to defy the State
of California, and cripple the country on the eve of war.

Nine people out of ten read these things in the papers and believed
them. Practically everyone Bunny knew believed them, and thought he was
some kind of freak because he hesitated and doubted. Aunt Emma, for
example; she just knew the strikers were born criminals, and German
agents besides, or at any rate in league with German agents, and what
difference did it make? The ladies in the clubs had inside information,
right from headquarters, for many of them were the wives of influential
men, who learned what was going on, and told their wives, and the wives
told Aunt Emma, who was thrilled to be on the inside, as her
brother-in-law’s financial position entitled her.

And Bertie, who was still worse, the very princess of all the tight
little snobs you ever knew! Bertie went round with the younger set, and
these likewise knew everything, but without having to wait for anyone to
tell them. Bertie had condescended to visit one of her father’s oil
wells now and then, and there she had noted a race of lower beings at
their appointed tasks—creatures smudged with black, who tipped their
caps to her, or forgot to, but in either case stared with dumb awe, and
beneath their lowering brows showed signs of intelligence that was
almost human, and filled Bertie with uneasiness. She had visited
Paradise once, and spent a night at the cabin, and patronized Paul and
Ruth while they waited upon her, and both of them, sensing this, had
been frozen to silence, and Bertie had condescended to admit that they
were very decent working people, but she couldn’t comprehend why her
brother persisted in making intimates of such. “My God,” stormed Bunny,
in a rage, “what are we?” And that, of course, was disgusting of him—to
remind his sister that their father had been driving mule-teams in a
construction camp once upon a not very long time, and why was it any
better to drive mules than to build houses? Bertie said with dignity
that her father had raised himself by innate superiority; she knew he
had “good blood,” even though she could not prove it. Bunny answered
that Paul and Ruth might have “good blood” too, and they were certainly
on the way to raising themselves.

It was a subject about which the two would never cease to quarrel.
Bertie insisted that Paul patronized her brother, and presumed upon his
good nature, taking towards him an intolerable attitude of superiority.
Paul had taken to calling him “son,” as he heard Dad doing, and such
impudence was that! Bertie referred to her brother’s friend as “your old
Paul;” and, said Bertie, “your old Paul has gone and turned traitor to
Dad, and it’s just what I told you all along, you can’t trust such
people.” And when Bertie found that Bunny was half-heartedly
sympathizing with Paul, and yearning towards the “mob” himself, she
called him a perfect little wretch, an ingrate, and what not. Their
father was risking his life, staying up there among those outlaw mobs,
something which none of the other operators did—they remained in their
offices in Angel City, and let their agents break the strike for them.
But Dad, of course, was influenced by Bunny, with his silly, sentimental
notions; and if anything were to happen to him up there, Bunny would
carry the responsibility all his life.

Dad came home after a few days, and made Bertie still more indignant by
telling the members of the family they would have to go slow on
expenditures until the strike was over; he was going to have a hard time
with his financing. Bertie suggested sarcastically that Bunny might like
to sell his car to help his father out in the pinch. Dad told how there
had been a little fuss on the property, one of the strikers had got into
a fight with a guard at night; it wasn’t clear just whose the blame was,
but the captain of the guards had threatened to withdraw them all if Dad
did not turn the strikers out of the bunk-house and off the property.
They had finally compromised by Dad’s putting up a fence between the
rest of the property, and the part near the road which was occupied by
the bunk-house and the homes of the men. It was a fence of barbed wire,
eight feet high, and Bertie remarked sarcastically that it would be
another place where Bunny and “his Ruth” could grow roses. This jibe
hurt, because it summed up to Bunny the part he was playing in this
struggle—growing roses on the barbed wire fence which separated capital
from labor.

Dad rebuked Bertie, saying that the men were not criminals, they were
decent fellows, most of them, and good Americans; the Germans had
nothing to do with it at all. The trouble was, they were being misled by
agitators just now. But that didn’t help matters with Bertie, because
“Bunny’s old Paul” was one of the worst of these agitators. And Bertie
didn’t think her father ought to sleep up there in that lonely cabin,
and let those Watkins people cook for him. She had heard a wild tale
about some restaurant workers on strike who had put poison in the soup;
and when Dad and Bunny burst into laughter at that, she said she didn’t
exactly mean Paul or Ruth would do such a thing, but they certainly
couldn’t enjoy cooking for both the strikers and for Dad at the same
time, and Dad ought to be indignant with them for deserting him in a
crisis. Bunny took occasion to declare that Ruth was a true-hearted
girl; and his sister broke in, oh yes, of course, she knew Bunny’s
admiration for the wonderful Miss Ruth, the next thing they’d be hearing
he was in love with her—or would it be with Meelie, or what was the
other one’s name?

Bunny got up and walked out of the room. Bunny was in love with somebody
else, and his sister was hateful in this attitude of class-bigotry. And
yet, he had to remind himself, within her own circle Bertie was
generous, and sometimes tender-hearted. She was loyal to her friends,
she would help them if they got into trouble, and would work and scheme
to entertain them. You see, Bertie knew these people; they were all
rich, and so she considered them her equals, and was willing to enter
into their lives. But the oil workers Bertie did not know; they were a
lower order of beings, created for her pleasure, and owing her a debt of
submission, which they were trying to get out of paying.

And what was Bertie, that the oil workers should support her? She was a
dashing and brilliant young person, who knew how to spend a great deal
of money in super-elegant ways, in the company of other young persons
possessing the same accomplishment; she was racing about with them, and
her talk was of what they said and what they did and what they owned.
Bertie was going a fast pace, seldom in before the small hours of the
morning, and if she was up before lunch, it was because she had an
engagement to rush away. What was the use of having a lot of money if
you didn’t have a good time with it? That was the doctrine Bertie
hammered into her younger brother; and Aunt Emma echoed it; and now came
Eunice Hoyt, who had chosen Bunny, and had the most powerful leverage of
all. Be young, be young! everybody cried. Why should you carry all the
burden of the world upon your shoulders? Especially since there was not
a thing you could do—since the world was fixed and ordained, and would
not let you touch the least of all its vested and endowed and chartered
disharmonies!

                                  VII

The German submarines had sunk one American vessel too many, and America
was going to war; Congress had been summoned, and the whole country was
on tiptoe with belligerency. The newspapers had pages of despatches from
Washington and New York, and from the capitals of Europe; so it was not
surprising that the news of the Paradise oil strike got crowded out.
Once in a while you saw an inch or two buried in a back page; three
strikers had been arrested, charged with beating up a strike-breaker on
a dark night; it was declared by the operators that the strikers had
attempted to set fires in the district, and that German agents were
active among the trouble-makers: some little thing like that, to remind
you that three thousand men, and the wives and children of many of them,
were waging a desperate struggle with starvation.

Dad of course had daily reports of what was happening, and so Bunny got
the news. Little by little the operators had gathered up a supply of
men, paying them extra wages, and bringing them to the field. They were
seldom skilled men, and there were many accidents; nevertheless, a
number of the wells were back on production, and in two or three cases
some drilling was being done. But on the Ross tract everything stood
idle; and Bunny could see that his father was irritated by this
situation. He was losing a fortune every day—and at the same time
losing caste with his associates, who thought he was either
crack-brained, or a traitor, they could not make out which. Of course,
the Big Five were glad enough to see one of the independents cutting his
own throat; but they pretended to be indignant, and spread rumors and
propaganda against their rival, and magnified the trouble he was causing
in the field.

Bunny could see all this, and he got the sting of it from the gossip
which Aunt Emma brought home from the clubs, and Bertie from her
house-parties and dinner-dances. And then he would think of the men,
clinging pitifully to their hope of a better life, and his heart would
be torn in half. There was only one thing that could justify Dad’s
course, and that was for the men to win; they must win, they must! It
was the way Bunny felt when he sat and watched a football game, and
cheered himself hoarse for the home-team. He had an impulse to jump into
the arena and help the team—but alas, the rules of the game forbade
such action!

There had been more trouble with the guards at the Ross tract, and Dad
was going up to the field, and Bunny went along for a week-end. It was
springtime now, and the hills were green, and the fruit-trees in
blossom—oh, beautiful, beautiful! But human beings were miserable,
millions of them, and why could they not learn to be happy in such a
world? It was springtime all over the country, and yet everybody was
preparing to go to war, and form vast armies, and kill other people,
also groping for happiness! Everybody said that it had to be; and yet
something in Bunny would not cease to dream of a world in which people
did not maim and kill one another, and destroy, not merely the happiness
of others, but their own.

They came to Paradise, and there was the strange sight of idle men,
hanging about the streets; and of guards at the entrances to all the oil
properties. There was somebody making a speech on a vacant lot, and a
crowd listening. It was a great time for all sorts of cranks with things
to teach—itinerant evangelists, and patent medicine venders, and
Socialist orators—the people heard them all impartially. Bunny found
that his reading-room was being patronized now, there were men who had
read all the magazines, even to the advertisements!

Dad interviewed a committee of his men. It was an impossible situation,
they reported, the guards were deliberately making trouble, they were
drunk part of the time, and didn’t know what they were doing or had
done. Therefore the union had put up some more tents, and the men in the
bunk-house were about to move out. Those who had families, and occupied
the houses, would try to stay on, if Mr. Ross would permit it; there was
no place for the families to go, and they dared not leave the women and
children alone in the neighborhood of the guards. Dad interviewed the
captain of the latter, and got the information that the men had liquor,
of course; how could you expect men to stay in a God-forsaken hole like
this without liquor? Dad had to admit that was true; men were like that,
and when you had your property to protect in an emergency, you had to
take what you could get. Bunny wasn’t satisfied with this argument, but
then, Bunny was an “idealist,” and such people are seldom satisfied in
this harsh world.

Bunny went up to see Ruth and Meelie—the place to get the news! The
girls were hard at work baking, but that didn’t occupy their tongues,
and from Meelie’s there poured a stream of gossip. Dick Nelson was in
hospital with a part of his jaw shot away—that nice young fellow, Bunny
remembered him, he had worked on Number Eleven well; he had knocked a
guard down for dirty talk to his sister, and two other guards had shot
him. And Bob Murphy was in jail, he had been arrested when they were
bringing the strike-breakers into the Victor place. And so on, name
after name that Bunny knew. Meelie’s eyes were wide with horror, and yet
you could see that she was young, and this was more excitement than had
ever come into her life before. If the devil, with his hoofs and horns
and pitchfork and burning smell, had appeared at a meeting of the
Tabernacle of the Third Revelation, Meelie would have enjoyed the
sensation; and in the same way she enjoyed this crew of
whiskey-drinking, cursing ruffians, suddenly vomited out of the city’s
underworld into her peaceful and pious and springtime-decorated village.

Bunny asked about Paul, and learned that he had been put on the strike
committee, and was editing a little paper which the union was
publishing; it was lovely, and had Bunny seen it? They produced a
copy—a double sheet, mimeographed on both sides for economy, and with a
little oil-derrick at the top of the first sheet, alongside the title,
“The Labor Defender.” It was full of strike news, and exhortations, and
an appeal to the governor of the State against the violence of the
deputies and the refusal of the sheriff to take their whiskey away; also
there was a poem, “Labor Awake, by Mrs. Weenie Martin, a Tool-dresser’s
Wife.” Paul had just got back from a trip to some of the other fields,
where he had gone to persuade the men to join the strike; in Oil Center
they had tried to arrest him, but he had got a tip and got away by a
back road.

America was going to war, and everybody was thrilled about it; at school
they were singing patriotic songs and organizing drill corps. This oil
war was so little in comparison that nobody heeded it; but it got hold
of Bunny, and came to seem the big war to him. All this arrogance of
power, this defiance of law and decency, this miserable lying about
workingmen! Here Bunny got the truth, he got it face to face with the
men and women whom he knew; and then he would remember the tales he had
read in the newspapers—and would hate himself, because he lived upon
money which had been obtained by such means! His father was paying the
“assessments” of the Federation, and thus paying the salaries of these
blackguards—paying for their guns and ammunition, and for the bottles
of whiskey without which they would not stay!

What did it mean? What was back of it? One thing—the greed of a little
ruling group of operators, who wouldn’t pay their men a living wage, but
would work them twelve hours a day. They were driving the men with
revolvers and rifles, holding them away from the wells, their only
source of livelihood, and starving them back to work on the old unfair
terms. That was the story, just that simple; and here, in Ruth’s little
kitchen, you saw the process from the inside. The girls had had to
reduce the price of the bread they sold, because some people couldn’t
afford it otherwise! Oil workers never do save much, because they have
to move about, and to bring their families, or to send them money. And
now their savings were used up, and the contributions which came from
other fields were not enough, and Paul, who had been saving money to
study and become a scientist, was using it to support hungry families,
and Ruth and Meelie were giving all their time, and even old Mrs.
Watkins was helping when she could!

Bunny carried this anguish back to his father. What were the people
going to do, when they no longer had food to keep alive? Dad gave the
answer, they’d have to go back to work! “And lose the strike, Dad?” Yes,
he said, if they couldn’t win, they’d have to lose—that was the law of
strikes, as of everything else. Life was stern, and sooner or later you
had to learn it. They must give up, and wait till a time when their
union was stronger. “But, Dad, how can they make it stronger, when the
operators boycott them? You know how they weed out the union men—right
now, if they give up, most of the companies won’t take back the active
ones.” And Dad said he knew that, but the men would have to keep on
trying, there was no other way. Certainly he could not support the
strike by keeping his wells idle! The men must understand that he
couldn’t stand the gaff much longer, they had no right to expect it;
they must either close the other wells, or see the Ross wells opened.
And Bunny turned sort of sick inside, and went about hiding a thought
like a dirty vice: “We’re going to bring scabs into our tract!”

                                  VIII

There was really only one place where Bunny could be happy, and that was
up at the bungalow. He spent his Saturday afternoon there, helping Ruth
and Meelie—the one kind of aid he was permitted to give to the strike!
Part of the time they talked about the suffering of which they knew; and
part of the time they were jolly, making jokes like other young people;
but all the time they worked like beavers, turning flour belonging to
the union into various kinds of eatables. At supper-time Mr. Watkins
came with the wagon, his second trip, and they loaded him up, and Meelie
drove off with him to headquarters, while Bunny stayed with Ruth, and
helped clean up the place, and tried to explain the predicament of his
father, and why he, Bunny, could not really help the strike.

On Sunday he went in to the meetings, and heard Paul make another
speech. Paul, always sombre looking, was now gaunt from several weeks of
little food and less sleep, and there was a fury of passion in his
voice; he told about his trip to the other fields, and how there was no
justice anywhere—the authorities of town and county and state were
simply pawns of the operators, doing everything possible to hold the men
down and break their organization. In this white flame of suffering
Paul’s spirit had been tempered to steel, and the crowd of workers
shared this process, and took new vows of solidarity; Bunny felt the
thrill of a great mass experience, and yearned to be part of it, and
then shrunk back, like the young man in the Bible story who had too many
possessions.

Paul had seen him in the crowd, and after the meeting sought him out. “I
want to talk to you,” he said, and they strolled away from the others,
and Paul, who had no time to waste, came directly to the point:

“See here, I want you to let my sister alone.”

“Let her alone!” cried the other, and stopped short in his tracks, and
stared at Paul. “Why, what do you mean?”

“Meelie tells me you’ve been up there at the place a lot—you were there
last evening with her.”

“But Paul! Somebody had to stay with her!”

“We’ll take care of ourselves; she could have come to father’s place.
And I want you to understand, I won’t have any rich young fellows
hanging round my sister.”

“But Paul!” Bunny’s tone was one of shocked grief. “Truly, Paul, you’re
utterly mistaken.”

“I don’t want you to be mistaken about this one thing—if any fellow was
to do any wrong to my sister, I’d kill him, just as sure as anything on
earth.”

“But Paul, I never dreamed of such a thing! Why, listen—I’ll tell
you—I’m in love with a girl—a girl in school. Oh, honest, Paul, I’m
terribly in love, and I—I couldn’t think of anybody else that way.”

A quick blush had spread over Bunny’s face as he made this confession,
and it was impossible not to realize that he was sincere. Paul’s voice
became kinder. “Listen, son; you’re not a child any more, and neither is
Ruth. I don’t doubt what you say—naturally, you’ll pick out some girl
of your own class. But it mightn’t be that way with Ruth, she might get
to be interested in you, and you ought to keep away.”

Bunny didn’t know what to say to that—the idea was too new to him. “I
wanted to know about the strike,” he explained; “and I’ve had no chance
to talk with you at all. You can’t imagine how bad I feel, but I don’t
know what to do.” He rushed on, crowding all his grief into a few
sentences; he was torn in half, between his loyalty to his father and
his sympathy for the men; it was a trap he was in, and what could he do?

When Paul answered, his voice was hard again. “Your father is helping to
keep these blackguards in the field, I understand.”

“He’s paying assessments, if that’s what you mean. He’s under contract
with the Federation—when he joined—”

“No contract is valid that requires breaking the law! And don’t you know
these fellows are breaking a hundred laws a day?”

“I know, Paul; but Dad is tied up with the other operators; you don’t
understand—he’s really having trouble financially, because his wells
are shut down; and he’s doing that entirely for the men.”

“I know it, and we appreciate it. But now he says he’s got to give up,
and bring in scabs like the rest. They’re driving us beyond endurance;
they’re making a dirty fight, and your father knows it—and yet he goes
along with them!”

There was a pause, and Paul went on, grimly. “I know, of course; his
money is at stake, and he won’t risk it; and you’ll do what he tells
you.”

“But Paul! I couldn’t oppose Dad! Would you expect that?”

“When my father set up his will, and tried to keep me from thinking and
learning the truth, I opposed him, didn’t I? And you encouraged me to do
it—you thought that was all right.”

“But Paul! If I were to oppose Dad in such a thing—why, I’d break his
heart.”

“Well, maybe I broke my father’s heart—I don’t know, and neither do
you. The point is, your father’s doing wrong, and you know it; he’s
helping to turn these ruffians loose on us, and deprive us of our rights
as citizens, and even as human beings. You can’t deny that, and you have
a duty that you owe to the truth.”

There was a silence, while Bunny tried to face the appalling idea of
opposing Dad, as Paul had opposed old Mr. Watkins. It had seemed so
right in the one case, and seemed so impossible in the other!

At last Paul went on. “I know how it is, son. You won’t do it, you
haven’t the nerve for it—you’re soft.” He waited, while those cruel
words sank in. “Yes, that’s the word, soft. You’ve always had everything
you wanted—you’ve had it handed to you on a silver tray, and it’s made
you a weakling. You have a good heart, and you know what’s right, but
you couldn’t bear to act, you’d be too afraid of hurting somebody.”

And that was the end of their talk. Paul had nothing more to say, and
Bunny had no answer. Tears had come into his eyes—and that was weak,
wasn’t it? He turned his head away, so that Paul might not see them.

“Well,” said the latter, “I’ve got a pile of work to do, so I’ll be off.
This fight will be over some day, and your father will go on making
money, and I hope it will bring you happiness, but I doubt it, really.
Good-bye, son.”

“Good-bye,” said Bunny, feebly; and Paul turned on his heel and hurried
away.

Bunny walked on, and there was a fever in his soul. He was enraged
because of Paul’s lack of understanding, his cruel harshness; but all
the time another voice inside him kept insisting, “He’s right! You’re
soft, you’re soft—that’s the word for it!” Here, you see, was the thing
in Bunny which made his sister Bertie so absolutely furious; that Bunny
subjected himself to Paul, that he was willing to let Paul kick him, and
to take it meekly. He was so utterly without sense of the dignity which
his father’s millions conferred upon him!

                                   IX

Bunny went back to school, and the oil workers took a hitch in their
belts, hanging on by their eye teeth, as the saying is. Meantime,
America was in the war, and Congress was passing a series of
measures—one providing for a vast “liberty loan,” to pay the war costs,
and another for the registering of all men of fighting age, and the
drafting of a huge army.

And then began to come wild rumors of a truce with labor. It came first
in connection with the railway men, many of whom were on strike for a
living wage and better conditions. The railways were absolutely vital to
the winning of the war, and so Congress must authorize the Government to
intervene in disputes, and make terms with the unions, and see that
everybody got a square deal. If such steps were taken for the railway
men, they would surely have to be taken for others; the oil workers
might get those rights of which the Employers’ Federation was
endeavoring to deprive them! The labor press was full of talk about the
new deal that was coming, and telegrams came from labor headquarters in
Washington, bidding the men at Paradise stand firm.

It was like the “big scene” in the old “ten-twenty-thirty” melodrama
that we used to see on the Bowery in our boyhood, in which the heroine
is lashed to a log in the saw-mill, and being swiftly drawn to the place
where she will be sliced down the middle; the hero comes galloping madly
on horseback, and leaps from his steed, and smashes in the door with an
axe, and springs to the lever and stops the machinery at exactly the
critical instant. Or, if you want to be more high-brow and dignified, it
was like the ancient Greek tragedies, in which, after the fates of all
the characters have been tied into a hopeless knot, a god descends from
the sky in a machine, and steps out, and resolves the perplexities, and
virtue is triumphant and vice is cast down. You believe this, because it
is in a Greek classic; but you will find it less easy to believe that
the “open shop crowd” of California, the whole power of their industrial
system, with all the millions of their banks, their political machine
and their strike-breaking agencies, their spies and gunmen, and their
state militiamen with machine guns and armored cars in the
background—that all this terrific power felt its hand suddenly grasped
by a stronger hand, and drawn back from the throat of its victim!
Another god descended from a machine—a lean old Yankee divinity, with a
white goatee and a suit made of red and white stripes with blue stars
spangled over it; Uncle Sam himself stretched out his mighty hand, and
declared that oil workers were human beings as well as citizens, and
would be protected in their rights as both!

The announcement came from labor headquarters in Washington, saying that
the oil workers would get a living wage and the eight hour day; a
government “conciliator” would be sent out to see to it, and meantime,
they were to go back to work, so that the benevolent old gentleman with
the white goatee and the red, white and blue suit might have all the oil
he needed. The President of the United States was making speeches—oh,
such wonderful, convincing speeches, about the war that was to end war,
and bring justice to all mankind, and establish the rule of the people
and by the people and for the people over all the earth. Such thrills as
shook all hearts, such a fervor of consecration! And such rejoicing on
the playground of the school-house at Paradise, when the news came that
the gunmen would slink back into the slums from which they had come, and
that work was to start up at once!

Dad got the news early in the morning, and Bunny danced all over the
house, and made as much noise as if it were a football game; and Dad
said he felt pretty good himself, it would sure be nice to get those
wells on production again, he wouldn’t have been able to hold on another
week without them. And Bunny said he’d cut school in the afternoon, and
they’d drive out and see the celebration, and make friends with
everybody again, and get things started. The first thing they would do
was to tear down that barbed wire fence that separated capital from
labor! In the new world there would be no more barbed wire and no more
bad feeling—the roses would bloom on the hedges in front of the
workers’ homes, and there would be a book of the President’s speeches in
the reading-room, and all the oil workers would have time to read it!




                              CHAPTER VIII
                                THE WAR


                                   I

Eunice Hoyt was the daughter of “Tommy” Hoyt, of Hoyt and Brainerd,
whose advertisements of investment securities you saw on the financial
pages of the Beach City newspapers. Tommy you saw at racing meets and
boxing events, and generally you noticed that he had with him a new
lady, highly and artificially colored; sometimes she wore a veil, and
you kept tactfully out of the way, understanding that Tommy was “playing
the woman game.” Mrs. Tommy you saw pictured among “the distinguished
hostesses of the week”; she went in for art, and there would be a
soulful young man about the house. The servants understood the
situation, and so did Eunice.

She was dark and slender, a quick and impatient little thing, with an
abundance of what was currently known as “pep.” She was in two of
Bunny’s classes, and discovering that he was a serious youngster, she
worried him by saying sharp and cutting things, that he was never sure
whether she meant or not; he dared not ask, because then she would tease
him worse than ever. There were always half a dozen fellows following
her about, so it was easy to keep out of the way.

But one Saturday afternoon Bunny won the 220-yard run for the school
team, and that made him a bit of a hero, and boys and girls swarmed
about him, cheering and patting him on the back. Then, after he had had
his shower and was dressed, he went out in search of his car, and there
was Eunice just getting into her roadster, and she said, “Let me take
you.” He answered, “I’ve got my own car here,” and she exclaimed, “Why,
you horrid rude thing! Get into this car at once, sir!” So of course he
did, a little rattled. When she said, “Are you afraid somebody will
steal that cheap old car of yours?”—was it up to him to defend the
newness and expensiveness of Dad’s latest gift?

“Bunny,” she said, “my mother and father are having a row at home, and
it’s horrid there.”

“Well, what do you want to do?” said he, sympathetically.

“Let’s go somewhere and have supper—away from everything. You come, and
it’ll be my party.”

So they drove for an hour or so, and climbed by a winding road to the
top of a hill, and there was a café, with a terrace looking out over a
bay and a rocky shore-line that would have been famous if it had been in
Italy. They ate supper, and chatted about school affairs, and Eunice
told him about her home-life and how some one had written her mother a
letter revealing that her father had paid a lot of money to some woman,
and Mrs. Hoyt was furious, because why should men do things that made it
necessary for them to pay money?

The sun set over the ocean, and the lights came out along the shore, and
a big full moon behind the hills; and Eunice said, “Do you like me a
little bit, Bunny?” He answered that of course he did, and she said,
“But you don’t show it ever.” “Well,” he explained, “I never know quite
what to make of you, because you always kid me;” and to that she said,
“I know, Bunny, I’m a horrid mean thing, but the truth is, I just do
that to keep my courage up. I’m afraid of you, too, because you’re
serious, and I’m just a silly chatterbox, and I have to make a show.” So
after that Bunny was able to enjoy the party.

They got into the car and drove again. The road ran through a tangle of
sand-dunes, high up above the ocean. “Oh, this is lovely!” said Eunice,
and when they came to a place where the ground was firm she ran the car
off the pavement and parked it. “Let’s go and watch the ocean,” she
said. “There’s a rug in the back.” So Bunny got the rug out, and they
walked over the dunes, and sat on top of one, and listened to the waves
below; and Eunice smoked a cigarette, and scolded Bunny because he was a
horrid little Puritan that wouldn’t keep her company. Presently a man
came walking by, and glanced at them as he passed, and Eunice said,
“Have you got a gun?” And when he said that he hadn’t, she remarked,
“You’re supposed to bring a gun nowadays when you go on a petting
party.” Bunny had not realized that this was exactly a petting party,
but you can see that it would not have been polite of him to say so.

He listened while she told him about bandits who were making a business
of holding up couples parked by the roadside; some were beastly to the
girls, and what would Bunny do if one of them were suddenly to appear?
Bunny said he didn’t know, but of course he’d defend a woman the best he
could. “But I don’t want you to get shot,” said Eunice. “We’ve a scandal
already in our family.” So she said, “Let’s get lost, Bunny;” and he
gathered up the rug and they wandered over the dunes—a long way from
the road and from everything; and in one of the hollows, a still nest
where the sand was soft and smooth, she told him to spread the rug
again, and there they sat, hid from everything save the round yellow
moon, which has looked down upon millions and millions of such scenes,
and never yet betrayed a confidence.

They sat close together, and Eunice rested her head against Bunny’s
shoulder and whispered, “Do you care for me a little bit?” He assured
her that he did, but she said, no, he must think she was a horrid bold
thing; and when he declared that he didn’t, she said, “Then why don’t
you kiss me?” He began to kiss her, but she wasn’t satisfied—he didn’t
mean it, she said; and suddenly she whispered, “Bunny, I don’t believe
you’ve ever really loved a girl before!”

He admitted that he had not. “I’ve always known you were a queer boy,”
she said. “What is the matter?” Bunny said he didn’t quite know; he was
trembling violently, because he had never had anything like this happen
to him, and several different emotions clamored at the same time, and
which one should he follow? “Let me teach you, Bunny,” whispered the
girl; and when he did not answer at once, she put her lips upon his, in
a long kiss that made him dizzy. He murmured faintly that something
might happen, she might get into trouble; but she told him not to worry
about that, she knew about those things and had taken the needed
precautions.

                                   II

Such was the way of Bunny’s initiation into the adult life. Gone were
the days of happy innocence when he could be content to sit holding
hands with Rosie Taintor. “Holding hands” was now walking on a slippery
ledge, over a dark abyss where pleasure and pain were so mingled you
could hardly tell them apart. Bunny was frightened by the storm of
emotion which seized upon him, and still more by the behavior of the
girl in his arms; a kind of frenzy shook her, she clung to him in a
convulsion of excitement, half sobbing, half laughing, with little cries
as of an animal in pain. And Bunny must share this delirium, she would
not have it otherwise, she was furious in her exactions, the mistress of
these dark rites, and he must obey her will. The first time, the boy was
overwhelmed by the realization of what he had done, but she clung to
him, whispering, “Oh, Bunny don’t be ashamed! No, no! I won’t let you be
ashamed! Why haven’t we got a right to be happy? Oh, please, please, be
happy!” So he had to promise, and do his best.

“Oh, Bunny, you are such a sweet lover! And we are going to have such
good times.” This was her crooning song, wrapped in his arms, there
under the springtime moon, which is the same in California as everywhere
else in the world. And when the chill of the California night began to
creep into their bones, they could hardly tear themselves apart, but all
the way over the dunes they walked arm in arm, kissing as they went.
“Oh, Bunny, it was bold and bad of me, but tell me you forgive me, tell
me you’re glad I did it!” It appeared to be his duty to comfort her.

Driving back to Beach City they talked about this adventure. Bunny
hadn’t thought much about sex, he had no philosophy ready at hand, but
Eunice had hers, and told it to him simply and frankly. The old people
taught you a lot of rubbish about it, and then they sneaked off and
lived differently, and why should you let yourself be fooled by silly
“don’ts”? Love was all right if you were decent about it, and when you
had found out that you didn’t have to have any babies, why must you
bother to get married? Most married people were miserable anyhow, and if
the young people could find a way to be happy, it was up to them, and
what the old folks didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Did Bunny see anything wrong with that? Bunny answered that he didn’t;
the reason he had been “such an old prude,” was just that he hadn’t got
to know Eunice. She said that men were supposed not to care for a girl
who made advances to them; therefore, she added with her flash of
mischief, it would be up to Bunny to make some of the advances from now
on. He said he would do so, and would have started at once, only Eunice
was driving at forty-some miles an hour, and it would be better to hurt
her feelings than to upset the car.

Were there other girls like Eunice, Bunny wanted to know, and she said
there were plenty, and named a few, and Bunny was surprised and a little
shocked, because some of them were prominent in class affairs, and
decorous-seeming. Eunice told him about their ways, and it was a good
deal like a secret society, without any officers or formal ritual, but
with a strict code none the less. They called themselves “the Zulus,”
these bold spirits who had dared to do as they pleased; they kept one
another’s secrets faithfully, and helped the younger ones to that
knowledge which was so essential to happiness. The old guarded this
knowledge jealously—how to keep from having babies, and what to do if
you got “caught.” There was a secret lore about the art of love, and
books that you bought in certain stores, or found stowed away behind
other books in your father’s den. Such volumes would be passed about and
read by scores.

It was a new ethical code that these young people were making for
themselves, without any help from their parents. Eunice did not know, of
course, that she was doing anything so imposing as that; she just talked
about her feelings, and what she liked and what she feared. Was it right
to love this way or that? And what did Bunny think about the possibility
of loving two girls at the same time? Claire Reynolds said you couldn’t,
but Billy Rosen said you could, and they were wrangling all the time.
But Mary Blake got along quite happily with two boys who loved her and
had agreed not to be jealous.—This was a new world into which Bunny was
being introduced, and he asked a lot of questions, and could not help
blushing at some of Eunice’s matter-of-fact replies.

Bunny crept into the house at two o’clock in the morning, and no member
of the family was the wiser. But he was equally as late the next night,
and the next—had he not promised Eunice to “make the advances”? So of
course the family realized that something was up, and it was interesting
to see their reactions. Aunt Emma and Grandma were in a terrible
“state,”: but they could not say why—such was the handicap the old
generation imposed upon themselves. They both went to Dad, but could
only talk about late hours and their effect on a boy’s health. And Dad
himself could not do much more. When Bunny said that he had been taking
Eunice Hoyt driving, Dad asked about her, was she a “nice” girl? Bunny
answered that she was the treasurer of the girls’ basket-ball team, and
her father was Mr. Hoyt, whom Dad knew, and she had her own car and had
even tried to pay for the supper. So there could be no idea that Bunny
was being “vamped,” and all Dad said was “Take it easy, son, don’t try
to live your whole life in a couple of weeks.”

Also there was Bunny’s sister, and that was curious. Had some
underground message come to Bertie, through connections with the
“Zulus”? All that she said was, “I’m glad you’ve consented to take an
interest in something beside oil and strikers for a change.” But behind
that sentence lay such an ocean of calm feminine knowledge! Bunny was
started upon a new train of thought. Could it be that late hours meant
the same thing for his sister that they had suddenly come to mean for
him? Bertie was supposed to be dancing; and did she always come directly
home, or did she also park by the waysides? Bunny had got over being
shocked by the parking of Eunice’s car, but it took him longer to get
used to the idea of the parking of his sister’s car. He began to notice,
as he drove along the highways in the evening—what a great number of
parked cars there were!

                                  III

All this was near the end of the strike; and also it was while America
was going to war. So the excitements of sex were mingled in Bunny’s mind
with those of patriotism. The two were not so far apart as you might
think, for the youth of the country was preparing to march away to
battle, and that loosened sexual standards. You might not come back, so
it made less difference what you did in the meantime. The girls found
their hearts softened toward the boys, and the boys were ready to snatch
a bit of pleasure before it was too late.

Bunny was too young for the first draft, but he went to drilling at
school, which cast the military halo about him. There was a high school
corps, provided with old rifles of the state militia, and the
athletic-ield was covered with groups of lads marching, “Hep, hep! Hep,
hep! Squad right! Squad left!”—treading on one another’s toes, but
keeping the grim look on their young faces. Soon they would have
uniforms, and so would the girls of the nurses’ training corps. Boys and
girls met in school assembly and sang patriotic songs with fervor.

Yes, it was war! Whole fleets of cargo vessels were taking supplies to
England and France, and brigades of engineers and laborers to prepare
the way for the army. The President was making speeches—wonderful,
glowing, eloquent speeches. There was a race of evil men, the Huns, who
had risen up to threaten civilization, and now the might of democratic
America was going to put them down. When this job had been done, there
would be an end to all the world’s troubles; so the duty of every
patriot was to take his part in this last of all wars—the War to end
War—the War for Democracy. Statesmen big and little took up the chorus,
the newspapers echoed it a million copies every hour, and a host of
“four minute men” were trained, to go into factories and theatres, and
wherever crowds were gathered, to rouse America for this crusade.

The Ross family, like all other families, read, and listened, and
argued. Bunny, the young idealist, swallowed every word of the
propaganda; it was exactly what he wanted to believe, his kind of mental
food. He would argue with his cool, slow-moving, quietly dubious father.
Yes, of course, Dad would say, we had to win the war; we had to win any
war we got into. But as to the future, well, it would be time to decide
about that when we came to it. First, Dad was occupied with getting the
strike settled, and after that, with selling oil on a constantly rising
market. There was no sense giving it away, because the government wanted
more wells drilled, and how were they to be financed, unless the product
was paid for? The government was paying generously, and that was
patriotism enough for Dad; he would see to the spouting of his wells,
and leave the other kinds of spouting to the politicians.

Aunt Emma considered that a shameful way to talk to a boy, and she
scolded vigorously, according to the privilege of “in-laws.” Aunt Emma
would go to the clubs and listen to the patriotic lady-orators, telling
about Belgian babies with their hands cut off, and munition depots blown
up by German spies, and she would come home in a blaze of militarism.
Bertie was even worse, for her young man who took her to the
jazz-parties was active in one of the defense societies, and knew the
names of all the German agents in Southern California, and the
villainies they were planning; so Bertie was full of dark hints, and a
sense of awful responsibility.

You could never tell how this war excitement was going to hit any one
person. For example, could you have imagined that a perfectly
respectable old lady of way over seventy, brought up on a ranch, and
supposed to be wrapped up in painting in oils, would suddenly blossom
out as a Hun sympathizer? Such was Grandma, who declared that she had no
use whatsoever for this war; the Germans were no worse than any of the
other people concerned, they were all stained with blood, and all there
was to the atrocity stories and spy rubbish was to make people hate the
enemy. But Grandma wasn’t going to hate anybody, no matter how much Emma
and Bertie and the rest might rage; she proceeded to show her defiance
by painting a picture of some Germans in old-time costumes drinking beer
out of painted steins. She wanted to hang this in the dining-room, and
there was a great row, with Aunt Emma and Bertie trying to persuade Dad
to forbid it!

All this was part of Bunny’s education; he listened and learned. From
his quiet, steady old father he learned to smile amiably over the
foibles of human nature, and to go on gathering in the dollars. Talk was
all right, but after all, what was going to win the war was bullets and
shells, and to get them to the battle-field you had to have
transportation. The oil that Dad brought up out of the ground was
driving big trucks that were carrying munitions up to the front; it was
moving the biggest and fastest cargo-ships, and the swift destroyers
that were protecting them; it was lubricating the machinery in the
factories, and more and more was being called for. As soon as the strike
was over, Dad proceeded to sign contracts with the government, and to
put down a dozen new wells in the Paradise field. The one thing that was
troubling him was that he could not make three times as many contracts
and put down three times as many wells; the big fellows, who controlled
the banks, would not let him have enough money—at least not unless he
would go in with them and let them hog most of the profits. That was a
different kind of war, one going on right at home, and there was no
prospect of it’s being ended by presidential speeches. Dad would explain
that to Bunny, as a reason for the limitations in the “idealism” of a
business man!

                                   IV

Up at Paradise things were booming. All the men were back at work—even
the blacklisted ones, at a dollar a day more and with another raise
promised; a good driller was worth just about his weight in gold. Here
too came the “four minute men,” and were listened to gladly; the oil
workers were patriotic, and would have enlisted to a man, but they were
needed on this job—there was nothing more important than oil, and the
way for them to serve their country was to keep the stuff flowing, and
watch out for fires, and for obstructions dropped into the wells, and
other acts of vandalism by enemy agents.

Paul was back as Dad’s boss builder. But then came the first draft, and
Paul had one of the lucky numbers. Dad offered to get him exempted, for
obviously there had to be shacks to house the men who were to drill and
operate the new wells. Dad had power to arrange matters—you can
understand that, when you learn that the chairman of the exemption board
was Mr. Carey, the rancher who had accepted money from Dad to get the
road built for the drilling. But Paul said no, there were married men
with families who knew as much about building houses as he did, so Paul
would do his share in the field.

Paul and Bunny were friends again, and had no end of arguments. Paul
wasn’t nearly as keen for the war as Bunny thought he ought to be; he
agreed that we had to win, since we were in, but he wasn’t sure it was
necessary for us to be in, so Bunny had to retell the arguments he heard
from the orators at school. That made lively times at the Rascum
cabin—because, strange as it may seem, Ruth was taking exactly the same
attitude to the war as Grandma, whom Ruth had never met. Ruth declared
that all wars were wicked, and she would never have anything to do with
one. But of course you could see what she really meant, she didn’t want
Paul taken away and killed! When Paul read his number in the first
draft-list, Ruth became quite frantic, and there was nothing that would
pacify her. She clung to Paul, vowing he should not go, she would die of
grief if he did; when she realized that he was actually going, she went
about her work, pale and silent.

Paul went away to a training-camp, and after that paleness and silence
became the dominant notes of Ruth’s character. She went back to her
father’s home to stay at night, which meant that on Sunday’s she had to
go to church with them, and sit and bite her lips while Eli preached.
For Eli was a prophet after the old testament model, calling down
judgment upon the enemies of the Lord, smiting them hip and thigh,
leaving not one alive, not even the little ones, the “spawns of the
devil.” Eli, being a preacher, did not have to do this killing himself;
he was exempt, and so was his sister Meelie, who solved the war problem
for herself by marrying a young derrick man and getting Dad to make him
a foreman and have him kept at home. Meelie, who was a chatterbox and a
fresh young thing, said to Bunny that Ruth ought to find herself a
husband instead of mourning over Paul; maybe the day would come when
Bunny would want to be exempted, and they might both solve the problem
at the same time!

                                   V

That was a feverish summer in Bunny’s life, between the war and his
raptures with Eunice. He spent a great deal of time at Beach City,
because he had the excuse of the military work, and because the girl was
so imperious in her demands. Indeed, the first rift in their happiness
came because he would persist in paying visits to Paradise, where Eunice
could not very well come. She took up Bertie’s phrase that Bunny was a
“little oil gnome.” “What do you want with so much money?” she would
argue. “My God, let me get some from Papa, if you need it!” Tommy Hoyt,
it seems, had made a huge killing, buying old hulks down at the harbor
just before the country entered the war; it was reported he had cleared
a cool three million. There had been a lot about it in the papers—all
very complimentary, since that was everybody’s dream of glory.

How could Bunny explain that it wasn’t the money, but the fact that the
country had to have oil, and he wanted to do his share; what kind of
preternatural solemnity was that for a youth of eighteen? He put the
blame on Dad, who wasn’t very well and needed his son; and so it became
an issue, which did Bunny care for most, his Dad or his sweetheart?
Eunice would grab him by the shoulders and shake him; she had to have
some one to take her to a dance, and if he went off and buried himself
in the desert, she would get another fellow.

She was insatiable, ravenous for pleasure; she never knew when to stop,
whatever it might be. “One dance more! Just one!” she would plead; and
then it would be one kiss more, or one drink. She was always pleading
with Bunny to drink, and having her feelings hurt because he refused.
How could he count his promise to his father more than his promise to be
her pal? And how could she take him out with her crowd if he played the
part of a skeleton at a feast?

Not for long was she content to lose themselves in the sand-dunes, and
share their secret with the moon. Eunice loved the bright lights, the
free and conspicuous spending of Papa’s sudden wealth. They would drive
to Angel City, where in fashionable hotels were palatial dining-rooms,
with jazz-orchestras, and crowds of revellers, celebrating new contracts
and new financial coups. The rooms were decorated with the flags of all
the allies, and the men wore the uniforms of all the services. This was
what the war meant to Eunice, to be in this shining company, and stand
up while the orchestra played the “Star-spangled Banner,” and after that
to dance all night while it played, “Kiss me, honey-baby,” or
“Toodle-ums too,” or whatever amorous cajolement the saxophone might
present. She was an aggressive little dancer, clinging to her partner,
her body fitted into his as if it had been moulded there. Bunny would
not have thought it quite decent to behave like that in public, but it
was the mood of the time, and no one paid any attention to them,
especially after the hours had passed and the drinks had taken effect.

There was always the problem of getting Eunice away from these
excitements. She never wanted to go, not even when she was exhausted; he
would half carry her out, and she would fall asleep on his shoulder on
the way home, and it was all he could do to keep from falling asleep
himself. There was a boy in their crowd who would carry a broken nose
about for the rest of his life, because he had dozed at the
steering-wheel on a crowded boulevard; another had spent ten days in
jail because, after a smash-up, the police had smelled liquor on his
breath. It was the etiquette of parties that the man who had to drive
must drink only gin—not because that would not make him drunk, but
because it left no odor on his breath!

The time came when Eunice decided that it was silly to take that long
drive to Beach City after dancing. She found a hotel where you could
register as Mr. and Mrs. Smith of San Francisco and no one would ask any
questions; you paid in advance, because of your lack of baggage, and in
the morning you slipped out separately, and no one was the wiser. You
told the folks at home that you had spent the night with a friend, and
they did not pursue the matter—being afraid of what they might find
out.

All this made a great difference in Bunny’s life, and before long it
began to show in his appearance; he was not quite so rosy, and Dad took
notice, and was no longer embarrassed to speak. “You’re making a fool of
yourself, son; these late hours have got to stop.” So Bunny would try to
get out of going to some dance, and Eunice would fly into his arms, and
sob, and cling to him, moulding her body into his in that terrible,
breath-taking way she had; all Bunny’s senses would be filled with her,
the delicate perfume she used, the feeling of the filmy stuffs she wore,
her tumbled hair, her burning, swift, persistent kisses. He would have
to stand and argue and plead, trying to keep his reason while his head
went round.

Sometimes there would be embarrassment mingled with his other emotions,
because these scenes took place in the drawing-room of the Hoyt home,
with either of the parents present. But what could they do? They had
raised this wild young creature, giving her everything in the world,
half a dozen servants to wait on her, to answer her every whim. She had
always had what she wanted, and now she wanted her lover, and all that
poor Mrs. Hoyt could say was, “Don’t be hard-hearted, Bunny”—really
seeming to blame him for these tantrums in her presence! As for poor
“Tommy,” when he happened in on a tantrum, there came a frightened look
on his rosy, rather boyish face, and he turned and skedaddled. He had
troubles enough of his own making, and the next time he met Bunny, he
set forth his point of view in one pregnant sentence, “There’s no such
thing as a normal woman in the world!”

                                   VI

Just before school opened, Bunny took the bit in his teeth and went to
Paradise to spend a week with Dad, and found that Paul was there on a
three day’s furlough. Paul was not going to get overseas, it appeared;
the army had put him to work at his old job—building barracks—only
now, instead of ten dollars a day he was getting thirty a month “and
beans.” That was what it meant for a workingman to be patriotic! It was
quite a contrast with Tommy Hoyt’s three millions, and the hundred and
twenty thousand a week of Dad’s oil-contracts! But nobody thought about
that, because of the eloquence of the President’s speeches, and the
concentrated ardor of the four minute orators.

Paul looked big and strong in his khaki uniform; and Ruth was happy,
because Paul wasn’t going to be killed. Meelie was happy, because there
was a baby on the way, and Sadie because there was a young rancher
“keeping company” with her. Dad was happy, because he had brought in
another gusher, and proved up a whole new slope of the Paradise tract;
he was putting in pipe-lines and preparing a colossal development—the
bankers couldn’t keep him down, he would finance himself with oil!

Everybody was happy except Bunny, who could think of nothing but the
fact that Eunice was angry, and he was risking the loss of her. She had
warned him, she would not be left alone; if he deserted her, she would
punish him. He knew that she meant it; she had had lovers before him,
and would have others after him. This “petting” was a daily necessity
for her, and a girl could not get it unless she was willing to “go the
limit.” That was the etiquette prevailing in this smart and dashing
crowd; the rich high school youths would go out hunting in pairs in
their fancy sport-cars, and would pick up girls and drive them, and if
the girls did not play the game according to their taste, they would
turn them out on the road, anywhere, a score of miles from a town. There
was formula, short and snappy, “Pet or walk!”

Bunny took long tramps, trying to shake off his cruel fever. He would
come back to sleep, but instead he would think about Eunice, and the
manifold intoxication of his senses would return; she would be there
with all her allurements and her abandonments. Bunny tried haltingly
once or twice to tell Paul about it; Paul being a sort of god, a firm
and dependable moral force, to whom one might flee. Bunny remembered the
scorn with which Paul had talked about “fornications,” and Bunny had not
known quite what he meant—but Bunny knew now, alas, only too well. He
tried to confess, but was ashamed, and could not break down the
barriers. Instead, he made some excuse to his father and drove back to
Beach City, three days earlier than he had intended; and all the way as
he rode he was hearing Paul’s voice, those cruel words of the
strike-days: “You’re soft, Bunny, you’re soft.”

                                  VII

The first rain of the season was falling, and Bunny got in fairly late,
and found that Eunice was at home, and had not carried out her threat to
get another lover. No, she was trying an experiment she had read about
in a book of her mother’s, a thing called “mental telepathy”; you sat
and shut your eyes and “concentrated,” “willing” that somebody should do
something, and then they would do it, and the “new thought” doctrine
would be vindicated. Eunice was trying it, and when she heard Bunny’s
step on the veranda, she sprang up with a little shriek of delight and
rushed into his arms, and while she smothered him with kisses she told
him about this marvelous triumph of experimental psychology. “Oh, Bunny,
I just knew you couldn’t be so cruel to me! I knew you’d come, because
I’m all alone, Mamma has gone to raise money for the Serbian orphans.
Oh, Bunny, come on!”—and she started to draw him toward the stairs.

Bunny didn’t think that was quite the thing, and tried to hold back, but
she smothered his protest in kisses. “You silly boy, are we going out
and park in the rain? Or do you want to go to a hotel here in town,
where everybody knows us?”

“But, your mother, Eunice—”

“Mother, bunk!” said Eunice. “Mother has a lover and I know it, and she
knows I know it. If she don’t know about you and me, it’s time she was
making a guess. So you come up to my room.”

“But how’ll I get out, Eunice?”

“You’ll get out when I let you out, and maybe it’ll be morning, and
you’ll be treated with decent hospitality.”

“But Eunice, I never heard of such a thing!”

“Bunny, you talk like your grandmother!”

“But what about the servants, dear?”

“Servants, hell!” said Eunice. “You can run your home to please the
servants, but that’s not our way—at least, not tonight!” And to save
Bunny any embarrassment, she kept him in her room in the morning while
she broke the news to her mother; and if there were any mental agonies
Bunny never knew it, because the patroness of the Serbian orphans
breakfasted in bed, reading in the morning paper the account of her
fashionable philanthropies.

After that, the ice was broken—as the French have observed, it is the
first step that counts, thought it is doubtful if any parent in
old-fashioned France has been compelled to take quite so long a step.
The rainy season continued, making outdoor petting parties
uncomfortable, so whenever he was commanded, Bunny would stay in
Eunice’s home, and it was all quite domestic and regular according to
advanced modern standards. In fact, there was only one small detail
left, and Bunny suggested that: “Eunice, why shouldn’t we go and get
married, and have it over with?”

He was surprised by the vehemence of the girl’s reaction. “Oh, Bunny,
we’re having such a happy time, and why do you want to ruin it?”

“But why would that ruin it?”

“All married people are miserable. I know, because I’ve watched them.
Mamma and Papa would give a million dollars—well, maybe not that much
but certainly a couple of hundred thousand, if they could get loose
without having to go through all the fuss in the courts, and the horrid
things the newspapers would publish, and their pictures and all.”

“But we won’t have to do that, dear.”

“How do you know we mightn’t? If we got married, you’d think you had a
right to me, and then you wouldn’t do what I say any more, and I
wouldn’t be happy. Oh, let’s do our own way, and not what other people
try to make us. All my life other people have been making me do things,
and I’ve been fighting them—even you, Bunny-bear.” She had a score of
such appellatives for him, because, as you can understand, his name was
adapted to petting-party uses; they were dancing a contrivance known as
the Bunny-hug, and he heard a lot about that.

You went about in this prosperous and fashionable society, and on the
surface everything was decorous and proper, fitting the marital formulas
laid down in the laws and preached in the churches. But when you got
under the surface—anywhere, high or low—what you found was that human
beings, finding themselves unhappy, had come to private understandings.
Husbands and wives set one another free, they made exchanges of
partners, they brought friends into their homes, who were in reality
substitute husbands or wives; there were companions and secretaries and
governesses and cousins who played such roles—and when the children
found it out, they were in position to put pressure on their parents, a
kind of informal family blackmail, good for motor-cars and fur-coats and
strings of pearls, and most precious of all, the right to have your own
way.

                                  VIII

Early in the year, while America was getting into the war, the people of
Russia had overthrown their Tsar and set up a republic. That had pleased
most people in America; it was much pleasanter to be allied with a
republic. But now, in the fall, came a terrifying event; there was
another revolution, this time not made by respectable scholars and
business men, but by wild-eyed fanatics called “Bolshevikis,” who
proceeded to confiscate property and smash things up. At once it became
apparent what a calamity this was going to mean for the allies; Russia
was going to desert them, and the mass of the Germans on the East would
be set free to be hurled against the half-exhausted Western front.
Already the Russian armies were going to pieces, the soldiers were
deserting wholesale and swarming back to the cities or to their
villages; at the same time the leaders of the new government were
starting a world-wide propaganda attacking the allies and their
war-aims.

Who were these leaders? It was enough for America to note that a horde
of them, who had been hiding in Switzerland, were loaded into a sealed
train by the German government and escorted across Germany and dumped
into Russia to make all the trouble they could. That meant Lenin and his
crowd were hired agents of the Hun; when they proceeded to attack what
they called “allied imperialism,” that was the Kaiser’s voice speaking
Russian, and when they published the secret treaties of the allies,
taken from the archives of the Tsar, the newspapers in America dismissed
the documents as obvious forgeries.

Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers. He considered that
this “Bolsheviki revolution” was the most terrible event that had
happened in the world in his life-time; his face would grow pale as he
talked to Bunny about it. America could get no army to France until next
spring, and perhaps not till fall, and meantime the Germans had a
million men they could move, only a few hundred miles across their
country to the West front; they were jist a-goin’ to roll over the
British and French, and take Paris, and perhaps the whole of France, and
we should have the job of driving them out again. The whole burden of
the war now fell onto America’s shoulders, and it would last years and
years—neither Dad nor Bunny might live to see the end of it.

Dad would read paragraphs out of the papers, details of the horrors that
were happening in Russia—literally millions of people slaughtered, all
the educated and enlightened ones; the most hideous tortures inflicted,
such obscenities as you could not put into print. Before long they began
applying their Communist theories to the women of the country, who were
“nationalized” and made into public property by official decree; the
“commissars” were raping them wholesale. Lenin was killing Trotsky, and
Trotsky was throwing Lenin into jail. It was a boiling up from the
bottom of the social pit, such savagery as we had hardly dreamed
existing in human nature. Bunny could see now the folly of that
“idealism” he had been prattling, his idea of letting strikers have
their way, and turning industry over to the mob. Here was the thing
tried out in practice, and how did he like it? Bunny had to admit that
he didn’t like it so well, and he was crushed and sobered.

The problem came home to him, because he had to decide as to his own
duty in this world crisis. This was his last year in school; then he
would be old enough for the draft, and what was he going to do? He and
his father talked it out in a solemn conference. Dad thought that he had
responsibilities enough to entitle him to the help of one son; he didn’t
think he would be a slacker if he were to get Mr. Carey to release Bunny
for service in the oil industry. But Bunny insisted that he must go to
the front; he even talked of quitting school at once and enlisting, as a
number of other boys had done. They finally agreed to compromise,
waiting till Bunny was through school, and then see how matters shaped
up. But meantime Bunny owed this much to his country, as well as to
himself—he should give more time to his studies, and less to playing
about. If a young fellow really understood this world crisis, he would
surely stick to whatever work he was doing, and not throw himself away
in dissipations. Bunny flushed and let his eyes fall, and said he
guessed that was true, and he’d do better in future.

                                   IX

He went to Eunice in his mood of high seriousness, to explain how the
burden of the task of saving civilization had fallen upon their
shoulders. She told him yes, she had been realizing it, she had just
been getting a serious talk from her mother, who had explained that
there was going to be a shortage of food and all kinds of materials, as
a result of the war and the needs of our allies. The club-ladies had
decided upon their duty—they would purchase only the most expensive
kinds of food, so as to leave the lard and cabbage and potatoes for the
poor; Mrs. Hoyt had given away all her clothing to the Salvation army,
and spent a small fortune buying a complete outfit of the most costly
things she could find. Eunice was of course quite willing to use only
luxuries, but found it a little puzzling, because her Aunt Alice took
just the opposite view, and had bought herself a lot of cheap things, in
order to set an example to the working-classes. Which did Bunny think
was right?

But this sober mood did not last long with Eunice. A couple of days
later she was invited to a Belgian orphans’ ball, and when Bunny
insisted that he had to study, she threatened to go with Billy Chalmers,
the handsome captain of last year’s football team—there was no team
this year. Bunny said all right, and so Eunice flaunted Billy in front
of the whole school, and there were rumors that he was parking his car
with her, and that Bunny’s nose was out of joint. This went on for a
week or two, until Bunny’s heart-ache was more than he could stand. It
was a Saturday night—and Dad had granted that it wouldn’t be wrong to
go to one dance a week; so he phoned Eunice, and they “made it up” with
tears and wild gusts of passion, and she declared that she had never
really really loved anyone but her Bunny-bear, and how could he have
been so wicked as to refuse to please her?

But then came Christmas, and the shrewd and persistent Dad arranged a
series of temptations—a big turkey, and Ruth to cook it, and two new
wells coming in, to say nothing of the quail calling over the hills at
sunset. Bunny promised, and simply had to go; and Eunice had the most
terrible of all her tantrums, she grabbed Bunny by the hair and pulled
him about her mother’s drawing-room, with her mother standing helpless
by; she vowed that Bunny was a four-flusher, and a wretch, and she would
ring up Billy Chalmers, and they would go off on a joy-ride that very
night, and not come back till the Christmas holidays were over and maybe
not then.

Bunny went to Paradise, and studied the new wells, and the drawings for
the new pipe-lines, and the “set-up” of the proposed refinery; he
wandered over the hills with Dad and shot quail, and at night he lay in
his lonely bed and writhed in misery. It seemed to him that he was
turning into an old man—surely he would find all his hair grey in the
morning! He was losing more sleep than if he had taken Eunice to the
dances, and what was the sense of that? At school they were teaching him
biology and nineteenth century English poets, and how was that going to
help drive the Germans out of France? Eunice was so fragile, so
beautiful, and she was going to be so unhappy! She was different from
other girls, difficult to understand, and the next fellow would not be
so good to her as Bunny had been! Also, the world that was trying to
tear them apart was the same blind and stupid world that was killing
millions of people; maybe Grandma was right after all, the whole thing
was a chaos of cruelty, and it didn’t matter what you did, or which side
won.

Then in the morning there would be Dad, and the day’s grinding of their
tremendous big machine. Dad at least was dependable, Dad had something
he was sure of. Also, he seemed to know all about Bunny without being
told, he was gentle and sympathetic in a tactful way, not saying a word,
but trying to entertain Bunny, and find things they could do together.
Come to think of it, Dad had been through things like this himself! It
would have been interesting to talk straight with him—only it would
have embarrassed him so. Bunny thought of his “little Mamma,” whom he
had not seen for more than a year; she had gone to New York, and Bunny
suspected that Dad had increased her allowance on condition that she
would stay there. Bunny wished that he might talk with her about Eunice,
and get her opinion on the subject of exchangeable lovers.

He stuck it out, and when he went back home, he did not go to see
Eunice. Whenever he met her, his heart would give a jump that hurt, but
he would turn the other way and walk a few miles to get over it. The
news spread among the “Zulus” that the pair had broken for good, and
several sprightly young ladies began making overtures to the young oil
prince. But Bunny hardly saw them, his heart was dead within him, he
told himself that he would never look at another girl. One of the
nineteenth century poets was Byron, and in his romances Bunny found
exactly the mood of aristocratic broken-heartedness to which he could
respond. As for Eunice, she went on petting parties with her former
football captain, and apparently managed to escape every one of the
calamities which Bunny had feared for her.




                               CHAPTER IX
                              THE VICTORY


                                   I

The first term of Bunny’s school ended in February, and he passed his
examinations with reasonable success; then there was a brief holiday,
and Dad produced a wonderful scheme. He could not help feeling a little
uncomfortable, with the Watkins family living right there on the tract,
and he taking millions of dollars out of the ground for which he had
paid them thirty-seven hundred. Dad had an impulse to do something, yet
he was afraid to do too much, for fear he might “spoil” them, giving
them the notion he owed them more. What he proposed was a family
excursion; he would take Bunny and Ruth and Meelie and Sadie in the big
limousine, and hire an extra car for old Mr. Watkins and his wife, and
drive to the cantonment where Paul was working, and pay him a visit and
see the new army in the making. They would stay a couple of days at some
hotel nearby, and see all the sights, including the revival meetings
which Eli was holding in a huge tent near the encampment.

The girls of course were wild with happiness. It was the first time they
had ever had a long automobile trip in the whole of their
unsophisticated lives. Bunny spoke to Ruth, who spoke to her mother, who
in turn spoke to her husband, and obtained his promise that he would do
his best to persuade the Holy Spirit not to send them any revelations or
inspire any rolling or talking in tongues until they had got to the
camp-meeting. As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit had recently
declared, through Eli as prophet of the Third Revelation, that these
inspirational gymnastics had served their purpose and were to be
dropped. No reason was vouchsafed, but there were rumors that the
well-to-do people who were backing Eli in his evangelical campaigns were
opposed to the rolling, and did not regard the speech of the archangels
as having any meaning for mortal ears. One of these disciples was an
eminent judge, and another was a proprietor of chain grocery-stores;
their wives had taken Eli in hand and rubbed off the rough spots and
improved his grammar, explaining that because one said heathen, one did
not necessarily say healen; also they had taught him where to get his
clothes and how to hold a knife and fork, so that Eli was becoming a
social success.

It was almost like going to see the war: this tremendous city of canvas
and corrugated iron and redwood siding which had arisen as if by Arabian
Nights magic, swarming with eager young men in khaki, all of them as
busy as ants—yet never too busy to take note of the presence of three
good-looking girls in a row! You could go through this city at certain
hours, if you got the proper permit, and see a bit of the drilling; at
certain other hours Paul could get off, and while the old folks and the
girls went to hear Eli, Dad and Bunny and Paul sat on the hotel veranda
and talked about the state of the world.

The Russians had just concluded a peace with Germany, withdrawing
entirely from the war, and giving up a lot of territory to the enemy.
Dad discussed this event, and repeated his opinion of the treacherous
“Bolshevikis.” Then Paul said how it seemed to him; Bunny saw that even
here, with all the work he had to do, Paul had found time to read and to
think his own thoughts. “Bunny,” he said, “do you remember our oil
strike, and what we read about it in the papers? Suppose you had never
been to Paradise, and didn’t know the strikers, but had got all your
impressions from the Angel City newspapers! Well, that’s the way it
seems to me about Russia; this is the biggest strike in history, and the
strikers have won, and seized the oil wells. Some day maybe we’ll know
what they’re doing, but it won’t be from newspaper stories made up by
the allied diplomats and the exiled grand dukes.”

That made Dad rather warm, because he had been reading this news for
three or four months, and believing every word of it. He wanted to know
if Paul didn’t believe there had been any killing of the rich classes in
Russia. Paul said he didn’t doubt there had been some, because he had
read about the French revolution. What you had to remember was the way
the Russian people had been treated by their ruling classes, and the
kind of government they were used to; you had to judge their revolution
by their standards and not by ours. Paul smiled and added that it was a
mistake for an American employer who had tried to give his men a square
deal, to identify himself with those masters in Russia who had beaten
their men with knouts, and turned them over to the Cossacks if they
attempted any protest.

That pacified Dad a little, but he said the way it seemed to him, these
Bolshevikis were jist so many German agents. He told about the train
that had carried Lenin—Dad called him Lee-nyne—through Germany. But
Paul asked whether he had watched the news that had come from the peace
negotiations; the Germans had apparently been as much afraid of the
Russians as we were. These Bolsheviks were fighting the ruling classes
of both sides, and the Germans might find the peace they had made more
dangerous to them than the fighting; the revolutionary propaganda might
spread in their armies, and even to the Western front.

There was no use expecting Dad to see anything so complicated as that.
He declared that if the Russians had really wanted to help the cause of
peace and justice, they should have stood by the allies until the Kaiser
was put out of business. Then Paul asked whether Mr. Ross had read the
secret treaties of the allies, and Dad was obliged to confess that he
had never even heard of them. Paul explained how the Soviets, after
demanding that the allies should make known their war aims, and having
no attention paid to the request, had revealed to the world all the
secret agreements which the allies had made with the Tsar, for dividing
up the territories they meant to take from the Germans and Austrians and
Turks. Paul declared that the text of these treaties, the most important
news of the day, had been suppressed by the American newspapers. If we
were going into this war blindfolded, to help Great Britain and France
and Italy and Japan in their imperialist aims, then our people were
being deceived, and some day they would have a bitter awakening.

Dad’s answer to that was simple: Paul might rest assured, those secret
treaties would turn out to be Bolshevik forgeries. Had not our
government already given out a lot of documents it had obtained in
Russia, proving the Bolshevik leaders to be German agents? Those were
the true documents, and Paul would find it out some day, and be ashamed
of having doubted our allies. How could he suppose that President Wilson
would let us be jockeyed?

Bunny sat, taking in every word of this discussion. It was puzzling, and
hard to be sure about, but it seemed to him that Dad was right, what
could a good American do, in war-time like this, but trust his
government? Bunny was a little shocked to hear a man wearing the uniform
of the army sit there and express doubts about his superiors, and he
considered it his duty to get Paul off by himself, and tell him some of
the things the four minute men had said in school, and try to inspire
him with a more intense patriotism. But Paul only laughed, and patted
Bunny on the back, saying that they got any quantity of propaganda here
in the training-camp.

                                   II

One evening they all went to hear Eli; in a great tent such as would
hold a three ring circus, with thousands of cars parked in the fields
about, and sawdust strewn in the aisles, and hundreds of wooden benches,
crowded with soldier boys and ranchers and their wives and children.
There was a platform with the evangelist, wearing a white robe with a
golden star on his bosom, for all the world like some Persian magus; and
there was a “silver band,” with trumpets and bass-tubas gleaming so that
they put your eyes out. When those big blarers started a hymn of glory,
and the audience started to rock and shout, “Praise the Lord!” the top
of that tent would bulge up!

Eli preached against the Hun, telling how the Holy Spirit had revealed
to him that the enemy was to be routed before the year was by, and
promising eternal salvation to all who died in this cause of the
Lord—provided, of course, that they had not rejected their chance to be
saved by Eli. In the middle of the stage was a tank constructed, with
steps descending into it, and the converts sitting in rows on the
platform, garbed in white nighties; when that stage of the ceremonies
arrived, Eli descended into the water himself, and grabbed his victims
one by one by the backs of their necks, and in the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Ghost he swung them forward, souse! into the
water. Thereby their sins were washed from the very last hair of their
bodies, and if from the holy water they contracted any of those diseases
which are the penalty of sins, even among military crusaders—well, all
they had to do was to come back again and have themselves “healen” by
the prophet of the Third Revelation.

Next day the family drove home, and how much they had to gossip about on
the way, and for weeks thereafter! Bunny was looking forward to living
this camp-life the coming summer—except that, because of the
preparation he was getting in school, and also because of Dad’s
influence, he was to be in an officer’s training-camp. He was full of
consecration, and working harder than ever at his duties.

Late in March began that long-dreaded onslaught on the Western front;
one of those battles to which the world had grown accustomed, extending
over a hundred miles of front, and lasting all day and all night for
several weeks. Such a battle was not named from a town or a city, but
from a province; this was the battle of Picardy. The German rush broke
through the British line, and drove them back in rout for thirty or
forty miles, and captured a hundred thousand men, and it seemed that
Dad’s worst forebodings were to be realized.

But neither the Germans nor the allies knew that in an obscure village
amid the fruit orchards of California a mighty prophet was exercising
his magic on their behalf. It chanced that Eli Watkins read a news item
from the front, declaring that the only thing which could save the
British armies was rain; and forthwith he assembled his hosts of prayer,
and all night long they rocked upon their knees and wrung their hands
unto the Lord, invoking storms in Picardy; and the Lord heard them, and
the floodgates of heaven were opened, and the rain descended, and the
feet of the Huns were stuck fast, yea, and their chariot wheels also,
and their mighty men at arms were drowned in mud; but on the side where
the hosts of the Lord were battling there fell no rain, but the ground
was clean, and reinforcements came up, and the British line was saved,
and back amid the California orchards the hosannas of the faithful shook
the blossoms off the prune-trees.

                                  III

Even amid such agonies and thrills, Bunny, being young, had his personal
life. On his way home after drill he ran into Nina Goodrich, one of his
class-mates, turning a corner in her car, clad in a bathing suit with a
cape over it. Upon such little things do one’s life-destinies depend!
She slowed up and called, “Come have a swim with me!” He hopped in, and
she whisked him down to the beach in two minutes, and in five more he
had hired a bathing suit and got into it, and the two of them were
running a race along the sand.

Nina Goodrich was one of those lavish Junos, of whom California brings
to ripeness many thousands every year. Her limbs were strong trunks, and
her hips were built for carrying a dozen babies, and her bosom for the
nourishing of them. She had fair hair and a complexion that had not come
out of a bottle, and her skin was bronzed by hours in the surf, in those
fragile one-piece bathing suits the girls were wearing, which revealed
considerably more than fifty percent of their natural charms. Never
could a man who took himself a wife in Southern California complain that
he did not know what he was getting!

The two swam down the shore, a long way, not troubled by the chill of
the water; they ran hand in hand on the beach, and as they went back to
the bath-house, Nina said, “Come have supper with me, Bunny; I’m tired
of home,” So Bunny slipped into his clothes, and she drove him back to
her home, and while she changed he sat in the car and got up his next
lesson in nineteenth century English poetry. The poet called attention
to a chain of natural phenomena:

                   The sunlight clasps the earth
                     And the moonbeams kiss the sea!
                   What are all these kissings worth,
                     If thou kiss not me?

They drove to a cafeteria, an invention where California fish and
California fruits and California salads are spread out before the eyes
in such profusion as to trouble a nineteen year old Juno already
struggling to “reduce.” There was nothing so safe as celery, said Nina,
it took both space and time; while she munched, they sat by the window,
and watched the sun set over the purple ocean, and the slow fog steal in
from the sea. Then they got into the car, and without saying a word she
drove out of town and down the coast highway; one of her hands was in
Bunny’s, and he, searching the caverns of his memory, remembered having
heard Eunice mention that Nina had had a desperate affair with Barney
Lee, who had enlisted a year ago, and was now in France.

They stopped at a lonely place, and there was a rug in the car, and
pretty soon they were sitting by the noisy surf, and Nina was snuggled
close to Bunny and whispering, “Do you care for me the least little
bit?” And when he answered that he did, she said, “Then why don’t you
pet me?” And when he began to oblige her, he found his lips held in one
of those long slow kisses which are sure-fire hits on the silver screen,
but which the censors cut to a footage varying according to
geography—00 in Japan up to 8,000 in Algeria and the Argentine.

It was evident that this nineteen year old Juno was his to do what he
pleased with, there and then; and Bunny’s head had begun to swim in the
familiar alarming way. He had never got the ache of Eunice out of his
soul, and here at last was deliverance! But he hesitated, because he had
sworn to himself that he would not get in for this again. Also from some
of the English poets he had begun to hear about a different kind of
love. He knew that he didn’t really love Nina Goodrich, she was all but
a stranger to him; so he hesitated, and his kisses diminished in ardor,
until she whispered, “What’s the matter, Bunny?”

He was rattled, but a sudden inspiration came to him. “Nina,” he said,
“it doesn’t seem quite fair.”

“Why not?”

“To Barney.”

He felt her wince as she lay in his arms. “But Barney is gone, dear.”

“I know; but he’ll come back.”

“Yes, but that’s so far off; and I guess he’s got a girl in France by
now.”

“Maybe so, but you can’t be sure; and it don’t seem quite right that a
fellow should go risk his life for his country, and somebody else steal
his girl away while he’s gone.”

So Bunny began to talk about the front, and what was happening there,
and how soon the Americans would get in, and how he expected to go right
after graduation, and about Paul and what he thought about Russia, and
what Dad thought about Paul; and the young Juno continued to be in his
arms, but with a more and more sisterly affection, until at last the fog
began to chill even their young blood, and they got up to go, and the
nineteen year old Juno put her arms about her escort and gave him an
especially violent kiss, declaring, “Bunny, you’re a queer fellow, but I
like you an awful lot!”

                                   IV

The Germans made another gigantic thrust at the British, and this time
it was the Battle of Flanders. They captured a great stretch of the
British lines, and if it had not been for a six day stand of laborers
and chauffeurs and what not behind the lines, every man hiding in a hole
and fighting for himself with any weapon he could pick up, the Germans
would have taken the whole railway system in Flanders. A month or so
later came another offensive, this time to the South, against the
French, the battle of the Aisne and the Oise; it looked as if Paris was
doomed, and people in America held their breath while they read the
bulletins in the newspapers.

In the midst of that battle, covering nearly two hundred miles of front,
an epoch-making thing happened; the hard-pressed French commander put in
the first of the newly-arrived American troops. These boys had had only
a few months training, and the French didn’t think they would hold; but
instead of giving way like the rest of the armies, they hit the German
line and went forward a couple of miles over a three mile front. So more
of them were rushed in, and a few days later came the battle of Belleau
Wood, and all over America went a thrill of exultation. It was not
national pride, but more than that, men felt—it was a victory of free
institutions. When you ran over the lists of dead and wounded in these
battles you found Horowitz and Schnierow and Samerjian and Samaniego,
Constantinopulos and Toplitsky and Quong Ling; but they all fought
alike, and it was a victory for that golden flood of eloquence that was
being poured out from the White House.

In the midst of these excitements came Bunny’s commencement time, and he
had to make the great decision. He and his father had the most serious
talk of their lives; Bunny had never seen the old man so deeply moved.
What he said was, “Son, can’t you possibly see your way to stay and help
me with this job?” What Bunny answered was, “Dad, if I didn’t get into
the army, I’d never feel right the rest of my life.”

Dad pointed out what it was going to mean to him personally. He was no
longer able to carry this load alone. There had to be more and more
wells, and every one was an added care. They simply had to have a big
refinery, and that meant also, a chain of service stations, you could
not count on government contracts forever. This Paradise tract was
Bunny’s, but if he wanted to give it up, why then Dad would have to
negotiate with some of the big people who had been sounding him out on
the question of mergers. If Bunny went into the army there would be no
use counting on him, because Dad was sure this war wasn’t half over.
“Those that go now aren’t many of them coming back,” was the way he put
it; there was a catch in his voice, and with a little bit more they
would have had to pull out their pocket-handkerchiefs, which would have
been equally embarrassing to both. All that Bunny could do was to
repeat, “I’ve just got to go, Dad; I’ve just got to go.”

So Dad gave up, and a couple of weeks later Bunny got his notice to
report to his training-camp. Aunt Emma spilled tears over him, while
Grandma drew her withered old lips tight over her badly-fitting false
teeth, and said it was a crime, and it ended her interest in life.
Bertie made arrangements for a farewell party, and Dad reported that he
had opened negotiations with Vernon Roscoe, the biggest independent oil
operator on the coast, president of Flora-Mex and Mid-Central Pete, who
had several times broached the project of a vast enterprise to be known
as “Ross Consolidated.”

                                   V

They drove up to Paradise, to give Bunny a farewell look at things, and
there they found that Paul was expected home for a furlough, preliminary
to a journey across the Pacific Ocean. This war, Dad said, was like a
fire in a “tank-farm,” you could never tell which way things would
explode, or what would go next. Here was Paul, with the bunch of
carpenters he directed, ordered onto a transport to be shipped—of all
places in the world—to Vladivostok in Siberia!

It appeared that when the Bolsheviks took charge of Russia they found
themselves with a great army of war prisoners, among them a hundred
thousand Czecho-Slovaks. This was a new name—you looked it up in the
encyclopedias and couldn’t find it, and had to have it explained to you
that they were Bohemians, but this was a German word, and just as we had
changed hamburger into liberty steak and sauerkraut into liberty
cabbage, so the Bohemians became Czecho-Slovaks, which nobody knew how
to spell when they heard it, or to pronounce when they saw it. The
people of this race were revolting against Germany, and the Bolsheviks
had agreed that their Czecho-Slovak prisoners would be shipped to
Vladivostok, where the allies might take charge of them, and bring them
to the fighting front if they saw fit. But on the way across Siberia the
Czecho-Slovaks got to fighting with the Bolsheviks and the released
German war prisoners, and had seized a great section of the railroad.

So now into this weird mix-up the allies were intervening. The
newspapers explained the matter: the Bolshevik movement was an uprising
of fanatics, imposed upon the Russian people by the guns of hired
mercenaries, Chinese and Mongolians and Cossacks and escaped criminals
and general riff-raff; it couldn’t last very long, a few weeks or months
at the most, and what was needed was to supply a nucleus about which the
decent Russians might rally. The allies were now undertaking to do that;
American and Japanese troops were to help the Czecho-Slovaks in Siberia,
and American and British troops were to organize the Russian refugees at
Archangel in the far north. So here was Paul, going to build barracks
and Y. M. C. A. huts along the famous Trans-Siberian railway, and see
for himself those exciting events about which he had been debating with
Dad. Bunny was going to a training-camp, and maybe when he got through
they would send him to the same front—that was a case where he would
let Dad use his influence! Bunny meant to work hard and rise in the
service, and maybe he would have Paul and his carpenters under his
command!

They had a hard time keeping their spirits up, because of Ruth, who was
utterly inconsolable. She would go about the place with tears running
down her cheeks, and now and then would have to jump up and rush from
the room. When the time came for Paul to say his last farewell, Ruth
almost went out of her mind; she locked her arms about his neck, and he
had to pull her fingers away. It was sad for a fellow, to be driven away
with his sister lying in a faint in a chair. Old Mr. Watkins had to come
up and take her home, and send up Sadie to do the housework for Dad. By
golly, it made you realize about war!

                                   VI

Bunny went back to Beach City, to face a trial of the same sort. Grandma
did not cry out or faint, she just went up to her studio-room and locked
the door and did not appear, even for meals. When Bunny was ready to go,
he went and knocked on the door, and Grandma let him into her laboratory
of paints and oils and high art. Her face was drawn but grim, and only
her withered red eyelids gave her away. “Little boy,” she said—he was
still that to her, he would never grow up—“little boy, you are a victim
of the old men’s crimes. That means nothing to you now, but remember it,
and some day, long after I’m gone, you’ll understand.”

She kissed him without a sound, and he stole out, with tears running
down his cheeks, and feeling somehow as if he himself were committing a
crime. He felt still more that way when, a week later, he received a
telegram saying that Grandmother Ross had been found dead in bed. He got
a three day leave to come home and attend the funeral, and had to say
his good-byes to the rest of the family all over again.

The training-camp was located in the South, a place of blazing sunshine
and vigorous perspiration. It was crowded with boys from every part of
the state, mostly high school and college fellows, with a sprinkling of
others who had got into the officer class by having military experience.
The sons of grape-growers and orange and walnut and peach and prune
growers, of cowmen and lumbermen, and business and professional men in
the cities—Bunny wanted to know what they were like, and what they
thought about life and love and the war. He drilled until his back
ached, and he studied, much the same as at school; but he lived in a
tent, and ate ravenously, and grew in all directions.

Now and then he would explore the country with a companion, but keeping
himself out of the sex adventures that occupied most of the army’s free
time. Here was a place where no bones were made about plain talk; your
superiors took it for granted that when you went out of the camp you
went to look for a woman, and they told you what to do when you came
back, and had a treatment-station where you lined up with the other
fellows and made jokes about where you had been and what it had cost
you. Bunny knew enough to realize that the women in the neighborhood of
this camp who were open to adventures must be pretty well debauched
after a year, so he had little interest in their glances or the trim
silk-stockinged ankles they displayed.

He had made application for the artillery, but they assigned him to
study “military transportation,” because of his knowledge of oil. He
took this quite innocently, never realizing that Dad with his
wide-spreading influence might have put in a word. Dad was quietly
determined that Bunny was not going across the sea, no, not if this
man’s war lasted another ten years. Bunny was going to be among those
who had charge of the army’s supplies of gasoline and oil, seeing that
the various products were up to standard and were efficiently and
promptly shipped. Who could say—perhaps he might be among those who
would have the job of working out contracts, and might be able now and
then to put in a good word for Ross Consolidated!

                                  VII

The new deal was going through, and Dad wrote long letters telling of
the progress—letters which Bunny was to return when he had studied
them, and not leave lying about in a tent. Also there were rumors in the
papers, and then more detailed accounts, designed to prepare the public
for the launching of a huge enterprise. Late in the summer Bunny got a
furlough, and came home to get the latest news.

“Home” no longer meant Beach City; for Dad had only been waiting till
Bunny had got through with school, and now he had moved to another
house. It was a palace in the fashionable part of Angel City, which he
had leased through a real estate agent for fifteen thousand a year. It
was all pink stucco outside, with hedge plants trimmed to the shape of
bells and balls like pawn-broker’s signs. It had a wide veranda with
swings hanging by brass chains, and ferns planted in a row of huge sea
shells, and big plate glass windows that did not come open. Inside was
furniture of a style called “mission oak,” so heavy that you could
hardly move it, but that was all right, because Dad didn’t want to move
it, he would sit in any chair, wherever it happened to be, and the only
place he expected comfort was in his den, where he had a huge old
leather chair of his own, and a store of cigars and a map of the
Paradise tract covering one whole wall. One thing more Dad had seen to,
that Grandma’s biggest paintings were hung in the dining-room, including
the scandalous one of the Germans with their steins! The rest of the old
lady’s stuff, her easel and paints and a great stack of her lesser
works, were boxed and stowed in the basement. Aunt Emma was now the
mistress of the household, with Bertie as head critic when she was home.

On the desk in Dad’s den was piled a stack of papers a foot high,
relating to the new enterprise. He went over them one by one and
explained the details. Ross Consolidated was going to be a seventy
million dollar corporation, and Dad was to have ten millions in bonds
and preferred stock, and another ten millions of common stock. Mr.
Roscoe was to get the same for his Prospect Hill properties and those at
Lobos River, and the various bankers were to get five millions for their
financing of the project. The balance was to be a special class stock,
twenty-five millions to be offered to the public, to finance the new
development—one of the biggest refineries in the state, and storage
tanks, and new pipe-lines, and a whole chain of service stations
throughout Southern California. This stock was to be “non-voting,” a
wonderful new scheme which Dad explained to Bunny; the public was to put
up its money and get a share of the profits, but have nothing to say as
to how the company was run. “We’ll have no bunch of boobs butting in on
our affairs,” said Dad; “and nobody can raid us on the market and take
away control.”

A little farther on in the explanations, Bunny began to see the meaning
of that perpetual and unbreakable hold which Dad and Mr. Roscoe were
giving to themselves. In the prospectuses and advertisements of Ross
Consolidated, the public would be told all about the vast oil resources
in the Ross Junior tract at Paradise; but here it was being fixed up
that Ross Consolidated was not to operate this tract, but to lease it to
a special concern, the Ross Junior Operating Company, and nobody but Dad
and Mr. Roscoe and the bankers were to have any stock in that! There was
a whole series of such intricate devices, holding companies and leasing
companies and separate issues of stock, and some of these things were to
go into effect at once, and some later on, after the public had put up
its money!

When Bunny, the “little idealist,” began to make objections to this, he
saw that he was hurting his father’s feelings. Dad said that was the
regular way of big money deals, and my God, were they running a
soup-kitchen? The public would get its share and more—that stock would
go to two hundred in the first year, jist you watch and see! But it was
Dad and his son who had done the hard work on the Paradise tract, and at
Prospect Hill and Lobos River too; and the government wanted them to go
on and do more such work, to drill a hundred new wells and help win the
war, and how could they do it if they distributed the money around for
people to throw away on jazz-parties? Jist look at those “war-babies,”
and all the mad spending in New York! Dad was taking care of his money
and using it wisely, in industry, where it belonged; he was perfectly
sincere, and hard set as concrete, in his conviction that he was the one
to whom the profits should come. He and Mr. Roscoe were two individuals
who had fought the big companies and kept themselves afloat through all
the storms; they were making an unbreakable combination this time, and
they were going to get the jack out of it, just you bet!

                                  VIII

Meantime, the Germans had begun another offensive against the French,
the most colossal yet; it was the second Battle of the Marne, and they
called it their “Friedensturm,” because they meant to capture Paris and
win their peace. But now there were large sectors held by the American
troops, of whom there were a million in France, and three hundred
thousand coming every month, with all their supplies, in spite of the
submarines. These troops were fresh, while all the others were
exhausted; and so where they stood, the line did not give way, and the
great German offensive was blocked and brought to a standstill.

Then, a week or two later, began an event that electrified the whole
world; the allies began to advance! Attacking now here, now there, they
gained ground, they routed the enemy out of intrenchments which had been
years in building, and were counted impregnable. All that mighty
Hindenburg line began to crumble; and behind it, the Siegfried line, and
the Hunding line, and all the other mythological constructions. To
people in America it was the breaking of the first sunrays through black
storm clouds. The “Yanks” were wiping out the famous St. Mihiel salient,
they were capturing the enemy by tens of thousands, and even more
important, the machine guns and artillery which the Germans could not
replace. All through the early fall this went on; until the young
officers-to-be in Bunny’s training-camp began to fret because this man’s
war was going to be over before they got to the scene.

But all this time, not one word from Paul! Bunny received agonized
letters from Ruth, “Oh, what do you think can have happened to him? I
write him every week to the address he gave, and I _know_ he would
answer if he was alive.” Bunny explained that it took six weeks for mail
to go to Vladivostok and return; how much longer it took on the railroad
no one could guess; and besides, there was a censorship, and many things
might happen to letters in war-time. If Paul had been killed or wounded,
the army would surely notify his parents; so no news was good news.
There had been practically no fighting, as Ruth could see from the
newspaper clippings which Bunny faithfully sent to her. The reports were
scanty, but that was just because nothing much had happened; if there
were any real fighting, or losses to the troops, the papers would get
it, you might be sure.

In the month of July of this year of 1918, the American and Japanese
troops had made a landing in Vladivostok, practically unopposed; they
had spread along the Trans-Siberian railway, and were policing it, and
in fact running it, all the way to Lake Baikal where they had met the
Czecho-Slovaks. With the help of these intelligent men, the allies now
controlled the country clean across to the Volga; the Bolsheviks had to
keep back in the interior. Now and then the newspapers would report that
admiral this or general that was setting up a stable Russian government,
of course with the help of allied money and supplies. At the west end of
the line it would be a Cossack ataman and at the east end a Chinese
mandarin or Mongolian tuchun or other strange beast; thus new stretches
of the earth’s surface were being delivered from the wickedness of
Bolshevism. Somewhere amid these picturesque and exciting events Paul
Watkins of Paradise, California, was building army barracks and “Y”
huts; and some day he would come back with a wonderful story to tell! So
Bunny wrote, bidding Ruth keep cheerful, and have faith in the
benevolence of her old Uncle Sam.

                                   IX

The nights were growing cold in Bunny’s cantonment, and from Europe the
thrilling news continued to pour in, and spread across the front pages
of the newspapers, six or eight editions every day. The allied advance
was turning into a march, that long talked of march to Berlin! A march
also to Vienna and to Sofia and to Constantinople—for everywhere the
central powers were weakening, collapsing, surrendering. President
Wilson issued his “fourteen points,” on the basis of which the Germans
were invited to quit. There were rumors of negotiations—the German
leaders were suggesting a truce! There were two or three days of
suspense, and then the answer, there would be no truce, only a
surrender; the march to Berlin was on!

And then one day an amazing report; the enemy had capitulated, the
surrender had been signed! As a matter of fact, it was a false alarm,
due to the American custom of keeping one jump ahead of events. Each
paper wants to beat the others, so they get everything ready in
advance—speeches that have not yet been delivered, ceremonies that have
not yet taken place. Some nervous reporter let his finger slip on the
trigger, and the message came that set all America wild. Such a
spectacle had never been witnessed since the world began; every
noisemaking instrument conceivable was turned loose, and men, women and
children turned out on the streets, and danced and sang and yelled until
they were exhausted; pistols were shot off, and autos went flying by
with tin-cans bouncing behind; newsboys and stock-brokers wept on one
another’s shoulders, and elderly unapproachable bank-presidents danced
the can-can with typists and telephone girls. A day or two later, when
the real news came, they turned out to do it all over again, but never
could recapture their first fine careless rapture.

After that, of course, the fun had gone out of military training; all
the young officers-to-be wanted to get back home, to go to college or to
take up their jobs, and all who had any influence quickly got furloughs
that were understood to be elastic. Such a favor came to Bunny, out of
the blue void where Dad wielded his mysterious power, and he went home
to watch the movements of “Ross Consolidated,” which had been launched
at an opening price of $108 per share for the “class B stock,” and
completely sold out in two days, and was now quoted in the market at
147¾. They had made the stock of “no par value”—another new device
which Vernon Roscoe’s fancy lawyers had recommended; there were certain
taxes both state and federal which could be dodged by this method, and
moreover there would never be need to issue “stock dividends” to conceal
the amount of the profit. Mr. Roscoe was certainly a wizard when it came
to finance, jist about the smartest feller Dad had met in the oil-game.

It was a tremendous load taken off Dad’s shoulders, for now the enormous
Roscoe machine would market the oil and collect the money. Dad’s job was
new developments—the part of the game he really liked. He was a member
of the board of directors of the new concern, and also a vice-president,
at a salary of a hundred thousand a year, with charge of exploring and
drilling; he would travel here and there and lay out the tracts and
select the drilling sites, and see that every well was brought in
properly, before turning it over to another executive, the
superintendent of operation. It was Dad’s idea that Bunny should take a
position under his father, to start with say six thousand a year, until
everybody was satisfied that he knew the business; the two of them would
have the time of their lives, driving all over Southern California and
smelling out oil, jist like at Paradise! Bunny said that sounded good,
but he’d want a little time to think it over and get used to the idea
that he wasn’t going to Siberia or to France. Dad said all right, of
course, he mustn’t jump into things in a hurry; but Bunny could see that
he was a little pained because his son and namesake did not do that very
thing!

                                   X

They went up to Paradise to see the developments; and one of the first
developments they saw was Ruth, who had their lunch ready in the Rascum
cabin. Bunny was shocked by her appearance; she looked ten years older
than when he had seen her last, her face was pale, and her smile was
forced. She had given up all pretense of feminine charm, her hair was
drawn back tight and tied in a knot on top of her head, and her skirts
came to her ankles, which was half a leg longer than the fashion. Ruth
was just setting out to be an old maid, said Meelie, and all on account
of grieving her heart out about Paul.

“Oh, I know he’s dead!” Ruth declared. “Just think, it’s been five
months since he went away, and don’t you know Paul would have written me
a lot of letters in that time?”

It did seem strange; and Dad thought a bit and said, “Yes, we’ve waited
long enough, and now we’ll jist find out.”

“Oh, Mr. Ross, how do you mean?” cried Ruth, clasping her hands
together.

“Well, we ain’t lost that army altogether in Siberia, and I guess there
is some way to connect up with it.”

Ruth had gone paler than ever. “Oh, I don’t know as I’d dare find out!
If I should hear he was dead—if I was really to know it—”

“Look here, child,” said Dad, “the troubles you imagine is always a lot
worse than the real ones. I want to know about my boss-carpenter, and
I’m jist a-goin’ to!”

So Dad went to the telephone, and called the hay and feed-store of Mr.
Jake Coffey in San Elido. “Hello, Jake. Yes, we’re all fine here, how’s
your old man? Say, I understand you had the nominating—I fergit the
feller’s name, but the congressman from this district. Well, I never
asked him a favor, but I guess I got a right to one, seeing all I put up
to elect him. Well, now, you send him a telegram and tell him to toddle
over to the War Department and put in an inquiry about the whereabouts
and health of Paul Watkins. You got a pencil there?”

Dad turned to Ruth, “What is it now? Company B, Forty-seventh California
Regiment, American Expeditionary Forces to Russia. I want the War
Department to cable an inquiry and have the reply cabled; you wire the
congressman twenty-five dollars to cover the cost, and if there’s
anything left over he can keep the change. I’ll mail you my check today.
You might explain, if you want to, a member of the family is ill, and
it’s a matter of life and death to get some word at once. And I’ll be
obliged, Jake, and if you need any gasoline for your car, jist drop
round after we git this new refinery a-goin’. How’d you like that last
dividend check from the company? Ha, ha, ha! Well, so long.”

For two days Ruth waited on tenter-hooks, holding her breath every time
the phone rang; and at last there was the voice of Jake Coffey—Bunny
answered, and he turned from the receiver right quick, saying, “Telegram
from Congressman Leathers, the War Department reports that Paul is at
Irkutsk and well.” Ruth gave a cry—she was standing by the dining
table, and she grabbed at it and missed, and went swaying, and Bunny had
to drop the receiver and catch her. And there she was, by golly, white
and cold and senseless, they had to lay her out on the floor and
sprinkle water on her face. And when she came to, all she could do was
to cry and cry like a baby. Presently Bunny remembered the telephone
receiver hanging, and went and apologized to Mr. Coffey and thanked him,
and it was all Bunny could do to keep his own voice straight; the truth
was, he and Dad had been more worried about Paul than they were willing
to admit.

After Ruth was able to sit up and smile, Dad said, “Irkutsk, where is
that?” And the girl said at once, “It’s on Lake Baikal, in the middle of
Siberia.” Said Dad, “Hello, where did you git your geography?” It turned
out there was an old atlas among Paul’s books, and Ruth had the Siberia
part clean by heart—the names of every station on the Trans-Siberian
Railway—Omsk, Tomsk, Tobolsk—Dad thought it was funny, and made her
say them off—by golly, if there had been a timetable attached, she’d
have known when the night-freight was due at Vladivostok! She knew the
physical geography of the country, the races which inhabited it, the
flora and fauna and principal commercial interests, furs, lumber, wheat,
dairy products.

The only trouble was, her information was twenty years out of date! So
now, what was she going to do but take the stage to Roseville that
afternoon, and in the library she would find a big new atlas, and maybe
some books on the subject. Bunny said he’d drive her; so he did, and
they found an atlas with a picture of Irkutsk, a public square with some
buildings, churches or mosques or whatever they were called, with round
domes going up to a point on top; there was snow on the ground, and
sledges with big high harness up over the horses’ necks. It was dreadful
cold there, Ruth said, Paul wasn’t used to such weather; but Bunny
laughed and told her not to worry about that, Paul would have plenty to
wear, this was the best taken care of army in history, and so long as
they had the railroad open, nobody would suffer.

But that was not enough for Ruth, what she wanted was for Paul to come
home. Surely, now that the war was over, he ought to be on the way! But
Bunny said she’d have to make up her mind to wait, because an armistice
wasn’t the same as a peace, there was a lot of negotiating to be done,
and the army would sit tight meantime. But when peace was declared, then
surely Paul would come back, because we certainly weren’t going on
running the Trans-Siberian Railway after the war was over. Bunny said
that with a laugh, meaning it to be funny, and Ruth smiled, because it
sounded funny to her; so innocent they were of the intricacies of world
diplomacy, these two babes in the California woods!

                                   XI

Bunny spent a week hunting quail with Dad, or wandering over the hills
by himself, thinking things over. At last he sat down to have it out.
“Dad, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in me, but this is the
truth—I want to go to college.”

“College! Gosh, son, what’s that for?” There was a look of amazement on
Dad’s face; but he was an old hypocrite, he had known perfectly well
that Bunny was thinking about college, and he had thought about it a lot
himself.

“I just don’t feel I’ve got enough education, Dad.”

“What is it you want to know?”

“Well, that’s something you can’t say; you don’t know just what you’ll
get till you’ve got it. But I have a feeling, I want to know more about
things.”

Dad looked forlorn—pitifully, but quite innocently and unintentionally.
“It means you jist ain’t interested in oil.”

“Well, no, Dad, that’s not quite fair. I can study for a while and then
come back to the business.”

But Dad knew better than that. “No, son, if you go to college, you’ll
get so high up above us oil fellers, you won’t know we’re here. If you
mean to be an oil man, the thing to study is oil.”

“Well, Dad, the truth is, I’m really too young to know what I want to
be. If I wanted to do something else, surely we’ve got money enough—”

“It’s not the money, son, it’s the job. You know how I feel—I like to
have you with me—”

“I don’t mean to go away,” Bunny hastened to put in. “There’s plenty of
colleges around here, and I can live at home. And we can come up for
week-ends and holidays, the same as always. I’m not going to lose my
interest in Paradise, Dad, but I really won’t be happy to buckle down to
business until I’ve had a chance to learn more.”

Dad had to give way to that. There was that curious war in his own mind,
a mingling of respect for knowledge, of awe in the presence of cultured
people, along with fear of “notions” that Bunny might get, strange
flights of “idealism” that would make him unfit to be the heir and
custodian of twenty million dollars worth of Ross Consolidated!




                               CHAPTER X
                             THE UNIVERSITY


                                   I

Southern Pacific University had been launched by a California land baron
as a Methodist Sunday-school; its professors were all required to be
Methodists, and it featured scores of religious courses. It had grown
enormous upon the money of an oil king who had bribed half a dozen
successive governments in Mexico and the United States, and being
therefore in doubt as to the safety of his soul gave large sums to
professional soul-savers. Apparently uncertain which group had the right
“dope,” he gave equally to both Catholics and Protestants, and they used
the money to denounce and undermine each other.

If Dad had known that his son was to be educated by the donations of
Pete O’Reilly, he would have been at once amused and reassured. Not
knowing about it, he paid a visit to the place, to see at least the
outside of Bunny’s future environment. The university had started far
out in the suburbs of Angel City, but now the community had grown around
it—which meant another large endowment, contributed by all the
rent-payers of the city. Its buildings were elaborate, which impressed
Dad; the fact that they were crowded with five thousand young men and
women impressed him still more, for when Dad saw a great number of
people doing the same thing, he concluded it was something normal and
safe.

Still more reassuring was his meeting with President Alonzo T. Cowper,
D.D., Ph.D., LL.D. For Dr. Cowper was in the business of interviewing
dads; he had been selected by his millionaire trustees because of his
skill in interviewing trustees. Dr. Cowper knew how a scholar could be
at the same time dignified and deferential. Our Dad, being thoroughly
money-conscious, read the doctor’s mind as completely as if he had been
inside it: if this founder of Ross Consolidated is pleased with the
education his son receives, he may some day donate a building for
teaching oil chemistry, or at least endow a chair of research in oil
geology. And that seemed to Dad exactly the proper attitude for a
clergyman-educator to take; everybody in the world was in the business
of getting money, and this was a very high-toned way.

Both Dad and Bunny took the university with the seriousness it expected.
Neither of them doubted that money which had been gained by subsidizing
political parties, and bribing legislators and executive officials and
judges and juries—that such money could be turned at once into the
highest type of culture, wholesale, by executive order. Bunny plunged
into the excitements of courses and credits, he raced from English 5A to
Spanish 2, and from there to Sociology 7 and Modern History 14, and
accumulated a stack of textbooks, and listened to lectures, and wrote
notes, and stowed in his mind a mass of dates and other details.

It took him a long time to realize that the “English” was cruelly dull,
and that the young man who taught it was bored to tears by what he was
doing; that the “Spanish” had a French accent, and that the professor
was secretly patronizing bootleggers to console himself for having to
live in what he considered a land of barbarians; that the “Sociology”
was an elaborate structure of classifications, wholly artificial,
devised by learned gentlemen in search of something to be learned about;
and that the Modern History was taught from textbooks which had
undergone the scrutiny of thousands of sharp eyes, in order to spare the
sensibilities of Mr. Pete O’Reilly, and avoid giving to any student the
slightest hint concerning the forces which control the modern world.

                                   II

With equal seriousness Bunny took the social life of this enormous
institution. It was the far-off wonderful goal to which all high school
students had looked; a few lucky ones had got there, and he was among
them. His sister’s chum had a brother who was a senior, and belonged to
the best possible fraternity; so the word was spoken, and Bunny was
snapped up. They were a fast, free-spending crowd, aggressive,
self-confident, slangy, voluble over the prospects of this year’s track
team. Bunny was a runner, so they had a reason for welcoming him that
was more presentable than his old man’s oil.

Like all Western universities, Southern Pacific was co-educational; so
Bunny was exposed to the impact of a mass of femininity, the distilled
and concentrated essence of allurement. Such swarms of graceful figures,
trim ankles, dimpled white and brown arms, costumes the color of
Brazilian butterflies; a kaleidescope of smiles and flashing eyes, a
perpetual zephyr of soft scents, blown from lilac-bushes and jasmine
vines and miles upon miles of California orange and lemon-orchards.
Something was bound to happen to a young idealist in such an
environment—especially when he had just spent the summer in a
training-camp for men only!

Not all these bundles of feminine charm were accustomed to follow the
market reports upon Ross Consolidated; yet somehow they managed to learn
about the discoverer and heir-apparent of the Paradise oil field. Many
sets of quick wits were concentrated upon him, he was invited to scores
of dances and hundreds of fudge parties and thousands of motor-rides.
Then a strange rumor spread; here was an unimaginable phenomenon, a
young millionaire who would not “pet”! One by one the champion
spell-weavers of Southern Pacific wove in vain; before long there were
odds posted, and quite a trade in bets as to who would be the first girl
that Bunny Ross would kiss! Researches were conducted in the Beach City
High School, and word came that the young oil prince carried in his
bosom a broken heart; which, of course, made him a romantic figure, and
added enormously to his prestige.

These things go by contraries, and the girl who landed Bunny did so
because she did not try. The family of Henrietta Ashleigh had had money
for generations, and so could afford to look down upon it, and all those
who sought it. This was the way to impress Bunny, who was aware that his
money was painfully new. Never would he attain to the aggressive
self-assurance of his sister; he was looking for something better than
himself, and for a while he found it in the Ashleighs, with their
perfect manners and well trained servants and mansion full of the debris
of culture.

Henrietta was tall and slender, gentle, soft of voice, and reserved to
the point of primness. Her mother had just died, and for a year she wore
black, which of course was very conspicuous. She was high church
Episcopal, and on Sunday mornings wore long kid gloves and carried a
little prayer-book and hymnal joined together, bound in black leather
with a gold border. She took Bunny to church and he learned that one
does not have to take ancient Hebrew mythology with vulgar literalness,
but may have its symbolic meaning explained by a white-haired old
gentleman with a trace of English accent.

What Henrietta meant to Bunny was a refuge from the anguish and tumult
of illegitimate desire. He fled to her as to a saint, a madonna alive
and visible upon a college campus. She was so far above the glaring
crudeness of the smart set; she did not use paint nor powder—nothing so
common as perspiration would presume to appear on her delicately
chiseled nose. You might dream of kissing her, but it would remain a
dream; she would call you “Mr. Ross” during the first six months of your
acquaintance, and after that she would call you “Arnold,” finding it
dignified, perhaps because of Matthew. So long as you knew and truly
appreciated her, you would make the highest grades in class, and, as the
little black and gold prayer-book phrased it, “honour and obey the civil
authority, and submit yourself to all your governors, teachers,
spiritual pastors and masters.”

                                  III

Bunny went up to Paradise for his Christmas holidays, and there was the
first word from Paul; a plain card, bearing the stamp of the American
Expeditionary Force, but no place; no picture post-card with “Scenes in
Irkutsk” or “Camel-sleigh on the Volga,” or anything like that! “Dear
Ruth,” it said: “Just a line to let you know that I am well and
everything is all right. I have received three letters from you. Please
write often. We are busy and I am having an interesting time. Give my
love to all the family and to Bunny and Mr. Ross. Affectionately, Paul.”

Ruth had had this treasure for several days, and there was no telling
how many times she had read it, and studied every mark on both sides. It
seemed to Bunny a cold and unsatisfactory note, but he did not say so to
Ruth; he asked Dad about it, and Dad said there would necessarily be a
great deal of censoring of soldier’s mail, and Paul had probably written
this bare message to make sure it got through. Why did there have to be
so much censoring? Bunny asked; and Dad answered that these were
ticklish times, and the army had to protect itself against enemy
propaganda.

Dad had been reading a magazine article which explained what was
happening in the world. The German and Austrian empires had come down
with a crash, and that was a great triumph for democracy. But now the
friends of democracy had a second big job to do, which was to crush the
wild beast of Bolshevism. They were starving it by a blockade on every
front, and wherever the well-behaved and respectable Russians had set up
a government on the borders, the allies were helping them with money and
supplies. General Denikin had taken possession of south Russia; on the
west a lot of new states had been set up; on the north, at Archangel, an
anti-Bolshevik group was making headway under British and American
protection. As to Siberia, there had been a Socialist government,
holding over from the Kerensky days; but these Socialists were a lot of
talkers, and now they had been kicked out and replaced by a real
fighting man, Admiral Kolchak, who had once commanded the Tsar’s fleet.
It was this he-admiral the allies were backing to run Siberia, and our
troops were there to keep the railroad open for him. Of course the
Bolsheviks, and their sympathizers in this country, were making a fuss
about it, and telling all the lies they could; that was why we had to
have a censorship, said Dad.

Bunny accepted this explanation without question. He had been in a
training-camp for seven months, and had acquired the military point of
view. He was keenly alert to the danger of Bolshevik propaganda, and
determined that if ever he ran into any of it, he would hasten to
denounce it. So innocent was he, and so little aware of the subtlety of
the enemy—he never dreamed that he was at this time absorbing the
poison; and—of all places in the world—in one of the class-rooms of
his most Christian and conservative university!

It was hard on a poor overworked university president. Dr. Cowper’s most
trusted dean had engaged this young instructor, upon recommendation of
high-up Y. M. C. A. authorities. The young man had been doing relief
work in Saloniki, and was the son of a prominent Methodist pastor; he
bore the name of Daniel Webster Irving, and how was anyone to imagine
that a man with such a name might be suffering from political
shell-shock?

This young instructor was subtle in his method; he did not say anything
that could be pinned down on him, but would sow his seeds of doubt by
asking questions, and advising students to “think for themselves.” There
are always in every college class one or more “soreheads,” the sons of
unorthodox parents; one in Bunny’s class was an avowed “rationalist,”
and another had a Russian name. All that a teacher had to do was to let
these fellows ask questions, and quickly the whole group would be
wandering in a maze, demoralized by what the Japanese government in its
control of education describes as “dangerous thoughts.”

President Wilson had gone to Europe, in order to bring about the reign
of justice he had promised. He was having a triumphal progress through
England and France, and our newspapers were full of the wonders of what
he was about to achieve. But in Mr. Irving’s class Bunny heard it
pointed out that the President had dropped from mention the most
important of his “fourteen points,” the demand for “freedom of the
seas.” Could it be that this had been the price of British support for
his program? And then, more startling yet, Bunny learned that the secret
treaties which the allies had signed among themselves at the outset of
the war were now laid on the peace table, and made the basis of jealous
bickerings. Bunny had never forgotten about those treaties, how Dad had
assured Paul that they would turn out to be Bolshevik forgeries. But
here the allies were admitting them to be genuine, and furthermore, were
setting out to enforce them, regardless of any promises of fair play
which President Wilson had made to the Germans!

Bunny took this amazing news home with him to Dad; apparently Paul had
been right, and the wicked Bolsheviks had been telling the truth! What
did Dad make of it? Dad didn’t know what to make of it; he was much
disturbed, and could only say we couldn’t judge, we’d jist have to wait.
But the trouble was, the longer we waited, the worse things seemed to
get; the more evident it became that our President had done the very
thing that Dad had been sure he would never do—he had let himself be
“jockeyed.” Like water seeping underneath a dike, a subtle current of
skepticism was creeping through those freshman classes in Southern
Pacific University which were taking “Modern History 14.”

Mr. Irving wasn’t supposed to be discussing the peace conference at all;
he was supposed to be seeing to it that his students memorized the names
of battles and commanding generals in the Franco-Prussian war. But one
theme led so easily to the other, and it was so difficult to keep the
“soreheads” quiet! This same thing was happening in other class-rooms,
and in other parts of the United States where men encountered their
fellows, and thus became exposed to “dangerous thoughts.” Before long
the forbidden ideas were being voiced in Congress, and after that they
could not be kept out of the newspapers. It was like a storm that burst
over the whole country. A million idealists like Bunny woke up all at
once to the cruel fact that their dolly was stuffed with sawdust.

                                   IV

Yes, it was a trying time to be alive in the world. All those golden
promises that had been made to us, those bright hopes we had cherished!
All the blood of the young men that had been shed, three hundred
thousand of them dead or wounded in France—and here were the allied
statesmen, grim, cruel old men, sitting at the council-table and putting
the world right back where it had been before! Perpetuating all the old
hatreds, all the old injustices—with a thousand new ones to torment the
future! Tearing Germans away from their own land and giving them to
Frenchmen, giving Austrians to Italians, Russians to Poles—so on
through a long list of blunders; condemning millions of people to live
under governments which they feared and despised, and thus making
certain they would revolt, and throw Europe into uproar again!

Men could not realize these things all at once; they got them little by
little, as details of the negotiations leaked out. Every country in the
world was carrying on its own propaganda, thinking about its own selfish
interests; and President Wilson was in the midst of the mess, being
pulled and hauled about, this way and that, quite powerless for the good
aims he had proclaimed. As the picture of this got back to America,
there spread over the land such a wave of disgust as had never been
known before.

And then the President himself came home, to declare that he had
achieved a complete victory. In the name of “self-determination of all
peoples” he was giving the German Rhineland to France, and German Africa
to Britain, and the German Tyrol to Italy, and a Chinese province to
Japan, and to the United States a mandate over Armenia! Also he had made
a perpetual alliance with France and Britain, whereby we bound ourselves
to maintain this brand of self-determination forever! When this program
had been thoroughly realized, a tone of hilarious cynicism became the
correct thing among the young intellectuals of America; fashionable
young matrons took to deceiving their husbands in the name of chastity,
and college boys began toting hip-pocket flasks out of loyalty to
prohibition.

The thing was particularly hard upon Bunny, because he had to go to
Paradise every once in a while, and come face to face with Ruth, and
explain how self-determination for the people of Siberia meant that her
brother must stay there in peace time and hold a bayonet at their necks.
In elucidating this singular situation, Bunny became almost as skillful
a trickster as if he had had a regular diplomatic job with
extra-territorial immunity. For a month or two he managed it, while the
Germans were dragged to Versailles and made to sign an agreement to pay
an indemnity so vast that it could not be named.

Then one day came a letter that made his task all but impossible. It was
an innocent-looking letter, written in a crude hand on some sheets of
cheap paper, postmarked Seattle, and addressed to “Mr. Bunny Ross,
Paridise, California.” It said:

“Dear Mr. Bunny: You dont know me but I am a returned soldier that used
to punch cattle in Salinas valley. Paul Watkins said I should write you
because he cant get no news by the censors. I am invalidded back, have
had the Asiatic dissenterry, am bleeding at the bowls three months and
you should wash your hands good when you have read this letter, because
it is an easy dissease to catch. I am in issolation and this will be
smuggled, for God’s sake dont let on I have wrote it they would sure put
me in the can. But Paul said your father might do something to get us
boys out if he knew what a hell it was. Mr. Bunny what are we doing in
that place and why do we have to stay? It is forty below zero most of
the winter and big storms a lot of the time and you have to do sentry
duty and in summer the muskeetoes is big as flies and where they bite
the blood runs. And the Japs take shots at us, they are suppose to be
our allies but they are sure grabbing that country there is suppose to
be only seven thousand but there is seventy and why did we take them in
there? Our boys is not allowed to have no side arms and the Japs have
got bayonets and we have only fists. We have zones that we are supposed
to control but the Japs will not keep out of them and I have saw them
put out with machine guns lined up, and if we have to have a war with
them over Siberia there will sure be a lot of our boys massacreed at the
startoff. And them Russian refugees and officers that we have orders to
help I heard our colonel say, you give them money to start a government
and they go on a bust and that night you have to pull them out of a
sporting house. They have got one idea which is to shoot all the
workingmen they can get hands on and the women too and they torture
them, Mr. Bunny I seen things that it would make you sick to read them.
From General Graves down our army is sore on this job and some of them
is gone crazy, there has been more than twenty in our regiment and some
has been sent home in a strait jacket. But the people at home is not
allowed to know nothing, there is boys in our regiment that is not had
one line from their folks in half a year and they are crazy with worry.
Why do we have to be there when the war is over, if you know I wish you
would tell me. But Paul said not to tell his sister, because it is not
so bad for himself, they move him a lot and he is always busy it is easy
when you have a lot of carpenter work but for some fellers I seen them
carry a stack of railway ties a hundred yards and then move them back to
the old place just to keep us working. Please send me some cigarettes
that will be a way to say that you have got this letter and if you send
two packages I will know that you want me to write some more. Yours
respectfully, Jeff Korbitty.”

                                   V

Bunny took this letter to Dad, and it worried him very much, of course,
but what could Dad do about it? He had three wells to bring in that
week, and one of them broke loose and smeared up a couple of hundred
acres of rocks. Also he and Mr. Roscoe had to deal with the amazing
gyrations of the oil market. It seemed as if all the nations in the
world had suddenly set themselves to buying up gasoline; perhaps they
were making up for the shortage of the war, or perhaps they were getting
ready for another war—anyhow, the price was up sky-high, and Southern
California was being drained. It was truly amazing, the gas-stations
were refusing to sell to any but their regular customers, and then only
five gallons at a time; other stations were clean empty, and cars were
stalled for days. Dad and Mr. Roscoe were making a tremendous killing;
they were getting real money too, Dad said with a laugh, none of these
foreign bonds for them!

Bunny shipped a dozen cartons of cigarettes to Jeff Korbitty; and day
and night he worried over the problem of Paul. Somehow the putting down
of Bolshevism took on quite a different aspect when it meant keeping
Paul in Siberia! Also, Bolshevik propaganda seemed a different thing
when it came from the pen of an ex-cowpuncher from Salinas valley! Bunny
simply had to do something, and finally in desperation he sat himself
down and composed a letter to his Congressman, Mr. Leathers, telling
what he had heard about conditions in Siberia, and requesting that
functionary to ascertain the War Department’s reasons for censorship of
soldiers’ mail in peace time, also to urge an investigation by Congress
of the reasons for keeping American troops in Siberia.

That letter was due to reach the Congressman five days later. Seven days
after Bunny had posted it, a well-dressed and affable gentleman called
at the Ross home in Angel City, stating that he was the owner of an oil
concession in Siberia and wanted to interest Mr. Ross in it. Dad was up
at Paradise, so Bunny talked with the gentleman, and finding him humane
and catholic in his interests, told him all about Paul, and showed him
Jeff Korbitty’s letter. They discussed the situation in Siberia, and the
gentleman said there had been no declaration of war against the
Russians, so what right did we have fighting them? Bunny said it seemed
the same way to him; and then the gentleman went away, and no more was
heard about the oil concession, but a couple of weeks later Bunny
received a second letter from the ex-cowboy soldier, bitterly
reproaching him for having’ “throwed me down,” as he must have done,
because Jeff hadn’t wrote to nobody else, but the army had got onto him,
and they had throwed him into the can just like he had said, and he was
smuggling out this letter to tell Bunny that he could go to hell and
stay there. Which was one stage more in the education of a little
idealist!

Bunny simply had to talk to somebody about this episode. Next day, as he
was driving away from the university in his sporty new car, he noticed a
young man walking with a slight limp, and it struck him as impolite for
a student of the university to drive in a sporty new car, while an
instructor of the university had to walk with a slight limp. Bunny
slowed up, and inquired, “Will you ride with me, Mr. Irving?”

“If you’re going my way,” said the other.

“Whatever way you wish,” was Bunny’s reply. “As a matter of fact, I’ve
been hoping for a chance to talk with you, and it would be a favor to
me.”

The young man got in, and stated the address to which he wished to go;
then he said, “What is on your mind?”

“I want to ask you why you think it is that we are keeping an army in
Siberia.”

Mr. Daniel Webster Irving was a peculiar-looking person; his head came
up a long way out of his collar, and with its quick alert movements it
made you think of a quail sitting in a tree and looking out for you and
your gun. He had a brown moustache, rather bristly and rebellious, and
grey eyes which he fixed upon you sharply when you said something stupid
in class. He fixed them now upon Bunny, demanding, “What makes you
interested in that?”

“I have a friend with the troops there, nearly a year, and I’ve had some
news that worries me. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Said Mr. Irving: “Are you asking me as a student, or as a friend?”

“Why,” replied Bunny, a little puzzled, “I’d be glad to be a friend, if
I might. What is the difference?”

“The difference,” said the other, “might be the loss of my position in
the university.”

Bunny flushed, embarrassed. “I hadn’t thought of anything like that, Mr.
Irving.”

“I’ll put it to you bluntly, Ross. I spent all I had saved on relief
work in Europe and came home broke. Now I am educating a young sister,
and they are paying me the munificent salary of thirteen hundred a year.
I am due to get a rise of two hundred next year, and the matter of
contracts comes up this month. If it is reported that I am defending
Bolshevism to my students, I won’t get a contract, either here or
anywhere else.”

“Oh, but Mr. Irving, I wouldn’t dream of reporting you!”

“You wouldn’t need to. You’d only need to tell your parents or your
friends what I think is the reason our troops are in Siberia, and they
would consider it their moral duty to report me.”

“Is it as bad as that?” said Bunny.

“It’s so bad that I don’t see how it could be worse,” said Mr. Irving.
“I will answer your question provided you agree that I am talking as a
friend, and that you won’t mention the conversation to anyone else.” And
you can see how deeply Bunny had fallen into the toils of Bolshevism,
when he was willing to agree to a proposition such as that!

                                   VI

What Mr. Irving said was that our troops were in Siberia because
American bankers and big business men had loaned enormous sums of money
to the government of the Tsar, both before the war and during it; the
Bolshevik government had repudiated these debts, and therefore our
bankers and business men were determined to destroy it. It was not
merely the amount of the money, but the precedent involved; if the
government of any country could repudiate the obligations of a previous
government, what would become of international loans? The creditor
nations—that is to say America, Britain and France—maintained that a
government debt was a lien, not against the government, but against the
country and its resources. The total amount of international loans was
one or two hundred billions of dollars, and the creditor nations meant
to make an example of Soviet Russia, and establish the rule that a
government which repudiated its debts would be put out of business.

Bunny found this a novel point of view, and asked many questions. Mr.
Irving said that in Washington was a Russian who had been the war-time
ambassador to our country, and in that capacity had had the handling of
the money loaned by our government, and used for buying guns and shells
for Russia. At the time of the Bolshevik revolution, this ambassador had
just got something like a hundred million dollars, and our government
was allowing him to use it to set up a propaganda machine against the
Soviet government, with a spy system as elaborate as the Tsar had ever
known. Newspapers and newspaper men, government officials and
legislators, all were on this ambassador’s pay-roll. Moreover, there
were in our state department officials who had married Russian wives of
the old nobility, and these wives had lost everything in the revolution,
and it was natural they should hate the new regime. One official was a
member of the banking-house which had handled the loans and stood to
lose a fortune; others were tied up with banks and business concerns
which had vast sums at stake. So it came about that America was at war
with Soviet Russia, on the entire circumference of that vast republic;
and so it came about that an instructor in an American university could
not discuss the matter with one of his students, even outside the
class-room, without fear of losing his position.

Mr. Daniel Webster Irving denied that he had any sympathy with
Bolshevism, or wished to teach such doctrines in America; and Bunny, in
his innocence of soul, accepted this statement—not knowing that all
Bolshevik agents say that, until they have got the minds of their
victims thoroughly poisoned. Mr. Irving expressed the view that what was
happening in Russia was a great social experiment. Could a government of
the working-class succeed? Was democracy in industry a possibility, or
only a fanatic’s dream? We ought to send disinterested people, experts
of all sorts into Russia, to watch what was happening and report it.
Instead of that, we were helping France and Britain to starve the
Russians out; we were compelling them to spend all their energies
resisting our armies, and those which we subsidized; we were making it
impossible for the experiment to succeed, and so, of course, its failure
would prove nothing.

Bunny, poor little propaganda victim, said that he was beginning to
change his mind about these matters. Yes, the Russians surely had a
right to work out their own problem in their own way; and certainly we
ought to know the truth about what was happening—he wished there was
some way to get it. Thereupon Mr. Irving gave him the names of two
weekly magazines, which as it happened, had just been excluded from the
library of the university, and from all the high schools of Angel City,
for “dangerous thoughts.”

You can imagine what happened then. When you tell a high-spirited lad
that he must not read certain publications, he becomes immediately
filled with curiosity to know what they contain. Bunny went home and
sent in his subscription to these papers; quite openly, in his own name.
So there was another entry in the card-indexes of the Military
Intelligence Department and the Naval Intelligence Department and the
Secret Service Department; to say nothing of many organizations which
were using these card-indexes as their own—several patriotic societies,
and several militant newspapers, and several big private detective
agencies, including, of course, the information service of the
once-upon-a-time ambassador from a no-longer-existing Russian
government.

Bunny, groping about for some way to help Paul, was next moved to write
a letter to the Southern Pacific “Stude,” telling what he had come to
think about the Siberian situation; being careful, of course, not to
refer to Mr. Irving, nor to name either Paul or Jeff Korbitty. His
letter was returned to him by the student editor, with a note protesting
against a man of his prominence in the university giving such aid to the
enemies of his country. The news of this incident spread, and the
wildest rumors took wing; Bunny was besieged by friends and others, who
wanted to read the letter, and then to argue with him.

One member of the senior class declared that he agreed with
Bunny—certainly the Russians had a right to run their own country.
Billy George was this man’s name, and his father was a wealthy
manufacturer of iron pipe. Needless to say, Bunny was glad to have a
little sympathy, and let his new friend read his letter to the “Stude,”
and Jeff Korbitty’s letter to him, and told all his ideas and troubles;
and thus the card-indexes in Angel City, New York and Washington were
further enriched. Inasmuch as so many other people were allowed to
inspect these indexes, it will surely not be unpatriotic for us to take
a glimpse into the file. The cards were six by eight in size, neatly
typed on both sides; and when one was full, another was started. Our
young idealist’s now stood as follows:

“Ross, James Arnold, junior, alias Bunny: 679 S. Mendocino Ave., Angel
City, Calif., also Paradise, San Elido Co., Calif. Age 20, height 5′
9½″, hair brown, eyes brown, features regular; photo attached. Son of J.
Arnold Ross, v-pres. Ross Consolidated Oil Co., Vernon Roscoe Bldg.,
Angel City, also indept. oil interests, estimated worth $25,000,000.
Graduate 1918 Beach City (Calif.) High School, school records good,
reported sex susceptibility, report agent 11497 attached. Active
sympathizer Paradise oil strike 1916-17, intimate friend of Paul
Watkins, strike leader, file 1272W17. Suspected intimate with Rose
Watkins, sister of Paul. Training at Camp Arthur, 1917-18, record
satisfactory. Wrote to Hon. H. G. Leathers, 49th California district,
prompted by returned soldier Jeff. Korbitty, file 9678K30; see letter
attached, also report agent 23,672 attached. Class of 1923, Southern
Pac. Univ., member Kappa Gamma Tau fraternity, trackrunner, pupil of
Daniel Washington Irving, file 327118. Sentimental sympathizer Bolsh.
Subscriber Nation, New Republic. Further reports from agent 11497,
fellow student; also 9621, intimate with subject’s sister, known as
Birdie Ross.”

                                  VII

The elder Ross had another source of information as to world affairs,
besides his morning and afternoon newspapers, and his idealist son. His
associates in the oil-game were thinking vigorously on the subject, and
they held long conferences and studied elaborate reports. They also were
dissatisfied with the diplomacy of President Wilson—not because he
wasn’t making the world safe for democracy, but because he wasn’t making
it safe for oil operators. In the territories being taken from the
enemies were petroleum regions of wealth untold; and here, in the
imbecile name of idealism, we were permitting France and Britain to grab
this treasure, while all we got was the job of keeping the Turks off the
Armenians!

So far as Dad personally was concerned, his interests were at home. It
was Excelsior Pete and Victor Oil and the rest of the “Big Five” which
were reaching out for foreign concessions, and if they got the prizes,
the price of oil at home might drop, and cost Dad a good chunk of money.
Nevertheless, he took the patriotic attitude; the country needed oil,
and it was our business to get it. So you see, Dad also was an idealist;
and it vexed him that his kind of idealism was so little appreciated by
his son.

He was becoming convinced that the university was to blame. No matter
what Bunny might say, it was this “education business” that was
unsettling his mind, and spoiling him to deal with practical affairs.
Several times Bunny realized that the shrewd old man was probing his
mind; there must be some older person influencing Bunny’s thought, and
the most suspicious fact was Bunny’s failure to mention such a person.
Bunny realized that sooner or later the name of Daniel Webster Irving,
alias Daniel Washington Irving, was bound to come into the open; so he
hit on a shrewd idea—he would get Dad to meet his instructor-friend! It
would never be possible for Dad to report a man whom he had received in
his home!

“Dad, I want to bring one of my teachers up to see the field.” And of
course Dad was delighted; it would bring a bit of culture into his
world, and give him a share in his boy’s mental life. One fear which
haunted Dad was that this “education business” might cause Bunny to
become ashamed of his ignorant old father. Dad knew that there were
“high-brow fellers,” crazy enough to look down upon twenty-five million
dollars—or at any rate to pretend to!

Mr. Irving was to teach in summer school, but he had ten days in
between, and Bunny suggested that he might like to motor up to Paradise
for a week-end, and the young instructor accepted with pleased surprise.
So they set out, one morning in June, in that sunshiny weather which is
so common in Southern California that you forget all about it. On the
way they talked about events in Russia and Siberia; the progress being
made by General Denikin and Admiral Kolchak, the desperate efforts of
the Bolsheviks to organize a “red army,” and the hope of the German
ruling class to win back to respectability by serving the allies against
the Russian revolution. Also Bunny told Mr. Irving his idea about this
visit; Dad must be allowed to do most of the talking, and Mr. Irving
should voice only such opinions as were proper for an elderly oil man to
hear.

                                  VIII

They arrived at Paradise, and the instructor was duly installed in the
fine new Spanish “ranch-house” which Dad had erected on the tract for
the use of himself and his guests. It was built around the four sides of
a court, with a fountain splashing in the center, and date-palms and
banana plants and big shoots from the bougainvillea vine starting to
climb the stucco walls. There was a Japanese who served the double
function of butler and cook, and a boy who combined gardening with
dish-washing, while Ruth had been promoted to be housekeeper and general
boss. There were six guest-rooms, and when the executives and directors
and geologists and engineers of Ross Consolidated came up to the tract,
they were always Dad’s guests, and it was one big happy family. They
would settle around a green baize table in the living-room right after
supper and start playing poker; they would pull off their coats and
unhitch their suspenders, and ring for the Jap to bring more cigars and
whiskey and soda, and they would fill the room with blue smoke and never
move from their seats until the small hours of the morning. It was an
amusing illustration of the double standard of morals, that Dad was glad
his son preferred to stay in his own room and read, and not hear the
stories which the oil men would tell when they broke loose.

But there was no gambling this time—this was to be a high-brow
week-end, in honor of “the professor,” as Dad persisted in referring to
his guest. The elder Ross was naively proud to have a “professor”
visiting him, and to show him the well that was spudding in, and the one
that was bailing, and the score that were drilling. They inspected the
new refinery, something really special, that had been exploited in the
newspapers as the latest miracle in petroleum engineering; incidentally
it was a work of art, buildings of concrete and shining, newly-painted
metal, set in a regular pleasure park. Oil wells are black and greasy,
incurably so, but a refinery is different; the stuff comes in
underground pipes, and most of it is taken away in the same fashion, so
a refinery can be laid out according to the taste of a young idealist,
with neat fences of steel mesh covered with rose vines, and plots of
grass with gravelled roads winding between. The Ross refinery was as big
as a good-sized village, only most of its houses were tanks; big tanks
and little tanks, high tanks and squat tanks, round tanks, oblong tanks
and square tanks, black tanks, red tanks, and tanks with an infinite
variety of colors inside where they did not show.

The main feature was an enormous battery of stills, set in a row and
joined together with a tangle of pipes; each still big enough to have
served the purposes of all the bootleggers of the United States. In the
first still the crude oil was heated to a certain temperature, and it
gave off one of its products; this was the “cracking” process. The
remainder went on to the next still, where it got a little hotter, and
gave off something else. So it went from still to still—the process
known as “continuous” distillation. The product from each still was run
into a big condenser, and from there into its own tank; so you got
gasoline of several qualities, and kerosene and benzine and naphtha, and
a dozen different grades of lubricating oil, and petrolatum, and thick,
black lovely tar, and endless pans of smooth white paraffin wax.

You can see how in these processes there was room for no end of
management, and the discovery of new methods. Dad had a chemist that he
never tired of telling about—say, that fellow was a wonder! Dad paid
him six thousand a year, and owned everything he discovered, and he had
saved the company several millions since it had started. That McEnnis
jist lived on carbon rings and chains—he would draw you diagrams on the
blackboard, and it would be a purple dye, and then he would add another
C-unit, and by golly, it was some green stuff that would cure
tape-worms, and the name of it was longer than any tape-worm ever
measured.

They must meet this wizard; so they went over to the laboratory, which
was on a little hill-top away off by itself, so that the inmate might be
free to blow himself up as many times as he wanted. McEnnis was pale,
stoop-shouldered and partly bald, and peered at you through big
spectacles. Dad was proud to introduce “Professor” Irving, and the
chemist showed them a row of test-tubes and retorts, and explained that
he was trying to ascertain why normal hexane and the more stable methyl
cyclopentane are so much less stable to heat than saturated hydrocarbons
of the same molecular weight. There was a chance here to effect the
biggest saving in refining history, but the trouble was, the maximum
percent of defines demanded by the simple general equation—and here the
chemist began to write on the
blackboard—RCH₂—CH₂—CH₂R₁➳RCH₃+CH₂=CH.R₁—was seldom attained owing
to polymerization of the olefines and the formation of naphthenes.

After learning which, they went back to the “ranch-house” for a supper
of fried chicken, with fresh green corn and honeydew melons from
Imperial valley, and then they settled down for a chat. Mr. Irving
behaved beautifully; they talked till midnight, and he answered a
hundred of Dad’s questions about world affairs, and told what he had
seen of relief work in Greece and of diplomacy in France.

The young instructor had some relatives in high positions, so he knew
things on the inside; they fitted in with what Dad knew—yes, it was
awful, the way things were being bungled. My God, here were we jist
telling the Japs to help themselves to Saghalien, that had more oil
perhaps than all the rest of the world; and the British of course were
getting to work to repair the pipe-lines at Baku, and at Mosul they had
the whole field, and the French were getting into Persia with the
British, and the same in Syria, and where was your Uncle Sam? Vernon
Roscoe was jist raising hell, because he had had some contracts at Baku,
and what was the use of kicking out the Bolshevikis and putting in the
Anglo-Dutch? Roscoe said this country needed a practical man for
president and not a college professor—

Dad stopped, afraid that he had made a “break”; but Mr. Irving laughed,
and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Ross, I am not entitled to that high honor,
and don’t expect ever to make it.” So Dad went on with Roscoe’s tirade;
the oil men by golly had had their lesson, and were going to get
together and have something to say about the next election—they were
going to have a business man for president. Bunny and his Bolshevik
instructor exchanged the faintest trace of a glance, but Dad suspected
nothing. Afterwards, when he was alone with Bunny, he remarked, “Son,
that’s a bright young fellow. It’s a pleasure to talk with a man that
understands affairs like him.” You see how the Bolshevik propaganda was
spreading!

                                   IX

Bunny spent that summer “playing about,” as the phrase ran; he read a
few books on the international situation, he studied some of the
confidential reports of Vernon Roscoe’s foreign agents, and watched the
derricks climb over a couple more hills of the Ross Junior tract. Bertie
telephoned, insisting that he should make his debut into society and
meet some “eligible” girls; so he went with her to spend a week at the
camp of the ultra-fashionable Woodbridge Rileys, located high in the
mountains, in a “club” to which only the elect might attain. Here people
boated and swam, but otherwise lived as complicated lives as in the
city, tangled in the same web of social duties and engagements, and
dressing several times a day. They drank a great deal at dinner, and
danced to the music of a Negro jazz orchestra until daybreak, after
which the young people would go horseback riding, and have a late
breakfast, and sleep a couple of hours before keeping a luncheon
engagement.

Here Bunny got to know Eldon Burdick, who had been his sister’s favored
suitor for a couple of years. Just what was their relationship Bunny was
not sure. Dad had ventured a jest about an approaching wedding, but
Bertie froze him; she would attend to her own engagements, with no
parental meddling. Now Bunny discovered that the pair were quarreling;
he could not help overhearing them, and seeing tears in his sister’s
eyes. She was angry because Eldon would only spend a week-end at the
camp, and he was angry because she punished him by dancing too often
with some other man. But neither of the pair offered any confidences to
Bunny, and he did not seek them.

Eldon Burdick was the youngest son of a family of old California
land-owners. Their holdings lay on the outskirts of Angel City, and
every ten years or so they would sell off a chunk for “subdivisions,”
and this development would so increase the value of the remainder that
the family grew richer all the time, despite the fact that forty people,
young and old, spent money for everything they could think of. Eldon was
a handsome, dashing sportsman with a tiny black moustache, after the
fashion of a British army officer; he held himself erect and stiff, and
Bunny discovered that he had a military mind. Bertie must have mentioned
her brother’s dangerous ideas, for Eldon invited the younger man for a
horseback ride, and proceeded to sound him out. Eldon himself was an
amateur patriot, in the proper sense of the abused word amateur; he was
letting his string of polo-ponies stay idle all summer, while he did his
part to save society.

It did not take long for him to uncover the deeps of Bunny’s peril. The
boy had got by heart every one of the Bolshevik formulas: that the
people of Russia had a right to run their own country in their own way;
that our troops had no business shooting and killing them without a
declaration of war by Congress; that people in this country had a right
to express the above convictions without being beaten or tarred and
feathered or sent to prison or deported. Eldon pointed out that all this
was merely camouflage, the convenient formulas whereby criminal
conspirators sought to cover themselves with a mantle of legality, “free
speech” and “civil rights” and all the rest. The Soviet savages had
repudiated all these principles, and it was our business to fight them
with their own weapons.

Bunny listened politely while his companion explained the ramifications
of the Bolshevik plot. Not merely had these traitors sought to give the
victory to Germany, they were now organizing a propaganda machine to
overthrow civilized government all over the world; they were stirring up
Negroes, Hindoos, Chinese and Mohammedans to rise and exterminate the
white race. They had secret organizations with hundreds of thousands of
followers in this country, they published or subsidized some eight
hundred papers, all preaching class hatred. How could any man of decent
instincts make a truce with this monstrosity?

It was indeed terrifying, and difficult to answer; nevertheless, Bunny
stuck it out, we had no right in Russia or Siberia, and if we would let
the Bolsheviks alone, they couldn’t hurt us. When we suppressed people’s
ideas, we made it seem that we couldn’t answer them; when we smashed up
meetings and threw hundreds of people into jail for trying to attend
meetings, we simply advertised the ideas we were trying to suppress, we
made lots of other people sympathize with the victims. Look at those
Russian Jewish boys and girls that had been arrested in New York, all of
them under twenty; they had done nothing but distribute a leaflet
appealing to the American people not to make war on Russia, yet they had
been tortured in jail until one of them died, and the rest had got
sentences of twenty years! When Eldon Burdick discovered that Bunny was
defending vermin such as these, he first became hot, and then he became
cold; and soon Bunny noticed that others of the guests were cold, and
his sister came to him with flashing eyes, declaring that he had ruined
her social career.

                                   X

So Bunny went to visit Henrietta Ashleigh, at the beach-home of her
family; located on a beautiful blue lagoon, with little white sail-boats
dotted over it, and yellow and gray cliffs covered with Spanish
bungalows of many-tinted plaster. Here, gliding about in a canoe, Bunny
tried to justify his ideas, but met no better success. Henrietta had an
invincible prejudice against Bolsheviks, and Bunny suspected the
reason—she had heard about the nationalization of women. He would have
liked to hint to her that he doubted the truth of these stories; but if
it had been possible to mention such a subject to Henrietta, she would
not have been his ideal of feminine purity.

So Bunny had to motor up to Angel City and take Mr. Irving out to lunch,
in order to have some one to tell his troubles to. But Mr. Irving made
matters worse by giving him an article from a Socialist paper, written
by an English journalist who had just come out of Russia, telling of the
desperate efforts the Communists were making to defend their cause. The
party had conscripted fifty percent of its members to go to the front
and die—that was what it amounted to, for even a slight wound was often
fatal—there were no antiseptics anywhere in a country of more than a
hundred million people. On twenty-six fronts the Russian workers were
waging battle against a host of enemies. In Finland alone the
counter-revolutionary general Mannerheim had slaughtered a hundred
thousand people suspected of sympathy with Bolshevism; he had done it
with American guns and American ammunition, and his troops many of them
wearing American uniforms. In cases where the troops had been beaten by
the Bolsheviks and forced to retreat, the American Red Cross had burned
millions of dollars worth of medical supplies, for fear that they might
be used to save wounded Bolshevik soldiers and Bolshevik women in
child-birth. Somehow, when you knew that things like this were happening
in the world, you did not enjoy drifting about in a canoe on a beautiful
blue lagoon!

Bunny went back to Paradise, and studied and thought and waited. There
came another post-card from Paul—just like the former one, cold and
matter-of-fact; Paul was well and busy, and was being taken good care
of; he had had another letter from Ruth; he hoped that the family was
well, and also the Rosses. Bunny now knew the world-situation
sufficiently to understand why Paul wrote such a card, and even to
imagine the bitterness that Paul must feel to be compelled to write it.

Bunny thought that he also would try his hand at card-writing. He got a
plain postal, and told Paul that they were all well and busy, and
producing a lot of oil to help defeat America’s enemies. “I am doing a
lot of thinking,” Bunny added; but then it occurred to him that this
might suggest a forbidden procedure to troops, so he got another card
and told how happy everybody was and how well things were going, and
then added, “I am coming to agree with Tom Axton in everything.” Bunny
figured that the censor would hardly know, way out there in Siberia, how
Tom Axton had organized the oil workers in the Paradise field!

All this time Bunny was torn between two sets of emotions, both strong
within him, and absolutely contradictory. He had been in the army as a
prospective officer and had burned with patriotic loyalty; but now, only
seven months later, here he was with a desire to “root” for the enemies
of his country, and to cheer when the flag had to retreat! Yes, he was
actually tempted to be glad when he read that the American troops at
Archangel were checked, and their British commanders foiled in their
objectives! He remembered the thrills that had stirred his soul in the
training-camp, when he had leaped from his tent at reveille, and seen
“Old Glory” floating in the breeze of dawn; if in those days he could
have seen himself as he was now, he would have called himself a
black-hearted traitor!

                                   XI

There were very few people in the world who thought the Russians would
be able to defend themselves against the hosts of all the world. Yet
somehow they were managing it. There was a peculiar thing to be noticed
in the newspaper despatches from the various anti-Bolshevik fronts. The
allied troops would win great victories; they would take Perm, or Ufa,
or whatever city it might be, and capture vast thousands of the enemy. A
month or two later they would win another victory, and again the
patriots would be cheered up—until it occurred to them to get the map,
and compare the location of the two places, and discover that the second
place was one or two hundred miles farther back than the first one!

Later on Bunny found out what this meant. The peasants had a way of
staying quiet while the allied forces advanced, and then rising up
behind their lines and forcing them to retreat. So mighty was Bolshevik
propaganda—it was working thus at Archangel, and all along the western
front from the Baltic to the Crimea, and all over Siberia; no victory
ever lasted. Admiral Kolchak got all the way across Siberia, General
Denikin, in the Ukraine, got within a hundred and twenty-five miles of
Moscow; but it all came to nothing.

Then, as summer turned into fall, and fall into winter, a still more
terrifying thing began to happen. The armies of the great powers began
to show signs of succumbing to the deadly propaganda poison! They were
now in the second winter since the armistice, and the soldiers thought
the war was over, and why couldn’t they go home? The very worst of the
prophesies of Eldon Burdick began suddenly to come true. The sailors of
the French fleet in the Black Sea rose up and overthrew their officers
and captured several battleships! German troops declined to win their
way back to respectability by putting down Bolshevism for the allies!
British soldiers at Folkestone refused to go onto the ships that were to
take them to Archangel!

And most appalling of all, a mutiny in the American army! The first
mutiny in the whole history of “Old Glory”! Michigan lumbermen and
farmer-boys, shipped up there under the Arctic circle, put under the
command of British officers, and ordered out to shoot half-starved and
ragged Russian workingmen at fifty degrees below zero—these boys laid
down their arms! The facts were hushed up in the newspapers—but not in
the higher circles of the army and of world diplomacy, nor yet in the
office-buildings where the gentlemen and lady-patriots planned the
future of the world!

In the month of October the allies made their last military effort. They
sent in the tsarist General Yudenich to take Petrograd; they gave him
all the supplies he could use, and troops of many nations, and he got
within a few miles of the city, so that the Soviets had to move their
capital to Moscow. But the half-starved and ragged Communists drove back
their foes, and Bolshevik propaganda proceeded to cause a revolution in
Hungary and another in Bavaria!

Also at home there were portents. In spite of all the raids and jailings
and deportations, great numbers of people could not be prevented from
saying publicly and loudly that we had no business making war upon a
friendly people. More and more there was discontent with the program of
keeping our soldiers abroad after the war was over. “Radical” newspapers
and magazines continued to be circulated, and in the big cities at any
rate it was not possible to prevent mass-meetings.

It was a little difficult to make any protest effective, because of the
peculiar condition into which the government had fallen. The President
had set out on a tour, to convince the people that they should be
satisfied with the peace settlement. He had come to Angel City, and Dad
and Bunny had gone to hear him—in a vast hall where ten thousand people
were marshalled, and taught to stand up and sit down again, and cheer at
signal, all very reverently, quite like royalty. The great man’s voice
was strained, and his face had an unwholesome flush, and his arguments
were as broken as his appearance. A few days later came word that his
health had collapsed, and he was hurried back to Washington, where he
had an apoplectic stroke. Now he lay, a helpless, half-conscious
invalid, and the country was governed by a strange triumvirate—a
Catholic private secretary, an army doctor, and one of the most
fashionably dressed of Washington society ladies.

But somewhere, in the cabinet, perhaps, there was left a trace of
intelligence, with which to realize the mounting dangers abroad and at
home. At Christmas time, while Bunny was up at Paradise, hunting quail
and watching the progress of Ross Consolidated, he went out one morning
to meet the Ford car which brought the mail to the tract. He got his
morning paper and opened it, and there on the front page was a despatch
from Washington, announcing that the army authorities had decided it was
no longer necessary for them to police the Trans-Siberian Railway; we
were going to leave the Japanese in charge, and come home. Bunny gave a
shout, and rushed into the house, calling for Ruth. “Paul is coming
back! Paul is coming back!” And then he had to run quick and catch her
by the arm and help her to a chair!




                               CHAPTER XI
                               THE REBEL


                                   I

At Southern Pacific University the class lines were tacitly but
effectively drawn, and in the ordinary course of events a man of Bunny’s
wealth, good looks and good manners, would have associated only with the
members of fraternities and sororities. If some Negro boy were to
develop eloquence as a debater, or if some one taking a course in
millinery or plumbing were to display fleetness as a hurdler, the
hurdler might hurdle and the debater might debate, but they would not be
invited to tea-parties or dances, nor be elected to prominence in the
student organizations; such honors were reserved for tall Anglo-Saxons
having regular features, and hair plastered straight back from their
foreheads, and trousers pressed to a knife edge and never worn two days
in succession.

But here was Bunny Ross, persisting in fooling with “dangerous
thoughts,” that made his friends angry. Of course, as anyone would have
foreseen, there were “barbs” and “goats,” anxious to break in where they
were not wanted, and perfectly willing to pretend to think that our
country ought not to intervene in Russia, if by so professing they could
get to know one of the socially élite. So Bunny found himself on talking
terms with various queer fish. For example, there was Peter Nagle, whose
father was president of a “rationalist society,” and who seemed to have
one dominating desire in life—to blurt out in class that what was the
matter with the world was superstition, and that mankind could never
progress until they stopped believing in God. In a university all of
whose faculty were required to be devout Methodists, you can imagine how
popular this made him. Peter looked just as you would expect such a boor
to look, with a large square head and a wide mouth full of teeth, and a
shock of yellow hair which he allowed to straggle round his ears and
drop white specks onto his coat collar—his coat did not match his
trousers, and he brought his lunch to the university tied with a strap!

And then there was Gregor Nikolaieff. Gregor was all right, when you got
to know him, but the trouble was, it was hard to know him, because his
accent was peculiar, and at critical moments in his talk he would forget
the English word. He had jet black hair, and black eyes with a sombre
frown above them—in short, he was the very picture of what the students
called a “Bolsheviki.” As it happened, Gregor’s father had belonged to
one of the revolutionary parties whom the Bolsheviks were now sending to
jail; but how could you explain that to a student body which dumped into
one common garbage-can Socialists and Communists and Syndicalists and
Anarchists, Communist-Anarchists and Anarchist-Syndicalists, Social
Revolutionaries and Social-Democrats, Populists, Progressives,
Single-taxers, Nonpartisan Leaguers, Pacifists, Pragmatists, Altruists,
Vegetarians, Anti-vivisectionists and opponents of capital punishment.

Also there was Rachel Menzies, who belonged to a people that had been
chosen by the Lord, but not by the aforesaid student body. Rachel was
rather good-looking, though in a dark, foreign way; she was short—what
feminine enemies would have called “dumpy”—and made no pretense at
finery, but came to the university in black cotton stockings and a
shirtwaist that did not match her skirt. There was a rumor that her
father worked in a clothing factory, and her brother was pressing
students’ pants for an education.

And here was the discoverer and heir-apparent of the Ross Junior oil
field, letting himself be seen in public with these people, and even
trying to introduce them to his fraternity brothers; excusing himself by
saying that they believed in “free speech.” As if it were not obvious
that they would, having everything to gain and nothing to lose!
Proletarians of all universities unite!

Poor Bunny got it from both sides. “Look here,” said Donald Burns,
president of the sophomore class, “don’t you introduce me to any more of
your Yid fairies.” And then, “Look here,” said Rachel Menzies, “don’t
you introduce me to any more of your male fashion-plates.” Bunny
protested, he had the idea that all kinds of people ought to know one
another; but Rachel informed him that she thought too much of herself.
“Probably you’ve never been snubbed in your life, Mr. Ross, but we Jews
learn the lesson early in our lives—not to go where we aren’t wanted.”

Said Bunny, “But Miss Menzies, if you believe in ideas, you’ve got to
teach people—”

“Thank you,” she said; “I believe in my ideas, but not enough to teach
Donald Burns.”

“But how can you tell?” Bunny protested. “You’re teaching me, and I
don’t belong to the working-class.” He had learned that this girl was a
member of the Socialist party, and it was “class-consciousness,” as well
as Jewish consciousness.

Rachel insisted that Bunny was one person in a million, capable of
believing what was contrary to his economic interests. But Bunny had no
awareness of anything extraordinary about himself. Instead of being a
conspicuous and shining leader, as his high destiny directed, he was
always looking for some one he could lean on, some one who was positive,
and whom he could trust. He found some of this in Henrietta Ashleigh,
who knew exactly what was proper; and he found some more of it in Rachel
Menzies, who knew exactly what was true, and said it with energy and
frankness that were like flashes of lightning in the twilight of
Southern Pacific culture.

The only trouble was, the contradiction between his two authorities; it
appeared almost as if what was true was not proper and what was proper
was not true! For Henrietta considered Rachel an impossible person, and
was cold as a corpse in her presence; while Rachel’s idea of being
insulting was to tell Bunny that it was with Henrietta he really
belonged, his Creator had made him to take her to church.

                                   II

Amid this perplexity, Bunny found comfort in the backing of Billy
George, who was Anglo-Saxon and broad-shouldered, and a senior besides.
Billy assured him he was right, and suggested that they take some steps
to make their ideas understood to the rest of the student body. Why not
organize a little group, the Society for the Study of Russian Problems,
or something of that sort? Bunny should ask Mr. Irving to advise them,
and perhaps join them—it would be much better if they could have the
backing of one of the teachers. So Bunny went to Mr. Irving, who said at
once that he could not give any advice on the subject, for the reason
that it would jeopardize his position to do so; the students would have
to follow their own judgment. The young instructor did add this much,
they ought surely not use the name “Russian,” but take some inoffensive
title, the “Liberal Club,” or the “Social Problems Society.”

Bunny took that advice to the others, meeting in one of the class-rooms
after hours. Billy George said it didn’t seem very “spunky” of Mr.
Irving; whereupon Rachel Menzies flared up, he had no right to hint at
such a thing, they all knew what the teacher’s position was, and he had
a perfect right to keep out of trouble. What business had Mr. George to
be finding fault, when he himself had done nothing publicly?

The other demanded to know what he could do, and the girl was not
backward in suggestions. Why not start a student paper, a little
four-page sheet, once a week or even once a month? It would cost very
little, and would make a hit, they could be sure; look how many people
had wanted to read Mr. Ross’s letter about Siberia! If they printed that
letter they would set the campus on fire. Mr. George could have the
honor of being editor, and Rachel would contribute her share of the
cost. There was obvious irony in that, considering the quantity of iron
pipe which Billy’s father was known to be marketing in Angel City. But
they discussed it gravely, and Billy didn’t think he could take any
responsibility; his old man would pull him out of college, and put him
to work on a bookkeeper’s stool.

Then, automatically, the eyes of the group turned to Bunny. What did he
think? Bunny found his cheeks growing red. He had wanted to explain his
ideas to other people, but had thought of doing it in some dignified
way, privately and quietly. A paper would make such a noise! Rachel
Menzies apparently didn’t mind a noise, but Henrietta would, she would
be horrified by the bare idea. Also there was Dad—the “education
business” would be damned forever by such a venture. So Bunny had to say
no; and Rachel Menzies said that was all right, there were plenty of
excuses, and she didn’t blame anybody for finding the best one, but at
least they had no business criticizing Mr. Irving for lack of courage!

                                  III

Soon after that Bunny read in the paper that the transport “Bennington”
had arrived in San Francisco with two thousand troops from Siberia.
Paul’s unit was listed; so Bunny called up Ruth on the telephone and
told her the news, and said, be sure to let him know as soon as she got
word. Two days later Ruth called him—Paul had arrived at Paradise. It
was a Friday, so Bunny “cut” his afternoon courses, and jumped into his
car. Dad had gone over to Lobos River, to see to a “fishing” job, and so
missed this first meeting.

It was almost twenty months that Paul had been away, and Bunny was keyed
up with eagerness. The first glance gave him a shock, for Paul looked
quite terrible—gaunt and yellow, his khaki jacket hanging loose upon
him. “You’ve been sick!” cried Bunny.

“Yes,” said Paul; “but I’m getting all right now.”

“Paul, tell me what happened!”

“Well, it was no picnic.” And he seemed to think that would satisfy both
his sister and his friend—after a year and a half!

They were over in the cabin on the Rascum tract, where Ruth and Paul had
first begun house-keeping. It was supper-time, and the girl had prepared
a bounteous repast; but Paul wasn’t much on eating just now, he
said—afraid to trust himself with good food. While they sat at table he
told them about Manila, where they had stopped; and about a storm on the
Pacific; but not a word about Siberia!

Of course that wouldn’t do. After the meal they got Paul settled in an
arm-chair, and Bunny said, “Look here, Paul, I’ve been trying to
understand about this Russian business. I’m quarrelling with most
everyone I know about it, and I counted on you for the truth. So please
do tell us about it—just what happened to you.”

Paul sat with his head lying back. His face had always been sombre, a
prominent nose and wide mouth with a tendency to droop at the corners;
haggard as he was, this tendency was accentuated, he looked like a mask
of sorrow. “What happened to me?” he said, in his slow voice; and then
he seemed to raise himself to the effort of recalling it. “I’ll tell you
what happened, son; I was kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped!” The two of them echoed the word together.

“Yes, just that. I thought I went into the army to put down the Kaiser,
but I was kidnapped by some Wall Street bankers, and put to work as a
strike-breaker, a scab.”

Ruth and Bunny could only sit and gaze at Paul, and wait for him to say
what he meant by these strange words.

“You remember our oil strike, Bunny? Those guards the Federation sent up
here—husky fellows, with plenty of guns, and good warm clothes,
rain-coats and water-proof hats and everything. Well, that’s what I’ve
been doing for a year and a half—putting down a strike for Wall Street
bankers. The guards here at Paradise got ten dollars a day, and if they
didn’t like it, they could quit; but I got thirty a month and beans, and
if I tried to quit they’d have shot me. That was the cinch the bankers
had.”

Again there was a pause. Paul had closed his eyes, and he told a part of
his story that way, looking at things he saw inside his mind.

“First thing, the allies took the city of Vladivostok. The strikers had
that city, with a perfectly good government, everything orderly and
fine. They didn’t make much resistance—they were too surprised at our
behavior. We shot a few longshoremen, who tried to defend one building,
and the strikers had a big funeral with a procession; they brought the
red coffins to the American consulate with banners that asked us why we
had shot their people. It happened to be the Fourth of July, and we were
celebrating our revolution; why had we overthrown theirs? Of course we
couldn’t answer; none of us knew why we had done it; but little by
little we began to find out.”

Paul paused, and waited so long that Bunny thought he wasn’t going on.
“Why, Paul?”

“Well, just outside that city, along the railroad track, there were
fields—I guess there must have been ten or twenty acres, piled twenty
feet high with stuff—guns and shells, railroad locomotives, rails and
machinery, motor-trucks—every kind of thing you could think of to help
win a war. Some of it was in cases, and some without even a tarpaulin
over it, just lying there in the rain, and sinking slowly—some of the
heavy stuff two feet down in the mud. There was a hundred million
dollars of it, that had been put off the steamers, intended to be taken
across to Russia; but then the revolution had come, and there it lay.
One of our jobs was to guard it. At first, of course, we thought it
belonged to the government; but then little by little we got the story.
Originally the British government had bought it for the Tsar’s
government, and taken bonds for it. Later, when we came into the war,
the firm of Morgan and Company took over the bonds from the British
government, and these supplies were Morgan’s collateral, and we had
overthrown the Vladivostok government to protect it for him.”

Again there was a pause. “Paul,” said Bunny, anxiously, “do you really
know that?”

Paul laughed, but without any happiness. “Know it?” he said. “Listen,
son. They sent out an expedition, two hundred and eighty men to run the
railroad—every kind of expert, traffic men, telegraphers, linemen,
engineers. They all wore army uniforms, and the lowest man had the rank
of second lieutenant; of course we thought they were part of the army,
like the rest of us. But they got fancy pay, and by God, it wasn’t army
pay, it was checks on a Wall Street bank! I’ve seen dozens of those
checks. It was a private expedition, sent to run the railroad for the
bankers.”

“But why, Paul?”

“I’ve told you—to break the strike. The biggest strike in all
history—the Russian workers against the landlords and the bankers; and
we were to put the workers down, and the landlords and bankers up! Here
and there were bunches of refugees, former officers of the Tsar’s army,
grand dukes and their mistresses, land-owners and their families; they
would get together and call themselves a government, and it was our job
to rush them supplies, and they would print paper money, and hire some
adventurers, and grab a bunch of peasants and ‘conscript’ them, and that
would be an army, and we’d move them on the railroad, and they’d
overthrow another Soviet government, and slaughter a few more hundreds
or thousands of workingmen. That’s been my job for the past year and
half; do you wonder I’m sick?”

“Paul, did you have to kill people?” It was Ruth’s voice of horror.

“No, I don’t think I killed anybody. I was a carpenter, and my only
fights were with the Japs, that were supposed to be our allies. You see,
the Japs were there to grab the country, so they didn’t want either the
‘white’ Russians or the ‘red’ ones to succeed. The first thing they did
was to counterfeit the money of the ‘white’ government; they brought in
billions of fake roubles, and bought everything in sight—banks and
hotels and stores and real estate—they made themselves the capitalists,
and broke the ‘white’ government with their fake money. They resented
our being there, and the fact that we really tried to help the ‘whites;’
they butted in on our job, and there were times when we lined up our
troops and threatened to fire in five minutes if they didn’t move out.
They were always picking on our men; I was fired at three times in the
dark—got one bullet through my hat and another through my shirt.”

Ruth sat there with her hands clasped together and her face white. She
could see those bullets going through Paul’s clothing right now! And be
sure that she was not unlearning any of her dislike for war!

“A lot of our fellows came to hate the Japs,” said Paul; “but I didn’t.
I got a philosophy out of this—the only thing I did get. The ruling
classes in Japan were grabbing half a continent; but all the poor
soldiers were grabbing was pay even poorer than mine. They didn’t know
what they were there for—they, also, had been kidnapped. There were
some that had been to America, and I got to talk with them, and we never
had any trouble in agreeing. That was true of Czecho-Slovaks, and
Germans—every nation I met. I tell you, Bunny, if the private soldiers
could have talked it over, there wouldn’t have been any war. But that is
what is known as treason, and if you try it you’re shot.”

                                   IV

Paul and Bunny talked, that Friday night, and a lot of Saturday and
Sunday, and Paul explained the Russian revolution. There was an easy way
for Bunny to understand it, Paul said; if there was anything that
puzzled him, all he had to do was to remember their oil strike. “Ask
yourself how it would have been at Paradise, and then you know
everything about Russia and Siberia—yes, and Washington and New York
and Angel City. The Petroleum Operator’s Federation, that fought our
strike, they’re exactly the sort of men that sent our army into
Siberia—often they’re the same individuals. I read in the paper
yesterday how a syndicate of oil men in Angel City has got some
concessions in Saghalien. I remember one name, Vernon Roscoe. He’s one
of the big fellows, isn’t he?”

Paul said this seriously, and Bunny and Ruth exchanged a smile. Paul had
been away so long, he had lost track of the oil-game entirely!

Said Paul, “The operators are the same, and so are the strikers. Do you
remember that little Russian Jew, Mandel, a roughneck that was in our
strike? Used to play the balalaika, and sing us songs about Russia—we
wouldn’t let him make speeches, because he was a ‘red.’ Well, by jingo,
I ran into him in Manila, on the way out. He’d been travelling steerage
on a steamer, on the way to Russia, and they found he was a Bolshevik,
and threw him ashore and took away everything he had, even his
balalaika. I loaned him five dollars, and six months later he turned up
at Irkutsk, in a ‘Y’ hut. Lying on a shelf there was a balalaika, and he
said, ‘Why, that’s mine! How did it get here?’ They told him a soldier
had brought it, but didn’t know how to use it. ‘You can have it if you
can play it,’ they said, so he played it all right, sang us the Volga
Boatman, and then the Internationale—only of course nobody knew what it
was. A few days later there were orders to arrest him, but I helped him
get away. Months after that we came on him out in the country, not far
from Omsk; he had been a Soviet commissar, and the Kolchak people had
captured him, and buried him alive, up to his nose, just so that he
could breathe. When we found him the ants had eaten most of his eyes,
but there was still some life in him, his forehead would wrinkle.”

It was while Paul was alone with Bunny that he told this; and the
younger man sat, speechless with horror. “Oh, yes,” said Paul; “that’s
the kind of thing we had to see—and know we were to blame for it. I
could tell you things much worse—I’ve helped to bury a hundred bodies
of people that had been killed, not in battle, just shot down in cold
blood, men and women, children, even babies. I’ve seen a ‘white’ officer
shoot women in the head, one after another; and with our bullets,
brought there by our railway men—I mean our bankers’ railway men. A lot
of our boys went plumb crazy with it. Out of the two thousand that came
off our transport, I doubt if there were ten percent quite normal. I
said that to our surgeon, and he agreed.”

                                   V

All this was so different from what Bunny had been taught that it was
hard for him to adjust his thoughts to it. He would go off and think it
over, and then come back with another string of questions. “Then Paul,
you mean the Bolsheviks aren’t bad people at all!”

Paul answered, “Just apply the rule—remember Paradise! They were
workingmen, like any other workingmen on strike. A lot of them have come
from America—got their training here. I used to meet them and have long
talks—all kinds of fellows, that had been all over this country. They
are people with modern ideas, trying to dig the Russians out of their
ignorance and superstition. They believe in education—I never saw such
people for teaching; everywhere, whatever they were doing, they were
always preaching, having lectures, printing things—why, son, I’ve seen
newspapers printed on old scraps of brown butcher paper, or wrappings
our army had thrown away. I learned Russian pretty well—and it was just
the sort of thing our strikers printed at Paradise, only of course these
people have got farther in their struggle against the bosses, they see
things more clearly than we do.”

Bunny was staring, a little frightened. “Paul! Then you agree with the
Bolsheviks?”

Paul laughed, a grim laugh. “You go up to Frisco and talk with the men
on that transport! That army was Bolshevik to a man—and not only the
privates, but the officers. I guess that’s why they brought us home.
There was mutiny in Archangel, you know—or maybe you don’t.”

“I heard something—”

“Let me tell you, Bunny—I’ve been there, and I know. The Bolsheviks are
the only people in that country that have any faith or any solidarity;
and they’re going to run it, too—mark my words, the Japs will get out,
the same as we did. You can’t beat people that will die for their cause,
the last man and the last woman.”

Said Bunny, timidly, “Then it isn’t true what we’ve been told—I mean
about their nationalizing the women?”

“Oh, my Lord!” said Paul. “Is that the sort of rot you’ve been
thinking?”

“Well, but how can we know what to think?”

Paul laughed. “Come to think of it, I met some women that had been
nationalized by the Bolsheviks—as school-teachers. They taught the men
in their armies to read and write, and made every man swear to teach ten
others what he had learned. I saw a couple of dozen such women in a
cattle-car on the Trans-Siberian railway, without a single blanket,
nothing but blocks of wood for pillows, not even a bucket to serve for a
toilet. They had several cases of Asiatic cholera among them, and they’d
been that way for ten or twelve days—prisoners of war, you understand,
waiting until they got to Irkutsk, where they’d be shot without a trial.
And on the other hand, Bunny—here’s the truth, I was in Siberia
eighteen months, and never saw an atrocity committed by a Bolshevik, and
never met a man in our army that had seen one. I don’t say there weren’t
any; all I say is, I met men that had travelled all over Russia, our
people as well as natives, and the only Bolshevik atrocity that anyone
knew about was the fundamental one of teaching the workers they had a
right to rule the world. You can set this down for a fact about the
Russian revolution, all the way from Vladivostok to Odessa and
Archangel—that where the ‘reds’ did any killing or executing, the
‘whites’ did ten, and a hundred times as much. You never hear about
‘white’ atrocities, because the newspapers don’t report them—they are
too busy telling how Lenin has murdered Trotsky, and Trotsky has thrown
Lenin into jail.”

                                   VI

This meeting with Paul was the most exciting event of Bunny’s life. It
transvaluated all his values; things that had been wicked became
suddenly heroic, while things that had been respectable became suddenly
dull. Bunny, confronting the modern industrial world with its manifold
injustices, had been like a man lost in a tangled forest. But here he
had been taken up in a balloon, and shown the way out of the tangle.
Everything was now simple, plain as a map. The workers were to take over
the industries, and run them for themselves, instead of for the masters.
Thus, with one stroke, the knot of social injustice would be cut!

Bunny had heard of this idea, and it had sounded fantastic and absurd.
But now came Paul to tell him that it had actually been done! A hundred
million people, occupying one-sixth of the earth’s surface, had taken
over their industries, and were running them, and would make a success
of them—if only the organized greed of the world would stand off and
let them alone!

Bunny took Paul in his car, to show him all the field. They investigated
the new refinery, that wonderful work of art. Before them rose a great
building, made entirely of enormous baking-pans set one inside
another—a stack half way to heaven; the angels were making caramels for
the whole world, dainties with a new, patented flavor, and sickish sweet
odors that spread over the hills for miles and frightened the quail
away!

It was twilight, and the white steam that rose from these pans had a
faint violet tinge as it merged with the sky. Electric lights came on,
white and yellow and red, until the place looked like a section of Coney
Island. And this resemblance increased as you drove farther, and came to
a building, long and low, in which forty-four Dutchmen sat hidden
puffing on forty-four pipes, and doing it all in unison, like an
orchestra; the most comical effect you could imagine—forty-four
exhausts all keeping time, quick and
sharp—puff-puff-puff-puff-puff-puff-puff!

Bunny felt his old embarrassment in connection with the Paradise tract;
his title to these vast possessions was not clear, and Paul was bound to
be jealous, realizing how his family had been tricked. But, then, in
swift flashes of revelation, Bunny discovered how completely out of date
these old feelings had become. Nevermore would Paul be jealous for his
lost heritage; never would he consider the claims of the Watkins
family—any more than the claims of the Ross family! The Paradise tract
belonged to the Paradise workers; the beautiful new refinery was a ripe
peach, hanging on a tree and waiting to be picked! All that was needed
was for some one to point this out to the men. If Paul had not been weak
and exhausted, he might have pointed it out that evening, and they could
have taken over the plant, and had it ready for operation under the new
management by morning! All power to the Soviets!

                                  VII

Bunny went back to the university, charged with these electrical new
thoughts; at one moment he would be trembling with excitement, and at
the next he would be frightened to realize what he had been thinking.
Some instinct warned him that the idea of expropriating the industries
of Southern California would stand no chance with his class-mates; so he
contented himself with telling the good tidings about Russia—that the
revolution was not a blind outburst of ferocity, but the birth of a new
social order. Bunny told this; and Peter Nagle received the gospel with
his large mouth wide open; while Gregor Nikolaieff said yes, but why had
they got his cousin in jail; and Rachel Menzies said they had got
thousands of Socialists in jail; and Billy George said, “Let’s get a
group of fellows together and have Paul come and talk to them.”

The rumor spread with magical swiftness through the university, and the
quick imaginations of Bunny’s friends supplied all those details about
which he had been silent. Bunny Ross knew a workingman who was an
out-and-out Bolshevik, and had made Bunny into an out-and-out Bolshevik
too; “the millionaire red” became his future designation. Men and women
gathered round to question and argue with him; the arguments often broke
up with furious word rows, but all the same it was interesting, and they
came back for more. Bunny was made into a centre of Soviet propaganda;
for, when they drove him to the wall with their arguments, what could he
do but go to Paul for more facts, and then come back and hurl them at
his adversaries’ heads? His fraternity brothers sat up half the night
with him, wrangling over his challenge to everything they considered
good.

With rest and home cooking Paul picked up considerably, and in a couple
of weeks came down to Angel City to meet a friend. Bunny joined him, and
had another adventure, in the person of Harry Seager. This man, ten
years older than Paul, was the head of a small business college, who had
put his affairs into a partner’s hands and gone in for “Y work” during
the war. They had sent him to Siberia, to help those two hundred and
eighty railway men whom the bankers were paying. He had travelled up and
down the line, seeing everything there was to see, and now he had
“kicked over the traces,” and was telling the truth about the situation,
in spite of the protests of the “Y” authorities, and the army, and the
state department, and the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, and
everybody that could put pressure on the head of a business college in
Angel City.

Dad was up to the ears just then in work, on account of some
wild-catting they were planning on the Bandy tract. But Bunny insisted
he must meet Harry Seager, and lured the two of them to lunch, and Paul
also, and before the soup was eaten they had got Dad so stirred up that
he did not eat any more. Of course he was horrified at their story; but
there was no use expecting his mind to work the same as Bunny’s. Dad
couldn’t straighten out all the tangles in the world, and didn’t feel
the impulse to try. What worried him was that the Japs were in Siberia;
and that our diplomacy was so unaware of oil; and most of all, that his
son was falling under the spell of wild and dangerous ideas.

This fellow Seager, for example—a big six-foot Westerner, handsome as a
Viking, and picturesque because of hair turned prematurely grey by his
labors; you couldn’t deny the fellow’s facts, you couldn’t think he was
lying—but good Lord, there was no use being thrown off your base, and
going round the country raising a public disturbance, attacking the
government because it had made a blunder in the confusion of war-time,
and then hadn’t known how to get out.

Bunny dragged his father to a Socialist meeting at which Harry Seager
was to speak. It was in a big hall, with two or three thousand people
packed into it, and Dad thought he had never seen so many dangerous
people in all his life before: foreign faces, dark and sinister,
intense-looking intellectuals with hair over their collars, women with
short hair and big spectacles, workingmen, sullen and dull, or
sharp-faced, bitter—oh, terrible, terrible people! And this man Seager,
lashing them to frenzy! Telling about the “death-train” he had seen on
the Trans-Siberian—more than two thousand men and women packed into
cattle cars, prisoners of the “Whites,” who did not know what to do with
them, but ran the train here and there, shunting it onto sidings for
weeks, while the victims perished of hunger, thirst and disease. And
American troops standing by, feeding such murderers, supplying them with
money, protecting them with guns! Yes, and it was still going on! Right
now Polish troops were invading Russia, wearing American uniforms,
killing Russian workingmen with American ammunition! What did the people
of America have to say?

What the people of America had to say was a roar that sent shivers down
the spine of J. Arnold Ross. He looked about him at this human ocean
tossed by a storm—hands waving, fists clenched, heads bobbing up and
down with excitement; and he knew what it meant—nobody could fool him.
When presently the crowd burst into cheering at the name of Lenin, they
were not cheering for what the Russian Lenin had done, but for what some
American Lenin meant to do. “Hands off Russia!”—that was mere
camouflage; what they meant was, “Hands on Ross Consolidated!”

And then, out of the corner of his eye, Dad stole a glimpse at his son.
Bunny apparently did not feel one particle of his father’s fear! Bunny
was like the rest of the mob, his face shining with excitement. Bunny
was shouting for “Hands off Russia!”—and either he did not know what
this mob meant to do to Ross Consolidated, or else—worse yet—he did
not care!

                                  VIII

The little bunch of “reds” from the university had attended this Seager
meeting, and next day were all a-thrill with it. Most of Bunny’s
fraternity brothers had refused to go; and now they proceeded to
criticize an argument they had not heard! Bunny’s feelings boiled over
as he listened to them. All this rubbish about nationalization of women,
these faked figures concerning millions of victims of Bolshevism! It was
a disgrace to a university that such stuff should pass for knowledge,
and no effort made to contradict it. Bunny voiced this idea to Peter
Nagle, and Peter went home and talked to his father about it, and came
back announcing that he was willing to serve as editor for a student
paper to present the truth.

There was another meeting of the conspirators, and thirty dollars was
quickly subscribed, and it was voted to publish a four-page weekly sheet
of all kinds of truth-telling, to bear the name of “The Investigator.”
It was agreed that the best approach to the Russian problem was Harry
Seager, because he had been a “Y” worker in good standing; therefore
Rachel Menzies was requested to write a two thousand word interview with
Mr. Seager. Another young rebel was to collect facts and rumors
concerning secret payments made out of an alumni fund to bring promising
athletes to Southern Pacific. Bunny, as social light of the crowd, was
assigned the theme of college snobbery, apropos of the fact that a
Hindoo student with high scholarship records had been black-balled for
the “Lit.”

And then Peter Nagle brought up his favorite hobby, in the form of a
poem mildly satirizing God. There was some question as to the wisdom of
bringing in the religious issue, but Peter asserted his prerogatives as
editor; either he was or he wasn’t, and if he was, then he took his
stand upon the Russian formula, “Religion is the opium of the people.”
Billy George backed him up, insisting that the new paper should cover
the whole field of modern thought.

Well, “The Investigator” was written, and edited, and set up into
galleys, and pasted on a “dummy,” and then cut up and pasted
differently. At last it was printed; there lay the sheets, fresh from
the press, soft and damp, like locusts newly emerged from the chrysalis.
Next day they would be dry; and meantime, “Ssh! Not a word!”

How were the papers to be distributed? There had been much discussion.
Bunny, with his lordly ideas, wanted to give them away. But Rachel
brought word from her father, the tailor, who was also literature agent
for Local Angel City of the Socialist party, that the papers must be
sold; people wouldn’t respect them otherwise. “What they pay good money
for they will read,” said Papa Menzies, with proper Jewish insight; and
his daughter added, with proper Socialist fervor, “If we really believe
in our cause, we won’t mind a little ridicule.” It was a call to
martyrdom, and one after another they responded—though not without
qualms.

So, promptly at eight-thirty next morning, the campus in front of the
Assembly building beheld a sight, the like of which had never thrilled
the student body of S. P. U. since the first days of the Methodist
Sunday-school. The discoverer and heir-apparent of the Ross Junior oil
field turned into a newsboy! Standing on a bench, with an armful of
papers, shouting gaily, “The Investigator! First issue of the
Investigator! Five cents a copy!”

Did they buy them? Oh, ask! They crowded around Bunny three deep, he
couldn’t make the change fast enough; as the excitement spread, they
crowded six deep, ten deep—it was a mob, a riot! Everywhere, all over
the campus, men and women, seeing the throng, came running. An accident?
A fight? What was the matter? People who got their copies and drew out
of the crowd, became centres of minor disturbances, others trying to see
over their shoulders, asking questions.

For just about ten minutes this went on; until from the Administration
building there emerged, portly and dignified, with gold nose-glasses and
a roll of fat around his neck—just such a personage as you would meet
in any big real estate office or bank in the city—Reginald T. Squirge,
Ph. D., Dean of Men. Quietly and masterfully he penetrated the throng,
and quietly and masterfully he took charge of the millionaire newsboy,
and conducted him into his private office, still clutching his armful of
papers. “Wait here,” he commanded, and again went out, and returned with
Peter Nagle; a third time he went out, and his prey was Gregor
Nikolaieff; while at his heels came deputy deans, appointed ad hoc,
escorting the other criminals.

How many copies had been sold no one could say; the unsold copies were
stacked in a corner of the Dean’s office, and if they were ever counted
the result was not made known. But enough had been distributed to set
the campus ablaze. “Have you read it?” “Have you got a copy?”—that was
all anybody heard that day. The price of “The Investigator” leaped to
one dollar, and before nightfall some had sold for two or three times
that price.

One reason was that a copy had reached the Angel City “Evening Booster,”
most popular of newspapers, printed in green, five editions per day. The
second edition, on the streets about noon, carried a “streamer head”
across the front page:

                        RED NEST AT UNIVERSITY!

                   _Bolshevik Propaganda at S. P. U._

There followed a two-column story, carried over to page fourteen, giving
a lurid account of “The Investigator’s” contents, including the most
startling of the facts about the hiring of athletes for the university,
and the whole text of the satiric poem about God—but alas, only a very
brief hint as to what Harry Seager had told about Siberia. A little
later in the day came the rivals of the “Evening Booster,” the “Evening
Roarer” and the “Evening Howler”; they had been scooped one whole
edition, but they made up for it by a mass of new details, some
collected by telephone, the rest made up in the editorial offices. Said
the “Evening Roarer”:

                       RED COLLEGE PLOT UNEARTHED

and it went on to tell how the police were seeking Russian agents who
had made use of Southern Pacific students to get their propaganda into
print. The “Evening Howler,” which went in especially for “human
interest stuff,” featured the ring-leader of the conspiracy:

                      MILLIONAIRE RED IN COLLEGE!

                  _Son of Oil Magnate Backs Soviets!_

And it scooped its rivals by having a photograph of Bunny, which it had
got by rushing a man to the Ross home, and informing Aunt Emma that
Bunny had just been awarded a prize for the best scholarship record in
ten years. The good lady was so excited, she sent the butler out to the
corner drug-store three times, to see if the “Evening Howler” had
arrived with the story of that prize!

                                   IX

In the ordinary course of events this newspaper excitement would have
lasted thirty-two hours. Next afternoon’s papers would have recorded the
fact that the university authorities had banned “The Investigator,” and
on the following day their streamer-heads would have proclaimed, “Film
Star Divorces Champ,” or “Magnate’s Wife Elopes with Cop.”

But fate had prepared a fantastic torment for the “parlor reds” of S. P.
U. On the morning after their flyer in publicity, it chanced that a
wagon loaded with blasting material, making its way through Wall Street
with customary indifference to municipal ordinances, met with a
collision and exploded. The accident happened in front of the banking
offices of Morgan and Company, and about a dozen people were killed. A
few minutes after the accident, the bankers called in America’s
sleuth-celebrity to solve the mystery; and this able business man,
facing the situation that if it was an accident it was nothing, while if
it was a Bolshevik plot it was several hundred thousand dollars, took
three minutes to look about him, and then pronounced it a plot.

And forthwith throughout the world a horde of spies and informers went
to work, knowing that if he or she could find or invent a clue, it was
fame and fortune for him or her. A wave of witch-hunting swept the
country, and other countries—for two or three years thereafter new
discoveries would be made, and new “revelations” promised, and poor
devils in Polish and Roumanian dungeons would have their arms twisted
out of joint and their testicles macerated, while eager newspaper
readers in New York and Chicago and Angel City waited ravenously for
promised thrills.

As for the Angel City “Evening Booster” and “Evening Howler” and
“Evening Roarer,” the situation confronting them was this: if they could
connect the Bolshevik conspiracy in Southern Pacific University with the
bomb explosion in Wall Street, they would have several hundred dollars’
additional sales; while if they failed to make the connection, they
would lose this amount to some more clever rival. This being the case,
it took the “Evening Howler” about one hour to remember that “The
Investigator” had featured Harry Seager, and to ascertain from the
agents of the American Defense League that at a recent mass-meeting this
Seager had fiercely denounced the firm of Morgan and Company, and
predicted a dire fate for them. So, in its third edition, on the streets
about one o’clock, the “Evening Howler” told the world:

                        BOMB FORETOLD BY RED AID

                    _Police Seek Soviet Agent Here_

That was taking a chance, as the headline writer of the “Evening Howler”
would have admitted with a grin; but he knew his business, and sure
enough, before the day was by, a war veteran came into the editorial
office with confirmation. Two days ago he had ridden on a public stage
with Harry Seager, and had got into conversation, and heard the
sentence: “You mark my words and watch the papers, within three days you
will read that the House of Morgan has paid for its crimes in this war.”
It is only fair to the shell-shocked soldier to add that he may have
been sincere in his statement, for it happened that the two men in their
conversation had touched upon the Polish invasion of Russia, then at its
height, and Seager had uttered the sentence, “You mark my words and
watch the papers, within three days you will read that the Poles are
back of where they are now.”

Prior to this incident, the office door of the Seager Business College
had been chewed to a ragged edge by the chisels of detectives and other
patriots breaking their way in at night; but on the night after this
“bomb expose” they used an axe, and when Seager arrived in the morning
he found every desk-drawer in the place, not merely his own, but the
students’, dumped onto the floor, and trampled beneath the hob-nailed
boots of patriotism. They had carted off, not merely Seager’s notes for
his orations, but likewise the typewriting exercises of his
students—and most damaging evidence they afforded, too, for Seager did
not make his students write, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
dog,”—no, siree, he gave them revolutionary propaganda that would send
shivers down the spine of any patriot: “All men are created free and
equal,” or, more desperate yet, “Give me liberty or give me death!”

                                   X

Not many in Southern Pacific University seriously believed that their
“student reds” had any responsibility for or even guilty knowledge of
the Wall Street bomb explosion. But they knew that these silly fools had
been misled by sinister men who quite possibly did have part in the
plot, or anyhow were bad enough to have it. Also they knew that the
fools had got the university in for a lot of hideous publicity. So the
fools were badgered and browbeaten on every hand; they were summoned to
the Dean’s office one by one and there racked and cross-questioned—and
not merely by President Cowper and Dean Squirge, but by various stern
gentlemen representing the district attorney and the city prosecutor and
the federal secret service and the patriotic newspapers and the defense
societies and the information service of the once-upon-a-time ambassador
of a no-longer-existing Russian government.

When Bunny Ross realized that this was happening, there was another
explosion. Being a rich man’s son, he was accustomed to having his
rights, and more. So of the first of his questioners he demanded, “Who
are you, and what brings you into this?”

“Now, Ross,” said Dean Squirge, “if there are evil men threatening our
country’s welfare, you certainly do not wish to protect them.”

“It depends on what you mean by evil,” retorted Bunny. “If you mean men
who are trying to tell the truth, I wish to protect them all I can.”

“All we want to know is, what you know about a man called Paul Watkins.”

So there it was; either Bunny must submit to being cross-questioned by
detectives, or else he must have everybody decide that he was hiding
some dark secrets about Paul. Said he: “Paul Watkins is my best friend.
I have known him for seven or eight years. He is the straightest man I
have ever known, bar none. He has come home sick, after a year and a
half in the army in Siberia. He could claim an allowance from the
government if he wasn’t too proud. What he did to me was to tell me what
he saw with his own eyes, and I believe every word of it. And I am going
to tell it to other people, inside the university or out, and no one is
going to stop me.”

So that was that, and Bunny was excused for the present. They would
tackle the less wealthy conspirators—beginning with Peter Nagle, most
guilty of all, because his name had appeared on the paper as editor.
Peter was commanded forthwith to recant his impoliteness to God, and he
swore by God that he wouldn’t; so the “Evening Howler” carried a
two-column head:

                          STUDENT RED LET OUT

And Peter grinned and said for the rest of the bunch not to worry, he
was going into the plumbing business and get his revenge on society; and
when he had made some money he would publish a paper of his own and kid
the life out of God every week.

And then came the turn of Rachel Menzies. She had been warned by Bunny
as to the secret agents, and had promised to give them a piece of her
mind; but they had a way to break her nerve. Just what had been her
father’s share in this conspiracy? They had ascertained that Papa
Menzies had been born in Poland, and under the new deportation laws it
didn’t matter what you believed or what you had done, they would cancel
your naturalization papers, and grab you and ship you away, leaving your
family behind to starve, if it so happened. You had no trial, and no
recourse of any sort. And furthermore, if a man was dumped into Poland
with the red tag on him these days, no trial was held and no questions
were asked—he was stood against a wall and shot.

So there was Rachel, bursting into tears before these strangers and
declaring that her father was a Socialist and not a Communist—as if
that meant anything to any patriot! Hadn’t the Socialists been opposing
the war right along? And wasn’t it a fact that the country had an
attorney-general who was intriguing to get the nomination for president
at the next Democratic convention, and was basing his claim to that
distinction upon his valiant campaign to put down the red menace?

Rachel telephoned to Bunny, and he hopped into his car and paid a call
on President Alonzo T. Cowper, D.D., Ph.D., LL.D., at that worthy’s
private residence in the evening, contrary to the established etiquette
of the university. He began by stating his own decision—he was willing
to agree to make no more public “propaganda” during his stay in the
university; but he wanted to add this, if the authorities permitted Mr.
Menzies to suffer deportation as punishment for his daughter’s having
written a review of a lecture—then he, Bunny Ross, was going on the
war-path, and use some of his father’s money to blow things wide open
before he quit Southern Pacific.

The reverend doctor’s round clerical face had grown rosy to the roots of
his snow-white hair as he listened to this scarcely veiled blackmail.
“Young man,” said he, “you seem to overlook the fact that the university
authorities have nothing to do with the decisions of the United States
government.”

“Dr. Cowper,” responded the young man, “I learned from my father to go
to headquarters when I want things done. I know that if you tell these
defense idiots that you want this matter dropped, they will drop it. And
I want to say that while I have never met Mr. Menzies, I know his
daughter, and she brought us his ideas at different times, and he
believes in democracy and in educating the people—every bit of advice
he sent us was along that line. He belongs to the right wing group among
the Socialists, and is opposing the Bolsheviks in the movement. You must
know enough about the situation to realize that that is not the sort of
people we are supposed to be deporting.”

It turned out that Dr. Cowper really didn’t know that much, but was
willing to learn. It was rather comical; underneath the indignation he
was officially obliged to feel, the old gentleman had an unholy
curiosity about these strange new ideas that had seduced his prize
millionaire sophomore. So here was Bunny telling him about Paul Watkins,
and about Harry Seager, what sort of people they were, and what they had
seen in Siberia, and what they thought about it, and what Bunny thought.
The doctor asked the most naive and childish questions, but he did try
to understand, and Bunny gave him a complete lecture on Bolshevism
versus Socialism lasting two hours. At the end the prize millionaire
sophomore was sent away with a pat on the back, and the assurance that
Papa Menzies would not be deported so long as he behaved himself; plus a
solemn warning that whereas mature minds such as Dr. Cowper’s were
equipped to deal with these dangerous new thoughts, the immature minds
of the students were not to be trusted with them!

                                   XI

There was an interview to be had with Henrietta Ashleigh. It was not so
painful as Bunny had feared, because she hid her grief under a cloak of
dignity. “I am sorry, Arnold, but I am beginning to fear there is
something in you that enjoys this crude notoriety.” Bunny tried to be
humble and accept this rebuke, but he couldn’t; there was something in
him that was bored by Henrietta’s ideas; and when you are bored, you can
no longer keep up romantic imaginings about a girl.

And then the folks at home! First, Aunt Emma, horrified tearful, and
completely muddled. Bunny had not got that prize after all! Aunt Emma
had somehow got it fixed in her head that there had been a prize, and
that Bunny might have got it if it had not been for the reds. This awful
peril of Bolshevik agents, right in one’s home! Aunt Emma had heard
hair-raising stories from lecturers to her club-ladies, but had never
dreamed that these emissaries of Satan might be seducing her darling
nephew! “Watch out, auntie!” said the nephew. “You may be next!”

And then Bertie. Bertie was just wild! She had been invited to a
house-party of the very desirable Atherton-Stewarts, but now she would
be ashamed to show her face among decent people. That was the way every
time, no sooner did she achieve a social triumph, than Bunny came along
and made one of his stinks. It was the most disgusting thing that could
have happened, it showed his tastes were naturally low. Bertie and Bunny
were quite fond of each other, and called each other violent names with
true brotherly and sisterly frankness.

Finally Dad, who was a perfect brick; never said a word, nor asked a
question, and when Bunny started to explain, he said, “That’s all right,
son, I know just how it happened.” And that was true; he knew Paul and
Harry Seager, he had been inside his boy’s mind. And he knew the tragedy
of life, that each generation has to make its own mistakes.

The uproar died away surprisingly soon. In a few days Bunny’s
class-mates were “joshing” him, it was all a joke. There was only one
serious consequence, that Mr. Daniel Webster Irving received a letter
from President Cowper, advising him in advance, as a matter of courtesy,
that his contract with Southern Pacific University would not be renewed
for next year. The instructor showed it to Bunny, with a dry smile; and
Bunny was enraged, and wanted to blackmail the reverend doctor a second
time. But Mr. Irving said to forget it, there were too many ways to make
life miserable for a teacher who wasn’t wanted. He would file his
references with the employment agencies, and write a lot of letters, and
move on to pastures new. “That is,” he added, “assuming I can get
something. They have a pretty tight organization, and I may find I’m
blacklisted for good.”

“How do you suppose they got on to you, Mr. Irving?”

“It was bound to happen,” said the other. “They have so many spies.”

“But we have been so careful! We’ve never mentioned your name, except
among our own little group!”

“They’ve probably got a spy right among you.”

“A student, you mean?”

“Of course.” And smiling at Bunny’s incredulity, Mr. Irving reached into
his desk and pulled out a mimeographed sheet of paper. “This was handed
to me by a business friend of mine,” he said.

It was one of the weekly bulletins of the “Improve America League,” a
propaganda organization of the business men of Angel City. It explained
how they had their agents at work in colleges and high schools, training
students to watch their teachers and fellow students, and report any
signs of the red menace. The league boasted its fund of a hundred and
sixty thousand dollars a year for the next five years. So here was
another chunk of reality, falling with a dull sickening thud upon the
head of a young idealist! Bunny sat, running over in his mind the
members of the little group. “Who could it be?”

Said Mr. Irving: “Some one who was very ‘red,’ you can be sure. That is
how it works—a man is looking for something to report, and when it’s
too slow making its appearance, he’s tempted to help it along. So the
spy almost always becomes a provocateur. You can tell him by the fact
that he talks a lot and does nothing—he can’t afford to have it said
that he was a leader.”

“By God!” cried Bunny. “He promised to help us sell those papers, and
then he didn’t show up!”

“Who is that?”

“Billy George. We never could be red enough to suit him! He was the
cause of that fool poem of Peter Nagle’s going into the paper. And now
he’s dropped clean out—he wasn’t mentioned in the scandal.”

Mr. Irving smiled. “Well, Ross, you’ve seen the white terror in action!
You’ll find it helps you to understand world history. Fortunately,
you’re rich, so it was just a joke. But don’t forget—if you’d been a
poor Russian Jew in the slums, you’d be in jail now, with ten thousand
dollars bail, and ten or twenty years in state’s prison for your
destiny. If you had happened to live in Poland or Finland or Roumania,
you and all your little bunch would have been buried in one muddy trench
a week ago!”




                              CHAPTER XII
                               THE SIREN


                                   I

Springtime had come again, and Bunny was finishing his second year at
Southern Pacific. But the bloom was now worn off the peach; he no longer
took the great institution at its own valuation. He knew that the
courses were dull, and that they taught you masses of facts of little
importance, and were afraid of new and original thinking. The one thing
he had got was a clue to some worthwhile books; he wanted to read
them—but you could do that better at home. He was debating whether he
would come back next year.

Things were freer at Paradise, it seemed. Paul had gone back to work as
a boss-carpenter for the company; he had recovered a part of his
strength, and was making good money—building labor was scarce, because
the country was making up for the lost construction of war-time. Ruth
was happy again; at least three of the oil workers were in love with
her, but she would think of no one but her wonderful brother. Paul was
studying again; but not the biology books, all his money now went for
magazines and pamphlets and books that dealt with the labor struggle.
There were a good many returned soldiers with the company, some of whom
had come to think about the war just as Paul did; twice a week they had
regular classes, reading aloud a chapter from a book and discussing it.

So the Rascum cabin became what the Angel City newspapers were
accustomed to describe as a “Bolshevik nest.” Much as these workingmen
might differ about tactics, they were a unit on the proposition that
capital and labor had nothing in common but a fight. And they made no
bones about saying it; they would start an argument on the job, or while
a bunch of the men were eating their lunch; the echoes would spread all
over the place. There were “wobblies” in the field also, you would find
their literature in the bunk-houses. Dad must have known about it, but
he did nothing; his men had always been free to say what they pleased,
and he would take his chances. Indeed, he could hardly do anything else,
while every man on the place knew that the discoverer and heir-apparent
of the field was one of the “reddest” of the bunch!

Ever since the war, the union of the oil workers had been recognized and
dealt with, as the government had decreed. But now the hand of Uncle Sam
was beginning to relax; the idealistic President was a semi-invalid in
Washington, and in Angel City the “open shop” crowd were getting ready
to bring back the good old days. At least that was the rumor among the
union officials, and how were they going to meet the employers’ move?
The wage agreements expired towards the end of the year, and this was
the issue to which all the arguments of the oil workers led, whether
among the “reds” in Paul’s cabin, or among the rank and file. Over
Bunny’s head the prospect of another strike hung like a black shadow of
doom.

Dad never gave up longing to have his son take an interest in the
company and its growing activities. And Bunny, always aware of this
loving bond, would study monthly reports of production, and cost sheets
and price schedules, and go out to the wells that were drilling, and
take part in long consultations with the foremen. Only a few years ago,
an oil well had been to him the most interesting thing in the world; but
now cruel fate had brought it about that one oil well seemed exactly
like another oil well! Number 142 had brought in six hundred thousand
dollars, whereas Number 143 had brought in only four hundred and fifty
thousand. But what difference did it make, when all you would do with
the extra hundred and fifty thousand was to drill another well?

Dad’s answer was kept in stock on the shelves of his mind: “The world
has got to have oil.” But then, you looked at the world, and saw
enormous crowds of people driving to places where they were no better
off than at home! But it would annoy Dad to have you say that—it was a
step outside the range of his thinking. To Bunny he now seemed like an
old horse in a treadmill; he climbed and climbed, all day long, and at
night he climbed in dreams. But if you should let him out of the
treadmill, he would die—for lack of any reason for living.

So Bunny learned more and more to keep his traitor doubts to himself;
those theories of the “class struggle” that he learned from Paul and his
fellows, and the rumors of a strike that he read in the oil workers’
journal. Instead, he would take Dad fishing, and they would pretend they
were just as happy as of old in the bosom of their mother Nature—though
the sad truth was that Dad was too heavy and too stiff in the joints to
get much fun out of scrambling over the rocks.

                                   II

Bunny spent his Easter holidays at Paradise, and it happened that Vernon
Roscoe paid a visit to the tract. He had been there before, but only
while Bunny was away; their meetings so far had been brief ones at the
office, amid the press of business. Bunny had got a general impression
of a big face and a big body and a big voice. Dad said that “Verne” had
also a big heart; but Bunny’s only evidence was that Mr. Roscoe had
patted him on the back, and called him “Jim Junior,” with great gusto.

Now he came; and it happened that a desert wind came with him, and made
a funny combination. As a rule the heat of the day was endurable at
Paradise, and the nights were always cold and refreshing; but three or
four times in a year the place would be struck by a wind off the desert,
and it would be like a hot hand reaching out and holding you by the
throat. “A hundred and fourteen in the shade and their ain’t any shade,”
was the way the oil workers put it, as they went on working in the sun,
drinking barley water by the quart. The worst of it was, the hot wind
blew all night, and the houses, which had heated up like furnaces,
stayed that way for three or four days.

The “oil magnate,” as the newspapers called Vernon Roscoe, left Angel
City after dinner, and reached the tract just before midnight. Dad and
Bunny were expecting him, sitting out on the veranda, and he saw them,
and his voice started before the engine of his car stopped. “Hello, Jim!
Hello, Jim Junior! By Jees, what’s this you’re doing to me! Christ
amighty, man, I never felt such heat. Is it going to be like this
tomorrow? By Jees, I think I’ll turn my tail and run!”

He was out of the car, and coming up the path, his face as round as the
moon that shone down on his half-bald head. He had taken off his coat
and shirt, and was in a pink silk under-shirt; no perspiration, of
course, because you were always dry when you drove in this desert
heat—you might stop at a filling station and stand under a hose and
soak yourself, and the wind would dry everything but your sitting down
place in a couple of minutes.

“Hello, Verne,” said Dad; and Bunny said, “How are you Mr. Roscoe?” He
was careful to get a grip on the magnate’s paw before the magnate got a
grip on his—for he would make the bones crunch with his mighty grasp.
He had been a cattle-puncher back in Oklahoma, and it was said that he
had grabbed a Mexican horse-thief with his two hands and bent him
backwards until he broke. He still had that strength, in spite of his
rolls of fat.

“I’m hot as hell,” he said, answering Bunny’s polite inquiry. “Say, Jim,
do you think I’d better stay?”

“You’ve got to stay,” said Dad. “I’m not going ahead with development on
that Bandy tract till you’ve looked the field over. We’ll sit you on
ice.”

“Has my beer come? Hey, there, Kuno”—this to the Jap, who was grinning
in the doorway. “Bring me some of my beer! Bring me a bucketful—a
tubful. By Jees, I brought some in my car—I wouldn’t take a chance. Did
you hear what happened to Pete O’Reilly? Damn fool tried to come across
the border with a crate of whiskey in his car; told me it cost him a
hundred dollars a quart before he got through! Christ amighty, Verne,
how do you stand this?”

“Well, for one thing, I drink lemonade instead of beer.” This was a
reform which Bunny had imposed upon his father, and now Dad was very
proud of it.

“No pop for me!” said Verne. “By Jees, I’ll have my suds in the
bath-tub. Any women about, Verne?” And Mr. Roscoe kicked off his shoes
and his trousers, and sat himself under an electric fan. “The damn thing
blows hot air!” he said; and then he looked at Bunny. “Well, here’s our
boy Bolsheviki! Where’s the red flag?”

Now Bunny was expecting to reach the impressive age of twenty-one in a
month or two, and he had heard all possible variations on this
“Bolsheviki” joke. But he was host, and had to smile. “I see you read
the papers.”

“Say, kiddo, you made the front page all right! It did me a lot of good
in some negotiations. Come down to the office and I’ll introduce you to
a Soviet commissar in disguise; they’re trying to sell me a concession
in the Urals. ‘Where the hell is that?’ I says; but it seems there is
really such a place, unless they have forged some atlases. The guy
started to pull this brotherhood of man stuff on me, and I says, ‘Sure,
I’m great on that dope,’ I says. ‘The junior member of our firm is in
the business! Look at this, by Jees,’ and I showed him the papers, and
we’ve been ‘Tovarish’ ever since!”

                                  III

Well, Tovarish Roscoe went to bed, in Nile green silk pajamas on a cot
out in the court alongside the fountain; and at five in the morning they
woke him, so that he might go out with Dad and the geologist and the
engineer, to O. K. the plans for the Bandy tract. He came back with the
sunrise in his eyes, puffing and snorting, and yelling for beer instead
of breakfast, and how would he get some more when this gave out? They
persuaded him that he must not try to cross the desert until the sun
went down, so he and Dad and Bunny retired into the living-room, and
shut all the doors and windows, to stick it out as best they could.

Well, the sun got to work on the roof and walls of that house, and every
ten minutes the great man would get up and look at the thermometer and
emit another string of mule-skinner’s technicalities. By the middle of
the morning he was frantic; declaring that surely there must be some way
to cool a house. By Jees, let’s get a hose and soak this room! But
Bunny, who had studied physics, said that would only shift them from the
climate of the desert to the climate of the Congo river. Mr. Roscoe
suggested turning the hose on the veranda and the roof; and Bunny called
the gardener boy, and pretty soon there were half a dozen sprinklers
going, a regular rain-storm over the doors and windows of the
living-room.

But that was not enough, so Dad went to the phone and called up the
foreman of the sheet metal shop, and he said sure thing, he could design
a refrigerator; and Dad said to drop everything else and build one, and
he’d pay the men a dollar apiece extra if they finished it inside an
hour. So here came four fellows with a truck and a big metal box with
double walls all the way from the floor to the ceiling; and they cut a
hole in the floor for a vent-pipe, and brought in about half a ton of
cracked ice from the ice-plant, and a couple of sacks of salt, and in a
few minutes the thermometer showed a zero wind blowing out from the
bottom of that box. The great man moved over close to it, and in a
little while he began to sigh with content, and in half an hour he gave
a loud “Kerchoo!” and they all roared with laughter.

After that he was sleepy, with all the beer he had drunk, and had a nap
on the lounge, while Dad went out to see to the drilling. And then the
party had lunch, and Mr. Roscoe had another nap, after which he felt
fine, and did a lot of talking, and Bunny learned some more about the
world in which he lived. “Jim,” said the “magnate,” “I want two hundred
thousand dollars of your money.”

“Where’s your gun?” said Dad, amiably.

“You’ll get it back many times over. It’s a little fund we’re raising,
me and Pete O’Reilly and Fred Orpan. We can’t talk about it except to a
few.”

“What is it, Verne?”

“Well, we’re getting ready for the Republican convention, and by Jees,
it’s not going to be any god-damn snivelling long-faced college
professor! We’re going to get a round-faced man, like you and me, Jim!
I’m going on to Chicago and pick him out.”

“You got anybody in mind?”

“I’m negotiating with a fellow from Ohio, Barney Brockway, that runs the
party there. He wants us to take their Senator Harding; big chap with a
fine presence, good orator and all that, and can be trusted—he’s been
governor there, and does what he’s told. Brockway thinks he can put him
over with two or three million, and he’ll pledge us the secretary of the
interior.”

“I see,” said Dad—not having to ask what that meant.

“I’ve got my eye on a tract—been watching it the last ten years, and
it’s a wonder. Excelsior Pete put down two test wells, and then they
capped them and hushed it up; there was a government report that
mentioned it, but they had it suppressed and you can’t get a copy
anywhere—but I had one stolen for me. There’s about forty thousand
acres, all oil.”

“But how can you get it away from Excelsior?”

“The government has taken the whole district—supposed to be an oil
reserve for the navy. But what the hell use will it be to the navy, with
no developments? The damn fools think you can drill wells and build
pipe-lines and storage tanks while Congress is voting a declaration of
war. Let us get in there and get out the oil, and we’ll sell the navy
all they want.”

That was Dad’s doctrine, so there was nothing to discuss. He laughed,
and said, “You’d better be on the safe side, Verne, and get the
attorney-general as well as the secretary of the interior.”

“I thought of that,” said the other, not noticing the laugh. “Barney
Brockway will be the attorney-general himself. That’s a part of his
bargain with Harding.”

And then all at once Mr. Roscoe recollected Bunny, sitting over by the
window, supposed to be reading a book. “I suppose our boy Bolsheviki
will understand, this ain’t for use on the soap-box.”

Dad answered, quickly, “Bunny has known about my affairs ever since he
was knee-high to a grass-hopper. All right, Verne, I’ll send you a check
when you’re ready.”

                                   IV

The sun went down, and it was time for Mr. Roscoe to make his get-away.
But first he had dinner; and when he was through with his ice-cream and
coffee, he pushed his plate away, and took his napkin out of his neck,
and leaned back in his chair with a sigh of content; and while he was
unrolling his cigar from its gold foil, he fixed his shrewd eyes upon
Bunny across the table, and said, “Jim Junior, I’ll tell you what’s the
matter with you.”

“All right,” said Jim Junior, receptively.

“You’re a nice kid, but you’re too god-damn serious. You take life too
hard—you and your old man both. You got to get a little fun as you go
along, and I know what you need. You got a girl, kid?”

“Not right now,” said Bunny, blushing a trifle.

“I thought so. You need one, to take you out and cheer you up. Mind you,
I don’t mean one of these jazz-babies—get a girl that’s got some sense,
like my Annabelle. You know Annabelle Ames?”

“I’ve never met her. I’ve seen her, of course.”

“Did you see her in ‘Madame Tee-Zee’? By Jees, that’s what I call a
picture—only one I ever made any money out of, by the way! Well, that
girl takes care of me like a mother—if she’d been up here, I wouldn’t
’a drunk all that beer, you bet! You come up to my place some time, and
Annabelle’ll find you a girl—lots of ’em up there, with the ginger in
’em, too, and she’s a regular little match-maker—never so happy as when
she’s pairing ’em off, two little love-birds in a cage. Why don’t you
drive back with me now?”

“I’ve got to go to college the day after tomorrow,” said Bunny.

“Well, you come some time, and bring the old man along. That’s what he
needs too, a girl—I’ve told him so a dozen times. You got a girl yet,
Jim? By Jees, look at him blush, the old maid in pants! I could tell the
kid some things about you that would bust the rouge-pots in your
cheeks—hey, old skeezicks?” And the great man, who had been getting out
of his chair as he discoursed, fetched Dad a couple of thumps on the
back and burst into a roar of laughter.

It was things like that that made you know Vernon Roscoe had a “big
heart.” He seemed to have really taken a fancy to Bunny, and was
concerned that he should learn to enjoy life. “You come see me some
time, kiddo,” he said, as he was loading himself into his big limousine.
“Don’t you forget it now, I mean it. I’ll show you what a country place
can be like, and you make the old man get one too.” And Bunny said all
right, he would come; and the engine began to purr, and the car rolled
off in the moonlight, and the big laughing voice died away among the
hills. “So long, kiddo!”

                                   V

Bunny came back into the house, and followed Dad into his study and shut
the door. “Dad, are you really going to put up that money with Mr.
Roscoe?”

“Why, sure, son, I got to; why not?” Dad looked genuinely surprised—as
he always did in these cases. You could never be sure how much of it was
acting, for he was sly as the devil, and not above using his arts on
those he loved.

“Dad, you’re proposing to buy the presidency of the United States!”

“Well, son, you can put it that way—”

“But that’s what it _is_, Dad!”

“Well, that’s one way to say it. Another is that we’re protecting
ourselves against rivals that want to put us out of business. If we
don’t take care of politics, we’ll wake up after election and find we’re
done for. There’s a bunch of big fellows in the East have put up a
couple of millions to put General Leonard Wood across. Are you rooting
for him?”

Bunny understood that this was a rhetorical question, and did not answer
it. “It’s such a dirty game, Dad!”

“I know, but it’s the only game there is. Of course, I can quit, and
have enough to live on, but I don’t feel like being laid on the shelf,
son.”

“Couldn’t we just run our own business, Dad?” It was, you may remember,
a question Bunny had asked before.

“There’s no such thing, son—they’re jist crowding you all the time.
They block you at the refineries, they block you at the markets, they
block you in the banks—I don’t tell you much about it, because it’s
troubles, but there’s jist no place in the business world for the little
feller any more. You think I’m a big feller because I got twenty
million, and I think Verne is a big feller because he’s got fifty; but
there’s Excelsior Pete—thirty or forty companies, all working as
one—that’s close to a billion dollars you’re up against. And there’s
Victor, three or four hundred million more, and all the banks and
insurance company resources behind them—what chance have we
independents got? Look at this slump in the price of gas right now—the
newspapers tell you there’s a glut, but that’s all rot—what makes the
glut, but the Big Five dumping onto the market to break the little
fellers? Why, they’re jist wiping ’em off the slate!”

“But how can public officials prevent that?”

“There’s a thousand things that come up, son—we got to land the first
wallop—right at the sound of the bell! How do we get pipe-line
right-o’-ways? How do we get terminal facilities? You saw how it was
when we came into Paradise; would we ever ’a got this development if I
hadn’t ’a paid Jake Coffey? Where would Verne and me be right now, if we
didn’t sit down with him and go over the slate, and make sure the
fellers he puts on it are right? And now—what’s the difference? Jist
this, we got bigger, we’re playin’ the game on a national scale—that’s
all. If Verne and me and Pete O’Reilly and Fred Orpan can get the tracts
we got our eyes on, well, there’ll be the Big Six or Big Seven or Big
Eight in the oil-game, that’s all—and you set this down for sure, son,
we’ll be doin’ what the other fellers done, from the day that petroleum
came into use, fifty years ago.”

They were on an old familiar trail now, and Bunny knew the landscape by
heart.

“It’s all very well for a feller to go off in his study and figure out
how the world ought to be; but that don’t make it that way, son. There
has got to be oil, and we fellers that know how to get it out of the
ground are the ones that are doing it. You listen to these Socialists
and Bolshevikis, but my God, imagine if the government was to start
buying oil lands and developing them—there’d be more graft than all the
wealth of America could pay for. I’m on the inside, where I can watch
it, and I know that when you turn over anything to the government, you
might jist as good bury it ten thousand miles deep in the earth. You
talk about laws, but there’s economic laws, too, and government can’t
stand against them, no more than anybody else. When government does fool
things, then people find a way to get round it, and business men that do
it are no more to blame than any other kind of men. This is an oil age,
and when you try to shut oil off from production, it’s jist like you
tried to dam Niagara falls.”

It was a critical moment in their lives. In after years Bunny would look
back upon it, and think, oh why had he not put his foot down? He could
have broken his father, if he had been determined enough! If he had
said, “Dad, I will not stand for buying the presidency; and if you go in
with Mr. Roscoe on that deal, you’ve got to know that I renounce my
inheritance, I will not touch a cent of your money from this day on.
I’ll go out and get myself a job, and you can leave your money to Bertie
if you want to.” Yes, if he had said that, Dad would have given way; he
would have been mortally hurt, and Mr. Roscoe would have been hurt, but
Dad would not have helped to nominate Senator Harding.

Why didn’t Bunny do it? It wasn’t cowardice—he didn’t know enough about
life as yet to be afraid of it. He had never earned a dollar in his
life, yet he had the serene conviction that he could go out and “get a
job,” and provide for himself those comforts and luxuries that were a
matter of course to him. But the trouble was, he couldn’t bear to hurt
people. It was what Paul meant when he said that Bunny was “soft.” He
entered too easily into other people’s point of view. He saw too clearly
why Dad and Mr. Roscoe wanted to buy the Republican convention; and
then, a few hours later, he would go over to the Rascum cabin, and sit
down with Paul and “Bud” Stoner and “Jick” Duggan and the rest of the
“Bolshevik bunch,” and see too clearly why they wanted the oil workers
to organize and educate themselves, and take over the oil wells from Dad
and Mr. Roscoe!

                                   VI

Bunny went back to Southern Pacific, and just as he was finishing his
year’s work, the convention of the Republican party met in Chicago, a
thousand delegates and as many alternates, and as many newspaper
correspondents and special writers, to tell the world about this mighty
historic event. The convention listened to impressive “key-note”
speeches, and smoked enormous quantities of tobacco, and drank enormous
quantities of bootleg liquor; and meantime, in a room in the Blackstone
Hotel, the half-dozen bosses who controlled the votes sat down to make
their deals. In the millions of words that went out over the wires
concerning the convention, the name of Vernon Roscoe was never
mentioned; but he had his suite adjoining that hotel room, and he made
exactly the right offers, and paid his certified checks to exactly the
right men, and after a long deadlock and the taking of eight ballots,
amid wild excitement on the convention floor, the support of General
Leonard Wood began suddenly to crumble, and on the ninth ballot Warren
Gamaliel Harding of Ohio became the Republican party’s standard-bearer.

College was over; and Gregor Nikolaieff went up to San Francisco to ship
on one of the vessels of the “canning fleet,” which went up to Alaska to
catch and pack salmon. Rachel Menzies and her brother joined three other
Jewish students who had equipped themselves with a battered Ford car, to
follow the fruit-picking; moving from place to place, sleeping under the
stars, and gathering apricots, peaches, prunes and grapes for the
canners and driers. Bunny was the only one of the little group of “reds”
who did not have to work all summer; and he was the only one who didn’t
know what to do with himself.

In the old days, when he and Dad were drilling one well at a time, Bunny
would pitch in and help at anything there was to do; he was only a “kid”
then, and the men liked it. But now he was of age, and supposed to be
dignified; the company was of age, too, a huge machine in which every
cog had its place, and must not be interfered with. Bunny could not even
cultivate the plants at home without trespassing on the job of the
gardener! He had resolved to study some of Paul’s books; but he had
never heard of anyone studying eight hours a day, and he couldn’t take
Paul’s job for part of the time, because he wasn’t a good enough
carpenter!

It was a world in which some people worked all the time, and others
played all the time. To work all the time was a bore, and no one would
do it unless he had to; but to play all the time was equally a bore, and
the people who did it never had anything to talk about that Bunny wanted
to listen to. They talked about their play, just as solemnly as if it
had been work: tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, polo matches—all
sorts of complicated ways of hitting a little ball about a field! Now,
it was all right, when you needed exercise and recreation, to go out and
hit a little ball; but to make a life-work of it, to give all your time
and thought to it, to practice it religiously, read and write books
about it, discuss it for hours on end—Bunny looked at these fully grown
men and women, with their elaborate outfits of “sport clothes,” and it
seemed to him they must be exercising a kind of hypnosis upon
themselves, to make themselves believe that they were really enjoying
their lives.

                                  VII

Bertie came along, making one more effort to drag her brother out into
this play world, to which by right of inheritance and natural gifts he
belonged. Bertie had broken off her affair with Eldon Burdick. He was a
“dud,” she told Bunny, and always wanting to have his own way. There was
another affair on, a very desperate one, Bunny gathered, since his
sister exposed her feelings even to him. It was the only son of the late
August Norman, founder of Occidental Steel; the boy’s name was Charlie,
and he was a little wild, Bertie said, but oh, so fascinating, and rich
as Croesus. He had nobody to take care of him but a rather silly mother,
who was still trying to be young and giddy, dressing like a debutante,
and having surgical operations performed on her face to keep it from
“sagging.” They had a most gorgeous yacht down at the harbor, and had
asked Bertie to bring her brother, and why wouldn’t he go and help her,
as he so easily could, with his good looks and everything?

Bunny thought his sister must indeed be hard hit, if she was counting
upon his reluctant social charms! But he went; and as they drove to the
harbor Bertie coached and scolded him—he must not talk about his
horrible Bolshevik ideas, and if they mentioned his disgrace at Southern
Pacific, he must make a joke of it. Bunny had already learned that that
was the thing to do; and so he did it, and found that it was very easy,
for Charlie Norman was one of those brilliant young persons who found
something funny to say about everything that came up; if he couldn’t do
any better, he would make a bad pun out of your remark.

Here was the “Siren,” a floating mansion, all white paint and shining
brass, finished in hand-carved mahogany, and upholstered in hand-painted
silk. The sailors who shined and polished, and the Filipino boys who
flitted here and there with trays full of glasses, were spick and span
enough for the vaudeville stage. The party of guests would step into a
launch, and from that into several motor-cars, and be transported to a
golf-links, and from there to a country club for luncheon; they would
dance for an hour or two, and then be whirled away to a bathing-beach,
and then to a tennis-court, and then back to the “Siren” to dress for
dinner, which was served with all the style you would have expected at
an ambassador’s banquet. There would be many-colored electric lights on
the deck, and an orchestra, and friends would come out in launches, and
dance until dawn, while the waves lapped softly against the sides of the
vessel, and the tangle of lights along the shore made dim the stars.

These people talked about the appearance and peculiarities and
adventures of all their acquaintances, and it was hard to follow their
conversation unless you were one of their set; they even had slang words
of their own, and the less possible it was for an outsider to understand
them, the funnier they seemed to themselves. They talked about clothes,
and what was going to be the newest “thing.” They talked about their
bootleggers, and who was reliable. For the rest of the time they talked
about the hitting of little balls about a field; the scores they had
made that day and previous days, and the relative abilities of various
experts in the art. Was the tennis-champion going to hold his own for
another year? How were the American golf players making out in England?
Was the polo team coming from Philadelphia, and would they carry off the
cup? There were beautiful silver and gold-plated trophies with engraved
inscriptions, which helped to hypnotize you into thinking that the
hitting of little balls about a field was of major importance!

                                  VIII

Sitting on the deck of this floating mansion, Bunny read about the
famine on the Volga. The crops had failed, over huge districts, and the
peasants were slowly starving; eating grass and roots, eating their dead
babies, migrating in hordes, and strewing their corpses along the way.
It was the last and final proof of the futility of Communism, said the
newspaper editors; and if Charlie Norman did not take the occasion to do
some “joshing” of Bunny, it was only because Charlie never read a
newspaper.

Bunny had talked with Harry Seager, and got a different view of famines
in Russia. They were caused by drought, not by Communism; they had been
chronic ever since the dawn of history, and their occurrence had never
been taken as evidence of the futility of Tsarism. Conditions were bad
now, because of the breakdown of the railroads. But people who blamed
that on Communism overlooked the fact that the railroads had broken down
before the revolution; and that under the Soviet administration they had
had to stand the strain of three years of civil war, and of outside
invasion on twenty-six fronts. Newspapers which had incited these
invasions, and applauded the spending of hundreds of millions of
American money to promote them, now blamed the Bolsheviks because they
were not ready to cope with a famine!

You can understand how a young man with such thoughts in his mind would
not fit altogether into this play party. He tried his best to be like
the others, but they found out that he was different; and presently
Charlie’s mother took to sitting beside him. “Bunny,” she said—for you
were Bunny or Bertie or Baby or Beauty to this crowd as soon as you had
played nine holes of golf and had one drink out of anybody’s hip-pocket
flask—“Bunny, you go to the university, don’t you? And I’m sure you
study some.”

“Not very much, I fear.”

“I wish you would tell me how to get Charlie to study some. I can’t get
him to do anything but play and make love to the girls.”

Bunny wanted to say, “Try cutting off his allowance,” but he realized
that that would be one of those “horrid” things for which Bertie was
always rebuking him. So he said, “It’s quite a problem”—in the style of
a diplomat or politician.

“The young people are too much of a problem for me,” said Charlie’s
mother. “They want to race about all day, and they just insist on
dragging you with them, and it’s getting to be more than I can stand.”
So then Bunny was sorry for Charlie’s mother—he had supposed that she
did all this “gadding” because she enjoyed it. To look at her, she was a
nautical maid, plump but shapely, clad in spotless white and blue, with
fluffy brown hair that the breeze was always blowing into her bright
blue eyes. Bunny stole a glance now and then, and judged that the
surgical operations upon her face must have been successes, for he saw
no trace of them.

“I’ve devoted my whole life to that boy,” the nautical maid was saying,
“and he doesn’t appreciate it a bit. The more you do for people the more
they take it as a matter of course. This afternoon I think I’ll go on
strike! Will you back me up?”

So when the golfing expedition was setting out, Charlie announced, in a
tone loud enough for the whole company, “Mumsie’s not going—she’s got a
crush on Bunny!” At which they all laughed merrily, and trooped down the
ladder, secretly relieved to be rid of one of the old folks, who
insisted on “tagging along,” and trying to pretend to be one of the
crowd, when it was perfectly evident that they were not and could not.

                                   IX

So Bunny and Mrs. Norman sat on the deck of the “Siren,” in two big
canvas chairs under a striped canvas awning, and sipped fruit juices and
chatted about many things. She wanted to know about his life, and his
family; Bunny, having heard something about the ways of “mumsies,”
guessed that she was investigating Bertie as a possible daughter-in-law,
so he mentioned all the nice things he could. Assuming that she would
not be entirely indifferent to practical matters, he told about the Ross
tract, how he and Dad had discovered it, and how the wells continued to
flow. And Mrs. Norman said, “Oh, money, money, always money! We all of
us have too much, and don’t know how to buy happiness with it!”

She went on to reveal that she was Theosophist, and how there was a
great mahatma coming, and we were all going to learn to live on a
different astral plane. She had noticed that Bunny, when he stood
against a dark background at night, had a very decided golden aura—had
anyone ever mentioned it to him? It meant that he had a spiritual
nature, and was destined for higher things.

Then she began to ask about his ideas; she had heard nothing about his
“disgrace” at the university, apparently, and he gave her just a hint as
to his conviction that there was something wrong with our social order,
the world’s distribution of wealth. The nautical maid, leaning back
among her silken cushions, replied, “Oh, but that’s all material! And it
seems to me we’re too much slaves to material things already; our
happiness lies in learning to rise above them.”

That was a large question, and Bunny dodged it, and presently Mrs.
Norman was talking about herself. Her life was very unhappy. She had
married when she was very young, too young to know what she was doing,
except obeying her parents. Her husband had been a bad man, he had kept
mistresses and treated her cruelly. She had devoted her life to her son,
but it all seemed a disappointment, the more you gave to people the more
they would take. Charlie was always in love, but he didn’t really know
anything about love, he wasn’t capable of unselfishness. What did Bunny
think about love?

This was another large question; and again Bunny ducked. He said he
didn’t know what to think, he saw that people made themselves unhappy,
and he was waiting, trying to learn more about the matter. So Mrs.
Norman proceeded to tell him more. The dream of love, a really true and
great love, never died in the soul of a man or woman; they might become
cynical, and say they didn’t believe in it, but they were always
unhappy, and secretly hoping and waiting, because really, love was the
greatest thing in the world. It made Mrs. Norman happy to know that
among this loud and noisy generation there was one young man who was not
making himself cheap.

The loud and noisy generation came back to the “Siren,” and cut off
these intimacies. Charlie’s “mumsie” went below, and when she
reappeared, it was in the dining-saloon, with painted panels of Watteau
nymphs and shepherds, and seventeenth century ladies reclining to the
lascivious pleasing of a lute. The hostess was no longer the nautical
maid, but instead a great lady of many charms, a shimmer of pale blue
satin, and a gleam of golden hair, and snowy bosom and shoulders, and a
double rope of pearls. It was a striking transformation, and Bunny, who
had watched Aunt Emma at work, ought to have understood, but his mind
had been on other matters.

Mrs. Norman had the young oil man next to her at table; and when they
danced, she asked him would he dance with her—these horrid young
fellows neglected their hostess quite shamelessly. They danced, and
Bunny discovered that she was a good dancer, and she said that he was an
exquisite dancer, she just adored it, and would he dance some more with
her? Bunny was willing; there was no one else he particularly wanted to
dance with. She had a faint elusive perfume, and he might have learned
about that also from Aunt Emma, but he had the vague impression that
women somehow naturally smelled that way, and it was very sweet of them.
The steel-widow’s bosom was bare most of the way, and her back was bare
all the way, down to where he put his hand.

Charlie teased them, and the rest of the company giggled. But next
morning, when they took a long walk about the deck, Bunny realized that
it took these young people less than twenty-four hours to get used to
anything, and after that it was a bore. So he sat with Mrs. Norman, and
drove with her, and danced with her, and played golf with her, while
Charlie did all these things with Bertie, and it suited at least three
of them completely.

                                   X

Then one evening there was something in a magazine that Bunny wanted to
read, and towards midnight he slipped away to his own cabin, and settled
himself in his gold-plated bed, with hand-embroidered pink silk pillows,
and a gold-plated, or possibly solid gold lamp-stand at his head, and
presently was far away—in Russia seeing the famine stragglers dying by
the roadside, or maybe in Hungary, where they were putting down the
social revolution by the simple plan of slaughtering everybody who
believed in it; using, as always, machine gun bullets made in American
steel mills, and purchased with an American loan. Bunny was so much
absorbed in these unhappy far-off things, that he did not hear the door
of his cabin very softly opened, nor the key very gently turned on the
inside. The first thing he noticed was the faint elusive sweet odor, and
he gazed upon a vision standing by his bedside, clad in a purple kimono
with huge red hibiscus flowers. The vision looked timorous, and had its
two hands clasped in front of it, and it whispered in a voice he could
hardly hear, “Bunny, may I talk to you a little?”

Of course Bunny had to say that it might; and the vision sank down on
its knees by the bed, and gently one of the soft hands touched his, and
the soft voice trembled, “Bunny, I’m so lonely and so unhappy! I don’t
know if you can understand what it means to a woman to be so lonely, but
you are the first man I’ve wanted to trust for a long, long time. I know
I shouldn’t come like this, but I have to tell you, and why shouldn’t
men and women be frank with each other?”

Bunny didn’t know any reason why they shouldn’t, and so they were. The
substance of the frankness was that the dream of love had stirred once
more in the soul of a woman who was utterly bewildered about life. He
must not think that she was shallow or light, she had never done
anything like this before, and it was honest—the tears came into her
eyes as she said it, and oh, please, please not to despise her, she
wanted to be happy, and there were so few people you could love. “Bunny,
tell me, are you in love with any other woman?”

It might have been a kindness to tell her that he was; but this was his
first adventure of the sort, and he told the truth, and it was like
sunlight after an April shower, as the smile shone through her tears.
There was a little catch in her voice, as she whispered, “I’m being
silly, the tears will come, and they make a woman look so ugly, let me
put out the light.” So she pulled the little golden chain, and was no
longer the least bit ugly, but only sweet-smelling, as she clung to his
hand with her two hands, and whispered, “Bunny, do you think you could
love me just a little?”

He had to say it, somehow or other. “Mrs. Norman,” he began—but she
stopped him: “Thelma.” He stammered, “Thelma—I hadn’t thought—”

“I know, Bunny, I’m older than you; but look at these flappers, how
empty their heads are! And believe me, I really do care for you, I would
do anything for you, give you anything you wanted.”

Bunny learned something from this incident. He knew that he had only to
stretch out his arms and take her; and he knew what to do—Eunice Hoyt
had taught him how to love a woman. He could have swept her into
ecstasy, and from that hour forth she would have been his slave, he
could have had everything she owned; he might have mistreated her, used
her money to keep other women, but still she would have been his slave.
So now he could understand things that went on under his eyes, in this
world that was a gamblers’ paradise. There were men who would not share
Bunny’s lofty indifference to luxury and power, but would go in
deliberately to seduce Dame Fortune; turning their bodily charms and
social graces into weapons of prey—there were many names for them,
lounge lizards, parlor snakes, tame cats, Romeos, sheiks. How many years
had old August Norman slaved to build a great steel plant, and a
floating mansion in the ocean, and a ten times bigger one on the shore;
and here all these treasures were magically incorporated in one feminine
body, clad in—well, the kimono had slid off, and there was a
night-dress so filmy that it was nothing, and a faint sweet odor, and a
pair of soft caressing arms, and lips pressing hot, moist kisses.
“Bunny,” whispered the voice, “I would marry you if you wanted me to. I
would give you everything you asked for.”

Bunny had learned from Eunice that when you are disposed to love, the
lips can be seductive; he now learned from Mrs.—no, Thelma—that when
you are not so disposed, they are repellant. “You know, Thelma,” he
pleaded, “I don’t happen to need anything.”

“I know, and I’m a horrid vulgar thing. But I’m trying in my poor
blundering way to make you understand that I do care for you, and you
mustn’t think ill of me!”

That gave him his lead, and he explained to her that he would never
think ill of her; but he did not love her, he had thought of her as a
friend. And so gradually her clasp relaxed, and she sank down in a
pitiful heap by the bedside, sobbing that he would be sure to loathe
her, he would never want to see her again. He pleaded that that was not
so, there was no disgrace about it, there was no reason to quarrel
because you did not happen to love. She was so abject, he was sorry for
her, and put out his hand to comfort her; but he saw at once that this
would not do, she had caught his hand and was kissing it, and he was
being tempted by his sympathy. Away back in the eighteenth century, one
of the English poets had announced the discovery that pity moves the
soul to love.

One has to think these matters out in advance, and have a standard of
conduct. Bunny had made up his mind that the next time he embraced a
woman, it would be one he truly loved; and now the clear cold voice of
his reason told him that he did not love Charlie Norman’s mother, it
would only be an intrigue, and neither of them would be happy very long.
So he said, gently, that he thought she had better go; and slowly and
sadly she gathered up the kimono from the floor, and rose to her feet.
“Bunny,” she said, “people have nasty minds. If they hear about this
they will make it horrid.”

“Don’t think of that,” he answered. “I shall not tell.”

He heard the door softly opened, and softly closed again; and he turned
on the light, and locked the door—never again would he fail to take
that precaution at a house-party! For a while he paced the floor,
thinking over this alarming experience. He told himself, with becoming
modesty, that it wasn’t because he was irresistibly fascinating; but in
this new pagan civilization women were so startled by an encounter with
chastity, it struck them as something colossal, superhuman.

Next morning the nautical maid had her first natural blush in many years
when she encountered the young Adonis on deck. But she soon got over it,
and they talked about Theosophy, as spiritually as ever, and were
perfectly good friends; he called her Thelma, and Charlie did not even
make a joke. But on the way home Bertie wanted to know all about it, had
Mrs. Norman made love to him, and how much? And when Bunny blushed, she
laughed at him, and was provoked because he was silly and wouldn’t tell.
She decided that of course they had had an affair. That was all right,
there had been other affairs on board the “Siren”—the lights were dim
in the central hall-way, so that you needn’t be recognized as you
flitted from door to door. “But don’t imagine she’ll ever marry you,”
added Bertie, sagely. “She talks a lot of reincarnation bunk, but she
hangs onto her Occidental Steel bonds for this incarnation!”

                                   XI

Occidental Steel had a bad slump in the market a few days after this,
and Bertie was worried—taking a proprietary interest in the concern.
She asked Dad about it, and he said it was “jist manipulation.” But
right away a lot of other stocks went tumbling, including Ross
Consolidated, and then Dad said there were fools who would gamble and
bid stocks up, and then they had to come down. But the trouble continued
to spread over the country, and there were reports of big concerns, and
even banks, in trouble. There was panic in the air, and Dad and “Verne”
held anxious consultations, and stopped all their development work, and
laid off several hundred men; “pulling in their horns,” as Dad phrased
it. There was plenty of money in the banks, Dad said, but only the big
fellows had the use of it; “Verne” was in a rage with Mark Eisenberg,
the banker, who had “thrown him down.” It was the “Big Five,” at their
old tricks of trying to freeze out the independents. Wouldn’t they jist
like to get Ross Consolidated in a hole, and buy it up for five or ten
millions!

Bunny had a talk with Mr. Irving, who told him that it was the Federal
Reserve system at work; a device of the big Wall Street banks, a
supposed-to-be government board, but really just a committee of bankers,
who had the power to create unlimited new paper money in times of
crisis. This money was turned over to the big banks, and in turn loaned
by them to the big industries whose securities they held and must
protect. So, whenever a panic came, the big fellows were saved, while
the little fellows went to the wall.

In this case it was the farmers who were being “deflated.” They were
unorganized, and had no one to protect them; they had to dump their
crops onto the market, and the prices were tumbling—literally millions
of farmers would be bankrupt before this year was by. But the price of
manufactured goods would not drop to the same extent, because the big
trusts, having the Wall Street banks behind them, could hold onto their
stocks. Bunny took this explanation to his father, who passed it on to
Mr. Roscoe, who said it was exactly right, by Jees; he knew the bunch
that had their fingers in the till of the Federal Reserve bank here on
the coast, and they were buying up everything in sight, the
blankety-blank-blanks, but they weren’t going to get the Roscoe-Ross
properties.

Money was so scarce, Bertie could not have a new car, despite the fact
that she had damaged hers in a collision; and Dad talked economy at
meal-times, until Aunt Emma took to feeding them on hash made from
yesterday’s roast! Shortage everywhere, and worry in people’s faces, and
hints of bankruptcy and unemployment in the newspapers—they tried their
best to hide it, but it leaked out between the lines.

Then a funny thing happened. A big limousine with a chauffeur drove up
before the Ross home one summer evening, and out stepped a stately
personage in snow-white flannels; a tall young man with yellow hair and
a solemn visage—Eli Watkins, by heck! He shook hands all round—he had
developed the manners of an archbishop—and then asked for a private
conference with Dad. He was taken into the “den,” and half an hour later
came out smiling, and bowed himself away; and Dad said nothing until he
was alone with Bunny, and then his face expanded into a grin and he
chuckled, by Judas Priest, Eli had gone into the real estate business.
He had found a block on the outskirts of the city which was exactly the
size for the temple which the angel of the Lord had commanded him to
build; or rather he had found some real estate subdividers who had a
pull with the city board of supervisors, and had got permission to
create a block of this unprecedented size. So the word of the Lord had
been vindicated, and the golden temple was to arise. But for some reason
unknown the Lord had failed to tip off Eli to the panic, and here he was
“stuck,” just like any common, unholy business man, with a payment on
his hundred and seventy-five thousand dollar tract nearly a month
overdue. The collections at the revivals had fallen off, and the Lord
had made it manifest that He desired Eli to employ some other method of
raising funds.

“What did he want of you, Dad?”

“The Lord had revealed to him that I would take a second mortgage on the
property. But I told him the Lord had failed to reveal where I was to
get the cash. I gave him five hundred to help him over.”

“Good God, Dad! I thought we were economizing!”

“Well, Eli pointed out that he had blessed that first well on the
Paradise tract, and that was why we had got all the oil. You can see, it
would ’a been sort of blasphemy if I’d denied it.”

“But Dad, you know you don’t believe in Eli Watkins’ bunk!”

“I know, but that fellow has got a tremendous following, and we might
need him some day, you can’t be sure. If there should come a close
election, here or at Paradise, we might get our money back many times by
getting Eli to endorse our ticket.”

                                  XII

Bunny thought this over, and then summoned his nerve, and went back to
his father. “Look here, Dad! If you’ve got five hundred for a joke with
Eli Watkins, I want five hundred for something serious.”

Dad looked alarmed right away. He should not have told Bunny about that
money! “What is it, son?”

“I’ve been to see Mr. Irving, Dad, and he’s in trouble, he can’t get a
teaching job anywhere. They’ve got him blacklisted. You see, he has to
mention that he’s been teaching at Southern Pacific the last two years,
and the people write to enquire about him, and he’s convinced that
somebody in the university is telling them he’s a red.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Dad. “But that’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is, Dad! I was the one that dragged him out and made him talk
to me. I thought I could keep it to myself, but they had some one spying
on us.”

“Well, son, is he trying to borrow money from you?”

“No, I offered him a little, but he wouldn’t take it. But I know he
needs it, and I’ve been talking about it with Harry Seager, and with
Peter Nagle—they know some of the labor men in the city, and they think
there is a possibility of starting a labor college here. We all agree
that Mr. Irving is the ideal man to run it.”

“A labor college?” said Dad. “That’s a new one on me.”

“It’s to educate the young workers.”

“But why can’t they go to the regular schools, that are free?”

“They don’t teach them anything about labor. At least they don’t teach
them anything that’s true. So the labor men are founding places where
bright young fellows can be fitted to take their part in the labor
struggle.”

Dad thought it over. “You mean, son, it’s a place where a bunch of you
reds teach Socialism and such stuff.”

“No, that’s not fair, Dad; we don’t propose to teach any doctrines. We
want to teach the open mind—that has always been Mr. Irving’s idea. He
wants the labor men to think for themselves.”

But that kind of talk didn’t fool Dad for a moment. “They’ll all turn
into reds before they get through,” he said. “And see here, son—I don’t
mind your giving five hundred to Mr. Irving, but it’s going to be kind
of tough on me if I’m to spend my life earning money, and then you spend
it teaching young people that I haven’t got any right to it!”

And Bunny laughed—that was the best way to take it. But he thought it
over—more and more as the years passed—and he realized how that shrewd
old man looked into the future and read life!




                              CHAPTER XIII
                             THE MONASTERY


                                   I

Bunny was studying and thinking, trying to make up his mind about the
problem of capital versus labor. It had become clear to him that the
present system could not go on forever—the resources and wealth of the
country thrown into an arena, to be scrambled for and carried off by the
greediest. And when you asked, who was to change the system, there was
only one possible answer—the great mass of the workers, who did not
have the psychology of gamblers, but had learned that wealth is produced
by toil. In the very nature of their position, the workers could only
prevail by combining; and so, whether they would or not, they had to
develop solidarity, an ideal of brotherhood and co-operation.

Such was the fundamental faith of all “radicals,” and Bunny accepted the
doctrine joyfully, as a way of escape from the tangle of commercialism
and war. Labor was to organize, and take over industry, and rebuild it
upon a basis of service. The formula was simple, and worthy of all
trust; but alas, Bunny was being forced to admit that the reality was
complicated. The makers of the new society were not able to agree upon
plans for the structure, nor how to get the old one out of the way. They
were split into a number of factions, and spent a good part of their
energies quarreling among themselves. Bunny would have thought that here
in Southern California at least, the labor movement had enemies enough
in the federations of the employers, with their strike-breaking and spy
agencies, their system of blacklist and persecution, and their
politicians, hired to turn the law against the workers. But alas, it did
not seem so to the young radicals; they had to make enemies of one
another!

Just now they were in a fever over the Russian revolution; a colossal
event that had shaken the labor movement of the whole world. Here for
the first time in history the workers had got possession of a
government; and what were they making of the chance? The capitalist
press of the world was, of course, portraying Russia as a nightmare; but
the Soviets continued to survive, and every day of survival was a fresh
defeat for the newspaper campaign. The workers _could_ run a government!
The workers _were_ running a government! Just look!

So, in every country of the world, the labor movement became divided
into two factions, those who thought the workers in their country could
follow the example of the Russians, and should organize and prepare to
do it; and those who thought that for one reason or another it couldn’t
be done, and the attempt was madness. This great division showed itself
in every faction and school of thought. The Socialists split into those
who wanted to follow Russia and those who didn’t; the Anarchists split
in the same way, and so did the “wobblies”; even the old line labor
leaders divided into those who wanted to let the Soviet government
alone, and those who wanted to help the capitalists to put it down!

For Bunny this struggle was embodied in the Menzies family. Papa Menzies
was an old-time Social-Democrat from abroad, active in the clothing
workers’ union. Of his six children, two daughters had followed their
mother—an old-time, orthodox Jewess who wore a dirty wig, and kept all
the feast days in the home, and wept and prayed for the souls of her
lost ones, stolen from the faith of their fathers by America, which had
made them work on Saturdays, and by the radical movement, which had made
them agnostics and scoffers. Rachel and the oldest boy, Jacob, were
Socialists like their father; but the other two, Joe and Ikey, had gone
over to the “left wing,” and were clamoring for the dictatorship of the
proletariat.

                                   II

Bunny received a letter from Rachel. “Dear Mr. Ross”—she always
addressed him that way, alone of his class-mates; it was her way of
maintaining her proletarian dignity, in dealing with a person of great
social pretensions. “We are home after picking all the prunes in
California, and next week we begin on the grapes. You said you wanted to
attend a meeting of the Socialist local, and there is to be an important
one tomorrow evening, at the Garment-workers’ Hall. My father and
brothers will be there, and would be glad to meet you.”

Bunny replied by a telegram, inviting one old and four young Jewish
Socialists to have dinner with him before the meeting. He took them to
an expensive restaurant—thinking to do them honor, and forgetting that
they might feel uneasy as to their clothes and their table manners.
Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter into the feelings of the disinherited.

Bunny found Rachel quite altered from the drab, hardworking girl he had
known. She belonged to that oriental type which can pick fruit in the
sun for several weeks without worrying about complexions; she had sunset
in her cheeks and sunrise in her spirit, and for the first time it
occurred to Bunny that she was quite an interesting-looking girl. She
told about their adventures, which seemed to him extraordinarily
romantic. Most people, when they indulged in day-dreaming, would picture
themselves as the son and heir of a great oil magnate, with millions of
dollars pouring in upon them, and a sporty car to drive, and steel
widows and other sirens to make love to them. But Bunny’s idea of a
fairy-story was to go off with a bunch of youngsters in a rattle-trap
old Ford that broke down every now and then, and camp out in a tent that
the wind blew away, and get a job picking fruit along side of Mexicans
and Japanese and Hindoos, and send home a post-office order for ten or
twelve dollars every week!

Papa Menzies was a stocky, powerful-looking man with curly yellow hair
all over his head, and a deep chest—though most of it seemed to be in
back instead of in front, so much was he bent over by toil. There were
certain English letters he could never pronounce; he would say,
contemptuously, “Dis talk about de vorld revolution.” His son Jacob, the
Socialist one, Bunny knew as a stoop-shouldered, pale student, and found
him much improved by outdoor life. The other two boys, the young “left
wingers,” were talkative and egotistical, and repelled the fastidious
Bunny, who had not insight enough to guess that they were meeting a
young plutocrat for the first time in their lives, and this was their
uneasy effort to protect their working-class integrity. Nobody was going
to say that they had been overawed! In addition to this, they were
hardly on speaking terms with the rest of the family, because of the
bitter political dispute going on.

They went to the hall, which was crowded with people, mostly workers,
all tense with excitement. There had been a committee appointed to deal
with the policy of the “local,” and this committee brought in a report
in favor of expelling the “left wingers”; also there was a minority
report, in favor of expelling everybody else! So then the fat was in the
fire; and Bunny listened, and tried valiantly to keep from being
disillusioned with the radical movement. They were so noisy, and Bunny
had such a prejudice in favor of quiet! He wouldn’t expect working
people to have perfect manners, he told himself nor to use perfect
English; but did they need to shriek and shake their fists in the air?
Couldn’t they debate ideas, without calling each other “labor fakers”
and “yellow skunks” and so on? Bunny had chosen to call upon Local Angel
City of the Socialist party at a critical moment of its history; and
decidedly it was not putting on company manners for him!

Here was Papa Menzies, clambering onto the platform, and shouting at his
own sons that they were a bunch of jackasses, to imagine they could
bring about mass revolution in America. “Vy did de revolution come in
Russia? Because de whole country had been ruined by de var. But it vould
take ten years of var to bring de capitalist class in America to such a
breakdown; and meanvile, vot are you young fools doing? You vant to
deliver de Socialist party over to de police! Dey have got spies
here—yes, and dose spies is de mainspring of your fool left ving
movement!”

That seemed reasonable enough to Bunny. The business men of Angel City
would want the radical movement to go to extremes, so that they might
have an excuse to smash it; and when they wanted something to happen,
they did not scruple to make it happen. But to say this to the young
extremists was like waving a red rag before a herd of bulls. “What?”
shouted Ikey Menzies at his own father. “You talk about the police? What
are your beloved Social-Democrats doing now in Germany? They have got
charge of the police, and they are shooting down Communist workers for
the benefit of the capitalist class!”

“Yes, and they will do the same thing in California!” cried the other
brother. “You are a bunch of class-collaborators!” That was a new word,
and a dreadful one, it appeared. The question was whether the tottering
capitalist system could be propped up for another ten years or so; and
the “right-wingers” would take office under the capitalists, and help to
save them. “You make yourself their agent,” proclaimed Joe Menzies, “to
bribe the workers by two cents more wages per hour!”

And so there was a bust-up in Local Angel City, as everywhere else in
the world; the “reds” withdrew, and presently split into three different
Communist groups; and Joe and Ikey Menzies left home, and set up
house-keeping with two girl-workers of their own way of thinking. So
Bunny was more perplexed than ever; life appeared so complicated, and
happiness so hard to find!

                                  III

One Saturday the telephone rang, and it was Vernon Roscoe calling Dad.
Bunny happened to answer, and heard the jovial voice, “Hello, how’s the
boy Bolsheviki? Say, Jim Junior, I thought you were coming up to my
place! Eventually—why not now? Annabelle is resting from ‘Pangs of
Passion’—she’ll be glad to see you. Vee Tracy is there, and Harvey
Manning—quite a bunch of people over Sunday. Sure, I’ll be up! You go
ahead, your old man will tell you the way.”

Bunny told Dad he had accepted the invitation, and Dad said that Mr.
Roscoe’s domestic arrangements were such that Bunny ought to be told
about them in advance. Annabelle Ames, the moving picture actress, was
what people called his mistress, but it wasn’t really that, because she
was devoted to him, and all their friends knew about it, and it was jist
the same as being married; only, of course, there was Mrs. Roscoe, who
lived in the house in the city, with her four sons. Mrs. Roscoe went in
for society and all that, and had tried to drag Verne in, but he wasn’t
cut out for that life. Sometimes Mrs. Roscoe would go out to the
Monastery, as the country place was called, but of course not when Miss
Ames was there; Dad said they must have some system to keep from running
into each other. Miss Ames had her own house, near to the studio, and
the Monastery was a “show-place,” where they took their friends over
week-ends.

You drove up behind a chain of mountains that lined the coast: another
of those wonderful roads, a magic ribbon of concrete laid out by a
giant’s hand. The engine purred softly and you raced ahead of the wind,
up long slopes and down long slopes, and winding through mazes of hills;
there were steep grades and vistas of tumbled mountains, and broad
sweeps of valley, and stretches of shore with fishermen’s huts, and
boats, and nets drying in the sun; then more hills and mountain
grades—for hours you flew, as fast as you pleased, for you were
twenty-one now, and Dad no longer expected you to obey the speed-laws.

There was a road that branched off towards the ocean, and after climbing
ten miles or so, you came to a high steel fence, and steel gates, and a
sign: “Private: Turn Back Here.”—and a wide place in the road, made
especially so that you might obey! The gate was open, so Bunny drove on,
and climbed another hill, and came over the brow, and then, oh,
wonderful!—a great bowl of yellow and green, two or three miles across,
with one side broken out towards the ocean, and in the center of the
bowl the grey stone towers of the Monastery! Mountains on every side,
and the oil magnate owned everything in sight, both the land and the
landscape; if the public wanted to see his retreat, it would have to get
a row-boat, or swim.

You rolled down the winding drive, through tumbled masses of rocks and
clumps of live oaks a century or two old, and came to a fork in the
road, and one way said “Delivery,” and the other said, “Guests.” If you
were so fortunate as to be a guest, your road led under a porte-cochere
big enough for half a dozen double-decker stages; a footman appeared,
and summoned a chauffeur to take your car to the garage, and you were
escorted into a living-room—well, it was like going into a cathedral,
your eyes would follow the arches overhead, and you might trip yourself
on the skin of an aurochs or a gnu or whatever the dickens it was. What
grim sardonic architect had played this jest of Gothic towers and
steeples and crenellations and machicolations—here in the midst of a
new pagan empire, and called by such a very suggestive name! Assuredly,
the Monastery would need to be of pre-reformation style, to fit the ways
of the monk who occupied it!

The transept of the cathedral concealed an elevator, Bunny discovered;
and out of it tripped suddenly a diminutive vision in lemon-colored
chiffon, with lemon-colored stockings and shoes, and a big lemon-colored
hat such as shepherdesses used to wear when having their portraits
painted. It was complete and costly enough for a fancy-dress ball; and
no introduction was needed, for Bunny was one of that ninety percent of
all males in the civilized world, and perhaps seventy percent in
Madagascar, Paraguay, Nova Zembla, Thibet and New Guinea, who could have
told the number of lashes in each of Annabelle Ames’s eyelids, or drawn
a diagram of her dimples, and the exact course of a tear down her cheek.
He had seen her as the “wild” daughter of a Pittsburg steel king, duly
chastened and brought to faith in mother, home and heaven; as the
mistress of a French king, dying elegantly to expiate elegant sins; as
the mistreated and eloping heiress of a Georgian manor-house; as a
bare-legged “mountainy-girl” in the Blue Ridge—“Howdy, stranger, be
you-all one of them revenooers?” All this in the “movies”; and now here
she was in the “speakies!”

“So this is Mr. Ross!” Her “speakie” was a queer little high treble.
“Papa has told me so much about you!” (Papa was Mr. Roscoe.) “I’m so
glad to have you here, and do make yourself at home. Do whatever you
please, for this is liberty hall.” Bunny recalled the caption—but was
it from “Hearts of Steel,” or from “The Maid of the Manor?”

“And here is Harve,” the mistress of the manor was saying. “Oh, Harve,
come here, this is Bunny Ross; Harvey Manning. It’s the first time Mr.
Ross has been here, and please be nice to him so he’ll come back. He’s
going to college, and reads a lot and knows everything, and we’re going
to seem so ignorant and frivolous!”

Harvey Manning was coming in through one of the French windows which
took the place of the stations of the cross in this cathedral. He was
walking slowly, and did not increase his pace; he talked slowly also, a
dry sort of drawl—having never had to hurry, because he came of one of
the old families of the state. He had a queer, ugly face, with a great
many wrinkles, and Bunny never was clear whether he was old or young.
“Hello, Ross,” he said, “pleased-to-meecher. I got an uncle that’s
spending a hundred thousand dollars to put you in jail.”

“Is that so?” said Bunny, a trifle startled.

“Sure thing! He’s nuts on this red-hunting business, and the pinks are
worse than the reds, he says. I’ve been worried about you.”

“Never mind,” said Bunny, perceiving that this was a “josh,” such as
helps to make life tolerable for idle men, young and old. “Dad will
spend two hundred thousand and get me out again.”

“Come to think of it, I guess Verne would chip in—wouldn’t he,
Annabelle?”

“None of my guests ever stay in jail,” replied the star.

“They phone to Papa, and he phones to the chief of police, who lets them
out right away.”

She said this without smiling; and Harvey Manning remarked, “You see,
Ross, Annabelle has a literal mind.”

                                   IV

Yes, that was the truth about this bright luminary of the screen, as
Bunny came to observe it; she had a literal mind. All the poetry and
romance the public imagined about her—that was in the public’s eye, so
to say. All that Annabelle had to contribute was a youthful figure and a
pliable face; the highly paid directors did the rest. She produced
pictures as a matter of business, and her talk was of production costs,
and percentages on foreign sales, just as if it had been an oil well.
That was why she got along with Vernon Roscoe, who also had a literal
mind. A primrose by the river’s brim a yellow primrose was to him, and
to Annabelle it was a decoration for an “interior,” or a background on
“location.”

There was a certain grim honesty about this, as Bunny discovered; it was
Annabelle’s desire to be an actress rather than a mistress. “By Jees,”
Verne would proclaim to his guests, “it’s cost me eight million dollars
to make a movie queen out of this baby.” And the thirty year old baby
had the dream that some day she would achieve a masterpiece, that would
earn this eight million and vindicate her honor. Meantime, she paid
installments by taking care of Verne—so publicly that it was quite
touching, and respectable according to the strictest bourgeois
standards. If the oil magnate had ever had the idea that in taking to
his bosom a movie star he was going to lead a wild and roystering life,
he had made a sad mistake, for he was the most hen-pecked of all “butter
and egg men.”

“Now, Papa,” Annabelle would say, “you’ve had enough to drink. Put that
down.” She would say it before a company assembled in their gladdest
rags for a dinner-party; and Verne would protest, “My God, baby, I ain’t
got started yet!”

“Well, you stop before you start tonight. Remember what Doctor Wilkins
says about your liver.”

Verne would bluster, “To hell with livers!” and the answer would be,
“Now, Papa, you told me to make you obey! Have I got to make you ashamed
before all this company?”

“Me ashamed? I’d like to see anybody make me ashamed!”

“Well, Papa, you know you’ll be ashamed if I tell what you said to me
the last time you were drunk.”

Verne paused, with his glass half-way in the air, trying to remember;
and the company burst into clamor, “Oh, tell us! Tell us!”

“Shall I tell them, Papa?” It was a bluff, for Annabelle was very prim,
and never indulged in vulgarity. But the bluff went, and the great man
set down his glass. “I surrender! Take the stuff away.” Whereat
everybody applauded, and it gave the party a merry start.

Strange as it might seem, Annabelle was a pious Catholic. Just how she
managed to fix things up with her priests Bunny never knew, but she gave
freely to charity, and you would find her featured at benefits for
Catholic orphan asylums and things of that sort. At the same time her
little head was as full of superstitions as an old Negro mammy. She
would not have started a picture on a Friday for the whole of Vernon’s
eight million dollar endowment. When you spilled the salt, she not
merely advised you to throw some of it over your shoulder, she did it
for you, if necessary. Once, at luncheon, she made a girl-friend eat at
a side table, because otherwise there would have been thirteen, and this
girl, being the youngest, would have fallen the victim.

At the same time she was very good. She really liked you, and liked to
have you around, and when she begged you to come back, she meant it. Nor
would she make unkind remarks about you after you were gone. Along with
the ecstasies of the artistic temperament, she had escaped its gnawing
jealousies; she was one of the few lady-stars before whom it was safe to
praise the work of other lady-stars, Bunny found. Also, she had an
abiding respect for him, because he had read books, and had ideas about
public questions. The fact that Bunny had got his name on the front
pages of the newspapers as a dangerous “pink,” served to lend him that
same halo of mystery and romance, which the public assigned to Annabelle
as a luminary of the screen world, and the mistress of a monastery!

                                   V

“Harve,” said Annabelle, “there’s time for you to show Mr. Ross over the
place before dinner.” And so Bunny got to see what a country place could
be like, so that he could make his father give him one. But Harvey
Manning did not make a very good escort. To show off a show-place you
need some one of an admiring disposition, whereas “Harve” had seen too
many places, and was inclined to patronize them all.

There were almost as many buildings on this estate as there were tanks
at the Paradise refinery; only these were Gothic tanks, with miniature
towers and steeples and crenellations and machicolations. There was no
chapel or place of worship, nor tombs of ancient abbots; but there was a
gymnasium, with a swimming pool of green marble, and a bowling alley,
and squash courts and tennis courts, and a nine hole golf course, and a
polo field—everything you would find at the most elaborate country
club. There was a stable with saddle horses ridden mostly by grooms, and
a library read only by motion picture directors looking up local
color—or at any rate that was Harvey’s tale about it.

Also there was a regular menagerie of local creatures. The hired men and
their youngsters had discovered that such gifts pleased the master, so
they brought in everything they could capture. There was an enclosed
park with deer and mountain sheep, and heavily barred dens with grizzly
bears shambling over the rocks, and wild cats and coyotes and mountain
lions dozing in the shade. There was a giant dome covered with netting,
with a big dead tree inside, and eagles seated thereon. An eagle in his
native state, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure deep of
air, has been a thrilling theme for poets; but sitting in a cage he is a
melancholy object. “Some of your red friends in jail!” Harvey Manning
remarked in passing.

But even the most blasé man of the world has something in which he is
interested, so Bunny found. Presently his guide took out his watch and
remarked that it was nearly six-thirty, and they must get back to the
house. He was “on the water wagon” until that hour of each day, and when
it drew near, he was about ready to jump out of his skin. So they
strolled back, and a Chinese boy clad in white duck had evidently
learned to expect him, and was on hand with a tray. Harvey took two
drinks, to make up for lost time, and then he sighed contentedly, and
revealed that he could talk without a drawl.

When Bunny came down for dinner there was quite a company
assembled—some in evening dress and some in golf clothes and some in
plain business suits like the host—it was “liberty hall,” according to
the caption. Roscoe was talking politics to Fred Orpan—the drubbing
they were going to give the Democratic party. Roscoe did the talking,
for the other was a queer silent creature, tall and lean, with a tall,
lean face, like a horse. He had the strangest grey-green eyes, that
somehow looked absolutely empty; you would decide that his head was
empty too, when he would listen and say nothing for an hour—but this
would be a mistake, for he was the directing head of a great chain of
oil enterprises, and Dad said he was sharp as a steel trap.

Also there was Bessie Barrie, because good form required that she be
invited wherever Orpan went. He had backed her in several pictures, and
she was “paying the price,” as the current phrase ran; but it wasn’t
quite the same respectable arrangement as in the case of Roscoe and his
Annabelle, because Bessie had been in love with her director, and he was
still in love with her, and the attitude of the two men was far from
cordial. This was explained to Bunny by Harvey Manning, gossip-in-chief,
who had now had several more drinks, and got his tongue entirely
loosened. Bunny noted that the hostess had tactfully placed the rival
males at opposite ends of the table.

They were in a smaller cathedral now, known as the “refectory”; and
Bunny was in the seat of honor, at the right of the charming Annabelle,
transformed from a lemon-colored shepherdess to a duchess in white
satin. On her left sat Perry Duchane, her director, telling about the
cuts in the first two reels, which he had brought along for a showing.
Next to him was a vacant seat; some lady was late, and Bunny was too
young in the ways of the world to know that this is how great personages
secure importance to themselves. It was his first meeting with
actresses, and how should he know that they sometimes act off-stage?

                                   VI

You remember in that colossal production, “The Emperor of Etruria,” the
Scythian slave girl who is brought in from the wilds to serve the
pleasures of a pampered sybarite, and the scene where the fat eunuchs
lay hands upon her? With what splendid fury she claws them and knocks
their heads together! Her clothing is torn to shreds in the struggle,
and you have glimpses of a lithe and sinewy body—the extent of the
glimpses depending upon the censorship laws of the state in which you
see the picture. The scene made a hit with the public, and many
producers competed for Viola Tracy—pronounce it Vee-ola, please, with
the accent on the first syllable. She displayed her magnificent fighting
qualities next in “The Virgin Vamp,” and thereafter escaped dishonor by
a hair’s breadth in many palpitating scenes. Of late she had acquired
dignity, and was now regal on all the billboards of Angel City in “The
Bride of Tutankhamen,” an alluring figure, with deep-set mysterious
black eyes, and a smile fathomless as four thousand years of history.

Well, here she was, stepping out of the billboards, and into the
refectory of the Monastery; her Egyptian costume changed for a daring
one of black velvet, fresh from Paris, and with black pearls to match.
The footman drew out her chair, and she rested one hand upon it, but did
not take her seat; her hostess said, “Miss Tracy, Mr. Ross”—and still
she paused, smiling at Bunny, and he smiling at her. It was a striking
pose, and Tommy Paley, her director, who had taught her the stunt, and
watched it now from the other end of the table, suddenly called,
“Camera!” Everybody laughed, and “Vee” most gaily of all—revealing two
rows of white pearls, more regular than the black ones, and worth many
times as much to a movie star.

Annabelle Ames got along in the world without ever saying anything
unkind about anybody, but that was not “Vee” Tracy’s style; she had a
fighting tongue, as well as fighting fists, and her conversation gave
Bunny the shock of his innocent young life. They happened first to be
discussing a lady vamp, recently imported from abroad with much clashing
of advertising cymbals. “She dresses in very good taste,” said
Annabelle, mildly. “Oh, perfect!” said Vee. “Absolutely perfect! She
selected her dog to match her face!” And then presently they were
talking about that million dollar production, “The Old Oaken Bucket,”
which was just then waking home memories and wringing tears from the
eyes of millions of hardened sinners. Dolly Deane, who played the
innocent country maiden seduced by a travelling salesman, was so
charmingly simple, said Annabelle. “Oh, yes!” replied Vee. “For the
chance to be that simple, she slept with her producer, and two angels,
and the director and his assistant; and all five of them told her how an
innocent virgin says her prayers!”

Bunny, who was a rebel in his own line, sat up and took notice of this
conversation; and you may be sure that Vee did not fail to take notice
of the young oil prince, flashing him mischief with her sparkling black
eyes. The footman brought her a plate of soup in a golden bowl, and she
took one glance and cried, “Oh, my God, take it away, it’s got starch in
it! Annabelle, are you trying to drive me out of the profession?” Then,
to Bunny, “They say that nobody can eat a quail a day for thirty days;
but Mr. Ross, what would you say if I told you I have eaten two lamb
chops and three slices of pineapple every day for seven years?”

“I would ask, is that an Egyptian rite, or maybe Scythian?”

“It is the prescription of a Hollywood doctor who specializes in
reducing actresses. We public idols are supposed to be rioting in
luxury, but really we have only one dream—to buy enough Hollywood real
estate so that we can retire and eat a square meal!”

“Don’t you really ever steal one?” asked Bunny, sympathetically.

She answered, “Ours are the kind of figures that never lie. You can ask
Tommy Paley what would happen if they were to see any fat on me when the
gentleman heavy tears my clothes off! They would put me into the comics,
and I’d earn my living being rolled down hill in a barrel!”

                                  VII

Conversation at this dinner-party, as at most dinner-parties in America
at that time, resembled a walk along the edge of a slippery ditch.
Sooner or later you were bound to slide in, and after that you could not
get out, but finished your walk in the ditch. “Mr. Ross,” said
Annabelle, in her capacity as hostess, “I notice you aren’t drinking
your wine. You can trust what we have—it’s all pre-war stuff.” And so
they were in the ditch, and talked about Prohibition.

The law was two years and a half old, and the leisure classes were just
realizing the full extent of the indignity which had been inflicted upon
them. It wasn’t the high prices—they were all of them seeking ways to
spend money rapidly; but it was the inconvenience, and the difficulties
of being sure what you were getting. People escaped the trouble by
pinning their faith to some particular bootlegger; Bunny noticed it as
an incredible but universal phenomenon that persons otherwise the most
cynical, who made it the rule of their lives to trust nobody, would
repeat the wildest stories which men of the underworld had told them,
about how this particular “case of Scotch” had just been smuggled in
from Mexico, or maybe stolen from the personal stock of a visiting duke
in Canada.

They discussed the latest developments in the tragedy which had befallen
Koski, one of the emperors of their screen world, who had had a
priceless stock in the cellar of his country place, and had taken the
precaution to have it walled in with two feet of brick, and guarded by
doors such as you would find on a bank vault; but thieves had come
during the owner’s absence, and bound and gagged the caretaker, and cut
through the floor of the drawing-room, above the cellar, and hauled out
everything with rope and tackle, and carted it away in trucks. Since
then Koski had been raising a row with the authorities; he charged that
they were standing in with the thieves, and he had brought in an outside
detective agency, and threatened a scandal that would shake the pants
off the police department. By this means he had got back the greater
part of his casks and bottles; but alas, the real stuff was gone, they
had all been emptied and refilled with synthetic. And so, after that,
there was a convincing story for your bootlegger to tell you; this was
some of the original Koski stuff! Millions of gallons of original Koski
stuff were being drunk in California, and even in adjoining states.

Suddenly Vee Tracy clapped her hands. “Oh, listen! I have one on Koski!
Him and some others! Has anybody heard The Movie’s Prayer?”

There was a silence. No one had.

“This is something for all of us to teach our children to recite every
night and morning. It is serious, and you mustn’t joke.”

“Let us pray,” said the voice of Bessie Barrie.

“Fold your hands, like good little children,” ordered Vee, “and bow your
heads.” And then with slow and solemn intonation she began:

“Our Movie, which art Heaven, Hollywood be Thy Name. Let Koski come. His
Will be done, in studio as in bed.”

There was a gasp, and then a roar of laughter swept the table; no
explanations were needed, they all knew their emperor, master of the
destiny of hundreds of screen actresses. “Go on!” shouted voices; and
the girl continued to intone an invocation, which echoed in outline and
rhythm the Lord’s prayer, and brought in the names of other rulers of
their shadow world, always with an obscene implication. It was a kind of
Black Mass, and performed the magic feat of lifting the conversation out
of the ditch of Prohibition. They talked for a while about the sexual
habits of their rulers; who was living with whom, and what scandals were
threatened, and what shootings and attempted poisonings had resulted.
There were thrilling crime mysteries, which would provide a topic of
conversation for hours in any Hollywood gathering; you might hear half a
dozen different solutions, each one positive, and no two alike.

                                  VIII

They adjourned to the larger cathedral, where the lights were dim, and
there appeared, very appropriately in place of the altar, a large white
screen. At the far end of the room was a projecting machine, and the
guests distributed themselves in lounging chairs, prepared to pay for
their entertainment by watching the first two reels of Annabelle’s new
picture, and giving their professional judgments on the “cutting.”
“Pangs of Passion” you may recall as a soul-shaking story about a
society bud whose handsome young husband is led astray by a divorcee,
and who, in order to make him jealous, begins a flirtation with a
bootlegger, and is carried off in a rum-running vessel, and made the
victim of the customary pulling and hauling and tearing of feminine
costumes. “My God,” said Vee Tracy, in an aside to Bunny, “Annabelle has
been playing these society flappers since before they were born, and in
all that time she’s never had a story above the intelligence of a twelve
year old child! You’ll think it’s a joke, but I know it for a fact that
Perry Duchane gets a bunch of school children together and tells them
the scenario, and if there’s anything they don’t like, he cuts it out.”

And then to Annabelle she said, “It’s up to standard, my dear; it will
sell all right.” And to Bunny, “That’s one good thing about Annabelle,
you can say that and she’s satisfied—she doesn’t ask you if it’s a work
of art. But others do, and I’ve made mortal enemies because I won’t lie
to them. I say, ‘Leave art out of it, dearie; we all know our stuff is
trash.’”

There was technical discussion, and Bunny had an opportunity to learn
about the tricks of “cutting.” Also he learned what had been the gross
business on a number of Annabelle Ames’ pictures, and the inside figures
on other successes. Tommy Paley had recently indulged in the luxury of
making an artistic and beautiful picture, which the papers had called a
“classic”; he and a group of friends had come out something over a
hundred thousand in the hole, and he had charged it up to education, and
said, “Let the Germans do the art stuff after this!”

All this time there had been a silent spectral figure flitting about the
cathedral, clad in white duck coat and trousers and padded purple
slippers; the Chinese boy, bearing a tray with little glasses full of
pink and yellow and purple and green liquid. He would move from guest to
guest, offering his tray, and they would put down empty glasses and take
up full ones, and during the entire course of the evening the spectre
never made one sound, nor did anyone make a sound to it. Some three
hundred years ago an English poet, long since forgotten by the movie
world, had asked the question why a man should put an enemy into his
mouth to steal away his brains; but here at the Monastery, the anxiety
appeared to be that some one might forget to put the enemy into his
mouth—hence this Chinese spectre to save the need of recollecting.

There were a few who did not drink; Annabelle was one, and Vee Tracy
another. The spectre had apparently been instructed not to go near
Vernon Roscoe, and if Vernon tried to approach the spectre, there would
be a sharp warning, “Now, Verne!” But others drank, and tongues were
loosened, and hearts poured out as the evening passed. Even Fred Orpan
came to life, and revealed a tongue! It was Vernon Roscoe’s habit to
“josh” everybody, and now he got paid back, as the one-time rancher from
Texas sat up in his chair and opened his long horse’s face and demanded,
in a falsetto voice which sounded as if it came from a ventriloquist:
“Anybody here know how this old shyster got his start in life?”

Apparently nobody did know; and Orpan put another question: “Anybody
ever seen him in swimming? I bet you never! When it’s outdoors, he’ll
tell you the water is too cold, and when it’s indoors he’ll tell you
it’s dirty or something. The reason is, he’s got one toe missing, and
he’s afraid to have it proved on him. When he was drilling his first
well, he ran out of money and was clean done for; so he went and took
out an accident insurance policy, and then went rabbit-hunting and shot
off one of his big toes. So he got the cash to finish the well! Is that
true, old socks, or ain’t it?”

The company laughed gleefully and clamored for an answer; and Vernon
laughed as much as anyone. He didn’t mind the story, but you could never
get him to tell. Instead, he countered on his assailant, “You ought to
hear about this old skeezicks, how he got rich leasing oil lands from
Indians. They tell this about a dozen oil men, but Fred was the real one
that done it, I know because I was there. It was Old Chief Leatherneck,
of the Shawnees, and Fred offered him one-eighth royalty, and the old
codger screwed up his eyes and said, ‘No take one-eighth, got to have
one-sixteenth!’ Fred said he couldn’t afford that, and begged him to
take one-twelfth, but he said, ‘One-sixteenth or no lease.’ So they
signed up for a sixteenth, and now it’s the Hellfire Dome, by Jees! Is
that so, old skeezicks, or ain’t it?”

Said Fred Orpan, “You might complete the story by telling what the old
chief does with his royalties. He’s got a different colored automobile
for each day of the week, and he figures to get drunk three times every
day.”

“Oh, take me to the Hellfire Dome!” wailed the voice of Harvey Manning.
“They won’t let me get drunk but one time in a night, and none at all in
the day-time!”

                                   IX

There was a large organ in this cathedral, a magic organ of the modern
style, which played itself when you put in a roll of paper and pressed
an electric switch. It played the very latest jazz tunes from Broadway,
and the company danced, and Vee Tracy came to Bunny and said, “My doctor
allows me only one drink in an evening, and I want a sober partner.”
Bunny was glad to oblige, and so the time passed pleasantly. He danced
with his hostess, and with the blonde fairy, Bessie Barrie. In between
dances they chatted, and the Chinese spectre continued to flit about,
and the deeps of the human spirit were more and more unveiled.

In front of Bunny stood Tommy Paley, super-director, handsome,
immaculate if slightly ruffled, flushed of face, and steady upon his
legs if not in his thoughts. “Look here, Ross,” he said, “I want you to
tell me something.”

“What is it?”

“I want to know what it’s all about.”

“What, Mr. Paley?”

“Life! What the hell are we here for, and where do we go when we get
through?”

“If I knew,” said Bunny, “I would surely tell you.”

“But, lookit, man, I thought you went to college! I never got any
education, I was a newsboy and all that. But I thought when a fellow’s
read a lotta books and goes to college—”

“We haven’t got to it yet,” said Bunny. “Maybe it comes in the last two
years.”

“Well, by God, if they tell you, you come tell me. And find out, old
son, what the hell we going to do about sex? You can’t live with ’em and
you can’t live without ’em, and what sort of a mess is it?”

“It’s very puzzling,” admitted Bunny.

“It’s the devil!” said the other. “I’d pay anybody ten year’s salary if
they’d teach me to forget the whole damn business.”

“Yes,” said Bunny; “but then, what would you direct?”

And the super-director looked at him, bewildered, and suddenly burst out
laughing. “By God, that’s so! That’s a good one! Ho, ho, ho!” And he
went off, presumably to pass the good one on.

His place was taken by Harvey Manning, who was no longer able to stand
up, but sprawled over a chair, and in a voice of the deepest injury
declared, “I wanna know whoze been tellin bout me!”

“Telling what?” asked Bunny.

“Thaz what I wanna know. What they been tellin?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Harvey.”

“Thass it! Why don’t you know? Why don’t you tell me? Mean say I ain’t
askin straight? You think I’m drunk—that it? I say, I wanna know whoze
been talkin bout me an what they been sayin. I gotta take care my
reputation. I wanna know why you won’t tell me. I’m gonna know if I have
to keep askin all night.” And accordingly he started again, “Please, ole
feller, what they been tellin you?”

But just then the Chinese spectre flitted past, and Harvey got up and
made an effort to catch him, and failing, caught hold of a lamp-stand,
slightly taller than himself. It was not built like the lamp-posts that
he was used to clutching on street-corners; it started to fall, and
Bunny leaped and caught it, and Harvey cried, in alarm, “Look out,
you’re upsettin it!”

Then a funny thing happened. Bunny had noticed at the dinner-table a
well-groomed man of the big Western type, polite and unobtrusive; the
superintendent of the estate, and one of the few who kept sober. Now it
appeared that among the duties of superintendent at a monastery was that
of the old-fashioned “bouncer” of the Bowery saloon. He came up, and
quietly slipped his arm about Harvey Manning; and the latter, evidently
having been there before, set up an agonized wail, “I d’wanna go to bed!
I woan go to bed! Dammit, Anderson, lemme lone! If I go to bed now I
wake up in the mornin an I can’t have a drink till evenin an I go
crazy!”

Against that horrible fate poor Harvey fought frantically; but
apparently the material inside the shoulders of Mr. Anderson’s dresscoat
was not the ordinary tailor’s padding, and the weeping victim was
helpless as in the grip of a boa-constrictor. He went along, even while
proclaiming loudly that he wouldn’t. “I’ll get up again, I tell you! I
woan be treated like a baby! I woan come this damn place again! It’s an
outrage! I’m a grown man an I got a right get drunk if I wanna—” and so
his weeping voice died into the elevator!

“Mr. Ross,” said Vee Tracy, “there are two cries that one hears at
Hollywood parties. The first is, I don’t want to go to bed; and the
second is, I do.”

                                   X

When Bunny made his appearance on Sunday morning, he had the Monastery
all to himself. He breakfasted, and read the papers, which had been
delivered from the nearest railroad station; then he went for a stroll,
and renewed his acquaintance with the “reds” in the eagle cage. He
walked down towards the ocean, and discovered a combination of
fire-break and bridle-path, leading over the hills along the coast. He
followed this for a couple of miles, until it led down to a long stretch
of beach. The owner of the Monastery had erected a barrier here, with
signs warning the public to keep out; there was a gate with a spring
lock, and on the inside a board with keys hanging on it, and
instructions to take one with you, so that you could return. Bunny did
this, and continued his walk down the beach.

Presently he came upon a Rhine castle, set upon one of these lonely
hills; and in front of it, coming down to the water, a series of
terraces and gardens. There were paths, and watercourses, “bridal-veil”
falls, and fountains with stone-carved frogs and storks and turtles and
tritons—all suffering from drought, for the water was shut off. You
could guess that the owner was away, because the window-shades in the
Rhine castle were drawn, and here and there throughout the gardens were
great lumps of white sheeting, evidently wrapped about statues. Some of
these were on pedestals, and some perched on the stone walls; and
directly over the head of each hung an electric light.

It was such a curious phenomenon that Bunny took the trouble to climb
into the garden, and lift up the hem of one of these sheets, and was
embarrassed to discover the entirely naked round limbs of a large marble
lady—presumably a Lorelei, or other kind of German lady, because you
could tell by the shape of the cloth, and by feeling through it, that
she had a goblet uplifted in one hand, and behind her head a thick
marble rope, made by her braided hair. With golden comb she combs it,
you remember, and sings a song thereby, das hat eine wundersame
gewaltige Melodei; and Bunny was the fisher-boy whom it seized with a
wild woe. He peered under half a dozen of the sheets, and counted the
rest, establishing the fact that the gardens contained no less than
thirty-two large, fat marble ladies with braided hair hanging down their
backs. An amazing spectacle it must have afforded, at night when all the
lights were turned on—and no one to behold it but seals! Yes; Bunny
looked out over the sea, and there was not a sail in sight, but close to
the shore were clusters of rocks, and on these the seals sat waiting to
see if he were going to unveil the statues, and bring back the merry
days before prohibition ruined America!

He returned to the beach, and walked on. The sun was high now, and the
water tempting; there were more rocks with seals on them, and
green-white breakers splashing over them, not high enough to be
dangerous, but just enough to be alluring. Bunny made sure he was alone,
and then undressed and waded into the water.

The attention of the seals became riveted upon him, and with each step
that he took, one of them would give a hump, hump, and get nearer to the
water’s edge. Some of them were yellow, and some a dark brown, little
ones and big ones, each of them enormously fat—having consumed his own
weight in fish in the course of a day. As Bunny swam near, they slid
silently off the rocks, politely yielding place to him; when he
clambered onto the rocks, they would bob up and form a circle a few
yards away, yellow heads and brown heads sticking out of the water,
whiskers bristling and mild eyes staring. They were strangely human, a
circle of foreign children, watching some visitor who does not know
their language and may or may not be dangerous.

California water is always cold, but California sunshine is always warm;
so Bunny would swim for a while, and then approach a cluster of rocks,
and watch the silent company hump themselves into the water. Whatever he
wanted, they would yield to him, the superior being, and content
themselves with the places he had left. The green-white seas splashed
over him, and underneath their surface was a garden of strange plants,
with anemones and abalones clinging, too tightly to be pried off by
fingers. White clouds drifted by, making swift shadows over the water,
and far out at sea a streak of smoke showed where a steamer was passing.

The world was so beautiful, and at the same time strange, and
interesting to be alive in! What must it be like to be a seal? What did
they think concerning this arrogant being who commandeered their resting
places? Did they see the Rhine castle on the shore, or did they see only
fish to eat, and how did they understand so clearly that they must not
eat a man? Embarrassing if one of them should be a “red,” and rebel
against the genial customs of the phocidae! Thus Bunny—just the same at
the age of twenty-one as when first we met him, driving over the
Guadalupe grade and speculating about the feelings of ground-squirrels
and butcher-birds. He had completed in the meantime a full course at the
Beach City High School, and half a course at Southern Pacific
University, but neither institution had told him what he wanted to know!

                                   XI

The young philosopher decided that he had had enough, and started to
swim in; but then he noticed someone on horseback, galloping down the
beach towards him. The figure was bare-headed and clad in
knickerbockers, and appeared to be a man; but you never could be sure
these days, so he swam and waited, and presently made out that it was
Vee Tracy. She saw him, and waved her hand, and when she was opposite,
reined up her horse. “Good morning, Mr. Ross.”

“Good morning,” he called. “Is this part of the doctor’s prescription?”

“Yes, and it also includes swimming.” There was laughter in her face, as
if she guessed his plight. “Why don’t you invite me to join you?”

“It would embarrass the seals.” He swam in slowly, and stood with the
waves tumbling about his shoulders.

“It is the morning of the world,” said Vee. “Come out, and let us enjoy
it.”

“Look here, Miss Tracy,” he explained, “it so happens that I wasn’t
expecting company. I am the way the Lord made me.”

“O ye sons of men,” she chanted, “how long will ye turn my glory into
shame?” And she explained, “I once acted in ‘King Solomon’—a religious
pageant. We had three real camels, and I was Abishag the Shunammite, the
damsel who cherished the king and ministered unto him; and he sang to
me, Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is
past, and the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth,
the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is
heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the
vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair
one, and come away. Oh my dove, that art in the cleft of the rocks—”

He was near enough to see the imp of mischief dancing in her black eyes.
“Young woman,” he said, “I give you fair notice. I have been in this
water an hour, and I am cold. I was on my way out.”

She continued, “Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an
armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty
men.”

He took a few steps, until the breakers barely reached his waist. “I am
on the way,” he said.

“Who is this that cometh out of the water? My beloved is white and
ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. His head is as the most fine
gold, his locks are bushy—”

“Fair warning!” he announced. “One—two—three!” And when she gave no
sign of yielding, he strode out from the waves.

“His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold; his
countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.”

He stood confronting her, the water playing about his feet.

“Thou are beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible
as an army with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have
overcome me!”

“If that’s in the Bible, I suppose it’s all right,” said Bunny.

“‘King Solomon’ lost a fortune,” said the lady on horseback, “so it’s
the only pageant I was ever in, and it’s the only poetry I can recite.
But I dare say if I had been in a Greek pageant I could quote something
appropriate, for I read they used to run naked in the games, and it did
not embarrass them. Is that true?”

“So the books say,” said Bunny.

“Well then, let’s be Greek! You are a runner, I have heard. Are you in
training?”

“Partly so.”

“My beloved’s lips are blue and he’s got goose-flesh, so let’s have a
race, you and my horse, and it’ll be a Greek pageant.”

“Anything to oblige a lady.”

“Ready! Set!” she called sharply—and then, to his great surprise,
pulled a little revolver from under her jacket, and fired it into the
air. It was to be a real race!

He started at the rate of twenty miles an hour, or a little better, and
heard the horse loping on the sand behind him. He did not know how long
the race was to last, so presently he settled down to a long distance
gait. He was warm again, and willing to investigate being a Greek. The
sky was blue, and the clouds white, and the sea green, and the sand
sparkling cold; truly, as the girl had said, it was the morning of the
world!

They came to a place where wagon-tracks came down to the beach, and
there were fishermen’s boats, and three men had just shoved out through
the breakers. They rested on their oars, to stare at this amazing
spectacle, an entirely naked youth running a race on the beach with a
woman on horseback. Their swarthy Italian or Portuguese faces wore broad
grins, with white teeth showing. They knew about the Monastery, and this
was the latest freak of the idle rich!

But then came a place where the highway came near to the beach. There
were tents ahead, and automobiles parked, with canvas covers to protect
them from the sun. There were people on the beach; and these, Bunny
knew, would not be primitive foreigners, but ranchmen from the interior,
having brought their families to spend Sunday away from the baking heat.
They would have no toleration for the freaks of the idle rich, neither
would they know about the customs of the ancient Greeks; they were
sober, church-going people, the sort who formed the Ku Klux Klan, and
punished fornications and adulteries by tarring and feathering and
riding on a rail. But Vee had challenged Bunny, and he said to himself
that it was up to her. Did she really want to be pagan and take the
consequences?

He ran on and on. The tents came near, and he saw women stare, and then
dive into shelter; he saw the men, not running away, nor turning their
heads, but glaring with menace in their faces. What would they do? Seize
the obscene intruder, and wrap him perforce in a blanket, and deliver
him over to the police? Bunny’s quick mind leaped to the outcome—a
streamer head across the front page of the “Angel City Evening Howler”—

                        STAR RACES NUDE OIL RED!

Then suddenly he heard a voice behind him: “I give up! I’m going back!”
So he whirled, and the horse whirled, and away they went, even faster
than they had come, and both of them shaking with laughter in the
morning of the world!

                                  XII

The Greeks had never worn either trousers or shirts, and the process of
getting into these garments did not lend itself to romantic or esthetic
interpretations. Therefore Vee Tracy rode down the beach while Bunny
dressed; and when he rejoined her, she was no longer Greek, but an
American young lady upon her dignity, and it would have been bad taste
to have referred to her crazy prank.

She was leading the horse with the bridle over its head, and Bunny
walked by her side. “Did you notice that nightmare?” she said, as they
passed the thirty-two Loreleis in their grave-clothes. “That was one of
the dreams of old Hank Thatcher. You’ve heard of ‘Happy Hank,’ the
California Grape-king?”

“So that’s his place!” exclaimed Bunny.

“He dreamed of orgies, and kept half a dozen harems; his wife refused
him a divorce to punish him, and when he died she covered up his dream
as a kind of public penance.”

“Nobody seems to see it but the seals.”

“Oh, the papers were full of it; they would never pass up any news about
the Thatchers. They send out a reporter once in a while. One time they
had a scream of a story—the reporter had worn a suit of chain-mail
under his trousers, and the dogs had torn at him in vain!”

“She sets dogs on them?”

“That’s why nobody dares go up there to peek at the statues.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Bunny. “I peeked at half a dozen of them.”

“Well, you were lucky. That’s why I carried this revolver along; they
sometimes come onto the beach, and the neighbors make war on them.”

“Why doesn’t she put up a fence?”

“She’s in a dispute with the county. She claims to own the beach, and
every now and then she puts a barrier across it, and the county sends
men at night to tear it down. They’ve been fighting it out for the past
ten years. Also the state is trying to put a highway through the
tract—it would save several miles of the coast route—but she has spent
a fortune fighting them; she lives in that castle like a beleaguered
princess in the old days—all the shades drawn, and she steals about
from room to room with a gun in her hand, looking for burglars and
spies. Ask Harve about it—he knows her.”

“Is she insane?”

“It’s a reaction from her life with her husband; he was a profligate,
and so she’s a miser. They tell a story about him, he used to pay his
hands in cash, and would drive about the country in a buckboard with
little canvas bags, each containing a thousand dollars in gold. One time
he dropped one bag and didn’t miss it; one of his hands brought it to
him, and old Hank looked at the man with contempt, and put his hand into
his pocket and pulled out a half dollar. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘here’s the
price of a rope; go buy one and hang yourself’!”

“So now she’s taking care of the money!”

“Exactly. She pays all her bills by registered mail, and preserves the
receipts, and insists on having a return receipt from the post office,
and when that comes she files the two together, and when the receipted
bill comes back, she files and indexes that. She won’t let a bookkeeper
do it, because you can’t find any employees who can be trusted to attend
to things properly. She spends hours poring over her business papers,
and discovering other people’s carelessness and incompetence. She
employs lawyers, and then she employs other lawyers to check them up,
and then a detective agency to find out how the lawyers are selling her
out. She’s convinced the county authorities are persecuting her, and
that they’re all a lot of crooks—she mayn’t be so wrong in that. She’s
lean and haggard, and wears herself to a skeleton roaming about the
house, dusting the furniture and nagging at the servants because they
won’t take care of things.”

The two walked on down the beach. “Up over that hill,” said Vee, “lives
old Hank’s sister; he left her part of the estate, and the two women
have quarrelled about the boundary line and the water-rights. Tessie
Thatcher’s an old rake—hires men to work for her, and makes them her
lovers, and writes them tootsie-wootsie letters, and then they try to
blackmail her, and she tells them to go to hell, and they bring suit for
unpaid salaries, and sell the letters to the newspapers, and they’re all
published; but Tessie doesn’t care, she knows that nothing can hurt her
social position, she’s too rich; and besides, she’s an old
booze-fighter, and knows how to forget her troubles.”

“My God!” exclaimed Bunny. “What property does to people!”

“To women especially,” said Vee. “It’s too much for their nerves. I look
at the old women I meet, and think, which of them do I want to be? And I
say, Oh, my God! and jump into my car and drive fifty miles an hour to
get away from my troubles, and from people who want to tell me theirs!”

“Is that what you were doing when the judge sent you to jail for a
week?” laughed Bunny.

“No,” she answered, “that was a publicity stunt, the bright idea of my
advertising man.”




                              CHAPTER XIV
                                THE STAR


                                   I

Bunny went back to Angel City, and discovered that if he wanted to
follow Vee Tracy’s program of dodging other people’s troubles, he had
made a fatal mistake to get interested in a labor college! He went to
see Mr. Irving, and found the young instructor up to his ears in the
growing pains and disputes of the labor movement. All summer long his
job had been interviewing leaders and sympathizers, and trying to get
them together on a program. He had managed to get the college started,
with three teachers and about fifty pupils, mostly coming at night; but
it was all precarious—the difficulties seemed overwhelming.

There were a handful of progressive and clear-minded men and women in
the labor movement; and then there was the great mass of the
bureaucracy, dead from the ears up; also a little bunch of extreme
radicals, who would rather have no bread at all than half a loaf. The
old-line leaders would have nothing to do with the college if these
“reds” got in; on the other hand, if you excluded the “reds,” they would
set up a clamor, and a lot of genuine liberals would say, what was the
use of a new college that was so much like the old ones?

The labor movement had its traditions, having to do with getting shorter
hours and more pay for the workers; and the old officials were bound by
that point of view. The average union official was a workingman who had
escaped from day-labor by the help of a political machine inside the
union. Anything new meant to him the danger of losing his desk job, and
having to go back to hard work. He had learned to negotiate with the
employers and smoke their cigars, and in a large percentage of cases he
was spending more money than his salary. Here in Angel City, the unions
had a weekly paper, that lived by soliciting advertising from business
men—and what was that but a respectable form of graft? When you took
any fighting news to an editor of that sort, he would say the dread word
“Bolshevism,” and throw your copy into the trash basket.

And the same thing applied to the movement in its national aspects. The
American Federation of Labor was maintaining a bureau in Washington, for
the purpose of combatting the radicals, and this bureau was for
practical purposes the same as any patriotic society; its function was
to collect damaging news about Russia from all over the world, and feed
it to the American labor press. And of course, if any labor man was
defiant, and insisted upon telling the other side, he would incur the
bitter enmity of this machine, and they would throw him to the wolves.
There would be a scare story in the capitalist press, telling how the
Communists had got possession of the plasterers’ union, or maybe the
button workers, and the grand jury was preparing action against a nest
of conspirators. The average labor leader, no matter how honest and
sincere, shivered in his boots when such a club was swung over his head.

                                   II

Also there was Harry Seager and his troubles. The Seager Business
College had turned out a class of young men and women, thoroughly
trained to typewrite, “All men are created free and equal,” and also,
“Give me liberty or give me death.” And now these young people were
going about in the business offices of Angel City, and discovering that
nobody wanted employees to typewrite anything of that sort! In plain
words these young people were being told that the Seager Business
College was a Bolshevik institution, and the business men of the city
had been warned not to employ its graduates. The boycott was illegal in
Angel City, and if any labor men tried to apply it, they would be
whisked into jail in a jiffy. But imagine Harry Seager asking, the
district attorney to prosecute the heads of the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association, whose campaign contributions had put the
district attorney into office!

Bunny went up to Paradise, and there was another bunch of grief. In
preparation for the coming struggle over the wage-scale, the oil
operators were weeding out the “trouble-makers,” which meant the active
union men. And now for the first time, Ross Consolidated was following
the policy of the rest. Ben Riley, one of the fellows who met in the
Rascum cabin, had been told that he was no longer needed. They had too
many men, the foreman had said, but that was a plain lie, because he had
taken on half a dozen new men since. No, Ben was a Socialist, and had
talked at meetings in Paradise, and distributed Socialist papers that
showed the monstrous wastes in the oil industry, and the world-rivalry
for oil which was to cause the next great war.

It was Ruth who told Bunny about this; very seriously, with distress in
her gentle eyes. “It’s a shame, Bunny, because Ben has got no place to
go. And here he’s got a home, and a wife and two little girls.”

Bunny was worried too; Dad had promised this kind of thing should not
happen!

“Can’t you do something about it?” pleaded Ruth.

“Well, but Ben was a pumper, and that’s in the department of operation,
and Dad only has to do with the development work. He wouldn’t butt in on
the superintendent of operation.”

“But then, ask him to give Ben a job on development.”

“I’ll ask him, Ruth, but I know what he’ll say. If he undertook to make
jobs for men that other departments want to get rid of, he’d make bad
feeling. You know what a lot of fuss he makes about good feeling inside
the organization.”

“Yes, Bunny, but then, what about Ben’s feeling, and all the men?” Ruth
persisted, with that surprising force that gentle people sometimes
display. Ruth did not understand abstract questions, she had no theories
about the “class struggle;” but when it came to a human fact, a
grievance, then she was possessed by it, and as determined as Paul.
These men who came to the cabin to argue and discuss, they were all her
friends, and if they did not get a square deal, something must be done!

So here was Bunny, in his old tormenting position, watching a fight
which he was powerless to stop, or even to mitigate! Ben Riley managed
to get work on a ranch; he had to put in twelve hours a day, but all the
same, he would come onto the tract at night and distribute his Socialist
literature—and of course with a burning sense of bitterness, shared by
his friends.

Tom Axton was back in the field, at his organizing job, and he and Paul
and Bunny had long discussions. Here in the oil workers’ union, just as
in the labor college, there was the problem of what to do about the
“reds.” You could never have any big group of workers without Socialists
and Communists and I. W. W. among them—and all busily “boring.” Paul
was endorsing the position of Axton, that the one thing in the oil
industry was to save the union; all the workers must concentrate on
that, and avoid every cause of division. To this the Socialists and the
Communists made answer, all right, they would help; but as the struggle
developed, the bosses would call in the police and the courts, and the
oil workers, like all other workers, would find they could not stay out
of politics, they would have to master the capitalist state. So far the
Socialists and Communists would agree; but then would come the question,
how was this mastering to be accomplished—and at once the two groups
would be imitating the Menzies family!

The “Industrial Workers of the World,” as they called themselves, were a
separate group, men who had been revolted by the corruption and lack of
vision in the old-line unions, and had formed a rival organization, the
“One Big Union,” that was some day to take in all the workers. They were
hated by the regular labor leaders, and the newspapers represented them
as criminals and thugs. When Bunny met one, he found a young fellow
clinging to an ideal in the spirit of the early Christian martyrs. These
“wobblies” were now being hunted like wild beasts under the “criminal
syndicalism act” of California; every one who came into a labor camp or
industrial plant was liable to be picked up by a constable or company
“bull,” and the mere possession of a red card meant fourteen years in
state’s prison. Nevertheless, here they were in Paradise; half a dozen
of them had a “jungle” or camping place out in the hills, and they would
lure workingmen out to their meetings, and you would see the glare of a
camp-fire, and hear the faint echo of the songs they sang out of their
“little red song book.” To Bunny this was romantic and mysterious; while
to Dad and Mr. Roscoe and the managers of Ross Consolidated, it was as
if the “jungle” had been located in the province of Bengal, and the
sounds brought in by the night wind had been the screams of man-eating
tigers!

                                  III

From these and all other troubles Bunny now had a way of swift escape,
the Monastery. Nobody up there had troubles—or if they did, they didn’t
load them onto him! “Make this your country club,” Annabelle had said;
“come when you please and stay as long as you please. Our horses ought
to be ridden, and our books ought to be read, and there’s a whole
ocean—only watch out for the rip-tides!” So Bunny would run up to this
beautiful playground; and sometimes Vee Tracy was there, and when she
wasn’t she would turn up a few hours later—quite mysteriously.

She was several years older than he, and in knowledge of the world older
than he would be at a hundred. Nevertheless, she was a good playmate. It
was her business to be young in both body and spirit—it was the way she
earned her living, and she practiced the game all the time. She had to
live hard, like an athlete in training, a pugilist before a battle. Who
could tell what strange freak might next occur to the author of a novel,
or to a “continuity man,” or a director dissatisfied with the progress
of a melodrama? She would find herself tied upon a wild horse, or to a
log in a saw-mill, or dragged by a rope at the end of a speed-boat, or
climbing a church steeple on the outside. In ages past, in lands
barbarian and civilized, the hardships of the ascetic life have been
imposed upon women for many strange reasons; but was there ever one more
freakish than this—that she might appear before the eyes of millions in
the aspect of a terror-stricken virgin tearing herself from the hands of
lustful ravishers!

Anyway, here she was, a playmate for a young idealist running away from
other people’s troubles. They would take Annabelle’s unused horses, and
ride them bareback over the hills to the beach, and gallop them into the
surf and swim them there, to the great perplexity of the seals; or they
would turn the horses loose, and run foot-races, and turn hand-springs
and cart-wheels—Vee would go, a whirlwind of flying white limbs and
flying black hair, all the way into the water, and the waves would be no
wilder than her laughter. Then they would sit, basking in the sun, and
she would tell him stories about Hollywood—and assuredly the waves were
no wilder than these. Anything might happen in Hollywood, and in fact
had happened—and Vee knew the people it had happened to.

Bunny would go away, and find himself haunted by a figure in a scanty
one-piece bathing suit a figure youthful, sinewy but graceful, vivid,
swift. It was evident that she liked him, and Bunny would wake up from
his dreams and realize he liked her. He would think about her when he
ought to be studying; and his thinking summed itself up in one question,
“Why not?” Echo, in the form of Dad and Mr. Roscoe and Annabelle Ames
and their friends, appeared to be answering, “Why not?” The one person
who would have answered otherwise was Henrietta Ashleigh, and Henrietta,
alas, was now hardly even a memory. Bunny was not visiting the blue
lagoon, nor saying prayers out of the little black and gold books.

Bunny would call Vee Tracy on the telephone, at the studio or at her
bungalow, and she was always ready for a lark. They would go to one of
the restaurants where the screen folk dined, and then to one of the
theatres where the same folk were pictured, and she would tell him about
the private lives of these people—stories even stranger than the ones
made up for them. Very soon the screen world was putting one and one
together in its gossip. Vee Tracy had picked up a millionaire, an oil
prince—oh, millions and millions! And it was romantic, too, he was said
to be a Bolshevik! The glances and tones of voice that Bunny encountered
gave new echoes of the haunting question—“Why not?”

                                   IV

Sitting on the beach, half dug into the sand, and staring out over the
blue water, Vee told him something about her life. “I’m no spring
chicken, Bunny, don’t imagine it. When I came into this game, I had my
own way to make, and I paid the price, like every other girl. You’ll
hear them lie about it, but don’t be fooled; there are no women
producers, and no saints among the men.”

Bunny thought it over. “Can’t they be satisfied with finding a good
actress?”

“She can be a good actress in the day-time, and a good mistress at
night; the man can have both, and he takes them.”

“It sounds rather ghastly,” said the other.

“I’ll tell you how it is, there’s such fierce competition in this game,
if you’re going to get ahead, nothing else matters, nothing else is
real. I know it was that way with me; I hung round the doors of the
studios—I was only fifteen—and I starved and yearned, till I’d have
slept with the devil to get inside.”

She sat, staring before her, and Bunny, watching her out of the corner
of his eye, saw that her face was grim.

“There’s this to remember too,” she added; “a girl meets a man that has
a wad of money, and can take her out in a big car, and buy her a good
meal, and a lot of pretty clothes, and set her up in a bungalow, and
he’s a mighty big man to her, it’s easy to think he’s something
wonderful. It’s all right for moralists to sniff, that don’t know
anything about it; but the plain truth is, the man that came with the
cash and offered me my first real start in a picture—he was just about
the same as a god to me, and it was only decent to give him what he
wanted. I had to live with him a few months, before I knew he was a
fat-headed fool.”

There was a silence. “I suppose,” said Vee, “you’re wondering why I tell
you this. I’m safe now, I’ve got some money in the bank, and I might set
up for a lady—put on swank and forget the ugly past. If I’d told you I
was an innocent virgin, how would you have known? But I said to myself,
‘By God, if having money means anything to me, it means I don’t have to
lie any more.’”

Said Bunny: “I know a man that says that. It made a great impression on
me. I’d never known anybody like it before.”

“Well, it makes you into a kind of savage. I’ve got an awful reputation
in the picture world—has anybody told you?”

“Not very much,” he answered.

She looked at him sharply. “What have they told you? All about Robbie
Warden, I suppose?”

“Hardly all,” he smiled. “I heard you’d been in love with him, and that
you’d sort of been in mourning ever since.”

“I made a fool of myself twice over a man; Robbie was the last time, and
believe me, it’s going to stay the last. He put up the money for the
best picture I ever made, and he was handsome as a god, and he begged me
to marry him, and I really meant to do it; but all the time he was
fooling with two or three other women, and one of them shot him, so that
was the end of my bright young dream. No, I’m not in mourning, I’m in
rejoicing because I missed a lot of trouble. But if I’m a bit cynical
about love, and a bit unrefined in my language, you can figure it out.”

And Vee shook the mountain of sand off her bare legs and stood up.
“Here’s how I keep off the fat,” she said, and put her hands down on the
sand where it was wet and firm, and stood the rest of herself upon them,
her slender white limbs going straight up, and her face, upside down,
laughing at Bunny; in that position she walked by slow handsteps down to
the water, and then threw herself over in the other half of a
handspring, and lighted on her feet and dashed into the breakers. “Come
on in! The water’s fine!”

                                   V

Bunny thought over this conversation, and learned from it his usual
lesson of humility. Vee had had to fight for her success; whereas he had
never had to fight for anything. If he wanted a moving picture career,
Dad would arrange it for him, the studio doors would fly open. And the
same with any other sort of career he could think of. How could he
afford to pass judgment on anybody?

Also, while he listened to Vee Tracy, he had the memory of Eunice Hoyt
to keep him humble. No, people didn’t know what was right about sex; or
at any rate, if they did, they didn’t make it clear. It was disagreeable
to have to think about so many other men; but then, too, it helped to
clear the atmosphere. She wouldn’t expect to marry him right off; there
were marriages among the screen people, but apparently not until they
had made sure they were happy. Also, it enabled Bunny to be certain that
Vee would not be shocked by the knowledge that she was haunting his
dreams.

They were at the Monastery, and had been dancing, and went out upon one
of the loggias, or platforms, or terraces, or whatever you call the
outside of a cathedral. There was a moon shining down—the same that had
shone on Bunny and Eunice, and on Bunny and Nina Goodrich. There was
organ music inside, and the scent of flowers outside, and Bunny was
thinking to himself, “What am I going to do about this?” It couldn’t go
on, that was certain; he had got so that he was trembling all over. And
yet, somehow, he seemed to be tongue-tied. So far, all the girls had had
to propose to him, and it was quite absurd. What the dickens was the
matter with him?

In a faltering voice he suggested, “Let’s dance.” Vee stood up, and he
stood up; they had danced out onto this loggia, or terrace or platform,
and now they would dance back, and he would be, literally, just where he
had been before. No, that wouldn’t do! He had a sudden fit of
desperation; and instead of the particular kind of embrace which has to
do with dancing, he put his arms about her in a way that made it
impossible for her to dance. This was a crude procedure, no credit to a
junior classman and leader of fashion in a high-toned university. Bunny
knew it, and was in a panic. She would not understand—she would be
angry, and send him away!

But no, she was not angry; and somehow, she was able to understand.
There is an old saying, that fingers were made before forks, and in the
same way it is true that embraces were made a long time before words.
Bunny became aware that his clasp was being returned—and by a pair of
capable arms, that were able to hold a girl upside down in the air and
carry her into the surf! It was all right! “Oh, Vee!” he whispered.
“Then you do care for me!” Her lips met his, and they stood there in the
moonlight, locked together, while the organ music rose to a shout.

“Vee, I was so scared!” And she laughed. “You silly boy!” But suddenly
she drew back her head.

“Bunny, I want to talk to you. There’s something I must say. Let me go,
and sit down, please—no, in that chair over there! I want us to talk
quietly.”

There was fear in her voice, and he did what she asked. “What is it,
Vee?”

“I want us to be sensible, and know what we’re doing. It seems to me
hardly anybody I know can be happy in love, and I swore to God I never
would get into it again.”

“You’ll have to get a new God!” Bunny had managed to recover the use of
his tongue.

“I want us to promise to be happy! Any time we can’t be happy, let’s
quit, and not have any fuss! Let’s be sensible, and not go crazy with
jealousy, and torment each other.”

“You’ll be a plenty for me,” declared Bunny. “I surely won’t make you
jealous!”

“You don’t know what you’ll do! Nobody ever knows! It’s the devil’s own
business—oh, you’ve no idea what I’ve seen, Bunny! You’re nothing but a
babe in arms.”

“You’ll be good to me, Vee, and raise me up!”

“How do you know what I’ll do? How do you know anything about me? You
want me, without really knowing what I am or what I’ll do! I could have
told you a million lies, and how would you have known? The next woman
that comes along will tell you a million and one, and how will you know
about her?”

“That’s too easy, Vee—you’ll tell me!”

He sank down on his knees before her, and took one of her hands,
intending to comfort her; but she pushed it away. “No, I don’t want you
to do that. I want you to think about what I’m saying. I want us to
decide in cold blood.”

“You make my blood cold,” he laughed, “telling about the vamps of
Hollywood!”

“Bunny, a man and a woman ought to tell each other the truth—all the
time. They ought to trust each other that much, no matter how much it
hurts. Isn’t that so?”

“You bet it’s so.”

“If that means they give each other up, all right—but they’ve no
business holding each other by lies. Will you make that bargain, Bunny?”

“I will.”

“And I want you to know, I don’t want any of your money.”

“I haven’t got any money, Vee—it’s all Dad’s. That is the first painful
truth.”

“Well, I don’t want it. I’ve got my own, and I’ll take care of myself.
I’ve got a job, and you’ll have yours, and we’ll let each other alone,
and meet when it makes both of us happy.”

“That’s too easy for a man, Vee!”

“It’ll be a game, and those are the rules, and if we break the rules,
it’s cheating.”

Bunny could assure her that he had never cheated in a game, and would
not cheat in this one. So he overcame her fears, and she was in his arms
again, and they were exchanging those ravishing kisses, of which for a
time it seems impossible ever to have enough. Presently she whispered,
“Some one will come out here, Bunny. Let me go in, and I’ll dance a bit,
and then make my excuses and get away, and you come up to my room.”

                                   VI

Had anybody seen them in the moonlight? Or had Vee whispered the secret
to Annabelle? Or was it just the light of happiness radiating from the
eyes of the young couple? Anyhow, it was evident next day that the truth
was out, and there was an atmosphere of festivity about the Monastery.
Nobody went so far as to sprinkle rice on the pair, or to throw old
shoes at them, or tie white ribbons to their cars; but there were
friendly smiles, and sly jests, enough to keep the play spirit alive.
Annabelle, of course, was enraptured; she had planned this from the
beginning, she had picked this young oil prince for her friend from the
day that Verne had told her about him. And Verne—well, you can imagine
that when he started to make jokes on such a subject, nobody was left in
doubt as to what had happened!

Strangely enough, when Bunny got home, he found this spirit of orange
blossoms and white ribbons in some mysterious way communicated to Dad.
Could it be that Verne, the old rascal, had taken the trouble to
telephone the news? Here was Dad, shining with satisfaction, and Bunny
could read his every thought. Dad had met Vee Tracy, and liked her fine.
A motion picture star—by golly, that was something to brag about! That
was the right sort of career for a young oil prince—quite in the
aristocratic tradition! Bunny would have something else in his mind now
but this fool Bolshevik business!

Presently here was Dad trying to drop hints—with about as much tact as
you would expect from a full grown rhinoceros! Had Vee Tracy been up at
the Monastery this time? Say, that was a live wire, that girl! Verne
said she got as high as four thousand a week; and that was no press
agent money either. She had more brains than all the male dolls put
together; she had money salted away, owned lots all over Hollywood.
She’d come to Verne to ask his advice about Ross Consolidated, and he
had told her to go the limit, and by golly, she had brought him a
cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars, and had got a block of the
stock at the opening price, and now it was worth three times that, and
Vee said that Verne had saved her from six rapings! Then the old
rhinoceros went on and explained what Vee had meant—that she wouldn’t
have to act in six pictures!

And then there was Bertie, who got the news at once because it happened
that Charlie Norman’s bootlegger was in love with Annabelle Ames’
sister. Right away Bertie was curious to meet Vee Tracy, and ordered
Bunny to bring her to lunch. Vee was uneasy about this—declaring that
sisters always poisoned men against sweethearts. But Bunny laughed and
said he had plenty of antitoxins against Bertie. So they met, and
everything went off beautifully; Vee was humble, and anxious to please,
and Bertie was the great lady, supremely gracious. That was according to
the proprieties, for Vee was only an actress, while Bertie was in real
“society,” her doings appearing in a sanctified part of the newspaper,
where the screen people seldom broke in. After the luncheon, Bertie told
her brother that Vee was all right, and maybe she would teach him a
little sense; which, from a sister, was the limit of cordiality.

So there they were, everything hunkydory. Bunny’s sleep was no longer
disturbed by dreams; the dream had become a reality, and it was his.
When they visited the Monastery, they were placed in connecting rooms;
and when he went to visit Vee at her bungalow, the discreet elderly lady
who kept house for her would quietly disappear. As for the moving
picture colony, it said nothing more—having already said everything
there was to say.

Bunny would call Vee on the telephone, and if it was a Saturday or
holiday, they would make a date; but if it was a week-day, Vee would
say, “No, Bunny, you ought to stay home and study.”

He would answer, “Oh, bosh, Vee, I’m a whole week ahead of my classes.”

“But Bunny, if I make you neglect your work, your father will get down
on me!”

“Dad’s more in love with you than I am! He thinks you’re the brightest
star in the movie zodiac.”

“We just mustn’t overdo it, Bunny! Your conscience will get to troubling
you, and you’ll blame it on me.”

“Dog-gone-it, Vee, you boss me worse than if we were Annabelle and
Roscoe.”

“Well, let me tell you, if I manage to keep my oil prince as long as
Annabelle has kept hers, I’ll count myself a lucky woman!”

                                  VII

Gregor Nikolaieff was back from his trip to Alaska, with more troubles
for the conscience of a young idealist. Gregor was gaunt and
hollow-eyed, like Paul returned from Siberia. Poor unsuspecting foreign
youth—he had shipped on what the sailors call “the hell fleet of the
Pacific,” and had found himself trapped in a desolate bay, walled in by
mountains on one side and ocean on the other, housed in barracks whose
floors were wet by the tides, sleeping in vermin-ridden bunks, and
eating food like that fed to the inmates of county jails. No way of
escape, save on ships that would not take you! While Bunny had been
romping in the Pacific with Vee and the seals, Gregor had been near to
drowning himself in the same ocean.

Also Rachel Menzies had come home, with more troubles; there was a
strike of the clothing workers! Quite unforeseen and
spontaneous—hundreds of workers, driven beyond endurance by petty
oppressions, had walked out in the middle of a job; the movement had
spread all over this Angel City, paradise of the “open shop.” The
workers were crowding into the union offices and signing up, and a
regular mass-struggle was under way. But Papa Menzies, one of the
intellectuals among the strikers, a man of force and insight—Papa
Menzies was sitting at home, with his frantic Hebrew wife clinging to
his coat-tails and wailing that if he went out and took part in the
strike, the police would get him and ship him off to Poland to be shot,
and never to see his family again!

As a result of this strike, Rachel was not going to be able to come to
college. Bunny, elegant young gentleman of leisure, who had never known
what it was to need money in his life, could not understand this, and
had to be told in plain words that Rachel’s family had been making
sacrifices to get her an education, and all these plans were knocked
out. Then of course Bunny wanted to get Dad to help; what was the use of
having a rich father, if you couldn’t serve your friends in a pinch? But
Rachel answered no, they had always been independent, and she would not
think of such a thing; she would have to skip a term in the university.

“But then you won’t be in my class!” exclaimed Bunny—realizing suddenly
how much he needed an antitoxin for the dullness of Southern Pacific
culture!

“It’s very kind of you, Mr. Ross,” she answered, sedately. “But perhaps
you will come to the meetings of the Socialist local.”

“But see here, really, I can get the money without the least trouble;
and you don’t have to consider it a gift, you can pay it back when you
want to. Won’t it be easier to earn money if you have a college degree?”

Rachel admitted that; she had meant to get a position as a social
worker—she had come to this university because there were special
courses which would make such a career possible. Bunny pleaded, why not
take Dad’s money, with no strings to it whatever, and pay him back ten
or twenty dollars a month out of her future salary. But Rachel was
stubborn—some strange impulse born of her “class-consciousness.” He
felt so keenly about it that without saying anything to her, he got into
his car and drove to the home of the Menzies family. He had the address
in his notebook, and it did not occur to him that she or her family
might be embarrassed to have him see the way they lived—in a wretched
slum district, crowded into a little three-room house on the back of a
lot, without a shred of a green thing in sight. It was a rented place,
Papa Menzies having put his money into Socialism, instead of into real
estate and shrubbery. Bunny found him in a crowded front room, with
furniture and books, and a job of sewing, and the remains of a meal of
bread and herring, and the proofs of an article which he was getting
ready for a strike bulletin, and a fat old Jewish lady rushing about in
a panic, trying to put things away from the sight of this alarmingly
fashionable visitor.

None of that bothered the old man; he was used to confusion, and all
wrapped up in the strike. He told Bunny about it, and read his article,
a bitter statement of the grievances of the clothing workers. And then
Bunny got down to the question of Rachel and her education, insisting
that Chaim Menzies should persuade his daughter not to give up her
career. Mrs. Menzies sat, staring with her large dark eyes, trying to
understand; and suddenly she broke into a torrent of excited Yiddish, of
which it was just as well that Bunny could not make out a word. For
Mamma Menzies placed no trust in this handsome young goy, and put the
worst possible construction upon his visit; he was trying to lure their
daughter into sin, and maybe he had already done so—who could tell what
sort of life she was living, with all these atheist and Socialist ideas
in her head, and going to a college run by a lot of Krists!

Papa Menzies bade her sternly to hold her tongue, which according to the
Hebrew law she was supposed to do; but apparently she took her Hebrew
law with as many allowances as the Krists took theirs. In the middle of
her torrents of Yiddish, Chaim thanked Bunny for his kindness, and
explained that what was worrying Rachel was the hard time the family
would have during the strike. If Bunny would help the family, then it
would be easy for Rachel to help herself. So they shook hands, and Bunny
went home to report to Dad that he had acquired the responsibility of
supporting half a dozen Jewish clothing workers!

                                  VIII

Bunny was back at Southern Pacific. It was the line of least resistance;
a nice, clean occupation, honorific and easy on the nerves. One who was
good-looking and wealthy, and knew how to charm the professors, could
get by with almost no work at all, and have abundant time to read
Bolshevik propaganda, and watch strikes happen; also to sport about town
with a moving picture star, to drive and dine and dance with her, and
escort her to week-end parties of the Hollywood élite.

He might even have found time to visit the studio and watch her at work
on her new picture; but she would not let him do this. She was too much
in love with him, she could not concentrate with him looking on.
Moreover, she said, her work was horrid, all pictures were horrid; Bunny
wouldn’t like what she was doing. It was just a way she earned her
living, and she had to do what other people told her; it was without any
relation to life, and Bunny, who was serious and educated, would think
it childish, or worse. She liked him to be serious, he was a dear and
all that, and one of the few men who really could tell her something
about the world; he must go on being like that, and not pay any
attention to her pictures.

It struck Bunny as a little mysterious; she protested too much. And
before long he discovered the reason—in some of the gossip about the
screen world which filled pages upon pages of the newspapers. Vee Tracy
was working on a picture about Russia! She was to be a beautiful
princess of the old regime, caught in the storm of the revolution,
falling into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and making one of her famous
“get-aways” with the aid of a handsome young American secret service
man! Vee had been working on this picture for the past six months; and
right in the middle of it, she had gone and got herself a “parlor
Bolshevik” for a lover, and now was afraid to let him know what she was
doing!

Poor Bunny, he was making such earnest and devoted efforts to ride on
two horses at once! And the horses kept getting farther and farther
apart, until he was all but split in the middle! Here was this strike of
the clothing workers, breaking in upon the peace of America’s premier
“open shop” city. It was the climax of a series of disorders—first a
walk-out of the street railwaymen, and then of the carpenters; it was
evident that the program of the reds, “boring from within,” was having a
terrifying success, and the thing had to be stopped, once for all. The
city council passed an anti-picketing ordinance, which forbade anyone to
even make an ugly face in front of a place where there was a strike.
Since not all the clothing workers had faces of natural beauty, there
was much infringement of this law, and very soon the papers were full of
accounts of riots, valiantly put down by the police. A part of Bunny’s
curriculum at the university consisted of having Rachel Menzies describe
to him and the rest of the “red bunch” how girls who were doing nothing
but walking up and down the street in pairs, were being seized by the
police and having their arms twisted out of joint.

Then one morning Rachel did not show up in class; next day came a note
for Bunny telling him that Jacob Menzies had been clubbed almost
insensible on the picket-line. Jacob was the “right wing” brother, the
pale, stoop-shouldered one who had been earning his education by
pressing students’ pants; and Bunny had so far departed from the safe
rule of dodging other people’s troubles that he felt it his duty to
drive over to the Menzies’ home, and have his feelings harrowed by the
sight of Jacob Menzies in bed, pale as the sheets, and with a Hindoo
turban wound about his head. There was Mamma Menzies, with tears
streaming down her cheeks, wailing over and over one Yiddish word that
Bunny could understand—“Oi! Oi! Oi!” Chaim Menzies, the father, was
nowhere to be seen, because he had torn his coat-tails loose from his
wife’s fingers, and was over at strike headquarters, doing his duty.

The next afternoon, coming out from his classes, Bunny saw on a
newsstand the familiar green color of the “Evening Booster,” and his eye
was caught—as it was meant to be caught—by flaring headlines:

                         POLICE RAID RED CENTER

So Bunny purchased a paper—as it was meant that he should do—and read
how that morning a squad from police headquarters had invaded the rooms
of the clothing workers’ union, and taken off nearly a truck-load of
documents which were expected to prove that the disturbance in the
city’s industry was being directed and financed by the red
revolutionists of Moscow. The officials of the union were under arrest,
one of those apprehended being Chaim Menzies, “self-confessed
socialistic agitator.”

                                   IX

So there was another job for Bunny. He didn’t know quite how to set
about it, and Dad was on the way to Paradise, and could not be
consulted. Bunny went to see Dad’s lawyer, Mr. Dolliver, a keen-witted,
soft-spoken gentleman who had no sympathy with reds, but, like all
lawyers, was prepared for any weird trouble his wealthy clients might
bring along. He called up police headquarters and ascertained that the
self-confessed socialistic agitator was to be arraigned the following
day; bail would be set at that time, and it would be up to Bunny to have
the cash on hand, or real estate to twice the amount. Bunny said he
wanted to see the prisoner, and Mr. Dolliver said he knew the chief of
police, and might be able to arrange it.

He wrote a note, and Bunny went over to the dingy old building which had
been erected to serve a city of fifty thousand, and was now serving one
of a million. The chief proved to be a burly person in civilian
clothing, smelling strongly of civilian whiskey; he requested Bunny to
sit down, and summoned a couple of detectives, and began an obvious
effort to find out all that Bunny knew about Chaim Menzies, and Bunny’s
ideas, and Chaim’s ideas. And Bunny, who was growing up fast in an ugly
world, gave a carefully phrased exposition of the difference between the
right and left wings of the Socialist movement. Finding that he could
not be trapped into indiscretions, and knowing that he was a
millionaire’s son, and could not be thrown into a cell, the chief gave
him up, and told one of the detectives to take him in to see the
prisoner.

So Bunny got a glimpse of his city’s jail. The old building was cracked,
and had been condemned as a menace to life by half a dozen successive
commissions; nevertheless, here it was, a monument to the greed of real
estate speculators, who cared nothing about a city’s good name, provided
only its tax-rate were low. The mouldy old place stank, and if you
looked carefully, you might see vermin crawling on the walls. The
prisoners were confined in a number of “tanks,” which were steel-barred
cages holding thirty or forty men each, with no ray of daylight, and not
enough artificial light to enable anyone to read. This city, so oddly
named “Angel,” appeared anxious to cultivate all possible vices in its
victims, for it provided them no reading matter, and no exercise or
recreation, but permitted them to have cards, dice and cigarettes—and
the jailers secretly smuggled in whiskey and cocaine to such as had
money for bribes.

In one of these tanks sat Papa Menzies—on the floor, since there was no
other place to sit. He appeared quite contented, having gathered round
him the entire congregation of the cell, to hear about the struggle of
the clothing workers, and how it was up to the toilers of the world to
organize and abolish the capitalist system. When Bunny appeared, the old
man jumped up and grabbed him by the hand; and Bunny said quickly, “Mr.
Menzies, you should know that this gentleman with me is a detective.”

Papa Menzies grinned. “Sure, I got notting to hide. I been a member of
de Socialist party for tventy years. I believe in de ballot box—dey
vill find notting to de contrary, unless dey make it. I have been
telling dese boys vat Socialism is, and I vill tell dis gentleman, if he
vants to listen. I have been helping de cloding vorkers stand togedder
for decent conditions, and I am going on vid it de day I git out again.”
So that was that!

And in the evening Bunny phoned to his father and told him the
situation. Bunny had been accustomed to sign his father’s name to checks
of any size, and had been careful not to abuse the privilege; but now he
was proposing to draw fifteen thousand dollars, because they would
probably fix the bail very high, in the hope of keeping the old man in
jail until the strike had been broken. There was no risk involved, Bunny
declared, for Menzies was the soul of honor, and would not run away.

Dad made a wry face over the telephone—but what could he do? His dearly
beloved son was ablaze with indignation, and insisted that he knew all
about it, there was no possibility whatever that this old clothing
worker might be a secret agent of the Soviet government, deliberately
planted in Angel City to destroy American institutions. How Bunny could
know such things Dad couldn’t imagine, but he had never known his boy to
be so wrought up, and finally he said all right, but to have Mr.
Dolliver send somebody to court with the money, so that Bunny would not
get his name into the newspapers again.

                                   X

The matter was handled as Dad ordered; the lawyer’s clerk went to court,
and came back and reported that the prisoners had appeared, but Chaim
Menzies had not been among them. His case had been taken over by the
Federal authorities, because it had been discovered that he was born in
Russian Poland, and it was proposed to cancel his naturalization papers
and deport him. Chaim had been transferred to the county jail, another
condemned structure, fully as dingy and filthy as the city jail. There
was no longer anything you could do about it, because in these
deportation cases the courts were refusing to intervene, holding them to
be administrative matters. The Democratic attorney-general had failed in
his effort to get the nomination for president by his campaign against
the reds, but the machinery he had set going was still grinding out
misery for guilty and innocent alike.

So here was some real trouble for Bunny! Over at the Menzies home was
Rachel, white-faced and pacing the floor, and Mamma Menzies wailing and
tearing her clothing. It was impossible even to get word to poor
Chaim—he was “incommunicado”; indeed, he might already have been put
onto a train for the east. After that there would be no chance for him
whatever—he would be dumped onto a steamer for Dantzig, and there
turned over to the Polish “white terror.”

Bunny insisted that something must be tried, and so Mr. Dolliver called
in a couple of still more expensive lawyers—at Dad’s expense—and they
debated habeas corpuses and injunctions and other mystical formulas, and
made out a lot of papers and tried this court and that, all in vain.
Meantime, in response to frantic commands from his son, Dad broke the
speed laws from Paradise; and when he arrived, there were Bunny and his
Jewish girl-friend waiting on his front-porch. They dragged him into his
den and made him listen to a disquisition on the difference between the
right and left wings of the Socialist movement, with a complete
description of the activities of a literature agent of the Socialist
party. In the middle of it Rachel burst into tears, and sank down upon
the sofa; and Dad, who was really no more able to stand a woman weeping
than was Bunny, went over and patted her on the shoulder, and said,
“There, there, little girl, never mind! I’ll get him out, even if I have
to send a man to New York!”

So Dad stepped out and sped away in his car. That was about
lunch-time—and a little before three o’clock of that same day, who
should emerge from a taxi-cab in front of the Menzies tenement but Chaim
himself, dirty and unshaven, but smiling and serene, and ready to
continue his labors for his “cloding vorkers”! He hadn’t the least idea
how it had happened; the keepers of the county jail had volunteered no
information as they turned him loose, and Chaim had not stopped for
questions. He never did know, and neither did his daughter, for what Dad
told Bunny was strictly confidential, a bit of oil men’s secret lore.

“What did I do? I called in an old friend of ours, Ben Skutt.”

“Ben Skutt!” Bunny had not thought of their “lease-hound” for years.

“Yes, Ben is high up in this defense business now, and he did it for
me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Tell him? I told him one grand.”

“One what?”

“That’s bootlegger’s slang. I gave him five hundred dollars, and said,
‘Ben, go and see the man that’s got that old kike in jail and tell him
to turn him loose, and then come back to me and I’ll give you another
five hundred!’”

“My God!” said Bunny.

And Dad took a couple of puffs at his big cigar. “Now you see why we oil
men have to be in politics!”

                                   XI

Besides completing Bunny’s political education, this incident was
important to him in another way; it was the cause of Vee Tracy’s taking
over the management of his life. Ross senior got the moving picture lady
on the telephone that very evening, and he said, “Look here, Vee, you’re
laying down on your job!”

“How do you mean, Mr. Ross?”

“My name is Dad,” said the voice, “and what I mean is that you’re not
taking care of my son like I wanted you to do. He’s been a-gettin’ into
trouble with these Bolshevikis again, and it’s all because you don’t see
enough of him.”

“But Mr.—Dad—I’ve been trying to make him study—I thought that was
what you wanted.”

“Well, you forget about him studyin’, that’s all bunk, it ain’t a-goin’
to do him no good, and besides, he don’t do it; he jist goes off to
Socialist meetin’s, and he’d better be with you.”

“Oh, Dad!” There was a little catch in Vee’s voice. “There’s nothing I’d
like better! I’m just crazy about that boy!”

“Well, you take him under your wing and keep him there, and if you can
get him loose from these reds, I’ll remember you in my will.”

So after that Bunny found that he could have a date with his beloved at
any hour of the day or night. She never told him the reason—no, her
idea of truth-telling did not go that far! She let him think it was
because of his overwhelming charms, and his male egotism was satisfied
with the explanation. She would make feeble pretenses at resistance.
“Oh, Bunny, Dad will think I’m wasting your time, he’ll call me a vamp!”
And Bunny would answer, “You goose, he knows that if I’m not with you, I
may be off at some Socialist meeting.”

They were so happy, so happy! The rapture of fresh young souls and fresh
young bodies, eager, quivering in every nerve! Their love suffused their
whole beings; everything became touched with magic—the sound of their
voices, the gestures of their hands, even the clothing they wore, the
cars they drove, the houses they lived in. They flew together—the
telephone girls were overworked keeping them in touch. Bunny became what
in the slang of the time was known as a “one-arm driver”; also he
studied the arts of cajoling professors and cutting lectures. His
conscience was easy, for had he not done his duty by the Socialist
movement, with that “one grand” of Dad’s? Besides, the strike was over,
and the clothing workers had won a few concessions; the leaders had been
released, and the promised “Moscow revelations” forgotten by the
newspapers, and therefore by everybody else.

Vee would still not let Bunny come to the studio where she was working.
For the next picture, perhaps, but not this one; he and his Bolsheviks
wouldn’t like it, and he must put off seeing it as long as possible. But
all the rest of her time was his—every precious instant! The elderly
housekeeper received a five-dollar bill now and then, and was deaf, dumb
and blind. Vee’s room in the bungalow was upstairs, the only
second-story room, open on all four sides, and with ivy wreathing its
windows; inside it was all white, a bower of loveliness. Here they
belonged to each other; and tears of ecstasy would come into Vee’s eyes.
“Oh, Bunny, Bunny! I swore I’d never do this; and here I am, worse in
love than I ever dreamed! Bunny, if you desert me, I shall die!” He
would smother her fears in kisses; it was a case for the application of
another old saying, that actions speak louder than words!

There was no cloud in the sky of their happiness; except just one little
cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand! Bunny did not see it at all; and the
woman saw it for an instant or so, and then looked the other way. Oh,
surely the rose will bloom forever!

                                  XII

The hands of destiny, turning upon the face of the movie clock, had
brought Vee’s hour of glory again. The great picture was ready, and once
more she was on all the billboards of the city: “Schmolsky-Superba
presents Viola Tracy in the twelve-reel Superspecial, ‘The Devil’s
Deputy, Million Dollar Heart Drama of the Russian Revolution.’” The
scene which ornamented the billboards disclosed Vee, as usual with her
lingerie torn, crouching in the arms of the ineffably handsome young
American secret service agent, and the agent presenting a revolver to a
mass of tangled black whiskers, behind which hideous foreign faces
lurked.

Also there was publicity in the newspapers, columns and columns about
the picture, the authors of the book, the continuity man and the
director and the writer of the titles and the artists and the decorators
and the costumers and the musicians; but most of all about the star. Was
it to be expected that the publicity man should drop no hint to the
reporters about the fascinating young oil prince who had now become Miss
Tracy’s most intimate friend? It had been expected by Bunny, and maybe
by Dad, but assuredly not by anyone else. The reporters laid siege to
the young prince, and sweet, sentimental sob-sister ladies sought to
lure him into revealing how it felt to be the very, very dearest dear
friend of such a brilliantly scintillating star of the movie heavens.
One day it was rumored they were engaged to marry, and the next day they
were not; and if they said nothing, the reporters knew what they ought
to have said. And when Bunny would not give his picture, they snapped
him on the street, and when he turned his face away, they gave it a
jolly caption: “Oil Prince Is Shy!”

“The Devil’s Deputy” was to have its “world premiere” at Gloobry’s
Million Dollar Melanesian Theatre; and these “world premieres” are, as
you may know, the great social events of Southern California.
Searchlights search the clouds and bombs boom in the sky; red fire makes
an imitation Hades in the streets, and kleig lights make day in the
arcade which the million dollar Melanesians hold upright upon their
naked shoulders. The crowds pack the streets, and swarms of burglars
invade the city, because all the police department is required to make a
pathway for the movie stars as they move in their appointed courses,
from their shining ten thousand dollar limousines, across the sidewalk
and through the arcade and under the million dollar portals. The kleigs
glare upon them, and a dozen moving picture cameras grind, and
flashlights boom, and the crowd surges and quivers and murmurs with
ecstasy.

Never in all human history has there been such glory; never have the
eyes of mortals beheld such royal pageantry! Trappers and hunters have
perished in the icy wastes of the arctic to bring the ermines and sables
in which these queens are robed; divers have been torn by sharks to
bring up their pearls from the depths of tropic seas, and miners have
been crushed in the deep earth to dig their blazing diamonds; chemists
have blown themselves up in search for their cosmetics and dyes, and
seamstresses have grown blind embroidering the elaborate designs which
twinkle upon their silken ankles. All this concentrated in one brief
glory-march—do you wonder that heads are high and glances regal? Or
that the crowd surges, and rushes wildly, and women faint, and
ambulances come clanging?

Inside the theatre, over the head of one of the million dollar
Melanesians, is a huge megaphone; and as the great ones descend from
their cars, a giant’s voice acquaints the audience with their progress.
“Mr. Abraham Schmolsky is coming through the arcade. Mr. Schmolsky is
accompanied by Mrs. Schmolsky. Mrs. Schmolsky wears a blue satin opera
cloak trimmed with chinchilla, made by Voisin, just brought by Mrs.
Schmolsky from Paris. Mrs. Schmolsky wears her famous tiara of diamonds.
Mr. and Mrs. Schmolsky are now entering the theatre. Mr. and Mrs.
Schmolsky have stopped to talk with Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Gloobry.”

And so on and on, thrill after thrill—until at last, exactly at the
sacred hour of eight-thirty, the supreme, the superthrill of the
evening:

“Miss Viola Tracy is descending from her car. Miss Tracy is accompanied
by her friend, Mr. J. Arnold Ross, junior, discoverer and heir-apparent
of the Ross Junior oil field, of Paradise, California. Miss Tracy and
Mr. Ross are coming through the arcade. Miss Tracy wears a cloak of
gorgeous ermine furs; her slippers are of white satin, trimmed with
pearls. She wears a collar of pearls and a pearl head-dress, presented
to her by Mr. J. Arnold Ross, senior. Miss Tracy and Mr. Ross junior are
in the lobby, shaking hands with Mr. and Mrs. Schmolsky and Mr. and Mrs.
Gloobry”—and so on, until Miss Tracy and Mr. Ross junior are in their
seats, and history is at liberty to begin.

                                  XIII

So Bunny saw the Russian picture. His beloved was the beautiful bride of
a grand duke; the gestures, the kisses, the raptures of love, which had
been rehearsed upon himself, were now lavished upon a magnificent,
sharp-whiskered personage in a military uniform with many stars and
orders. This personage was haughty but high-minded, and his grand
duchess was the soul of charity; and oh, such lovely gentle peasants as
she had to exercise her charity upon! How sweetly they curtsied, how
charmingly they danced, and gathered to cheer and throw flowers after
the grand ducal carriage! It was a beautiful, almost idyllic world—one
was tempted really to doubt whether any world so perfect ever had
existed on earth.

There was only one thing wrong with it, and that was a secret band of
villains with twisted, degenerate faces, some of them with wild hair and
big spectacles, others with ferocious black whiskers and knives in their
boots. They met to concoct anarchist manifestoes, intended to seduce the
sweet innocent peasants; and to make dynamite bombs to blow up
noble-minded grand dukes. They drank in booze-dens, and grabbed women by
the arms and man-handled them, right out before one another. There was
no wickedness these creatures did not do, and their leader, with the
face of a rat and the arms of a gorilla, made evident to the dullest
mind why the picture was called “The Devil’s Deputy.”

Then came the young secret service man, clean-cut, smooth-shaven, quick
on the trigger. His job was to get messages from the American embassy to
the American fleet, and later on to save the treasure of the embassy
from the Bolsheviks. For of course you know what happened in Russia—how
this band of villains with twisted faces rose up and overthrew the
government, and killed the haughty but just grand duke with cruel
tortures. It was, of course, the grand duchess that the Devil’s Deputy
especially wanted; and first he chased her about the castle, and
battered in the doors, and the young secret service hero dashed with her
from room to room. Blood ran down his face from a bullet wound, but he
carried her out of a window of the castle, and away they flew on
horseback, over hills and dales covered with the familiar Russian
eucalyptus trees.

And then presently they were trapped in St. Petersburg, and the Devil’s
Deputy laid his foul hands on Vee, and tore her lingerie to shreds, as
the billboards had promised you he would. But here came the hero with
his automatic, and he held the mob at bay, while Vee behind her back
made signals to a friend of the hero who was preparing one of the
villains’ own bombs to throw at them—could you imagine more poetic
justice than that? Vee and her savior fled, this time in a motor-car,
over roads of the well-known Russian concrete, through the well-known
mountains of the suburbs of St. Petersburg, and came to the River Neva,
with its eucalyptus groves concealing a speed-boat. There was another
mad chase, which ended in the capture of the agonized pair, and more
tearing of Vee’s lingerie by the Devil’s Deputy.

But—don’t be worried—at the most critical instant came the American
Navy, that whole glorious flotilla which we kept in the River Neva
during the war. Old Glory floated in the breeze, and the band played
“The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the million dollar audience burst
into enraptured cheering. A launch from a battleship came dashing up,
the Devil’s Deputy leaped into the water with one of his own bombs in
his mouth, and Viola Tracy and the secret service man stood clasped in
an attitude which was familiar to Bunny, and hardly less so to the
million dollar audience.

All the time this story was unfolding, Bunny was privileged to sit and
hold the heroine’s hand. Once she leaned to him and whispered, “Is it so
very bad?” His answer was, “It is up to standard. It will sell.” It was
the formula she had used with Annabelle Ames; and Bunny felt a tight
pressure of his hand. It was clever of him, as well as kind!

                                  XIV

The screen was dark, and the cheering died away, and the lights came up,
and the moving picture world crowded about Vee Tracy, and Mr. Schmolsky,
the producer, and Tommy Paley, the director, and all the rest of the
personages whose services had been faithfully catalogued on the film.
There was hand-shaking and chatter; and meantime the crowds stood about,
gaping at the celebrities—it was hard to get the theatre empty after a
“world premiere.” The throngs in the lobby, and outside in the arcade,
were still held back by the police—many had stood for three hours, in
order to see their favorites emerge.

Vee and her lover went out among the last, greeting this one, greeting
that one, the observed of all observers. Bunny saw many he knew, and
among them one face he had not expected—Rachel Menzies! She saw him,
and he saw that she saw him; and straightway it became a point of honor
with a young idealist, he must not fail to treat her as well as anybody
else. Rachel, a poor working-girl, and class-conscious, pitiful in a
dingy, worn coat and a faded, out-of-fashion hat—Rachel must not think
that he would slight her in this expensive company! He went straight to
her. “How do you do, Miss Menzies? I didn’t know you were a movie fan.”

“I’m not,” she answered. “But I wanted to see what they would do to the
Russian revolution.”

“There wasn’t much in it for us,” said Bunny; and she answered, grimly,
“No, there was not.”

He would have liked to talk with her, but not in this place. “Can I help
you out?” he asked; and turned as if to seek a way through the crowd.

But at that moment came Vee! With all the throngs of the great ones
about her, with all the praise they poured upon her, there was one thing
she really cared about, and that was Bunny—she did not want to be
separated from him! And straightway, of course, the honor of a young
idealist was still more deeply involved. He must not be unwilling to
introduce his dingy working-girl friend to the gorgeous lady of the
ermines and pearls! “Meet Miss Viola Tracy,” he said. “Vee, this is Miss
Rachel Menzies, a class-mate of mine at the university.”

Equally, it was a point of honor with Vee to be cordial. “Oh, how do you
do, Miss Menzies?” And she held out her hand. Rachel did not move to
take the hand, but stood very stiff and straight, and answered, “How do
you do, Miss Tracy.” To Bunny, who knew her, the voice sounded strange
and dead; but of course Vee had no means of knowing what her voice ought
to be, and the withheld hand might easily be shyness at meeting the most
important person in all Hollywood that night. Vee was still cordial as
she inquired, “And how did you like the picture?”

Bunny heard that question—more dangerous than any bomb ever made by a
Devil’s Deputy! He groped in his bewildered mind for something to
say—“Miss Menzies is a Socialist, like me”—anything of that playful
sort; but before he could get his tongue to move, Rachel had answered,
swift and deadly, “I think it’s the most poisonous thing I ever saw on
the screen.”

There was no mistaking that for shyness, or anything else. And Viola
Tracy stared at this amazing creature. “Oh, indeed, Miss!”

“Yes, and people who helped to make it will someday have on their
conscience the blood of millions of young men.”

Bunny broke in, “You see, Vee—”

But she put out her hand to stop him. “Wait! I want to know what you
mean!”

“I mean that this picture is part of the propaganda to get us into a war
with Russia, and a woman that lends herself to such work is a disgrace
to her sex.”

Vee glared, and fury leaped into her face. “You bitch!” she cried, and
her hand shot out, and smack! she landed a blow across Rachel’s cheek.

For one horrible moment Bunny stood numb; he saw the red start to
Rachel’s face, and the tears start to her eyes; then he sprang between
them, and caught Vee’s hand to stop another blow. “No, Vee, no!” A burly
policeman completed the job of blocking the way between the two
antagonists, and Rachel faded back into the crowd—something it was easy
enough to do, since everybody was pushing to the front. In the confusion
Bunny became aware of one hideous thing—a young man jabbing at them and
demanding, “What is it? What is the matter? What happened, Miss Tracy?
What was the trouble, officer?” Bunny whispered into Vee’s ear, “Quick!
It’s a reporter!” He grasped her arm, and they fled through the crowd.

                                   XV

Sitting in their car, with Bunny driving, Vee whispered, “Who is that
woman?”

“Her family are Jewish clothing workers. Her father’s the man who got
arrested—don’t you remember I told you?”

“Oh! That girl!”

“Yes. You see, you stepped on her class-consciousness.”

Vee’s teeth were clenched. “Oh, the odious creature!”

“But Vee! Don’t forget you asked her what she thought.”

“Oh, so insolent! Outrageous!”

“But dear, you take the liberty of saying what you think. Don’t you
grant her the same right?”

“Bunny! You are going to defend her!” And before he could reply, she
cried, in a voice of fury, “I hate those people, I hate them! They’re
nasty, they’re low, they’re jealous—they haven’t an idea but to take
away things from people who’ve slaved to earn them.”

There was a long silence. Bunny drove; and when Vee spoke again, it was
to ask, “Where are you going?”

“Don’t forget the Schmolsky’s supper-party.”

“No, I won’t go to any supper-party, it would choke me. Take me
home—right away.”

He obeyed; and when she was in the bungalow, she fled to her room. He
followed, and found the ermine cloak on the floor, and Vee in a heap on
the bed, without regard to the costliest of embroidered silk gowns. She
was convulsed with sobbing, and he made out the words, “It’s going to
ruin us!”

Suddenly she sat up, blinded by her tears, and stretched out her arms.
“Oh, Bunny, Bunny, don’t let’s have our love killed! Don’t let’s quarrel
like all the others! Bunny, I don’t care about those people, they can
say anything they please to me, I’ll never mind again! I’ll apologize to
that girl, I’ll let her walk on me, I’ll do anything you say! But oh,
please don’t let’s stop loving each other!”

It was the first time he had ever seen Vee break down; and of course it
always produces a great impression upon the protective male. He took her
in his arms, tears and all, without regard to the costliest of
broadcloth evening suits. Their love flamed up, and their troubles were
melted in the fire, and they swore that nothing, nothing should ever,
ever tear them apart.

Long afterwards, as they lay in each other’s arms, Vee whispered,
“Bunny, that girl is in love with you!”

“Oh, absurd, Vee!”

“Why do you say so?”

“She’s never given the least sign of such a thing.”

“How would you know a sign?”

“But dear—”

“Of course she’s in love with you! How could anybody fail to be in love
with you, Bunny?”

It was not worth while to try to argue. It appeared to be a peculiarity
of women, they were always sure that all other women were in love with
their man. When he had told Vee about Henrietta Ashleigh, she had been
sure that Henrietta was desperately enamored, and that only her pride of
caste had kept her from trying to hold him. Likewise, when he told her
about Ruth, she was sure this poor country lass was pining her heart
out. That was the reason she was so indifferent to the charms of oil
workers, and not because she was wrapped up in Paul. Sisters didn’t make
so much fuss over brothers—no, that was rubbish! Bunny remembered that
Bertie said this same thing; and strangely enough, Eunice Hoyt had said
it also—it had been one reason why she hated to have him go up to
Paradise. Bunny decided that it was better not to tell women about one
another; and especially not to introduce them, if it could possibly be
avoided!

Morning came, and the newspapers were outside the door of their room.
Sitting up in bed in silken garments they devoured—no, not the
elaborate accounts of the world premiere with details of the gowns worn
by the women—that would come later. First, their eyes leaped to the
headline:

                       STAR SLAPS RIVAL IN LOBBY

There it was! The reporter, having been unable to get the real story,
had made the inevitable romantic assumption. Another triangle of the
screen world! He had written a highly playful article about the
world-famous star, emerging in the hour of her glory upon the arm of the
young oil prince—about whom so many interesting rumors were being
circulated. Seeing him leave her side and join some other woman, the
star had rushed over in a fit of jealous fury and smacked the other
woman in the face. There was an interview with Officer Tony Reber of the
Angel City police department, who had stepped between the infuriated
combatants. The star had called her rival an awful name, which the
officer’s modesty would not permit him to repeat. “But I’ll say this,”
he told the world, “She certainly packs an awful punch, that lady. If I
was to hit anybody as hard as that I would sure get canned.”

                                  XVI

Bunny met the other combatant on the campus that same day, and her face
was pale and her dark eyes sombre. “Mr. Ross,” she began, quickly, “I
want to tell you I’m ashamed for what I said.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed,” he replied. “It was true.”

“I know, but I had no right to say it to a friend of yours, and after
all you have done for me. It was just that I was so wrought up over that
picture.”

“I understand,” Bunny said. “Miss Tracy wishes me to tell you she is
truly sorry for what she did.”

“I know, you’d make her sorry. But I don’t care about that—we Jews have
been struck many times, and we workers also, and there’ll be more of it
before the class war is over. The real harm is one she can never atone
for—that hideous picture that’s going out to poison the people’s
minds—millions upon millions of them. For that she can never
apologize.”

It was an aspect of the matter that had somehow fallen into the
background of Bunny’s consciousness during all the excitement. “I’ve
nothing good to say about the picture,” he replied, “but I think you
must make allowances for Miss Tracy. She doesn’t know as much about
Russia as you and I.”

“You mean she doesn’t know there were hideous cruelties in old
Russia—that the Tsardom was another word for terror?”

“Yes, but then—”

“She doesn’t know that the men she portrays as criminals have most of
them been in the dungeons of the Tsar for the sake of their faith?”

“She may not know that, Miss Menzies. It’s hard to realize how ignorant
people can be, when they read nothing but American newspapers and
magazines.”

“Well, Mr. Ross, you know that I’m not a Bolshevik; but we have to
defend the workers of Russia from world reaction. That picture is a part
of the white terror, and the people that made it knew exactly what they
were doing—just as much as when they beat my brother over the head and
started to deport my father.”

“Yes,” said Bunny, “but you must understand, an actress does not write
the story, and she’s not always consulted about the parts she plays.”

“Ah, Mr. Ross!” Rachel’s face wore a pitying smile. “She would tell you
that, and you’re so anxious to believe the best about people! Well, I’m
going to tell you what I think, and maybe you won’t ever speak to me
again. A woman who makes a picture like that is nothing but a
prostitute, and the fact that she’s highly paid makes her all the more
loathsome.”

“Oh, Miss Menzies!”

“I know, it sounds cruel. But that’s a murder picture, and that woman
knew it perfectly well. They paid her money and jewels and fur cloaks
and silk lingerie, and her face on the billboards and in all the
newspapers; and she took the price—as she’s done many times before. I
don’t know one thing about her private life, Mr. Ross, but I’ll wager
that if you investigate, you’ll find she’s sold herself, body as well as
mind, all the way from the bottom up to the pedestal she’s on now!”

And so Bunny decided that he had better postpone for a while the plan he
had had in mind, of having Vee Tracy and Rachel Menzies meet and
understand each other!




                               CHAPTER XV
                              THE VACATION


                                   I

All this summer and fall, Dad and Mr. Roscoe had been carrying a heavy
burden—they were helping to make over the thinking of the American
people. A presidential campaign was under way; and the oil men, having
made so bold as to select the candidate, now had to finish the job by
persuading the voters that he was a great and noble-minded statesman.
Also they had to pay a part of the expense, which would come to fifty
million dollars, so Bunny learned from the conversations at Paradise and
at the Monastery. This was several times as much as would get recorded,
since the money went through local and unofficial agencies. It came from
the big protected interests, the corporations, the banks—everyone that
had anything to get out of the government, or could be squeezed by
politicians; the process was known as “frying out the fat.” The oil men,
having grabbed the big prize, were naturally a shining mark for all
campaign committees, county, state and national. Dad and Mr. Roscoe
received visits from Jake Coffey, and from the bosses of the state
machine, and listened to hair-raising stories about the dangers of the
situation.

It was necessary to persuade the American people that the Democratic
administration for the past eight years had been wasteful and corrupt,
ignorant and fatuous—and that was easy enough. But also it was
necessary to persuade them that an administration by Senator Harding was
likely to be better—and that was not so easy. Naturally, the chairmen
of campaign committees wanted to make it appear as difficult as
possible, for the more money that passed through their hands, the larger
the amount that would stick. As the campaign drew to its close, Bunny
had the satisfaction of hearing his father swearing outrageously, and
wishing he had taken his son’s advice and left the destinies of his
country to the soap manufacturer who had put up the millions for General
Wood!

The Senator from Ohio was a large and stately and solemn-faced person,
and conducted what was called by the newspapers a “front-porch
campaign.” That is to say, he did not put himself out to travel on
trains and meet people, but received deputations of the Hay and Feed
Dealers of Duluth, or the Morticians of Ossawotomie. They would sit in
camp-chairs upon his lawn, and the statesman would appear and read an
imposing discourse, which had been written by a secretary of Vernon
Roscoe’s selection, and given out to all the press associations the day
before, so that it could be distributed over the wires and published
simultaneously on fifty million front pages. That is a colossal
propaganda machine, and the men who run it have to lose a lot of sleep.
But the majestic candidate lost no sleep, he was always fresh and serene
and impassive; he had been that way throughout his career, for the able
business men who groomed him and paid his way had never failed to tell
him what to do.

Bunny now dwelt upon an Olympian height, looking down as a god upon the
affairs of pitiful mortals. Dad and Mr. Roscoe let him hear
everything—being sure that common sense would win in the end, and he
would accept their point of view. They had a philosophy which protected
them like a suit of chain-mail against all hesitations and doubts. The
affairs of the country had to be run by the men who had the money and
brains and experience; and since the mass of the people had not sense
enough to grant the power freely, the mass of the people had to be
bamboozled. “Slogans” must be invented, and hammered into their heads,
by millions, yes, billions of repetitions. It was an art, and experts
knew how to do it, and you paid them—but by Jees, the price made you
sweat blood!

The tremendous campaign came to an end, and it was revealed that
16,140,585 Americans had been successfully bamboozled. Senator Harding
had seven million more votes than the Democratic candidate, the greatest
plurality ever polled in American history. So there were shouting mobs
on the streets, and in the expensive restaurants and clubs where the
rich celebrated, everybody got hilariously drunk. Yes, even Vernon
Roscoe got drunk, because Annabelle was too drunk to stop him; Vee Tracy
defied her doctor, and Dad forgot his resolutions, and even Bunny drank
enough to make him fear for his idealism. Man is a gregarious animal,
and it is hard not to do what everybody you know is doing!

                                   II

Christmas had come, and the quail were calling from the hills at
Paradise. There were not so many on the tract, but there was plenty of
adjacent land over which an oil prince and his royal sire were welcome
to shoot. And once you were out of sight of the derricks, and out of
smell of the refinery, it was the same beautiful country, with the same
clear sky and golden sunsets, and you could get the poisons of bootleg
liquor out of your blood, and the embarrassing memories out of your
soul. Tramping these rocky hills, drawing this magical air into your
lungs, it was impossible to think that men would not some day learn to
be happy!

This visit corresponded with a great historic event, which put Paradise
upon the map of California. Eli Watkins, prophet of the Lord, had
completed the payments for the land upon which his tabernacle in Angel
City was to stand, and he celebrated this event by coming back to the
scenes of his boyhood, the little frame temple where the Third
Revelation had been handed down to mankind, and there holding a novel
and interesting performance of his own invention, known as a “Bible
Marathon.” You see, Eli had read in the papers about Marathon races, and
though he didn’t know what the word meant, it was romantic-sounding, and
he had a fondness for strange words. So the disciples of the First
Apostolic Church of Paradise announced that a “Bible Marathon” consisted
in reading the Lord’s Holy Word straight through without a single pause;
they would be told off in relays, and day and night there would be a
little group in the church, and one voice after another would take up
the sacred task, regardless of oil wells “on the pump” just outside the
door.

This was Big Magic. Not only did it thrill the believers, and bring
swarms of people to town, but it caught the fancy of the newspapers, and
they rushed reporters to write up the event. Many new miracles were
wrought, and many crutches hung up; and in the midst of the excitement
the Lord vouchsafed a fresh sign of His mercy—Eli, preaching to the
throngs outside, announced in the Lord’s name that if the reading were
completed, Divine Omnipotence would cause the rest of the money to be
offered, and the Angel City tabernacle would be erected within a year.
After that, of course, nothing could stop the “Marathon,” and the
epoch-making feat was accomplished in the time of four days, five hours,
seventeen minutes, and forty-two and three-quarter seconds—glory
hallelujah, praise the Lord!

Bunny saw the shouting thousands with their heads bared, their faces
uplifted and a searchlight playing upon them; for Eli had money now, and
used it for spectacular effects. His “silver band” was mounted upon a
platform with electric lights shining upon the instruments; and the
prophet would exhort, and then wave his hand, and the musicians would
blare forth an old gospel tune, and the crowd would burst into a mighty
chorus, and sway and stamp, their souls transported to glory, the tears
running down their cheeks.

There were many wives of oil workers among the audience, and these would
plead and pray, and persuade their husbands to attend. There is not much
for a man to do out in a lonely place like Paradise; a third-rate movie
was the only form of amusement—and here were the bright lights and the
silver trumpets and the heavenly raptures, all free—and with a
gambler’s chance of heaven thrown in! No wonder many of the men “fell
for it”; and Paul and his little bunch of rebels insisted that the
employers had hired Eli to come there at this critical time, while the
struggle to save the union was impending. Bunny would have thought the
idea exaggerated—but then he remembered that five hundred dollars his
father had given to Eli! Also, he remembered a remark of Vernon Roscoe
at the Monastery—“They can have their pie in the sky, so long as they
let me have the oil.” Annabelle had given a frightened exclamation,
“Hush, Verne! What a horrid thing to say!” For Annabelle knew that the
heavenly powers are jealous, and liable to cruel whims.

The “wobblies” also were trying to stir the revival spirit in their
members, and use the power of song. But feeble indeed was the singing in
the “jungles,” compared with the mighty blast of Eli’s silver trumpets,
and the hosannas of his hosts. The operators were not subsidizing the
“wobblies,” you bet! They had sent their sheriff, and a score of
deputies, carrying shot-guns loaded with buckshot, and raided the
camping place of the rebels, and loaded eleven of them into a
motor-truck and locked them up in the county jail. There they were now,
and Bunny had to hear the tragic tale of Eddie Piatt, one of Paul’s
friends, who had gone down to San Elido to find out what the bail was,
and had been locked up on suspicion of being a member of the outlaw
organization. He wasn’t, but how could he prove it?

Ruth, who told Bunny about it, wanted to know if Dad wouldn’t put up the
money to bail him out. Did Bunny remember him, a dark-haired young
fellow, very quiet, determined-looking? Yes, Bunny remembered him. Well,
he was as trust-worthy as a Jewish garment worker, and the food they
gave you in that terrible place was full of worms, and the boys hadn’t
even a blanket to cover them. It was planned to railroad them all to San
Quentin, and Paul knew one of the “politicals” who had just come out of
there, and oh, the most horrible stories—the tears came into Ruth’s
eyes as she told how they put the men to work in the jute-mill, and the
brown stuff filled their lungs, and presently they were coughing, it was
the same as a death-sentence. When they could not stand the labor, they
were beaten and thrown into the “hole”—and think of fellows that you
knew and cared for having to go through such things!

Bunny knew the sheriff of San Elido County, and also the district
attorney, and knew that Dad had named these officials, and could give
them orders. But would Dad butt in on their efforts to protect the oil
companies? Would he go against the wishes of all the other directors,
executives and superintendents of Ross Consolidated? No, assuredly he
would not! All that Bunny could do was to give Ruth a couple of hundred
dollars, with which to get food for the prisoners. He went back to take
up his work at the university; and inside himself there was a “hole,”
and his conscience would drag him to it, protesting and resisting in
vain, and throw him in, and shut a steel door behind him with a
terrifying clang. Yes, even when Bunny was up in the snow-white room
with the ivy vines wreathing the window, even while he held in his arms
the eager body of his beloved—even then the prison door would clang,
and he would be in a tank of the county jail with the “class-war
prisoners”!

                                  III

Under the arrangements which had kept peace in the oil industry during
the war, a government “oil board” would listen to grievances of the
workers, and decide what was fair. But now the war was fading in men’s
memories, and the operators were restive under this “outside” control.
Was it not the fundamental right of every American to run his own
business in his own way? Was it not obvious that war-time wages had been
high, and that “deflation” was desirable? Here and there some operator
would refuse to obey the orders of the “oil board”; there would be long
arguments, and resorts to the courts, and meantime the workers would be
protesting, and threatening, and everyone could see that a crisis was at
hand.

In the old days, J. Arnold Ross had been one of the little fellows, and
all that Bunny could do was to await events. But now he dwelt among the
Olympians, and saw the fates in the making. The Petroleum Operators’
Federation, by its executive committee, of which Vernon Roscoe was a
member, came to a decision to brush the Federal Oil Board aside, ignore
the unions, and announce a new schedule of wages for the industry. A
copy of this schedule was in Dad’s hands, and it averaged about 10
percent under the present scale.

It was going to mean a bitter struggle, and Bunny was so much concerned
that, without saying anything to his father, he made an appeal to Mr.
Roscoe. This being a business matter, the proprieties suggested a visit
to the office, so Bunny called up the secretary and asked for an
appointment in the regular way.

The great man sat at his flat mahogany desk, as clear of papers as the
prevailing superstition required. It appeared as if a captain of
industry had not a thing to do but grin at a college boy, and gossip
about the boy’s mistress and his own. But then Bunny remarked, “Mr.
Roscoe, I came to see you here because I want to talk to you about the
new wage-scale.” And in a flash the smile went off the magnate’s face,
and it seemed as if even the fat went off his jaws; if you have thought
of him as a mixture of geniality and buffoonery, this is the time for
you to set yourself straight, along with Bunny, and all other rebels
against the American system.

Bunny started to tell about the way the men felt, and the trouble that
was brewing; but Mr. Roscoe stopped him. “Listen here, Jim Junior, and
save a lot of breath. I know everything the men are saying, and
everything that Bolshevik bunch up there is teaching them. I get a
confidential report every week. I know about your friend, Tom Axton, and
your Paul Watkins, and your Eddie Piatt, and your Bud Stoner and your
Jick Duggan—I could tell you all you know, and a lot that would
surprise you.”

Bunny was taken aback, as the other had intended. “Jim Junior,” he
continued, “you’re a bright boy, and you’ll get over this nonsense, and
I want to help you over it—I might save you a lot of suffering, and
also your father, that’s the salt of the earth. I’ve been in this world
thirty or forty years longer than you, and I’ve learned a lot that you
don’t know, but some day you will. Your father and the rest of us that
are running the oil industry, we got here because we know how, and
that’s a real thing, by Jees, and not just a lot of words. But some
other fellers want to kick us out, and think all they got to do is to
make speeches to oil workers and set them to raising hell—but let me
tell you, kiddo, it’s going to take a lot more than that!”

“Yes, Mr. Roscoe, but that’s not the point—”

“Pardon me, but it is. Let’s cut out the hokum—just say to yourself
that I’ve been sitting in at the arguments of that Bolshevik bunch of
yours. Do they mean to take the industry away from me and your old man,
or don’t they?”

“Well, they may think that ultimately—”

“Yes, exactly. And so far as I’m concerned, the time to stop the
ultimately is now. And I tell you that if any sons-of-bitches imagine
they’re going to live off my wages while they’re getting ready to rob
me, they’re mistaken; and if they find themselves in the jute-mill at
San Quentin, they’re not going to get my money to bail them out!”

That was a centre shot, and Vernon Roscoe was looking Bunny straight in
the eye. “Jim, Junior, I know all the fine idealistic phrases them
fellers use on you. It’s all lovely and sweet and for the good of
humanity—but they know that’s all bait for suckers, and if you could
hear them laughing at you behind your back, you’d realize how you’re
being used. What I tell you is, you better get on your own side of the
fence before the shooting begins.”

“Is there going to be shooting, Mr. Roscoe?”

“That’s up to your Bolshevik friends. We’ve got what we want, and
they’re going to take it away from us.”

“We needed the oil workers during the war, Mr. Roscoe, and we made them
promises—”

“Pardon me, kiddo—we didn’t make any promises at all! A god-damn
long-faced snivelling college professor made them for us, and we’re done
with that bunk for good! We’ve got a business man for president, and
we’re going to run this country on business lines. And let me tell you
for one, I’m god-damn sick of having to buy labor leaders, and I can
think of cheaper ways to manage it.”

Bunny was startled. “Is that really true, Mr. Roscoe? Have you been able
to buy the oil workers’ officials?”

Verne hitched himself a few inches across the desk, and stuck a large
finger at Bunny’s face. “Kiddo,” he said, “get this straight: I can buy
any officials, just the same as I can buy any politicians, or anybody
else that a bunch of boobs can elect to office. And I know what you’re
thinking—here’s an old cow-puncher, without any fine ideals, and he’s
got a barrel o’ money and thinks he can do anything he pleases with it.
But that ain’t the point, my boy—it’s because I had the brains to make
the money, and I got the brains to use it. Money ain’t power till it’s
used, and the reason I can buy power is because men know I can use
it—or else, by Jees, they wouldn’t sell it to me. You get that?”

“Yes, but what are you going to do with the power, Mr. Roscoe?”

“I’m going to find oil and bring it to the top of the ground and refine
it and sell it to whoever’s got the price. So long as the world needs
oil, that’s my job; and when they can get along without oil, I’ll do
something else. And if anybody wants a share in that job, let him do
like I done, get out and sweat, and work, and play the game.”

“But Mr. Roscoe, that’s hardly practical advice for all the workers.
Everybody can’t be an operator.”

“No, kiddo, you bet your boots they can’t—only them that’s got the
brains. The rest have to work; and if they work for me, they’ll get fair
wages, and the money will be there every Saturday night for them, no
matter how much worrying and planning I got to do. But when some feller
comes along with the gift of the gab, and sticks himself in between me
and my men, and says I can’t deal with them except by paying him a
rake-off, why then I say, ‘The jute-mill for him!’”

                                   IV

The thing that Bunny carried away from this interview was Vernon
Roscoe’s final appeal. “Can’t you see, boy, that your father’s a sick
man? You’re not going to have him with you many years more, and some day
when it’s too late you’re going to wake up and realize what you done to
him. That old man ain’t had a thought in the world but to make things
easier for you; you can say he shouldn’t if you want to, but all the
same, that’s what he lived for. And now—now you’re spittin’ on his
life! Yes, just that, and you might as well face it. Everything he’s
done has been no good, it’s all crooked and dirty, and the only people
with any ideals or any rights on their side are a bunch of
ne’er-do-wells that hate him because he’s made good and they never will.
And if you think the old man don’t feel that, if you don’t know it’s
eating his heart out—well, you take it from me, and get your eyes open
before it’s too late. If you got to despise your father’s money, for
Christ’s sake wait till he’s dead, and the money’s your own.”

So when Bunny went out from the office, he was not thinking about the
troubles of the oil workers. Was it true that Dad’s health was so bad?
And wasn’t there some way he could be got to stop working so hard? Was
it necessary for him to be on hand and see every new well that Ross
Consolidated brought in, whether it was at Lobos River or Paradise or
Beach City? And what was going to happen to Dad when this labor struggle
actually came to a head?

Early in the spring the union leaders held a conference, and served
notice on the oil board that the defiance of government authority by the
operators was beyond endurance; either the board must assert its
authority, or else the workers would take matters into their own hands.
The board did nothing; and when the union officials addressed letters to
the operators’ committee, the letters were ignored. A strike was
inevitable; and the longer it was postponed, the worse for the men.

Then a peculiar thing happened. Vee Tracy came to Bunny; she had just
completed another picture—no propaganda this time, no, she had laid
down the law to Schmolsky, she would never again have anything to do
with Russia, or with strikes, or anything that might wound the
sensibilities of her oil prince. This time the billboards announced
Viola Tracy in “An Eight Reel Comedy of College Capers, entitled
‘Come-hither Eyes.’” Vee was glorious as the flirt of the campus,
breaking hearts of football stars by the eleven at a time, and
incidentally foiling the plot of a band of bookmakers, who had bet a
million dollars on the outcome of the big game, and sought to paralyze
the team by kidnapping its mascot and darling. Bunny having no sympathy
with either bookmakers or kidnappers, it had been all right for him to
watch this picture in the making, and supply local color out of his
experience with college capers.

The “world premiere” of “Come-hither Eyes” was to take place in New
York, and the star had to attend. “Bunny,” she said, “why not come with
me, and have a little fun?”

Now Bunny had never been east, and the idea was tempting. He had two
weeks’ Easter vacation, and if he missed a bit of college, it could be
made up. He said he would think it over; and later in the day—this was
at the Monastery—Annabelle opened up on him, “Why don’t you go with
Vee, and take Dad along? The change would be the very thing for him.”

He studied her ingenuous countenance, and a grin came over his own.
“What’s this, Annabelle—you and Verne trying to get us out of the way
of the strike?”

She answered, “If your friends really care for you, they’ll wish you to
be happy.” And when he said something about it’s being cowardly to run
away, she made a striking reply. “We’re going to have roast spring lamb
for dinner, but you didn’t consider it necessary to visit the
slaughter-house.”

“Annabelle,” he replied, “you are a social philosopher.” And she told
him that people went to universities to learn long names for plain
common sense!

Evidently the plot was deeply laid; for when Bunny got back home, there
was Dad, inquiring, “Did Verne say anything about what he wants me to
do?”

“No, Dad, what’s that?”

“There’s a conference in New York that somebody’s got to attend, and he
wanted to know if I could get away. I was wondering if it would break
you up at the university if you were to take a bit of vacation.”

Bunny debated with himself. What could be accomplished by staying? In
the first strike, he had managed to keep the workers in their homes, but
he couldn’t do even that much now, for Verne would be in charge, and
would not budge an inch. Annabelle’s simile of the spring lamb appeared
to fit exactly the position of the oil workers’ union. The job of
slaughtering might take weeks, or even months, but it would be done—and
all that Bunny could do would be to torment his poor father.

And then Bertie was called into the conspiracy. Bertie wanted him to go.
She was to visit the fashionable Woodbridge Riley’s, and after that to
be on Thelma Norman’s yacht, and she didn’t want her brother getting
mixed up in an oil strike and perhaps making another stink in the
newspapers! Wouldn’t he think about Dad for once, and get the old man to
take a rest? Bunny was tired of arguing, and said, all right.

                                   V

The proposed trip brought up a curious problem. How did one travel with
one’s mistress, in this “land of the pilgrim’s pride?” Bunny remembered
vaguely having heard of people being put out of hotels, because of the
lack of marriage certificates. Would he and Vee have to meet
clandestinely? He asked her about it, assuming that her experience would
cover the question; and it did. On the trains one took a compartment,
and no questions were asked. As for hotels, you went to the most
fashionable, and let them know who you were, and they made no objection
to putting you in adjoining suites, with a connecting door. Look at
Verne and Annabelle, said Vee; when it suited their convenience they
stayed quite openly at the most high-toned of Angel City’s hotels, and
there was never a peep from either the management or the newspapers. It
had happened more than once that Mrs. Roscoe had been stopping at the
same hotel, and the papers would report her doings on the society page,
and Annabelle’s on the dramatic page, so there was never any clash.

In truth the land of the pilgrim’s pride no longer existed; in its place
was the land of the millionaire’s glory. When a moving picture star went
east, with or without a paramour, she always left by daylight, and her
publicity man saw to it that the newspapers published the time and
place. There would be shouting thousands, and policemen to hold them
back, and cameras clicking, and armfuls of flowers to let everybody on
the train know who was who. There would be crowds at every station,
calling for a glimpse of their darling; and if she had an oil prince
travelling in the same compartment, that was not a scandal, it was a
romance.

And when they got to New York, there was another crowd, conjured into
being by the efficient publicity machine of Schmolsky-Superba. At the
hotel there were people waiting, and more armfuls of flowers, and a
dozen reporters demanding interviews. And with all that free advertising
for the hotel, was any officious clerk or house detective going to
concern himself with the question of whether or not the connecting door
between two suites was kept locked? And with a personage of such
magnificent authority as J. Arnold Ross travelling along, and beaming
his approval on the situation? Dad’s face was as good as a dozen
marriage certificates at any hotel in the land!

For the old man this journey was just peaches and cream all the way; a
vicarious jag, with no “hang-over” the next morning. He insisted upon
paying all the bills; and he had his secretary along, so everything just
happened by magic—train accommodations, hotel suites, taxicabs,
flowers, candy, theatre tickets—you had only to hint a wish, and the
thing was there. What more could there be to add to mortal bliss? Only
that Vee would have liked to eat a square meal now and then; and to have
spent the morning in bed, instead of having to keep an appointment to
“reduce” at a gymnasium!

They saw the world premiere of “Come-hither Eyes.” Possibly you have
never been to college in America, and do not understand our lively ways
of speech; so let it be explained that sometimes the eyes of “co-eds”
have been observed to possess, whether from natural endowment or by
practice acquired, a certain quality suggestive to the male creature of
an impulse to proximity. A delicious title, you see; and a delicious
picture, transporting tired and bored millions into that very same world
of glorious money-spending to which Vee and Bunny had been lifted up.
The mechanic who had been screwing up nut number 847 in an automobile
factory all day, the housewife who had been washing baby-diapers and
buying shoddy goods in a five and ten-cent store—these were placed in
the same position as Dad, enjoying a vicarious jag with no hang-over the
next morning!

The scenes at the New York premiere were the same as in Angel City; the
crowds as great, and the cheering as enthusiastic. And Vee and Bunny,
sitting up in bed in their silken garments, while black-clad robots
silently and mechanically served breakfast on silver trays—Vee and
Bunny read the accounts of their triumph, and who had attended and what
they had worn. And then, turning over the paper, Bunny read a dispatch
from Angel City—ten thousand oil workers had walked out on strike, and
the industry was tied up tight. The operators announced that they were
no longer willing to recognize the oil board, and issued a new
wage-scale that was to be taken or left. Trouble was feared, added the
newspapers, because it was known that radical agitators had for some
time been active among the men.

                                   VI

Bunny was on a holiday, and must enjoy himself; if he failed to do so,
the enjoyment of his two companions would be marred. He must smile and
escort them to a theatre, and afterwards send Dad home in a taxi, and go
with Vee to a supper-party with some of the screen people, and gossip
about their productions and their profits, and see them drink too much,
and know that there would be an hour’s talk about prohibition and
bootleggers, starting as soon as he and Vee refused to drink. Were they
“on the wagon”? Or were they afraid of this liquor? This was something
special—the original Koski stuff, or whatever it might be in New York.

Then in the morning the pair would go to the “gym,” and practice stunts
together, making themselves a quite competent pair of gymnasts—Vee said
that if ever Dad went broke, and she got “kleig eyes” and had to quit
the movies, they could earn several hundred a week on the “big time
circuit.” They would have lunch, and then maybe there would be a
matinee, or somebody calling, or reporters or special writers; or Vee
would go shopping, and absolutely insist upon having her darling Bunny
along, because he had such exquisite taste, and why did she dress but to
please him? Bunny met other rich young men in his position, and learned
that such remarks were preliminary to the man’s ordering the bill sent
to him. But there was nothing of the “gold-digger” about Vee—when she
gave the invitation, she paid.

What she wanted was her Bunny-rabbit. She adored him, and wanted to be
with him every moment, and to show him off to all the world, including
the newspapers. They had been together long enough for Bunny to know her
thoroughly, and to realize the drawbacks as well as the advantages of
the alliance. That she was sensual did not trouble him, for he was
young, and his ardors matched hers. The arts that he had learned from
Eunice Hoyt were combined with those Vee had learned from many lovers,
and they were dizzy with delight; the impulse that drew them together
was impossible to resist.

But intellectually they were far from being mated. Vee would listen to
anything he wanted to talk about, but how little she really cared about
serious things would be comically revealed by her sudden shifting of the
conversation. She had her own life, one of speed and excitement and
show. She might jeer at the movie world and its works, but nevertheless,
she was of that world, and applause and attention were the breath she
lived by. She was always on the stage, playing a part—the world’s
professional darling; always bright, always fresh, young, beautiful,
sprightly. Such a thing as thoughtfulness was suspect, a cloak for
dangerous enemies stealing into your mind. “What’s the matter,
Bunny-rabbit? I believe you’re thinking about that horrid strike!”

Sitting down and reading a book was a thing quite unknown to this
world’s darling. A newspaper, yes, of course, or a magazine—one had
them lying about, and a man would pick them up and glance over
something, but always ready to stop to look at a new dress or listen to
a bit of gossip. But to become absorbed in reading and not want to be
interrupted—well, it didn’t seem quite polite, did it? As for spending
a whole afternoon or evening reading a book—Vee had simply never heard
of such a thing. She did not put it into words, but Bunny could
understand that a book was cheap; anybody could get one and sit off in a
corner, but few could have a box at the theatre, presented by the
management, and sit there, almost as important as the play.

One of the young fellows who had taught at Dan Irving’s labor college
was in New York, and Bunny met him, and they talked about what was going
on in the labor movement all over the world. Bunny would have liked to
meet him again, and to go to meetings—there were so many exciting
things in this great city, headquarters of the radical movement as of
everything else. But Vee found out about this, and set out to save
him—just as if he had wanted to smoke opium or drink absinthe! She
would make engagements for him, and claim his time, and question him,
with an anxious, “Where is my wandering boy tonight?” sort of an air.
Bunny knew, of course, that she was doing it for his soul’s salvation,
and doubtless at Dad’s direct request; but all the same it was a bore.

He had one other acquaintance, to whom Vee made no objection—his
mother. She had married again some time ago, and her husband was rich,
and she had a lovely home, so she had written. Bunny went to see her,
and had to make an extreme effort not to reveal his consternation at her
appearance. A dreadful example of what happened when a woman yielded to
her craving for a square meal! Mamma had filled out till she was round
as a ball of butter, and so soft that it was hard to keep together on a
hot day like this. “Fair, fat, and forty” runs the saying; the surgeons
add, “and a bad gall bladder,” but Bunny didn’t know that, and neither
did Mamma. She was dressed like a queen in his honor, and had a poodle
dog—selected, as Vee would have said, to match her figure. Her husband
was a dealer in jewelry, and apparently he used his wife instead of a
safe. She insisted on giving Bunny a diamond ring, and when he told her
about the strike, she gave him another to be sold for the strikers’
relief fund. Oil men were cruel, said Mamma—she knew!

                                  VII

Dad was attending to the business which had brought him east. He didn’t
say much about it, and that was unusual, so Bunny knew it was something
off color. Presently he wormed it out of his father, it had to do with
those naval reserve leases they were planning to get. President Harding
had been inaugurated, and had made Barney Brockway his attorney-general,
according to schedule, and appointed Vernon Roscoe’s man as secretary of
the interior. This was Senator Crisby, an old party hack who had served
Roscoe and O’Reilly when they were occupied in turning out one Mexican
administration and putting in another; they had held over the Mexicans’
heads the threat of American intervention, and this Crisby, as senator
from Texas, had clamored for war and almost got it. He couldn’t let
women alone, Dad said, and so he was always busted, and ready for any
new job that came along.

Now he was to give the oil men a whole string of valuable leases for
practically nothing; but he had to have more money, there were a lot of
fellows that had to have a lot more money. That was the trouble in
dealing with politicians; you bought them before election, and then you
had to buy them again after election, they wouldn’t “stay put,” like
business men. What Dad had come on here for was to consult a lawyer that
Verne considered the greatest in the country, and fix up a little
corporation for the purpose of buying government officials legally. Of
course Dad didn’t put it in those crude words, but that was what it
amounted to, Bunny insisted, and how could it be done? Dad answered that
a real good lawyer could do anything. This was going to be a Canadian
corporation, so that it wouldn’t have to obey United States laws; and
the men that took stock in it were to get their leases in the end. But
the trouble was, nobody could be sure just what the leases would be
worth, and Pete O’Reilly and Fred Orpan were trying to make Dad and
Verne put up too big a share of the money. Verne was mad and said they
could go to hell, and he wanted Dad to settle down and wait a while in
New York, and bluff them out. Could Bunny make up his mind to skip the
rest of his college term, and maybe do some studying with a tutor, and
pass his examinations in the fall?

Bunny said he didn’t care about college, but this worried him—what was
Dad getting in for with this Canadian corporation? Dad insisted it was
perfectly all right, he had the best lawyer in the country. But Bunny
said, “Are you sure Verne isn’t putting something over on you?” Dad was
shocked at that, how could Bunny have such an idea, why Verne was the
best friend Dad had ever had in business, he was straight as they made
them. “Yes, Dad, but they don’t make them so very straight in the
oil-game. And why doesn’t Verne do his own bribing? Why didn’t he come
to New York?”

“But son, Verne has got to handle the strike—you know he couldn’t get
away now. He’s taken that off my shoulders, and you ought to be glad.”
Dad added a naive remark, the oil men wouldn’t let him deal with labor,
he was “too soft.” The phrase sounded familiar.

It turned out that Vee and Dad had been putting their heads together.
Vee wanted a vacation, also; they would go up to Canada to complete
Dad’s business, and then they would find a camp, and instead of tiresome
“gym” work, she and Bunny would tramp the forests and swim in a
beautiful lake. So Dad sent a telegram to President Alonzo T. Cowper,
D.D., Ph.D., LL.D., explaining that urgent business compelled his son to
remain in the east, and could it be arranged that Bunny might return and
take his examinations in the fall? Dr. Cowper wired that the authorities
would be very pleased indeed to grant this favor.

And then, the very morning after it was all settled, a telegram came for
Bunny, and he opened it and read the signature. Ruth Watkins. With
swiftly flying eyes he took in the sense of it—Paul and Eddie Piatt and
Bud Stoner and Jick Duggan and four others of their group had been
arrested, charged with “suspicion of criminal syndicalism,” and were
lodged in the San Elido county jail with ten thousand dollars bail
demanded for Paul and seventy-five hundred for each of the others. “They
have done nothing and everybody knows it,” declared the telegram,
“merely scheme to lock them up during strike. Jail is horrible place
Paul’s health will not stand it implore you for sake our old friendship
obtain needed bail for all surely no need assure you no money will be
lost on our boys.”

                                  VIII

At first Bunny had a cruel suspicion—that his father had known of this
arrest, or at any rate that it was pending, before his latest effort to
keep Bunny away from California. But he realized, it was enough to
believe that Vernon Roscoe, intending to break up the “nest of
Bolshevism” in the Rascum cabin, had made plans to get both Dad and
Bunny away and keep them away. Anyhow, the scheme would not work, for
Bunny was not going to permit his friend to be treated in that crude
fashion!

Dad happened to be out, and Bunny showed the telegram to Vee, and talked
it out with her. She wanted to know what he meant to do, and he answered
that Dad would have to put up the bail for Paul, at least.

“But Bunny, you know he can’t do that—he wouldn’t cross Verne in regard
to the strike.”

“He’s simply; got to do it, Vee! I’d be a dog to let a man like Paul be
locked up in that filthy hole.”

“But suppose Dad won’t, Bunny?”

“Then I’ve got to go back, that’s all there is to it.”

“What could you do when you got there?”

“I’ll hunt around till I find somebody that’s got a sense of decency and
also a little cash.”

“The combination isn’t so easy to find, dear—I know, because I’ve tried
it. And it’s going to make Dad dreadfullly unhappy, to say nothing of
spoiling our vacation. I have just learned of the loveliest place—a
camp that Schmolsky bought up in Ontario, and he’s never been there,
he’s too busy. And, oh, Bunny, I thought we were going to have such a
marvelous time.”

She put her arms about him, but he hardly knew she was there, so cruelly
was his spirit wrung by the vision of Paul in jail. And he, Bunny,
running away from the trouble, loafing about and pretending it was a
“vacation”! He that thought he understood the social problem, and had an
ideal, at least a glimpse of what was kind and fair! He broke loose from
Vee’s arms and began to pace the floor, storming half at himself for a
renegade and half at the dirty crooks that ran the government of San
Elido county, and stole the funds that were supposed to keep the jail
clean and feed the prisoners. Bunny was twisting his hands together in
his misery, and Vee watched him, startled; it was a new aspect of her
Bunny-rabbit, that she had thought so sweet and soft and warm!

“Listen, dear!” she broke in, suddenly. “Stop a minute and talk to me
quietly. You know, I don’t know much about these things.”

“What is it?”

“How can you be sure that Paul hasn’t broken any law?”

“Because I know him. I know all his ideas. I’ve talked the thing out
with him from A to Z—all about this strike, and how it’s to be handled,
the importance of getting the men to stand as a unit, how everything
else must be subordinated to that. That’s what he’s been doing, and
that’s why Verne has thrown him into jail.”

“You’re quite sure Verne has done it?”

“Of course—he and the rest of the operators’ committee. What are those
officials in San Elido, but office-boys for the oil men? Before Verne
came in there, Dad ran that county; I’ve seen him pay the money with my
own eyes, and more times than one.”

“And you don’t think they may have evidence that Paul has been conniving
at violence?”

“I don’t know what evidence they’ve got. Verne as good as told me he had
spies on that bunch, and I don’t know what those spies may have
planted—and neither does Verne know, for that matter. That’s one of the
damnable things about it. Another is—you see that charge, ‘suspicion of
criminal syndicalism’! What they call ‘criminal syndicalism’ means that
you advocate overthrowing the government, or changing the social system
by force; but you notice they don’t arrest you for that—they arrest you
for ‘suspicion’ of it! In other words, you advocate some idea that some
ignorant cop or some crook in office chooses to think may be dangerous,
and then they throw you into jail, and there you stay—the courts are
crowded, and they can keep you a year without a trial or any chance at
all.”

“Oh, surely they can’t do that, Bunny!”

“They’re doing it right along. I know fellows it’s been done to. They
put the bail high on purpose, so that workingmen can’t get it. And they
think they’re going to do it to Paul Watkins, the best boy-friend I ever
had, the straightest fellow I ever knew—yes, by God, and he went to
Siberia and served in that war, and came out sick—that boy was as tough
as a hickory nut before that, a country fellow, simple and straight, and
with no vices. And this is the reward he gets for his services to his
country—by Jesus, I’d like to see them get me to fight for a country
like that!”

Bunny had to dash a tear out of his eyes, and he began to pace the floor
again, and stumbled against a chair. Vee put her arms about him and
whispered, “Listen, dear, I know some people that have got money, and I
may be able to help you. Leave it to me for a few hours, and don’t say
anything to Dad about it—what’s the use of worrying him to no purpose?
If I can arrange it, he’ll be able to tell Verne that he knew nothing
about it, and that’ll be so much better all round.”

She went off, and a couple of hours later came back. Bunny was to wire
Ruth that neither he nor his father could do anything, but a friend had
taken an interest in the case, and the money had been deposited with the
American Bonding Company, and their office in Angel City would obtain
Paul’s release. Bunny said, “How did you do it?” and she answered, “The
less you know about it the better. I know somebody that owns some real
estate in Angel City, and has a salary coming to them, and employers
that are anxious to keep them happy and contented.” Bunny said it must
have cost a good deal, and he ought to pay it back, and Vee said, “Yes,
it cost a pile, and you’re going to pay in love and affection, and you
can start right now.” She flew to his arms, and he covered her with
kisses, and it was like an orchestra that went surging up in their
hearts. It is an extremely unsettling thing to have a whole orchestra
inside you!

                                   IX

Well, Paul got out, and Bunny was supposed to be satisfied. To be sure,
seven other fellows were in, and Bunny knew them all; but it would have
cost fifty-two thousand five hundred dollars to release them, and that
would certainly be carrying idealism to unreasonable extremes. So Bunny
let Vee carry him and Dad off to that “camp” on a lake with a long
Indian name, and there they swam, and canoed, and fished, and tramped
the forests, and took pictures of moose in the water; they had Indian
guides, and everything romantic—and at the same time hot and cold water
in their bed-rooms, and steam-heat if they wanted it; all the comforts
of Broadway and Forty-second Street.

Here, if ever, they had a chance to get enough of each other; there were
no distractions, no social duties, no visitors dropping in, no dressing
to be done; they were together all day and all night. What Bunny found
was that they were perfectly happy so long as they were doing physical
things: canoe trips to other places, new fishing stunts, hunting with
the camera, shooting rapids, learning to make camp, to start a fire like
the Indians—anything it might be. But they must be playing all the
time, otherwise a great gulf opened between them. If Bunny wanted to
read, what was Vee to do?

Once a day a little steamer came the length of the lake and put off
supplies and a packet of mail. There were papers from Angel City, and
also, once a week, the strike bulletin of the oil workers, which Bunny
had very unwisely subscribed for. What was the use of running three
thousand miles away from trouble, and then having it sent to you in a
mail sack? Reading of the scenes that he knew so well—the meetings, the
relief work, the raising of funds, the struggles with the guards, the
arrests, the sufferings of the men in jail, the beating up of strike
pickets, the insolence of the sheriff and other officials, the
dishonesty of the newspapers—it was exactly the same as if Bunny were
in Paradise. Paul was one of the executive committee, Paul had become
Tom Axton’s right-hand man, and his speeches were quoted, and his
experiences in the San Elido county jail—when Bunny had finished that
little paper, he was so shaken he was not the same all day. Vee found
out about it, of course, and began trying to persuade him to stop
reading it. Had he not done his share by giving the strikers back their
leader? And had he not promised to repay her, his darling Vee-Vee, with
love and affection for a whole summer?

Bunny wrestled it out with his own soul, in such free moments as he
could get. He told himself that it was to help his father—a more
respectable excuse than entertaining a mistress! But did his father have
a right to expect so much? Did any one person have a right to replace
all the rest of humanity? If it was the duty of the young to sacrifice
themselves for the old, how could there ever be any progress in the
world? As time passed, and the struggle in the oil fields grew more
tense, the agony of the workers more evident, Bunny came to the clear
decision that his flight had been cowardly.

He tried to explain his point of view to Vee, but only to run into a
stone wall. It was not a subject for reasoning, it was a matter of
instinct with her. She believed in her money; she had starved for it,
sold herself, body and mind, for it, and she meant to hang onto it.
Bunny’s so-called “radical movement” meant to her that others wanted to
take it away. He discovered a strange, hard streak in her; she would
spend money lavishly, for silks and furs and jewels, for motor-cars and
parties—but that was all professional, it was part of her advertising
bill. But, on the other hand, where no display was involved, where the
public did not enter—there she hated to spend money; he overheard her
wrangling with a washer-woman over the amount to be charged for the
ironing of her lingerie, and those filmy night-dresses in which she
seduced his soul.

No, he could never make a “radical” out of this darling of the world; he
would have to make up his mind to that. She would listen to him, because
she loved him, even the sound of his voice talking nonsense; she would
make a feeble pretense at agreeing, but all the time it was as if he had
the measles and she waiting for him to get cured; as if he were drunk
and she trying to get him “on the wagon.” She had apologized to Rachel,
and had got Paul out of jail, but merely to please him, and in reality
she hated both these people. Still more did she hate Ruth, with a cold,
implacable hatred—an intriguing minx, pretending to be a simple country
maiden in order to win an oil prince! No women were simple, if you
believed Vee, and damn few of them were maidens.

Nor would Ruth ever stop being a nuisance. In the midst of one of their
happiest times, she sent Bunny another telegram—her brother was in jail
again, this time it was contempt of court. Bunny considered it necessary
to paddle down to the nearest telegraph office and wire Mr. Dolliver,
the lawyer, to investigate and report. The answer came that nothing
could be done—Paul and others of the strike leaders had disregarded an
injunction forbidding them to do this and that, and there was no bail
and no appeal, neither habeas corpusses nor counter-injunctions, and
Paul would have to serve his three months’ sentence.

Bunny was bitter and rebellious against judges who issued injunctions,
and Vee was afraid to speak, because it seemed obvious to her that
somebody had to control strikers. Of course after that there was a
shadow over their holiday—Bunny brooding upon his friend shut up in the
county jail. He sent Ruth five hundred dollars, to take care of all the
prisoners; and in course of time got a letter, saying that the prisoners
had refused the money, and Ruth had turned it over to the strike relief.
It was a terrible thing to see children without enough to eat; terrible
also that men who had power should use it to starve children! Thus the
“simple” Ruth—not meaning any hint at Dad!

                                   X

Bunny had to study for his fall examinations, and that looked like a
problem, for what was Vee going to do? But fate provided a solution—Dad
telegraphed to Harvard University, which sent up a young instructor to
do tutoring, and he was the solution. He was tall, and had the loveliest
fair blue eyes, and a softly curling golden moustache, and soft golden
fuzz all over him like a baby; he wore gold nose-glasses, and had a
quiet voice and oh, so much culture—one of those master minds which can
tutor you in anything if you give them a week’s start!

Coming as he did from an old Philadelphia family, and having been
trained in the haughtiest centre of intellectual snobbery, you might
have thought he would look down upon an ex-mule-driver and his son, to
say nothing of an actress who had been raised in a patent medicine
vender’s wagon, and had never read a whole book in her life. But as a
matter of fact, young Mr. Appleton Laurence just simply collapsed in the
presence of the situation he found at this Ontario camp; it was the most
romantic and thrilling thing that a young instructor had encountered
since Harvard began. As for the patent medicine vender’s daughter, he
could not take his eyes off her, and when she came near, the tutoring
business was scattered as by a hurricane.

Vee of course had put her sparkling black eyes to work at once; all
those stunts which Tommy Paley had taught her she now tried out on a new
victim, and Bunny, as audience, was in position to study them
objectively. Vee would wait till Mr. Laurence had set Bunny his
morning’s work, and then she and the tutor would go for a walk in the
woods, and Bunny would sit with one-half his mind on his books, while
the other half wondered what was happening, and what he had reason to
expect from one who had had so many lovers.

She did not leave him long in doubt. “Bunny-rabbit,” she said, “you
aren’t going to be worried about my Appie, are you?”—for the hurricane
that struck the tutoring business had swept all dignity away, and Mr.
Appleton Laurence was “Appie,” except when he was “Applesauce.”

“I won’t worry unless you tell me to,” Bunny answered.

“That’s a dear! You must understand, I’m an actress, that’s the way I
earn my living, and I simply have to know all about love, and how can I
learn if I don’t practice?”

“Well, that’s all right, dear—”

“Some of the men they give you in Hollywood are such dubs, it makes you
sick, you would as soon be in the arms of a clothing dummy. So I have to
tell them how to act, and I have to know how a real gentleman
behaves—you know what I mean, the highbrows and snobs. Oh, Bunny, it’s
the cutest thing you ever saw, he falls down on his knees, and the tears
come into his eyes, and you know, he can recite all the poets by heart;
I never saw anything like it; you’d think he was an old Shakespearean
actor. And it’s really a great opportunity for me, to cultivate my taste
and get refined.”

“Well, yes, dear, but isn’t it a little hard on him?”

“Oh, rubbish, it won’t hurt him, he’ll go off and put it into
sonnets—he’s doing it already, and maybe he’ll get to be famous, and
it’d be great publicity! Don’t you bother about him, Bunny, and don’t
bother about me; there’s nobody in the world for me but my
Bunny-rabbit—all the rest is just a joke.” And she put her arms about
him. “I know what it is to be jealous, dear, and I wouldn’t cause you
that unhappiness for anything in the world. If you really mind, you can
send old Applesauce packing, and I won’t be cross.”

Bunny laughed. “I can’t do that, I’ve got to be tutored.”

Vee told Dad about it, too—lest he should be having any vicarious
pangs. When Dad heard about the falling on the knees and the tears, he
chuckled. Bunny would get the contents of the tutor’s mind, and Vee
would get the contents of his heart, and they would send him home like a
squeezed orange. It appealed to Dad as good business. Back in Paradise,
you remember, he was hiring a chemical wizard, paying him six thousand a
year, and making millions out of him!

                                   XI

There came another development, to protect Vee from the possibility of
boredom. Schmolsky sent her up the “continuity” of the new picture upon
which she was to start work in the fall. And then suddenly it was
revealed that the world’s darling knew how to read! For a whole hour she
sat buried in it, and then she leaped up, ready to start rehearsing—and
all the hurricanes that ever swept the province of Ontario were as
nothing to the one that came now. Clear the way for “The Princess of
Patchouli”!

It was a popular musical comedy which was to be made into a moving
picture. “Patchouli” was one of the little Balkan kingdoms, though it
looked and acted very much like Vienna of the Strauss waltzes. A young
American engineer came in to build a railroad, and found himself
mistaken for a conspirator, and presently he was rescuing the lovely
princess from a revolutionary band—no Bolsheviks, these were
aristocratic array conspirators, so Bunny wouldn’t have his feelings
hurt, would he? Of course the hero carried her off, married her for love
only, and then got the kingdom thrown in—the bankers who were financing
the railroad bought it for him.

So here was Vee, being a princess all over the place. It was amazing to
watch her work—Bunny suddenly came to realize that her success hadn’t
been all money and sex, after all. She pounced onto the role like a
tiger-cat, and when she got going the rest of the world ceased to
exist—except to the extent that she needed it for a foil. “Now, Dad,
you’re the king; you walk in here—no, no, for God’s sake, kings don’t
walk so fast! And I have to fall at your feet, and plead for his life,
‘Oh, mercy sire, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so!’”

It is one of the peculiarities of motion picture acting that it doesn’t
matter what you say, so long as you are saying something; so Vee would
weep, “And so-and-so,” and she would croon “And so-and-so” in passionate
love-accents to either Bunny or Apple, and she would shriek “And
so-and-so” in deadly terror to an executioner with uplifted axe. And if
in the course of the scene the other person didn’t do it right, then
scolding and commands would serve equally well for a love-song, “Hold
it, now, you idiot, I adore you, darling”—or maybe it might be, “Take
your hands off me, foul beast—don’t let go, you goose, grab! That’s
better, you don’t have to be polite when you’re a murderer.”

If Bunny had wanted to rehearse tempestouous emotions, and shriek and
scream and tear his hair, he would have sought refuge in the woods,
where only the chipmunks could have heard him. But Vee was utterly
indifferent to the existence of other humans. That is something one
learns on “the lot”; for there will be camera-men and scene-shifters,
and property-boys, and carpenters working on the next set, and some
visitors that have managed to break in despite the strictest
regulations—and you just go on with your work. The first time the
executioner lifted his axe and Vee started screaming, the Indian guides
came running in alarm; but she hardly stopped even for a laugh, she went
on with the scene, while they stood staring with mouths wide open. She
and her two lovers would come in from swimming, and suddenly she would
call for a rehearsal of some royal pageantry—she could be a princess
just as well in a scanty bathing suit, with a carpet of pine-needles
under her bare feet.

Mr. Appleton Laurence had never met any princesses, but he had read a
great deal of history and poetry, and so he was an authority, and must
criticise her way of walking, her gestures, her attitudes, her reaction
to the love-advances of a handsome young American engineer. “Just
imagine you’re in love with me yourself, Appie,” she would say—and so
his emotions became sublimated into art, and he could pour out his soul
to her, right before Bunny and Dad and Dad’s secretary and the Indians!
“You’re much better at it than Bunny,” she would declare. “I believe
he’s got used to me, it’s as bad as if we were married.”

So the time passed pleasantly. Until at last Vee had got to feel
perfectly at home in her Appie’s conception of royalty; she no longer
had to ask questions, nor to stop and think, but knew instantly what to
do—and forever after, in all her entrances to and exits from Hollywood
society, she would be a little of a Harvard instructor’s Princess of
Patchouli. She was impatient now, wanting to see the sets, and to hear
Tommy Paley call, “Camera!” Bunny also was loaded up with answers to all
possible exam questions, and ready to get back and unload them onto his
professors. Dad had run down to Toronto, and signed the last of the
papers for his Canadian corporation; he had telegrams from Verne almost
every day—the strikers, having held out for nearly four months, had
learned their lesson, and the Federal Oil Board had written them a
letter, advising them to go back to work as individuals, and promising
there would be no discrimination against union men.

Then one day the steamer brought a telegram signed Annabelle, addressed
to Bunny, and reading, “Spring lamb for dinner come on home.” He
explained what that meant, the strike was over; and so the occupants of
the camp packed up, and Mr. Appleton Laurence went back to his fair
Harvard, with woe in his heart and a packet of immortal sonnets in his
suit-case, while Vee Tracy and Dad and Bunny and the secretary made
themselves luxurious in compartments on a Canadian-Pacific train bound
West.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                              THE KILLING


                                   I

Bunny passed his examinations, and was duly established as a “grave old
senior” in Southern Pacific University. And then he hunted up his
friends—and such a load of troubles as fell onto his shoulders!
Literally everybody had troubles! Rachel and Jacob Menzies had come back
from their summer’s fruit-picking, to find their two younger brothers,
the “left wingers,” in the county jail! The police had raided a
Communist meeting and arrested all the speakers, and the organizers, and
the literature sellers, and all who had red badges in their buttonholes.
They had raided the Communist headquarters—determined, so the
newspapers announced, to root every Moscow agent out of the city. They
had sorted the prisoners, and fined a few, and were holding the rest,
including the Menzies boys, under that convenient universal charge,
“suspicion of criminal syndicalism.”

These foolish boys had made their own trouble, said Rachel; but still it
was an outrage to arrest people for their beliefs; and it was tormenting
to think of your own flesh and blood shut up in those horrible cages.
Bunny asked the bail—it was two thousand dollars per brother. He began
explaining his troubles with his father, and his own impotence; and
Rachel said of course, she understood, they couldn’t expect him to bail
out the whole radical movement. And yet that did not entirely restore
his peace of mind.

Then Harry Seager, whose business college was on the rocks. The boycott
had wrecked it, and Harry was trying to sell the debris. He was going to
buy him a walnut ranch; it would be harder to boycott walnuts, you
couldn’t tell the “red” ones from the “white”!

And then Dan Irving, whose labor college was in almost as bad a way. The
orgy of arrests had frightened the old line labor leaders completely
off. The college was still going, but it was in debt, and the head of it
hadn’t had any salary for several months. Bunny wrote a check for two
hundred dollars, and went away debating the question that never would be
settled—to what extent had he a right to plunder his father for the
benefit of his father’s enemies?

From Dan Irving he learned that Paul had got out of jail, and was in
Angel City, together with Ruth. It was a dirty deal the oil workers had
got, said Dan; the operators had made one last use of the oil board, to
trick the men into a complete surrender. They had promised the oil board
there would be no discrimination against union men, but they had never
had the least intention of keeping this promise. They had kept all the
strike-breakers at work, and taken back just enough of the strikers to
make up their needs. All the active union fellows were begging jobs, and
the oil industry was a slave-yard of the “open shop.”

                                   II

Bunny went at once to call on Paul and Ruth at the address which Dan
Irving gave him. It was a mean and dingy lodging-house, in a part of the
city given up to Mexicans and Chinese. An old woman sent him up to the
second floor, and told him which door to knock on, but he got no
response. He came back later, and found that Ruth had just got in. They
were crowded into one little room, with a gas plate and a sink in an
unventilated alcove, and another alcove with a curtain before it, and a
cot on which Paul slept. Ruth was ashamed to have Bunny see them in such
a place, but explained that it wouldn’t be long, just till Paul got a
job; he was out looking for one now. She herself had got work in a
department-store, and as soon as they could get ahead, she was going to
study trained nursing. She looked pale and worn, but smiled bravely; she
didn’t really mind anything, so long as Paul was out of jail.

Bunny wanted to know all the news, and plied Ruth with questions. Just
what had Paul done to get arrested? The first time, Ruth said, the
sheriff had raided the Rascum cabin, with a lot of rough, hateful men,
who had torn everything to pieces and carried off all of Paul’s books
and papers—they had them still. They had done the same thing to all the
other fellows that used to come to the cabin—they were going to prove
them “reds,” but what evidence they had or claimed to have was a secret
the sheriff or the district attorney or whoever it was was keeping to
himself. They had had a lot of spies on the bunch—one fellow was known
to be a spy, and two others had disappeared, and would no doubt turn up
as witnesses—but who could tell what they would testify? All the other
boys were still locked up in those horrible tanks, so dark and dirty,
and nothing to do all day or night. The trial was set for next February,
and apparently they were to stay there meantime. Paul was free, thanks
to Bunny’s ten thousand dollars; Ruth could never express her thanks—

Never mind about that, Bunny said—what about the second arrest? And
Ruth told how Judge Delano had issued an injunction forbidding anyone to
interfere with Excelsior Pete in the course of its business, the
production and marketing of oil. That meant that you mustn’t advocate or
encourage the strike; and of course Paul had done that, so the judge had
sent him to jail—that was all. Judges were getting so they did that all
the time, and what were union men going to do? It had been a fearful
ordeal for Paul, he was not very well, and of course he was terribly
bitter. He would never go back to Paradise again, it wasn’t the same
place at all. Ruth smiled a wan smile, “They’ve cut down all those
lovely trees that we planted, Bunny. They needed the room for tanks.”

Bunny hauled out his check-book, and sought to salve his conscience by
making a present to his friends. But Ruth said no, she was sure Paul
wouldn’t let him do that. They were going to get along all right. Paul
was a good carpenter, and sooner or later he would find some boss that
didn’t mind his having been in jail. Bunny argued, but Ruth was
obdurate; even though she were to take the check, Paul would send it
back.

Bunny did not wait till Paul came home; he made some excuse, and went
away. He just did not have the nerve to sit there, in his fashionable
clothes which Vee had selected for him in New York, and with his new
sport-car waiting downstairs, and see Paul come in, half sick,
discouraged from seeking work in vain, and with all the black memories
of injustice and betrayal in his soul. Bunny could make excuses, of
course. Paul did not know that he had been spending the summer at play
with the world’s darling, Paul would believe that he had gone away on
his father’s account. But nothing could change the fact that it was on
money wrung from the Paradise workers that Bunny was living in luxury;
nothing could change the fact that it had been to increase the amount of
this money, to intensify the exploitation of the workers, that Paul had
spent three months in jail, and the other fellows were to spend nearly a
year in jail. So long as that was the truth, there was nothing Bunny
could do but just run away from Paul!

                                  III

Money! Money! Money! It was pouring in upon Dad and Verne. Never had oil
prices been so high, never had the flow at Paradise been so rapid.
Millions and millions—and they were scheming to make it tens of
millions. It was a game, marvelous, irresistible; everybody was playing
it—and why could not Bunny be interested? Why did he have to go
sneaking around in the dressing-rooms and behind the grand-stands,
finding out dirty and disreputable facts about the players of this game
and their methods?

It seemed as if the fates had it in for Bunny. Just as sure as he made
some pitiful effort to be like his father and his father’s friends, some
new development would come along and knock him down! Here he had gone to
a university, a solemnly respectable university, trying to improve his
mind and make a gentleman of himself; he had turned over his young and
eager mind to the most orthodox and regular authorities—and surely they
would know how to make him good and honest and happy, surely they would
teach him wisdom, dignity, and honor! Such things were being taught to
all students in this great institution, which had begun as a Methodist
Sunday-school, and still had more courses on the religion of Jesus
Christ than on any other subject whatever! Oh, surely yes!

The university had grown great on the money of Pete O’Reilly, the oil
king; and Pete O’Reilly’s son was a graduate, and the two of them, “Old
Pete” and “Young Pete,” were the gods of the campus. When they came to
commencement, the faculty bowed down before them, and in all the stories
which the university’s publicity man sent to the newspapers, the names
of Pete O’Reilly, father and son, never failed to be featured. The son
was the most active of the alumni, and their god; when they had
banquets, he was toasted and flattered and cheered; he was the patron
saint of all the teams, the bounteous friend of all athletes. And of
course, if you know anything about American universities, you know that
this is what counts in the molding of the students’ minds; this is the
thing they do for themselves, and into which they put their hearts.

At first it seemed all right. You knew that S. P. U. was a glorious
college, and had splendid teams, and won victories that resounded up and
down the coast. And presently there was a stadium, and a vast business
of athletics, that resulted in infinite applause and free advertising
for your alma mater. Of this you were proud, the whole student body was
made one by it—the thing called “college spirit.” Bunny, a trackrunner,
had had his share of cheering; and here was a “game” he could play with
all his heart!

But now he was a senior, and on the inside of things, just as with the
oil-game, and with strikes, and with political campaigns. And what did
he find? Why, simply that all the football and track and other athletic
glory that had come to Southern Pacific had been stolen, and “Young
Pete” O’Reilly was the thief! The oil king’s son had put up a fund of
fifty thousand dollars every year, for the purpose of turning the game
of college athletics into a swindle! The fund was administered by a
secret committee of alumni and students, and used for the purpose of
going out into the market and buying athletes, to come and enroll
themselves under false pretenses and win victories for S. P. U. Husky
young truck-drivers and lumbermen and ranch-hands and longshoremen, who
could not speak correct English, but could batter down “interference”
and crash through to a goal! And the pious Methodists who constituted
the faculty were conniving at the procedure, to the extent of permitting
these young huskies to pass farcical examinations—well knowing that any
professor who presumed to flunk a promising quarterback would soon be
looking for some other university to presume in. Was not “Young Pete”
showing what he thought of professors, by paying a football coach three
times the salary of the best?

And of course these hired athletes were hired to win, and did not bother
about the rules of the game; they slugged and fouled, and the rival
teams paid them back, and there was a nasty mess, with charges and
countercharges, bribery and intimidation—all the atmosphere of a
criminal trial. Along with secret professionalism, came its
accompaniments of the underworld, bootleggers and bookmakers and
prostitutes. Study was a joke to hired gladiators, and quickly became a
joke to students who associated with them. The one purpose was to win
games, and the reward was two hundred thousand dollars in gate receipts;
and when it came to distributing this prize, there were just as many
kinds of graft as if it had been a county government: students putting
in bills for this and that, students looking for easy jobs, students and
alumni building up a machine, and paying themselves and their henchmen
with contracts and favors. Such was the result of an oil king’s resolve
to manufacture culture wholesale, by executive order!

                                   IV

Bunny went to see the young lawyer whom the oil workers’ union had
engaged to defend the eight “political prisoners.” The union had since
become practically extinct, and the young lawyer had been wondering
where he was going to get his pay. When Bunny came to question him, it
was a great relief—for surely this young oil prince would put up
something for the defense of his friends! Or could it be that he was
sent as an emissary from the other side, to feel out the situation?

Young Mr. Harrington talked freely about the case. The thing which the
state was doing to these eight men was without precedent in our law, and
if it could stand, it meant the end of American justice. Every prisoner
was supposed to know the charges against him, the specific acts he was
alleged to have committed. But in all these “criminal syndicalism”
cases, the state simply alleged violation of the law in its vague
general terms, and that was all. How could you prepare a defense in such
a case? What witnesses would you summon—when you didn’t know the time,
or the place, or the particular things a man was alleged to have done,
or said, or written, or published? You were taken into court
blindfolded, bound and gagged. Yet, so completely were the courts
terrorized by the business crowd, no judge would order the district
attorney to make a detailed statement of the charges!

Bunny went away, and in his desperation played a dirty trick on Vernon
Roscoe—he went to see Annabelle Ames. Annabelle was kind and gentle,
and he would wring her soul, and see if in that way he could not get
under the hide of the old petroleum pachyderm! He told her about these
boys, what they looked like, what they believed, what they were
suffering in the jail. Annabelle listened, and the tears came into her
eyes, and she said it was horrible that men could be so cruel. What
could she do? Bunny told her that the strike was over, the spring lamb
had been slaughtered and eaten, and Verne ought to be willing to cry
quits. It would be of no use for him to plead that he couldn’t do
anything, that the law must take its course; that was all rubbish,
because the district attorney had the right to ask for the dismissal of
the cases, and he would surely do it if Verne said the word.

Well, Bunny got under the hide of the old petroleum pachyderm! The way
Bunny heard about it, Dad came in in a terrible state, Verne had jumped
on him, Verne was mad as the very devil, Bunny sneaking into his home
and plotting against his domestic peace! He wanted it understood, by
Jees, if Dad couldn’t control his son, Verne would. Bunny wanted to know
what Verne meant to do, spank him? Or have him locked up with the
others?

Bunny had made up his mind, and stood his ground—he had a perfect right
to talk to Annabelle, she was a grown woman, and there was no way Verne
could stop him. He was going to do more talking before he got
through—he was sorry enough to make his father unhappy, but here was
the fact, if that case ever came to trial, he, Bunny Ross, was going to
take the stand as a witness for the eight defendants, and not merely a
character witness, but one with first-hand knowledge of the facts, he
had sat in the Rascum cabin night after night, and heard them discuss
the problems of the strike, and their own attitude to it, and he could
testify that every man of them had agreed on workers’ solidarity as the
way to victory, and acts of violence as a trap the operators would try
to lure them into. If there was no other way to get money for the
defense of these boys, Bunny would sell the car that Dad had given
him—“I suppose Verne won’t have any right to keep me from walking to
the university!”

Poor Dad, he couldn’t stand talk like that from his darling son; he
began to give way, and revealed that he and Verne had discussed the
possibility of a compromise with the rebels. Would they agree to get out
of the state, or at least to keep their hands off the oil industry? And
Bunny said, by God, if Vernon Roscoe wanted to make any such
proposition, he could be his own messenger boy! Bunny knew what Paul’s
answer would be—Paul had a right to try to organize oil workers, and he
would never quit while he lived. Bunny was sure the whole eight would
respond with a unanimous shout, they would rot in jail the rest of their
lives before they would make such a bargain!

Then, having said that very magnificently, the young idealist who was
gradually and painfully evolving into a man of the world, went on to
point out that as a matter of fact none of the eight would have much
chance to bother Verne. His efficient blacklist system would see to it
that they didn’t get work in the oil fields; and any organizing they
could do would be of a pitiful sort. On the other hand, Verne must
realize that if he persisted in trying to railroad these fellows to
jail, there was going to be a long trial, and a lot of publicity of a
kind the operators might find troublesome. The testimony would have to
be “framed”; and Bunny would do everything in his power to expose it,
and to see that the public got the facts. What if it should occur to the
defendants’ lawyer to subpoena Mr. Vernon Roscoe and ask what he knew
about the planting of spies on the Paradise workers?

“Oh, son!” cried Dad, “You wouldn’t do a dirty thing like that!”

Bunny answered, “Of course I wouldn’t. I said the lawyer might do it.
Wouldn’t you, if you were in his place?” And Dad, very uncomfortable,
said to let the matter ride, and he would see what he could do with
Verne.

                                   V

One outcome of these negotiations, Dad appealed to Vee Tracy: couldn’t
she possibly do more to keep Bunny out of the hands of these awful reds?
Why, he wasn’t thinking about a thing else! Vee said she would try, and
she did, and it was a further strain upon their love and affection. For
Bunny was beginning to know what he wanted now, and he didn’t want to be
kept from it.

Vee was hard at work on “The Princess of Patchouli.” It was a silly
story, she would freely admit; yet her whole being was concentrated upon
making it real and vivid. If you asked her why, the answer would be, it
was her profession; which meant that she was getting four thousand a
week, with the possibility of increasing it to five thousand a week if
she “made good.” But what did she want with the five thousand a week? To
buy more applause and attention, as a means of getting more thousands
for more weeks? It was a vicious circle—exactly like Dad’s oil wells.
The wobblies had a song about it in their jungles: “We go to work to get
the cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work to get the
cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work—” and so on, as
long as your breath held out.

Vee wanted to talk about the picture and the problems that arose day by
day, and the various personalities and their jealousies and vanities,
their loves and hates. Bunny, who loved her, would pretend to be
interested, because it would hurt her if he wasn’t. And it was the same
with the Hollywood parties; once they had been new and startling, but
now they all seemed alike. Everybody was making a new picture, but it
would always be like the old pictures. Nobody did anything original, but
everybody followed fashions; the public’s taste ran to society pictures,
and nobody would look at a war picture—but presently the public would
want war pictures, and after that costume pictures, and then sea
pictures, and then back to society pictures. Vee’s friends changed their
bootleggers, but it was always the same stuff they drank. Also they
changed their lovers; a certain man slept with a certain woman, and then
presently it was a different woman—but the more it changed, the more it
was the same thing.

Bunny and Vee loved each other, just as passionately as ever. At least,
they told themselves it was as ever, but all the while the subtle
chemistry of change was at work. Men and women are not bodies only, and
cannot be satisfied with delights of the body only. Men and women are
minds, and have to have harmony of ideas. Can they be bored with each
other’s ideas, and still be just as much in love? Men and women are
characters, and these characters lead to actions—and what if they lead
to different actions? What if the man wants to read a book, while the
woman wants to go to a dance?

Vee had been so considerate in the matter of her adoring “Applesauce,”
so careful lest Bunny should be jealous; and now Bunny made the
irritating discovery that it was his turn to be careful! Vee had two
enemies among women—and Bunny persisted in keeping them as his
intimates. That Socialist girl at the university—of course he had to
see her there, but did he have to make dates to go to Socialist meetings
with her? Vee was ready to believe that he wasn’t in love with a common
little sweatshop Jewess; but what if Vee wanted to be taken to a “world
premiere” on the evening of the Socialist lecture?

And then—that Ruth Watkins! Of course Bunny wouldn’t be in love with an
ignorant country girl, without any education; but all the same, she was
setting her snares for him, and Vee had seen enough of men to know that
a woman can always get what she wants, if she keeps after it. Bunny kept
going to that lodging-house room, and plotting and scheming with Paul to
worry his father, and make trouble with Verne and Annabelle, so that
pretty soon they wouldn’t welcome Bunny any more at the Monastery, which
was practically Vee’s country club, and where you met the most important
people. It wasn’t just the social life, it was the business connections,
that meant everything in the career of an actress. In the screen world
promotion goes by favor, and Vee simply couldn’t afford to give up her
intimacy with Verne and Annabelle. She tried to convey this tactfully to
Bunny, but when he failed to heed it, she had to keep insisting, until
it began to sound like nagging. Bunny remembered her playful remark to
her Applesauce, “It’s as bad as if we were married!”

                                   VI

Dad and Verne had a lot of negotiating to do with Pete O’Reilly,
concerning the new leases they were putting through, and Dad was invited
to spend a week-end at this famous man’s country place. Bunny was
included in the invitation, and Dad said he ought to come; Dad was
always nourishing the hope that something in this “great” world that so
impressed him would impress his fastidious son. Besides, he added with a
grin, the O’Reillys had a marriageable daughter.

Bunny had already met “Young Pete” at the university in connection with
athletic events. Bunny had been singled out for attention, because he
also was a scion of oil; some day he and “Young Pete” would be running
the government of the United States, as their two fathers were running
it now. “Young Pete” was a perfectly colorless business man, of the
nationally advertised brand; but the father was the real thing—an old
Irishman who had wandered over the deserts leading a burro loaded with a
pick, a blanket, a sack of bacon and beans, and a skin full of water.
This had continued up to middle age—he delighted to tell how, when he
had come to Angel City to print a prospectus about his find, the
printshop would not trust him for a thirteen-dollar job! Now, nobody
could guess his millions; but he was plain as an old shoe, a likeable
old fellow who wanted to sit in his shirt in hot weather, but was not
allowed to.

The boss of the family was Mrs. Pete, who had risen from a section
foreman’s daughter to this high station in Southern California society.
She was large and decisive; when she went into a department-store she
did not fool with the clerks, but strode at once to the floor-walker and
announced, “I am Mrs. Peter O’Reilly, and I wish to be waited on
promptly.” The functionary would hit the floor with his forehead, and
tear three clerks loose from their duties and set them rushing about at
the great lady’s behest.

Mrs. Peter it was who had summoned the architects and ordered the royal
palace in a park, and set the high bronze fence all about, and the
bronze gates; she it was who had caused the name of the owner of the
estate to be graven on the gates. She had negotiated for the yacht of a
fallen European monarch, and then torn it all out inside, and made it
over to be fit for an Irish-American oil prospector—finished in
Circassian walnut and blue satin, and with the owner’s name in plain
sight. Also there was a private car finished in Circassian walnut and
blue satin, and with the owner’s name on a brass plate. It was as fine
as a haberdashery shop.

Now Mrs. Peter had Dad and Bunny to practice “society” upon; to shake
hands high up in the air, and remark the early cold weather and the snow
upon the mountains. And then to introduce Patricia, and to watch while
Patricia did the stunts which her director had taught her, and which
gave Bunny an impulse to say “Camera!” Miss Patricia O’Reilly was tall
like her mother, and had a tendency to grow stout too early, so she was
taking reducing medicine, which was injuring her heart and making her
pale and aristocratic. She had learned every motion and every formula so
carefully that she was as interesting as a large French doll, and her
mother beamed upon the young couple—a possible union between two great
dynasties, and there would be a wedding in Holy Name Church, and fifty
thousand people outside, and pictures on the front pages of all the
newspapers. Bunny’s thoughts went even further—the “yellows” would
interview Vee Tracy, and she would be cold and haughty, and in secret
she would weep, and then catch a glimpse of her face in the mirror, and
the thought would come, “Hold it!”

There were other guests, including Dr. Alonzo T. Cowper, D.D., Ph.D.,
LL.D., than whom it was not possible to imagine a human being radiating
more cordiality. He was delighted that Bunny had passed his examinations
successfully, and charmed to have been able to oblige his father, and
again delighted that Dad was pleased with his son’s progress. When they
were alone, he ventured some playful remark about Bunny’s red measles,
and was much distressed to learn that the patient had not yet recovered;
he took occasion to question the young man—was it really true that the
reds were making such alarming progress in Angel City. Dr. Cowper wanted
to talk about these shocking doctrines, in the same way that a small boy
wants to read a naughty book!

Bunny was not called in to the conference between Old Pete and his
father, but on the way home Dad told him about it. They were having the
devil’s own time; buying a government was not so simple a matter as they
had thought. Everybody had to have a “rake-off,” all the way down the
line; by golly, the very office boy that brought you a letter about the
matter expected a ten-dollar bill! Bunny took the occasion to plead, why
not get out of the thing, surely they had enough money! But Dad said
they were in too deep, the thing had cost him personally nearly six
hundred thousand dollars, and it was real money, and it had hurt. No,
they would go through with it, and when they had got the leases, it
would be all hunkydory.

Two troubles had arisen. The naval reserve lands had been under the
control of the navy department, and it had been necessary to get them
shifted to the control of Secretary Crisby. There had been question
whether this could be done by executive decree, or did it require an act
of Congress. The officials had made a lot of delay, but of course it was
just a hold-up; they wanted more money for this one and that. Old Pete
had sent his son on to Washington to act as paymaster. The other
difficulty was that some little oil company had got onto the Sunnyside
tract—the one that Verne and Dad were to get—and had started drilling
under an old lease. They would have to be ejected, and it must be done
quietly, they must fix matters up with the newspapers somehow. Verne
wanted Dad to go up there and look the ground over, and maybe he and
Bunny might make a trip of it. Sunnyside was going to be the world’s
wonder of an oil field—it would beat Paradise many times over, and when
they had got it safely tucked away, Dad would take a good long rest.

                                  VII

There was a telephone call for Bunny—he was to call “long distance” in
a city a hundred miles up the state. When he did so, there was a nurse
in a hospital, with a message from Bertie; she wanted him to come to
her. She was not in any danger, and there was no use worrying the
family, therefore she wished him to say nothing about the matter. Bunny
of course jumped into his car and made all haste. His sister had been
visiting the Normans, a long way from this hospital.

When he got there, the attendants told him that Bertie had had an
operation for appendicitis, and was doing well. He was taken up to her
room, and there she lay, pale, and strange-looking, because he had never
seen her without her colors. Everything about her was spotlessly clean,
a lacy white nightgown, and soft white pillows in which she lay
sunken—nun-like, and pathetic in her gladness to see him. “Gee whiz,
Bertie! How did this happen?”

“It came quite suddenly. It was pretty bad, but I’m all right now.
Everybody’s been so good to me.” There was a nurse in the room, and
Bertie waited until she had gone out and closed the door. Then she fixed
her tired eyes on her brother, and said, “We call it appendicitis,
because that’s the conventional thing, and what you’ll have to tell Dad
and Aunt Emma. But you might as well know the truth—I was going to have
a baby.”

“Oh, my God!” Bunny stared at her, aghast.

“You needn’t begin acting up—you’re no spring chicken, Bunny.”

“Who is the man?”

“Now, don’t start any melodrama. You know it might happen to anybody.”

“Yes—but who was it, Bertie?”

“I want you to get this straight at the beginning—it wasn’t his fault.
I did it on purpose.”

Bunny didn’t know what to make of that. “You might as well tell me,
Bertie.”

“Well, I want you to behave yourself. I’m my own boss, and I knew what I
was doing. I wouldn’t marry him now for a million dollars—not for all
his millions, because he’s a yellow pup, and I despise him.”

“You mean Charlie Norman!”

She nodded in assent; and as she saw Bunny’s hands clench, she said,
“You don’t have to do any heroics. There can’t be a shot-gun wedding
when the bride refuses to attend.”

“Tell me about it, Bertie.”

“Well, we were in love quite desperately for a while, and I thought he
was going to marry me. But then I saw he wouldn’t lay off other women,
and I thought it over, and I decided, if I had a baby, he’d have to
marry me, so I tried it.”

“Good God, Bertie!”

“You needn’t make faces. Thousands of women do it—it’s one of our
tricks. But Charlie’s a yellow cur. When I told him about it, he behaved
so disgustingly, I told him to go to hell. I got the name of a doctor
that would fix me up, and Dad will have a thousand dollars to pay, and
that’s all the damage.”

“Bertie,” he whispered, “why in the world do you have to do things like
that?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll not do it again. I had to learn, like everybody
else.”

“But why did you have to do it once? Trying to trap a rich man into
marriage! Doesn’t Dad give you enough money?”

“That’s very easy for you to say, Bunny, you’re satisfied to get off in
a corner and read some old book. But I’m not like that, I have to have a
little life. Dad gives me pocket money, but that’s not what I want. I
want a career—something of my own. And don’t start preaching at me,
because I’m weak as a kitten and can’t stand anything just now. I wanted
what every woman wants, a home of my own, and I didn’t want a bungalow,
I wanted a place I could invite people to, and make some use of my
talents as a hostess. Well, I fell down, and now I want somebody to be
kind to me for a few minutes, if you’ve possibly got that in you.”

It looked as if the tears were coming into her eyes, so Bunny hastened
to say, “All right, old girl, I’ll lay off. But naturally I was taken
aback.”

“You needn’t be. The doctor says it’s done a million times a year in the
United States. I amused myself figuring that out—it’s about once every
thirty seconds. Life is a messy business. Let’s talk about something
else!”

It was a time for confidences, and she wanted to know about him and
Vee—was he going to marry her? He said he didn’t know if she would have
him. Bertie laughed—she would have him all right, she was playing her
cards cleverly. But Bunny told how many times she got irritated at him,
and why, and that gave Bertie occasion for a discourse. She was the same
old Bertie; she might weaken for a few minutes, and ask him to be kind,
but she still believed in money, and the things money bought. She
discussed Vee from that point of view; it would be more dignified, and
safer in the long run, for him to marry a lady, rather than an actress;
but all the same, Vee had a lot of sense, and he might do worse. To go
and wreck their happiness for the sake of his fool Bolshevik
notions—that was just sickening!

Then she wanted to know about Dad’s affairs, and how that deal in
Washington was going; would they really get the leases? And was it true
that Dad had any real pull with the administration in Washington? Bunny
was sure he had; and Bertie revealed what she had in mind. “I’ve been
thinking it over—I’ve had a lot of time to think, lying here. I believe
that what I’ll do is to go back to Eldon Burdick. He’s a good deal of a
dub, but you always know where to find him, and that seems to me a
virtue right now.”

“Would you tell him about this?” asked Bunny, wonderingly.

“No, why should I? He’s made his mistakes, I guess, and he doesn’t
advertise them. He knows I’ve been living with Charlie, but I think he’s
still in love with me. What I have in mind is that I could make a career
for him; I’d get Dad or Verne to pull some wires and get him a good
diplomatic post. I believe I’d like to live in Paris, you meet all the
important people there, and it’s very good form. We’re going to have to
take charge of Europe, Eldon says, and I think he’s the sort of man
they’ll need. How does that strike you?”

“Well, if it’s what you want, I’ve no doubt you can get it. But it’ll be
rather tough on Eldon to have me for a brother-in-law.”

“Oh, you’re going to behave yourself,” said Bertie, easily. “This is
just a sort of children’s complaint that you’ll get over.”

                                  VIII

The navy department ousted the little company which had started drilling
on the Sunnyside naval reserve. It sent in a bunch of marines to do it,
and this unprecedented move attracted a lot of attention, which worried
Dad and Verne. The latter had a man up there, to fix matters with the
newspaper correspondents; and “Young Pete” was in Washington, seeing to
things there. You began to notice in the newspapers items to the effect
that the navy department was greatly worried because companies occupying
lands adjoining the naval reserves were drilling, and draining the
navy’s oil; this would be a calamity, and the authorities were of the
opinion that in order to avoid it the reserves should be turned over to
the department of the interior, which would lease them upon terms
advantageous to the government.

Bunny didn’t need to ask his father about that propaganda; he knew what
it meant, and he waited, wondering—was it possible to get away with
anything so crude? Could anybody fail to see that the government could
have taken the adjoining lands, under the same powers which had set
aside the present reserves? Or that the navy could have put down offset
wells on its own property, exactly as any oil man would have done? But
no, this administration was not thinking about the navy—it was thinking
about Dad and Verne! When the oil men had bought the Republican
convention, they had also got the machinery of the party, and that
included the press, which now accepted meekly the “dope” sent out from
Washington, and commended the prompt measures of the administration to
protect the navy’s precious oil.

Then a peculiar thing happened. Dan Irving called Bunny on the phone,
and made a date for lunch. The first thing he said, “Well, the labor
college is flooey—naa poo!” He went on to declare, it was a waste of
time to try to keep such an enterprise alive, so long as the present
labor leaders were in power; they didn’t want the young workers to be
educated—it wouldn’t be so easy for the machine to control them. Last
week somebody had raided the college at night, and taken most of its
belongings, except the debts; Dan had decided to pay these out of his
savings and quit.

“What are you going to do?” asked Bunny. And Dan explained he had been
sending in news to a little press service which a bunch of radicals were
maintaining in Chicago, and he had got a lot of information from
Washington that had attracted attention. He had some friends there on
the inside, and the upshot of it was that Dan had been offered fifteen
dollars a week to go to the national capital as correspondent of this
press service. “I can exist on that, and it’s the best job I can do.”

Bunny was enthusiastic. “Dan, that’s fine! There’s plenty of rascals
that need to be smoked out!”

“I know it; and that’s what I want to see you about. One of the things
I’ve got my eye on is these naval reserve oil leases. They look mighty
fishy to me. Unless I’m missing my guess, the people behind it are
Vernon Roscoe and Pete O’Reilly, and there’s bound to be black wherever
their hands have touched.”

“I suppose so,” replied Bunny, trying to keep his voice from going weak.

“There’s talk in Washington that that’s how Crisby came into the
cabinet. The deal was fixed up before Harding got his nomination.
General Wood says the nomination was offered to him if he’d make such a
deal, and he turned it down.”

“Good Lord!” said Bunny.

“Of course I don’t know yet, but I’m going to dig it out. Then I
remembered that Roscoe is an associate of your father’s, and it occurred
to me, it would be awkward as the devil if I was to come on
anything—well, you know what I mean, Bunny—after your father was so
kind to me, and you put up money for the college—”

“Sure, I know,” said Bunny. “You don’t have to worry about that, Dan.
You go ahead and do your job, just as if you’d never known us.”

“That’s fine of you. But listen—I was afraid maybe some day there might
be a misunderstanding, unless I got this clear, that I never got any
hint on this subject from you. My recollection is positive, you’ve never
mentioned it in my hearing. Is that right?”

“It’s absolutely right, Dan.”

“You’ve never discussed your father’s business with me at all—except
the strike; and you haven’t discussed Roscoe’s or O’Reilly’s, either.”

“That is true, Dan. There’ll never be any question about that.”

“There will be, Bunny, rest assured—if I should bust loose in
Washington, nothing would ever convince Roscoe and O’Reilly that I
hadn’t wormed it out of you. I’m afraid nothing would convince your
father, either. But I want to be sure that your own mind is clear, I
haven’t been dishonorable.”

Bunny gave him his hand on it; and not one of the veteran poker-players
who sat all night in the smoke-filled living-room of the “ranch-house”
at Paradise could have acted more perfectly the part of impassivity.
Bunny even made himself finish lunch, and he wrote a check to cover part
of the debt of the labor college, and gave his friend a hearty farewell
and best wishes for his new job. Then he drove off in his car, and was
free to look as he felt, which was quite unhappy!

He decided that it was his duty to tell his father about this
conversation. It couldn’t make any difference to Dan Irving’s work, and
it might yet be possible to keep Dad out of the mess. But when the elder
Ross got home that evening, Bunny had no time to get in a word. “Well,
son, we got those leases!”

“You don’t say, Dad!”

“They’ve been approved, and Verne left for Washington today. They’ll be
signed next week, and you and me are going to take a trip and have some
fun!”

                                   IX

Joe and Ikey Menzies had been out of jail for a couple of months, their
comrades of the Workers’ party having scraped together the bail. Now
came their trial, with several other members of the party. The state was
undertaking to show that this organization was nothing but the Communist
party under a camouflage; it was the “legal” part of the organization,
but the real direction was in the hands of an “underground” group, which
received funds and took orders from Moscow. It advocated the forcible
overthrow of the “capitalist state,” and the setting up of a
“dictatorship of the proletariat,” after the Russian pattern. On the
other hand, the indicted men claimed that they had organized a
legitimate working-class political party, and their attitude to violence
was purely defensive. They believed the capitalists would never permit
the power to be taken from them peaceably; it was the capitalists who
would overthrow the constitution, and the workers would have to defend
themselves.

The prisoners were all tried at once, and the procedure took three weeks
and was quite an education in contemporary problems—or would have been,
had the newspapers reported both sides. To get the workers’ side, you
had to sit in the court room; and Bunny went whenever he could get loose
from the university. He was there when the prosecution sprung a
“surprise” witness, and it was a surprise to Bunny also—his boyhood
friend, Ben Skutt! Ben, it appeared, had grown a moustache and taken a
course in the Moscow dialect, and had turned up as an oil worker out of
a job, and been admitted to the Workers’ party, and before long had got
a job in the office. Now he had harrowing stories to tell of the
criminal things he had heard said, and of efforts the party had made to
incite the oil workers to rise and destroy the wells. On the other hand,
so Bunny was told by Ikey Menzies, the Communists were ready to swear
that Ben Skutt had himself done all the proposing of destruction—at the
crisis of the strike he had spent his time insisting that the only way
to save the situation was to get a bunch of real fighting men and burn
up half a dozen oil fields.

Bunny went home to his father. “Dad, just what was it made you get rid
of Ben Skutt?”

“Why, I found he’d been taking commissions from the other feller. He’d
been up to other rascalities, too.”

“Just what?”

Dad laughed. “He had a scheme that was a wonder. You know, down there at
Prospect Hill, people were in a crazy hurry to drill; the owner of the
next lot was getting his well down first, and draining all the oil away.
Ben and another feller would find a bunch of lot owners jist on the
point of making a good lease; and Ben would have his pal give him a
quit-claim deed to one of those lots. Ben would record the deed, and of
course, when the title company come to report on the property, there was
that cloud on the title. The owner would come hustling after Ben Skutt
in a panic, what the hell was this? And Ben would look shocked, and tell
how he had bought the lot from some feller in good faith. Who was the
feller? Well, the feller had disappeared, and nobody could find him. But
there Ben had the lease tied up, and the drilling couldn’t start. The
lot owner would rage and swear—all the lot owners in the lease was all
tied up together, and nobody could do anything with their property till
that one lot had got free. To go into court and clear the title would
take six months or so, and meantime the chance to lease would be gone;
so the owners would have to chip in and pay Ben five thousand or
so—whatever he claimed he had paid to the other man.”

“I should think that trick would have been tried a lot of times,”
remarked Bunny; and Dad answered, it would be tried just long enough for
the news to git round, and then some lot owner would stick a gun under
Ben’s nose, and settle it that way. What had happened in his case was
the usual thing, a woman had got hold of him and plucked him clean, and
that was why he was doing spy work for the patriotic societies.

Bunny knew that his father didn’t owe anything to this slippery rascal,
and wouldn’t mind his being exposed, provided Bunny’s name was not
dragged in. It would be easy to trace the matter down, by looking up
Ben’s real estate transactions in the county records; he would have
given a quit-claim deed to the lot owners whom he had held up, and if
these men were still in the neighborhood, no doubt they would testify,
or could be made to. Bunny saw Rachel at the university next morning and
told her the story, and gave her a hundred dollar bill to cover the
costs of a title search. She passed it on to Joe or Ikey, and two days
later Ben was confronted by half a dozen infuriated citizens, male and
female, who did a good deal to shake the jury’s faith in his testimony
as to secret conspiracies in the Workers’ party! The jury disagreed in
the case of all but two men, the leading party directors; these got six
years apiece, but the Menzies boys got off, and the party held a
celebration, which was described in the newspapers as an orgy of red
revolutionary raving.

                                   X

Dad was not so much troubled by the news which Bunny told him, that Dan
Irving was on the trail of Vernon Roscoe in the national capital. There
was bound to be gossip about the lease, of course; there were always
“soreheads,” trying to make trouble, but everybody would understand it
was jist politics. It was the biggest “killing” of Dad’s life-time, and
of Verne’s, too; they would go ahead and drill the land and get out the
oil, and nothing else would count. You had to be a sort of hard-shell
crab in this game; it was too bad Bunny wasn’t able to grow the
necessary shell. Also, it was too bad that a nice young feller like “the
professor” couldn’t find anything better to do with himself than to go
smelling round Verne’s out-house.

There had been a new company formed, to develop this greatest oil field
in America, and Dad was part owner of the stock, and a vice-president,
with another hundred thousand a year for directing the development work.
But he wasn’t going to wear himself out with detail, he promised Bunny;
he had trained some competent young fellers by now, and all he had to do
was direct them. It was a wonderful job, and he was all wrapped up in
putting it through, working harder than ever, in defiance of his
doctors.

A telegram came from Verne; the leases had been signed. Bunny arranged
to get a week off from his studies—such favors could be had by a grave
old senior, especially when there was hope that his father might endow a
chair of research in petroleum chemistry. They took a long drive to
Sunnyside, a remote part of the state, grazing country, with very few
settlers, and poor roads. They stayed in a crude country hotel, and
inspected the new fields, riding horseback part of the time. Dad’s
geologists were there, and the engineers and surveyors; they decided
upon the drilling sites, and the roads, and the pipe-lines, and the
tank-farm—yes, even a town, and how the streets were to run, and where
the moving picture theatre and the general store were to be! The
necessary wires had been pulled, and the county was to start work on a
paved road next week. It was all hunkydory!

Bunny ought to have been interested in all this; he ought to have been
proud of the “killing,” like any loyal son. Instead of that, here he was
as usual, “smelling round the out-house” to use the ex-mule-driver’s
crude phrase. The fates which willed that Bunny should be always on the
wrong side of his father’s work followed him here to this country hotel,
and brought him into contact with an old ranchman, a feeble-faced,
pathetic old fellow with skin turned to leather by sixty years of baking
heat and winds. Anxious watery blue eyes he had, and a big case of
papers under his arm, which he wouldn’t leave in his room for fear they
would be stolen. He wanted Dad to consider a lease, and of course Dad
had no time to fool with little leases, and told him so, and that
settled it. But the old man found out somehow that Bunny lacked the
customary hard-shell of the big oil-crabs, and succeeded in luring the
young man to his room and showing his documents. It was a certified file
from the department of the interior, all fixed up with impressive red
seals and blue ribbons—but all the same it wasn’t complete, the old man
declared; somebody had stolen the essential documents from the
government files, which showed how “Mid-Central Pete” had done him out
of his homestead. “It’s a feller named Vernon Roscoe, one of the big
crooks in this game.”

The old man, Carberry, had set out to homestead a claim to some lands
nearby; and oil had been discovered, and Mid-Central Pete had just come
in and shoved him out, paying him not a cent for his twenty-two hundred
dollars of improvements. They could do this—the old man had a copy of
the law to show how it read, excluding “mineral lands” from homestead
rights; there were thousands in this part of the state who had been
caught in that trap. But Carberry had actually got a patent on his land,
and so had a valid claim; but somebody had managed to doctor the
government records, and now for several years he had been struggling for
redress. With pathetic trustfulness he had written to his congressman,
to get a lawyer in Washington to represent him, and the congressman had
recommended a lawyer, and Carberry had sent him money several times with
no result—and then, going to Washington, had discovered that the
alleged lawyer was simply a clerk in the congressman’s office,
plundering land claimants and presumably dividing the graft with his
employer!

A pitiful, pitiful story—and the worst part of it, you could see it
wasn’t a single case, but a system. One more way by which the rich and
powerful were plundering the poor and weak! Carberry had with him a
government document he had managed to get in Washington, the report of a
congressional investigation of California land cases. Bunny spent an
evening glancing through it—a thousand pages of wholesale fraud and
stealing in close print. For example, the seizure of oil rights by the
railroads! The government land grants had turned over to the railroads
every other section of land along their right of way, but had
specifically exempted all “mineral lands.” Wherever minerals might be
discovered, the roads were bound to surrender these sections and take
other sections. Under the law, the word “minerals” included petroleum;
but were the railroads paying any attention to that law? The Southern
Pacific alone had California oil lands to a value of more than a billion
dollars; but every effort to recover these properties for the state had
been blocked by cunning lawyers and purchased politicians and judges. As
they drove home, Bunny tried to tell his father about this; but what
could Dad do? What could he do about old Carberry, who had been robbed
of his home by “Mid-Central Pete”? You could be sure that Dad wasn’t
going “smelling round Verne’s out-house”!




                              CHAPTER XVII
                              THE EXPOSURE


                                   I

All that fall and winter the quail had been calling from the hills of
Paradise unheeded. Bunny didn’t want to go there. But now it chanced
that Dad had some matters to see to, and his chauffeur had got sent to
jail for turning bootlegger in his off hours. Dad was having spells of
bad health, when he did not feel equal to driving; and this being a
Friday, his son offered to take him.

The Ross Junior tract had nothing left of Bunny but the name. There was
a strange woman as housekeeper in the ranch-house, and the Rascum cabin
had been moved, and the bougainvillea vine replaced by a derrick. Every
one of the fellows who had met with Paul was gone, and there were no
more intellectual discussions. Paradise was now a place where men worked
hard at getting out oil, and kept their mouths closed. There were
hundreds of men Bunny had never seen before, and these had brought a new
atmosphere. They patronized the bootleggers and the pool-rooms, and
places for secret gambling and drinking. “Orange-pickers” was the
contemptuous name the real oil workers applied to this new element, and
their lack of familiarity with their jobs was a cause of endless
trouble; they would slip from greasy derricks, or get crushed by the
heavy pipe, and the company had had to build an addition to the
hospital. But of course that was cheaper than paying union wages to
skilled men!

A deplorable thing happened to Bunny; his reading of a book was
interrupted by a visit from the wife of Jick Duggan, one of the men in
the county jail. The woman insisted on seeing him, and then insisted on
weeping all over the place, and telling him harrowing tales about her
husband and the other fellows. She begged him to go and see for himself,
and he was weak enough to yield—you can see how imprudent it was, on
the part of a young oil prince who was trying to grow his hard-shell, so
that he could be a help to his old father, and enjoy life with a darling
of the world. Bunny knew that he was doing wrong, and showed his guilt
by not telling his father where he was going that rainy Saturday
afternoon.

They let him into the jail without objection; the men who kept the place
being used to it, and unable to foresee the impression it would make
upon a young idealist. The ancient dungeon had been contrived by an
architect with a special genius for driving his fellow beings mad. The
“tanks,” instead of having doors with keys, like other jail cells, were
designed as revolving turrets, and whenever you wanted to put a prisoner
in or take one out, you revolved the turret until an opening in one set
of bars corresponded with an opening in another set. This revolving was
done by means of a hand-winch, and involved a frightful grinding and
shrieking of rusty iron. There were three such tanks, one on top of the
other, and the revolving of any one inflicted the uproar on everybody.
In the course of the jail’s forty years of history, scores of men had
gone mad from having to listen to these sounds at all hours of the day
and night.

Have you ever had the experience of seeing some person you know and love
shut behind bars like a wild beast? It was something that hit Bunny in
the pit of his stomach, and made him weak and faint. Here were seven
fellows, all but two of them young as himself, crowding together like so
many friendly and affectionate deer, nuzzling through the bars and
expecting lumps of sugar or bits of bread. Their pitiful clamor of
welcome, the grateful light on their faces—just for a visit, a few
minutes of a rich young man’s time!

These were all ranch-fellows, outdoor men, that had worked in the sun
and rain all their lives, and grown big and bronzed and sturdy; but now
they were bleached white or yellow, dirty and unshaven, with sunken
cheeks and hollow eyes. Jick Duggan was coughing, just as his wife had
said, and there was not one healthy-looking man in the bunch. If Bunny
had been able to say to himself that these men had done some vile deed,
and this was their atonement, he might have justified it, even while he
questioned what good it would do; but they were there because they had
dared to dream of justice for their fellows, and to talk about it, in
defiance of the “open shop” crowd of big business men!

Bunny had sent them some books—they were allowed to have books that
didn’t look radical to very ignorant jailers, and provided the books
came direct from the publishers, so that they would not have to be
searched too carefully for concealed objects such as saws and dope. Now
they wanted to tell him how much these books had helped, and to ask for
more. And what did Bunny know about their prospects of getting a trial?
Had he seen Paul, and what did Paul think? And what about the union—was
there anything left of it? They were not allowed any sort of “radical”
paper, so they were six or seven months behind the news of their own
world.

                                   II

Bunny came out into the sunshine with a fresh impulse of desperation.
His father was half sick, but even so, his father must have this burden
of pain dumped onto him! The last time they had discussed the matter,
Dad had said to wait, Vernon Roscoe would “see what he could do.” But
now Bunny would wait no longer; Dad must compel Verne to act, or Bunny
would take up the job himself.

He drove his father back to Angel City, and learned that the radicals
had organized a “defense committee,” and there was to be a mass-meeting
of protest, at which funds would be raised for the approaching trial.
Paul was to be the principal speaker—despite the fact that it might
cause his bail privilege to be cancelled. When Bunny got that news, he
served an ultimatum on his father; the meeting was to take place the
following week, and unless Verne had acted in the meantime, Bunny was
going to be one of the speakers, and say his full say about the case.

Dad of course protested. But it was one of those times when his son
surprised him by failing to be “soft.” Bunny went farther than ever in
his desperation. “Maybe you’ll feel I haven’t any right to behave like
this while I’m living on your money, and perhaps I ought to quit college
and go to work for myself.”

“Son, I’ve never said anything like that!”

“No, but I’m putting you in a hole with Verne, and it would be easier if
you could say I’m not living on you.”

“Son, I don’t want to say any such thing. But I do think you ought to
consider my position.”

“I’ve considered everything, Dad—considered till I’m sick at heart. I
just can’t let my love for any one person in the world take the place of
my sense of justice. We’re committing a crime to keep those men in jail,
and I say Verne has got to let them out, and if he don’t, then I’m going
to make it hot for him.”

Verne was on his way back from the east; and Bunny demanded that he
should phone the district attorney his wishes; he might phone the judge,
too, if he thought necessary—it wouldn’t be the first time, Bunny would
wager. If he didn’t do it, then Bunny’s name would be announced as one
of the speakers at that mass-meeting. Upon Dad flashed the memory of
that terrible meeting of Harry Seager’s; he saw his beloved son publicly
adopting that same ferocious mob, clasping that sea of angry faces and
uplifted hands and lungs of leather!

Also Bunny renewed his threat about Annabelle. “You tell Verne with my
compliments, I’m going to lay siege to his girl, and take her to that
meeting. I’ll tell her he’s trying to keep her in a golden cage, and
that’ll make her go; and if ever she hears the full story of those
political prisoners, she’ll make Verne wish he’d known when to quit!”
Dad could hardly keep from grinning. Poor old man, in his secret heart
he was proud of the kid’s nerve!

Whether Dad used the argument about Annabelle, or what he said, this
much is history—two days after Vernon Roscoe arrived from Washington in
his private car, carrying in his own hands the precious documents with
the big red seals of the department of the interior, the district
attorney of San Elido County appeared before Superior Judge Patten, and
entered a “nolle pros” in the eight criminal syndicalism cases. So Vee
Tracy got back her ten thousand dollars, and the seven oil workers were
turned out half-blinded into the sunshine, and Bunny postponed his
premier appearance in the role of that ill bird—whatever may be the
name of it—which is reputed to foul its own nest.

                                  III

Bunny got the news before it was in the papers, and he hastened to take
it to Paul and Ruth. Paul had got work as a carpenter, and they had
rented a little cottage on the rear of a lot. Ruth had started her
nurse’s course in one of the big hospitals, and Paul had got some books,
and there was a little of Paradise transported to a working-class part
of Angel City. And oh, the happiness that shone in Ruth’s face when
Bunny came in with the news! And then the strange mixture of anguish and
pride, as Paul spoke: “It’s good of you, son, to have taken so much
trouble, and I do appreciate it; but I’m afraid you won’t think me very
grateful when you hear what I’m going to do with my freedom.”

“What is it, Paul?”

“I’ve decided to join the Workers’ party.”

“Oh, Paul!” Bunny’s face showed dismay. “But why?”

“Because I believe in their tactics. I always have, ever since my time
in Siberia. I waited, because I didn’t want to hurt the strike; and
after I got arrested, I couldn’t do anything without compromising the
other fellows. But now it won’t hurt anyone but myself, so I’m going to
say what I know.”

“But Paul! They’ll only arrest you again!”

“Maybe so. But this time they’ll arrest me as a Communist, and they’ll
try me that way.”

“But they’ve already convicted so many!”

“That’s the way an unpopular cause has to grow—there’s no other way.
Here I am, an obscure workingman, and nobody pays any attention to what
I think or say; but if they try me as a Communist, I make people talk
and think about our ideas.”

Bunny stole a look at Ruth: a pitiful sight, her eyes riveted upon her
brother, and her hands clasped tight in fear. It was so that she had
looked when Paul was going off to war. It was her fate to see him go off
to war!

“Are you sure there’s nothing more important you can do, Paul?”

“I used to think I was going to do a lot of great things. But the last
few years have taught me that a workingman isn’t very important in this
capitalist world, and he has to remember his place. A lot of us are
going to jail, and a lot more are going to die. The one thing we must be
sure of is that we help to awaken the slaves.”

There was a pause. “You’re quite sure it can’t come peaceably, Paul?”

“The other has to say about that, son. Do you think they were peaceable
during the strike? You should have been there!”

“And you’ve given up hope for democracy?”

“Not at all! Democracy is the goal—it’s the only thing worth working
for. But it can’t exist till we’ve broken the strangle-hold of big
business. That’s a fighting job, and it can’t be done by democracy. Look
at the boobs that Eli has got in his tabernacle, and imagine them
setting out to get the best of Vernon Roscoe!”

Bunny could not avoid a smile. “That’s exactly Verne’s own statement.”

“Well, he’s a practical man, and I’ve a great respect for him. He wants
to do something, and he finds out the way, and he does it. He doesn’t
let the government get in his way, does he? No, he overthrows the
government by bribery. By the way, son, have you seen Dan Irving’s
Washington letter this week?”

“The paper’s at home, but I didn’t stop to look at it.”

“Well, you’ll be interested. Dan says it’s known to all the newspaper
men in Washington that Roscoe and O’Reilly made a deal with the
attorney-general to buy the nomination for Harding, on condition they
were to get these naval reserve leases. They’ve been buying government
officials right and left, and newspaper men also. There’s a clamor for
an investigation, but the gang won’t let it happen.”

There was a pause. Paul, watching his friend’s face, saw an uneasy look,
and added, “Don’t talk to me about it, son—I don’t want to know
anything I’m not free to tell. But you and I both understand—that is
capitalist government, and what has it got to do with democracy?”

Again Bunny didn’t answer; and Paul said, “I think about Verne, as you
call him, because I’ve just had a run-in with him, and he’s the system
to me. I want to take his powers away from him; and how am I going to do
it? I’ve boxed the compass, trying to figure how it can be done legally.
He’s got the courts, and they’ll call anything legal that he says;
they’ll wind you up in a spider’s web of technicalities. He’s got the
machinery for reaching the masses—you can’t tell them anything but what
he wants them to hear. He’s got the movies—people say he has a movie
star for a mistress—maybe you know about that. And you’ve been to
college—O’Reilly attends to that, I’m told. We could never get a
majority vote—because Verne has the ballot-boxes stuffed; even if we
elected anybody, he’d have them bought before they got into office. The
more I think of the idea that he would give up to paper ballots—the
crazier it seems to me.”

“But then, Paul, what can you hope for?”

“I’m going to the workers! Verne’s oil workers are the basis of his
power, they produce his wealth, and they can be reached, they’re not
scattered all over. They have one common job, and one common
interest—they want the wealth that Verne takes from them. Of course
they know that only dimly; they read his newspapers, and go to his
movies. But we’re going to teach them—and when they take the oil wells,
how can Verne get them back?”

“He’ll send troops and take them, Paul!”

“He won’t send troops, because we’ll have the railwaymen. We’ll have the
telegraphers, and they’ll send our messages instead of his. We’ll have
the men in all the key industries—we’re going out to organize them, and
tell them exactly how to do it—all power to the unions.”

Bunny was contemplating once more the vision which his friend had
brought back from Siberia. And Paul went on, with that condescending air
that had always impressed Bunny, and infuriated his sister. “It seems
dreadful to you, because it means a fight, and you don’t want to
fight—you don’t have to. The men for this job are the ones that have
had the iron in their souls—men that have been beaten and crushed,
thrown into jail and starved there. That’s how Verne makes the
revolution, he throws us into jail and lets us rot. We lie there and
have bitter, black thoughts. All the Bolsheviks got their training in
dungeons; and now the masters are giving the same course in America.
It’s not only that we’re tempted and made hard—it’s that we become
marked men, the workers know us; the poor slaves that don’t dare move a
hand for themselves, they learn that there are fellows they can trust,
that won’t sell them out to Vernon Roscoe! I’m going back to Paradise,
son, and teach Communism, and if Verne has me arrested again, the Moscow
program will go into the court records of San Elido county!”

                                   IV

The newspapers announced a social event of the first importance, the
engagement of Miss Alberta Ross, only daughter of Mr. J. Arnold Ross, to
Mr. Eldon Burdick, a scion of one of the oldest families of the city,
and recently chosen president of the California Defense League. A few
days later came the announcement that Mr. Burdick had been appointed a
secretary to the American embassy at Paris; and so the wedding was a
state occasion, with more flowers than were ever seen in a church
before, and Bunny all dolled up for a groomsman, and Dad looking as
handsome as the ringmaster of a circus, and Aunt Emma, who considered
that she had made this match, assuming the mental position of the
bride’s mother, with the proper uncertain expression, half elation and
half tears. “Mrs. Emma Ross, aunt of the bride, wore pink satin
embroidered in pastel colored beads and carried pink lilies”—thus the
newspapers, which set forth the importance of the Burdick family, and
all about the Ross millions, and never mentioned that the father of the
bride had once been a mule-driver, nor even that he had kept a general
store at Queen Center, California!

And when the excitement was all over, and bride and groom had set out
for their post of duty, then a funny thing happened; Aunt Emma, uplifted
by her success as match-maker, turned her arts upon Bunny! The occasion
was the world premiere of “The Princess of Patchouli,” a sort of family
event. Had not Dad and Bunny been present at the inception of this
sumptuous work of art? Had not Dad been king? By golly, he had, and he
had told Aunt Emma about it at least a dozen times—and so, what more
natural than that he should escort her upon his arm, following
immediately behind the star of the occasion and her Bunny-rabbit? And
what more natural than that Aunt Emma should meet Vee Tracy, and fall in
love with her at first sight, and tell her darling nephew about her
feelings?

In short, Bunny became aware that he was being manipulated by the
proverbial tact of woman to think that Vee Tracy made a perfect princess
on the screen, she was a natural-born aristocrat in both appearance and
manner. It is part of the proverbial intuitive powers of woman, that she
will be able to say exactly how an aristocrat will look and act, even
though she has never been outside the state of California, and never
laid eyes upon a single aristocrat in all her fifty years.

Bunny said, yes, Vee was all right; she was a good-looker. With the
proverbial unresponsiveness of the selfish male, he did not warm up to
his aunt’s hints and tell about his love-affair. In fact he was rather
shocked, because he thought she was too old to know about anything
improper. So Aunt Emma had to come right out with it, “Why don’t you
marry her, Bunny?”

“Well, but Aunt Emma, I don’t know that she’d have me.”

“Have you ever asked her?”

“Well, I’ve sort of hinted round.”

“Well, you stop hinting, and ask her plain. She’s a lovely girl, and
you’re getting old enough to be serious now, and I think it would make a
very distinguished marriage, and I know it would please your father—I
believe he’ll propose to her himself if you don’t.” Aunt Emma was quite
charmed with this naughtiness, giving the younger generation to
understand that they needn’t be laying the old folks away on the shelf
quite yet!

Bunny always liked to oblige; so he went off and thought it over, and
half made up his mind to talk it over with Vee. But alas, the next time
they met they got into one of those disputes that were making it so hard
for them to be happy. Vee had just come from Annabelle Ames, and
reported that Annabelle was in distress, because some rascal journalist
was writing letters from Washington, accusing Verne of having bought the
presidency of the United States, denouncing the Sunnyside lease as the
greatest steal of the century, and demanding that Verne be prosecuted
for bribery. Some thoughtful friend had cut out a copy of this printed
article, and marked it all with red pencil and mailed it to Annabelle’s
home, marked “Personal.” The article was most abusive, and the name of
the writer sounded familiar to Vee—Daniel Webster Irving, where had she
heard of Daniel Webster Irving? Of course Bunny had to tell her at
once—because she’d be bound to find it out, and would think he was
hiding it from her: Dan Irving was his former teacher at the university,
and head of the labor college that had failed.

So then Vee went up into the air. This fellow had been worming secrets
out of Bunny! And when Bunny stated firmly that he had never mentioned
the matter to Dan or to any other of his radical friends, Vee cried,
“Oh, my God! My God! You poor, naive, trusting soul!” She went on like
that, it was proof positive of the cunning of these dangerous reds, that
they should be able to keep him in ignorance while they used him for an
oil well and pumped him dry! In Vee’s view of the matter, it now became
of the utmost urgency that Annabelle and Verne should not find out that
Bunny knew this rascal journalist, and had actually helped to support
him. If they found out, it would be all over with their friendship, they
would be sure they had been basely betrayed, or at least that Bunny was
such a scatter-brain that it was unsafe to have him about. Vee wanted to
be loyal and romantic and melodramatic, just like one of her
“continuities.” And Bunny was bored, and told her that Dad had probably
told Verne all about the matter, at the time that he, Bunny, had told
his father.

So the young oil prince did not ask the “natural-born aristocrat” to
marry him. No, he went off and was wretchedly unhappy; because he ached
for Vee whenever he was away from her, and yet they seemed to be always
having violent emotional crises, and having to make it up with tears.
There was no way for him to avoid trouble, except to give up the radical
movement; and it was a fact that intellectually nothing else appealed to
him. He wanted to see Paul, and argue with him, and present a score of
new objections to the Workers’ party! He wanted to take Rachel to meet
Paul and Ruth, and hear the arguments that would fly fast and furious,
when Rachel set forth her opinion of the left wing insanity! He wanted
to go to the meetings of the “Ypsels,” the Young Peoples’ Socialist
League, of which Rachel had recently taken on the duties of
secretary—here was real education, young folks who actually wanted to
use their minds, and took ideas with the seriousness that other students
reserved for football and fraternity politics!

                                   V

Of all the people Bunny knew, it appeared just now that only one was
perfectly successful and completely happy, and that was Eli Watkins,
prophet of the Third Revelation. For the Lord had carried out to the
letter the promise revealed to the runners of the Bible Marathon; he had
caused a great banker, Mark Eisenberg, who ran the financial affairs of
Angel City, to reflect upon the importance of Eli’s political influence,
and to put up a good part of the money for the new tabernacle. Now the
structure was completed, and was opened amid such glory to the Lord as
had never been witnessed in this part of the world.

Southern California is populated for the most part by retired farmers
from the middle west, who have come out to die amid sunshine and
flowers. Of course they want to die happy, and with the assurance of
sunshine and flowers beyond; so Angel City is the home of more weird
cults and doctrines—you couldn’t form any conception of it till you
came to investigate. To run your eye over the pages of performances
advertised in the Sunday newspapers would cause you to burst into
laughter or tears, according to your temperament. Wherever three or more
were gathered together in the name of Jesus or Buddha or Zoroaster, or
Truth or Light or Love, or New Thought or Spiritualism or Psychic
Science—there was the beginning of a new revelation, with mystical,
inner states of bliss and esoteric ways of salvation.

Eli had advantages over most of these spiritual founders. In the first
place, he had been a real shepherd of flocks and herds, and there are
age-old traditions attaching to this profession. Also it was
symbolically useful; what Eli had done to the goats he was now doing to
the human goats of Angel City, gathering them into the fold and guarding
them from the cruel wolf Satan. He had taken to carrying a shepherd’s
crook on the platform, and with his white robes and the star shining in
his yellow hair, he would call the flocks, just as he had done upon the
hills, and when he passed the collection plate, they would do the
shearing of themselves.

Eli possessed a sense of drama and turned it loose in the devising of
primitive little tableaux and pageants, which gave rapture to his simple
minded followers. When he told how he had been tempted of the devil, the
wicked One came upon the scene, hoofs, horns and tail, and with a red
spotlight on him; when Eli lifted up the cross on high, the devil would
fall and strike his forehead on the ground, and the silver trumpets
would peal, and the followers would burst into loud hosannas. Or perhaps
it would be the command, “Suffer little children to come unto me”; there
would be hundreds of children, all robed in white, and when Eli lifted
his shepherd’s crook and called, they came storming to the platform,
their fresh young voices shouting, “Praise the Lord!” And of course
there was the regular mourners’ bench, and the baptisms in the marble
tank. You were never allowed to forget that you had a soul, and that it
was of supreme importance to you and to Jesus and that you were having
it saved by Eli’s aid. You were always being called upon to do
something—to stand up for the Lord, or to clap your hands for
salvation, or to raise your right hand if you were a new-comer to the
tabernacle.

But the great advantage Eli had over the other prophets was the pair of
leathern bellows he had developed out on the hills of Paradise. Never
was there such an electrifying voice, and never one that could keep
going so long. All day Sunday it bellowed and boomed—morning,
afternoon, evening; there were week-day services every evening but
Saturday, and in the mornings and afternoons there were prayer meetings
and Bible schools and services of song and healing blessings and
baptismal ceremonials and thank offerings and wholesale weddings and
Bride of the Lamb dedications—you just couldn’t keep track of all that
was going on in the many rooms and meeting-halls of this half million
dollar tabernacle.

Science had just completed a marvelous invention; the human voice became
magnified a hundred million-fold, it could be spread over the whole
earth. The population of America had gone wild over radio, and everybody
had rushed to get a set. The first great public use made of this
achievement in Angel City was to open a new three million dollar hotel
for the pleasure of the very rich, and the opening ceremonies were
broadcasted, and the newspapers were full of the wonder of it; but it
proved to be dreadful, because everybody in the hotel got drunk, and the
manager of the institution placed himself in front of the microphone and
poured out a stream of obscenities such as farmers’ wives from Iowa had
never dreamed in all their lives. So it was felt that the new invention
needed to be sanctified and redeemed, and Eli proceeded to install one
of the biggest and most powerful broadcasting stations. Through the
Lord’s mercy, his words were heard over four million square miles, and
it was worthwhile to preach to audiences of that size, praise Jesus!

Eli’s preaching had thus become one of the major features of Southern
California life. You literally couldn’t get away from him if you tried.
Dad had been told by his doctor that he needed more exercise, and he had
taken to walking for half an hour before dinner; he declared that he
listened to Eli’s sermons on all these walks, and never missed a single
word! Everybody’s house was wide open in this warm spring weather, and
all you had to do was to choose a neighborhood where the moderately poor
lived—and 90 percent of the people were that. You would hear the
familiar bellowing voice, and before you got out of range of it, you
would come in range of another radio set, and so you would be relayed
from street to street and from district to district! In these houses sat
old couples with family bibles in their hands and tears of rapture in
their eyes; or perhaps a mother washing her baby’s clothes or making a
pudding for her husband’s supper—and all the time her soul caught up to
glory on the wings of the mighty prophet’s eloquence! And Dad walking
outside, also exalted—because, don’t forget that he was the man who had
started this Third Revelation—he had invented all its patter, that day
he had tried to keep old Abel Watkins from beating his daughter Ruth!

                                   VI

Bunny received a letter from Dan Irving, telling about his new job. It
was a simple matter to be a radical press correspondent in Washington
these days; the regular newspaper fellows were loaded up with material
they were not allowed to handle. All but a few of the “hard guys” were
boiling over with indignation at what they saw, and when they met Dan,
they boiled over on him. The only trouble was, his labor press service
had so little space, and only a score or two of radical papers that
would look at its material.

President Harding had brought with him a swarm of camp followers, his
political bodyguard at home; the newspaper men knew them as “the Ohio
gang,” and they were looting everything in sight. Barney Brockway had
given one of his henchmen a desk in the secret service department; this
was the “fixer,” and if you wanted anything, he would tell you the
price. The Wilson administration had grown fat by exploiting the
properties seized from enemy aliens; and now the Harding administration
was growing fat out of turning them back! Five percent was the regular
“split”; if you wanted to recover a ten million dollar property, you
turned over half a million in liberty bonds to the “fixer.” Bootlegging
privileges were sold for millions, and deals were made right in the
lobbies of the Capitol. Dan heard from insiders that more than three
hundred millions had already been stolen from the funds appropriated for
relief of war veterans—the head of that bureau was another of the “Ohio
gang.” And the amazing fact was, no matter how many of these scandals
you might unearth, you couldn’t get a single big newspaper or magazine
in the country to touch them!

Bunny took that letter to his father, and as usual it meant to the old
man exactly the opposite of what it meant to Bunny. Yes, politics were
rotten, and so you saw the folly of trusting business matters to
government. Take business away from the politicians, and turn it over to
business men, who would run it without graft. If those oil lands had
been given to Dad and Verne in the beginning, there wouldn’t have been
any bribing—wasn’t that clear? Dad and Verne were patriots, putting an
end to a vicious public policy!

Did Dad really believe that? It was hard for Bunny to be sure. Dad had
lies that he told to the public; and perhaps he had others that he told
to his son, and yet others that he told to himself. If you laid hold of
him and tore all those lies away, he would not be able to stand the
sight of his nakedness.

His enemies, the “soreheads” in Congress, were busily engaged in
depriving him of these spiritual coverings. There was one old senator in
Washington by the name of LaFollette—his head had been sore for forty
years, and no way could be found to heal it. Now he was denouncing the
oil leases, and demanding an investigation. The Harding machine had
blocked him, but it couldn’t keep him from making speeches—he would
talk for eight hours at a stretch, and the galleries would be full, and
then he would mail out his speeches under government frank. Dad would
grumble and growl—and then in the midst of it he would realize that his
own dear son was on the side of these trouble-makers! Instead of
sympathizing with his father’s lies, Bunny was criticizing them, and
making his father ashamed!

Then a painful thing happened. There was a newspaper publisher in a
western city, one of those old pirates of the frontier type, who had
begun life as a bartender, and delighted to tell how he would toss a
silver dollar up to the ceiling, and if it stuck it belonged to the boss
and if it came down it belonged to him. By this means he had got rich,
and now he owned a paper, and he got onto this scandal of the oil
leases. There came to him a man who had some old claim to part of the
Sunnyside lease, and the publisher made a deal with this man to go
halves, and then he served notice on Verne that they had to have a
million dollars. Verne told him to go to hell, and the result was, this
newspaper opened up with front page exposures of the greatest public
steal in history. And this was no obscure Socialist sheet, this was one
of the most widely read newspapers in the country, and copies were being
mailed to all members of Congress, and to other newspapers—gee, it was
awful! Dad and Verne and the rest held anxious conferences, and suffered
agonies of soul; in the end they had to give up to the old pirate, and
paid him his million in cold cash—and the great newspaper lost all its
interest in the public welfare!

When Bunny was a youngster, he had read the stories of Captain Mayne
Reid, and he remembered one scene—a fish-hawk capturing a fish, and
then a swift eagle swooping down from the sky and taking the prize away.
Just so it was in the oil-game—a world of human hawks and eagles!

                                  VII

Bunny no longer felt comfortable about going to the Monastery. But Vee
would not let him quit, she argued and pleaded; Annabelle was so kind
and good, and would be so hurt if he let horrid political quarrels break
up their friendship! Bunny answered—he knew Verne must be sore as the
dickens; and imagine Verne being tactful or considerate of a guest!

When you went out into society and refused to take a drink, you caused
everybody to begin talking about prohibition. In the same way, when you
did not join in denunciation of the “insurgent” senators in Washington,
you caused some one to comment on your sympathy for bomb-throwers. The
little bunch of “reds” in Congress were interfering with legislation
much desired by the rich, and they were denounced at every dinner-table,
including Vernon Roscoe’s. The great Schmolsky said, what the hell were
they after, anyhow? And Verne replied “Ask Jim Junior—he’s chummy with
them,” Annabelle had to jump in and cry, “No politics! I won’t have you
picking on my Bunny!”

Then, later in the evening, when Harvey Manning got drunk, he sat on
Bunny’s knee, very affectionate, as he always was, and shook one finger
in front of Bunny’s nose and remarked, “You gonna tell’m ’bout me?” And
when Bunny inquired, “Tell who, Harve?” the other replied, “Those
muckrakin friends o yours. I aint gonna have ’em tellin on me! My ole
uncle fines out I get drunk he’ll cut me out o his will.” So Bunny knew
that his intimacy with the enemy had been a subject of discussion at the
Monastery!

There had been a series of violent outbreaks in Angel City. The members
of the American Legion, roused by the “red revolutionary raving,” had
invaded the headquarters of the I. W. W. and thrown the members down the
stairs, and thrown their typewriters and desks after them. Since the
courts wouldn’t enforce law and order, these young men were going to
attend to it. They had raided bookstores which sold books with red
bindings, and dumped the books into the street and burned them. They had
beaten up newsdealers who were selling radical magazines. Also they were
taking charge of the speakers the public heard—if they didn’t like one,
they notified the owner of the hall, and he hastened to break his
contract.

John Groby, one of Verne’s oil associates from Oklahoma, was at the
dinner-table, and he said, that was the way to handle the rattle-snakes.
Groby may not have known that one of the snakes was sitting across the
way from him, so Bunny took no offense, but listened quietly. “That’s
the way we did the job at home, we turned the Legion loose on ’em and
cracked their heads, and they moved on to some other field. You’re too
polite out here, Verne.”

Annabelle had put Bunny beside her, so that she might protect him from
assaults. Now she started telling him about her new picture, “A Mother’s
Heart.” Such a sweet, old-fashioned story! Bunny would call it
sentimental, perhaps, but the women would just love it, and it gave her
a fine part. Also Vee had a clever scenario for her new picture, “The
Golden Couch.” Quite a fetching title, didn’t Bunny think? And all the
time, above the soft murmur of Annabelle’s voice, Bunny heard the loud
noise of John Groby blessing the Legion. Bunny longed to ask him what
the veterans would say to the “Ohio gang,” stealing the funds from their
disabled buddies.

Someone mentioned another stunt of the returned soldiers—their setting
up a censorship of moving pictures. One Angel City theatre had started
to show a German film, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” and this Hun
invasion had so outraged the Legion men, they had put on their uniforms
and blockaded the theatre, and beaten up the people who tried to get in.
Tommy Paley laughed—the courage of each of those veterans had been
fortified by a five-dollar bill, contributed by the association of
motion picture producers! They didn’t want foreign films that set them
too high a standard!

Then Schmolsky. He was too fat to comprehend such a thing as irony, and
he remarked that the directors were mighty damn right. Schmolsky, a Jew
from Ruthenia, or Rumelia, or Roumania, or some such country, said that
we didn’t want no foreign films breaking in on our production schedules.
An hour or so later Bunny heard him telling how the Hollywood films were
sweeping the German market—it wouldn’t be three years before we’d own
this business. “Vae victis!” remarked Bunny; and Schmolsky looked at
him, puzzled, and said, “Huh?”

                                  VIII

From such a week end Bunny would return to Angel City, and accompany
Rachel to a meeting of the Young People’s Socialist League. In an
obscure hall twenty-five or thirty boys and girls of the working-class
met once a week, and read papers, and discussed problems of politics and
economics, the labor movement and the Socialist party. Rachel had grown
up with this organization, and had prestige with it because she had got
a college education, and because she brought “Comrade Ross” with her.
The most thoroughly “class-conscious” young people could not help being
thrilled by a spectacle so unusual as a millionaire who sympathized with
the workers and had helped to bail out political prisoners.

With these young Socialists, as with the old ones, it was right wing
versus left; everybody argued tactics, and got tremendously excited. The
Communists also had an organization, the Young Workers’ League, and the
two rivals carried on sniping operations; sometimes they held formal
debates, and young people would jump up and down in their seats, and
carry on the controversy in their homes and working places for weeks
afterwards. It was Moscow versus Amsterdam, the Third International
versus the Second, the “reds” against the “pinks,” as the mild
Socialists were called. And this same struggle was going on in the soul
of Bunny. Paul Watkins would pull him forward, and then Rachel Menzies
would haul him back; and his trouble seemed to be, he was of the opinion
of the one he talked with last. He was so prone to see the other
fellow’s point of view, and lose himself in that! Why couldn’t he have a
mind of his own?

Theoretically it was possible to bring about the change from Capitalism
to Socialism by peaceable, one-step-at-a-time methods. Anyone could lay
out the steps. But when you came to take the first one, you confronted
the fact that the capitalists didn’t want to be evolved into Socialism,
and wouldn’t let you take any step. It was a fact that so far they had
outwitted the workers at every turn; they had even forced the government
to retrace the steps which had been taken in the emergency of war. It
was also true, as Paul contended, that the capitalists would not permit
the workers to be peaceable; they resorted to violence every time, and
set aside the laws and the constitution when it suited their
convenience.

To Bunny that seemed a pathetic thing about the Socialists. Take a man
like Chaim Menzies; he had the long vision, the patience of the elderly
worker; with ages of toil behind him, and ages ahead of him, he did not
shrink from the task of building an organization. But he was never
allowed to finish the building, the masters would knock it down
overnight; they sent in spies, they bribed the officials and sowed
discord, and in time of strikes their police and gunmen raided the
offices, and jailed the leaders, and drove the workers back into
slavery. So here was a curious situation—the masters in their blindness
working as allies of the Communists! Verne and his oil operators and the
rest of the open shop crowd saying to the working people, “No, don’t
listen to the Socialists, they are a bunch of old fogies. The Communists
are the fellows who can tell you what we are like, and how we are going
to behave!”

One thing Bunny had felt certain about—the workers ought to determine
their tactics without bitterness and internal strife. But now he was
beginning to doubt if even that were possible. The quarrel between the
two factions was implicit in the nature of the problem. If you believed
in a peaceable transition, your course of action would be one thing, and
if you didn’t so believe, it would be another thing. If you thought you
could persuade the masses of the voters, you would be cautious and
politic, and would avoid the extremists, whose violent ways would repel
the voters. So you would try to keep the Communists out of your
organization, and of course that would make them hate you, and denounce
you as a compromiser and a “class collaborator,” and insist that you
were in the pay of the bosses, who hired you to keep the workers under
their yoke.

And then the Socialists would counter with the same charge of bribery.
Chaim Menzies never failed to declare that some of the Communists were
secret agents, paid by the bosses to split the movement, and expose it
to raids by the police. Bunny knew, from talk he heard among his
father’s associates, that these big business men had elaborate secret
agencies for the disrupting of the labor movement. And these agencies
would work either way; they would hire old line leaders to sell out the
workers, calling off strikes, or calling premature strikes that couldn’t
win; or they would send in spies to pose as reds and split the
organizations and tempt the leaders into crime. Incredible as it might
seem, the government secret service, under that great patriot, Barney
Brockway, was up to the neck in such work. At the trial of one group of
Communists the federal judge presiding remarked that apparently the
whole direction of the Communist party was in the hands of the United
States government!

                                   IX

Bunny was always having the beautiful dream that his friends were going
to be friends with one another. Now he took Rachel to call on Paul and
Ruth; he liked them so, and they must share his feelings. But alas, they
didn’t seem to! Both sides were reserved, and avoided talking politics
as carefully as if they had been visiting at the Monastery! But Bunny
wanted them to talk politics, because he was trying to settle his own
inner debate, and he felt that they were qualified, they were members of
the working-class, while he was only an outsider. Perhaps one might
convert the other; but which one he wanted to be the converter, and
which the converted, it would have been hard for him to say!

Bunny questioned Paul, and learned that he had given up his carpentry
job—the Workers’ party was paying him a small salary to give all his
time to organizing. Paul had met Joe and Ikey Menzies, the young “left
wingers”; and Bunny told about how he and Rachel had helped to put Ben
Skutt out of business at the trial. How he wished the Socialists and the
Communists might work together like that, instead of making things
easier for the enemy!

Thus led on, Rachel said that she would be interested to understand the
ideas of Comrade Watkins. (Whenever a Socialist wanted to be very polite
to a Bolshevik, she called him by that old term, which had applied
before the family row broke out!) How could a mass uprising succeed in
America, with the employing class in possession of all the arms and
means of communication? They had poison gas now, and would wipe out
thousands of the rebel workers at a time. The one possible outcome would
be reaction—as in Italy, where the workers had seized the factories,
and then had had to give them up because they couldn’t run them.

Comrade Watkins replied that Italy had no coal, but was dependent on
Britain and America, which thus had the power to strangle the Italian
workers. As a matter of fact the Fascist reaction in Italy had been made
by American bankers—Mussolini and his ruffians had not dared to move a
finger till they had made certain of American credits. We had played the
same role there as in Hungary and Bavaria; all over the world, American
gold was buttressing reaction. Paul had seen it with his own eyes in
Siberia, and he said, with his quiet decisiveness, that nobody could
understand what it meant unless he had been there. Paul didn’t blame
Comrade Menzies for feeling as she did, that was natural for one who had
been brought up under peace conditions; but Paul had been to war, he had
seen the class struggle in action.

“Yes, Comrade Watkins,” said Rachel, “but if you try and fail, things
will be so much worse!”

“If we never try,” said Paul, “we can never succeed; and even if we
fail, the class-consciousness of the workers will be sharpened, and the
end will be nearer than if we do nothing. We have to keep the
revolutionary goal before the masses, and not let them be lured into
compromise. That is my criticism of the Socialist movement, it fails to
realize the intellectual and moral forces locked up in the
working-class, that can be called out by the right appeal.”

“Ah,” said Rachel, “but that is the question—what is the right appeal?
I want to appeal to peace rather than to violence. That seems to me more
moral.”

Paul answered, that to make peace appeals to a tiger might seem moral to
some, but to him it seemed futile. The determining fact in the world was
what the capitalist class had done during the past nine years. They had
destroyed thirty million human lives, and three hundred billions of
wealth, everything a whole generation of labor had created. So Paul did
not enter into discussions of morality with them; they were a set of
murderous maniacs, and the job was to sweep them out of power. Any means
that would succeed were moral means, because nothing could be so immoral
as capitalism.

When Bunny went out with Rachel, she said that Paul was an extraordinary
man, and certainly a dangerous one to the capitalist class. He was a
case of shell-shock from the war, and those who had made the war would
have to deal with him. Then Bunny asked about Ruth, and Rachel said she
was a nice girl, but a little colorless, didn’t Comrade Ross think?
Bunny tried to explain that Ruth was deep, her feelings were intense,
but she seldom expressed them. Rachel said Ruth ought to think for
herself, because she would have a lot of suffering if she followed Paul
through his Bolshevik career. Bunny suggested that Rachel might help to
educate her, but Rachel smiled and said that Comrade Ross was too naive;
surely Paul would not like to have a Socialist come in and steal his
sister’s sympathy from him. In spite of all Bunny could do, his women
friends would not be friends!

Then later on Bunny saw Paul, and got Paul’s reaction to Rachel. A nice
girl, well-meaning and intelligent, but she wouldn’t keep her
proletarian attitude very long. The social revolution in America was not
going to be made by young lady college graduates doing charity work for
the capitalist class! What she was doing among the “Ypsels” was mostly
wasted effort, according to Paul, because these Socialist organizations
spent their efforts fighting Communism. The capitalists ought to be glad
to hire her to do such work!

But somehow it wasn’t that way, Bunny found; the capitalists were
narrow-minded, and lacking in vision! A few days later Bunny learned
that Rachel was facing a serious dilemma. She had taken her four years
course at the university with the idea of making a career as a social
worker; but now a woman friend, upon whose advice she was acting, had
warned her that she was throwing away her chances by her activity with
these “Ypsels.” It was hard enough for a Jewish girl, and one from the
working-classes, to have a professional career, without taking on the
added handicap of Socialism. Rachel should at least wait till she had
got a position, and got herself established.

So there were more troubles! What was Rachel going to do? The answer was
that she was not going to desert her beloved young Socialists. It was
all very well to say wait, but that was the way all compromising began;
once you started, you never knew where to stop. No, Rachel would take
her chances of the “Ypsels” being raided by the police, or placarded in
the newspapers as a conspiracy to undermine the morals of youth! If it
turned out that her friend was right, and the bourgeoisie wouldn’t have
her as a dispenser of their charities, she would find some sort of job
in the labor movement. And Bunny went off to keep an engagement to a
dinner party with Vee Tracy; he went with a sober face and a troubled
conscience, neither of which he was clever enough to hide!

                                   X

Graduation time was at hand, and all the grave old seniors had the job
of choosing their future careers. Dad asked Bunny if he had made up his
mind, and Bunny answered that he had. “But I hate to tell you, Dad,
because it’s going to make you unhappy.”

“What is it, son?” A look of concern was upon the old man’s round but
heavily lined features.

“Well, I want to go away for a year, and take another name, and get
myself a job as a worker in one of the big industries.”

“Oh, my God!” A pause, while Dad gazed into his son’s troubled eyes.
“What does that mean?”

“Just that I want to understand the working people, and that’s the only
way.”

“You can’t ask them what you want to know?”

“No, Dad they don’t know it themselves—except dimly. It is something
you have to live.”

“Good Lord, son, let me help you! I’ve been there. It means dirt and
vermin and disease—I thought I was saving you from it, and making
things easier for you!”

“I know, Dad, but it’s a mistake; it doesn’t work out as you thought.
When a young fellow has everything too easy for him, he gets soft, he
has no will of his own. I know what you’ve done, and I’m grateful for
it, but I have to try something different, for a time.”

“You can’t possibly find anything hard enough for you in the job of
running an oil industry?”

“I might, Dad, if I could really run it. But you know I can’t do that.
It’s yours; and even if you gave it to me, Verne and the operators’
federation wouldn’t let me do what I’d want to do. No, Dad, there’s
something vitally wrong with the oil industry, and I can never play the
game with the rest. I want to go off and try something on my own.”

“You mean to go alone?”

“There’s another fellow has the same idea, and we’re going together.
Gregor Nikolaieff.”

“That Russian! Couldn’t you possibly find an American to associate
with?”

“Well, it just happens, Dad, that none of the Americans are interested.”

There was a long pause. “And you really mean this seriously?”

“Yes, Dad, I’m going to do it.”

“You know, son, the big industries are pretty rough, most of them. Some
of the men get badly hurt, and some killed.”

“Yes; that’s just the point.”

“It’s pretty hard on a father that has only one son, and had hopes for
him. You know, I’ve really thought a lot about you—it’s been the main
reason I worked so hard.”

“I know, Dad; and don’t think I haven’t suffered about it; but I just
can’t help doing it.”

Another pause. “Have you thought about Vee?”

“Yes.”

“Have you told her?”

“No, I’ve been putting it off, just as I did with you. I know she won’t
stand for it. I shall have to give her up.”

“A man ought to think a long time before he throws away his happiness
like that, son.”

“I have thought, all I know how. But I couldn’t spend my life as an
appendage to Vee’s moving picture career. I should be suffocated with
luxury. I have convictions of my own, and I have to follow them. I want
to try to help the workers, and first I have to know how they feel.”

“It seems to me, son, you talk like one of them—I mean the red ones.”

“Maybe so, Dad, but I assure you, it doesn’t seem that way to the reds!”

Again there was a silence. Dad’s supply of words was running short. “I
never heard of such a thing in my life!”

“It is really quite an old idea—at least twenty-four hundred years.”
And Bunny went on to tell about that young Lord Siddhartha, in far off
India, who is known to the western world as Buddha; how he gave up his
lands and his treasures, and went out to wander with a beggar’s bowl, in
the hope of finding some truth about life that was not known at court.
“The palace which the king had given to the prince was resplendent with
all the luxuries of India; for the king was anxious to see his son
happy. All sorrowful sights, all misery, and all knowledge of misery
were kept away from Siddhartha, and he knew not that there was evil in
the world. But as the chained elephant longs for the wilds of the
jungle, so the prince was eager to see the world, and he asked his
father, the king, for permission to do so. And Shuddhodana ordered a
jewel-fronted chariot with four stately horses to be held ready, and
commanded the roads to be adorned where his son would pass.” And then
Bunny, seeing the bewildered look on Shuddhodana’s face, began to laugh.
“Which would you rather I became, Dad—a Buddhist or a Bolshevik?”

And truly, Dad wouldn’t have known what to decide!

                                   XI

There has been during the present century a new universe opened up to
knowledge—the subconscious mind—and many strange things are told about
it. It is accustomed to make determined efforts to have its own way; and
sometimes when it is balked it will go to such lengths as to make the
body ill. A jealous wife will suffer nervous collapse, a quite genuine
case, thus retaining the attentions of her husband; and so on through a
catalog of strange phenomena. But the Freudian theories, not being
consistent with Methodist theology, had not yet penetrated into Southern
Pacific. So Bunny was entirely unsuspicious when it happened, just after
his graduation, and before he set out with Gregor Nikolaieff, that Dad
came down with a severe attack of the flu. Of course Bunny had to
postpone his leaving, and was able to find all the trouble he needed at
home. There were several days when it was not certain if Dad would live;
and Bunny felt all the remorse that Vernon Roscoe had foretold. Also he
faced the alarming prospect, he might have to take over control of all
those millions of Dad’s money!

The old man pulled through; but he was very weak, and pitiful, and the
doctor warned his family that the flu was apt to leave the heart in bad
condition, and he would have to be guarded and kept from shock. Down in
the deeps of Dad there must have been a merry chuckling, for now it was
impossible for Bunny to go away. The father clung to his boy’s hand like
a child, and Bunny must sit and read to him the sad and tender story of
the young Lord Siddhartha. Had Dad said something to Vee about the plot,
or was it a telepathic contact between two subconscious minds? She came
frequently to the house, and was so kind and sympathetic—the wild
elephant in Bunny’s spirit was tied down with a million silken cords.

And then, when Dad was able to be about, and to sit on the porch in the
sunshine, his shrewd conscious mind started work, and presently he had a
scheme. “Son, I’ve been thinking about your problem, and I realize that
you have a right to express your ideas. I’ve been wondering if we
mightn’t work out a compromise, and let me help.”

“How, Dad?”

“Well, you might have some money that you could use in your own way, and
wouldn’t feel you were taking from mine. Of course, I wouldn’t feel it
was right to help you do anything that was against the law; but if there
is some kind of education that isn’t for violence, why, that would be
all right, and if you had an income of a thousand dollars a month that
you might use for such propaganda—would that help?”

A thousand dollars a month! Gee whiz! Bunny forgot the standards of his
own class, according to which a thousand dollars a month would not keep
a string of polo-ponies or a small racing yacht; he thought according to
the standards of the radicals, to whom a thousand dollars a month meant
a whole labor college or a weekly paper! Nothing was said about Bunny’s
staying at home, but he understood that the offer was a bribe; he would
have to administer the fund! He yielded to the temptation, and hastened
to phone Rachel—he had a job in sight for her!

He invited her to lunch; and all the way as he drove to the place, his
busy mind was flying from scheme to scheme. Rachel would remain
secretary of the “Ypsels,” and be paid a salary for her work, the same
as she would have got as a social worker. The young Socialists would
hire a larger hall, and would publish a weekly paper, aimed at the high
schools and colleges of Angel City. Bunny was now free from the promise
he had made to Dr. Cowper, not to make propaganda in Southern Pacific.
And he was going to make it, you bet! The students of that university
and all others would learn something about modern thought, and about the
labor movement, and about Socialism, and—well, not too much about
Communism, of course, because Dad would call that violence, and it might
be breaking the law!




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                               THE FLIGHT


                                   I

This summer of 1923 was a pleasant one for Bunny. To be one of the
editors of a little paper, and be able to say what you thought, and
print it week by week and distribute it, with no Dean Squirge to take it
away from you, and no police or patriots to raid your office! To mail it
to every one you knew, and flatter yourself with the idea that they were
reading it, and being cured of their prejudices! Bunny had put all his
former class-mates on the mailing list of “The Young Student,” and in
the fall the “Ypsels” were going to sell it on the college campuses, and
maybe trouble would begin then, and they would get some advertising
free!

Dad was slowly picking up. He read the little paper every week, a sort
of loving censorship. But it wasn’t needed, because Rachel, orthodox
Socialist party member, was wasting no space on the left wingers. When
these extremists got hold of Bunny and cajoled him into thinking that
both sides ought to have a hearing, Rachel would say, what was the
matter with their getting out a paper of their own? So here was Bunny,
being “bossed” as usual—and by a woman! It was almost as bad as being
married!

Another source of relief—Vee was not quarreling with him so much. She
had been so shocked by his mad proposal to go off and get himself killed
in heavy industry, that she was glad to compromise and take half his
time, and let Rachel and “The Young Student” have the other half. Vee
was working hard on her new picture, “The Golden Couch,” telling about
an American darling of luxury who fell into the toils of a fake prince
from some Balkan country. To play the part they had got a real Roumanian
prince, who had most charming manners, and was willing to devote himself
to Vee at all times when Bunny was busy with his Socialist Jewess.

Also they were getting agreeable letters from Bertie, who had been
transported to heaven. Such a brilliant world, with such important
things going on! She had lunched with the Prince de This, and dined with
the Duchesse de That. Why wouldn’t Dad and Bunny come over and visit
them—Bunny might make a really brilliant marriage. Dad chuckled; the
idea of him going to Paree and trying to polly voo Francy!

The blackmailers were busy, of course; but since his illness Dad had
left all that trouble to Verne. Congress was on vacation, which meant a
partial respite; the senatorial reds might denounce the oil leases in
their home states, but the papers no longer had to print what they said.
A curious superstition, that when things were said in Congress, even the
most respectable newspapers found it necessary to mention them. Such
things brought politics into disrepute with business men.

The drilling of the Sunnyside tract was under way. A dozen wells were
flowing, and justifying all that had been expected of them. Sometimes
Dad was driven to the office, but most of the time the bright young
executives would come out to his home, and sit in the den and get their
orders. Such clean-cut efficient young men, with all their faculties
concentrated upon getting oil out of the ground! No visions tormenting
them, no strains of music haunting them, no hesitations, no
uncertainties, never a doubt that to get oil out of the ground was the
purpose of man’s life! So they kept their wits about them, and mastered
their departments, and increased their prestige and their salaries; and
when any one of them had taken his departure, there was an unuttered
sadness between Dad and his son. Why couldn’t Bunny have been like young
Simmons, or young Heimann, or young Bolling?

                                   II

The doctor had said that Dad must not think about business more than two
hours a day; so Bunny would tempt him for a stroll, a very slow one, and
perhaps they would hear a sermon of Eli’s as they walked along the
street, and that never failed to divert Dad’s mind and set him to
chuckling. He took a kind of malicious delight in watching the glory
sweep of the Third Revelation; by proving that the masses were boobs,
you made it all right to take their naval reserves! Dad subscribed to a
little paper issued by one of the rival religious showmen of the town,
full of denunciations of Eli and exposures of his trickery.

The regular churches were jealous of this new Revelation, which had
burst so rudely upon them. Eli was an upstart and a mountebank, and Tom
Poober, the clerical rival, declared that he faked a lot of his alleged
cures, he hired people to stand up and tell how their crippled limbs had
healed and their cancers had disappeared. Also, Eli’s followers had not
been willing to give up their customs of rolling and talking in tongues,
and Eli had had to build for them a number of sound-proof rooms in the
Tabernacle, where these rites were carried on. “Tarrying rooms,” they
were called, because you went there to “tarry with Jesus”; and when
things got going, you would see a hundred men and women rolling on the
floor, pawing one another, tearing off their clothing; you would see a
woman jerking her head back, or leaping several feet at a time, here and
there, exactly like a chicken with its head cut off. The orgies would
end with a mass of human creatures piled into a heap, wriggling and
writhing, amid a smell of sweat that would make you ill.

The Reverend Poober would print such things, and send newsboys to sell
the paper in front of the Tabernacle; the newsboys would be fallen upon
and beaten, and the police would fail to arrest the assailants, or
having arrested them, would turn them loose. Were the politicians of
Angel City afraid of the power of this stuffed prophet? Tom Poober would
ask in large capital letters, and Dad would chuckle—in the mood of that
Western pioneer who came home and found his wife in a hand-to-hand
conflict with a bear, and rested his gun upon the fence and took a seat
and called, “Go it, woman! Go it, bear!”

There was another charge—the prophet was said to be fond of the company
of handsome young women. That was a cruel thing to hint, because Eli was
strenuous in denouncing fornications and adulteries, as much so as any
Hebrew prophet of the First Revelation. Dad chuckled and speculated;
until it happened one day that he and Bunny took a long drive, and
stopped at an unfrequented beach, looking for a place for Bunny to get a
swim. There was a cheap hotel on the waterfront, and coming out of the
door, whom should they run into but Eli Watkins, with an indubitably
handsome young woman! The young woman walked quickly on, and Eli
exchanged greetings with Dad and Bunny, and then excused himself. Dad
stood for a minute, looking after the couple and saying, “By golly!”

Then he turned and went into the hotel, and to the man at the desk
remarked, in a casual tone, “I met that gentleman, but his name has
slipped my memory—the one that just went out.”

“That’s Mr. T. C. Brown, of Santa Ynez.”

“Is he staying here”?

“He just checked out.”

Dad began to glance over the hotel register, and there he read, as big
as life, “T. C. Brown and wife, Santa Ynez.” And in the crude scrawly
handwriting of Eli Watkins, which Dad had at home upon several business
letters! It was all Dad could do to keep from bursting out laughing. By
golly, if he were to tip off Tom Poober to the contents of that hotel
register, he would knock the Third Revelation as high as a kite!

                                  III

President Harding died; and Dan Irving wrote Bunny the gossip from
Washington. The old gentleman had been reluctant to take the oil men’s
money, so Barney Brockway and his “fixer” had fixed things for him—they
had “carried an account” in a Wall Street brokerage, a method whereby
business men make life comfortable for statesmen. Every now and then
they would bring the old gentleman a bundle of liberty bonds which they
had “won” for him. And now his widow had found several hundred thousand
dollars of these bonds in a safe deposit box, and become convinced that
he had meant them for another woman, and was in such a fury about it
that she was telling all her friends, and giving great glee to
Washington gossip.

And then the new president: a little man whose fame was based upon the
legend that he had put down a strike of the Boston policemen, when the
truth was that he had been hiding in his hotel room, with a black eye
presented to him by the mayor of the city. His dream in life, as
reported by himself, was to keep a store, and that was the measure of
his mentality. He didn’t know what to say, and so the newspapers called
him a “strong silent man.”

Bunny didn’t publish much of this, because Rachel didn’t approve of
gossip. But they did publish some of the inside facts about
professionalism in college athletics, and when this was offered for sale
on the campuses, the athletic students mobbed the “Ypsels.” But even the
mobbers read the paper, and Bunny was having the time of his life.

In December the new Congress assembled, and an alarming state of affairs
was revealed; the “insurgents” had the balance of power in the Senate,
and their first move was to combine with the Democrats and order an
investigation of the oil leases. This news fell upon Dad and Verne like
a thunderbolt—their scouts in Washington had failed to foresee such a
calamity, and Verne had to jump into his private car and hurry to
Washington, to see what a last-minute expenditure of cash might do.
Apparently it didn’t do much, for the committee proceeded to put
witnesses on the stand and “grill” them—a terrifying newspaper phrase,
but really it was not so much a culinary operation as an explosion, with
the debris scattered all over the front pages of the press.

The thing was too sensational to be held down any longer. It didn’t read
like politics, but like some blood and thunder movie. Secretary Crisby
hadn’t had the sense to put his oil money into liberty bonds and hide
them in a safe deposit box—he had gone like a fool and paid off a big
mortgage on his Texas ranch, and bought a lot of stuff that everybody
could see; he had even told the foreman of his ranch that he had got
sixty-eight thousand dollars from Vernon Roscoe, and the foreman had
told one of the ranch-hands. Now the senators put the badly rattled
foreman on the witness stand, and he had to explain that it was all a
misunderstanding—what he had said was not “sixty-eight thousand
dollars,” but “six or eight cows.” You can see how easy it was for such
a mistake to happen!

But then it was shown that Secretary Crisby had deposited a hundred
thousand dollars in his bank one day; and where had he got that? A great
Washington newspaper publisher came forward to declare that he had
loaned his dear friend the secretary that little sum for no particular
reason. The great publisher then went off to Florida to spend the
winter, and he was sick and couldn’t possibly be disturbed. But the
perverse committee sent one of its members to Florida and put the
publisher on the witness stand, and in the presence of half a hundred
newspaper reporters pinned him down and made him admit that his story
had been a friendly fairy-tale.

Where had the hundred thousand come from? The scandalmongers were busy,
of course—fellows like Dan Irving running to the committee with tales
of what Washington gossip was saying. So the committee grabbed “Young
Pete” O’Reilly, and “grilled” him, and made him admit that he had
carried the trifling sum of a hundred thousand dollars to Secretary
Crisby in a little black bag—more stuff right out of a movie! And then
they grabbed “Old Pete,” and he claimed it was just a loan—he had got a
note, but he couldn’t recollect where the note was. He finally produced
a signature which he said had been cut off the note, but he couldn’t
tell what had become of the rest of it; he was very careless about
notes, and thought he had given this one to his wife, who had misplaced
all but the signature. And these scandalous details about the leaders of
the most fashionable society in Washington and Angel City! The
newspapers published it, even while they shivered at their own
irreverence.

                                   IV

Every day Dad was getting long telegrams from Verne, not coming direct,
of course, but addressed to Mrs. Bolling, the wife of the trusty young
executive; they were signed “A. H. Dory”—a play upon Dad’s favorite
formula, “All hunkydory.” They were not the sort of telegrams that a
doctor would have picked out for the soothing of his patient’s nerves;
no, they kept the patient in a fever of anxiety—how many, many times he
wished that he had listened to the warnings of his young idealist, and
kept clear of this mess of corruption! But of course Bunny couldn’t say
that now; he could only read the news and wait and wonder at what hour
the thunderbolt would descend upon them.

Annabelle’s new picture was done, “A Mother’s Heart,” and there was
going to be an especially grand premiere, and Bunny was to take Vee, of
course, and Dad was to take Aunt Emma, and everything would be all
hunkydory for that one night at least. Bunny came home from reading the
proofs of the next issue of the paper, and there in the entrance hall he
found his aunt waiting for him, her hands shaking with excitement, and
her teeth chattering. “Oh, Bunny! The most dreadful thing! They’re
trying to arrest your father!”

“Arrest him?”

“Men are after him—right in front of the house! You’ve got to get away
without being seen—they’ll follow you—oh, I’m so frightened—oh,
please, please, be careful! Don’t let them catch your father!”

He managed to get the story, and it was really almost as melodramatic as
her wild words conveyed. Young Bolling, the trusty executive, had been
to the house a few minutes ago, looking for Bunny with a message from
Dad of the utmost urgency; he had written it out, and Bunny read it: he
was to drive in his car, and make absolutely certain that he was not
being followed—there would be men trying to follow him, in order to
trail Dad. As soon as he had shaken off these men, he must leave his
car, which of course had his name on the license; he must go to some
automobile place where he was not known, and buy a closed car under an
assumed name; it must not be a new car, because they might have to do
very fast driving. Still making sure that he was not being followed,
Bunny must proceed to the suburban town of San Pasqual, and at a certain
corner Dad would join him. Mr. Bolling had given Aunt Emma five thousand
dollars in bills, and then had gone away, hoping that the men who were
watching the house would follow him.

Bunny said a few words to comfort the poor old lady. Nobody wanted to
put Dad into jail, they just wanted to get him on the witness stand, the
way they had done the “Petes,” young and old. Bunny threw a few clothes
into an old suit-case, that had no name or initials on it, and hurried
out to his car. Sure enough, there was another car just down the street,
and when Bunny started, this other started also. Bunny swung round half
a dozen corners, but the other car kept on his trail. He bethought
himself of the traffic jam in the heart of the city, which was at its
worst right now, between five and six in the evening. The traffic was
controlled by signals, with two or three officers at the crowded
corners, and it would be possible by dodging here and there to get
several cars between you and a pursuing car, and sooner or later to get
across just as the bell rang and compelled your pursuer to wait.

Bunny worked the trick, and shook off the other car; then he left his
own in a public garage for storage, and made the purchase of a
two-passenger closed car under the name of “Alex H. Jones.” The dealers’
receipt would serve for a license temporarily, and Bunny counted out
eighteen of his hundred dollar bills, and drove away. Half an hour later
he was in the town of San Pasqual, driving past the corner specified. He
passed it twice, and the second time Dad stepped out of a hotel, and
Bunny slowed up, and then away they went! “Anybody following you?” were
Dad’s first words, and Bunny said, “I don’t think so, but we’ll make
sure.” They swung round several corners, and Dad kept watch through the
rear window. “All hunkydory,” he said, at last, and Bunny asked, “Where
are we going?” The answer was, “To Canada”; and Bunny, who had been
prepared for anything, took the boulevard that led North out of San
Pasqual.

While he drove, Dad told him the news. The first thing, Verne had
skipped to Europe; at least, his steamer was sailing today, and it was
hoped he had not been caught. “A. H. Dory” had telegraphed to Mrs.
Bolling, advising her that it was absolutely necessary for Mr.
Paradise—that was Dad’s code name—to meet his friends in Vancouver
immediately, and he must start tonight, otherwise he would be too late
for the appointment. Dad hadn’t needed any further hint; he had learned
yesterday—though he had kept the painful news from Bunny—that the
Senate investigators had got wind of that Canadian corporation, and were
planning to subpoena all its organizers. Undoubtedly the subpoenas had
been issued that day, and telegraphed to Angel City, with instructions
to the United States marshal to serve them at once. Dad and young
Bolling had made their get-away from the office by means of a
fire-escape—more movie stuff, you see! And here they were, Alex H.
Jones and Paul K. Jones, driving all night on a rain-battered highway,
not daring to stop at any hotel, because a United States marshal might
be lurking in the lobby; not daring even to pass through the big cities,
for fear the all-seeing eye of their irate Uncle Sam might be spying
from a window!

                                   V

They got to Vancouver in a heavy snow-storm; and immediately dropped
their uncomfortable aliases, and put up at the best hotel. Straightway,
of course, the newspaper reporters came running; and Dad said with his
quiet dignity that it was all rubbish about their being fugitives from
the Senate investigation, they were American business men who had come
to British Columbia to consider investments. That scandal in Washington
was nothing but cheap and silly politics, the leases had been most
advantageous to the government, and as for the Canadian corporation, it
had been an enterprise of great benefit to Canada. Did Mr. Ross and his
son plan to explore for oil in British Columbia? asked the reporters,
eagerly; and Dad said that he had nothing to communicate as yet.

Here they were: comfortable in the physical sense, but mentally not at
all so, in a city which to them was a frontier place, with cold weather
and nothing of interest. Yet Dad was likely to be in exile for a long
time; the new Congress would be in session half a year, and the
trouble-makers would certainly keep the oil scandal going, so as to have
something to use in next fall’s presidential election. Dad sent
telegrams to his office, and wireless messages to Verne on board ship;
and presently came a reply from Verne requesting Dad to meet him in
London immediately.

Dad had to go; and then, what about Bunny? He had his sweetheart at
home, and also his paper, so perhaps he should return to Angel City. But
Bunny said nonsense, it was out of the question for Dad to cross a
continent and an ocean in winter-time alone. His son would go with him,
and after they had talked things out with Verne, they could go over to
Paris, and spend a while with Bertie, and meet those swell diplomatic
friends of hers. Then, if necessary, Bunny might come back alone—they
would see about that later.

The old man was pitifully glad of this decision. Bunny was all he had to
care about now. In his secret heart he must have been humiliated before
his son, but he had to go on with the pretense that he was a dignified
business man, persecuted by unscrupulous political enemies. He talked
about the matter very little with Bunny, but to other people he would
discourse for hours; this sudden talkativeness about his affairs was the
most pitiful of all signs of his weakening.

Bunny wrote long letters to Vee, telling her the situation and pledging
his love; and to Rachel, turning over the paper to her, and arranging
for the thousand dollars a month to be paid to her. Dad wrote long
letters to his efficient young executives—thank God for their
efficiency right now! They would keep in touch with him and Verne by
cable; and Verne’s agents in Washington would send the “low down” on the
investigation. Bunny arranged to get Dan Irving’s weekly letter, and the
various radical papers he was reading; so father and son would be in
position to carry on their controversy in Europe!

They spent four days on a train crossing the snowy plains of Canada. It
was bitter cold outside, but snug and warm within, and on the rear of
the train was an observation car, made use of by a score or two of
business men, American and Canadian. In an hour or two they had learned
that the great J. Arnold Ross was among them, and after that Dad held
court, and told his troubles to all and sundry. It was curious to Bunny
to see the class-consciousness of these men, an instant, automatic
reaction; every one of them was with Dad, every one knew that the
exposure was the work of malicious political disturbers, and that the
leases had been a good bargain for the public. The savings that
intelligent business men effected always made up many times over for
what profits the business men took.

When they got to Montreal, there was a palatial steamer waiting, with
several hundred wage-slaves of various sorts prepared to serve them in
return for a few hundred barrels of the stolen oil. They went on board,
and the steamer proceeded down the St. Lawrence river; it stopped at
Quebec, and there were newspapers, and Bunny read that Federal agents
had raided a secret convention of the Workers’ party, and arrested all
the delegates. It was a highly sensational event, and the Canadian
papers gave full particulars—they too had this problem! Their account
gave the names of the criminals who had been trapped, and one of them
was Paul Watkins!

                                   VI

Not all the oil money in the world could make the winter passage to
England other than cold and stormy. Dad proved to be a poor sailor, and
so he was a forlorn object when he got to Vernon Roscoe’s hotel in
London. But Verne cheered him up; yes, truly, Dad began to revive with
the first thump upon the back and the first boom of Verne’s voice in the
hotel lobby. “By Jees, the old skeezicks! I believe the reds have got
his nerve!”

Nobody had got Verne’s nerve, you bet; he was sitting on the top of the
world! That investigation—shucks, that was a circus stunt to entertain
the yokels. It would blow over and be forgotten in a few months—Verne
quoted a chieftain of Tammany Hall who had been up against the same kind
of racket, and said, “Dis is a nine day town. If yez kin stand de gaff
fer nine days, ye’re all right.” No, by Jees—and Verne gave his partner
another thump—they were getting the oil out of Sunnyside, and the money
was going into their bank accounts, and not into anybody’s else, and
they were going to have one hell of a lark spending it. What was more,
they were going to turn the tables on those blankety-blank red
senators—just let Dad wait a few days, and he’d see some stuff that
would get on the front pages of the papers, even here in England!

Jim Junior got his due share of back-slapping. The boy Bolsheviki must
take his old man around and show him some of the sights of London;
hadn’t he learned about ’em in the history books—the places where men
had had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago, and such
cheerful spectacles? After the old man had got rested up, then Verne
would show him some oil propositions that would make his eyes pop open.
Verne hadn’t been losing any time—not he! He had put five million into
a project that was to reopen a great oil field in Roumania that had been
burned during the German invasion, and it was a deal that would beat
Sunnyside, and Verne had got fifty-one percent and full control, and was
going to bring over a complete American outfit, and show those gypsies
or whatever they were what a real oil job looked like. And now he was
fighting with some of the British oil men over the Persian situation,
and Verne and the state department between them were waking old John
Bull from a long sweet dream.

It was a curious situation that was unveiled to Bunny here. Vernon
Roscoe was a fugitive from the oil investigating committee of the
Senate, but at the same time he was master of the foreign policy of the
United States government concerning oil, and the ambassadors abroad and
the secretary of state at home behaved as his office boys. Of course
there were other oil men; Excelsior Pete and Victor and the rest of the
Big Five all had their agents, hundreds of them, abroad; but Verne was
so active, and had so much the best word in Washington, that the rest
had come to follow his lead. President Harding might be dead, but his
spirit lived on, and Verne and his crowd had bought and paid for it.

The American magnate came among these Britishers with as much tact and
grace as one of his long-horned steers from the southwestern plains. He
wasn’t going to put on any society flummery, he was an old
cattle-puncher from Oklahoma, and if “Old Spats and Monocle,” as he
called Great Britain’s leading oil magnate, didn’t like him, by Jees he
could lump him! Bunny attended a banquet at which a group of the rivals
sat down together, and it seemed to Bunny that Verne was more noisy and
more slangy than even at his own dinner-table at the Monastery. There
was method in it, the younger man suspected; Verne frightened these
strangers with his wild western airs, and that was the proper mood for
negotiations! They had needed our navy damn bad a few years ago, and had
got it free of charge, but they weren’t going to get it that way again,
and Verne was the feller to tell them so. The next time, it would be the
oil crowd’s say about the battleships—and the same with the dollars, by
Jees.

There was a new deal in American diplomacy since the war. The state
department had taken charge of foreign investments made by our bankers,
and told them where to go and where to stay away from. The bankers had
to obey, because they never knew when they might need the help of the
marines to collect their interest. What it meant in practice was that a
few fighting men like Vernon Roscoe could go to foreign business men and
say, let me in on this and give me a share of that, or you can whistle
for the next loan from Wall Street. The procedure is known to all cattle
men, they call it “horning in”; and after a few of the Britishers had
been “horned in on,” they learned what the little fellows had learned
back home—who were the real masters of America!

                                  VII

Dad of course had no trace of interest in seeing the place where men had
had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago; and Bunny tried it,
and found that he didn’t have much either. What Bunny wanted was to meet
the men who were in danger of having their heads chopped off now. There
was a great labor movement in England, with a well developed system of
workers’ education, supported by the old line leaders; also a bunch of
young rebels making war on it because of its lack of clear revolutionary
purpose. “The Young Student” had been exchanging with the “Plebs,” and
now Bunny went to see these rebels, and soon was up to his ears in the
British struggle—a wonderful meeting at Albert Hall, and labor members
of Parliament and other interesting people to meet.

A couple of papers published interviews with the young oil prince who
had gone in for “radicalism,” as the Americans called it. And this
brought an agonized letter from Bertie. She had been begging them to
come over to Paris and meet the best people; but now, here was Bunny,
six thousand miles away from home, still making his stinks! Couldn’t he
for God’s sake stop to think what he was doing to his relatives? Eldon
just about to get a promotion, and here his brother-in-law coming in and
queering it all! You could see Bertie making a strong moral effort on
paper, controlling herself and patiently explaining to her brother the
difference between Europe and California. People really took the red
peril seriously over here, and Bunny would find himself a complete
social outcast. How could Eldon’s superiors trust him in delicate
matters of state policy, if they knew that members of his family were in
sympathy with the murderous ruffians of Moscow?

Bunny replied that it was very sad indeed, but Bertie and her husband
had better repudiate him and not see him, for he had no intention of
failing to make acquaintance with the labor and Socialist movements of
the countries he visited. Having got that off his chest, Bunny sat down
to write for “The Young Student” an account of all the red things he had
seen and the red people he had met so far.

The little paper was coming, and Bunny was reading it from the upper
left hand corner of page one to the lower right hand corner of page
four, and finding it all good. Yes, Rachel Menzies was going to make a
real editor—a lot better one than Bunny himself, he humbly decided. She
had started a series of papers called “Justice and the Student,”
discussing the problems of the younger generation. She saw it all so
clearly, and was so dignified and persuasive in manner—not angry, as
the young reds so easily got! Even Dad was impressed, yes, that was a
clever girl; you wouldn’t think it to look at her—but those Jews were
always smart.

Also the labor press service was coming, with Dan Irving’s Washington
letter and other news from the oil scandal. And very soon Bunny saw what
Verne had meant by predicting the collapse of the investigation. The
whole power of the attorney-general’s office had been turned against the
insurgent senators. Barney Brockway, backed against the wall, was
fighting for the life of himself and his “Ohio gang.” Secret service
agents had raided the offices of the senators conducting the
investigation and rifled their papers; they were raking up scandals
against these men, sending women to try to “get” them, preparing a
series of “frame-ups” in their home states—every trick they had
rehearsed on the Communists and the I. W. W. now applied to the exposers
of the oil steal. Presently they had one of the senators under
indictment; and just as Verne had predicted, the big newspapers came to
their senses, and took the crimes of the oil men off the front page, and
put the crimes of the reds in their place.

There was quite a bunch of “magnates” now in exile; Fred Orpan, and John
Groby, and all those who had formed the Canadian corporation, and
distributed two million dollars of bribes in Washington. Dad and Bunny
would lunch with them, and they would have confidential telegrams, and
it was curious to watch their reactions. They all made a joke of
it—“Hello, old jailbird!” would be their greeting; but underneath they
were eaten with worry. Among other developments, the new President was
preparing to throw them overboard, in anticipation of next fall’s
elections. He, Cautious Cal, had never had any oil stains on him—oh,
no! oh, no! The oil men would jeer—the little man had sat in the
cabinet all the time the leases were being put through, he had been the
bosom friend of all of them. The first time any of Verne’s crowd enjoyed
the exposures was when the Senate committee began digging into a file of
telegrams which showed the immaculate one as heavily smeared as the
other politicians; he had been sending secret messages, trying to stave
off the exposure, trying to save this one and that. But now he was
getting ready to kick their agents out of the cabinet, and how they did
despise him! “The little hop-toad,” was Verne’s regular description of
the Chief Magistrate of his country!

                                  VIII

Dad didn’t get well as quickly as they had hoped. Apparently the cold
damp darkness of London was not good for him, so Bunny took him to
Paris. Bertie relented, and met them at the station; even her husband
risked his diplomatic career, and everything was polite and friendly for
a few hours. But then the brother and sister got to arguing; Bertie
wanted Bunny not to investigate the Socialist movement of France, at
least, and Bunny said he had already promised Rachel an article about
it. There was a “youth” paper here that was on their exchange list, and
there was to be a Socialist meeting that very week which Bunny was going
to attend. Bertie said that settled it, he would never meet the Prince
de This and the Duchesse de That, and Bunny was so ignorant, he didn’t
know what he was missing.

Paris was wet and cold also, and Dad had a cough, and sat around in a
hotel lobby and was so forlorn it made your heart ache. He would let you
drive him around, and would look at public buildings—yes, it was very
fine, a beautiful city; people had been working on it a long while, we
hadn’t had time to get anything so good at home. But all the while you
could see that Dad didn’t really care about it; he didn’t like this
strange people with their jabber, the men looked like popinjays and the
women immoral, and people were always trying to pass off lead money on
you, and the food had fancy fixings so you couldn’t tell what it tasted
like, and why in the world Americans wanted to come chasing over here
was beyond Dad’s power to imagine.

It was decided to take him to the Riviera till spring. And here they
were settled in a villa looking over the Mediterranean, and there was
sunshine at last, a pale copy of California. Bertie came for a visit,
and then Aunt Emma to keep house for them, and it was a sort of a home.
Aunt Emma and Bertie got along beautifully, because the elder lady never
failed to admire the right things—oh, how perfectly lovely, how refined
and elegant, the most magnificent buildings, the most life-like
paintings, the most fashionable costumes! Aunt Emma would meet the
Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and never injure the diplomatic
career of her nephew-in-law!

Bunny got himself a tutor, and rapidly unlearned the French he had
acquired at Southern Pacific. Of course he had to pick out a Socialist
tutor, a weird-looking, moth-eaten young man who did not seem to have
had a square meal in many years—a poet, he was reported to be. Other
Socialists came round, and a few Communists and Anarchists and
Syndicalists and hybrids of these; they wore loose ties, or none at all,
and hair hanging into their eyes, and looked to Dad and Aunt Emma as if
they were spying out the premises with intentions of burglary. Even here
there were radical meetings, on this Coast of Gold, where the rich of
Europe gambled and played; and poor devils dangling always on the verge
of starvation roused the pity of a young American millionaire, who lived
in luxury and had a guilty conscience. When it was ascertained that he
would lend money, there were some to ask, and most of them were
frauds—but how was a young American millionaire to know?

Aunt Emma had been escorted from Angel City by Dad’s private secretary,
bringing two big brief cases full of reports and letters. And so Dad was
busy and happy for a while, he studied these papers, and wrote long
instructions, and sent cablegrams in code, and fretted because some of
the replies were not clear. Yes, it was a hard matter to carry on an oil
business six thousand miles away. They were putting down test wells in
the north half of Sunnyside, and you wanted to be there to examine the
cores. Why, the damn fools had even failed to send the full text of the
geologists’ reports!

Dad wasn’t well enough to go into the big new deals with Verne; he must
rest first. But the rest didn’t help him, because he fretted for
something to do, and for his secretary to do. To go driving up and down
the same coast was monotonous; while to sit at tea-parties and chatter
with fashionable idlers—Dad had unutterable contempt for these people,
they weren’t even crude and healthy, like the rich in California, no,
they were rotten to the core, vicious and terrible people. The
ex-mule-driver took one look into their gilded gambling palace, that was
famed all over the world, and he went outside and spit on the
steps—faugh! He was even willing to consider Bunny’s argument, that
such people were made by generations of hereditary privilege; let things
go as they were going in California, and Dad’s grand-children would be
giving this crowd lessons in depravity. For that matter, some of them
were giving it now right here on the Riviera—rich Americans setting the
pace in frivolity and ostentation.

Anyhow, said Dad, give him Americans! He wandered out and found a
retired department-store proprietor from Des Moines, just as desperately
bored as himself, and the two would sit for hours on the esplanade and
tell about their business and their troubles. Presently there was added
a banker from South Dakota, and then a farmer who had struck oil in
Texas. The women folks insisted on these fool European tours, and all
the fathers could do was to get off by themselves and grumble at the
bills. But here were four of them, and they gave one another courage,
and fixed up a little place to pitch horseshoes—and in their
shirtsleeves, by heck, just as if they had never made the mistake of
making too much money and ruining their family-life!

                                   IX

The weather grew hot, and they went back to Paris. Dad liked it better
now, he could stroll on the boulevards, and sit in those outdoor cafes,
where you sipped things to drink; there was always a waiter who
understood English, and maybe he had been in God’s country and would
chat about it. There were numbers of Americans to meet; Dad found the
express company office where they got their mail, and he even ran into
people from Angel City there! The newspapers from home came twice a
week, and lasted a long time.

Also, friends turned up—Annabelle Ames, for example, to attend the
London premiere of “A Mother’s Heart,” and to visit Roumania with Verne,
and also Constantinople. It appeared that Verne was backing the Turkish
government, as a means of squeezing a bigger share of the Mosul oil out
of the British. A funny thing—Excelsior Pete, Verne’s bitterest rival
at home, had offered to take him in on these concessions. Yes, you were
getting something when you bought the leading cabinet members of the
United States government! Excelsior Pete’s action showed how much real
importance they attributed to the oil scandals, and to the new
President’s public attitude.

Annabelle was a business woman, and understood these matters, which made
her a comfort to Dad. She pleaded with Bunny, in her gentle, loving
way—it was all right for him to set up new standards in business, but
was it fair to judge his father by them? Certainly no big business men
followed such standards. And surely America was entitled to its share of
the world’s oil; but there was no way to take it from these greedy
foreign rivals, except to mass the power of the government against them.

Annabelle had lots of news from home. Not gossip, she didn’t tell mean
things; but there was one story she couldn’t help telling, it was so
funny, and it caused Dad many a chuckle. A sudden fit of modesty had
struck the O’Reilly family; they had taken down all those bronze and
brass signs that had announced their progress about the world! No name
on their front gates, none on the “Conqueror,” their yacht, none on the
private car with its Circassian walnut and blue satin upholstery! No
longer was it a glorious thing to be an oil magnate’s wife—some fanatic
might throw a bomb at you!

Congress had adjourned for the summer, and Verne was going back. But he
wanted Dad to stay for a while, because that Canadian corporation was
the most vulnerable of all the oil men’s actions; it had never done
anything except to distribute that two million dollars of bribes. It was
more than ever important to keep the story down, because the government
was proceeding to bring suits for the return of all the naval reserves.
That would tie up the profits in the courts—all that good money, by
Jees, it was terrible!

Dad would stay, of course; and Bunny would have to stay with him. To
make matters easier, the great Schmolsky came along, fresh from the job
of buying most of the great German moving picture stars—another step in
the process of taking over the industry. Annabelle appealed to him, and
he was a good sport, he said yes, it was a damn shame the way old Jim
had been treated, and it was fine of the kid to stick by him—the Jews
are strong for the family; so Schmolsky would arrange several premieres
for “The Golden Couch” in Europe, and Vee might spend a long holiday
with her Bunny-rabbit. Lest Schmolsky should forget about the matter,
Annabelle made him dictate a cablegram right then; so Bunny saw a
demonstration of what it means to have influential friends! It was good
business as well as good nature, of course; because, when the world’s
darlings have these glory-progresses, a publicity man precedes them from
one great capital to the next, and the news of the crowds and the clamor
is cabled back to the United States, and takes the front page every
time.

Bunny could salve his conscience, because nobody needed him at home. The
magazine was getting along all right. Fifty-two issues had been
published, more than half of them of Rachel’s own editing; it was
something to count upon, the same as the sunrise—and it was the most
interesting paper in the world!

Also Paul was out of immediate trouble. One of the nineteen men arrested
at the Communist convention had been convicted and had appealed; the
cases of the rest were held up until that one was decided, and meantime
Paul and the others were out on bail. Ruth wrote Bunny the news; it was
a torment to have a twenty year jail sentence hanging over you, but they
were getting used to it. Ruth was going on with her nurse’s work, and
getting along fine. Paul had gone on a long journey—she was not at
liberty to say where.

But the capitalist press was at liberty, and did so. From time to time
you would read in the French papers items of news about Russia, made, of
course, to sound as hateful as possible. Soon after getting Ruth’s
letter, the papers reported that there had been a dispute among the
American Communists as to tactics, and the two factions had carried
their case to the chiefs of the Third International. There were half a
dozen leaders of the American party now in Moscow, and one of those
named was Paul Watkins, under indictment at home for participation in an
illegal convention.

                                   X

Several interesting events came along, to keep them busy in their exile.
First, Aunt Emma fell in love; yes, by golly, when it comes to such
things, you jist never can tell what will happen to either ladies or
gentlemen! It was a respectable elderly hardware merchant from Nebraska,
who was occupying his leisure collecting cameos. Maybe Aunt Emma
reminded him of one; anyhow, after beauing her around for several
months, he suddenly popped the question, and they had a quiet family
wedding, and went off on a honeymoon—to Nebraska!

It left Dad quite lonesome; but presently he hunted up an adventure for
himself, and that was stranger still—you couldn’t have guessed it in a
million years. SPOOKS!! It happened that Bunny went off one evening to a
meeting at which the Socialists and the Communists engaged in violent
warfare, as appeared to be their custom in Paris; and when he got back,
he found that Dad was not in his room. Next morning the old man told
about it—hesitatingly, with not a little embarrassment. Just what did
Bunny think about Spiritualism? Bunny said he didn’t think at all, he
didn’t know; and Dad revealed that he had had an amazing experience—a
long talk last night with grandma!

Holy smoke! said Bunny; and Dad said yes, he might well be surprised,
but there was jist no getting away from it. She had told him all about
his childhood, described the ranch where they had lived, and asked all
about her paintings, what had he done with that one of the Germans
drinking out of steins, and did he still have the one of the mansion
with the fountain in front and the carriage with the two horses and the
lady and gentleman sitting in it? She had called him “Little Jim,” and
it was all so real, it had made tears come into Dad’s eyes.

Bunny wanted to know, where had this happened, and Dad told him, there
was a lady living in this hotel, Mrs. Olivier—she was a lady from
Boston who had been married to a Frenchman, and her husband had died a
year or two ago. Dad had got to talking with her, and she had told him
about being a Spiritualist, and how she had a famous medium who gave
seances in her rooms here in the hotel, and she had invited Dad to
attend, and that was the way of it. Most amazing things had happened,
there had been horns floating in the air, and voices coming out of them,
and lights flickering about; then the ghosts had appeared, and finally
this old lady ghost, who had asked for “Little Jim,” and started right
off to tell these things that had taken Dad’s breath away. How could a
medium possibly have known such things?

Well, here was Dad with something to occupy his time! Of course he went
to the next seance, and the next; very soon he was learning all the
patter of the Spiritualists, taking it as seriously as a religion. You
could see how it was—he had got along without any religion, so long as
he was well and busy, but now that he was old and tired and sick, he
craved something to lean on. He was shame-faced about it, afraid his son
would ridicule him. But after all, did Bunny know any reason why the
soul might not survive after death? Bunny didn’t, and thereupon Dad
invited him to go to a seance. Obviously, this was something more
important than Socialism. If it was really true that we lived forever,
why then it would be easy to endure any temporary discomfort, it was
hardly worth arguing about such things as money. This from J. Arnold
Ross!

Bunny, who always tried to oblige, went to a seance, and witnessed the
strange phenomena. He knew that such things can be done by sleight of
hand, and that he had no way of telling the difference; no chance was
given in this company, made up of believers in a state of emotional
exaltation. So one session was enough, and he went back to the
Socialists. But let Dad be a Spiritualist if it made him happy!

Not so Bertie, who found out about it, and went into a regular tantrum.
What did Bunny mean by letting his father fall into such hands? It was
the worst kind of swindling in the world! And that woman, Mrs. Olivier,
it was perfectly obvious what her scheme was—she wanted to marry Dad!
Here Bertie and Bunny had worked all their lives to help him accumulate
a fortune and save it—and a designing adventuress would jump in and
grab the money, and Bunny hadn’t even sense enough to know what was
happening! Never had he seen his sister so mad in her whole life—she
called him a fool seven times running—when he said that the
Spiritualist widow might have her share, if only she could help the poor
old man to find happiness.

                                   XI

Then another strange affair for them to discuss: one you would have
found still harder to guess! The American newspapers in Paris published
a despatch from Angel City, setting forth that Eli Watkins, self-styled
prophet of religion, was believed to be drowned. He had gone swimming at
the beach, leaving his clothing in a hotel room, and had never been seen
since; a search was being made for the body. That was all the news for a
time; and Dad shook his head, and said, golly, what a strange thing—a
man whose God had saved so many others, but couldn’t save His own
prophet! What would become of that big Tabernacle, that had been Eli’s
personal property?

Then the New York papers came; and later on, the papers from Angel City,
with the story spread all over the front page day after day. The body of
Eli could not be found. The people of the temple employed divers—they
had searchlights sweeping the water at night, and thousands of the
faithful patrolling the sands, holding revival services there, weeping
and praying to God to give them back their beloved leader in his green
bathing suit. This went on for a week, for two weeks; and it was
puzzling, because the longest time a body could stay in the sea without
floating was nine days, and never before had it happened that a drowned
body had failed to be washed ashore.

Then, more and more amazing, there began to be rumors in the
papers—they were afraid to say anything direct, but they hinted, and
quoted others who hinted—Eli was possibly not drowned; Eli had been
seen here, he had been seen there—and always in the company of a
certain young woman, whom rumor declared to have been the keeper of the
sacred robes in the Tabernacle. Of course, the first time Dad saw one of
those hints, he remembered what he and Bunny had seen that day at the
beach hotel, and he went up into the air. “By God, that fellow’s playing
a trick! He’s gone off on a spree with a woman!”

There was a thrill for you! Dad talked about it for hours—it almost
drove the spooks out of his mind! It was no joking matter, because in
the course of the search for Eli’s body two men had lost their
lives—one diver had been taken with pneumonia, and a member of the
Tabernacle, seeing what he thought was a body, had swam out too far and
gone down. And here was Dad with the key to the mystery! Was it his duty
to cable the facts to the Reverend Poober?

More sensations yet—the people at the Tabernacle began getting letters
from kidnappers, who alleged that they had taken Eli in his green
bathing suit, and had him in hiding, and demanded half a million dollars
ransom for him! What was that? Nobody in Angel City could be sure. Had
the prophet really been kidnapped? Or was it true that he was driving
over the state, in company with Miss X, as the newspapers referred to
the former keeper of the sacred robes? One of the funniest aspects of
the scandal was that various young couples who had gone off on
love-expeditions in motor-cars—a favorite diversion of the
well-to-do—now found themselves in an embarrassing situation; all over
the state newspaper reporters and police officials were looking for Eli
and Miss X, and woe to any tall blond man who happened to register at a
hotel with a girl and no marriage certificate!

The denouement, when it finally came, was so sensational that it got
itself cabled, and thus spared Dad a tedious wait. Thirty-five days
after Eli’s disappearance, some fishermen, rowing in a harbor several
hundred miles from Angel City, encountered a man swimming to shore, and
picked him up; and behold, it was a tall blond man in a green bathing
suit—in short, it was the prophet! The story he told was that, finding
himself being carried out to sea, he had prayed to the Lord, and the
Lord had heard his prayer, and had sent three angels to hold him up in
the water. The name of one of these angels was Steve, and the second was
a lady angel, whose name was Rosie, and the third was a Mexican angel,
and his name was Felipe. These angels had taken turns holding onto the
shoulder-straps of Eli’s green bathing suit; and when he grew faint, one
of them would fly away and bring him food. They had upheld him, even
while he slept, quite peacefully in the water. For the entire period of
thirty-five days Eli had been thus alternately swimming and sleeping.
The devil had come, with wings of flame, and driven the good angels
away, and bound Eli’s hands behind him so that he had nearly drowned.
But he had prayed to the Lord, and the angels had floated him to a rusty
old can, and held it while he rubbed his bonds against the sharp edges,
and severed the bonds and was able to swim again.

So here was the prophet, none the worse for his adventure; and when he
had landed on the shore, and got some clothing, here came the reporters
hot-foot—for there have not been so many miracles in these skeptical
recent days, and this was an indubitable one. Crowds of people swarmed
about the prophet, they sang hosannas, and strewed his path with
flowers, and when he got back to Angel City, you just couldn’t imagine
the excitement—fifty thousand people at the railroad station, it beat
anything that even the greatest movie stars had achieved. And when he
got to the Tabernacle, there were his followers falling on their knees
and weeping for joy, because the Lord had answered their prayers and
given them back their prophet; six times a day the vast auditorium was
packed, and outside a park was filled with people, and Eli’s mighty
bellow was conveyed by a dozen loud-speakers, and men and women fell
down at the sound and shouted “Praise the Lord!”

Of course there were skeptics, people with the devil in their hearts who
refused to believe Eli’s story, and persisted in talking about a
blue-colored automobile driven by a good-looking girl, having a heavily
veiled man wearing goggles in the seat beside her. They talked about
signatures on hotel-registers, and handwriting experts, and other such
obscenities; but all that made no difference to the glory-shouters at
the Tabernacle, which was packed all day and all night, as never before
in the history of religions. Over and over Eli would tell his story,
full of the most convincing details—why, he even told how the angels’
wings had swished, and sometimes splashed water into his face; he told
the very words the angels had spoken to him. Said the prophet, if God in
His Omnipotence could keep Jonah three days in the belly of a whale, and
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace, why could
he not keep Eli Watkins afloat on the sea? It is obvious that no one
could answer that.

And then came an incident which settled the matter, completing the glory
of the Third Revelation. Eli happened to look inside his green bathing
suit, and what should he find but a snow-white feather! He recognized
it, of course—a proof of his story, left there by the mercy of the
Lord! When this fresh miracle was announced, the hosannas of the
faithful shook the roof; and presently the angel’s feather was mounted
in a glass case, and set up behind the place where Eli preached, and,
such was the Lord’s mercy, whoever even looked upon this relic, was
instantly cured of all his ailments and had his sins forgiven—yes, even
the most deadly sin of fornication!




                              CHAPTER XIX
                              THE PENALTY


                                   I

The billboards of Paris broke into universal ecstasy: “Schmolsky-Superba
Présente l’Etoile Américaine, Viola Tracy, dans La Couche d’Or,
Cinéma-Mélodrame de la Société en Huit Reels.” There were pages in the
newspapers, “Premiere Production sur le Continent d’Europe”—Schmolsky
was doing the job in style. “L’Etoile” herself was coming, all the way
from California; and Bunny motored to Havre to meet her, and oh, how
happy they were, a second honeymoon, with the old disharmonies
forgotten. He drove her back to Paris—no, almost to Paris, she must
board a train outside the city and make her entrance according to
schedule announced in the newspapers. There were the shouting thousands,
the cameras, and the reporters, including those whose duty it would be
to cable the stirring news back to New York and Angel City.

The world grows one, and it is the “cinéma-mélodrame de la Société” that
is doing it—which is to say the world grows American. The premiere here
in Paris was the same as a premiere in Hollywood, except that the crowd
made more noise, and sought to embrace its idol, actually imperilling
the idol’s life. There was a double reason for excitement, because the
man who had played the leading part was no common movie actor, but a
real prince from Roumania, who had been visiting in Southern California,
and had yielded to the wiles of Schmolsky and become a star for a night.
Now here he was in person, on his way home to Roumania—having traveled
on the train and the steamer with Vee, so Bunny learned. A tall, lean
young man, not very handsome, but used to attention; courteous, but
easily bored, wearing a quizzical smile, and reluctant to be
serious—until he heard Bunny express some sympathy with the murderous
and blasphemous reds! After that, he preferred the company of Bunny’s
sister.

When the Paris premiere was over, Dad got him a touring car of royal
proportions, and they motored to Berlin, Bunny driving, with Vee by his
side, and Dad on the back seat with his secretary and a chauffeur for
emergencies. It was all just as grand as their tour to New York; perfect
roads, beautiful scenery, humble peasantry standing cap in hand and
awe-stricken, servants rushing to wait upon them at every stop. All
Europe owes us money, and this is how it pays.

And then Berlin—“Erste Auffuehrung in Deutschland, Schmolsky-Superba
ankuendigt,” etc. And the crowds and the cameras and the reporters—the
world was one. This had been enemy country less than six years ago; but
did any ex-soldiers in uniform take station at the theatre entrance, and
forbid American films to set too high a standard for the native product?
They did not; and Bunny smiled, remembering his remark to Schmolsky,
“Vae victis!” and the latter’s reply, “Huh?”

They went on to Vienna. It is a poor city now, and hardly repays the
advertising; but there is still magic in the name, and it counts with
the newspapers. So here was another premiere, less noisy but more
genial. Vee and her lover were a little bored now; she had had the last
great “kick” that she could get out of life. When a star has had her
continental tour, and has got tired of it, she is an old-timer, blasée
and world-weary, and life from then on is merely one thing after
another.

The person with gift of perennial childhood was Dad. He enjoyed each
premiere as if he had never seen the others, and he would have liked to
go on to Bucharest, where her majesty the queen—herself a genius at
advertising—was to attend the first showing, in honor of Prince
Marescu. But another attraction kept Dad in Vienna—the spooks had
followed him! His friend, Mrs. Olivier had given him a letter to a
wonderful medium, and they went to a seance, and Vee was told all about
the patent medicine vendor who had raised her in a wagon—the very
phrases this man had used to the crowd. By golly, if it was a trick, it
was certainly a clever one!

                                   II

There was only one cloud on this second honeymoon, and Bunny kept it
hidden in his own soul. There were “youth” papers in both Berlin and
Vienna, and he considered himself bound to call at their offices and
invite the rebel editors to lunch, and send home letters for Rachel to
publish. In Vienna was a paper in the English language devoted to the
defense of political prisoners; it was a Communist paper, but so well
camouflaged that Bunny didn’t realize the fact, and anyhow, he would
have wished to meet the editors. He was still making his pitiful attempt
to understand both sides—even here in Central Europe, where the
Socialists and the Communists had many times been at open war.

In this obscure office in a working-class part of the city Bunny came
upon a ghastly experience. There was exhibited to him a creature that
had once been a young man, but now was little more than a skeleton
covered with a skin of greenish-yellow. It had only one eye and one ear,
and it could not speak because its tongue had been pulled out or cut
off, and most of its front teeth had been extracted, and its cheeks were
pitted with holes made by cigarettes burned into it. Likewise all the
creatures’ finger-nails had been torn out, and its hands burned with
holes; the men in the office bared its shirt, and showed Bunny how the
flesh had been ripped and torn by lashes this way and that, like
cross-hatchings in a pen and ink drawing.

This was a prisoner escaped from a Roumanian dungeon, and these scars
represented the penalty of refusal to betray his comrades to the White
Terror. Here in this office were photographs and letters and
affidavits—for this kind of thing was being done to thousands of men
and women in Roumania. The government was in the hands of a band of
ruling class thugs, who were stealing everything in sight, selling the
natural resources of the country; one of the biggest of Roumanian oil
fields had just been leased to an American syndicate, possibly Comrade
Ross had heard of that? And Comrade Ross said that he had. He didn’t add
that his father was in on the deal!

This victim of the White Terror was from Bessarabia, a province taken
from Russia under the blessed principle of self-determination. It was
inhabited by Russian peasants, and the natural struggles of these people
for freedom were met by slaughtering or torturing to death not merely
everyone who revolted, but everyone who expressed sympathy with the
revolt. Nor was this a sporadic thing, it was the condition prevailing
all along the Russian border, a thousand miles from the Baltic to the
Black Sea. All these provinces and countries, inhabited by Russian
peasants, had been taken from the reds and given to the whites. And so
you had this situation—on the Eastern side of the line the peasants had
the land and the government, they were free men and women, making a
civilization of workers; while on the other side they were serfs at the
mercy of landlords, robbed of the fruits of their toil, and beaten or
shot if they ventured a murmur. It was impossible to prevent peasants
from one side crossing to the other; and the contrast between the two
civilizations was so plain that no child could fail to understand it. So
the class struggle went on all the time, a hideous civil war, of which
no word was allowed to leak to the outside world.

Left to themselves, this landlord aristocracy could not survive a year.
But they had world capital behind them; they got the munitions with
which to do the slaughtering, or the money to make the munitions, from
American big business. Yes, it was America which kept alive this White
Terror, in order to collect interest on the debts, and to come in and
buy up the country—the railroads, the mines, the oil fields, even the
great castles and landed estates. Would not Comrade Ross tell the
American people what bloody work their money was doing?

Bunny went away with the question on his conscience. Would he tell, or
wouldn’t he? Would he begin by telling his darling of the world? Would
he mention that the young Prince Marescu, whom she so greatly admired,
was the son of one of the bloodiest of these ruling class thugs?

All the time Bunny was driving his darling through winding passes amid
the glorious snow-covered mountains of Switzerland, he was not happy as
it was his duty to be. He would have long periods of brooding, and she
would ask, what was the matter, and he would evade. But then she would
pin him down—being shrewd, like most women where love is concerned. “Is
it those reds you’ve been visiting?” He said, “Yes, dear, but let’s not
talk about it—it isn’t going to make any difference to us.” She
answered, ominously, “It is going to make all the difference in the
world to us!”

                                  III

Back in Paris, and there were long letters from Verne; the government
had filed suit for the return of its oil lands, and the Sunnyside tract
was in the hands of a receiver, and all the development stopped. But
they were not to worry—their organization would be put to work on the
various foreign concessions, and as for the money, what they were
getting out of Paradise would keep them in old age.

Strange to say, Dad worried scarcely at all. Mrs. Olivier had discovered
a new medium, even more wonderful than the others, and this Polish
peasant woman with bad teeth and epilepsy had brought up from the depths
of the universal consciousness the spirit of Dad’s grandfather, who had
crossed the continent in a covered wagon and perished in the Mohave
desert; also there was the spirit of an Indian chief whom the old
pioneer had killed during the journey. Most fascinating to listen while
the two warriors told about this early war between the reds and the
whites!

Bertie was furious, of course; she didn’t dare say much to Dad, for the
old man was still the boss, and would tell her “where to get off.” She
took it out on Bunny, storming at him, because he was the one who might
have saved Dad from this dangerous vamp. Bunny couldn’t help laughing,
because Mrs. Olivier was so far from the type which the Hollywood
directors had taught him to recognize: a stoutish, elderly lady, sweet
and sentimental, with a soft, caressing voice—it was too funny to
listen to her coo to the fierce and surly Indian chief, “Now, Red Wolf
in the Rain, are you going to be nice to us this evening? We are so glad
to hear you again! Captain Ross’s little grandson is here, and wants you
to tell us if the faces of the redmen are white in your happy world.”

Bunny was taking Vee about to see Paris; a city which was exhibiting to
the world the moral collapse of capitalist imperialism. In the theatres
of this culture centre you might see a stage crowded with naked women,
their bodies painted every color of the rainbow; some of them died of
the poisoning which this treatment inflicted upon the system, but
meantime the war for democracy was justified. While Bunny was there, the
artists of the city took offense because the managers of the underground
railway objected to an obscene advertisement; to express their scorn of
censorship, some hundreds of men and women emerged at dawn, having torn
off their clothing in drunken orgies, and invaded the subway cars
entirely naked. These beauty-creators and guides of the future held a
festival once every year, the Quatres Arts Ball, a famous event to which
Vee, as a visiting artist, was welcome; and here, when the revels were
at their height, you might stroll about a vast hall, and see, upon
platforms set against the walls, the actual enactment of every variety
of abnormal vice which human degeneracy had been able to conceive.

With the time he had left from such diversions, Bunny was preparing for
“The Young Student” a moving protest against the Roumanian White Terror.
He left this nearly completed manuscript on the writing table in his
hotel room, and when he came back it was gone, and inquiries among the
hotel staff brought no information. Two days later Bertie came to him
with another tantrum; she knew all the contents of his manuscript, and
what shame he was bringing upon their heads! “So Eldon’s been setting
spies on me!” exclaimed Bunny, ready to get hot himself; but Bertie,
said rubbish, Eldon had nothing to do with it, it was the French secret
service. Did he imagine for a moment the government was failing to keep
track of Bolshevik propaganda? Or that they would let him use their
country as a centre of plotting against the peace of Europe?

Bunny wanted to know, were they so silly as to imagine they could keep
him from writing home what he had learned in Vienna? He would do the
article over, and find ways to get it to America in spite of all the
spies. Then Bertie actually broke down and wept; of all countries for
him to pick out—Roumania! Here she had been pulling wires to get Eldon
appointed to a high diplomatic post, with the combined influence of
Verne in Washington and Prince Marescu in Bucharest; and now Bunny came
along and smeared them with his filth!

And more than that! Blind fool, couldn’t he see that Marescu was
interested in Vee? Did he want to give her up to him? The prince would
of course hear about this matter through the French government, which
was arming Roumania against Russia. Suppose he were to come back to
Paris and challenge Bunny to a duel? The young smart-aleck answered,
“We’ll fight with tennis rackets!”

                                   IV

Matters came to a climax. A letter for Bunny, bearing a French stamp,
but in a familiar handwriting that made his pulses jump. He tore it open
and read: “Dear Son, I am in town for a few days and would you like to
meet me? Yours for old times, Paul Watkins.”

Bunny was twenty-four years old now, but it was just the way it had been
eleven years ago, there in Mrs. Groarty’s back yard, when he had left
his father and run shouting, “Paul! Paul! Where are you? Please don’t go
way!” Bunny had a date with Vee, but he got out of it—his sister would
invite her to one of those diplomatic tea-parties where you met the
Prince de This and the Duchesse de That. Then Bunny hurried off to the
obscure hotel where his friend was staying.

Paul was haggard; one does not take a trip to Moscow to get fat. But his
sober face was shining with a light of fanaticism—the same thing which
his brother Eli called the glory of the Lord! Dad would have said there
were two of them, equally crazy; but it didn’t seem that way to Bunny,
who mocked at Eli’s god, but believed in Paul’s—at least enough to
tremble in his presence. Paul had been living under a workers’
government again—and this time not as a wage-slave, a strike-breaker in
army uniform, but as a free man, and master of the future. So now in
this dingy hotel room Bunny was sitting opposite an apostle; Paul, with
his sombre, determined features and toil-accustomed figure, the very
incarnation of the militant working-class!

And the miracles of which he had to tell were real. First of all a
spiritual miracle—a hundred million people proclaiming their own
sovereignty, and the downfall of masters and exploiters, kings, priests,
capitalists, the whole rabble of parasites. It was a physical miracle,
too, because these hundred million people controlled one-sixth of the
earth’s surface, and were building a new civilization, a model for the
future. They were poor, of course; they had started with a country in
wreck. But what were a few years, and a little hunger, compared with the
ages of torment they had survived?

Paul described the sights of Moscow. First of all, the youth movement; a
whole new generation being taught to be clear-eyed and free, to face the
facts of nature, and to serve the working-class, instead of climbing out
upon its face and founding a line of parasites! You saw those young
Communists in class-rooms, on athletic fields, in the streets—marching,
singing, listening to speeches—Paul himself had talked to tens of
thousands, in his little bit of Russian, and nothing had ever meant so
much to him. He had but one interest for the rest of his life, to tell
the young workers of America about the young workers of Russia. He began
by telling Bunny!

He talked about the councils he had attended, the international
gatherings where the future of the parties all over the world was
charted out. Bunny of course made his protest against this. Did Paul
really think it was possible for an American political party to have its
course determined in a foreign country? Paul smiled and said it was hard
enough—the Russian leaders couldn’t understand how far back in history
America stood. But what else could you do? Either you meant to have
world order, or you didn’t? If you left the party in each country to
determine its own course, you were right back where you were before the
war, with men calling themselves Socialists, and holding power in the
name of Socialism, who were in reality patriots, ready to back the
exploiters of their own land in wars against the exploiters of other
lands.

That was the thing which threatened to destroy the human race; and the
only way to end it was to do what the Third International was
doing—have a world government and enforce its orders. The workers’
world government was located in Moscow, because elsewhere the delegates
would be thrown into prison, or assassinated, as in Geneva. But before
many years the Third International would hold a Congress in Berlin, and
then in Paris and London, and in the end in New York. The workers of the
world would send their representatives, and that Congress would give its
orders, and the nations would stop their fighting, just you bet! Thus
Paul: and Bunny, as usual, was swept along upon a wave of enthusiasm.

                                   V

There were so many things Bunny wanted to know about. He took Paul to
dinner, in an outdoor café, and they spent a good part of the evening,
French fashion, conversing there. Paul told about the schools; all the
new educational discoveries that had been made in America, but could
only be applied in Russia. And the papers and books—the modern,
progressive writers being translated and spread over the half of two
continents. And industry—the colossal labors of a people to build a
modern world out of nothing, with no capital and no help from the
outside. Paul described the oil industry under this Soviet system; a
state trust, in which the workers’ unions were recognized, and given a
voice in labor affairs. The workers published papers, they had clubs and
dramatic societies, a new culture, based upon industry instead of
exploitation.

Then, of course, Bunny wanted to know about Ruth, and about Paul’s
arrest and his trial, and what was he going to do now. He was on his way
back to America, and would probably be put to organizing in California,
because that was the place he knew best. He had been in Paradise and
held secret meetings with the men; until at last he had been found out
and put off the tract—the place where he had been born, and had lived
nearly all his life! But that was all right, the party had a “nucleus,”
as it was called, in the field, and literature was being distributed and
read.

Bunny told what he had learned in Vienna, and how his article on
Roumania had been stolen; Paul said that in every European capital there
were more spies than there were lice. Very probably there was some agent
sitting at one of these tables, trying to hear what they said. His
baggage was rifled every few days. The imbecile governments, trying to
crush the workers’ movement—and at the same time piling up their
munitions, getting ready for the next war, that would make Bolshevism as
inevitable as the sunrise!

“You really think there’ll be another war, Paul?”

The other laughed. “Ask your eminent brother-in-law! He’ll know.”

“But he wouldn’t tell me. We barely speak.”

Paul answered that armaments produce wars automatically; the capitalists
who make the armaments have to see that they are used, in order to get
to make more. Bunny said that the idea of another war seemed too
horrible to think about; and Paul replied, “So you don’t think about it,
and that makes it easy for the business men to get it ready.”

He sat for a bit in thought, and then went on, “Since I’ve been
travelling in Europe, I find myself remembering that night when you and
I met for the first time. Do you recollect it, son?”

When Bunny said that he did, Paul went on, “I wasn’t in my aunt’s
living-room, and I didn’t see those people that had come to lease their
lots; but I listened outside and heard the wrangling; and now, as I go
about Europe I say to myself, that is world diplomacy. A wrangle over an
oil lease! Every nation hating every other one, making combinations and
promising to stick together—but they’ve sold each other out before
night, and there’s no lie that any one hasn’t told, and no crime they
haven’t committed. You remember that row?”

How well Bunny remembered! Miss Snypp—he hadn’t known her name, but her
face rose before him, brick-red with wrath. “Let me tell you, you’ll
never get me to put my signature on that paper—never in this world!”
And Mr. Hank, the man with the hatchet-face, shouting, “Let me tell you,
the law will make you sign it”—only there was no law in European
diplomacy! And Mrs. Groarty, Paul’s aunt, glaring at Mr. Hank and
clenching her hands as if she had him by the throat. “And you the feller
that was yellin’ for the rights of the little lots! You was for sharin’
and sharin’ alike—you snake in the grass!”

Said Paul: “Those people were so blind with greed, they were willing to
throw away their own chances for the satisfaction of beating the others.
They did that, I think you told me—threw away the lease with your
father. And everybody in the field behaved the same way. I wonder if you
happen to know, it’s government statistics on that Prospect Hill
field—more money was spent in drilling than ever was taken out in oil!”

“Yes, of course,” said Bunny. “I’ve seen derricks there with platforms
actually touching.”

“Each one racing to get the oil, and spending more than he makes—isn’t
that a picture of capitalism? And then the war! You remember how we
heard the racket, and ran to the window, and there was one fellow
hitting the next fellow in the nose, and the whole roomful milling
about, shouting and trying to stop the fight, or to get into it!”

“One said, ‘You dirty, lying yellow skunk!’ And the other said, ‘Take
that, you white-livered puppy!’”

“Son, that was a little oil war! And a year or two later the big one
broke out, and if there’s anything you don’t understand about it, all
you need is to think about what happened in my aunt’s home. And
remember, they were fighting for a chance to exploit the oil workers, to
divide the wealth the oil workers were going to produce; in their crazy
greed they killed or injured seventy-three percent of all the men they
put to work on Prospect Hill—that’s government statistics also! And
don’t you see how that’s the world war exactly? The workers doing the
fighting, and the bankers getting the bonds!”

                                   VI

So many things to talk about! Bunny told the story of Eli, concerning
which Paul had heard no rumor. The latter said it was easy to
understand, because Eli always had been a chaser after women. It was one
reason Paul had been so repelled by his brother’s preaching. “I wouldn’t
mind his having his girl,” he said, “only he denies my right to my girl.
He preaches a silly ideal of asceticism, and then goes off secretly and
does what he pleases.”

Here was an opportunity for which Bunny had been seeking. He took a
sudden plunge. “Paul, there’s something I want to tell you. For the past
three years I’ve been living with a moving picture actress.”

“I know,” said Paul; “Ruth told me.”

“Ruth!”

“Yes, she saw something about it in the papers,” And then, reading his
friend’s thought, Paul added, “Ruth has had to learn that the world is
the way it is, and not the way she’d like it to be.”

“What do you think about such things, Paul?”

“Well, son, it’s a question of how you feel about the girl. If you
really love her, and she loves you, why, I suppose it’s all right. Are
you happy?”

“We were at first; we still are, part of the time. The trouble is, she
hates the radical movement. She doesn’t really understand it, of
course.”

Paul answered, “Some people hate the radical movement because they don’t
understand it, and some because they do.” After Bunny had had time to
digest that, he went on, “Either you’ll have to change your ideas, or
you’ll have a break with the girl. That’s something I’m sure about—you
can’t have happiness in love unless it’s built on harmony of ideas.
Otherwise you quarrel all the time—or at least, you’re bored.”

“Have you ever lived with a woman, Paul?”

“There was a girl I was very much attracted to in Angel City, and I
could have had her, I guess. But it was a couple of years ago, when I
saw that I was going Bolshevik, and I knew she wouldn’t stand for it, so
what was the use? You get yourself tangled up in a lot of emotions, and
waste the time you need for work.”

“I’ve often wondered about you and such things. You used to think the
way Eli talks, when we first met.”

Paul laughed. “I’d hardly keep my Christian superstitions when I became
a Communist organizer. No, son; what I think is, find a woman you really
love, and that wants to share your work, and that you mean to stick by;
then you can love her, you don’t need any priest to give you permission.
Some day I suppose I’ll meet a woman comrade—I think about it a good
deal, of course—I’m no wooden post. But I’ll have to wait and see what
happens at my trial. I’d be little use to a girl if I’ve got to spend
twenty years in Leavenworth or Atlanta!”

                                  VII

Paul was going to speak at a meeting of Communists the next evening, and
Bunny must go to that meeting, of course. But what was he to do with
Vee? She would not be interested in hearing Paul tell about Russia; she
had learned all about it from her friend, Prince Marescu. Bunny
bethought him of Dad and the seances, and by tactful manipulation he
caused the old gentleman to call up Vee and tell her about an especially
interesting seance they were going to have that evening. Vee promised to
come, and Bunny thought he was free.

But then about lunch-time Bertie called him on the phone. “So your old
Paul is in Paris!”

Bunny was startled; having thought he was keeping a secret. Then he
laughed. “So your old secret service has been at work!”

Said his sister, “I just thought you might be interested to know—your
old Paul is not going to speak tonight. The police have arrested him.”

“Who told you that?”

“They’ve just notified the embassy. He’s to be expelled—in fact he’s on
his way now.”

“My God, Bertie, are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Did you think they’d let him make Bolshevik
speeches in France?”

“I mean—are you sure they’re going to expel him?” Bunny had learned so
much about the treatment accorded to the reds—all Europe had adopted
the sweet custom of the American police, to beat their prisoners with
rubber hose, which leaves no marks upon the skin. So there began a
wrangle over the phone, Bunny in a panic, insisting upon knowing what
official had given the information to Eldon; and Bertie insisting that
Bunny should not make another of his stinks in Paris, and maybe get
himself deported, and his brother-in-law ruined in the eyes of all
Europe.

In the end Bunny hung up, and called the office of the Communist
newspaper. Did they know about the arrest of Comrade Puull Votkan—so it
was necessary to say it. No, they knew nothing about it, they would
endeavor to find out. And Bunny jumped into a taxi-cab and hastened to
the office of the Prefet de Police, where he was received with a lack of
that courtesy which police officials usually display to young gentlemen
properly tailored. They had no information to give about the American,
Puull Votkan, but they would like to receive information about an
American named Zhay Arnoll R-r-osss feess, and how long he expected to
abuse the hospitality of the French government by giving sums of money
to enemies of public safety.

Meantime Bertie, in her desperation, was appealing to Vee Tracy, begging
her to make one more effort to get Bunny out of this hideous
entanglement. Vee answered that she would make one more, and only one.
She turned from the telephone and ordered her maid to pack her
belongings, and when Bunny came back from his visit to the police, he
found a note in his mail-box:

“Dear Bunny: I have just learned why I was to be put off with a
spiritualist seance tonight, instead of going to the opera with you! The
time has come when you have to choose between your red friends and me,
and I have moved to another hotel until you make up your mind. Please
give me your decision by letter. Do not try to see me, because I will
not speak to you again until this matter has been settled. If it is to
be all over between us, a quick clean cut is the way I choose. I will no
longer endure the humiliation of being associated with dangerous
criminals; and unless you can say that you love me enough to change your
associates, I mean that you are never to see me again. Take time to
think it over, but not too much time. Yours, Vee.”

As a matter of fact, Bunny did not need any time. Even while he was
reading the letter, a voice was telling him that he had known it was
coming. After the first shock of pain had passed, he sat himself down
and wrote:

“Dear Vee: We have had great happiness together. I have suffered for a
long time, because I knew it had to end. I won’t waste your time arguing
in defense of my ideas; I have some, and cannot give them up, any more
than you can yours. I wish you every happiness that can come to you in
life, and hope you will not cherish bitterness in your heart, because it
is something I truly cannot change. If ever the time comes that I can
aid you, I will be yours to command. With just the same affection,
Bunny-rabbit.”

                                  VIII

Bunny must not stop to nourish his grief, but must hurry to call upon
the French Communists and offer to pay the costs of a lawyer to
institute legal proceedings and find out what was happening to Paul. But
as a matter of fact the effort was not necessary, for next morning all
the newspapers had the story: a notorious American Bolshevik agitator
had been escorted by the authorities to Havre and placed on board a
steamer to sail that day. The Communist paper in its report commented
sarcastically; this was one Bolshevik agitator whom the American
government could not very well refuse to admit, since they had him under
bond of twenty thousand dollars to make his appearance in court! Bunny
had so little confidence in the French authorities that he took the
precaution to wireless Paul to the steamer with reply prepaid; and a few
hours later he got the words, “On the way to Paradise”—a code message
from Paul!

Three days later came a message from his sweetheart—no code this time,
but a proclamation to the whole world. The newspapers of Paris and all
other capitals—of Madagascar, Paraguay, Nova Zembla, Thibet and New
Guinea—announced the engagement of Viola Tracy, American screen
actress, to Prince Marescu of Roumania; the wedding was to take place in
the great cathedral of Bucharest, and Queen Marie herself would attend.
The efficient publicity organization of Schmolsky-Superba had contrived
many a stunt in its time, but never one so effective as this which fate
handed to it, free, gratis, and for nothing!

And so there was a chapter closed in Bunny’s life. The door which had
led from his suite in the hotel to Vee’s suite was locked, and a piece
of furniture moved in front of it. But there was no piece of furniture
that could be moved in front of the memory in Bunny’s mind! Nothing
could shut out that slender white figure, so vivid and eager, and the
memory of the delights she had brought to him. He was maimed in soul, as
the victims of the White Terror were maimed in body—and in the same
cause!

There were women here, of all kinds and sizes, native and American,
young ladies of the highest fashionableness, willing to receive the
attentions of a young oil prince. They knew about his romance and his
broken heart; and their shrewd mammas told them an ancient formula,
known to the feminine world since the dawn of coquetry—“Catch him on
the rebound!” Bunny was besought to attend tea-parties and dances, but
mostly he went to Socialist meetings; and when he thought about girls,
it was to Angel City that his fancy fled. Ruth Watkins was so gentle and
quiet, yet brave—not giving up her brother because he turned into a
Bolshevik! And Rachel Menzies was so steady, so grim in her
determination to send him a four-page paper, as regular as the calendar,
and always telling him everything he wanted to know! Once every month
she sent an itemized statement of receipts and expenditures, typed with
her own fingers, and always exactly right—whatever dollars were left
over went for sample copies, so he was never troubled by either surplus
or deficit!

                                   IX

September, and Dad came bringing an announcement that caused him to
hesitate, and turn fiery red after he got going. “You know, son, I have
got to be very good friends with Alyse, we—that is, we are interested
in the same ideas, and we realize that we can help each other.”

“Yes, Dad, of course.”

“Well, the fact is—you know how it is—I’ve been imposing on you for so
long, but now you will be free, because I’ve asked Alyse to marry me,
and she consents.”

“Well, Dad, I’ve been expecting that for quite a while. I’m sure you
will be happy.”

Dad looked very much relieved—had he feared a tantrum, after the
fashion of Bertie? He hastened to say, “I want to tell you—Alyse and I
have talked the matter over, and we agree—she is fond of you, and
appreciates your standing by me and all, and she wants you to know that
she’s not marrying me for my money.”

“No, Dad, I don’t think that.”

“Well, you know Bertie, and what she thinks. Bertie is mercenary—I
suppose she got it from her mother. Anyhow, I’m not a-goin’ to say
anything to her about this, it is none of her business; we’ll jist get
married on the quiet, and Bertie can read about it in the papers. What
I’m a-goin’ to do is this—Alyse says she hasn’t had anything to do with
helping me make my money, and she don’t want my children to hate her, as
they will if she comes in and takes a big share.”

“Oh, but I won’t, Dad!”

“We’ve agreed that I’m to make a will, and leave a million dollars to
her, and the rest will go to you and Bertie, and Alyse will be satisfied
with that—it will give her enough to carry on the psychic work she’s
interested in. You understand, she wants to do that—”

“Yes, of course, Dad. I am a propagandist too!”

“I know son; and what I’ve been thinking—you have a right to express
your ideas. And while I don’t agree with that little paper, I can see
that it’s honest, it says what you think; so I’m a-goin’ to make over a
million dollars worth of Ross stock to you, and you can jist go ahead
and do what you please with that. I hope you won’t turn into a
Bolsheviki like Paul, and I hope you won’t find it necessary to get into
jail.”

“It would be pretty hard to keep me in jail if I had a million dollars,
Dad.”

The old man grinned; the mediums and the spirits had not yet driven the
old devil entirely out of him. He went on to say that of course they
weren’t going to have as much money as he had once thought. Those
government suits were a-goin’ to dig a big hole in it—no doubt the
politicians would fix it so Dad and Verne would lose. Of course they
might get a pile out of these new deals abroad, but that was
speculative—not the sort of thing Dad fancied, but he was leaving it to
Verne.

“What are you and Mrs.—Alyse going to do, Dad?”

“Well, we want to have a sort of—you might call it a Spiritualist
honeymoon. We’ll go see that medium in Vienna, and there’s another in
Frankfort that we’ve heard about. It’ll depend for one thing on what you
want. Maybe you’ll go back to California.”

“I think I will, Dad, for a while—if you are sure you can spare me.”

Yes, Dad said he and Alyse would get along all right; his secretary had
learned enough French for practical purposes, and they would have a
courier or interpreter for their stay in Germany. He hoped the climate
there would agree with him; he didn’t seem ever to be strong now. That
flu had sort of done him up.

The preliminary steps were taken, and Bunny and his father and the
secretary and Mrs. Alyse Huntington Forsythe Olivier all put on their
best glad rags and appeared before the maire of one of the small towns
on the outskirts of Paris and were duly wedded, and Bunny kissed his new
stepmother on both cheeks, and the maire did the same, and also kissed
Bunny and Dad on both cheeks. And then Dad took his son to one side and
placed an envelope in his hands. It was an order on Verne to turn over
thirty-two hundred shares of Ross Consolidated Class B stock; a little
more than a million at the market. They were “street certificates,” Dad
explained—he had already signed them and left them with Verne, in case
they wished to market them. “And now, son,” said the old man, “have a
little sense—this is a pile of money, and don’t throw it away. Take
your time, and be sure what you want to do, and don’t let yourself be
plucked by grafters that will come round jist as soon as they smell it!”

The same old Dad! They gave each other hugs and squeezes; there were
tears in everybody’s eyes, even the secretary, and the maire and his
clerks, who had never heard of such fees for a wedding—marvelous
people, ces Americains! And Bunny said for Dad to write all the news,
and Dad said for Bunny to write all the news; and Bunny said he would
return to France next summer if Dad were not able to come to America,
and Dad said he was sure Verne would have it all fixed up before that.
And then Bunny kissed his stepmother again, and then he hugged Dad
again, and then shook hands with the secretary—a regular debauch of the
sweet sorrows of parting, with the officials and a crowd of street
urchins standing by on the sidewalk, staring at the grand rich car and
the grand rich Americans. Bunny was glad to look back on it in after
years—at least that once the old man had been happy! All the chatter,
and the messages, and the flowers, the baggage to be seen to and the
robes to be tucked in—and then at last they were rolling down the
street, amid waving of hands and cheers—headed for a Spiritualist
seance in Frankfort-am-Main!

Bunny took a train back to Paris, and wrote out two messages announcing
that he was sailing for home; one to Ruth Watkins and one to Rachel
Menzies—playing no favorites! Then he bought a paper, and read a brief
despatch—“Great California Oil Fire.” A bolt of lightning had struck
one of the storage tanks of the Ross Consolidated Oil Company at
Paradise, California, and as a high wind was blowing, it was not thought
possible to save any portion of the tank-farm, and possibly the whole
field might be destroyed.

When Bunny got back to the hotel, there was a cablegram from Angel City.
It was impossible to make any guess what the damage would be, but they
were fully insured and nothing to worry about, “A. H. Dory”—still
Verne’s signature when he wanted to be playful. Bunny forwarded the
message to his father, and asked if he should wait; but Dad’s answer
was, no, whatever he had to say could be said by letter or cable, and he
would be glad to have Bunny on the scene to report. “Love and best
wishes,” were the concluding words—the last that Dad was ever to say to
his son, except through the channel of the spirits!

                                   X

A steamer took Bunny out to sea—one of those floating hotels, like the
one he had left in Paris, fitted in the style of a palace, mahogany
finish and silken draperies and cushions, and the most elegant society,
flashing jewels and costly gowns—five thousand dollars per female
person would have been a modest estimate for evenings in the dining
saloon. And very soon the tongues of gossip began to buzz—“His father’s
the California oil man, they say he owns whole fields out there, but one
of them is burning up, according to the papers. The Ross that was in the
scandal, you remember, he’s hiding abroad, been there nearly a year, but
the son can come back, of course. They say he was one of the lovers of
Viola Tracy, but she chucked him and married the Roumanian prince. Catch
him on the rebound, my dear!”

So everybody was lovely to Bunny; so many charming young things to dance
with, until any hour of the morning; or to stroll on deck and be lost in
the darkness with, if one preferred. All day they flitted about him,
casting coy and seductive glances: they were interested in everything he
was interested in, even the book he was reading—provided he would talk
about it instead of reading it. There were some who would say that they
were interested in Socialism, they didn’t know much about it, but were
eager to learn. Until the second morning out, when the young Socialist
received a wireless which entirely removed him from fashionable society:

“Your father very ill with double pneumonia have obtained best medical
attention will keep you informed deepest sympathy and affection Alyse.”

So then Bunny walked the deck alone, and suffered exactly those torments
of remorse which Vernon Roscoe had predicted for him. Oh, surely he
could have been kinder, more patient with that good old man! Surely he
could have tried harder to understand and to help! Now fate was taking
him away, five or six hundred miles every day—and at any moment might
snatch him to a distance beyond calculation. His father himself had felt
it—Bunny went over what he had said, and realized that Dad had faced
the thought of death, and had been giving his son such last advice as he
could.

At first nothing but remorse. But then little by little the debate—the
old, old dispute that had torn Bunny’s mind in half. Was it possible for
men to go on doing what Dad had been doing in the conduct of his
business? Could any civilization endure on the basis of such purchase of
government? No, Bunny told himself; but then—he should have tried
harder, more lovingly, and persuaded his father to stop it! But at what
stage? Dad had been purchasing government ever since Bunny could
remember, as a little boy. All the oil men purchased government, all big
business men did it, either before or after election. And at what stage
of life shall a boy say to his father, your way of life is wrong, and
you must let me take charge of it?

There was no new thought that Bunny could think about all this; any more
than in the case of Vee Tracy. Just the grief, and the ache of
loneliness! Old things going; they kept going—and where did they go? It
was a mystery that made you dizzy, at moments like this; you stood on
the brink of a precipice and looked down into a gulf! The most
incredible idea, that his father, who was so real, and had been for so
long a part of his being—should suddenly disappear and cease to be! For
the first time Bunny began to wonder, could Alyse be right about the
spirits?

Another message in the evening. “Condition unchanged will keep you
advised sympathy and affection.” These last words never failed in the
messages; the next day, when Dad’s condition was the same and the crisis
expected tomorrow; and then tomorrow, when Dad was sinking; and then,
the morning after, when Alyse wired, “Your father’s spirit has passed
from this world to the next but he will never cease to be with you he
spoke of you at the last and promises that if you will communicate with
a good medium in Angel City he will guide your life with love and
affection as ever Alyse.” And then a message from Bertie: “I was with
Dad at the end and he forgave me will you forgive me also.” When Bunny
read that, he had to hurry to his stateroom, and lie there and cry like
a little child. Yes, he would forgive her, so he wired in reply, and
might whoever had made them forgive them all!




                               CHAPTER XX
                             THE DEDICATION


                                   I

Bunny was alone in the roaring city of New York—six or seven millions
of people, and not many known to him. There were reporters, of
course—it made a “human interest” story, fate snatching one of the oil
magnates away from the Senate inquisitors. The country was near the end
of a bitter presidential campaign, and the smallest item about the oil
scandal was of importance. Also Bunny had cablegrams and telegrams of
sympathy—from Verne and Annabelle, from Paul and Ruth, from Rachel and
her father and brothers; yes, and one from the Princess Marescu, signing
herself, with old-time nearness, “Vee-Vee.”

He purchased his ticket home, by way of Washington, and on the train he
read the back newspapers, with the day by day account of what happened
to his boyhood dream of a great oil field: enormous oceans of flame
rolling over the earth, turning night into day with the glare, turning
day into night with thunder clouds of smoke; rivers of blazing oil
rushing down the valleys, and a gale of wind sweeping the fire from one
hill to the next. A dozen great storage tanks had gone, and the whole
refinery, with all its tanks, and some three hundred derricks, licked up
and devoured in that roaring furnace. It was the worst oil fire in
California history, eight or ten million dollars loss.

In Washington was someone for Bunny to tell his troubles to—Dan Irving!
They took a long walk, and the older man put his arm about Bunny and
told him that he had done everything possible in a difficult situation.
Dan could assure him that he didn’t have to think of his father as a bad
man; Dan had made it his business to know, and could confirm Bunny’s
judgment, American big business men all purchased government, they all
justified the purchase of government. It was something that had shocked
Dan in the beginning, but he had come to realize now that it was a
system; without the purchase of government, American big business could
not exist. You saw it written plain in the instinctive reaction of the
whole business world to the oil scandals, the determinaton to damp them
down, to make nothing of them, to indict and prosecute, not the
criminals, but the exposers of the crime.

So they got to talking politics, which was the best thing for Bunny, to
divert his mind and get him back to his job. Dan had been doing what he
could in this presidential campaign, but he was sick with the sense of
impotence. The whole capitalist publicity machine had been set to work
on a new job, to glorify “Cautious Cal” to the American people—this
pitiful little man, a fifth-rate country politician, a would-be
store-keeper, he was the great strong silent statesman and the plain
people’s hero! One thing, and one only, the business men expected of
him, to cut down their income taxes; in everything else he would be a
cipher. The newspaper men were disgusted by their job, but all were
helpless, their papers at home would take only one kind of news. And
here was poor Dan with his labor press service, a score or two of
obscure papers, perhaps a hundred thousand circulation in all, and most
of the time not enough money for the office rent.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” said Bunny. “Before I left
France, Dad gave me a million dollars in Ross Consolidated stock. I
don’t know what it’ll be worth since the fire, but Verne says there’s
full insurance. I’m not going to touch the principal till I have time to
think things over, but I’ll put a thousand dollars a month of the income
into your work, if that will help.”

“Help? My God, Bunny, that’s more money than we’ve ever thought of! I’ve
been trying to raise an extra hundred a month, so as to mail free copies
where they would count.”

Said Bunny, “I’ll turn the money over to you with only one
provision—that you’re to have two hundred a month salary. There’s no
reason why you should run yourself into debt financing the radical
movement.”

Dan laughed. “No reason, except that there wouldn’t be any radical
movement if some didn’t do that. You’re the first really fat angel that
has appeared in my sky.”

“Well, wait,” said Bunny, “till I find out just how fat I’m going to be.
I’ve an idea my friend Vernon Roscoe will do what he can to keep me
lean. He knows that whatever I get will go to making trouble for him.”

“My gosh!” said Dan. “Have you seen the things we’ve been sending out
about Roscoe’s foreign concessions, and what the state department is
doing to make him rich? That story would beat the Sunnyside lease, if we
could get the Senate to investigate it!”

                                   II

Chicago, and more messages for Bunny. He had cabled Dad’s secretary to
ascertain if there was any will among Dad’s papers. The secretary
replied that nothing had been found, and neither the widow nor the
daughter knew of such document. They were proceeding to Paris after the
funeral, and the secretary would cable if anything was found there.

So then to Angel City, and more cablegrams; the secretary advised that
no will was among Mr. Ross’s papers in Paris, and Bertie cabled, “I
believe that infamous woman has destroyed will. Have you anything in
Dad’s writing or hers.” From which Bunny made note that death-bed
repentances do not last very long—at least not when it’s another
person’s death-bed! Bunny had nothing from Dad, except the order for the
Ross stock, and that wouldn’t bring much satisfaction to Bertie. He
cabled to Alyse, at her Paris hotel, reminding her that his father had
stated the terms of their marriage to be that she was to receive one
million dollars from the estate, and no more, and asking her to confirm
that agreement. The reply which he received was from a firm of American
lawyers in Paris, advising him on behalf of their client, Mrs. Alyse
Huntington Forsythe Olivier Ross, that she knew of no such agreement as
he had mentioned in his cablegram, and that she would claim her full
rights in the estate. Bunny smiled grimly as he read. A clash between
Spiritualism and Socialism!

Also a clash between Capitalism and Socialism! Bunny went to call on his
father’s partner, at the office, where both could speak frankly; and
they did. Verne’s first statement was a knockout—Bunny’s father had
been mistaken in thinking that he had any Ross Consolidated Class B
stock, and therefore his order upon Verne was worthless. All those
street certificates had been sold some time ago at Dad’s order; Dad’s
memory had evidently been failing since his illness—or perhaps he had
not been watching his affairs since taking up with Spiritualism. His
business was in a bad way. In the first place, the Ross Consolidated
Operating Company, which had been Dad’s choicest holding, was
practically bankrupt. Verne had that day been notified by the fire
insurance companies involved that they would not pay the claims, because
they had evidence that the fires had been of incendiary origin; they
didn’t quite say it in plain English, but they implied that Verne or his
agents had started the fires, because the company had an oversupply of
oil and was caught with a failing market.

“Good God!” said Bunny. “What’s that, a bluff?”

“No,” said Verne, “that’s a scheme of Mark Eisenberg, who runs the
banking business in this city for the Big Five, to knock one of the
independents out. They’ll tie us up in the courts for Christ knows how
many years. Ross Operating won’t have the cash to develop that burned
over field, and if it has to assess its stockholders for the money, your
father’s estate won’t be able to finance its share without help. The
Lobos River wells are played out, and the Prospect Hill field is filling
with water. Of course your father’s got shares in my foreign
undertakings, but none of them will realize anything for a long time; so
it looks as if you’ll have to sell them out.”

“Who is to handle all this?”

“Here’s a copy of Jim’s will—you can take it home and study it at your
leisure. The executors are you and me and Fred Orpan, and you and Bertie
are to divide the estate. Of course that’s been knocked out by his
marriage; unless he’s made another will, the widow gets one-half, and
you and Bertie a quarter. I promised your father I’d do the executor’s
work, so I suppose it’s up to me. Let me say this right away—that
Paradise field bears your name, and if you want to take it over and run
it, I won’t stand in your way. You can sell some of your other holdings
and buy me out at the market price and run the business for yourself. Do
you want to be an oil man?”

“No,” said Bunny, promptly. “I do not.”

“Well, then, I’ll have to buy out your father’s stock; because the
company is bankrupt, and I won’t carry it unless I have control. You and
me couldn’t work together, Jim Junior—your ideals are too high.” Verne
laughed—but without his usual jollity. “If I hadn’t promised your old
man to do this job, I’d like to dump Ross Operating onto you and let it
go bankrupt on your hands, and see what you’d do. You didn’t agree with
your father about business men controlling the courts. Well, by Jees,
you just be an upright public-spirited young citizen, and let the courts
appoint a receiver for Ross Operating, without any bribery or undue
influence of any sort—not pulling any political wires or making any
threats or improper promises—and see how much you’d have left of the
eight or ten millions, or whatever will be collected from the insurance
companies a few years from now!”

                                  III

From these ugly problems Bunny had a refuge—his little paper. He had
arrived on a Sunday, and Rachel had met him at the train, with a dozen
of the Ypsels, their faces shining. There was a cheer at sight of
him—just as if he had been a moving picture star! There were handshakes
all round—he and Rachel had several extra shakes, they were so glad to
be together. The young people knew that Bunny would be sad over his
father’s death, and possibly also the burning of his oil field; so they
crowded round, and told him all the news at once, and Rachel produced
the proofs of a new issue of “The Young Student,” also last week’s
issue, and several others that he might not have received.

The little office was home—the only home Bunny had, because the mansion
his father had rented had been subleased, and their personal belongings
put in storage before Aunt Emma came to Europe. The office was only one
room, but quite impressive with files and records accumulating; they had
a subscription list of over six thousand now, and were printing eight
thousand this week. But Rachel still had only one assistant—the Ypsels
did the wrapping and addressing, evenings and Saturdays and Sundays.
They hadn’t got mobbed or arrested any more; the Socialists were
supporting LaFollette for president, and that gave them the right to be
let alone for a while.

And then Ruth. Bunny went to call on her, in the same little cottage.
Paul had not got home yet; he had stopped in Chicago for a party
conference, and now was coming by way of the northwest, speaking every
night. He was having good meetings, because of the prominence his
arrests had given him. The story of his expulsion from France had been
in the papers all over the country, and Ruth showed Bunny letters
telling about this and other adventures with police and spies. Ruth had
made Paul promise to write her a post-card every single day; and when
she didn’t get one, then right away she began to imagine him in some
police dungeon, getting the third degree.

Bunny watched her face as she talked. Her words were cheerful—she was a
graduate nurse now, and able to earn good money, and save some if Paul
should be in need. But she was pale, and her face was strained. There
were Communist papers and magazines on the table, and Bunny could see at
a glance what was happening. These papers came for Paul; and Ruth,
sitting here alone many and many an evening, had read them, looking for
news about her brother; so she had absorbed all the horrors about the
torturing and maiming and shooting of political prisoners, and it had
been exactly as if Paul had been in battle.

Ruth hadn’t what you would call a theoretical mind; you never heard her
talk about party tactics and political developments and things like
that. She was instinctive, yet with class-consciousness all the more
intense and passionate for that. She had been through two strikes, and
the things she had seen with her own eyes had been all the lessons in
economics she would ever need. She knew that the workers in big industry
are wage-slaves, fighting for their very lives. And this war was not
like capitalist wars—this one had to be, because the masters made it.
But even thus believing in Paul’s work, Ruth could not help being in a
tension of anxiety.

Also—a strange and perplexing thing—Ruth was angry with Rachel and
“The Young Student”! It appeared that the Socialists had been getting up
meetings all over the country for a so-called Social-revolutionary from
Russia, a lecturer who made the imprisonment of his partisans in Russia
the pretext for attacks on the Soviet Government. The
Social-revolutionaries were the people who had tried to assassinate
Lenin, and who had taken the money of capitalist governments to stir up
civil war inside Russia. How could Bunny’s paper give support to them?

Bunny went back to Rachel and the Ypsels, who declared that this man was
a Socialist, opposing the partisans of violence; the Communists had come
to the meeting and tried to howl him down, and there had been almost a
fight. So here was poor Bunny, facing with dismay the same internal
warfare in the movement, which had so distressed him in Paris and Berlin
and Vienna! He had been so profoundly impressed by Paul and his account
of Russia, but he found that Rachel had not moved an inch from her
position. She would defend the right of the Russians to work out their
own destiny, she would defend their right to be heard in America—even
though they would not defend her right. But she would have nothing to do
with the Third International, and no talk about dictatorships—unless it
was her own dictatorship, that was going to see to it that “The Young
Student” didn’t give the post-office authorities or the district
attorney’s office any pretext for a raid! No, they were going to stand
for a democratic solution of the social problem; and Bunny, as usual,
was going to be bossed by a woman!

It was a curious thing—the nature of women! They seemed so gentle and
impressionable; but it was the pliability of rubber, or of water—that
comes right back the way it was before! From the very first—look at
Eunice Hoyt, so set upon having her own way! And even little Rosie
Taintor—if he had married her, he would have discovered that she had a
fixed religious conviction as to the proper style of window-curtains,
and how often they had to be laundered! And Vee Tracy, who had given up
her happiness—she would not be happy with a Roumanian prince, Bunny
knew. And Ruth and Grandma, in the matter of the war! And Bertie, so
hell-bent upon getting into fashionable society, in spite of having been
born a mule-driver’s daughter! And now here was Rachel Menzies, and
Bunny knew exactly the situation—it would break her heart to give up
the little paper, she had adopted it with the passion of a mother for a
child; but she would walk out of the office in a moment, if ever Bunny
should fall victim to the Communist process of “boring from within.”

                                   IV

Bertie arrived in Angel City a week behind her brother, and afforded him
still more evidence of the unchangeable nature of femininity. Bertie had
come to get her share of the estate, and she went after it with the
single-mindedness of a rabbit-hound. Bertie knew a lawyer—her kind of
lawyer, another rabbit-hound—and she saw him the day of her arrival;
and then Bunny must come to this lawyer’s office, and with the help of
Bertie and a stenographer have the insides of his mind turned out and
recorded: exactly what Dad had said about his arrangements with Mrs.
Alyse Huntington Forsythe Olivier—Dad hadn’t said a word about it to
Bertie, alas, nor to anyone else; he had made a will, of course, and
that infamous woman had destroyed it—Bertie knew that with the
certainty of God.

And then, everything else about Dad’s affairs that Bunny could recall;
where he had kept his money and his papers, what secret hiding-place for
stocks and bonds he may have had, what he had spent, so far as Bunny
could guess, who had been in his confidence. And then the statements
which Vernon Roscoe rendered; and all the files of Dad’s correspondence
with Verne; and the trusted young executives—Bolling and Heimann and
Simmons and the rest; and the bankers and their clerks; and Dad’s
secretary whom Bertie had brought back from Paris with her—a veritable
mountain of detail, and Bunny was required to attend all the sessions,
and be just as much a rabbit-hound as the rest. He told himself that it
was his duty to the movement, which so badly needed the aid of a “fat
angel”!

Right at the outset, there was one bitter pill that Bertie had to
swallow. Her lawyer advised her that there was no chance of depriving
Mrs. Alyse Ross of her half of the estate. Bunny’s testimony was worth,
in law, precisely nothing; and so, unless there should be found another
will, they must accept the inevitable, and combine with the widow to get
as much as possible out of Vernon Roscoe. Mrs. Ross’s Paris lawyers had
named some very high priced lawyers in Angel City as their
representatives, and Bertie had to swallow her rage and admit these men
to their counsels.

There were troubles enough to need the very highest-priced lawyers.
Accountants were put to work on the books of J. Arnold Ross, and on the
statements rendered by his partner, and in a few days there began to
emerge out of the tangle one colossal fact: over and above all the money
that Dad had put into new business ventures with Verne and others, above
all the cash which he had handled through his bank, there was more than
ten million dollars’ worth of stocks and bonds which had disappeared
without a trace. Verne declared that these securities had been taken by
Dad, and used by him for purposes unknown; and Bertie declared that was
idiocy, and that Vernon Roscoe was the biggest thief in all history.
Having access to Dad’s safe deposit box, he had simply helped himself to
the contents. And with rage Bertie turned upon her brother, asserting
that he was to blame—Verne knew that Bunny would use his money to try
to overturn society, and so it was only common sense to keep him down.

Nor could Bunny deny that this sounded reasonable. It was easy to
imagine Verne saying to himself that Bunny was a social danger, and
Bertie a social waster, and the widow a poor half-wit, while he, Verne,
was a capable business man, who would use those securities for the
proper purpose—to bring more oil out of the ground. Learning of Dad’s
death, Verne had quietly transferred the securities from Dad’s strong
box to his own, before the state inheritance tax commissioner came along
to make his records! Verne wouldn’t consider that stealing, but simply
common sense—the same as taking the naval reserves away from a
government which hadn’t intelligence enough to develop them.

Now Bertie wanted to start a law-suit against her father’s partner, and
put him on the stand and make him tell everything about his affairs; and
Bunny, with the help of the lawyers, had to argue with her, and bear the
brunt of her rage. So far, Verne had been careful to put nothing into
writing; and when he took the stand, he would have a story fixed up to
leave them helpless. He could say that Dad had given him the securities,
and how could they disprove it? He could say that Dad had taken the
securities, unknown to his partner, and lost the money on the stock
market—how could they disprove that? Even if they traced the sales of
Dad’s securities through Verne’s brokers, they would gain nothing,
because Verne could say that he had turned over the money to Dad, or
that he had been authorized to invest it, and had lost it—a hundred
different tales he could invent! “Then we’ve simply got to take what
that scoundrel allows us!” cried Bertie; and the lawyers agreed that was
the situation. Being themselves on a percentage basis, their advice was
sincere!

Then an incident that multiplied the bitterness between Bertie and her
brother. Bunny went to the storage warehouse where his belongings had
been put away, and in an atlas that his father had occasionally
consulted he came upon five liberty bonds for ten thousand dollars each.
It was some money Dad had been keeping handy—possibly to bribe the
officers in case he should be caught; anyhow, here it was, and Bunny
would have been free to consider it a part of the million which Dad had
tried to give him in Paris. But he haughtily decided that he would not
join in plundering the estate; he would turn the bonds in, to be counted
as part of the assets.

But he made the mistake of telling Bertie about it—and oh, what a riot!
The imbecile, to make Alyse and her lawyers a present of twenty-five
thousand dollars! Instead of quietly dividing with his sister, and
holding his mouth! That twenty-five thousand became to Bertie a thing of
more importance than all the millions that Verne had got away with;
these bonds were something tangible—or almost tangible—until Bunny
took them out of her reach, and made them a present to those greedy
vultures! And right when both of them needed cash, and were having to go
to one of their father’s bankers to borrow money on the basis of their
claims to the estate.

Bertie raved and stormed, and Bunny, to get it over with, took the bonds
to the bank and turned them in; and after that Bertie never forgave him,
she would mention his imbecility every time they were alone. She was
making herself ill with all this hatred and fuming; she would sit up
half the night poring over figures, and then she couldn’t sleep for
excitement. Like all young society ladies, she set much store by the
freshness of her skin and its freedom from wrinkles; but now she was
throwing away her charms, and making herself pale and haggard. In after
years she would be going to beauty specialists and having the corners of
her mouth lifted, and the skin of her face treated with chemicals and
peeled off—because now she could not control her fury of
disappointment, that she was to get only a paltry one or two million,
instead of the glorious ten or fifteen million she had been confident of
some day possessing.

                                   V

Rachel had published a brief article about Bunny’s return from abroad,
quoting him as saying that he intended to use his inheritance for the
benefit of the movement. And this statement had attracted the attention
of a bright young newspaper woman, who had written a facetious article:

                    MILLIONAIRE RED TO SAVE SOCIETY

And now it appeared that there were a great many people who had ideas as
to how to save society, and they all wanted to see Bunny, and waited for
him in the lobby of his hotel. One had a sure cure for cancer, and
another a perpetual motion machine actually working; one wanted to raise
bullfrogs for their legs, and another to raise skunks for their skins.
There were dozens who wanted to prevent the next war, and several who
wanted to start colonies; there were many with different ways of
bringing about Socialism, and several great poets and philosophers with
manuscripts, and one to whom God had revealed Himself—the bearer of
this message was six-feet-four and broad in proportion, and he towered
over Bunny and whispered in an awe-stricken voice that the Words which
God had spoken had been set down and locked in a safe, and no human eye
ever had beheld them, or ever would. Several others wrote that they were
not able to call because they were unjustly confined to asylums, but if
Bunny would get them out they would deliver their messages to the world
through him.

There was one more “nut,” and his name was J. Arnold Ross—no longer
“junior.” He had a plan, which he had been turning over and over in his
mind; and now he gathered his friends to get their reaction. Old Chaim
Menzies, who had been a long time in the movement, and watched most of
its mistakes; Chaim was working in a clothing shop, as usual, and giving
his spare time to getting up meetings. And Jacob Menzies, the pale
student—Jacob had got a job teaching school for a year, but then he had
been found out, and now was selling insurance. And Harry Seager, who was
growing walnuts, and escaping the boycotts. And Peter Nagle, who was
helping his father run a union plumbing business in an open shop city,
and spending his earnings on a four-page tabloid monthly ridiculing God.
And Gregor Nikolaieff, who had done his Socialist duty working for a
year in a lumber camp, and was now assistant to an X-ray operator in a
hospital. And Dan Irving, who had come from Washington at Bunny’s
expense—these six people sat down with Rachel and Bunny at a dinner
party in a private dining-room, to discuss how to save society with a
million dollars.

Bunny explained with becoming modesty that he was not putting forth his
plan as the best of all possible plans, but merely as the best for him.
He wasn’t going to evade the issue by giving his money away, putting off
the job on other people; he had learned this much from Dad, that money
by itself is nothing, to accomplish anything takes money plus
management. Moreover, Bunny himself wanted something to do; he was tired
of just looking on, and talking. He had thought for a long time about a
big paper, but he had no knowledge of journalism, and would only be a
blunderer. The one thing he did know was young people; he had been to
college, and knew what a college ought to be, and wasn’t.

“What we’re doing—Rachel and Jacob and the rest of us Ypsels—is trying
to work on young minds; but the trouble is, we only get them a few hours
in the week, and the things that count for most in their lives are the
enemy’s—I mean the schools, the job, the movies—everything. So I want
to get some students together for a complete life, twenty-four hours a
day; and see if we can’t build a Socialist discipline, a personal life,
with service to the cause as its goal. Rachel will agree with me in
this—I don’t know if anyone else will—I think one reason the movement
suffers is that we haven’t made the new moral standards that we need.
Our own members, many of them, are personally weak; the women have to
have silk stockings and look like the bourgeoisie, and their idea of
freedom is to adopt the bad habits of the men. If the movement really
meant enough to Socialists, they wouldn’t have to spend money for
tobacco, and booze, and imitation finery.”

“Dat let’s me out!” said old Chaim Menzies, who had already lighted his
ten-cent cigar.

The substance of what Bunny wanted was a labor college on a tract of
land somewhere out in the country; but instead of spending his million
on steel and concrete, he wanted to begin in tents, and have all the
buildings put up by the labor of the students and teachers. Everybody on
the place was to have four hours’ manual labor and four of class work
daily; and they were all to wear khaki, and have no fashionable society.
Bunny had the idea of going out among the colleges and high schools, and
talking to little groups of students, and here and there seducing one
away from football and fraternities to a new dedication. Also the labor
unions would be invited to select promising young men and women. It was
a thing that should grow fast, and take little money, because, with the
exception of building materials, everything could be produced on the
place; they would have a farm, and a school of domestic arts—in short,
teach all the necessary trades, and provide four hours’ honest work of
some sort for all students who wanted to come.

                                   VI

What did they think about it? Chaim Menzies was, as always, the first to
speak. Perhaps his feelings had been hurt by the reference to tobacco;
anyhow, he said it looked to him like it vas anodder colony; you didn’t
change a colony by calling it a college, and a colony vas de vorst trap
you could set for de movement. “You git people to go off and live by
demselves, different from de rest of de vorkers, and vedder dey are
comfortable or vedder dey ain’t—and dey von’t be!—all de time dey are
tinking about someting else but de class struggle out in de vorld.”

“That’s quite true,” said Bunny. “But we shan’t be so far from the
world, and the purpose of our training will be, not the colony, but the
movement outside, and how to help it.”

“De people vot are going to help de movement has got to be in it every
hour. You git dem out vun mont’ and dey are no good any more; dey have
got some sort of graft den, someting easy, dey are no longer vorkers.”

“But this isn’t going to be so easy, Comrade Chaim——”

“Listen to him! He is going to git nice young college ladies and
gentlemen to come and live lives dat vill not seem easy to de vorkers!”

“You might as well admit it, Bunny,” put in Harry Seager. “You’ll have a
nice polite place, with all the boys and girls wearing William Morris
costumes. They’ll work earnestly for a while, but they’ll never be
efficient, and if you really have any buildings put up, or any food
raised, you’ll have regulation hard-fisted workingmen to do it. I know,
because we’re picking walnuts now!”

“I don’t want a polite place,” said Bunny. “I want a gymnasium where
people train for the class struggle; and if we can’t have discipline any
other way, how about this as part of the course—every student is
pledged to go to jail for not less than thirty days.”

“Attaboy!” cried Peter Nagle. “Now you’re talking!”

“Vot is he going to do—break de speed laws?” inquired Chaim,
sarcastically.

“He’s going into Angel City and picket in a strike. Or he’s going to
hold Socialist meetings on street-corners until some cop picks him up.
You don’t need me to tell you how to get arrested in the class struggle,
Comrade Chaim.”

“Yes, but he might run into some judge dat vould not understand de
college regulation, and might give him six mont’s.”

“Well, that’s a chance we’ll have to take; the point is simply, no
senior student is in good social standing until he or she has been in
jail for at least thirty days in a class struggle case.”

“And the teachers?” demanded Gregor Nikolaieff.

“Once every three years, or every five years for the teachers.”

“And the founder! How often for the founder?” Peter clamored in glee;
but Dan Irving said the founder would have to wait until he had got rid
of his money.

They argued back and forth. Could you interest young people in the idea
of self-discipline? Would your danger be in setting the standard too
easy, so that you wouldn’t accomplish much, or in setting it too high,
so that you wouldn’t have any students? Bunny, the young idealist, was
for setting it high; and Harry Seager said that people would volunteer
more quickly to die than they would to get along without tobacco. And he
wanted to know, what were they going to do about the Communists. Harry
was no politician any more, he was a social revolutionist, and only
waiting for the day of action. Regardless of what Socialist party
members might wish, they couldn’t keep Bolshevik students out of a
college, and even if they did, the ideas would bust in.

Bunny answered by setting forth his ideal of the open mind. Why couldn’t
the students do their own educating, and make their own decisions? Let
the teachers give the information they were asked for: and then let the
students thresh it out—every class-room an open forum, and no loyalty
except to research and freedom? They were all willing to admit that
there would be no use starting a sectarian institution, to advocate one
set of doctrines and exclude the others. Also, it took a partisan of
each doctrine to set it forth fairly. So then, here was Bunny pinning
them down: “Chaim, would you be willing for Harry to explain his ideas
to your class? Harry, would you give Chaim a chance to talk?” Bunny
could see his own job—the arbitrator who kept these warring fractions
out of each other’s hair!

Then said Chaim, the skeptic, “I vant to know, vot are you going to do
about sex?”

Bunny admitted that this worried him. “I suppose we’ll have to conform
to bourgeois standards.”

“Oh, my God!” cried Peter Nagle. “Let the bourgeoisie begin!”

Jacob Menzies, the student, had just been reading a book about Ruskin,
the old-time Socialist colony in Tennessee. It was the sex problem which
had broken up that colony, he declared; and his father chimed in, “It
vill break up any colony dat ever exists under capitalism! Dere is only
vun vay you can make vun man live vit vun voman all his life, and dat is
to shut dem up in a house togedder and never let dem out. But if you let
dem get vit odder couples, den right avay vun man finds he vants some
odder voman but de right vun.”

“But then,” said Dan Irving, “according to bourgeois standards, they get
a divorce.”

“Sure ting!” said Chaim. “But not in a Socialist colony! If dey vould do
it in a colony, it vould be a free love nest, and you vould be on de
front page of de papers, and de American Legion come and bust you in de
snoot!”

                                  VII

The upshot of the debate was that no one of them was sure the enterprise
would be a success, but all the young ones were willing to pitch in and
help, if Bunny was determined for a try. And Bunny said that he had
already been looking about for a site, with good land and plenty of
water, somewhere about fifty miles from Angel City; he was going to make
a first payment on land as soon as he could get the cash, and meantime
they would work out the details. He would give his own time for three
years to getting the institution on its feet, and if it proved possible
to develop the right discipline and morale, he would make the
institution self-directing, and furnish whatever money could be used
effectively. They would need teachers, organizers, and business
managers, so there were jobs for all.

And meantime, Bunny must go back to the interviews with lawyers, to try
to save as much as possible of the estate. It meant long wrangles with
Bertie, for their affairs were in a snarl, and getting worse every day.
Verne insisted that Ross Operating must have funds to meet its current
expenses; and did they want him to assess the stock, and force the
estate to raise the money, or did they want him to buy the lease to the
Ross Junior tract, the only asset of Ross Operating, except the claims
against the insurance companies? Verne could do what he pleased, because
the directors of the concern were himself and his trusted young
executives. He was proposing to form another concern, the Paradise
Operating Company—with other trusted young executives as directors, and
sell himself the lease, which had twenty years still to run, and was
worth nobody could tell how many millions of dollars, for the sum of six
hundred thousand!

All right then, said Verne, let the estate do better. Bertie took up the
challenge, and exchanged long cables with her husband in Paris, and went
out among her rich friends—to make the embarrassing discovery that
people who have six hundred thousand dollars in cash do a lot of
investigating before they spend it, and then want to hog the whole thing
for themselves. Bertie spent much worry and hard work—and what made her
most furious was that she couldn’t do it for herself alone, but had to
do it for the whole estate, giving the incompetent Bunny and the
infamous Alyse the benefit of her labors. She got a proposition; and
then the lawyers of the infamous Alyse turned up with another
proposition; and Bertie declared they were bigger thieves than Verne.

And then Ross Consolidated needed money, and Verne was going to assess
that stock—meaning to drive the estate to the wall and plunder it of
everything. Presently he made a proposition—there was the Roumanian oil
venture, into which Dad had put a million and a quarter in cash. Verne
offered to purchase this back for the same amount, and the necessary
papers were prepared—the heirs all had to consent to the sale, and they
did so, and then the court must approve the proposal. This meant delay,
and meanwhile the estate was delinquent in the assessment on the Ross
Consolidated stock, and this stock was to be sold out. The money from
the Roumanian deal was to save it, but to the consternation of the
lawyers, the court refused its consent to this deal. There were
technical points involved—the court questioned the authority of Mrs.
Alyse Ross’ lawyers, and demanded her personal signature, attested in
France. In short, the estate couldn’t get the money in time for the
sale, and it was Vernon Roscoe who bought the Ross Consolidated stock at
a bargain.

Oh, how Bertie raved and swore—the veritable daughter of a mule-driver!
Verne, the filthy swine, had put that trick over on them! Not content
with having stolen Dad’s papers, he had diddled them along like this,
and got one of his crooked judges to hold up the order, so that he might
grab another plum! Bertie threatened to take a gun to Verne’s office and
shoot him down like a dog; but what she really did was to abuse her
brother, who had been such a fool as to make a mortal enemy out of the
most powerful man they knew.

It taught them a lesson. They would get themselves out of Verne’s
clutches, get rid of everything that he controlled. Dad had put nearly a
million into a concern called Anglo-California, which was to develop the
big Mosul concession; and the lawyers of Alyse got an offer for that
stock, but it included time payments, and Bertie wouldn’t agree to that,
and the lawyers wouldn’t agree to Verne’s cash offer, and Bertie was in
terror lest Verne would do some more hocus-pocus—organize an
Anglo-California Operating Company, and lease the Mosul tract to it, and
swipe all the profits!

Amid which wrangling came a letter from Alyse to Bunny. She was sure
that he would not let horrid money troubles come between him and her,
and break their sacred bond, the memories of dear Jim. Alyse had gone to
consult her favorite medium, immediately upon her arrival in Paris, and
at the third seance Jim had “manifested,” and ever since then Alyse had
had his words taken down by a stenographer, and here was a bulky record,
big as the transcript of a legal trial, and tied with blue ribbons of
feminine elegance. Alyse hoped that Bunny had not failed to consult a
medium, and would send her whatever dear Jim had had to say in his old
home.

Bunny went through the record, and it gave him a strange thrill. There
were pages and pages of sentimental rubbish about this happy shore and
this new state of bliss, with angel’s wings and the music of harps, and
tell my dear ones that I am with them, but I am wiser now, and my dear
Bunny must know that I understand and forgive—all stuff that might have
come out of the conscious or subconscious mind of a sentimental elderly
lady or of a rascally medium. But then came something that made the
young man catch his breath: “I want my dear Bunny to know that it is
really his father who speaks to him, and he will remember the man who
got all the land for us, and that he had two gold teeth in the front of
his mouth, and Bunny said that somebody would rob his grave.” How in the
name of all the arts of magic was a medium in Paris to know about a joke
which Bunny had made to his father about Mr. Hardacre, the agent who had
bought them options on ranches in Paradise, California?

By golly, it was something to think about! Could it really be that Dad
was not gone forever, but had just disappeared somewhere, and could be
got hold of again? Bunny would go for a walk to think about it; and
through the streets of Angel City he would hear the voice of Eli Watkins
booming over the radio. Eli’s Tabernacle was packed day and night, with
the tens of thousands who crowded to see the prophet who had been
floated over the sea by the angels, and had brought back a feather to
prove it; all California heard Eli’s voice, proclaiming the ancient
promise: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”




                              CHAPTER XXI
                             THE HONEYMOON


                                   I

Bunny was looking for a site for the labor college. It was a much
pleasanter job than seeking oil lands; you could give some attention to
the view, the woods and the hills, and other things you really cared
about; also it wasn’t such a gamble, because you could really find out
about the water supply, and have a chemical analysis of the soil. It
meant taking long rides in the country; and since Rachel was to be one
of the bosses, it was good sense for her to go along. They had time to
talk—and a lot to talk about, since they were going to take charge of a
bunch of young radicals, boys and girls of all ages—twenty-four hours a
day.

They had looked at a couple of places, and there was another farther
from the city, and Bunny remarked, “If we go to that, we’ll be late
getting home.” Rachel answered, “If it’s too late, we can go to some
hotel, and finish up in the morning,” said Bunny, “That would start the
gossips.” But Rachel was not afraid of gossips, so she declared.

They drove to the new site. It was near a village called Mount Hope, in
a little valley, with the plowed land running up the slopes of half a
dozen hills. It was early November, and the rains had fallen, and the
new grain had sprouted, and there were lovely curving surfaces that
might have been the muscles of great giants lying prone—giants with
skins of the softest bright green velvet. There were orchards, and
artesian water with a pumping plant, and a little ranch-house—the
people had apparently gone to town, so the visitors could wander about
and look at everything, and make a find—a regular airdrome of a barn,
gorgeous with revolutionary red paint! “Oh, Bunny, here’s our meeting
place, all ready made! We have only to put a floor in and we can have a
dance the opening night!” Imagine Rachel thinking about dancing!

They climbed one of the slopes, and here was a park, with dark live oaks
and pale grey sycamores, and a carpet of new grass under foot. The
valley opened out to the west, and the sun had just gone down, in a sky
of flaming gold; the quail were giving their last calls, and deep down
in Bunny’s heart was an ache of loneliness—because quail meant Dad, and
those beautiful hills of Paradise, and happiness he had dreamed in vain.

Now it was Rachel dreaming. “Oh, Bunny, this is too lovely! It’s exactly
what we want! Mount Hope College—we couldn’t have made up a better
name!”

Bunny laughed. “We don’t want to buy a name. We must take samples of the
soil.”

“How many acres did you say?”

“Six hundred and forty, a little over a hundred in cultivation. That’s
more than we’ll be able to take care of for quite a while.”

“And only sixty-eight thousand! That’s a bargain!” Rachel had learned to
think on Bunny’s imperial scale, since she had been racing over the
state in his fast car, inspecting millionaire play-grounds and real
estate promoters’ paradises.

“The price is not bad,” said Bunny, “if we are sure about the soil and
water.”

“You could see the state of the growing things, before it got dark.”

“Maybe so. We’ll come back in the morning, and have a talk with the
ranchman. Perhaps he’s a tenant, and will tell us the truth.” Not for
nothing had Bunny spent his boyhood buying lands with his shrewd old
father!

                                   II

Twilight veiled this valley of new dreams, and across the way the hills
were purple shadows. Bunny said, “There’s just one thing worrying me
about our plan now: I’m afraid there’s going to be a scandal.”

“How do you mean?”

“You and me being together all the time, and going off and being missing
at night.”

“Oh, Bunny, what nonsense!”

“No, really, I’m worried. I told Peter Nagle we’d have to conform to
bourgeois standards, and we’re beginning wrong. My Aunt Emma is a
bourgeois standard, and she would never approve of this, and neither
would your mother. We ought to go and get married.”

“Oh, Bunny!” She was staring at him, but it was too dark to reveal any
possible twinkle in his eyes. “Are you joking?”

“Rachel,” he said, “will you take that much trouble to preserve the good
name of our institution?”

He came a step nearer, and she stammered, “Bunny, you don’t—you don’t
mean that!”

“I don’t see any other way—really.”

“Bunny—no!”

“Why not?”

“Because—you don’t want to marry a Jewess!”

“Good Lord!”

“Don’t misunderstand me, I’m proud of my race. But all your friends
would think it was a mistake.”

“My friends, Rachel? Who the devil are my friends—except in the radical
movement? And where would the radical movement be without the Jews?”

“But, Bunny—your sister!”

“My sister is not my friend. Neither did she ask me to pick out her
husband.”

Rachel stood, twisting her fingers together nervously. “Bunny, do you
really—you aren’t just speaking on an impulse?”

“Well, I suppose it’s an impulse. I seem to have to blurt it out. But
it’s an impulse I’ve had a good many times.”

“And you won’t be sorry?”

He laughed. “It depends upon your answer.”

“Stop joking, please—you frighten me. I can’t afford to let you make a
mistake. It’s so dreadfully serious!”

“But why take it that way?”

“I can’t help it; you don’t know how a woman feels. I don’t want you to
do something out of a generous impulse, and then you’d feel bound, and
you wouldn’t be happy. You oughtn’t to marry a girl out of the
sweat-shops.”

“Good God, Rachel, my father was a mule-driver.”

“Yes, but you’re Anglo-Saxon; away back somewhere your ancestors were
proud of themselves. You ought to marry a tall, fair woman that will
stay beautiful all her life, and look right in a drawing-room. Jewish
women bear two or three children, and then they get fat, and you
wouldn’t like me.”

He burst out laughing. “I have attended the weddings of some of those
tall, fair Anglo-Saxon women; and the priest pronounces, very solemnly,
‘Into this holy estate the two persons now present come now to be
joined. If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be
joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his
peace.’”

“Bunny,” she pleaded, “I’m trying to face the facts!”

“Well, dear, if you must be solemn—it happens that I never loved a fair
woman. The two I picked out to live with were dark, the same as you. It
must be nature’s effort to mix things. I suppose you know about Vee
Tracy?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Vee had the looks all right, and she’ll keep them—she makes a
business of it. But you see, it didn’t do me any good, she threw me over
for a Roumanian prince.”

“Why, Bunny?”

“Because I wouldn’t give up the radical movement.”

“Oh, how I hated that woman!”

There was a note of melodrama in Rachel’s usually serene voice, and
Bunny was curious. “You did hate her?”

“I could have choked her!”

“Because she struck you?”

“No! Because I knew she was trying to take you out of the movement; and
I thought for sure she would. She had everything I didn’t have.”

Bunny was thinking—by golly, it was queer! Vee had known it—and he
hadn’t! Oh, these women! Aloud he said, politely, “No, she didn’t have
quite everything.”

“What is there that I have, Bunny? What do I mean to you?”

“I’ll tell you—I’m so tired of being quarreled with. You can’t have any
idea—my whole life, since I began to think for myself, has been one
wrangle with the people who loved me, or thought they had a right to
direct me. You can’t imagine what a sense of peace I get when I think of
being with you; it’s like settling down into nice soft cushions. I’ve
hesitated about it, because of course I’m not very proud of the Vee
Tracy episode, and I didn’t know if you’d take a man second-hand—or
third-hand it really is, because there was a girl while I was in high
school. I’m telling you my drawbacks, to balance your getting fat!”

“Bunny, I don’t care about the other women—they will always be after
you, of course. I was heartsick about Miss Tracy, because I knew she was
a selfish woman, and I was afraid you’d find it out too late, and be
wrecked. At least, I told myself that was it—I suppose the truth is I
was just green with jealousy.”

“Why, Rachel! You mean that you love me?”

“As if any woman could help loving you! The question is, do you love
me?”

“I do—yes, truly!”

“But Bunny—” there was a little catch in her voice. “You don’t show
it!”

So then he realized that he had been wasting a lot of time! He had to
take only one more step, and put his arms about her, and there she was,
sobbing on his shoulder, as if her heart would break. “Oh, Bunny, Bunny!
Can I believe it?”

So to make her believe it, he began to kiss her. She had been such a
sedate and proper little lady, such a manager in the office and all
that, he had been in awe of her; but now he made the discovery that she
was exactly like the other women who had been in love with him; as soon
as she was sure that she might let herself go, that it was not some
blunder, or some crazy dream—why, there she was, clinging to him in a
sort of daze of happiness, half laughing, half weeping. As he kissed
her, there was mingled in his emotion the memory of how brave she had
been, and how loyal, and how honest; yes, it was worth while making a
girl like that happy! To mingle love with those other emotions, that
appeared to be safe! And she was just as passionate as either Eunice or
Vee had been, not a particle more sedate or reticent! “Oh, Bunny, I love
you so! I love you so!” She whispered it in the darkness, and her
embraces said more than her words.

“Dear Rachel!” he said, with a happy little laugh. “If you feel that
way, let’s go find a preacher or a justice of the peace.”

She answered, “Foolish Bunny! I want to know that you love me, and that
I’m free to love you. What do I care about preachers or justices?”

So then he caught her tighter, and their lips met in a long kiss. If she
tried to voice any more doubts, he would stop the sounds, he would find
a way to convince her! And what better place for their love than this
mysterious grove, the scene of their future labors? Yes, they would have
to buy this ranch now, regardless of soil deficiencies! It would be a
haunted place; in after years, while the young folks had their games and
pageants in this grove, Bunny and Rachel would look on with a secret
thrill. Had it not been in ancient oak-groves that mystic rites had been
celebrated, and pledges made, and holy powers invoked!

                                  III

They found the justice of the peace next morning; and then they finished
the inspection of the ranch, and drove back to Angel City and made
arrangements for a first payment on the purchase price. After which they
had the thrills of telling all their friends about having got
married—strictly in the interest of the college, of course, and to
avoid scandals in the bourgeois press!

Bunny went to see Ruth, and tell her; and strange to say, this
embarrassed him. Bertie and Vee had planted in his mind the idea that
Ruth had been in love with him for the past ten years; and now Rachel
was certain of it; and these women had all proved to be right about each
other every time! Also, there was a fact which he had not mentioned to
Rachel: there had been a while on the way back from Paris, when he was
debating in his mind whether it was Rachel or Ruth he was going to
invite to become his wife! He had a deep affection for Ruth, the same
still quiet feeling that she herself manifested. But the trouble was,
there was Paul. Ruth was bound by steel chains to her brother—and that
meant the Communist movement, and so Bunny had to wrestle over that
problem some more.

Sooner or later you had to decide, and take your place with one party or
the other. Were you going to overthrow capitalism by the ballot or by
“direct action”? This much had become clear to Bunny—the final decision
rested with the capitalist class. They were getting ready for the next
war; and that meant Bolshevism in all the warring nations, at the end of
the war, if not at the beginning. The Socialists would try to prevent
this war; and if they failed, then the job would be done in Paul’s way,
by the Third International. But meantime, Bunny was drawn to the
Socialists by his temperament. He could not call for violence! If there
was to be any, the other side must begin it!

Whatever Ruth may have thought or felt about the news of his marriage,
she gave no sign but of pleasure. She had expected it, she said; Rachel
was a fine girl, who agreed with his ideas, and that was the main thing.
Then she told him that Paul was expected back tomorrow, and was to speak
at a meeting—his supporters had got him into the Labor Temple by much
diplomacy, and he would have a chance to tell the workingmen about what
he had seen in Russia. Bunny and Rachel must come and hear him; and
Bunny said they would.

This was the Sunday before election day, the end of a long political
campaign. The workers had heard no end of appeals for their votes—but
here was something different, more important than any election issues.
However hostile the leaders of labor might be, it was impossible for the
rank and file to resist the contagion of this miracle that was happening
on the other side of the world—a vast empire where the workers ruled,
and were making their own laws and their own culture. Paul was fresh
from these scenes; his words were vivid, he brought the things before
your eyes: the red army, and the red schools, and the red papers, the
white terror, and the resistance to capitalist siege on ten thousand
miles of front.

Oh, the fury of the capitalist press next day! They didn’t report the
meeting, but they published protests about it, and stormed in
editorials. The LaFollette “reds” were bad enough, but this was an
intolerable outrage—an avowed Moscow agent, who had been expelled from
France, permitted to hold a meeting in Angel City and incite union labor
to red riot and insurrection! What was our police department for? Where
were our patriotic societies and our American Legion and our other
forces of law and order?

Bunny called up Ruth next morning; he wanted to see Paul, to talk about
the proposed college. Ruth said that Paul had gone down to the harbor,
to see about addressing meetings of the longshoremen. These men had had
a big strike while Bunny was abroad, and had taken their full course in
capitalist government. Six hundred of them had been swept up off the
street, for the crime of marching and singing, and had been packed into
tanks with all ventilation shut off, to reduce them to silence. A score
of the leaders had been sent to state’s prison for ten or twenty years
for “criminal syndicalism”; so the rest ought to be ready to listen to
the Communist doctrine, that the workers had to master the capitalist
state. There was to be an entertainment that night in the I. W. W. hall
at the harbor; there would be music and refreshments, and Paul thought
it would be a good chance to get acquainted with the leaders. Bunny said
that he and Rachel were going down to Beach City, and they might run
over and bring Paul back with them.

                                   IV

Bunny had yielded to the importunities of his sister: wouldn’t he have
the decency to help out the estate in at least one way—look into those
reports which Vernon Roscoe had rendered concerning the Prospect Hill
field? Verne asserted that more than half the wells were off production,
and Bertie suspected one more trick to rob them. Bertie wouldn’t know an
oil well off production from a hen-coop; but Bunny would know, and
couldn’t he go down there, and snoop around a bit, and find out what
other oil men thought about the field and its prospects? Bunny took
Rachel with him—she went everywhere with her new husband, of course.
They had got one of the oldest of the Ypsels to run the magazine office,
and Rachel was just manager and editor, very high and mighty. Bunny was
a one-arm driver again, and the automobile was lopsided, and Rachel was
nervous when he drove fast, because the gods are jealous of such rapture
as hers.

Rachel had never seen an oil field at close range. So Bunny took her to
the “discovery well,” and told how Mr. Culver had had his ear-drums
destroyed, trying to stop the flow with his head. He showed her the
first well that Dad had drilled, and on which Bunny had helped to keep
the mud flowing. That had been the beginning of Dad’s big wealth; he and
perhaps a score of others had got rich, and to balance it, there were in
Beach City many thousands of people who had their homes plastered with
mortgages, representing losses from the buying of “units.” That was the
way most of the money had been made in Prospect Hill—selling paper
instead of oil. It was a fact, as Paul had cited, that more money had
been put into the ground than had been taken out of it. Here had been a
treasure of oil that, wisely drilled, would have lasted thirty years:
but now the whole field was “on the pump,” and hundreds of wells
producing so little that it no longer paid to pump them. One sixth of
the oil had been saved, and five-sixths had been wasted!

That was your blessed “competition,” which they taught you to love and
honor in the economics classes! Another aspect of it was those frightful
statistics, that of all the thousands of men who had worked here,
seventy-three out of every hundred had been killed or seriously injured
during the few years of the field’s life! It was literally true that
capitalist industry was a world war going on all the time, unheeded by
the newspapers.

Bunny did his checking up of the Ross wells; he couldn’t do any
“snooping,” because some of the old hands knew him, and came up to greet
him. He talked with a number of men, and found their reports about the
same as Verne’s. Then, towards evening, as he and Rachel were getting
ready to leave, they came to a bungalow, dingy and forlorn, black with
oil stains and grey with dust, with a storage-tank in the back yard, and
a derrick within ten feet on the next lot, and on the other side a shed
which had housed the engine of another derrick. Bunny stopped, and read
the number on the front of the bungalow, 5746 Los Robles Blvd. “Here’s
where Mrs. Groarty lives! Paul’s aunt—it was in that house we had the
meeting about the lease, and I first heard Paul’s voice through the
window there!”

He told the story of that night, describing the characters and how they
had behaved. Paul said it was a little oil fight, and the world war had
been a big oil fight, and they were exactly the same. While they were
talking, the door opened, and there emerged a stout, red-faced woman in
a dirty wrapper, and Bunny exclaimed, “There’s Mrs. Groarty!” Out he
hopped—“Hello, Mrs. Groarty!” How many years it had been since she had
seen him; he had to tell her who he was, that little boy grown up, and
with a wife—well, well, would you believe it, how time does fly! And so
Mr. Ross was dead—Mrs. Groarty’s husband had read the sad news out of
the paper. She knew that he had got to be very rich, so she was thrilled
by this visit, and invited them in, but all in a flutter because her
house wasn’t in order.

They went in, because Bunny wanted Rachel to see that staircase, and to
have a laugh on her afterwards, because she wouldn’t notice anything,
but would think the staircase led to a second story—in a one-story
bungalow! There was the room—not a thing changed, except that it seemed
to have shrunk in size, and the shine was all gone. There was the window
where Bunny had stood while he listened to Paul’s whispered voice. And,
by golly, there was “The Ladies’ Guide, a Practical Handbook of
Gentility,” still on the centre-table, faded and fly-specked gold and
blue! Along side was a stack of what appeared to be legal papers, a pile
at least eight inches high, and fastened with ribbons and a seal. Mrs.
Groarty caught his glance at it; or perhaps it was just that she was
longing for someone to tell her troubles to. “That’s the papers about
our lot,” she said. “I just took them away from the lawyer, he takes our
money and he don’t do nothing.”

So then she was started, and Rachel continued her education in oil
history. The Groarty’s had entered a community agreement, and then
withdrawn from it and entered a smaller one: then they had leased to
Sliper and Wilkins, and been sold by those “lease-hounds” to a
syndicate; and this syndicate had been plundered and thrown into
bankruptcy; after which the lease had been bought by a man whom Mrs.
Groarty described as the worst skunk of them all, and he had gone and
got a lot of claims and liens against the property, and actually, people
were trying to take some money away from the Groartys now, though they
had never got one cent out of the well—and look at the way they had had
to live all these years!

Here was the record of these transactions, community agreements and
leases and quit-claim deeds and notices of release and notices of
cancellation of lease, and mortgages, and sales of “percents,” and
mechanic’s liens and tax receipts and notices of expiration of
agreement—not less than four hundred pages of typewritten material,
something like a million and a half of words, mostly legal jargon—“the
undersigned hereby agrees” and “in consideration of the premises herein
set forth,” and “in view of the failure of the party of the first part
to carry out the said operations by the aforesaid date,” and so on—it
made you dizzy just to turn the pages. And all this to settle the
ownership of what was expected to be ten thousand barrels of oil, and
had turned out to be less than one thousand! Here you saw where the
money had gone—pale typists shut up in offices all day transcribing
copies of this verbiage, and pale clerks checking and rechecking them,
or looking them up, or recording them—there were men up in Angel City
who had become mighty magnates by employing thousands of men and women
slaves, to transcribe and check and recheck and look up and record
literally millions of documents like these!

                                   V

Bunny and Rachel had dinner, and then strolled on the waterfront; it was
one of those warm nights that come now and then in Southern California;
there was a moon on the sea, and a long pier with gleaming lights, and
the sound of an orchestra drawing the lovers. At the entrance to the
pier was a big bare hall, owned by the city, where very proper dancing
was chaperoned by a religious city government. Bunny and his bride
danced—oh, surely it was all right to dance a little bit, in this well
chaperoned place on what ought to have been their honeymoon!

But in between the dances, while the orchestra was still, something
shook the hall, a dull, sombre blow, like distant thunder, making the
windows rattle, and jarring your feet. “What’s that?” exclaimed Rachel.
“An earthquake?”

“The guns,” answered Bunny.

“Guns?” And he had to explain, the fleet was practicing. There were a
score or so of battleships stationed at the harbor, facing some unnamed
enemy; and now they were at night target-practice. You heard them now
and then, day and night, if you lived near the coast.

So Rachel couldn’t dance any more then. Each time she heard that dull
boom, she saw the bodies of young men blown into fragments. The
capitalists were getting ready for their next war; what business had the
Socialists to be dancing?

They drove along the boulevard which follows the harbor-front. It is
fifteen or twenty miles, and there are towns and docks and bridges and
railroad tracks and factories, and inland the “subdivisions” for the
homes of working people. It is one of the world’s great ports in the
swift making; and those who have charge of the job, the masters of
credit, see rearing before them that monstrous spectre known as “direct
action” or “criminal syndicalism.” The “Industrial Workers of the World”
had a headquarters, where they met to discuss this program; and the
masters made incessant war upon them.

The address which Ruth had given to Bunny was an obscure street in a
working-class quarter. There was a fair-sized hall, with lights in the
windows, and the sound of a piano and a child’s voice singing. Among the
cars parked along the curb Bunny found a vacant space, and backed into
it, and was just about to step from his car, when Rachel caught him by
the arm. “Wait!” There came rushing down the street a squadron of
motor-cars, two abreast and blocking the way entirely; and from them
leaped a crowd of some fifty men, carrying weapons of various sorts,
clubs, hatchets, pieces of iron pipe. They made a rush for the entrance,
and a moment later the music ceased, and there came the sound of
shrieks, and the crash of glass and battering of heavy blows.

“They’re raiding them!” cried Bunny, and would have run to the scene;
but Rachel’s arms were flung about him, pinning him to his seat. “No!
No! Sit still! What can you do?”

“My God! We must do something!”

“You’re not armed, and you can’t stop a mob! You can only get killed!
Keep still!”

The sounds from within had risen to a bedlam; the hall must have been
crowded, and everyone inside yelling at the top of his lungs. And that
horrible drumming of blows—you couldn’t tell whether they were falling
on furniture or on human bodies. Bunny was almost beside himself,
struggling to get loose, and Rachel fighting like a mad thing—he had
never dreamed that she had such strength. “No, Bunny! No! For God’s
sake! For my sake! Oh, please, please!” She knew in those dreadful
minutes the terror that was to haunt the rest of her life—that some day
in this hideous class war there would come the moment when it was her
husband’s duty to get himself killed. But not yet, not yet! Not on their
honeymoon!

It was like the passing of a tornado, that is gone before you have time
to realize it. The attacking party emerged from the hall, as quickly as
they had entered. They were dragging half a dozen prisoners, and threw
these into the cars, of which the engines were still going; then down
the street they went roaring, and silence fell.

It was permissible for Bunny to get out now, and run into the hall, with
Rachel at his heels. He had one thought, the same as on that night when
he had run over Mrs. Groarty’s place, crying, “Paul! Paul!” They were
certain to have taken Paul away on that lynching party; and how could
Bunny save him?

The first thing he saw, in the doorway, was a man with a great gash
across his forehead, and the blood streaming all over him; he was
staggering about, because he couldn’t see, and crying, “The
sons-o’-bitches! The sons-o’-bitches!” Near him was another man whose
hand had been slashed across, and a woman was tearing her skirt to make
a bandage. A little girl lay on the floor, screaming in agony, and some
one was pulling off her stockings, and the raw flesh was coming with
them. “They threw her into the coffee!” said a voice in Bunny’s ear.
“Jesus Christ, they threw the kids into the boiling coffee!”

Everywhere confusion, women in hysterics, or sunk upon the floor
sobbing. There was not a stick of furniture in the place that had not
been wrecked; the chairs had been split with hatchets; the piano had
been gutted, its entrails lay tangled on the floor. Tables were overset,
and dishes and crockery trampled, and the metal urn or container in
which the coffee had been boiling had been overset, and its steaming
contents running here and there. But first they had hurled three
children into it, one after another, as their frantic parents dragged
them out. The flesh had been cooked off their legs, and they would be
crippled for life: one was a ten years old girl known as “the wobbly
song-bird;” she had a sweet treble, and sang sentimental ballads and
rebel songs, and the mob leader had jerked her from the platform,
saying, “We’ll shut your damned mouth!”

What was the meaning of this raid? According to the newspapers, it was
the patriotic indignation of sailors from the fleet. There had been an
explosion on one of the battleships, and several men had been killed,
and the newspapers had printed a story that one of the wobblies had been
heard to laugh with satisfaction. It is an ancient device of the master
press. In old Russia the “Black Hundreds” were incited by tales of
“ritual murders” committed by the Jews, Christian babies killed for
sacrifice. In Britain now the government was forging letters attributed
to the Soviet leaders, and using them to carry an election. In America
the deportations delirium had been sanctified by a great collection of
forged documents, officially endorsed.

It was a spontaneous mob, said these law and order newspapers. But this
fact was noted: on all other occasions there had been policemen at these
wobbly meetings, to take note of criminal utterances; but this night
there had been no policeman on hand. Nor were there any afterwards;
Bunny and the other “reds” might besiege the police department and the
city government, and offer the names of the principal mob leaders, but
there would be no step taken to punish anyone for this murderous raid!

                                   VI

Bunny didn’t expect to find Paul, but there he lay, flat on his back,
with several people bending over him. His left eye was a mass of blood,
and seemed as if destroyed by a blow; he lay, limp and motionless, and
when Bunny called his name he did not answer. But he was alive, gasping
with a kind of snoring sound.

A doctor! A doctor! There were several in the neighborhood, and people
rushed away to look for them. From the days of Bunny’s residence in
Beach City he knew the name of a surgeon, and hurried to a phone, and
was so fortunate as to find the surgeon at home. Bunny told what had
happened, and the other said he would come at once; in the case of
injury to skull or other bones, X-ray pictures would be needed, so he
gave the name of doctors who did such work, and Bunny did more
telephoning, and arranged for one of these to be at his laboratory and
await developments. Also he ordered an ambulance from a hospital.

Then back to the hall, where Paul lay in the same condition. Rachel had
laid a clean handkerchief over the battered eye, and put a pillow under
his head. The other victims had been carried away, and the door of the
wrecked hall shut against the curious crowd.

The surgeon came, and said it was concussion of the brain. There was
evidence of a heavy blow at the base of the skull—either Paul had been
struck in the eye, and had hit the back of his head in falling, or else
he had been knocked down by a blow from behind, and later struck or
trampled over the eye. The first thing was a picture; so the unconscious
body was taken to the X-ray laboratory, and pictures were made, and the
surgeon showed Bunny and Rachel the line of a fracture at the base of
the skull, running to the front above the oral cavity. There was nothing
to be done, it was impossible to operate in such a place. It was a
question of how the brain had been affected, and as to that only time
could tell. They must keep the patient quiet.

There was a private hospital in the town; so before long Paul was lying
on a bed, with a bandage over his eye, and his head in a sling to avoid
pressure on the injured place; and Bunny and Rachel were sitting by the
bedside, gazing mournfully. Womanlike, Rachel was reading his thoughts.
“Dear heart, are you going to blame yourself all your life because you
didn’t rush in and get your skull broken, too?” No, he couldn’t have
prevented the harm, he knew it; but oh, why did it have to be Paul’s
brain—the best brain that Bunny had ever known! He sat with a
horrified, brooding stare.

But there was another ordeal to be faced. Rachel reminded him, “We’ve
got to tell Ruth.” She offered to attend to it, to spare his feelings.
She got her brother Jacob on the phone—he had just got home from a
committee meeting, and now he must call a taxi, and drive to Ruth’s home
and bring her to the harbor.

Two hours later Ruth came running up the stairs, her face like a mask of
fright. “How is he? How is he?” When she entered the room, and saw Paul,
she stopped. “Oh, what is it?” And when they told her—“Is he going to
live?” She drew nearer, never taking her eyes off his face. Her hands
would stretch out to him, and then draw back, because she might not
touch him; they would go out again, as if they had a will of their own.
Suddenly her knees gave way, and she sank to the floor, and covered her
face with her hands, sobbing, sobbing.

They tried to comfort her, but she hardly knew they were there. She was
alone, in the dreadful corridors of grief. Bunny, watching her, felt hot
tears stealing down his cheeks. It wasn’t natural for a girl to feel
that way about a brother, Vee had said; but Bunny knew how it was—Ruth
was back in those childhood days on the lonely hills of Paradise, when
Paul had been her only friend, a refuge from a family of fanatics, with
a father who beat her to make her think like him. Back there she had
known that Paul was a great man, and had followed him all these years;
she had watched his mind unfolding, and learned everything she knew from
it—and now, to see it destroyed by a brute with a piece of iron pipe!

                                  VII

It was long after midnight; and Rachel sought to draw Bunny away. There
was nothing more they could do, either for Paul or his sister. There was
a small hotel a few doors away, they would get a room there, and rest,
and the hospital nurse would notify them if there were any change. And
Bunny yielded: he must not be unfair to Rachel. He knew there was
something unnatural about his own devotion to Paul, the subjection of
his mind to everything that Paul thought, the exactness of his memory of
everything Paul had said. Yes, Bertie had told him that, and then
Vee—and now Rachel!

He could not sleep. So, lying a-bed in the hotel room, he explained it
to her; how Paul had come when Bunny was groping for something different
and better in his life. Paul had given him an ideal—something stern and
hard—self-sufficiency, independence of judgment, determination to face
life and understand it, and not be drawn away in pursuit of money or
pleasure. Bunny had not been able to follow that ideal—no, he had lived
in luxury, and gone chasing after women; but he had had the vision, the
longing to be like Paul.

And then, at each new crisis in his life, Paul would come along, a sort
of standard by which Bunny could measure himself and what he was doing,
and realize how little success he was having. Paul had taught him about
the workers, and how they felt; Paul had been the incarnation of the
new, awakening working-class. Paul’s mind had been a searchlight,
illumining the world-situation, showing Bunny what he needed to know.
Now the light was out, and Bunny would have to see by his own feeble
lantern!

“Dear, he may get well,” Rachel whispered; but Bunny moaned, no, no, he
was going to die. Like a jagged flash of lightning before his mind was
that X-ray picture of the crack at the base of Paul’s skull. The light
was out, at least from this world; a brute with a piece of iron pipe had
extinguished it.

Rachel put her arms about him and sought to beguile him with caresses.
And she succeeded, of course; he could not refuse her love. So presently
he slept a little. But Rachel did not sleep, she lay holding him in her
arms, because he would jump and start in his sleep, his limbs would
quiver—just the way she felt when the great guns went off!

What was Bunny doing? Fighting those brutes with their clubs and
hatchets and iron pipe? Or back in the old days, when he had hovered
over Paul and Ruth, watching events that wrung his soul? Watching Dad
deprive the family of their land; watching the oil operators crush the
first strike; watching the government tear Paul away and make him into a
strike-breaker for Wall Street bankers; watching Vernon Roscoe throw
Paul into prison; watching capitalism with its world-wide system of
terror drive Paul here and there, harry him, malign him, threaten
him—until at last it hired the brute with the iron pipe!

                                  VIII

Morning came, and they went back to the hospital room. Nothing was
changed. Paul still lay, breathing hoarsely; and Ruth sat in a chair by
the bedside, her eyes fixed upon him, her hands clasped tightly. She was
whiter, that was all, and her lips were quivering, never still. The
hospital nurse begged her to lie down and rest, but she shook her head.
No, she was used to watching the sick; she was a nurse too. The other
answered that all nurses slept when they could; but no, please—Ruth
wanted to stay right here.

The surgeon came again. There was nothing he could do, time would have
to tell. Bunny took him aside and asked what were the chances.
Impossible to say. If Paul were going to get well, he would return to
consciousness. If he were going to die, there might be a meningitis, or
perhaps a blood clot on the brain.

Rachel said the family ought to be notified. So Bunny sent a telegram to
Abel Watkins at Paradise, telling him to engage an auto and bring the
family at Bunny’s expense. He debated whether it was his duty to
telegraph Eli, and decided not to. Old Mr. Watkins might do it, but
Bunny would be guided by what Paul would have wished. Then he got the
morning papers, and read their exultant account of the night’s events:
the reds had been taught a much-needed lesson, and law and order were
safe at the harbor.

It was the morning of election day: the culmination of a campaign that
had been like a long nightmare to Bunny. Senator LaFollette had been
running, with the backing of the Socialists, and the great issue had
been the oil steals; the indicted exposers of the crime against the
criminals in power. At first the exposers had really made some headway,
the people seemed to care. But the enemy was only waiting for the time
to strike. In the last three weeks of the campaign he turned loose his
reserves, and it was like a vast cloud of hornets, the sky black with a
swarm of stinging, turning, poisoning lies!

It was the money of Vernon Roscoe and the oil men, of course: plus the
money of the bankers and the power interests and the great protected
manufacturers, all those who had something to gain by the purchase of
government, or something to lose by failure to purchase. Another fifty
million dollar campaign; and in every village and hamlet, in every
precinct of every city and town, there was a committee for the
distribution of terror. The great central factories where it was
manufactured were in Washington and New York, and the product was
shipped out wholesale, all over the land, and circulated by every
agency—newspapers and leaflets, mass-meetings, parades, bands, red fire
and torchlights, the radio and the moving picture screen. If LaFollette,
the red destroyer, were elected, business would be smashed, the workers
would be jobless; therefore vote for that strong silent statesman, that
great, wise, noble-minded friend of the plain people known as “Cautious
Cal.” And now, while Paul Watkins lay gasping out his life, there was a
snow-storm of ballots falling over the land, nearly a thousand every
second. The will of the plain people was being made known.

                                   IX

It was a day like midsummer, and the windows of the hospital room were
open. Next door, some twenty feet away, was an apartment house, and in
the room directly across this space, by the open window, was one of the
two hundred thousand radio sets which are in use in the state of
California. The occupant of the apartment was one of those two hundred
thousand housewives who are accustomed to perform their domestic duties
to the tune of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” or else of “Flamin’ Mamie,
Sure-fire Vamp.” There are a dozen broadcasting stations within range,
and some are always going, and you can take your choice. This housewife
had catholic tastes, and the watchers at Paul’s bedside were beguiled by
snatches from the Aloha Hawaiian Quartette, and the Organ Recital of the
First Methodist Church, and the Piggly Wiggly Girls’ Orchestra, and
Radio QXJ reporting that a large vote was being cast in the East, and
Radio VZW offering second-hand automobiles for sale, and an unidentified
orator exhorting all citizens to hurry to the polls, and Miss Elvira
Smithers, coloratura soprano, singing, “Ah loves you mah honey, yes Ah
doo-oo-oo-oo.”

There came telephone calls from the Workers’ party, and from the
wobblies at the harbor. And newspaper reporters, who politely listened
to Bunny’s indignation at the raid, and made a few notes, but published
nothing, of course. The newspapers of Angel City have a policy which any
child can understand—they never print news which injures or offends any
business interest.

A telephone call from Paradise; Meelie Watkins, now Mrs. Andy Bugner,
calling. Her father and mother, with Sadie, had gone to attend a revival
meeting. Meelie didn’t know just where it was, but would try to locate
them. How was Paul? And when Bunny told her, she asked had they summoned
Eli. Whether they believed in him or not, it was a fact that Eli was a
great healer; he had cured all sorts of people, and surely should have a
chance with his own brother! So Bunny sent a telegram to Eli at the
Tabernacle, telling him of Paul’s condition; and two hours later a large
and expensive limousine stopped at the hospital door.

Eli Watkins, Prophet of the Third Revelation, wore a cream white flannel
suit, which made his tall figure conspicuous. He had adopted a
pontifical air in these days of glory and power. He did not shake hands
with you, but fixed you with a pair of large, prominent, bright blue
eyes, and said, “The blessings of the Lord upon you.” And when he was in
the presence of his brother, he stood gazing, but asking no questions;
he was not interested in X-ray pictures of skulls, the Lord knew all
that was needed. Finally he said, “I wish to be alone with my brother.”
There was no evident reason for denying that request, so Bunny and
Rachel and Ruth went out.

It didn’t make any difference to Ruth where she was—there was nothing
to do but stare in front of her, with that terrible quivering of her
lips, that wrung your heartstrings. A picture of dreadful grief! The
doctor of the hospital begged her to drink a little milk, and the nurse
brought a glass, and Ruth tasted, but she could not swallow it. There
came a rush of tears to her eyes. You couldn’t talk to her, or do
anything with her at all.

Eli went away without saying a word; the ways of the Lord being not
always understandable by common mortals. There was no apparent change in
Paul’s condition. Ruth went back to her vigil; but now the doctor gave
an order, she must take a sleeping powder and lie down; he would not
permit her to kill herself in his establishment. Being trained to take
the orders of doctors, Ruth was led away, and Bunny and Rachel kept the
vigil.

                                   X

Night fell. The householder who occupied the apartment opposite their
window came home and had his supper, and now, comfortable in his
shirtsleeves, with pipe in mouth, he sat in a deep wicker chair in front
of his radio set, and proceeded to explore the circumambient ether. So
the watchers by Paul’s bedside got the news of the election without
leaving their posts. Owing to difference in time, California gets
returns from the east before it gets its own; but it was all the same
this Tuesday evening, east and west, the fifty million dollar campaign
fund had done its work, and wherever you listened, you learned that more
voters had cast their ballots for the strong silent statesman than for
all his opponents put together. And since that was the thing ardently
desired by the broadcasting stations, and the great newspapers and
churches and temples and tabernacles which own them, there was a tone of
jocularity in the announcements, and after you had learned that
Massachusetts was going three to one for her favorite son, you would
hear the Six Jolly Jazz Boys proclaiming, “Got a hot little gal in a
railroad town!”—or perhaps the Chicago Comet, chuckling, “My cutie’s
due at two-to-two!” It made a cheerful atmosphere to die in; but
unfortunately Paul wasn’t hearing it.

The Tabernacle of the Third Revelation on the air. Eli’s followers were
not concerned with elections, being soon to wing their way to celestial
regions which are conducted upon the monarchical principle. They opened
with an organ recital, and the householder didn’t care for that, but
preferred Radio VKZ, program sponsored by the Snow Baby Soap Company,
introducing the first appearance in Angel City of the Pretty Pet Trio,
singing their latest popular melody hit, “My Little Jazz-baby, Razz-baby
Coon.” But later the householder tried the Tabernacle again, and there
was the bellowing voice of Eli, that all California householders love.
So Bunny and Rachel learned what had been the meaning of Eli’s visit.

“Brethren, the Lord has vouchsafed a wonderful proof of His mercy to me.
Glorious tidings He gives to the world tonight! I have an older brother,
the helpmate of my boyhood, Paul by name, and he was brought up in the
fear of the Lord; the voice of the Most Highest was familiar to him on
the lonely hills where we tended our father’s flocks together. Shepherd
boys we were, sitting under the stars, awaiting a sign of the Lord’s
mercy, and praying for the lost ones of this world to be saved from the
devices of the great Tempter.

“Brethren, this brother grew up, and he strayed from the faith of his
childhood, he fell into evil company, and became a scoffer at the Lord’s
Word. The love of our Savior Jesus Christ was no longer in his heart,
but hatred and strife and jealousy of those to whom the Lord has
revealed His Truth. And, brethren, the ruin which this misguided brother
sought to bring upon others has fallen upon his own head, and tonight he
lies dying, struck down by the evil passions which he himself incited.
It was my painful task to go to his bedside, and see him lying in a
stupor.

“But oh my friends, who can foresee the Wisdom of the Lord? Who can
understand His ways? It was His Will to answer my prayers, and permit my
lost brother to open his eyes, and hear the voice of the Lord speaking
by my lips, and to answer, and confess his transgressions, and repent,
and be healed, and washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Glory hallelujah!
Glory! Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall become as white as snow,
blessed be the name of the Lord! Brethren, rejoice with me; for I have
found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you that likewise joy shall be
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine
just persons, which need no repentance. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

All through this discourse you were aware of the murmur and stir of a
great crowd. They would break into ejaculations at every pause in the
prophet’s words; and now at the end they drowned him out with a chorus
of rejoicing, “Glory! Glory, hallelujah!” And in the doorway of the
hospital room stood Ruth Watkins, having awakened from her sleep. She
was staring at Bunny with horrified eyes, and whispering, “Oh, what a
lie!”

Yes, Bunny suspected that it was a lie; but he could not prove it; and
even if he could, what then? The radio is a one-sided institution; you
can listen, but you cannot answer back. In that lies its enormous
usefulness to the capitalist system. The householder sits at home and
takes what is handed to him, like an infant being fed through a tube. It
is a basis upon which to build the greatest slave empire in history.

                                   XI

The householder shifted his dial. The returns from California were
beginning to come in. “Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Angel
City, California.” The announcer had a soft, caressing voice, worth a
thousand dollars a month to him; it had a little chuckle which caused
the children to adore him—he went by the name of “Uncle Peter,” and
told them bed-time stories. Now he was applying his humor to the
returns. “Rosario, California. Hello! The home town of Bob Buckman,
secretary to the Chamber of Commerce! Let’s see what Bob’s been doing!
Rosario, 37 precincts out of 52 give LaFollette 117, Davis 86, Coolidge,
549. Well, well! If Bob Buckman is listening in on VXZ, congratulations
from Uncle Peter—you’re a great little booster, Bob!”

And then, startling the watchers by the bedside—“Paradise, California.
Now what do you think of that? The location of the Ross Junior oil
field, owned by Bunny Ross, our parlor Bolshevik! Bunny’s the boy that
bails out the political prisoners, as he calls them; he publishes a
little paper to dye our college boys and girls pink. Let’s see what
Little Bunny’s town has to say to him. Paradise, California, 14
precincts out of 29 give LaFollette 217, Davis 98, Coolidge 693. Well,
well, Bunny—you’ve got some more boring from within to do!”

The householder shifted again. “Radio QXJ, the Angel City Evening
Roarer, banjo solo by Bella Blue, the Witch of Wicheta.”
Plunkety-plunkety—plunkety-plunkety—plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk!

Paul’s lips were beginning to move. There was a trace of sound, and Ruth
bent close to him. “He’s coming back to life! Oh, call the doctor!” The
hospital doctor came, and listened, and felt Paul’s pulse; but he shook
his head. It was merely a question of what areas of the brain were
affected; the speech areas might be uninjured. The sounds were
incoherent, and the doctor said Paul didn’t know what he was saying. He
might stay that way for days, even for a week or two.

But Ruth continued to listen, and try to catch a word. Paul might be
there, somehow, trying to speak to her, to convey some request. She
whispered, in an agony of longing, “Paul, Paul, are you trying to talk
to me?” The sounds grew louder, and Rachel said, “It’s a foreign
language.” Bunny said, “It must be Russian”—the only foreign language
Paul knew. It was strange, like a corpse talking, or a wax doll; the
sounds seemed to come from deep in his throat. “Da zdrávstvooyet
Revolútziya!” over and over; and Bunny said, “That must mean
revolution.” And then, “Vsya vlast Soviétam!”—that must have something
to do with the Soviets!

For an hour that went on; until suddenly Ruth exclaimed, “Bunny, we
ought to find out what he’s saying! Oh, surely we ought to—just think,
if he’s asking for help!”

Rachel tried to argue with her; it was just a delirium. But Ruth became
more excited—she didn’t want Rachel to interfere. Rachel had saved her
man, and what did she know about suffering? “I want to know what Paul’s
saying! Can’t we find somebody that knows Russian?” So Bunny got Gregor
Nikolaieff on the phone, and asked him to jump on the car and come down
here.

When Bunny returned to the room, Paul was talking louder than ever, but
still moving only his lips. The Angel Jazz Choir were shouting,
“Honey-baby, honey-baby, kiss me in the neck!” And Paul was saying again
and again, “Nie troodyáshchiysia da nie yest!”

“Oh, Bunny,” pleaded Ruth, “We ought to write down what he says! He
might stop—and never speak again!” Bunny understood—Ruth had been
brought up to believe in revelations, in words of awful import spoken on
special occasions, in strange languages or other unusual ways. The
doctors might call it delirium, but how could they be sure? Things that
were hidden from the wise were revealed to babes and sucklings. So Bunny
got out his notebook and fountain-pen, and wrote down what Paul’s words
sounded like, as near as he could guess. “Hliéba, mira, svobódy!” And
when Gregor came in, an hour or so later, he was able to say this meant,
“Bread, peace, freedom,” the slogan of the Bolsheviks when they took
possession of Russia: and “Dayesh positziyu!”—that was a war-cry of the
red army, commanding the enemy to give up the position. The other things
Paul had been saying were phrases of the revolution, that he had heard
first in Siberia, and then in Moscow. No, Paul was not trying to talk to
his sister; he was telling the young workers of America what the young
workers of Russia were doing!

                                  XII

“Radio VXZ, the Angel City Evening Howler, Winitsky’s orchestra, in the
main dining-room of the Admiralty Hotel, broadcasting by remote
control.” And then presently “Radio QXJ, the Evening Roarer,” giving
election returns—big figures now. “Republican Campaign Headquarters in
New York, in a bulletin issued at 1 A. M., estimates that Calvin
Coolidge has carried Massachusetts by 400,000 plurality—hooray for the
Old Bay State! And New York by 900,000—three cheers for the Empire
State—ray, ray, ray! And Illinois by—wait a minute there, somebody’s
knocked my glasses off—they’re pulling the rough stuff in this studio.
Behave yourselves, girls, don’t you know the world’s listening in on QXJ
tonight? Illinois by 900,000. Whoopee! That noise you hear is the
Chicago Comet yelping for his home state! It’s time we heard the Chicago
Comet again—sing us a hot one, Teddy—that little warble about the
street car comin’ along. You know what I mean?” A broad, jolly Negro
voice answered, “Yessah, Ah knows! Yessah, hyar Ah goes!”
Plunkety-plunk—

             “Ah had some one befoah Ah had you
               An’ Ah’ll have someone aftah you’s gone,
             A street car or a sweetheart doan’ mattah to me,
               There’ll be another one comin’ along!”

Six or seven years ago the people of the United States in their
sovereign wisdom had passed a law forbidding the sale of alcoholic
liquor for beverage purposes. But the advocates of law and order reserve
to themselves the privilege of deciding which laws they will obey, and
the prohibition act is not among them. All ruling class America
celebrates its political victories by getting drunk. Bunny knew how it
was, having got drunk himself four years ago when President Harding had
been elected; he could smile appreciatively when the announcer of QXJ
tripped over his syllables—“Thass not polite now, Polly, quit your
shovin’ this micro-hiccrophone!”

The householder next door was a workingman, or clerk, or such humble
being, denied the royal privilege of breaking the law at ten dollars a
quart for gin and thirty for champagne. But he could sit here till after
midnight, and turn from one studio to another, and enjoy a series of
vicarious jags. “Radio VXZ, the main dining-room of the Admiralty
Hotel.” A chanteuse from the Grand Guignol in Paris was singing a
ballad, and you could hear the laughter of those who understood the
obscenity, and those who pretended to understand it, and those who were
too drunk to understand anything but how to laugh. Bunny was there in
his mind, because it was in this dining-room that he had been drunk, and
Dad had been drunk, and Vee Tracy and Annabelle Ames and Vernon
Roscoe—and Harvey Manning sound asleep in his chair, and Tommy Paley
trying to climb onto the table, and having to be kept from fighting the
waiters. There were three hundred tables in that hall, all reserved a
month in advance, and all with occupants in the same condition; the
tables stacked with hip-pocket flasks and bottles, strewn with the ashes
of cigarettes, the stains of spilled foods, flowers and confetti, and
little rolls of tissue-paper tape thrown from one table to another,
covering the room with a spider’s web of bright colors; toy balloons
tossing here and there; music, a riot of singing and shouting, and men
sprawling over half-naked women, old and young, flappers, and mothers
and grandmothers of flappers.

There would be election returns read, more of those triumphant, glorious
majorities for the strong silent statesman; and a magnate who knew that
this victory meant several million dollars off his income taxes, or an
oil concession in Mesopotamia or Venezuela won by American bribes and
held by American battleships—such a man would let out a whoop, and get
up in the middle of the floor and show how he used to dance the double
shuffle when he was a farm-hand; and then he would fall into the lap of
his mistress with a million dollars worth of diamonds on her naked
flesh, and the singer from a famous haunt of the sexual perverts of
Berlin would perform the latest jazz success, and the oil magnate and
his mistress would warble the chorus:

                 What do I do?
                 I toodle-doodle-doo,
                 I toodle-doodle-doodle-doodle-doo!

                                  XIII

Paul moved one hand: and again Ruth cried in excitement—he was coming
back to life! But the nurse said that meant nothing, the doctors had
said he might move. They must not let him move his head. She took his
temperature, but told them nothing.

Paul’s hands were straying over the sheet that covered him; aimlessly,
here and there, as if he were picking at insects on the bed. His voice
rose louder—Russian, always Russian, and Gregor would tell what the
words meant. They were in the red square, and saw the armies marching,
and heard the working masses shouting their slogans: they were on the
playing fields with the young workers; they were in Siberia, with Mandel
playing the balalaika, and having his eyes eaten out by ants. “Da
zdrávstvooyet Revolútziya!”—that meant “Long live Revolution!” “Vsya
vlast Soviétam!—All power to the Soviets!”

And from there they would be swept to the ballroom of the Emperor Hotel,
Angel City, Radio RWKY, the Angel City Patriot broadcasting by direct
control. Or was it to the heart of the Congo, where the naked savages
danced to the music of the tomtom, their black bodies, smeared with palm
oil, shining in the light of blazing fires? For a hundred centuries
these savages had paddled the river, and never to the mind of one of
them had come the thought of an engine; they had stood on the shores of
mighty lakes, and never dreamed a sail. The weight of nature’s blind
fecundity rested upon them, stifling their minds. And now capitalist
civilization, rushing to destruction with the speed of its fastest
battle-planes, cast about to find a form of expression for its
irresistible will to degeneracy, and chose the tomtom of the Congo for
its music, and the belly-dances of the Congo for its exercise, and so
here was America, Land of Jazz.

A voice from the megaphone, raucous, shrill, and mocking:

         “There’s where mah money goes,
       Lipsticks and powderpuffs and sucha things like that!”

And Bunny was in that great “Emperor” ballroom, where he had danced so
many a night, first with Eunice Hoyt and then with Vee Tracy. All his
friends would be there tonight—Verne and Annabelle and Fred Orpan and
Thelma Norman and Mrs. Pete O’Reilly and Mark Eisenberg—the cream of
the plutocracy, celebrating their greatest triumph to date. There would
be American flags and streamers on the walls, and some would wave little
flags—a great patriotic occasion—nothing like it since the
Armistice—ray for Coolidge, keep cool with Cal! The room would be
crowded to suffocation, and by this hour nine-tenths of the dancers
would be staggering. Large-waisted financiers with crumpled
shirt-fronts, hugging stout wives or slender mistresses, with naked
backs and half-naked bosoms hung with diamonds and pearls, red paint
plastered on their lips and platinum bangles in their ears, shuffling
round and round to the thump of the tomtom, the wail of the saxophone,
the rattle and clatter of sticks, the banging of bells and snarl of
stopped trumpets. “She does the camel-walk!” shrilled the singer; and
the hip and buttock muscles of the large-waisted financier would be
alternately contracted and relaxed, and his feet dragged about the floor
in the incoordinate reactions of locomotor ataxia and spastic
paraplegia.

                                  XIV

Paul had begun to thresh his arms about: it was necessary to hold him,
and when they tried it, he began to fight back. Did he think the
strike-guards at Paradise had seized him? Or was it the jailors at San
Elido? Or the Federal secret service agents? Or the French gendarmes? Or
the sailors of the fleet? Or the thugs with hatchets and iron pipe? He
fought with maniacal fury, and there was Bunny holding down one arm and
Gregor the other, with Ruth and Rachel each clinging to one foot, while
the nurse came running with a straight jacket. So with much labor they
tied him fast. He would make terrific efforts; his face would turn
purple, and the cords would stand out in his neck; but the system had
got him, he could not escape.

Meantime, through the open window, Radio VXZ, the main dining-room of
the Admiralty Hotel; a blended sound of many hundreds of people,
shouting, singing, cheering, now and then smashing a plate, or pounding
on the table. Some one was making a speech to the assembly, but he was
so drunk he could hardly talk, and they were so drunk they could not
have understood anyhow. One got snatches—“glorish victry—greatesh!
country—soun instooshns—greatesh man ever in White Housh—Cautioush
Cal—ray for Coolidge!” A storm of cheers, yells, laughter—and the
voice of the announcer, drunk also: “Baby Belle, hottes’ lill babe, sing
us hot one, right off griddle. Go to it, Babe, I’ll hold you!”

Yes, the announcer was drunk, the very radio was drunk, the instruments
would not send the wave-lengths true, the ether could not carry them
straight, they wavered and wiggled; the laws of the physical universe
had gone staggering, God was drunk on His Throne, so pleased by the
election of the greatesh man ever in White Housh. Bunny, dazed with
exhaustion, saw the scene through a blur of sound and motion, the
shining mouths of trumpets, the waving of flags, the flashing of
electric signs, the cavorting of satyrs, the prancing of savages, the
jiggling of financiers and their mistresses simulating copulation. Baby
Belle was unsteady before the microphone, you lost parts of her song at
each stagger; but snatches came, portraying the nymphomania of “Flamin’
Mamie, sure-fire vamp—hottes’ baby in the town—some scorcher—love’s
torture—gal that burns ’em down!”

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” cried Ruth. “He’s trying to speak to me!” And so for
an instant it seemed. Paul’s one eye had come open, wild and frightful;
he lifted his head, he made a choking noise—

“Comes to lovin’—she’s an oven!” shrilled the radio voice.

“Paul! What is it?” shrieked Ruth.

“Ain’t it funny—paper money burns right in her hand!”

Paul sank back, he gave up, and Ruth, her two hands clasped as if
praying to him, seemed to follow with her soul into that far-away place
where he was going.

“Flamin’ Mamie, workin’ in a mine, ate a box o’ matches at the age o’
nine!”

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” Ruth put her hand over Paul’s heart, and then
started up with a scream.

“Flamin’ Mamie, sure-fire vamp,” reiterated the chorus, “hottes’ baby in
the town!”

And Ruth rushed to the window, and threw herself—no, not out, because
Bunny had been too quick for her; the others helped to hold her, and the
nurse came running with a hypodermic needle, and in a few minutes she
was lying on a cot at the side of the room, looking as dead as her
brother.

And the householder turned to Radio RWKY, the Angel City Patriot
broadcasting from its own studio. “Latest bulletin from New York, the
Republican Central Committee claims that Calvin Coolidge will have the
greatest plurality ever cast in American history, close to eighteen
million votes. Good-night, friends of Radioland.”

                                   XV

The Communists wanted to have a “Red funeral,” to make a piece of
propaganda out of Paul’s death. But Eli interposed his majestic
authority; since Paul had repented his evil ways and come back to Jesus,
he should be buried according to the rites of the Third Revelation.

So three days later a little pageant wound its way to the top of one of
the hills of Paradise. There was a crowd on hand, and a truck with the
necessary radio apparatus—never were any of the precious words of Eli
lost nowadays; the two hundred thousand radio housewives of California
had been notified by the newspapers, and a hundred and ninety thousand
of them had put off their marketing to hear this romantic funeral
service. Bunny and Rachel and a handful of the reds stood to one side,
knowing they were not welcome. Ruth stood near the grave with the
weeping family, having on each side, of her a sturdy oil worker—her two
brothers-in-law, Andy Bugner and Jerry Black—because she had been
violent on occasions, and no one knew what she might do. She was white
and fearful in looks, but seemed not to realize the meaning of the big
hole dug in the ground, or of the long black box covered with flowers.
While Eli was preaching his fervid sermon about the prodigal son who
returned, and about the strayed lamb which was found, Ruth stood gazing
at the white clouds moving slowly behind the distant hilltops.

She would make them no more trouble. All she wanted was to wander over
these hills, and call now and then for the sheep which were no longer
there. Sometimes she called Paul, and sometimes she called Bunny, and so
they let her wander; until one day she went calling Joe Gundha. The oil
workers who were putting up the new derricks and cleaning out the burned
wells to put them back on production were new men to the Ross Junior
tract—it is the Roscoe Junior tract now, by the way, one of Vernon
Roscoe’s four sons being in charge of the job. These new men had never
heard about the “roughneck” who had fallen into the discovery well, so
they paid no attention to the unhappy girl who wandered here and there
calling his name.

It was not till late that night, when Ruth was missing, and the family
making a search, that some one told of hearing her call Joe Gundha.
Meelie remembered right away, and they put down a hook in the discovery
well, which was having to be drilled again, and they brought up a piece
of Ruth’s dress; so they put down a three-pronged grab, and brought up
the rest of her, and Eli came again, and they buried her alongside Paul,
and with Joe Gundha not far away.

You can see those graves, with a picket fence about them, and no derrick
for a hundred feet or more. Some day all those unlovely derricks will be
gone, and so will the picket fence and the graves. There will be other
girls with bare brown legs running over those hills, and they may grow
up to be happier women, if men can find some way to chain the black and
cruel demon which killed Ruth Watkins and her brother—yes, and Dad
also: an evil Power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men
and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned
wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor.

                                THE END




                      Who Owns The Press, and Why?

When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? And
whose propaganda?

Who furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it
honest material?

No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the
first time the questions are answered in a book.

                     T H E   B R A S S   C H E C K
                     A Study of American Journalism
                           By UPTON SINCLAIR

Read the record of this book to August, 1920: Published in February,
1920; first edition, 23,000 paper-bound copies, sold in two weeks.
Second edition, 21,000 paper-bound, sold before it could be put to
press. Third edition, 15,000, and fourth edition, 12,000, sold. Fifth
edition, 15,000, in press. Paper for sixth edition, 110,000, just
shipped from the mill. The third and fourth editions are printed on
“number one news;” the sixth will be printed on a carload of lightweight
brown wrapping paper—all we could get in a hurry.

The first cloth edition, 16,500 copies, all sold; a carload of paper for
the second edition, 40,000 copies, has just reached our printer—and so
we dare to advertise!

Ninety thousand copies of a book sold in six months—and published by
the author, with no advertising, and only a few scattered reviews! What
this means is that the American people want to know the truth about
their newspapers. They have found the truth in “The Brass Check” and
they are calling for it by telegraph. Put these books on your counter,
and you will see, as one doctor wrote us—“they melt away like the
snow.”

From the pastor of the Community Church, New York:

“I am writing to thank you for sending me a copy of your new book, “The
Brass Check.” Although it arrived only a few days ago, I have already
read it through, every word, and have loaned it to one of my colleagues
for reading. The book is tremendous. I have never read a more strongly
consistent argument or one so formidably buttressed by facts. You have
proved your case to the handle. I again take satisfaction in saluting
you not only as a great novelist, but as the ablest pamphleteer in
America today. I am already passing around the word in my church and
taking orders for the book.”—John Haynes Holmes.

                 =440 pages. Cloth $2.00; paper $1.00=
           =UPTON SINCLAIR, Station A, Pasadena, California=




                             JIMMIE HIGGINS

“JIMMIE HIGGINS” is the fellow who does the hard work in the job of
waking up the workers. Jimmie hates war—all war—and fights against it
with heart and soul. But war comes, and Jimmie is drawn into it, whether
he will or no. He has many adventures—strikes, jails, munitions
explosions, draft-boards, army-camps, submarines and battles. “Jimmie
Higgins Goes to War” at last, and when he does he holds back the German
army and wins the battle of “Chatty Terry.” But then they send him into
Russia to fight the Bolsheviki, and there “Jimmie Higgins Votes for
Democracy.”

A picture of the American working-class movement during four years of
world-war; all wings of the movement, all the various tendencies and
clashing impulses are portrayed. Cloth, $1.50; paper, $1.00.

_From “The Candidate”_: I have just finished reading the first
installment of “Jimmie Higgins” and I am delighted with it. It is the
beginning of a great story, a story that will be translated into many
languages and be read by eager and interested millions all over the
world. I feel that your art will lend itself readily to “Jimmie
Higgins,” and that you will be at your best in placing this dear little
comrade where he belongs in the Socialist movement. The opening story of
your chapter proves that you know him intimately. So do I and I love him
with all my heart, even as you do. He has done more for me than I shall
ever be able to do for him. Almost anyone can be “The Candidate,” and
almost anyone will do for a speaker, but it takes the rarest of
qualities to produce a “Jimmie Higgins.” You are painting a superb
portrait of our “Jimmie” and I congratulate you.—EUGENE V. DEBS.

_From Mrs. Jack London_: Jimmie Higgins is immense. He is real, and so
are the other characters. I’m sure you rather fancy Comrade Dr. Service!
The beginning of the narrative is delicious with an irresistible loving
humor; and as a change comes over it and the Big Medicine begins to
work, one realizes by the light of 1918, what you have undertaken to
accomplish. The sure touch of your genius is here, Upton Sinclair, and I
wish Jack London might read and enjoy.—CHARMIAN LONDON.

_From a Socialist Artist_: Jimmie Higgins’ start is a master portrayal
of that character. I have been out so long on these lecture tours that I
can appreciate the picture. I am waiting to see how the story develops.
It starts better than “King Coal.”—RYAN WALKER.

                 =Cloth $1.50; paper $1.00; postpaid.=

                            =UPTON SINCLAIR=
                   =Station A, Pasadena, California=




                         They Call Me Carpenter
                           By UPTON SINCLAIR

WOULD you like to meet Jesus? Would you care to walk down Broadway with
him in the year 1922? What would he order for dinner in a lobster
palace? What would he do in a beauty parlor? What would he make of a
permanent wave? What would he say to Mary Magna, million dollar queen of
the movies? And how would he greet the pillars of St. Bartholomew’s
Church? How would he behave at strike headquarters? What would he say at
a mass-meeting of the “reds”? And what would the American Legion do to
him?

From the “Survey”:

“Upton Sinclair has a reputation for rushing in where angels fear to
tread. He has done it again and, artist that he is, has mastered the
most difficult theme with ease and sureness. That the figure of Jesus is
woven into a novel which is glorious fun, in itself will shock many
people. But the graphic arts have long been given the liberty of
treating His life in a contemporary setting—why not the novelist?

“Heywood Broun and other critics notwithstanding, it must be stated that
Sinclair has treated the figure of Christ with a reverence far more
sincere than that of writings in which His presence is shrouded in
pseudo-mystic inanity. By an artistry borrowed from the technique of
modern expressionist fiction, he has combined downright realism with an
extravagant imaginativeness in which the appearance of Christ is no more
improper than it is in the actual dreams of hundreds of thousands of
devout Christians.

“Like all of Sinclair’s writings, this book is, of course, a Socialist
tract; but here—in a spirit which entirely destroys Mr. Broun’s charge
that he has made Christ the spokesman of one class—he is unmerciful in
his exposure of the sins of the poor as well as of the rich, and directs
at the comrades in radical movements a sermon which every churchman will
gladly endorse.

“It is not necessary to recommend a book that will find its way into
thousands of homes. Incidentally one wonders how a story so colloquially
American—Mr. Broun considers this bad taste—can possibly be translated
into the Hungarian, the Chinese and the dozen or so other languages in
which Sinclair’s books are devoured by the common people of the world.”

          =Single copy, cloth, $1.50; paper, $1.00, postpaid.=
           =UPTON SINCLAIR, Station A, Pasadena, California=




                     A New Novel by Upton Sinclair
                                  100%
                         THE STORY OF A PATRIOT

WOULD you like to go behind the scenes and see the “invisible
government” of your country saving you from the Bolsheviks and the Reds?
Would you like to meet the secret agents and provocateurs of “Big
Business,” to know what they look like, how they talk and what they are
doing to make the world safe for democracy? Several of these gentlemen
have been haunting the home of Upton Sinclair during the past three
years and he has had the idea of turning the tables and investigating
the investigators. He has put one of them, Peter Gudge by name, into a
book, together with Peter’s lady-loves, and his wife, and his boss and a
whole group of his fellow-agents and their employers.

The hero of this book is a red-blooded, 100% American, a “he-man” and no
mollycoddle. He begins with the Mooney case, and goes through half a
dozen big cases of which you have heard. His story is a fact-story of
America from 1916 to 1920, and will make a bigger sensation than “The
Jungle.” Albert Rhys Williams, author of “Lenin” and “In the Claws of
the German Eagle,” read the MS. and wrote:

“This is the first novel of yours that I have read through with real
interest. It is your most timely work, and is bound to make a sensation.
I venture that you will have even more trouble than you had with ‘The
Brass Check’—in getting the books printed fast enough.”

                 =_Single copy, cloth, $1.50 postpaid_=

                            =UPTON SINCLAIR=
                   =Station A, Pasadena, California=




 A book which has been absolutely boycotted by the literary reviews of
                                America.
                        THE PROFITS OF RELIGION
                           BY UPTON SINCLAIR

A STUDY of Supernaturalism as a Source of Income and a Shield to
Privilege; the first examination in any language of institutionalized
religion from the economic point of view. “Has the labour as well as the
merit of breaking virgin soil,” writes Joseph McCabe. The book has had
practically no advertising and only two or three reviews in radical
publications; yet forty thousand copies have been sold in the first
year.

_From the Rev. John Haynes Holmes_: “I must confess that it has fairly
made me writhe to read these pages, not because they are untrue or
unfair, but on the contrary, because I know them to be the real facts. I
love the church as I love my home, and therefore it is no pleasant
experience to be made to face such a story as this which you have told.
It had to be done, however, and I am glad you have done it, for my
interest in the church, after all, is more or less incidental, whereas
my interest in religion is a fundamental thing. . . . Let me repeat
again that I feel that you have done us all a service in the writing of
this book. Our churches today, like those of ancient Palestine, are the
abode of Pharisees and scribes. It is as spiritual and helpful a thing
now as it was in Jesus’ day for that fact to be revealed.”

_From Luther Burbank_: “No one has ever told ‘the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth’ more faithfully than Upton Sinclair in
‘The Profits of Religion.’”

_From Louis Untermeyer_: “Let me add my quavering alto to the chorus of
applause of ‘The Profits of Religion.’ It is something more than a
book—it is a Work!”

                        Cloth $1.50; paper $1.00




                               Concerning
                               The Jungle

Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been
such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has
come to Upton Sinclair.—_New York Evening World._

It is a book that does for modern industrial slavery what “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” did for black slavery. But the work is done far better and more
accurately in “The Jungle” than in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”—_Arthur
Brisbane in the New York Evening Journal._

I never expected to read a serial. I am reading “_The Jungle_,” and I
should be afraid to trust myself to tell how it affects me. It is a
great work. I have a feeling that you yourself will be dazed some day by
the excitement about it. It is impossible that such a power should not
be felt. It is so simple, so true, so tragic and so human. It is so
eloquent, and yet so exact. I must restrain myself or you may
misunderstand.—_David Graham Phillips._

In this fearful story the horrors of industrial slavery are as vividly
drawn as if by lightning. It marks an epoch in revolutionary
literature.—_Eugene V. Debs._

        Mr. Heinemann isn’t a man to bungle;
        He’s published a book which is called “The Jungle.”
        It’s written by Upton Sinclair, who
        Appears to have heard a thing or two
        About Chicago and what men do
        Who live in that city—a loathsome crew.
        It’s there that the stockyards reek with blood,
        And the poor man dies, as he lives, in mud;
        The Trusts are wealthy beyond compare,
        And the bosses are all triumphant there,
        And everything rushes without a skid
        To be plunged in a hell which has lost its lid.
        For a country where things like that are done
        There’s just one remedy, only one,
        A latter-day Upton Sinclairism
        Which the rest of us know as Socialism.
        Here’s luck to the book! It will make you cower,
        For it’s written with wonderful, thrilling power.
        It grips your throat with a grip Titanic,
        And scatters shams with a force volcanic.
        Go buy the book, for I judge you need it,
        And when you have bought it, read it, read it.
                                     —_Punch (London)._




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.